Who'll dish the dirt on my old classes?

[Kitsune]

I'm trapped on the server job from hell right now, so to keep my sanity I'm calling out for you, my dear friends, to keep my mind occupied with any big news on the classes I left behind.

When I let my subscription lapse, Burning Crusade had been out for about two months.  My main was a feral druid, and I dabbled commonly in a warlock with summoning spec and a paladin who was retribution-heavy, but only for quicker soloing with an eye towards a respec at higher levels.

I remember being annoyed at the time because my druid couldn't tank for shit.  Not because she couldn't take the damage; she was a brick wall.  Rather, because even with all of her taunts, she couldn't keep even a single thing on her at the ramparts; they'd all run around her to go after the mages.  And that was with me mashing every attack as fast as they could refresh.

I was happy with the warlock, but found him a bit bland.  Send pet, drop curses, wait for thing to die, repeat.

The pally's the one I miss the most.  All of the seals and powers made each fight feel much more tactical than the warlock, but that was my lowest-level class and didn't get as much attention as the others.  I was busy in the outlands and didn't really want to go spend more time leveling in Tanaris.

Has life changed significantly for any of those classes?

[Merusk]

Druids still have problems with multi-targets if the DPS is a group of drooling retards who insist on going "ALL OUT ZOMG AOE".  They deserve to die if that's the case.  They did give ferals a damage nerf at one point, but I think they're back up to where they were before.  Not entirely sure on that, however.

Warlocks are still warlocks.  I'm playing one now and killing elites of my level (55) with really shitty horde quest gear and some blues/ greens that say they're level 35 at best.  It's nutty, but yes, being so powerful does get boring.  Plus dots suck in a group environment, as shit dies before you get more than a few ticks.

Ret Pallies got a buff, and they reworked them so they aren't struggling with 12 different stats to aquire.  Seal of Command works off of weapon damage and AP now, I think.  That was the plan, at least, but I'm not 100% sure that went through.  I know all of the season 3/4 ret pally gear has +str on it instead of int/ +spelldam, and ret pallies chew through folks like MS warriors when they get good procs.   Those bastards fucking hurt.

[K9]

In general the hybrid classes have seen a shift to more viability in all roles; notably boomkins and retadins, who are less of a joke now, in both PvE and PvP. Paladins are a really nice all-round class, protadins are awesome in 5-mans and on raid trash, holy paladins are still very desireable, although they really can't be considered the best healing class (or the most fun healing class) and Ret has a lot of burst damage in PvP potentially, and many raids now take one ret paladin, although it's one of those situations where there's only space for one ret paladin in a raid, no more.

Feral Druids are popular because they can fill both a DPS and a Tank slot far easier than any other equally geared class, at least at the levels I play at; in PvP they're not as strong as resto, but that's mainly due to resto druids having a slew of nice advantages in the arena and settings. Boomkins look to be pretty fun now, and offer competitive PvE dps.

Locks are locks, solid in PvE and PvP. They're welcome in groups for their DPS and the great range of utility they offer. In PvP locks aren't the gods they once were, but they're far far from the bottom of the pile still.

[Kitsune]

The feral damage nerf really ticked me off at the time.  Not because I minded doing less damage, but because I was already having a hellish time of building hate with my bear, even with all of the threat-boosting talents.  Of course, I only had the low-level outlands gear at that point; not a whole lot of +feral attack in my equipment.

[Calantus]

I have a new prot paladin and tanking with it is the easiest shit I've ever done 5man. I literally just throw a shield, throw up holy shield, throw down a consecrate, put on a seal, and hit mobs. I don't mark anything. I don't have the group CC anything. I don't even refresh my seal if I'm feeling lazy. I just get all the aggro and the DPS can hit whatever they want. Anybody who likes tanking in a 5man should try the prot pally. Ezi. Mode.

[Jobu]

I believe they boosted the amount of hate you get with Lacerate since you left. It still requires not having a group of idiots unloading too early to tank well, but it's not *that* bad.

[Hutch]

I have a new prot paladin and tanking with it is the easiest shit I've ever done 5man. I literally just throw a shield, throw up holy shield, throw down a consecrate, put on a seal, and hit mobs. I don't mark anything. I don't have the group CC anything. I don't even refresh my seal if I'm feeling lazy. I just get all the aggro and the DPS can hit whatever they want. Anybody who likes tanking in a 5man should try the prot pally. Ezi. Mode.

