Which is dispointing, since every other spec has had major fundamental changes and spells given back 'sept ferals. (Technically we have had some spells, but at an inconvenience to use).
Refund train might be coming to the station soon. Choo choo!
Do the devs actually watch those videos though? And some i’ve watched aren’t detailed enough so i’d take them with a grain of salt.
Also, it’s not just feral and guardian that’s in a bad spot, it’s balance as well. Resto seems like the only one that’s fine? I haven’t seen any outcry about the spec really.
I feel like a lot of the feedback is getting ignored anyway. There isn’t enough druid players on the alpha from what i’ve seen - they need to start inviting more people in.
I’ve been reading through the US forums. If blizzard does check it there we shouldn’t worry about them not hearing us. The US have a lot of good points about feral. If they’ll listen to them, we should be good too
Not really the point - You’re ignoring a large percentage of your fan base willing to provide feedback taking time out of their lives to improve your game. It’d be nice to get a response saying ‘We’re taking stuff under advisement’ or ‘We hear you’.
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I agree , this was the same problem with BFA alpha and beta when i gave feedback nobody listened to EU or Feral feedback it ended up “Alpha bfa” forums deleted and then they said “you didnt give feedback” the thing is people are like “Its only alpha relax” yeah only alpha like bfa one right when what i gave feedback for and what i feared would happend actually happend . So Kaivax , if you care about our community read Both Forums “class and alpha/beta shadowlands” not everyone has shadowlands alpha key but we know what our specs went through in BFA stop giving love to fire mages and give love to specs like Feral , Enhancment , Arms ,Sub and Survival .
if you dont care then i dont know what are you even doing in your office in that case you should be fired
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I think Arms, Enhancement & Sub have gotten some love already, but feral and survival ironically have been left to fend for themselves.
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i can agree yes
Dont get me wrong, I completely agree with you. Just trying to not worry myself and calm others I guess (:
Hello Community, Devs, Druids,
Here is some feedback about the state of Guardian druid, as I believe that the spec required urgently a full rework, due to the high number issue that are currently negatively impacting bears.
1. General issues
Guardian is currently in a terrible situation, where the bear brings nothing new and all the other tanks are superior in one way or another. With SR available to all druids, there is absolutely nothing that a guardian can do to deserve a raid spot. There is a reason why less that 70 guardian druids have done Mythic N’zoth worldwide (compared to 2k monks), Guardians are not viable.
Other issues such as threat (on the alpha and live) or the issue that we need 2-3 global CD-s before you can get Ironfur, make Guardian a joke even in M+. The same packs that I can pull in +21 on live with my monk, can/have killed my druid before I can get Ironfur up.
Bears need something major improvement on those aspects, updating the numbers will not resolve the issues mentioned. A lot of work is needed to bring this old-school tank model on par with the other tanks.
2. Gameplay
One of they biggest and most noticeable issues with bears is the gameplay, there isn’t a spec in the game that fills like TBC spec more than Guardian. The spec has major issue with the current abilities, the lack of interactivity, and conflicting ideas. Additionally 2 by 2, four of our abilities feel and play he same; Swipe and Trash, are exactly the same, even the animation is nearly identical; the same feeling is shared for Mangle and Maul, there is nothing special and the spec suffers greatly from this.
To resolve the issues, some of the abilities need to be reworked, to provide more to fit a more mature playstyle. Also work more on the rage issues, as a tank, especially for raiding you want to be spending rage on suitability not on Maul, especially with mythic fight getting more and more active tanking.
3. Class identity
I will not go in details here, but Guardian druid has no class identity. At the start of Legion, the developers stated that the class identity is for bears to be a big beefy tank, that has the HP and survival CD to survive. By the time we were doing Mythic Kil’Jaiden - DK had more HP than bears, by the time we were doing Mythic Argus, monks had the same HP and DKs had more than bears. Since then there is no class identity, I can’t understand what is the role the bear is suppose to fix and most people say, bear is just ok and nothing more.
There are a lot of ideas on both EU and US forums, how to resolve the issues and combining a new class identity with some new/updated abilities. Some examples that people had mentioned are a more Savage/Enraged spec design or a more reflective type of tank, with more focus on things like brambles, thorns and HFC Archi class trinket.
