Hey. I started playing my druid in 2.1.0, and had before then played a warrior. I switched to my druid because I loved the uniquenes that the feral spec offered me. My attention went directly to the part of feral that was melee dps, backup tank, backup healer, backup caster(cc). This of course wasn't a roll in a raid back then, but restoration druids were pretty good to bring. This made me roll restoration for raids, and whenever I got the oppurtunity, I specced feral either for some arena jokes, bgs, dailies or whatever I wanted to do. My love for this spec goes deep, and I loved the versatility and at the same time challenges this gave me. Played right, I could do ok in duels, ok in bgs, ok in arena, ok in soloing shit, ok in about anything. And I know some of you might not see "ok" as good enough, but I dont concider myself an exceptionel player. Best ferals had high ratings, it was just really few of them, and they were never in the top. (Atleast not as I can remember) This meant that if you gave just a little more of yourself to this spec, you could be a unique player, who performed well.
Then came WotLK and took away our intellect. Since then, healing/mana pool has been severly nerfed. I quit interesting myself in ferals who performed well in arena, because it had turned into more of a nukefest. Ferals were better when it came to burst, and thats why we were more wanted. Already this had damaged our uniquenes. And it got worse, ferals were buffed, sure. Ferals got more attention in pvp, sure. But our uniquenes had turned into burst, burst, burst. I haven't really looked up pvp in cata at all cus I gave that up in WotLK.
I still play my druid, and jesus christ, leveling a druid was pain. Where did our survivability go? Down the drain with the hybrid I guess. (Oh and escaping from roots in the next patch.)
Don't bother answering if you concider this whine, I just want to know if any other druid out there feels like this? If this is what people want, then I guess it's not a bad thing, I'm just begining to think it's not my class anymore. Concider it, it's a total change of how the spec works, over quite a long time. How is our healing now...?