I ran shadow lab non-heroic a few months ago, with my non-heroic-geared hunter (mostly greens, a couple blues). We approached the place as if we had a normal tank instead of a prot pally. I was given freeze trap assignments, and I had to be very careful and very quick -- once the pally aggro'd something, it stayed aggroed. I could not pull my assignment off the pally, no matter how much I blasted away at it.

And then, even if I managed to get my target before the pally got it, if I set up the trap too close to him, it was game over anyway. Consecrate doesn't mix well with Freeze Trap. Or with any other form of cc that breaks on damage, for that matter.

Eventually we changed our strategy, of course.

[Gobbeldygook]

I remember being annoyed at the time because my druid couldn't tank for shit.

Your experience was the exact opposite of what most people experienced at the start of burning crusade; paladins and druids were so superior to warriors that no-one wanted that gimp class tanking anything.

I was happy with the warlock, but found him a bit bland.  Send pet, drop curses, wait for thing to die, repeat.

If you were demo spec, that's normal.  If you were affliction, I have no idea what you were doing; affliction is widely considered to be one of the most involving specs to grind with because of the whole dot-fear thing.
---
Protadins are almost universally regarded as Sadf up until tier 5 gear levels because:

1. They're mana limited, so they have a harder time on long boss fights AND they have to drink in between pulls.
2. Their single target threat lags significantly behind warriors and druids.
3. They have the hardest time getting up to the raid minimum of uncrittable/uncrushable; they seriously socket DEFENSE gems.
4. Their off-tank threat building is the hands-down worst (e.g. gruul)
5. They are by far the least useful class when they're not tanking; warriors and feral druids can both put out non-trivial amounts of DPS in their tank spec with their DPS set on.  Protadins can pretend to heal or DPS.
6. They have no in-group synergy.  People are fine with a feral druid or warrior in their group because they can get LOTP/Battle Shout.  A protadin brings a shitty aura.
7. Most AOE tank stuff can be done by a properly specced holy paladin with a prot set.

Retadins are not worth a raid spot without windfury(30% of their DPS comes from being in a group with a friendly shaman) and their utility isn't strong enough to earn a raid spot against another equally-geared DPSer in Kara or ZA.

Boomkin do not do 'competitive DPS'.  They're somewhere between shadow priests and retadins without anywhere near the synergy of either.

[Merusk]

Boomkin do not do 'competitive DPS'.  They're somewhere between shadow priests and retadins without anywhere near the synergy of either.

Your Boomkins suck.  The one I ran with kept-up with my hunter and our shadowbolting demon-saccing lock.  He worked his ass off to get geared, but he was awesome.

[Ratama]

I remember being annoyed at the time because my druid couldn't tank for shit [due to threat issues].

Bears got whacked with the nerfbat pretty hard, but then got a fair bit of that over-nerf effectively revoked (they DID need a nerf, though).  You really shouldn't have had issues tanking with a Feral, assuming equivalently geared party members...

Your 'rotation' should be:  Mangle whenever it's up, then Swipe-spam (Don't bother with Mangle if your group is AEing).  Maul when you have excess rage.  That's it; if you can't keep threat just using Swipe/Maul (Mangle's just icing, really), you're either outgeared, or using the wrong gear.

Remove Lacerate from your bar.  Doesn't work on Undead/Mechanical critters (IE virtually everything in Karazhan, the first raid instance), and is completely unnecessary to tank anything effectively.

Speaking of wrong gear... don't be like a friend of mine and insist on using Heavy Clefthoof stuff (or equivelant pure tanking gear) for non-heroic 5-mans; yes, you won't ever die, but you won't keep threat on shit.  Unless you're tanking a raid instance/heroic, gear for Bear just like you'd gear for Cat.  In the same vein, don't use Demo Roar for mitigation in normal 5-mans, either.

The Feral PvP gear is *great* for Feral tanking/DPS vs everything short of 25-man raid bosses.  Get if possible.

I was happy with the warlock, but found him a bit bland.