4. Talents and covenant
Few words here, as those can easily change and the numbers will have a big impact on those. First for the talents, there is a little choice for the talents, some don’t work well with the spec, some are even conflicting and haven’t been improved in years. The WORST EXAMPLE here is affinities, although the idea may have some merit, the execution is beyond bad - can someone from the devs explain to me when will a bear stop actively tanking a boss/trash and swap to cat/owl/treant - the answer is never, there is no merit from those talents and only the passives are providing benefits to bears. PS. redo Barkskin+Brambles combo.
For Covnants, I know that this is in the process of development, but the existing choices and abilities are at best underwhelming - the abilities for druid a generally accepted as bad and they don’t even fit well for Guardian. Only Ravenous Frenzy is somehow acceptable, but we shouldn’t be happy about it, why isn’t there something more fitting or creative like Conqueror’s Banner or something more fitting the tank identity.
I know that other classes will instantly jump saying that Guardians are to OP in PVP, but there are ways to reduce PVP efficiency without impacting the PVE aspects. Some abilities can easily be updated to do less dmg vs players, or have longer CD in PVP areas, abilities can be more complex than Maul. (this is valid for druids in general)
Overall Guardian druids, need major rework, the spec is in the worst spot it has ever been, and worst of all there has never been another spec that goes 2 expansions without gameplay improvement or only reduction in their utilities and abilities. My long post about the BFA beta, was ignored and on life Guardians are not viable, but if you don’t believe me - you can easily find the number of top guilds using Guardians or see the comments from famous streamers, that all agree that Bears need something badly.
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It all went downhill after the RoTS was removed and multiple thrash procs were taken away with the artifact weapon. Its a damn shame, I really enjoyed playing guardian in legion, but i agree with alot of your points. Guardian is among those specs who’ve not gotten any love what so ever.
HoTW is just adding to the affinity issue. Yea, you can do increased X dmg or healing, but when do you get the chance to do it? Cyclone - Same issue as feral, can’t use it in our forms.
Beserk as a CD is cool idea - execution is garbage. - Just have beserk remove the CD of your abilities then you really can go beserk, spam thrash all you want, spam mangle all you want, proc as many iron furs as you can fit in.
Resto Affinity is the only viable spec for the passive - but balance holds the best CC - next to Resto (Would be useful on necrotic weeks).
I think i watched a video about Lunar beam - Have that cast on your druid and move with it & have some interactivity with Galactic guardian by having targets in Lunar beam suffer from moonfires which could proc more because of GG - That would be awesome.
Wild charge should be baseline alongside renewal or add renewal to resto afinity.
But mainly, bring back Rage of the god damn sleeper! We have 0 magic defense!
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HI Timelless, thank you for your big input.
This game is not about PVP on the first place. PVE Balance should be on the first place.
This issue could be EASILY solved by changing amount of rage getting from shifting into bear. Currently it gives 25 rage, should be changed to 40 rage(or other equal to Iron Fur cost). This so much simple and obvious solution just shows that nobody works on spec, or person who works completely does not understand and does not care about spec.
About affinities: all of them have a sick design.
I remember times in WotLK when I could do a tranquill while I was off-tanking, or give innervate, or even heal raid with my regular spells, because my spell effectiveness was scaling from my agility. In Cata Blizzard just cutted out all out-of-spec abilities and killed core of hybrid specs.
Now all affinities are choosed only for one passive effect(bigger range for spells = moonkin, cat and resto affinities are used extremely rarely). Nowdays PVE content does not allow Bear to use affinities at full strengh. You have a near zero mana, so you can’t heal with resto affinity, you can’'t switch to cat or moonkin and do dps because of two reasons: 1) your ‘affinity’ dps just can’t be compared with your bear dps, dps of ‘affinity’ moonkin is just a joke. 2) design of PVE encounters does not give you a chance to do something else: you are always busy: tanking boss, tanking adds, running somewhere. I even not talking about M+. Can you imagine how you are using cat-dps abilities in M+? No, it is a real joke. At the same time resto-druids are doing both heal+dps roles everywhere because of affinities.
So, affinities just have bad design and realisation.
“Bringing back cyclone” just another bad joke.
Berserk was useful only in WotLK with fear immunity and 3-target burst. But warlocks cried a lot, so it was removed.
ZzZ, I thought this argument was long since dead by now. There are as many people doing PvP as PvE (if not more doing PvP). BGs have* similar attendance numbers as Normal-Heroics, Arenas as Mythic etc.
Stop pretending you own the game. High end PvE is as much of a minority interest as high end PvP is.
Let’s design the game around leveling and world questing instead, since that’s a majority interest. /s
*when Holinka announced the high level comparison on Twitter back in WoD or MoP.
