Newest PTR push reduced the mana cost of regrowth by 20% (Because mana regen was the concern this whole time, right? Yeeeeeah. . . ), and the coefficient on lifebloom’s bloom was reduced 20% (Well, at least they ACTUALLY nerfed the PvPers with that one, but the nerf to the ticks still stands)

Buck Flizzard!

Now to get back to topic. The issue with 2vs2 Arena is simply that in this kind of environment druids do scale for a change. When I started 2vs2 Arena with a warlock friend I couldn’t keep him alive with my HoTs (early T4 level of gear, little to no resilience). Now with more than 350 resilience, more HP and +heal on my part it’s become much, much easier. This is due to the fact that our burst healing sucks and all our means of catching up with burst damage are either on cooldowns (15s/3min) or cost way too much mana (regrowth). Resilience counters burst damage and with increasing levels of +heal our HoTs actually have a chance at keeping people alive.

The issue here is not with druids. In fact I’m glad to see that at least one of our skill trees still scales well enough. The issue lies solely with the environment of 2vs2 (or even 3vs3) arena. There is little incoming damaged simply because there are only 1 or 2 DPS classes hacking away at your teammate so that our HoTs can keep up with the incoming damage. And our ability to succeed in this environment depends greatly on the enemy team. There is no balance possible with so many different classes and specs, 2vs2 arena shows that all to well.
Many players have seen that because of the way druids scale in this kind of environment and chose to roll a druid. Just like after the start of BC when everybody though feral druids were “overpowered”. This has indeed caused a rise in druid population and a vast decline in player quality.

Yet I do not believe that, even though there are more druids now than ever before, there are as many druids in high ranking arena teams as Blizzard’s statistics try to make you believe. The basis of these statistics are questionable at best. But if Blizzard chose to base their design choices on such statistics it would be very bad indeed (but at the same time it’d explain quite a lot of past changes )

Sorry for the wall of text

Kuhbi

Assuming similar gear levels, druids will not be the ‘top’ of some roles. Though I don’t mean to insinuate that they can’t strongly contribute to a raid.

However, a bear-form tank cannot out-threat a protection warrior (over time), we just don’t have the tools. Feral cats will not beat Rogues and Moonkins will not top a Mage (or possibly a Warlock). Doesn’t mean we’re not just as viable in those roles though. My guild prefers bear tanks and tree healers (lucky for me) because of the DPS versatility and battle rez, and Innervate is always appreciated. Versatility is one of our main strengths.

My original point was that the developers designed us to be _almost_ as good as the other classes, all in one character. Can we really complain when some mechanic of our class is balanced to maintain that goal?

And why a questionable PVP ratio about arena teams would indicate a need for a nerf in a mainly PVE ability (as in HoT part of Lifebloom)?
The increased ratio might be just a result of many PVP alts after druids were made a “fashion” for casual playing lately.

Why not take into account a more “Role” relevant ratio. Such like Druid representation as a healer or tank in raids.

Wanna know the representation of druids in our raids?
Healer is 0-4% (as in max 1).
Wanna know the ratio of Paladins?
Healers are ~20% (as in 4-5 each time)
Does that seem right? And it is a pure unbiased percentage that applies to almost every raiding guild I have been/seen/heard/read of, not some “cooked” and “misty” number that is obviously used erroneously.

And frankly I don t care about WoTLK and any changes that would come with it… I might never buy it considering the treatment of my class.
I am playing TBC now and it is quite difficult to fit in the game as a druid as it is… In any case I am leveling a mage now… It s a shame cause I really love my druid… Maybe I ll role a warrior next. Tanks are never out of demand in raids/instances.