No changes to report in that dept.  Warlocks are still nice and uber, but generally aren't considered as much fun to level/solo as Mages, Ele Shamans, etc.

The pally's the one I miss the most.

No it isn't; UNLESS, in the single exception, you mean as a 5-man tank.  If you just want a fun class to level, several others fit that bill without being gimped.

As a 5-man tank, Paladins are great; other than that, Paladins are simply the weakest class in WoW's endgame, either PvP or PvE.

The only Arena bracket any Paladin spec is viable for is Holy/5v5, and that's only vs teams that don't field a Priest; if your team keeps butting heads vs such a team on a given night, expect to be subbed out.

PvE?  Paladins are the worst raid healers, by far.  As in, literally half the effective healing of the other classes.  I have a 70 Resto Shaman in Kara gear, and a Pally with T5/T6 gear; not only is the Shaman a better single-target healer already, and not only is the Shaman a great AE healer whereas my Holydin's a ST-only chump, but the difference in *fun* between the two... healing on my Paladin makes me nauseous.

Paladins are great for tanking Hyjal trash; not a requirement, though.  Complete crap vs bosses; by the time you're geared to survive vs a given T5/T6+ boss, said gear's gimped your threat so bad that you won't be able to hold agro.

Ret Paladins are still lol, in both PvE and PvP; DPS is ok, but still below literally every other DPS class/spec. Non of the world-first raids use a Ret Pally; simply sub-par.

Also, it's interesting to note that WotLK Paladin talents are the only ones that haven't been implemented in alpha yet; that's prolly due to Blizz trying to put off the impending Pally-riot as long as possible.

[Kitsune]

You really shouldn't have had issues tanking with a Feral, assuming equivalently geared party members...

I had only just reached 60 before BC hit, so I was in old blues that were being replaced with greens and blues from the outlands; I wasn't swimming in purples at the time.  As I recall, the fights went like this...

Mangle
Maul
Lascerate
Swipe
Swipe
<monster wanders off>
Roar
Maul
Swipe
<monster wanders off>
Fuck.

No it isn't; UNLESS, in the single exception, you mean as a 5-man tank.  If you just want a fun class to level, several others fit that bill without being gimped.

This is a 30-ish level paladin we're talking about, here.  Between judging seals and a huge-ass hammer, I had no problem killing my way through solo fights.  At higher levels things may well be different, but in the low-mid range I felt like I was tearing everything up.

[K9]

6. They have no in-group synergy.  People are fine with a feral druid or warrior in their group because they can get LOTP/Battle Shout.  A protadin brings a shitty aura.

Hi 3rd blessing.

[Ratama]

I had only just reached 60 before BC hit, so I was in old blues that were being replaced with greens and blues from the outlands...

Ah, there's the problem.  F purples; the BC greens were upgrades over Molten Core/BWL stuff.  If you were trying to tank with a significant amount of old-world gear then yeah, you probably were a bit disappointed in the results. :p

I never had threat issues tanking Kara with a friend's Feral, even without a Paladin for Salvation.  Once you get comparable gear (especially a current-level +Feral AP weapon), you'll be fine.

This is a 30-ish level paladin we're talking about, here.  Between judging seals and a huge-ass hammer, I had no problem killing my way through solo fights.  At higher levels things may well be different, but in the low-mid range I felt like I was tearing everything up.

Oh, yeah; mid-level, Paladins are a blast.  Effective, fun to level, even easy to tank with if you happen to go instance-diving a couple times.

I'm just saying that it's *not* like that end-game; Paladins get jack and shit for new abilities 61-70, and the old stuff doesn't scale very well, compared to the old level 60 endgame.

For instance, you can prolly heal yourself back to full life twice-over, at least, prior to 61+; at level 70, healing yourself to full not only drains your entire mana bar as Ret, but you'll take about 10-12 seconds to do so (in other words, your healing abilities are completely vestigial at 70, especially for PvP).

Hi 3rd blessing.

Hi, being replaced by a group 6 buffbot-alt while your raid takes a real class in your place.

The Warlock-summoning-into-instances bit is what made this optimal; gg clueless devs.

