Recently some questions were posted on the general forums that were answered by Tigole. Thread here. Of particular note are questions 5 and 6 regarding the role of hybrids:

5) Healers. 40 mans seemed to be designed around something like 35% healers. Scaling that to 25 mans means 8 healers. R&J in Kara seems to require at least 3 main healers + 1 hybrid. The problem is very few people actually enjoy being healers. The prayer of mending nerf is just salt in the wound. It is very hard to find enough healers - I’d love to see 25 man content tuned for 6 dedicated healers and maybe 2 hybrids healing on healing intensive fights.

6) Tanks. We were planning on bringing 3 warriors and 3 druids to raids - 2 prot tanks, 1 fury, 1 feral tank, 1 cat, 1 resto druid. The Druid tanking nerf is extreme - I think it basically makes bears worthless against bleed immune mobs (all of Karazhan and likely much more), and their mitigation/HP worse than warriors, especially once T4/T5 becomes common and bears are still in quest greens. This means we’ll bring 3 prot tanks, 1 cat, and 1 resto. Maybe a pally OT. As a guild leader I really like the option of having more than one class be a viable MT, but with the druid nerf and warrior buff I don’t think I can justify anything but warrior tanks.

Tigole’s response to questions 5 and 6:

I don’t really agree with points 5 and 6 but I do feel like your previous points all had merit. Hopefully, the changes I mentioned will alleviate some of your worries.

What do you think? Looks to me like a shocking dismissal of the concerns of hybrids, as if it is intended that hybrids have no role in 25 man raid but to be full time healers.

It seems obvious to me that the so called “Internal Testing” done by the dev team to justify nerfing druids has a serious flaw - they only tested it against 5-man dungeon content and not against raid content.

It is generally accepted that druids seem to be prefered for tanking 5-man content, and warriors prefered for raid content. The nerf is designed to make us worse than warriors for 5-man content, and unviable for raid content.

This is most easily seen from the mitigation nerf that we received. We have seen several comparisons of damage mitigation between druids and warriors at similar gear level and they have mostly shown two things: Warriors suffer 5% more damage overall than druids when there are no crushing blows, but druids suffer 10% more damage overall than warriors when crushing blows occur, thanks to the shield block exploit.

With the nerf, druids will now be worse than warriors in mitigating non-crushing damage, by about 1-2%. At the same time we are now ~17% worse than warriors when it comes to tanking in a raid setting, in effect makes us useless for tanking raid content.

There is really no reason to nerf druid mitigation in a raid setting. Warriors are already monopolizing the Main Tank roles in the post-BC raids especially in Gruul’s Lair and higher tiers although this is something they choose to hide when they call for druids to be nerfed because we have been ‘monopolizing’ the tanking role in 5-mans. Druids did have some use tanking in 25 man though, for example we are the prefered offtank against Gruul’s Hurtful Strike because that does not do crushing blows, however when the patch hits, even druids will be useless in this role with warriors now having more mitigation even against non-crushing attacks.

Therefore there can only be one of the few reasons why druids will be taking the mitigation nerf:

1. The developers considered only 5-man dungeons during the “Internal Testing” and did not consider raid setting at all.
2. The developers are still completely clueless about the Shield Block Exploit, or did their testing without using Shield Block at all.
3. It is really in the developers intention to wipe druid tanking off the face of World of Warcraft

There’s been some other good posts analyzing why the nerfs have been unfair, unfortunately I haven’t remembered to collect them all yet. Here are a couple I’ve found:

• Development intent and Feral weapon scaling

Now that the excuses are out of the way, let’s get to some good useful information. Thankfully, it seems that other druids have taken over doing some of the stuff I used to do. Special thanks to Emmerald from over the Euro forums who did the approximation of DPS values for sustained cat DPS, and for bear tanking as well, and came up with the item lists.

• TBC Cat Sustained DPS Gear List
• TBC Bear Tanking Gear List

I’ve checked the calculations myself and I’m mostly satisfied with the results and the methods obtained. However, in the case of the bear tanking gear list, I’ve found that some subjective factors need to be added in. There are three things affecting bear survivability - damage mitigation, damage avoidance, total health. The values obtained for the bear tanking list treats them all equally for the purpose of surviving many small hits without receiving heals.

When you start receiving heals (most tanks do), then the value of health diminishes. You want to be mitigating and avoiding more damage so that the healers do not run out of damage quickly. When you get very large hits, then the value of avoidance diminishes - you cannot rely on avoidance because a bad roll of the die - which will happen a lot, will kill you.

