The most important thing a druid has, is the ability to keep the enemy away. Rooting/cycloning a rogue/warrior/lock/spriest etc. all gives time to get away and PREVENT having to be on defense.

This is imo a major point in this discussion which i miss in all the responses.

This situation made Blizz buff casterarmor (cloth) and creates a ‘strange’ situation where cloth and leather are closer together than we would expect them to be.

Hopefully i get my point across.

– Zhero

Heals:
Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Swiftmend. Power Word Shield, Prayer of Mending, Renew. Hmmm … that looks like 3 instant cast heals for each class. PWS also eats Warrior Rage and isn’t affected by Mortal Strike (!). To be fair, once every 3 minutes (once a match, maybe twice), a Druid can Nature’s Swiftness a Healing Touch.

Further, Priests’ Flash Heal is 1.5 seconds. With Martyrdom, any time they’re crit, their spells can’t be interrupted for 6 seconds. During that time they also have a 20% base resistance to Pummel, Kick, Silence, Counterspell, etc. Our quickest non-instant heal is 2.0 seconds and only becomes uninterruptible if we use Barkskin, an ability on a minute-long cooldown.

Damage Reduction:
In addition to these superior “healing under fire” abilities, Blessed Resilience is far better than the Druid equivalent, Natural Perfection. It actually scales past the Resilience cap. Blessed Recovery, a 3rd Tier Holy talent, reduces the damage from crits by 25% (by healing it immediately afterward). That’s basically an extra 490 Resilience!

Priests also get Inner Fire, an ability that brings their cloth armor on par with leather without needing to have the AC of their cloth artificially inflated. Not to mention AOE Fear for dispersing multiple melee assailants (albeit temporarily). While Druids do have the ability to turtle up in Bear Form, I’m not doing my job if I’m a Bear. I’m also less useful than a Prot Warrior. Not that Bear Form doesn’t have its uses, but Priests can continue to do their job while being attacked. Druids can’t.

Crowd Control Prevention/Removal:
Priests have a passive 15% resistance to Stun, Fear, and Silence through Unbreakable Will, a 1st Tier Discipline talent. A Druid can spend mana to break out of snares and Polymorph. A Priest can spend mana to dispel Roots and Frost Nova, but that still leaves them susceptible to Wing Clip, Hamstring, and Crippling Poison. With the momentary immunity to snares after shifting removed from Druids, however, a Druid is often re-Hamstrung (of the three, our gravest threat) immediately after shifting to remove it.

Crowd Control as a Defensive Measure:
Cyclone and Root (you might also include Bash despite its short duration since it can buy you time to Cyclone) vs. insta-cast AOE Fear. Cyclone and Roots are great CC, but in most situations, Roots are not a useful defensive measure because they break early and — if you’re stunned — the assailant can still attack you (unlike Cyclone, Polymorph, Fear, Stun). Cyclone’s heavy DR relative to its long cast time and its resulting susceptibility to Pummel/Kick helps to offset its strengths. Nonetheless, I would say that Druids win in this category.

The Arena stats speak from themselves. Priests do far better than Druids in the 5v5 setting where a Druid’s options for mobility are severely limited (no kiting – armor matters more). Do you honestly believe that it makes sense for Cloth to have the equivalent armor value of Leather?

What I’ve noticed is that, at least in my server (EU Shadowsong), people prefer a paladin over any other healing class, and priests are generally shadow.

Whatever the case, what were discussing is not whether a class has been improved over others, but the whole point of armor categories. If there’s unbalance between classes in certain roles (which I don’t know, but wouldn’t surprise me either), it should be fixed some other way.

Please don’t ask me to stop whining, I wasn’t!

Priests just sit there and get raped.

Your argument is weak.

By the way, I’ve noticed you’ve mentioned quite a few times already the importance of bear form in arena but, is it really a defensive tool?

(I’m relatively new to arena so I hope I’m not saying something stupid) Isn’t it often more useful to simply cast travel form and run away? Whenever I switch to bear is to either charge or bash someone to help my mate. I generally cast HoTs on the run, crowd control if possible, and run when things get ugly, and after getting some practice victories seem to come more often.

I guess with +15% speed one can actually run away in bear form (quite useful since one shouldn’t run too much against warriors or they charge), but do you use it that much?