[Fordel]

Prot Paladins are the best tanks to have for 5-10 man dungeons, if you are over geared for said dungeon. Druids and Warriors (especially warriors) almost scale in 'reverse' in terms of tanking ease of use as they gear up.

Put even a Badge/Kara warrior into a Normal 5 man and he will be so rage starved he might as well be auto attacking. A similarly geared Paladin will juts have to drink every 2-3 pulls instead.



The best way to CC with a paladin tank, is preemptive CC. Like put the Trap in front of the Paladin's pull path, sheep the mob as soon as it's pulled etc. Otherwise it takes a great deal of coordination to Re-Trap a mob already in the clump. If that is required, what my hunters and myself usually do is, I'll stun the mob that needs to be trapped, then drag the clump 5-10 yards away from the stunned mob. During this time the hunter will move onto the stunned mob and time his trap to trigger as soon as the Consecrate fades from the area. The issue with doing this is all the other DPS has to know to NOT interfere in this process... which is often to much to ask from PuGs.

[Gobbeldygook]

Your Boomkins suck.  The one I ran with kept-up with my hunter and our shadowbolting demon-saccing lock.  He worked his ass off to get geared, but he was awesome.

Amazingly, people that outgear others can keep up even when they play an inferior class.  This is not news to anyone anywhere.  When my guild hit zul'jin, we brought a PUG retadin who kept up with our rogue by virtue of being in a mixture of tier 6 vs the rogue's tier 4.

Put even a Badge/Kara warrior into a Normal 5 man and he will be so rage starved he might as well be auto attacking. A similarly geared Paladin will juts have to drink every 2-3 pulls instead.

If I find myself tanking a normal 5-man (why would anyone ever do that?  Just run it on heroic.), I just start putting on PVP gear until I notice the healer having problems, if any.  The last time I ran a normal 5-man, it was BM, I was fury specced, and our protadin was 'tanking'.  The enhance shaman and I just ignored him and tanked via superior DPS.  I believe he had to drink after virtually every phase.  He ended up 'tanking' every other phase or so.

[Ratama]

When Merusk said that Boomkins work their ass off to do comparable DPS, I believe he meant just that, not that Boomkins have to be overgeared.

Boomkins DO have to 'work harder' to get leather gear than the clothies do for any given gear level; and even if said Boomkin wants to stoop to cloth, they usually have to wait in line behind all the clothies.

A Boomkin does the same damage as a Mage, given the same gear level (putting both solidly behind Destro Locks, natch).

If I find myself tanking a normal 5-man (why would anyone ever do that?  Just run it on heroic.), I just start putting on PVP gear until I notice the healer having problems, if any.  The last time I ran a normal 5-man, it was BM, I was fury specced, and our protadin was 'tanking'.  The enhance shaman and I just ignored him and tanked via superior DPS.  I believe he had to drink after virtually every phase.  He ended up 'tanking' every other phase or so.

Sounds like you were sabotaging that Paladin, inadvertently or not.  "He had to drink after virtually every phase"... you do realize that Paladins get mana back from being healed, right?  Next time, try giving him a couple seconds to get a couple Holy Shield charges used, and you'll find that not only will you have to Taunt to get agro, but said Pally won't have to drink as much, if at all.

Paladins can do the same trick when overgearing a place; if mana's an issue, they can just swap out tanking pieces for their +healing/damage/Mp5 holybot stuff until the desired damage intake has been achieved.

[lamaros]

I stopped playing about the same time as you and recently resubbed. Warlock main. No talent point refund and no changes of note that I can see. Boring class to play though and I'm done with it.

[K9]

Hi 3rd blessing.

Hi, being replaced by a group 6 buffbot-alt while your raid takes a real class in your place.

The Warlock-summoning-into-instances bit is what made this optimal; gg clueless devs.

This was in response to the "protadins have no useful synergy" which is rubbish. Protadins are fine tanks, and having one means you can keep the 3rd blessing, while substisutuing a shaman or priest for a paladin healer. Anyone who thinks protadins are bad, hasn't seen how effective a good protadin could be.

And in a 25man running melee-heavy a good ret paladin can be a great addition. Personal DPS isn't everything.

