Should they be nerfed to avoid the “drum meta”? I think they should. What do you think?
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I picked up LW myself because I want to be a drummer.
But protecting people against themselves would be nice.
Can Blizzard keep those who want drums happy as well as those that force themselves to get drums? Time will tell.
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Simple solution: Don’t be a meta sheep.
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Why should they nerf them?
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Like worldbuffs most people can’t confront their guild management by saying that they will not participate in the meta (because the consequence is less loot prio/raid spots). At the moment in Classic there are some no-wbuffs guilds but not that many and definately not the more hardcore guilds.
If the drums stay unchanged there may be some no-drums guilds but most likely casual guilds will just accept members without drums. Hardcore guilds will probably make it mandatory.
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Just pick Leatherworking.
What’s next? Nerfing Nitro Boots in WotLK to avoid the “engineering meta”? (spoiler alert: if you’re in a hardcore guild in WotLK, especially if you’re a melee, you’ll have to pick engineering for the boots enchant)
If you need other professions, just put them on your alts.
EDIT: The parallel with worldbuffs is largely unwarranted because, while they’re both “metas” (then again, so are consumables, talent builds, etc.), worldbuffs are a ridiculously limiting meta that hinders gameplay in multiple ways:
- It forces players to rely on server dynamics they have no control over
- It punishes player death in raids extremely harshly, whereas in WoW death is not supposed to be especially punishing outside of certain achievements and “challenge runs”
- It forces players to actually stay logged off the game, to log at certain specific times (which, again, they have no control over), and to basically play on the clock. Which, again, is not something normal for this game outside of challenge runs and achievements
In comparison, all the “drums meta” requires of you is to actually use one of your profession slots for Leatherworking. The drums themselves are quite cheap, and you don’t even need 375 LW to use drums (350 is enough, and it’s much cheaper to get to 350 than 375).
Most arguments I’ve read against “drums meta” seem to boil down to one of:
- It’s a meta thus it’s bad: As mentioned before, the game is full of metas so that’s kinda BS - you just can’t have a game w/o a meta unless all options are equally good and thus none matters, competitively-speaking
- I don’t wanna use LW for roleplay reasons (ex: using LW as a mage makes no sense!): Well, using a cloth chest as a paladin or shaman doesn’t rly make much sense flavor-wise either, but that’s the game you’re playing. If you want strict armor-based adherence, you can go play Retail.
- I don’t wanna sacrifice a profession slot for LW: Aside from very few specs, the most you’re sacrificing in terms of PvE is the very minor bonuses provided by enchanting and Jewelcrafting. There’re basically no super-rare recipes in TBC to profit from - most profession-related income in TBC comes from profession CDs, and you got alts for those.
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I don’t see why I can’t compare wbuff meta to drums meta.
The drums meta will nowhere near be as bad for casuals, since they’ll still be able to play in casual guilds without LW. However, on my realm casual guilds still make wbuffs mandatory (since most are LC and wbuffs increase your performance by a lot)
For (semi-)hardcore guilds both metas will be mandatory.
Were drums available on launch? I don’t remember it ever being a thing until Sunwell patch, when suddenly lots of people were rerolling to LW. Let me just be clear though, my guild was progressing Mu’ru while most of the raidteam did not have LW, you don’t absolutely “need” it.
Maybe we were naive though because it does make a big difference, 4 people in a party can keep 100% uptime and it’s 80 haste rating, which is a lot. If you’re raiding “ahead of the curve” so to speak then it seems pretty obvious if they are available you will be required by your guilds to run them, but if you’re “ahead of the curve” that is absolutely not a problem for you.
Casual dedicated guilds will still clear all the raids without drums.
By that logic, even the “human warrior meta” (i.e. the fact most warriors are human for the weapon skill/expertise boost) is comparable to the drums meta or the wbuff meta. The only thing wbuff meta and drums meta have in common is that they’re meta. Which, again, is nothing bad per se and no grounds for changing a game that’s supposed to be a legacy recreation (or at least as close as possible)
And if we wanna talk about metas which are mostly enforced in hardcore guilds… what about flasks and consumables in general? Should be nerf/remove flasks from the game because they’re mandatory in almost any serious guild (especially in TBC, since they’re much cheaper than Vanilla)? I don’t see how that carries any weight as an argument.
