Reasons why you should roll a Druid in Classic:

[jakeic]

Yet any video you see of even the people considered to be the best back then is full of all of that.

Sure, every video.

[Deleted]

I do seem to remember it was one of, if not, the hardest classes to learn though. Maybe not a bad thing, but that's pretty much all I remember from vanilla druids..

[Blamblam41]

You forgot the best reason:

- Druids dont have to res people when the raid wipes.[

Hahaha, good one.

Seriously though, this sort of opened my eyes. i never leveled a druid until TBC personally, but I had heard the veteran stories from a few well played druids in my black temple guild about how amazing druid could be if you got everything perfect. I think it's the warden's staff you're talking about being the BiS and that thing was -beast- if I remember right.

May have to seriously consider druid if I do classic now. Was considering doing retridan because Seal of Command with Asscandy or Zinrokh is broke, but this sounds like a lot of fun, especially considering druid stealth and that paragraph of why travel form is 2d0pe.

- - - Updated - - -

@Eveningforest

I'm not gonna say that druids cant top the meters but you have to think about how much of your healing is actually overheals. Or in other words how much of it is wasted due to the target being healed up to full and your HoTs are still ticking. Druids being support is a fair assessment in my eyes. When I would heal in raids as Druid I felt like my job was to keep everyone topped off as much as I could so the Priest and Pallies don't go oom. For the most part I would keep a hot on people taking damage and when damage spikes would happen that's when it was time for the priests and pallies to do their jobs and we make it easier on them. Balance I felt like we supported the other casters by increasing their DPS with our +crit aura. I didn't play feral but they support melee damage with the +crit aura, or was that not added till BC?, and on the spot off tank if needed or if the main tank goes down and we need someone to jump in until we get him Battle Rezed back up.

HoTs overhealing has more to do with the thoroughput of the other healers vs. raid damage.

Generally speaking as long as 2/3rds+ of the rejuv is used to heal, you're technically remain mana positive overhealing be damned. You are right in saying that priest/paladin was more spike healing while druid/shaman was more smooth healing. Sort of how vanilla healers were 'balanced'.

Edit: And don't even get me -started- on the arguments our priest would have with our druid about renew vs. rejuv. Oh my fucking god.

[Storfan]

Hahaha, good one.

Seriously though, this sort of opened my eyes. i never leveled a druid until TBC personally, but I had heard the veteran stories from a few well played druids in my black temple guild about how amazing druid could be if you got everything perfect. I think it's the warden's staff you're talking about being the BiS and that thing was -beast- if I remember right.

May have to seriously consider druid if I do classic now. Was considering doing retridan because Seal of Command with Asscandy or Zinrokh is broke, but this sounds like a lot of fun, especially considering druid stealth and that paragraph of why travel form is 2d0pe.

- - - Updated - - -

Retridins are literally dogshit in vanilla. I cannot stretch enough how bad they are, and even if you roll one, they wont let you raid with Asscandy or Zinrokh because the only reason anyone would even remotely consider bringing a retridin is if you use the crafted Nightfall-axe but even then your DPS will be about 1/4th of other real DPS classes.

Source: I had a retridin alt on feenix vanilla private servers decked in mc/bwl epics and I did worse DPS than tanks.

[Tekkommo]

Druids are the worst healers for 5 man content.

One person dies, you have no option but to run back

Might not sound like a big deal, but with corpse runs being long, it can be quite irritating.

[Yorgh]

Druids are the worst healers for 5 man content.

One person dies, you have no option but to run back

Might not sound like a big deal, but with corpse runs being long, it can be quite irritating.

Unless you have a prot pally or shadow priest, but yeah not having a res as a healer was a pain

[RobertMugabe]

ffs can people please stop saying that Mage is the 2nd easiest class to level when it clearly fucking isn't? Hunters are easier, by far, warlocks are easier, by far, druids are easier by far, paladins are easier, by far (they're boring to lvl up, yes, but also easy).

So mage is at least somewhere in midtier if we're speaking of lvling (though I'd rate it more challenging than any other class besides warrior... though after the previous 4 classes have been considered, it does make sense to discuss the "hardness" of lvling a mage, priest, shaman or rogue... only warriors are undeniably the hardest to level)

...back to druids: Yes, they are actually great. They can tank all dungeons and 20man raids as well as be great offtanks in 40man raids. Feral dps can also actually perform great, though they are more gear dependent than others. Balance is only good in PVP and resto is resto, always needed in whatever scenario.

oh and btw: you get travelform at lvl30 (god... so many errors in this post)

[Tekkommo]

Unless you have a prot pally or shadow priest, but yeah not having a res as a healer was a pain

So 2 unwanted specs

[Yorgh]

So 2 unwanted specs

Didn't matter much for 5man content. A prot pally sure could tank 5 mans, and a shadow priest was fine too. In raid the loss of the ress was mainly possitiv for the druid as he/she "didn't have to" ress

[Tekkommo]

Didn't matter much for 5man content. A prot pally sure could tank 5 mans, and a shadow priest was fine too. In raid the loss of the ress was mainly possitiv for the druid as he/she "didn't have to" ress

Shadow Priest is fine yeah, played one on a private server. Can also heal fine as shadow.

