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
Continue reading 'Ring Ring Ring . . . Bananashoulders!'
Posts