It existed from the beginning of TBC, it just didn’t catch on until SWP due to the latter’s extremely unforgiving DPS requirements compared to the rest of TBC.
And yes you can still clear most of the content even without drums. Ofc most serious guilds will require or at least heavily recommend it, but it’s not as impactful as worldbuffs are at least.
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We really need tbc sub forum. tbc ruining classic.
I don’t think drums should be nerfed at all, but I think a “Sated” debuff on the user and the whole group he’s in would be a good idea. Same with Bloodlust/Heroism. It worked in Wrath, and I think there’s nothing bad about backpatching good changes.
Otherwise there will be another stupid, player-driven meta where everyone and their mothers take LW for any % advantage. Sure, drums are nowhere near as impactful or obnoxious as world buffs, that’s true. But I’d rather avoid any more stupid metas if possible.
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You don’t need drums to clear content. So play with people that aren’t going to force you into it.
No need to make it more complicated than that 
Absolutely remove this from the game.
Because blizz will change things they shouldn’t, they might as well remove some of the cancer
Blizz decided from the start to go with full changes so why keep the garbage other than to spite us and try to get returning players to quit and play shadowlands/bfa like they did with classic.
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I’m sorry but you have to think more than one step ahead. If the extremely dedicated would see that the drums are a bust, what would they do? Let me tell you. They would sim what’s the next best thing to increase performance and make that mandatory.
The rest who aren’t top but think themselfs above the plebs would be quick to follow and the “lol drum meta” would be replaced with something new. Would you try to make a stink about nerfing everything untill nothing can be mathed out to be the best?
The only such a change that would make sense to put in place would be to make enchanted rings to be inactive like in wrath when you don’t have the profession. So the cutting edge wouldn’t try to force that on themselfs. Leveling new profs when a ring drops seems silly to me but there are ppl out there who would do it to be the best.
If I get it right this is absolutely not needed to finish the raids. Find a guild or community that doesn’t want this to be the norm and play with them.
The only time where you really wanna consider drums is in Sunwell, casual guilds will not likely be doing Sunwell to begin with. TBC has a weird situation with attunements that effectively keeps the lower guilds stuck in T5 while T6 guilds poach their best players.
Then Sunwell patch removes the T6 attunement but you’re not doing Sunwell without T6 gear anyway, absolutely tonnes of guilds were just starting T6 progression when Sunwell came out, almost none of them used drums in a rotation, but rogues would usually have them as rogues were often LW anyway.
You can clear SW without drum rotations, but Mu’ru has a very high dps check and not using drums will delay you a few raid lockouts for gear.
By this logic, how many other things we should or could backtrack from Wrath because they can be argued to be “improvement” over TBC? How about we just wait for Wrath instead and enjoy TBC for what it is?
Also, what is a “stupid meta”, exactly? Is “bring the class not the player” a stupid meta, too? What about meta race+class combo choices? If you don’t want to deal with meta, just don’t play PvE or PvP at a competitive level in the first place.
They should pull the frog stuff from MoP and after X uses of drums on one boss fight master frog spawns and wipes everyone 
Or add drums to fishing 
Yeah I don’t buy the “stupid meta” argument. It’s a stupid meta to bench all your melee specs in Castle Nathria but also bring 4x DK’s because they are broken. Or the M+ meta for high keys which includes only a handful of specs while the rest just rot in mediocrity.
People are making more out of this than really exists, if you don’t want to raid in a hardcore guild you will never need LW to raid. I may also not feel super excited about levelling LW but it doesn’t bother me that much, I’d rather that than “TBC - Convenience Edition!” or “TBC - Non-elitist Edition”
Let’s just have TBC, a massively improved game compared to Vanilla on the convenience front.
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Getting these drums in the first place will be an amazing sh*tshow, since the Thick Clefthoof Leather required to make them only drops from very specific mobs in Nagrand. There is no instanced source as far as I can tell.
I predict many raider tears and pleads related to Clefthoof Bull spawn rates.
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Everything you’re saying is correct.
I still don’t like it however. I can see the WB comparison, but it’s not a perfect reflection.
It seems like asking someone to make 2 choices of 10 options. 1 to 10. But number 5 is incomparably better than 1-4 and 6-10. So why even bother with the other 9 options (or giving 2 choices) ? Might as well just lock 1 of everyone’s professions to LW and ask them to pick one more. At least that would be honest.