Strong agree. There are so many weaknesses with affinities, the main one being that you have all of the following mutually exclusive, in the same talent row:
- Strong passives (range/healing/damage reduction)
- Tame, but flavourful and nostalgic, off-spec abilities (like Sunfire, Starfire and Rejuvenation)
- Strong defensives/heals (Swiftmend, Frenzied Regen)
- Strong utility (Ursol’s, Vortex & Incap Roar)
This means that if you are forced to pick Balance Affinity due to 1) or Guardian affinity due to 3), based on the content you’re doing, then you can’t have a given utility that you would like from 4) because they’re mutually exclusive and tied to the other choice you just had to make. Or you’re forced to pick a certain utility from 4), forcing you into Restoration Affinity, meaning you can’t choose the flavour-abilities that you want, etc etc etc. There are tons of variants of this. It’s incredibly annoying and the anti-thesis of player agency. There’s simply too much stuff in this talent row.
They should just scrap the Affinity row, remove the passives (Astral influence, Ysera’s Gift and Thick Hide) and make the “weak” abilities baseline (Starfire, Sunfire, Wrath) while making the talent row utility only (Typhoon/Incap Roar/Ursol’s Vortex). Swiftmend is becoming obsolete anyway with the HoT requirement in SL and Frenzied Regen forces you to sit Bear Form and is almost impossible to balance around (do you design Feral defensive level around having or not having picked Guardian Affinity?), Moonkin Form I don’t even know why they ever gave Feral access to. So they might as well remove them anyway.
While they’re at it they can baseline Wild Charge (replace with Cenarion Ward) and Mighty Bash (replace with Faerie Swarm or Treants) for Feral as well.
Cyclone returning is good, but it’s nowhere near good enough to validate the “unpruning” mantra that Blizzard is spreading.
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Could work with talents, so you’d have avoidance, Heal or bubble. - but i’d also go as far as to make Tigers Dash usable in bear form (Oviously not to the same speed as cat) but a short 45 second movement increase - Bears can run pretty fast IRL, nothing to say this can’t be added into the game.
To whomever is able, please post our feedback on the BfA class topic, with only 4 comments there we will not be able to get the necessary attention needed. Feel free to copy/paste anything from my long post. As I would like to be more active on my druid, as I’m fond of it as it was the first tank I started with in TBC.
Additionally as a person that was deeply involved with top end raiding for years (had to skip BfA due to work, and came back 5 weeks ago), I can clearly see the difference when I play some of my other tanks and druid.
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This thread is visible as a link in the forum post. Put your feedback in here and if anyone is able to; please reiterate it on the applicable forums.
Lol how do you say something like this
That’s kinda easy, let me teach you 
Story in each addon is built around PVE activities, dungeons and raids are straight continuation of story development. PVP activities always stays aside of the plot.
Ok, let me explain my negative opinion about PVP. I did PVP 10 years ago, most of my honor kills are that years old. Then, Cata has come, Blizzard cutted out forse-shifting because mages cried a lot, and druid became completely disabled. That was the moment when PVP has ended for me. Funny moment: this change completely did not solve all-the-time problem about ‘class’ and ‘anti-class’, it just removed casual players like me from pvp. But this change still hurts even in PVE, because I can’t do re-shifting while I’m tanking boss, so I have to suffer/ask paladins for Blessing of Freedom. Like any other usual tank class. What a shame.
@Baghita, well, I’m regularly sending in-game feedbacks on US server with links to this and other Ferals and Bears discussions threads. Not sure that this makes any results. Kaivax could even post a single blue ‘+’ here or there and acknowledge that he read all that posts…
BTW we’ve got another fresh Alpha build with complete ignoring of druid feedback.
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Alright dude, I respect what your saying. I just think what you said first came of a bit strong.
For me… if I’d solely did pve, I wouldnt play this game.
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he should be fired , i dont care what others say to my comment but if you are a "Community manager " and not do your job , im sorry but you should be fired . whats the point of having him here on eu . get someone who cares to be here on forums 24/7 and actually reply to some arguments to class changes
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its Kinda two ways realistically
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lack of response on EU is defintly a thing.
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how can u give feedback on Shadowlands Design of the druid if u cant play it? weather u like it or not, The class recieved several changes going into Shadowlands, among loss of all borrowed power.
it’d be really hard to realistically give feedback on something u cant test. SL Feedback isnt really based on opinons about BFA Class Design, but how classes are changing in SL.