If I find myself tanking a normal 5-man (why would anyone ever do that?  Just run it on heroic.), I just start putting on PVP gear until I notice the healer having problems, if any.  The last time I ran a normal 5-man, it was BM, I was fury specced, and our protadin was 'tanking'.  The enhance shaman and I just ignored him and tanked via superior DPS.  I believe he had to drink after virtually every phase.  He ended up 'tanking' every other phase or so.

So basically in an instance with no requirement for AoE tanking, the protadin didn't  stand out as anything special; this is not very surprising. Why not repeat your experiment in a real 5-man like heroic SH and see how that compares.

[Kail]

Too late to add anything really useful, but anyway... from my point of view as an extremely casual player:

Don't have a Druid, so I can't help much there.  They seem kind of overpowered to me at the moment (they basically own Warsong Gulch), but that may just be me coveting the grass on the other side of the fence.

Paladin I'm happy with in PvE.  Protection spec, you can tank PUG instances pretty well. Problem is there's a huge gear gap you need to bridge before you can even start trying to tank entry level raids (Karazahn), and even after you do that, I'm under the impression that pally tanks are best for trash pulls and worst for bosses, which is not exactly encouraging.  Solo PvE as protection is fun; you can pull three or four mobs at once and just burn them down with AoE.  Protection is, of course, pretty useless in PvP.  Retribution is better in PvP, but isn't as nice as the DPS classes are.  My Paladin outgears my arms Warrior, who still does something like 30% more DPS.  In PvE, nobody wants a Retribution paladin for anything 5-man.  They don't do uber damage, they have mana problems (so they can't heal), and they can't tank at all.  Holy I haven't touched; it doesn't look too impressive to me, since Paladins have jack for healing outside of spamming "Flash of Light" until the heat death of the universe.  Might be useful in a guild, but solo, seems boring.  So for Paladins, I'd say: PvE is good, PvP could use a buff or two.  Respeccing to go from one to the other sucks, but a bunch of classes have this problem.

Warlock I'm pretty happy with all around.  They are a bit repetitive to me; I'm levelling affliction and it's basically "throw four DOTs, hit Siphon Life until mob dies, Dark Pact back to full mana, repeat".  No downtime, though, which is nice.  Haven't done much instancing.  Also, he can deal sick amounts of damage in AV, considering his gear.

[Fabricated]

Feral: Bear DPS was fucking insane for a while to the point where it was almost better to bring a druid than a prot warrior since the druid could put out top 5 worthy DPS in ADDITION to tanking. Their damage got nerfed hard, then sort of unnerfed. Now they're fantastic off tanks. Kitty druids put out pretty fantastic DPS too.

Warlocks: Are insanely overpowered.

loladin: Great if you can get them equipped, useless if you can't. They suck significantly less than they used to however. Protadins are demigods for tough trash tanking or tanking boss adds, which is a pretty common thing in anything that's not Gruul/Mags.

[Gobbeldygook]

A Boomkin does the same damage as a Mage, given the same gear level (putting both solidly behind Destro Locks, natch).

This is complete bullshit.  The best recorded DPS for Brutallus by a druid is 2074.  The best mage is 2689.  Boomkin are mathematically incapable of keeping up with a real DPS class.  The only way they are able to keep up with real DPS is by A. Everyone else in the raid sucking ass (this is the most common) and/or  B. Dramatically out-gearing the raid. This is why they are being boosted in WOTLK with both increased synergy and DPS.

Sounds like you were sabotaging that Paladin, inadvertently or not.  "He had to drink after virtually every phase"... you do realize that Paladins get mana back from being healed, right?  Next time, try giving him a couple seconds to get a couple Holy Shield charges used, and you'll find that not only will you have to Taunt to get agro, but said Pally won't have to drink as much, if at all.

There was no reason to 'wait for aggro' because the incoming mob damage was utterly irrelevent.  Everyone could tank the mobs.  It was just about doing as much damage in as little time as possible so we could get him some KOT rep(He wasn't Revered yet), finish someone's kara key quest, and move on.  The only time I waited for aggro was on the...third boss, I believe.

So basically in an instance with no requirement for AoE tanking, the protadin didn't  stand out as anything special; this is not very surprising. Why not repeat your experiment in a real 5-man like heroic SH and see how that compares.