Therefore I think a weighted approach to the tanking stats will rather more accurate. Unfortunately there is no objective way to assign the weightages, so it has to be done arbitrarily. I would probably give health a coefficient of 0.5 and avoidance a coefficient of 0.85.

Amythryx has came up with a very useful ingame mod that calculates “DruidPoints” based on the rating system that Emmerald has obtained. Check it out!

I haven’t been fully idle, and have been working on the Lacerate threat side of things. Check out the thread where I post results and some calculations of the testing that I have done.

First the druid changes in TBC Beta 2.0.3

• Tree of Life changed, now +25% Spirit conversion to healing is provided to heals received to party members, instead of heals cast by party members
• Tranquility now heals 1518 every 2 seconds for 8 seconds (around 4-5x more healing done), but has the cooldown doubled to 10 mins
• Rune of Metamorphosis changed from 100% cost reduction to flat 550 mana reduction
• Idol of Ferocity changed from -3 energy to +20 dmg, no longer affects mangle
• Idol of Brutality changed from -3 rage to +50 dmg
• 3/8 Stormrage Set now provides 20 mana/5 seconds instead of 15% mana regen
• Bear form HP bonus nerfed from +40% to +25%

The first compilation of druid questions on the European Druid forums was a pretty good success, with many of the questions answered. There is now a second compilation, and the blues hope to get answers for those as soon as possible. Here’s to hoping!

We are indeed all cheering.

We will try to get replies, but don’t hold your breath (I can’t promise a reply unfortunately, but I’ll see what I can do).

Tier 5 Armor sets are out, you can check out their stats from this huge image, or from the Thottbot links. You can also compare them with the Tier 4 Malorne sets.

• [Nordrassil Chestplate]
• [Nordrassil Feral-Kilt]
• [Nordrassil Feral-Mantle]
• [Nordrassil Handgrips]
• [Nordrassil Headdress]
• [Nordrassil Wrath-Mantle]
• [Nordrassil Chestpiece]
• [Nordrassil Gauntlets]
• [Nordrassil Headpiece]
• [Nordrassil Wrath-Kilt]

Also, the last piece of the Moonglade set has be found

• More updates from the devs through our good friend Vaneras
• New TBC Beta Patch has been announced, we have some preliminary information about changes that affects us, more will be known later
• More information about our Tier 5 set
• Some information about feral druid viability from Kylista over in WorldofRaids forums
• Miscellaneous Stuff: Tributes!

According to Vaneras, the devs feel that 6% iLOTP is too strong

The developers felt that the Imp LOTP talent was too strong due to the increased health pool sizes in the Burning Crusade. Given the fact that bear tank health totals of 15000 or more, the Improved Leader of the Pack talent can be used to heal over 3000 health per minute, for just the bear, let alone the rest of the party, mana free. It is very similar in strength to Judgement of Light, but never wears off, costs nothing to apply, and will scale as players get better gear, unlike Judgement of Light.

If the developers find that feral combat Druids are actually non-viable in raids, they will find ways to improve them as necessary. This goes for all new talent specs that were previously underutilized such as the Retribution or Protection Paladin, the Elemental or Enhancement Shaman, etc.

Regarding Feral Form Epic Skins

We just got a little more feedback from the developers on this. As said before, the developers really like this idea, but their primary concerns at the moment are balance issues. Graphical and cosmetic improvements are important indeed, but not as important as correcting balance issues. There are no immediate plans to improve the ?epic? feel just yet.

Regarding Tree of Life

These limitations are a cost issue. The developers do not want the Tree of Life to be better in all ways at what the restoration Druid is already doing. They want there to be a time and place for the Tree of Life and still have a compelling reason to shift out of the form. The movement speed penalty and the inability to use healing touch in that form is a part of that reason.

Regarding Blizzard’s thoughts and vision for the druid class (same post as above)

As with many classes, the developers have made many talent/gear paths available for the Druid class, but ultimately they want Druids to be classical hybrids. They want them to specialize to a point and still be flexible enough to perform adequately in other roles when it is required. Recent changes have been geared towards improving that hybridization viability.

If you have followed the itemization closely in the Burning Crusade, you will see that the developers are itemizing all hybrids for making them able to follow any of the paths available to them in their talent trees. Druids, Paladins, and Shamans should all be able to choose from different specializations now, and have the itemization support they need to make it possible. Internal testing shows that the hybrid classes are able to perform nearly as well as the primary classes for each role, and yet retain the utility to change roles midway through a fight or raid as needed.

