Seems like a good place for this rant...

I have been under the impression for a while that the "class balance" folks at Blizz have been in a reactive mode for quite a while -- reacting rather than in control.
The latest patch is, to me, the latest in a growing chain of Blizz adjustments that seem to validate my view. Is it just coincidental that Tobold is noting a lack of tanks and talking about warrior vs. feral druid, and Blizz targets those very classes in the patch?

Blizz has a fundamental problem -- there's probably a Blizz formula for "right class, right spec" for raid / heroic dungeons (the old mindset of PvE-first, game begins at 70).
But the server populations are probably way out of the balance Blizz planned for, leading inevitably to discontent and frustration at the high end when people are looking for attunements and such.

Blizz is rightly taking the heat for balance problems they brought on themselves.

This all began pre-BC. The scene was rather static and settled, then Blizz drops the 41-talent tree on players at the same time they nerfed the PvP reward requirements.
What probably happened was a huge shift away from prot warrior and holy priest to play with PvP and level to 70 -- warriors went arms or fury, and priests went shadow.
Also, the game was stagnant for so long that my guess is that people who played warriors started alts and got a taste of other classes -- and liked an alt better.
So a tank shortage resulted, and feral druids prominently stepped in and fill the gap.

That's not all that Blizz did to themselves.

Warriors and priests are probably enjoying their new spec, and are looking at the price of a respec back to prot warrior or holy priest are not in any rush to do it -- a flying mount is looking like a better value than a respec. Instead, they're trying to tank as arms / fury or heal as shadow.
Who can blame them?
Because I'm sure I'm not alone when I look at the warrior prot-tree and the priest holy-tree and think: Instance/raid spec, useless for solo/PvP.

What is the result?
Parties may now be in the mindset that they have to settle for picking their tank from a pool of feral druids and arms/fury warriors, and their healer from a pool of resto hybrids and shadow priests.
I'm even seeing it at lower levels -- the tank/off-tank are pally and hunter pet, and the healer is a resto druid with the shadow priest running vampiric/off-heal. And it works, too!
Which leaves Blizz in a bit of a bind, since that probably *won't* work in the high-end raid/heroic dungeons -- but the toons feeding into the level-70 population are not the right class ratio and not the right spec.

Bottom line, IMO:
Blizz made the warrior and priest trees too specialized, and the respec cost too steep.

So IMO Blizz is trying to give some incentive in the direction of tank and healbot, and IMO it won't make much, if any, difference.
 

I'm really burned about the priest and shadow changes too. My tanks in instances for weeks have been one of two druids, and they love doing it. Now, they're completely frustrated and close to cancelling. Me, my carefully crafted shadow build with all my crit heals/mana pumps is about to be impractical at best. Because I love playing my priest so much, I'm trying to work out a holy dps build (yah yah, stop laughing) so that I can at least do something solo and not just be healbot in instances. I've been shadow since starting my priest, and never had issues healing. Now, I'll end up being an agro magnet and not efficent (and good shadow healing is all about efficency).

Also rolled a paladin to be a healer. Seems like that's the way to go if you want to be a healer and do damage and have survivability. One guild paladin I know has over 1k +heal stuff, far above what I've managed to find as a priest!
 

The bear druid issue was one that has been on the horizon for a very long time, and I'm less than shocked to see that nerf bat swung. Even before TBC I could go 1 on 1 with my epic rogue against an epic feral druid and not have a chance. I remember one particular showdown where everything went in my favor, crippling poison proc'd early and I was able to stay behind the druid for 80% of the fight. My backstabs were CRITTING for 350. His non-crit mangles were topping 1000 and he crit me once for nearly 2000.

I couldn't even force him out of bear to heal himself. That was the start of the issue (as with many things in WoW, PVP issues are indicators of larger issues). Then TBC comes out, and it makes AQ40 look like it didn't have hardly any feral gear. Feral gear is everywhere and suddenly this hybrid class is literally able to tank better than the class built around tanking.

It sucks for the druids who were having fun, and it sucks for those of us who were able to run more instances thanks to knowing a druid could probably tank it if a warrior wasn't available, but it was inevitable.
 

If i grit my teeth a lot, I can sort of see the point of the VE nerf.

The amount of +dmg gear you get in BC for just wandering about for a bit is amazing.

This makes an all VE healed instance a possibility. I am not sure Blizzard like this.

