Siha, of Banana Shoulders, recently posted the first in what is likely to be a regular series of questions for bloggers such as myself. Be on the lookout for other Blog Azeroth patrons putting up their responses to the question:Q: What do you enjoy about the class you play the most?
Well, there are a few different reasons I play a Druid. . .
Druid was my first class -- Even before I played the game, I was doing my research on it. Before WoW, I had always played casters of some variety. But I was starting to get curious about more melee-oriented roles. Rather than make multiple characters to experiment with, I figured I would go with one of the game's hybrid classes and experience everything at once. Since I wanted to try both tanking and melee DPS, my options were either Paladin or Druid. Two factors tipped the scales toward Druid: I had an "RP family member" who would fit very well as a druid (though Jasminne was also an obvious choice for paladin), and more importantly, the literature I was reading tended to treat Paladins as a sort of easymode class. Not saying what I was reading was CORRECT, but I like a challenge, so I went with Druid.
(Feral) Druids dont have downtime -- One of the things I absolutely HATED about other games was the immense downtime inherent in most systems. Lineage II was the absolute worst in this regard, with special mention going to casters in D&D Online (where mana was so restricted that many fights DURING A RUN were effectively downtime since you couldn't hit a damn thing with weapons unless you were super-specialized in their use, and wanted to save as much MP as possible for the big fights). I have never had any downtime whatsoever as a feral druid, though. If my health runs low, I pop out, heal myself, and keep going. And if my mana runs out. . . LOL, yeah, I think thats happened like 3 times while soloing, and I just innervate myself.
Tree healing is fun! -- Believe it or not, I'm one of those nuts that actually enjoys healing (But only if I have a tank who knows how to keep mobs off of me). I dont think I've ever complained about having to heal a run, and have always tried to keep a decent healing set (Which I carry with me at ALL times, even when I'm soloing, you never know). When the expansion came out, and I got Lifebloom, things got a little bit more fun, tossing out heals on a 7-second fuse. Then the Lifebloom +heal change hit, and druid healing became a blast. Honestly, while I'm levelling my paladin to be a healer, I think I'd almost rather respec Surania to healing (She has damn good gear for a feral, 1500 +heal and 150 mana/5 while casting) and have the paladin be the tank. Almost.
I like big numbers. -- Which is not to say that I particularly care about the biggest crits ever, I never really got that, since its all about DPS in PvE, not the single big hits, leave that for the PvP arenas. But when I see 20k health (and then realize its actually low), 35k armor, and over 50% dodge when fully raid buffed for tanking, it makes me all giddy inside. To the point that I guess I've pissed some people off in the past when bragging about gear upgrades (Mind you, I've only gotten one signifigant upgrade recently, the ring from Mags' head).
The Swiss-Army-Knife effect. -- This is actually a mixed blessing. I love being able to do whatever the raid needs me to do, and to be able to (to a good extent) switch between roles at a moment's notice. The problem is, I never really wanted to be a melee DPS type. Sure, I levelled feral, but I never really got all that interested in LOLkittyMewMew for groups. That was reinforced, pre-1.12, by the fact that there used to be a definite split between the feral tanking spec (11/33/7 baybee) and feral DPS spec. Druids specced for tanking did pretty piss-poor DPS, and druids specced for cat DPS weren't terribly great at tanking. Not that druid tanking and DPS was all that great in general, mind you. Anyhow, with the streamlining of the feral tree, I was all but forced to embrace my inner kitty and learn the ways of The Shredder. And while I've started to enjoy cat DPS a bit, I still much prefer tanking or healing.
The one thing I truly HATE. -- Switching gears for a second, perhaps to an idea for the next installment of this blogging exercise, is the one thing I truly hate about being a bear. And that is the #^($ing armor cap. Seriously, blizzard, just take it out already, or at LEAST balance the game around never being able to reach it under normal circumstances. Armor is our primary scaling stat as a feral tank, and while I've already covered the fact that diminishing returns is a big pile of crap, it doesn't scale exponentially like dodge, either. Honestly, its not like we'd be able to get very far past the cap anyhow. In fact, just increasing the cap to 80% increases the cap on the actual armor number to 47,840! Good luck getting that without some hardcore, short-lived buffs *coughinspirationcough*
/prowl
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2 comments:
One of the reasons I went healer is because I got tired of dying on Sabarrh for lack of healage while running solo. That, and it was infinitely more useful to a group to have a healer (I remember full well Saliel saying 'We need healers, damnit...' and you saying, 'Just get 35 more levels in 24 hours and you can go.' And I was determined to stay resto no matter what while leveling -- it got me where I am today.
Did I miss out on leveling feral? Sure. But on the other hand, healing makes me fuzzy when people realize that they didn't die (again) and it's me in the support seat, versus tanking, where I'm always worried that someone's pulled aggro off of me and they're getting munched because I failed.
Two different dimensions, really; you fail as a healer when your heals don't keep someone up, but it gets easier the higher your +heal goes; you only fail as a tank when the mobs smoosh you faster than the healer can keep you up. Everything else is from the DPS being naughty. :)
-Sabtree
Hehe, Sab and I ran a heroic Sethekk tonight (Grats again on your epic flight form!), and the group reminded me of just why I admire your healing. You have this uncanny knack for surviving the unsurvivable.
For the record, we were three druids (Sab, myself, and another resto druid who respecced feral for the run), a warlock (who never used his succubus, nor was he ever asked to), and a fury warrior. Zero crowd control, and plenty of aggro-happy DPSers to keep me distracted from the crucial business of keeping our feathery friends off of the barkbutt in the back. Remember my post about enjoying chaotic runs? Well, this one went even past what *I* enjoy.
Sure, you had (more than) your fair share of deaths, but one moment that stands out in my mind from tonight was when we pulled the third group in Anzu's room, and the prophet feared us both. I went running toward trinket boy's room, and you went the exact opposite way toward where we had been. . . with a freshly-aggroed Talon Lord (Or whatever the paladin birds are called) on your tail . . . er, roots.
That fear seemed to last forever, and I was sure you'd be dead by the time I got to you. But I ran toward you nonetheless, and what seemed like 10 minutes later, I found you, still alive, playing with the mob in a corner. I have NO idea how you stayed vertical, but I admire the fact that you did.
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