Regarding rideable druids

Even though this is a fun idea, I don’t think that we will ever see something like this implemented into the game… But I could be wrong of course as no one really knows what the future will bring

Antaris has found some information about our Tier 5 set, mainly the names and the set bonus

• Nordrassil Harness (Melee Set)
• Nordrassil Raiment (Healing Set)
• Nordrassil Regalia (Caster Set)

Druid Tier 5 Set graphics was released on the Worldofraids forum

Patch Update: What is known so far in the patch update (from various sources)

• Bear Form Mangle has been fixed, does around 30% more damage than a Maul
• Pounce range has been nerfed/fixed from 10y to 5y
• Barksin now castable when stunned
• Idol of the Wild now buffs Mangle (bear/cat) instead of Shred
• Curse of Weakness has been nerfed fixed to reduce by 350 attack power instead of a fixed amount of damage
• Teleport: Moonglade icon changed
• Thistle Tea diminishes as you gain level, you lose 2 energy per level after level 20
• Nurturing Instinct now convers 200% (!!) of Str into +healing
• No information about pots and procs yet

Kylista over at Worldofraids forums has posted a Karazhan preview movie with screenshots. She talks a bit about the raid group, with a mention about the feral druid in the raid.

As far as feral druids, feral tree and itemization got really buffed, to the point where a geared feral druid can out-dps anyone but the best geared rogues/warriors in instances. They can really put out some damage in bc. Not to mention 5% crit from leader of the pack helps your other melee, as well.

I’ve seen a very good and well geared (in level 70 epics) feral druid top #1 overall on damage meters many times in instances. They’re really no joke in BC

Shade of Aran is an interesting encounter. SPOILER WARNING When Aran is OOM, he will mass polymorph the whole raid, conjure water and start drinking. If you watch the video, you can see how this allows the feral druid in the raid to finish off the boss

Miscellaneous Stuff this update, a couple of tributes!

• Tribute to Vaneras
• The Warden Staff

Regarding the costs of shapeshifting:

The developers want to encourage playing in multiple forms, but still require a cost. They do not want druids to be in all forms all the time by giving them unlimited shapeshifting, and additionally they wish to prevent other problems such as abusing the Furor talent or removing impaired movement speeds without any real cost.

When that has been said, the developers will keep an eye on the mana costs of shapeshifting to make sure that they are not too prohibitive.

Regarding Parry in bear form:

The reason why the developers do not give the parry ability to Druids, is that they want bear tanks to be different, but still efficient. The developers feel that increased armour and health over traditional tanks is more appropriate for a bear.

Bear form health has been significantly increased (and now scales) and the agility to dodge ratio has been improved considerable. Internal tests show that Bears can tank effectively but differently, from a Warrior or Paladin.

Regarding Weapon Speed Scaling/Normalisation:

Weapons speed normalization is an issue being addressed by the developers. Mangle definitely answers the weapon speed scaling issues, as it has been created with damage multipliers to bring it in line with the normalization speed of rogue and warrior weapons:

- Mangle in bear form takes the 2.5 speed of bear form and multiplies it to get 3.25, which is very close to the 3.3 normalization speed for two-handed weapons.

- Mangle in cat form takes the 1.0 speed of cat form and multiplies it to get 1.6, very close to the normalized attack speed for daggers

Additionally the Mangle de-buff increases the damage of Shred by 30%, which makes it act like backstab with an un-normalized 1.95 speed dagger.

Regarding Meleekins:

The developers do not intend for Druids in moonkin form to be able to meelee in a traditional sense. The ?meelee moonkin? is meant as a way for the Druid to get back into the fight while being low on mana. It is intended for aiding the druid with mana regeneration, and not for dealing damage. Basically it mirrors the ability of other casters to use wands with Judgement of Wisdom. In fact, it generates about 50% more mana per time for a dungeon-geared Druid than a Priest would get from JoW.

The ?meelee moonkin? is an experimental element that the developers are still evaluating.

Of course, the European blues also show that they can enjoy themselves and have some fun on the druid forums.

• Vaneras loves the Tree Form Emotes
• …and the bee form
• Ommaru enjoys some serious kitten vs warlock discussion

Crezax has commented about their views of a druid’s role in raids.