The problem they have with all this tinkering is now is really not the time to be hacking players off. Perhaps 6 months ago you might think "Well, there are not that many alternatives".

But now you think, "Heck, I will be at 70 soon, and the tedium will start again, and they keep changing things - Oh look LotRO and others, lots of new things to see and do, Bye".

Not predicting the end of WoW, but this isn't going to help their cause.
 

To start off with, i'm in a guild where we are doing high end instances, and we have a prot warrior, prot pally, and a bear druid ot. Each seems to have a role. When it comes to single slow hitting bosses, the warrior tanks it.. when it comes to aoe, and high armor targets, or fast hitting targets, the pally tanks it, and when it comes to caster bosses, the druid tanks it. i think each of the tank types has a specific role to play in end game raiding, and if your guild only rolls with prot warriors.. you can probably do the bosses, but it'll be alot more of a strain on the healers.

by the way.. we also use shadow priests along side our holy dps build priests.. there is still a place in end game for off class builds... and in some cases.. a need.

holy paly + shadow priest + tree druid + holy priest, you get so many HOTs and different levels of healing it smooths out the massive damage taken in end game instances.

Also, to address all the nerfs that have been happening.. it's all related to pvp.. and screwing up pve is really just a sad byproduct, but i still think druids will have a tanking role even after this patch.

- morgas
 

Time for some Dr. Jekel/ Mr Hyde.

First, feral druids needed to be nerfed. When my rogue who is assassination spec can't win against a feral druid with weaker gear, there is a problem.

Second, my priest is leveling almost as fast as my rogue did, and with the shadow spec I am using, I almost never have a problem with DPS or healing. So I guess that kind of made priests a more viable solo option, thus a giant target for the nerf.

Now the flip side.

I thought giving feral druids a chance to lead the pack was great. One of my RL friends plays a feral druid and he absolutely loved what BC did for his class. Now he is getting nerfed, and will probably go back to being the crappy DPS machine ala cat form, instead of tanking with the big boys and holding his own. sad...

The priest nerf is downright mindblowing. It's not bad enough that there is a priest shortage on just about every server, now Blizz is going to suck allot of the fun right out of that class by gimping us back to our proper "healbot" place.

All of this makes me (like many others) very pissed off. I have to wonder how many compentant employees Blizz has working for them because I am noticing a pattern here: Make the game fun and in some ways new to attract new players or players of old, then nerf the game back to the way it was and tell the players to *%&$ off if they don't like it.
 

After running the numbers, if VE counts as holy and SR still reduces threat from the VE healing then the change is not all that bad when you account for the nerf to VE healing as well. Since most of our threat comes from VE, it comes out to having to do 5% less damage, not 20%, to maintain the same level of threat.

However, that means 9.75% less healing from VE, and 5% less mana from VT. So.. it will be somewhat harder on healers but should be manageable.

The nerf to PoM makes me feel like some petty designer complained "they're not using it the way I want them to" so they made it a situational spell. I put in a suggestion on the official board to change the cooldown to 6-10 seconds, which would accomplish what they want, but also allow it to be more useful for different situations.
 

my calculations on threat from VE were based on a group of 5 getting healed for full, I posted them at worldofwar.net in the priest forum
 

VE counts as shadow healing. The animation from it is purple rather than gold.

Already cancelled my account. I enjoyed both shadow and holy specced, but currently specced holy on my 70 priest.

PoM was the only thing I looked forward to for PvP healing. Instant and fun heals = Guild Wars. Punching bag healers = WoW.
 

The thing to keep in mind is that Druids were never intended or designed to be a tank class and Priests were not designed to be a DPS class.
 

feral druids never should have been nerfed. The reason you currently see warriors and rogues as the dominant DPS classes in all brackets of arenas while feral druids really only exist in low ranked arena teams proves beyond doubt that the false perception of bear form being "OP" was soley caused by the absurd scaleability of feral druids.

With no way of improving their base DPS, feral druids needed to be where they were at the release of Burning Crusade to even have a chance once warriors and rogues got their PvP gear. Warriors and rogues now have that gear yet ferals remain nerfed into oblivion with more nerfs on the way with beastcoil.

Unnerfing ferals at this point may or may not make them arena viable, with season 4 gear coming out it's doubtful that a revrsal of these unwarranted nerfs would even have an effect.