BM does have an AOE tank suggestion; pally tanks can pick up all of the trash as it comes out of the portal.  Anyway, immediately afterwards we hit heroic OH.  He failed over and over on the 'gauntlet' in phase 2 in a variety of different ways ranging from not acquiring threat on everything and getting sheeped to going OOM to etc, etc.  I don't regard that as a condemnation of the paladin class so much as of him; the problem was less his ability to generate threat than his ability to do everything else a tank needs to do, like be aware of loose mobs or drink fast or move fast.  Fortunately, he seems to have taken that humiliation to heart and improved significantly since then.

The only time I don't want to set him and his mana bar on fire is when he has a shadow priest.

[SurfD]

A Boomkin does the same damage as a Mage, given the same gear level (putting both solidly behind Destro Locks, natch).

This is complete bullshit.  The best recorded DPS for Brutallus by a druid is 2074.  The best mage is 2689.  Boomkin are mathematically incapable of keeping up with a real DPS class.  The only way they are able to keep up with real DPS is by A. Everyone else in the raid sucking ass (this is the most common) and/or  B. Dramatically out-gearing the raid. This is why they are being boosted in WOTLK with both increased synergy and DPS.

Right, because Brutallus is always a good indicator of best damage.  Brutallus is pretty much designed around raid + group stacking.  Quite possibly the only reason that the best recorded Boomkin dps on brutallus falls short of a mage like that is cause no one bothers to stack a group and raid buffs in the boomkin's favour.

I have seen WILDLY different DPS numbers for different classes on Brutallus, and 99% of the time, they always come down to wierd shit like massive group stacking and Bloodlust Rotations and the like.

Hell, im in what could argueably be considered the top Horde Raid guild on my server (Tichondrious), and one of our mages (was a mage as main pretty much whole game up to t5 level) rerolled a druid and now plays solely as boomkin because they bring tons more utility to a raid WHILE doing comparable dps.  Hell, most of the time his biggest complaint is he often needs to hold back on dps because boomkin threat generation is a bit too high.

If your boomkin cant keep up with your mages, at equivilent gear levels, then they might need to re-evaluate their gearing / gemming and damage rotations.

[Paelos]

As a raid leader, I look for the following classes:

1 - Shamans - prefs on resto for the healing buffs, but the others are nice.
2 - Druids - Ferals make good OT's, restos make good healing buffs for the tanks.
3 - Warriors - high dps if fury, good MT/OT for other duties
4 - Warlocks - they rip it up on DPS and often own the meters and utility
5 - Mages - Utility is key with all of them for sheeps and tables and decurse
6 - Pallys - raid buffs rule with good healing, also having a pally tank in raids is always good for AE
7 - Priests - obviously great healers who vary from the specs, shadows rule in mana fights, they are pretty much tied with pallys.
8 - Rogues - they do excellent dps, but they are limited by encounter physics.
9 - Hunters - the shots work out well for helping make pulls, set traps, and then MD to OT's, plus the DPS

[lamaros]

Round 1: Gobbeldygook

Round 2: Fight!

[Ratama]

Round 1: Gobbeldygook

Round 2: Fight!

God dammit; I so wanted to get a Tim Donaghy joke in here, but I'm just drawing a blank atm.

But seriously, Boomkin DPS is only significantly behind Warlocks amongst the ranged classes; everyone else is sorta clumped up between Locks and Shadow Priests. The only real issue with Boomkin DPS atm is threat management (well, the silly CD on their AE is an issue, but that's gone in the next xpac, at least).

Anyone who claims differently is Wrong.  'Cause I said so.

[Gobbeldygook]

I have seen WILDLY different DPS numbers for different classes on Brutallus, and 99% of the time, they always come down to wierd shit like massive group stacking and Bloodlust Rotations and the like.

I chose Brutallus because it's not sufficiently out-geared that people can start fucking around and stacking raids to benefit one player the way they can, say, Gorefiend.

Hell, im in what could argueably be considered the top Horde Raid guild on my server (Tichondrious), and one of our mages (was a mage as main pretty much whole game up to t5 level) rerolled a druid and now plays solely as boomkin because they bring tons more utility to a raid WHILE doing comparable dps.

