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  1. #1

    Is Druid PvP very complex?

    Hello there, fellow forumers.

    I've been playing since vanilla, started raiding as rdruid back in WotLK, in Cata I've been PvPing as priest.
    Right now I want to start fresh to play very casually, BGs and 2v2 (<1600 probably, cant tell) mostly. I like priest gameplay but I really hate holy\light stuff (and shadow theme is ruined with bubbles and renews and PoMs, not saying occasional flash heals). I really do love warlock but I love healing too.

    So, I want to try druid. Resto, Feral, Balance (also guardian but AFAIK they dont get to pvp too often or competitive) - all specs seem interesting to me.
    My biggest concern is shapeshifting. Not saying I am bad or anything but I am quite afraid, seeing a bit of twitch streams, pvp druids run like hell, shapeshift 1000 times, that kind of stuff.

    I am asking you, druids: is it hard to learn? I am pretty good in low-rating PvP, lacking reflexes (low amount of time played per week) but good in strategy and stuff (occasionally playing for about 7 years, really used to this game).

    What advice can you give? How do I manage my skills in all forms, what is the most convenient way to bind shapeshifting?
    Maybe I am a bit exaggerating this 'problem'?
    Thanks in advance,
    Dartungar.

  2. #2
    I think priest and shamans have the biggest learning curves. Druid is pretty simple just key bind heavy.
    You're right except for 2 things.

    1. My name is spelt "God" not "Loucious-sama".
    2. I'm not a man, because man is inherently flawed. I am in fact a being so far beyond your comprehension that archaic constraints like flesh, blood, time and consequently, gender, have no meaning to me.

  3. #3
    I wouldn't say its complex it just takes a bit a micromanagement. May seem a bit overwhelming at first just take it slow.

  4. #4
    Deleted
    If you mean what i think you mean there is a shapeshift macro to get out of roots instantly, you just spam it since it is off gc (correct me if im wrong) theres a feral pvp guide here somewhere that explains it.

    OT: Im about to do the deepwind gorge meta on a druid and i have never before played any druid pvp, anyone have any inputs on which spec would provide the most advantage when doing solo achievements in the bg?

  5. #5
    Deleted
    Nope. I'd say shamans and sub rogues are more complicated.

  6. #6
    Resto Druids just involve a lot of pre-hotting, something you might not be used to compared to other healers who tend to be more reactive. If you get behind, you'll need to blow CDs to catch up, and even then it might be too late.

    There are plenty of macros out there for shifting, honestly that's probably one of the easier parts of playing the spec. The hardest thing is probably the pure number of keybinds and staying in front of damage. Personally, I really dislike the playstyle despite a Druid being my main for most of MoP, but some people really like it. Check out videos by Cottage on YouTube and you can get some great survival tips (he goes 1v5 at one point to show he can do it).

  7. #7
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Thopp View Post
    If you mean what i think you mean there is a shapeshift macro to get out of roots instantly, you just spam it since it is off gc (correct me if im wrong) theres a feral pvp guide here somewhere that explains it.

    OT: Im about to do the deepwind gorge meta on a druid and i have never before played any druid pvp, anyone have any inputs on which spec would provide the most advantage when doing solo achievements in the bg?
    Shapeshift is on the gcd. The macro is /cast !whatever_form_you_want, it refreshes the form buff so you take less risks of getting cc'd out of form and it's slightly faster than pressing the form button once to get out and then again to get back into form.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Thopp View Post
    If you mean what i think you mean there is a shapeshift macro to get out of roots instantly, you just spam it since it is off gc (correct me if im wrong) theres a feral pvp guide here somewhere that explains it.

    OT: Im about to do the deepwind gorge meta on a druid and i have never before played any druid pvp, anyone have any inputs on which spec would provide the most advantage when doing solo achievements in the bg?
    I use a shapeshift macro that works when you are in combat. It will shift you into travel form if outside, catform if inside, aquatic form if in water and flight form if you can fly. It works pretty well but you have to have a separate keybind for bear form when you need a survivability boost. I will have to put it in here when I get home tonight. The only problem with it is if you are pvping in the world it will try to shift you into flight form and of course not work.

    As for the deepwind gorge meta, the only thing that is hard about that is the capping the flag four times in a single game. My advise would be to go feral for that part and cast symbiosis on a priest. That will give you dispersion which you will need to get away from the hoards of people trying to kill you. Other than that your forms don't do a whole lot speed wise since you are limited to 100%, but shifting snares/roots will help a lot. You could go guardian, but it might be easier as feral. It also is possible that it would be easier as resto because you could heal yourself, but in my experience if you cannot reliably get away from people as resto you will die through heals.

  9. #9
    Feral is VERY keybind intensive (I believe I had 54 binds on my last count), damage is a bit complicated, defensive cooldowns are not hard, they are not easy either. Overall it is very time consuming to learn because you have a load of things to do an identify it all is pretty hard. Still you have huge uptime in a good team, which I find the best thing about ferals.