That’s rubbish. Seriously. That argument is pure propaganda of non-druids. We are just as “hybrid” as warriors or priests are. And while we DO have the ability to take on more roles than a warrior can it does not mean that we have to be sub par in what we do just because we are “hybrid”. Raids don’t care if you have the ability to tank when you’re a Moonkin. They don’t care if you can heal when you’re Feral. You have to be able to keep up with the other DPS or you are a wasted raidspot. You have to be able to tank well or you’re a liablity to the raid. Same with all other roles any hybrid can fill in. You choose one spec, gear for it and fulfill it’s role.

We are different. That does not mean we have to be worse “just because!”.

Now that that is said… Looking at those normalised statistics, I find it perfectly reasonable to expect the Blizzard team to want to implement changes to try and lower the popularity of 2v2/3v3 Druids (and a slightly below desired 5v5 representation), whilst raising those of classes such as Paladin/Shaman.

The issue of overall class popularity is completely seperate, and perhaps dilutes from the direct issue Blizzard is commenting on. For many people, a class isn’t chosen because it’s ‘OP’ – it’s chosen for what they want to play. There will always be flavor-of-the-month class creators, but in the general scheme of things these would be a small percentage. Additionally, Druids having racial restrictions will obviously lead to less druids than more racial free classes.

Nobody likes being nurfed, but quite simply no one class should have such a massive representation (276%!) in successful teams. I just wish they’d implement more spells/abilities which are different/resticted to Arena or outside of Arena – so these PvP changes don’t impact on PvE balance.

Thanks for highlighting this info. It’s interesting to see some of what informs the developers’ decision making process.

Regarding what Kalgan said, I’m curious what “a value of 100% means the class is represented as we’d expect” actually means. The numbers from Akala seem to suggest that Blizzard’s expectations aren’t necessarily a 1:1 relationship between class population and class Arena representation. I’m sure there’s more to it.

Unfortunately, smaller sample sizes usually make for less reliable statistics. So in that sense, 165 Arena Druids is a pretty small number, compared to the total level-70 population. And in this case, that 165 isn’t even really representative of the larger group it’s being compared to. Top Arena players have their own unique, dodgy motivations. I wouldn’t consider them a subset of the larger population. I think that these percentages are measuring the wrong thing – to me, it’s more player data than class data. It’s a reflection of how players experience the Arena game system. So many psychological factors feed into the numbers they’re getting, that it seems like a poor point of reference for tweaking the nuts n’ bolts of the classes.

Then again, I confess… that I have no better ideas for them at this time!

And of course, as Kalgan mentioned himself (more than once): these charts only represent one source of information to aid their balancing efforts. I’m sure they understand the limitations of it…

… we hope!

-Tone

1. We don’t know what Blizzard bases their balancing decisions off of.
2. Reducing the imbalance of a few classes creates less overall turbulence in the game than boosting many classes.
3. Virusboy is right in that Blizzard will not constantly underpower us without throwing us a bone in some other manner (even if we don’t like the bone).
4. It is my understanding that Druids are the Jack of all trades and NOT intended to be the master of any. In general, I cannot hope to exceed Prot Warriors or Holy Pallies performance in all regards (though I CAN in some).
5. The recent nerfs (which btw, are not finalized) do not ‘break’ the class.

Personally, I feel that after voicing our opinions, we should turn our attention to how to best adapt to the new changes. I was devastated when I heard about the Lifetap changes (I roll a druid and warlock). For all the nitpicking I could do about the change, in the end I’d just need to learn and adapt (yes it was rolled back, but I’m waiting on how they’ll next reduce ‘Lock OP).

Furthermore, balance adjustments are simply another aspect of the metagame. Should the changes Blizzard makes ‘fix’ the druid ‘problem’, players will move on and find some other combination of classes/specs to dominate arenas. I happen to think that this is very healthy for the game, and keeps us on our toes (the same concept worked very well for PvP in Guild Wars).

…still sucks that I got nerfed though.

P.S.
Virusboy, I will have to disagree that the developers are incompetent. Balancing is a hard and thankless job. I think the proof of their competency is shown by the still growing number of subscribers…even in the face of millions of them screaming at them and their nerfs.