• Crezax on role replacement

One of the things I like about the game is that most classes aren’t really NEEDED (a few exceptions here and there of course), there’s usually another class that can take their place. The result may not be optimal, but still perfectly acceptable. Playing the role as a healer is something that the majority of players do not enjoy, leading to guilds always searching for more healers. If the guild has enough healers and room for a feral druid, they can do an awesome job and boost the raid a lot

• Crezax on Warrior vs Druid tanking

I’m fairly sure most guilds will be using a protection warrior as a tank, but I don’t think the ones going for a druid will be disappointed. Both will do a good job, with the warrior having a small edge. That’s my personal opinion.

• Crezax ‘responds’ to a challenge to his views

Now for the Tree Form videos:

• Tree Form Dancing!
• Tree From Grinding!
• Tree Form Emotes!

Don’t they make you just want to spec for Tree of Life?

Just added the itemstats module for Wordpress, and made a few modifications to it to enable it to work somewhat for items from the beta. This makes it much easier to display the new items from the beta!

Our Healer Tier 4 Set:

• [Malorne Chest Raid Tier 4 Druid Healer Set]
• [Malorne Head Raid Tier 4 Druid Healer Set]
• [Malorne Gloves Raid Tier 4 Druid Healer Set]
• [Malorne Legs Raid Tier 4 Druid Healer Set]
• [Malorne Shoulders Raid Tier 4 Druid Healer Set]

Tier 4 Feral Set:

• [Malorne Chest Raid Tier 4 Druid Melee Set]
• [Malorne Head Raid Tier 4 Druid Melee Set]
• [Malorne Gloves Raid Tier 4 Druid Melee Set]
• [Malorne Legs Raid Tier 4 Druid Melee Set]
• [Malorne Shoulders Raid Tier 4 Druid Melee Set]

Tier 4 Balance Set

• [Malorne Chest Raid Tier 4 Druid Nuker Set]
• [Malorne Head Raid Tier 4 Druid Nuker Set]
• [Malorne Gloves Raid Tier 4 Druid Nuker Set]
• [Malorne Legs Raid Tier 4 Druid Nuker Set]
• [Malorne Shoulders Raid Tier 4 Druid Nuker Set]

Chest piece from Caverns of time: [Caverns of Time Dark Portal Lvl 70 Aeonus Loot 2 Druid Set Robe]

Various Weapons:

• [Draenic Wildstaff]
• [Feral Warp-Staff]
• [Earthwarden]
• [gladiator’s maul]
• [Grand Marshal’s Maul]
• [Dreamer’s Dragonstaff]
• [Staff of the Four Golden Coins]
• [Terestian’s Stranglestaff]
• [Faerie-Kind Staff]
• [Intimidating Greatstaff]
• [Purification Staff]
• [Reflective Staff]
• [Starshine Staff]
• [Tranquility Staff]
• [Vengeance Staff]
• [Fleshling Simulation Staff]
• [Staff of Beasts]
• [Staff of the Wild]
• [Ursol’s Claw]

The fact that Druids in the beta test could use consumables and items while being shapeshifted was a bug. It was an unforeseen side effect of the original intent, which was to allow for Druids to interact with NPCs while being shapeshifted.

However, the developers do like the idea of consumables being used while in Druid forms, but the above mentioned bug prevented a proper implementation of this ability, which would otherwise allow shapeshifted Druids to use certain consumables such as Rage and Healing Potions, Thistle Tea and Healthstones. The developers are currently evaluating which items they want Druids to be able to use while in forms, and as soon as all issues are resolved, it will be reintroduced into the game.

Similarly with the use of consumables while being shapeshifted, the developers like the idea of allowing weapons with procs to be used by Druids being in forms. As with consumables, they developers are currently evaluating which weapons with procs should be usable by shapeshifted druids. When the evaluation is complete and all possible issues have been resolved, this will be introduced to the game.

That is it for now, but we will hopefully soon have more feedback for you regarding your other questions.

He later followed up with:

The developers were playing with the idea of allowing the use of certain consumables in forms at the same time as they were working on allowing druids to interact with NPCs while being in forms. But the consumables in forms ability was not supposed to be available before it was ready and all issues had been resolved and thus was mistakenly implemented to soon. It may sound strange, but it was indeed a bug.

