Should Druids be allowed to Shapeshift into forms out of their spec?

[Sylar Hao]

What OP asks for is just removing of the essence of a druid... yeah no. If anything druid forms are in the worse state ever.

Bear form is completely useless, literally, with only one button to press, unless you are Guardian spec'ed or talented into Guardian affinity and the related bear pvp talents (talents that don't work if you aren't in Bear form by the way). If you don't, in bear you can only take like... 2 hits? 3 maybe? before dying.

Cat form is just a form that allows you to minor-stealth (is not effective unless you are feral) and use Dash, unless you spec into Feral, and if you take the Feral Affinity your damage is pretty much pathetic. Same can be said for Balance Affinity.

Whats the point of having Bear and Cat form if you need to spec into certain talents/specs to make them useful?

Druid forms should be back to have a basic kit for each form, the abilities that the affinities offer are perfect for that (Bear form should have the Guardian affinity abilities and passive baseline, Cat Form the Feral one, and so on), and then build each spec around the fact of having all those abilities. That's what a true druid should be.

[Deleted]

Druid forms should be back to have a basic kit for each form, the abilities that the affinities offer are perfect for that (Bear form should have the Guardian affinity abilities and passive baseline, Cat Form the Feral one, and so on), and then build each spec around the fact of having all those abilities. That's what a true druid should be.

It's a shame that I have to wait for the classic servers in order to be able to play a druid with its forms again.
So after 13 years druids have less tools and abilities than they had when the game was released... that means a lot.

[Aeula]

Not in combat. Or at least with a much reduced effectiveness.

Resto bears are annoying as hell in arenas and BG's.

[Teokis]

I do not think so.

Yes your analogues are good, but no, Druids have way more off-spec versatility. It's like having a mage that can blink, use healing spells, and tank.

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I do not believe this is removing anything. You still have shape-shifting ability.

And druids are never top tier in any specific area because of it. Your perspective is pretty bad.

Mages do more damage than druids, have a lot more CC, and defensive cds, because druids can "heal, dps, tank".

Balance has 1 defensive CD outside of "BEAR FORM" (which is a joke).

[Stormcleave]

I honestly couldn't tell you exactly what changed with Bear form in Legion...but, it's absurd. I wouldn't say remove Bear form for non-guardians. But, I seriously think it needs at the very minimum a 2 min CD. Bear form would still be super strong as a 2 min CD and utterly broken with no cooldown, like it is now.

Stop and think for a second and compare Bear form to the 2 minute CDs of other specs...ya, it's much stronger. That's a real problem. I think Resto Druid suffers because of Bear form and rather than Nerf Bear form they Nerf Resto heals which just silly.

[wholol]

Example: I mean, should Restoration/Feral/Balance be able to shift into a bear to gain survivabilty?

From what I am seeing in Arena, druids ATM are neigh-on impossible to tackle, due to their huge diversity of gameplay, they can activate a form for literally everything depending on the situation.

This makes them nigh-on unkillable, especially Restoration Putting HoTs on himself and running away in Bear form.

Feral should be able to turn into cats, Guardians-Bear, Balance-Moonkin, and Resto-Tree. That is what Specialty means, different druids specialize in utilizing different forms (Druids of the Claw, Talon, etc). Wanna go out of cat for and heal yourself fine, Cyclone someone else? Fine, but the rest is BS. Travel and Swimming forms should be available to all, naturally.

I get it, this may be viewed as dumbing down of the class, such as it is, and I am waiting for some Druid mains and such to tell me why that should not be the case, but this shape-shift system seems to be a relic of times old, which has escaped the class pruning.

Removing this ability will lead to simpler specs to balance for sure.

Sigh.

Listen well because I'm only going to share this with you once.

Your logic is flawed because it is based on failure from your part and a lack of solid grasp on the way things are and how the game is balanced.

I have a rough image of what scenario you encountered, let me sketch it out for you and explain where your mistake lies:

1) you are most likely a melee class.
2) you most likely play a class without many stuns.
3) given 1) and 2) your class is probably frost DK , arms warrior or ret pala.
4) you queued up 2v2 via LFG and your resulting skill level/ mmr is below 1.8k.
5) you faced a resto druid and decided to tunnel vision hit.
6) you were unsuccessful.
7) your brain tried to think about why you miserably failed.
8) your conclusion was that resto druids are op and need to have a severe playstyle change altering not only the pvp aspect of the class but it's overall gameplay.
9) you open a thread on mmochamp to whine about it.

Did you not consider for a second that, maybe, just maybe, you lack the proper knowledge as to why you failed?

First of all, the garbage that is wow pvp is balanced around 3v3 ( or whatever balance means in the eyes of the devs ).

Second, druids are extremely vulnerable to hard swap stuns when they're in caster form and not hotted up.

Third, their survivability is balanced around bear form in a 3v3 setting, so naturally they would feel tankier in 2v2 because that is not the area they were balanced for.

And lastly, you do not possess the necessary toolkit to solo a resto druid, thus the logical answer you should've reached was to find a 3rd within a viable comp for ur class and play 3v3, you will find much better success within the same mmr you were playing on in 3v3.

/thread