Thursday, March 24, 2011

How to Fix Feral Druids in Rated BGs

I know a lot of the PvP feral druids have complained about their state in Rated BGs.  In 4.0.6, they lost the ability to shapeshift out of snares.  In 4.1, they are nerfing Lifebloom, one of the few healing spells that feral druids can use that was somewhat helpful.  They used to be the ideal flag carriers due to the fact that they had travel form, which could help them move across the map quicker, and bear form, to help mitigate damage by increasing their stamina and armor.  However, they have been religated to about 4th line, behind protection warriors, protection paladins, and blood death knights.

So looking at, there could be some ways to save the Feral Druid in rated BGs.  Here are a few non-game breaking things that could be done to fix it.  I'm not suggesting do all of these, because that would break the game.  I'm saying maybe do one or two of them.

1) Make Shapeshift Useful Again - This used to be their biggest advantage.  Even as a moonkin, I routinely practice changing in and out of moonkin form to break snares.  (Mainly because I still can.) Giving them this back would give the advantage needed for them to become competent flag carriers again.

2) Kitty Heroic Leap - While a giant bear jumping the distance that a warrior can is absolutely ridiculous, the idea that a cat could do it is much less so.  Feral kitties already get Feral Charge, which is basically a jump behind an opponent, just use the same animation for heroic kitty leap. 

3) Fear - This is likely not gonna happen, but couldn't a bear have a roar that scares everybody off of him for a few seconds.  I don't think it is completely unreasonable to have.  Call it Terrifying Roar and make all enemies fear for 8 seconds.

4) Nerf Lifebloom Only For Casters - In other words, the game can already recognize if you have spellpower gear on and what your spellpower is.  Make it that if your total spellpower is above 6500, your Lifebloom is nerfed appropriately. Again, very unlikely to happen, but would give some benefit.

5) Make Barkskin Protect From CC. - Barskin is the ability that decreases the amount of damage you take.  Why not have the added benefit to have it free you out of snares, traps, etc. for its 8 second duration?  Paladins have Hand of Freedom, which removes movement impairing effects.  It would act very similarly to that but would also have the damage mitigation.  Either that, or make it a glyph that would decrease the amount of mitigation, but give you the CC protection.  Heck, if they make it a glyph, I would consider getting it for my moonkin/resto.

I'm sure there are other ways to get bears back up to the flag carrying positions they have held prior to 4.0.6.  I'm also sure that Blizzard is working on a way to balance it out so that all the tank classes can be reasonable flag carriers in rated BGs.  Hopefully, sooner rather than later.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"In 4.0.6, they lost the ability to shapeshift out of snares."

Kinda incorrect.

Ferals lost the ability to shift out of Roots not snares.

Redhawks said...

@Anon

Thanks. Although I thought they couldn't shapeshift out of frost mages Frost traps either.