I think you are looking at things a bit too pessimistically. The Druids are not a second rate class, but it is very different from other classes in many ways. Compared to what you have access to now of consumables, which is nothing, the Druid class will get greatly improved by getting access to certain consumables while being shapeshifted. Remember that the developers are currently evaluating which consumables you should have access to in certain forms, and it might very well be more than the ones I mentioned earlier.

Good news all around!

However, some questions still remain. Why was this information not made known to us earlier? Kalgan is generally the dev representatives communicating with us on the US forums, yet he talked to the mages and did not mention druids at all. Why did this information take so long to get to us? While most of the druids are thankful towards Vaneras and the EU-forum druids in general, the contrast between the communication on the EU druid forums and the silence on the US druid forums is defeaning.

I’m inclined to believe that not all of the information given to us is correct, and is just a form of damage control. The fact that the changes were made to Thistle Tea and Rage Potion shows that it was intended that consumables become usable during that period of time it was available. It looks to me like like they decided that druids should not be able to use procs and pots. The return of pots and procs might not have been possible without the actions of the druid community, however overdone.

Druid Tier 4 set has shown up on TBC beta, and generally looks quite good.

• Healer Set
• Nuker Set
• Feral Set

Worldofraids.com has posted a preview of Tier 5 sets, unfortunately druids are the only class not in the preview.

Kazamx from the Europe Druid forums has posted a list of the known feral weapons in TBC beta so far, 18 of them. This includes the newly discovered “Octopus” staff that drops in Karazhan.

Also discovered by Kazamx is a blue 5-piece druid set that looks to be a cat/healer hybrid set to me. So far only one piece has been discovered which is the chest piece that drops off a boss in Caverns of Time. The placeholder name of the set suggests that the remaining pieces will also drop in the Caverns of Time.

On the TBC Beta Bugs forum, the developers have acknowledged a couple of druid-related bugs

• The poor damage of Bear Form Mangle is a bug and will be fixed in the latest release.
• Druids missing Rank 1 Maul will need to open a ticket with a Game Master to get their character fixed.

I’ll end this update with a couple of videos

• Druids - The Last Stand, a very inspiring video regarding 11/16
• Seal Dance, for a good laugh

Various Threads

• Recently seen are many threads posting funny (to various degrees) movies based on the bombaytv. There are too many of such threads to list, but you will find them easily enough on the main druid forum and on the europe druid forums. Amusing for a few laughts if you are bored.
• Curse of Weakness, a warlock spell, has been discovered to reduce 131 damage per hit at the highest Rank 8, a huge boost from Rank 7 that reduces 61 damage. This, of course, is most effective against very fast hitting mobs and players - like druids in cat form. There are tonnes of posts on the druid forums about this.

More stuff regarding the nerf and the viability of druids:

• Maltuvion’s Reply to “Enough is Enough” is a very well thought out and written post in reply to the infamous “Enough is Enough” post by the blues on the Europe Druid forums, that covers just about all the issues that druids have with the beta in general, in a very constructive manner.
• A post from blue on the Europe Druid forums, probably the closest we have gotten to an answer to our issues. All it says is that they are aware of our issues and are forwarding our concerns to the relevant party in Blizzard and hope to give us more information soon. Pretty sad, considering that mages got an answer within a day from Kalgan himself while we have so far heard no word from the dev team.
• The Druid Manifesto, by Kae. Not exactly a response to the recent nerfs, but this has become more relevant than ever with the nerfs. This is THE resource for the the concerns of druids that everyone should read and understand.

Some stuff from the beta

• Tree of Life in Arena Video, by Ejviper. Very interesting video showing that Loltree may actually be of use in an arena. Of course, Ejviper has a warlock on his team, but still a good watch anyway.
• Druids in Karazhan, an interesting thread to watch, discussing the usefulness and role of druids in a 10 man raid group. May possibly give a glimpse at what to expect when it comes to 25 man raids.

Various Guides - These guides will eventually be listed on one of my static pages dedicated to good guides that can be found around various places. But for now I will list them here for future references.

• Druid Macros for v2.0 - Still a work in progress. While v2.0 nerfs many things like decursive and healing through emergency monitors, it makes some macros easier. Keep an eye out on this thread.
• Baelor’s Guide to Druid Tanking - Very good resource. There are a few things I would like to add, but that’s for later.
• Feral Equipment List - Updated for the expansion. Good resource for general feral equipment, although it doesn’t try to be specific towards DPS or tanking
• Cat DPS Guide, by myself - Needs to be updated for the expansion, of course. Definite work in progress, and much of this site will be dedicated to it