Prot Pally for levelling is useless in 5 mans, you'll be oom every pull. In proper gear, yes Prot Pally is fine, but they are very rare. But if you take a Prot Pally to tank a dungeon that needed gear, you're in for a bad time.

[Shibito]

Not to mention early vanilla has limited debuff slots on bosses you wont get to go feral and use debuff slots for bleeds.

[GenericDragon]

I've been playing Druid since mid-BC, I fully intent on playing feral druid during the entirety of classic when I play it. I'm pretty excited.

[-aiko-]

This is a misleading thread. It is extremely unlikely at end-game that you will be able to maintain more than one spec, for one, so you can throw the illusion of being able to do multiple things out the window. It is far too expensive to respec often and good luck gearing for two different specs. If you intend on raiding, you will pretty much get pigeon holed into healing anyways. Yes, yes, we know, some raids allowed things like off-tank druids but not typically for serious content and no matter what anyone says you were worse at it than your counter-parts.


I kind of hope Blizzard decides to do a pure vanilla experience, and not start with a later patch, so all these private server chums can have a rude awakening.

[Puri]

Druids lack rezz except combat rezz, which makes them in combination with quickly respawning trash and even quicker respawning pats one of the worst dungeon healers.

To effectively tank they need certain items, and while in best gear they indeed are very good tanks they still miss several utilities of the practically only viable raid tank, the warrior, especially the fear protection which is a major issue in many raids.

For both feral and balance you will be - again with best available gear - in the middle of the pack, with feral being a very annoying form switching playstyle (fully subjectivly, obviously) and balance needs all available (and there are many) mana reg consumables unless you want to be oom for 25% of the boss fights.

They are fully "viable" for all specs, but they don't excel at a single one and are rather middle of the pack at best. And it's not like you would change specs on a whim.

[Thatfire]

This is a misleading thread. It is extremely unlikely at end-game that you will be able to maintain more than one spec, for one, so you can throw the illusion of being able to do multiple things out the window. It is far too expensive to respec often and good luck gearing for two different specs. If you intend on raiding, you will pretty much get pigeon holed into healing anyways. Yes, yes, we know, some raids allowed things like off-tank druids but not typically for serious content and no matter what anyone says you were worse at it than your counter-parts.

As far as dungeon gear you shouldn't have any problems gearing 2 different specs. As for raids it might be a little more difficult gearing for Feral because for a majority of the time they will want you to raid as Resto. You are wrong about not being able play more than one spec when it comes down to Resto and Balance. Resto gear doubles as Balance gear so you essentialy are gearing both at the same time when raiding and when all the mages and warlocks pass on cloth dps gear grab it for Balance. Same thing goes for Resto/Balance PvP gear. You pretty much use the same gear other than switching out for gear with more crit for balance but using cloth is a no no in PvP. As far as respec costs all you have to do is know your raid nights and farm the gold for respeccing. I even had people willing to pay for my respec fees if I would raid for them. By the time 39 or close to people throw in 3G you got your respec fee.

[Eveningforest]

This is a misleading thread. It is extremely unlikely at end-game that you will be able to maintain more than one spec, for one, so you can throw the illusion of being able to do multiple things out the window. It is far too expensive to respec often and good luck gearing for two different specs. If you intend on raiding, you will pretty much get pigeon holed into healing anyways. Yes, yes, we know, some raids allowed things like off-tank druids but not typically for serious content and no matter what anyone says you were worse at it than your counter-parts.


I kind of hope Blizzard decides to do a pure vanilla experience, and not start with a later patch, so all these private server chums can have a rude awakening.

You mean if Blizzard could replicate the whole experience starting with Dec. 2004 and roll out the patches as they did in original Wow? I think that would be amazing, but probably not that easy to do.

As both a Vanilla vet and a 'private server chum', I'd be totally willing to do the whole druid experience again. Some of us just like challenges filled with imperfections.

Also, I noted earlier in this thread, both my spouse and I played druids in Vanilla and respecced quite frequently between resto for progression raids and feral, moonkin for farm nights.

PS: I don't find anything about the OP's post "misleading."

[Shibito]

I've been playing Druid since mid-BC, I fully intent on playing feral druid during the entirety of classic when I play it. I'm pretty excited.

good luck

[GenericDragon]

good luck

Thanks. :P I'm probably not going to raid, so I won't really need to worry about "my spot".

[Mendzia]

Sorry but i will stay with my warrior/priest.

[Vayra]

@Naralix

Your best weapon is a PvP weapon.
Your best helm is a lvl 40 item.
Your best tanking weapon is a lvl 43 item.
Your best trinket is a quest reward.
Your best tanking ring from MC is not good for warriors.
Your 2nd best tanking ring is a quest reward.
Your best gloves are from pvp ranking, not raiding.
Your best boots are from pvp ranking, not raiding.
Your best legs are from WSG exalted, not raiding.
There is no tier set conflicts.

Do you have the actual item names? I've been a Druid since BC and plan on staying on for Classic. =) Would be cool to start planning things on pen and paper (even if it's really far off).

Thank you!