Toss me a recent WWS of a neutral fight(no aoe, mage tanking, spellstealing, or nature/arcane/fire/frost-resistant bosses) and I'll explain what your mages are doing that lets a balance druid keep up with them.  Please include relevant group setups; trying to figure out group setups can be pretty tedious, especially if people die and the raid leader is on the ball about swapping people around.

[Ratama]

Toss me a recent WWS of a neutral fight...

On a thread about someone's questions pertaining to the current state of their old characters, you are seriously asking someone else to post a WWS comparing the damage of two second-rate ranged DPS classes?  When, even if they did, that WWS could in no way be considered definitive, or even scientific?

And no, Brutallus is a terrible choice for a DPS comparison fight; the raid stacking you're talking about happens for that fight by default, and if you happen to have threat issues the way Balance Druids do, that means you're not gonna get in the top caster group.

Kitsune: if you go Balance, your DPS will be fine; only one spec of one OP class (Destro Lock) will significantly out-perform you on the DPS meters. Threat, however, is an issue much of the time.

Feral, though, really is the best all-around PvE build for Druids; every raid wants at least one for their melee DPS group, and you can perform as a mediocre but acceptable MT for most raid bosses.

[photek]

I'm trapped on the server job from hell right now, so to keep my sanity I'm calling out for you, my dear friends, to keep my mind occupied with any big news on the classes I left behind.

When I let my subscription lapse, Burning Crusade had been out for about two months.  My main was a feral druid, and I dabbled commonly in a warlock with summoning spec and a paladin who was retribution-heavy, but only for quicker soloing with an eye towards a respec at higher levels.

I remember being annoyed at the time because my druid couldn't tank for shit.  Not because she couldn't take the damage; she was a brick wall.  Rather, because even with all of her taunts, she couldn't keep even a single thing on her at the ramparts; they'd all run around her to go after the mages.  And that was with me mashing every attack as fast as they could refresh.

I was happy with the warlock, but found him a bit bland.  Send pet, drop curses, wait for thing to die, repeat.

The pally's the one I miss the most.  All of the seals and powers made each fight feel much more tactical than the warlock, but that was my lowest-level class and didn't get as much attention as the others.  I was busy in the outlands and didn't really want to go spend more time leveling in Tanaris.

Has life changed significantly for any of those classes?

Life has changed quite a lot for all of these classes. Druids are excellent tanks at the moment. Mostly qualify as OT, but MT in some situations. Warlock has kinda still the same playstyle if you specc SL/SL or Affliction / Demonology, Destro can be fun for raiding if you like buttonmashing more. Also you can tank a few encounters, like the Twins / Illudan etcetra.

Paladin is great fun, Retri pala that is. In PvP combined with a Shammy + Warrior you are a deathspike. One thing you will love is those who underestimate you and come to your face and end up getting spiked down before they can say ._. Whatever your purpose is, all three of those classes are very solid. Some more than others for their purposes, but I'm sure you won't be disappointed. I'd go with the druid or pala, lock is too automated for me.

[slog]

Toss me a recent WWS of a neutral fight...

On a thread about someone's questions pertaining to the current state of their old characters, you are seriously asking someone else to post a WWS comparing the damage of two second-rate ranged DPS classes?  When, even if they did, that WWS could in no way be considered definitive, or even scientific?

No he's saying show him a WWS and he will show you why the mages suck.

[Chimpy]

In response to the "u suck magez r betterz see brutallus for proofz" stuff:

The reason Oomkin are brought to raids is not that they do better DPS than a mage on a 1:1 comparison, it is for the synergy. People don't bring shadowpriests for their DPS either, yet no one would think of not bringing a shadowpriest now.

Boomkin brings 3% hit to all classes through Imp faerie fire, a 5% spell crit aura to their group, an extra innervate/battlerez, and they can do respectable DPS. Just like ret pallies don't do the same DPS as a rogue or a good DPS warrior, they are brought for what they bring to the raid as a whole.

[kaid]

Druids were crazy when TBC came out mainly because druids scale a shit ton better with crappy gear than warriors or paladins do. Its one of the reason that about 80% or maybe even a bit more of the nerf was undone over time because once warriors and paladins and rogues started getting their gear the druids dropped back to their normal niche.

