Tuesday, September 13, 2011

[Druid]Feedback for the devs

I'd recommend everyone go over to the battle net thread and post constructive, meaningful feedback for their class/spec of their choice. Lissanna has been doing the resto/moonkin stuff, and it's great. Here's mine, reposted from the forums.

[i]What type of content do you focus on? [PvE/PvP/Both][/i]PvE

[i]If PvE, what type of PvE? [Heroics/Raids/Other][/i]Primarily heroics. Some raids when I have time or when I can fill in with my guild.

[i]If PvP, what type of PvP? [Arenas, BGs, Rated BGs][/i]

[i]What are your biggest quality-of-life issues? For instance, no longer requiring ammo could be considered a quality-of-life improvement for hunters[/i]. For bears, it is a lack of meaningful interaction with other party members or with the mobs. Aside from berserk attacks feel less than interesting and there is very little visual or behavioral change when doing attacks on mobs. Because it requires shifting out of bear there is even less interaction with the rest of the party while tanking.
Rage gain is poor and inconsistent, and ultimately meaningless past the first few seconds.
Too little control over incoming damage. Savage defense works, but there's no control over it - and that's all a bear has other than the long-term cooldowns.
Too little raid utility for a bear. Faerie fire is basically it. Innervate, tranquility and rebirth are all unusable while tanking.
Cats: poor options when attacking from the front. A very long buildup time for maximum dps means that anything that dies quickly doesn't die from cat DPS. Positioning in general appears to be fickle and odd at times. Charge takes long and doesn't actually go to the target if the target is moving. Compared to other classes ferals do not have a lot of burst DPS CDs to use regularly.
[i]What makes playing your class more fun?[/i]The mobility of a cat/bear is awesome. The transformation into multiple forms and activating different abilities in those forms is great. Flight form is awesome. Being able to do things like hibernate is great now.
[i]What makes playing your class less fun?[/i]For the bear side, the fairly boring rotation and relative lack of interaction with mobs other than hitting them. The lack of root/fear breaks. Missing out on all the druid abilities and being locked into just bear stuff. The gearing is also fairly boring and is very ilvl-dependent; it would be nice to care a bit more about things other than stamina or agility.
For cats: fewer burst options , fewer mobility options than other classes. Less raid utility (thoguh the raid utility I have is awesome, there's just not that much of it). No sign of gear in forms aside from a very small set of pieces. Having to deal with multiple mobs is not so fun. Having to have multiple debuffs on a mob to start optimal DPS isn't fun either. Having no real satisfying 'nuke' is kind of sad too.

How do you feel about your “rotation”? (Rotation is the accepted order in which abilities are used to maximum efficiency.)For bears: it's fine, if a bit boring. Multiple target rotation is dull and robotic. Single target is fine, particularly maximizing mangles. Would be nice to have something else to do for actual tanking other than demo roar.
Cats: requires external tools to track well, but it's fairly nice after that. I miss the complexity of WotLK. I miss wanting to do something other than rip or savage roar. The ramp up to get to the rotation is long as well.

[i]What’s on your wish list for your class?[/i]For ferals to be actually designed from the ground up. Ferals feel to me like an organically created class, where they have been built up from a poor foundation. Abilities feel tacked on that don't seem to make sense (savage defense, blood in the water, tiger's fury) and don't work that well together (lacerate/pulverize). Gear choices, especially for tanking, feel flat and lifeless; there really aren't exciting pieces for cats or bears any more other than weapons. Compare to warriors or paladins where everything is at least designed thematically well if not working perfectly in execution and it feels like ferals are duct-taped together. Things work, but they aren't nice. I would also like more druidry in the feral tree. Not being able to use any spells in forms is a drag. Getting things like wild mushroom as the 'big' spell this expansion and not having any use for it as a bear or cat was disappointing, especially compared to Guardian of Ancient Kings.

I would also like to see more interesting animations for cats and bears. Particularly bears. Bear tanking doesn't feel mean and hard. When you shield bash or shockwave it looks impressive; when you pulverize it looks fairly boring. Cats are a bit better but only just.

[i]What spells do you use the least?[/i]As a bear, I don't use challenging roar very often; it tends to not work well enough when I'd need it and that it aggros everything tauntable (including the boss) is problematic. As a cat, I never use pounce or start in stealth.

1 comment:

Grumpyhorn said...

Nice post. I don't know that I agree about the rotation. I find that I pay more attention to positioning and raid awareness than rotation now. If I'm just standing there soaking up dmg like on Baleroc, I do find it a little boring, but on several fights moving is important and adding more the track would not be that welcome.

Of course I'm not a professional tank, I just play one on tv, so I can see that others may feel this way. I do feel that gearing is a little boring, I think that reforging has replaced gearing as the fun with gear. Do I go hit/exp with my cat, do I hybridize my gear or get duplicates to reforge to dodge, etc. I don't have to keep as much current gear in my bank so when pieces are replaced I change to another equivalent piece.

I agree with a lot of the kitty points. Attacking from the front is a big dps loss and I've had questions on why my dps is so low on certain fights. I do wish Mushrooms had more utility. When they were announced I saw a cool replacement for the old hurricane pull. I is unusable if form (at least we can now warstomp as a tauren).