Too Many Roles Possible Reason for Nerf?

[shadedglory]

We all know druid is the ultimate hybrid class. We can tank, heal, range dps, melee dps, and even bake cookies for the entire raid and summon cows for milk. I believe this may have a little to do with the nerfs to bear tanks. I know feral tanks were a bit OP, and Blizz was concerned with their armor scaling. Still in certain situations bear tanks just weren't viable, and now will certainly be even less so. They have made the spec easier to play with the 360 Swipe and no target requirement, but nerfed it to the point it will likely not be viable in end game raiding. We all know this, so this is the point I'm trying to make:


Maybe Blizzard only wants druids to have 2-3 valid roles like other classes do? Priests, Shamans, DKs, Warriors can each only provide two roles to the group.. Pallies can provide three, Druids can provide all four. This means a person would only have to roll a druid and never another class to play all aspects. My question is, if this has ANYTHING to do with the nerfs, why the tank spec?? Wow is already short on tanks as is, why not make feral dps unviable and useless in end game? It's always been the red headed step child of the druid talent trees, and it was never a major problem before. From what I've seen a good percentage of feral dps is feral druids who tried to tank and failed, and are now failing at dps but it's less damaging to the group that way. Don't get me wrong there is a few solid feral dps out there, but it is without a doubt the most useless and unbeneficial to the raid spec in the tree, so it should be the one nobody wants to bring, not the tank spec. My druid is tank/healz, not dps. If I want to dps I play a pure dps class.

In conclusion, they need to buff druids to a point were they are on scale with all other tanks, as this is needed a millions time more than more scrub DPS running around taking up valuable raid spots for actual good players.

[Herecius]

I doubt this is really the case, as it would indicate that Blizz is worried about druids outnumbering everything else, where in reality they are one of the lesser-player classes. It may be more of a case that Blizz just isn't quite sure what to do with druids as a dps class just yet.

[droozle]

This would be a valid hypothesis before WotLK came out, but Blizzard has stated again and again that they want every spec of every class be viable in at least one area of the game (PvE, PvP, Arena). So while it is true that druids are a class that can perform all roles, it doesn't mean that this fact should be reason to nerf any of those roles to a state where it becomes useless.

As a kitty druid myself, I do not share your opinion about "the most useless and unbeneficial" raid spec. We can still provide utility (where this would be hard when you are tanking a boss) and do pretty decent damage if you know how your spec works. If you'd ask in my guild, you would find nobody saying that kitty druids suck. My guild/raid leader is very happy to have me around, because I can do lots of damage both in a short time and in long fights, and I can even tank Kel'Thuzad and Patchwerk in kitty spec, easing the work load of our dedicated tanks. Together with my battle rezzes, OOC rezzes, innervates and buffs, I'd say my value to the raid is quite huge.

[Iriqi]

You know, if you are counting Ranged DPS and Melee DPS as 2 different roles, (Which they are) That puts shaman at 3 roles, not 2.

[Javanface]

Anecdotal evidence at best, but when we roll into naxx, its fantastic having one or even two feral tanks because they seem to lose less dps viability from their spec than a prot warrior or paladin. Hence on those fights where only one tank is needed, a simple switch into dps gear and there you have an extra, quite decent dpser instead of a space waster. This is obviously a non-issue in 3.1, but so far it has served us well.

What I can see becoming an issue is if druid dodge and hp don't provide enough mitigation scaling compared to other tanking classes because of the diminishing returns on dodge. This could mean that the druid becomes the less preferred tank for other than situational fights where cat+sprint or similar skills are valuable.

As fair as our guild goes however, we won't be replacing our fat bear any time soon since he is our best tank at the moment. Skillwise, that is, not just cause he's an op druid

[Avermra]

Short Answer: No

Long Answer: Don't want to write

[Lori]

stop whining or reroll pally!