Right now druids are in good shape they tank very very well hold aggro as good or better than warriors and are between warriors and paladins for aoe tanking. Gearing up a druid is also pretty easy since they can get very good usage out of pvp gear since defense is not really any better for a druid than resilience is.

Boomkin are finally starting to shine. I have been a boomchikkin with my main alt since shortly after TBC and finally at long last you can get the gear to support the stats a boomkin needs and I can lay the smack down very effectivly. If you get geared out our damage is comparable to mages but it takes more work to get there. On the plus side we are a WHOLE lot less squishy than a mage. Hell given all the pansy assed non tanking folks in av I have more than a few times tanked galv and drekk in boomkin form for the entire fight. With pvp gear on I am crit immune and my ac is around paladin level so I can take a pounding pretty well.


Paladins are in pretty good shape holy is fine, prot is getting very popular with groups although the initial gear up to do the heroics is a pita but that goes for both warriors and paladins since neither can really cheese the initial gearing up via pvp. Ret paladins got a big boost and will continue to improve with the stat consolidation crap so you can more an more just gear up like a fury warrior and start pumping out some dps.

Not all paladins seem to have gotten that message yet but I have gotten jacked up by well geared ret paladins they are capable of putting up very respectiable damage numbers now.

[Fordel]

Moonkins only provide 3% Melee hit to the raid, just to clarify. (The Leaked Alpha info would have them doing 3% to everyone though, but alpha etc.)



Holy Paladins are the exact opposite of fine. They are the worst at every kind of healing job you could have currently. Their old niche of super efficiency on a single target is beyond moot with the new spirit regen abilities of Priests and Druids and the fact Blessing of Light doesn't scale. On top of all that they are horrendously boring to actually play.


Prot Paladins are significantly more difficult to gear up then Prot Warriors. You can gear up a Prot Warrior to be uncritable and uncrushable via 'of the champion' greens if so inclined. Toss in a few of the better quest items and the crafted Felsteel set and your good to go, A Season 1 (or soon to be 2) shield will dramatically increase viability as well. A Prot Paladin has a very specific set of gear requirements to be met to reach the ever important uncrushable, with very limited choices to obtain these items Pre-Kara. It is by far one of the most annoying class/specs to gear up. It isn't a matter of improved effectiveness with Prot Paladin gear requirements, it's flat out basic viability. A Crushable plate tank isn't worth anything to even a Kara raid.


Ret Paladins are amusingly split, in that Horde Paladins have a huge advantage with Seal of Blood. SoBlood is just flat out superior to Command for PvE DPS. But overall, Ret Paladins have greatly improved. They finally have stat choices that almost make sense, their gear isn't naturally handicapped (or significantly less so) and they have 'enough' utility to take one over a 2nd Holy paladin now.

[Phred]

I believe they boosted the amount of hate you get with Lacerate since you left. It still requires not having a group of idiots unloading too early to tank well, but it's not *that* bad.

They also made it so elementals and other mobs that were immune to bleeds weren't immune to lacerate.

Getting solid agro at the start of a fight is a bitch still though, and one retard dps can ruin your day.

[Tale]

My WoW main is a 70 druid, I quit around the same time as you, and I resubbed for a month shortly before AoC came out. I learned two things:

1. WoW is boring old shit. Only WotLK can save it.
2. Even if you still like the game, there's no current point in playing it unless you've kept up with TBC progress. Options are to reroll, wait for WotLK or forget WoW.

Basically it doesn't matter how our druids are now. We didn't progress in TBC, while everyone who is still playing has progressed so far in TBC that we might as well be level 1 druids, so it's an irrelevant game until there's new content.

[Kitsune]

My WoW main is a 70 druid, I quit around the same time as you, and I resubbed for a month shortly before AoC came out. I learned two things:

1. WoW is boring old shit. Only WotLK can save it.
2. Even if you still like the game, there's no current point in playing it unless you've kept up with TBC progress. Options are to reroll, wait for WotLK or forget WoW.

Basically it doesn't matter how our druids are now. We didn't progress in TBC, while everyone who is still playing has progressed so far in TBC that we might as well be level 1 druids, so it's an irrelevant game until there's new content.

I am either intrigued or confused by this statement.  How is a lack of playtime in TBC worse than rerolling?