    I found boomkins pretty easy to be honest, decent damage, you can still put some pressure even with a melee on you. I have played elemental and SP also, found boomkin to be the easiest of them. I just find it too based on RNG (sometimes I simply blow someone up with 200k+ damage in under a second, sometimes I just don't do any damage).

    I haven't played resto in quite a huge amount of time, last time I played it was pretty hard to know when to move from defensive to ofensive and not overstaying in offensive, maybe I just played too little, still I had better success as a priest.

  10. #10
    The "universal" shapeshift macro people speak of:

    Code:
    /cast !Cat Form
    /cast !Bear Form
    /cast !Aquatic Form
    /cast !Moonkin Form
    /cast !Travel Form
    The one I use for flying/travel form is:

    Code:
    /cast [flyable, nocombat] Swift Flight Form; Travel Form

  11. #11
    if you play priest just bind cat or travel form to your sw:death bind, that way you can shapeshift poly / hex a lot easier if you are more used to pressing that bind

    saying druid pvp is complex is saying hunters are bad right now tbh

  12. #12
    Deleted
    not complex at all, maybe only resto one, but not really

  13. #13
    Deleted
    I'd say it requires some practice but not to hard once u've played some of it.

  14. #14
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    druid is one of the classes i've never played in pvp, because of the fact it would take so long to learn and be good at. i would say they are the most complex and steepest learning curve. alot of different forms to utilize and alot of skills/spells to fully take advantage of. more keybinds and macros = takes more time to master, imo
    Last edited by DiscoGhost; 2013-08-18 at 03:44 PM.
    You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by hitmannoob View Post
    I think priest and shamans have the biggest learning curves. Druid is pretty simple just key bind heavy.
    Yeah, agree here. The amount of keybinds I have on my feral just isn't fun anymore. >.< Removing form restrictions on various spells didn't really help either.

  16. #16
    Sahamasn have the biggest learning curve imo

  17. #17
    People can and will make an argument about any spec being complex and hard to play competitively.. but personally I think that at least resto is one of the simplest and smoothest pvp specs in the game. As long as you use your cooldowns and get used to shifting out of most slows and roots while keeping your hots up, there is not much more to it. You don't have to actually cast much at all.

  18. #18
    Coming from a 6(? I think) year Druid main, Druids have one of the highest skill curves to begin playing but one of the lowest skill ceilings. What I mean by that is, for nearly all of the Druid specs, there is a lot of button bloat, a lot of spells that you need to have but 'don't really do anything', and the playstyle is somewhat different to that of most other classes.

    Once you learn the basics, there isn't really much difference in the personal skill level of a 2k rated Druid and a 2.4k rated Druid - but the difference of skill level for classes like Mages, Locks, Rogues, Hunters, Shamans between those ratings would be massive.

    Think of it like this, Druids are a large swimming pool - which looks daunting at first, but the depth difference between the shallow and the deep end is only a couple of inches. Most other classes are smaller swimming pools, but the difference between the shallow and deep end is instead a couple of meters.

    So to answer your question, yes and no. If you're enjoying Druid and you can put the time in to learn it, it's not complex at all. But you do need a lot of space on your bars, and a lot of binds.
    Last edited by Snuggli; 2013-08-19 at 12:22 PM.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Snuggli View Post
    Coming from a 6(? I think) year Druid main, Druids have one of the highest skill curves to begin playing but one of the lowest skill ceilings. What I mean by that is, for nearly all of the Druid specs, there is a lot of button bloat, a lot of spells that you need to have but 'don't really do anything', and the playstyle is somewhat different to that of most other classes.

    Once you learn the basics, there isn't really much difference in the personal skill level of a 2k rated Druid and a 2.4k rated Druid - but the difference of skill level for classes like Mages, Locks, Rogues, Hunters, Shamans between those ratings would be massive.

    Think of it like this, Druids are a large swimming pool - which looks daunting at first, but the depth difference between the shallow and the deep end is only a couple of inches. Most other classes are smaller swimming pools, but the difference between the shallow and deep end is instead a couple of meters.

    So to answer your question, yes and no. If you're enjoying Druid and you can put the time in to learn it, it's not complex at all. But you do need a lot of space on your bars, and a lot of binds.
    Id say moonkins have a pretty high skill cap in high end pvp 2400 + , ive never been that high myself , but id assume , ud need to be amazing at avoiding damage , whilst dealing damage at the same time. As for feral , probs a lower skill cap than moonkins at high ratings.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Batmoonn View Post
    Id say moonkins have a pretty high skill cap in high end pvp 2400 + , ive never been that high myself , but id assume , ud need to be amazing at avoiding damage , whilst dealing damage at the same time. As for feral , probs a lower skill cap than moonkins at high ratings.
    It is not so much avoiding damage and dealing damage at the same time as it is using clone to peel for your team. If you play rdruid first and are used to using clone as a defensive tool as well as an offensive tool then the transition to boomkin is much easier. Most new boomkins I play with don't know when to clone effectively and are focused on putting out damage when they should be peeling (which they are really good at doing). Boomkins have lots of roles in arena play, healer, damage dealer, CC bot, and runaway target but what you should be doing shifts a lot. Being able to know when to do what is the most important thing for a boomkin.

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