Aden Nak

I really don't understand this sudden, unbridled rage over the lame-ness of Swipe. The buff to Swipe in WLK, which removed the target limit, was huge. The additional 15% damage to Swipe (you all talented it, right?) is huge. But if Druids are using Swipe as their only AoE threat generator, then yes. Their threat is going to suck.

AoE generation for Druids is more than spamming Swipe. It's having Maul glyphed and knowing how to target and place that effect. It's keeping Demo Roar up (yeah, I said it) and tagging multiple targets with Faerie Fire and single-shot Lacerates. It's prioritizing AGI over Dodge Rating because the former grants crit as well as avoidance, and at a comparable rate.

Really, the only mobs I have trouble holding are casters and ranged attackers (especially the hunter-style trash in the beginning of HoL), but between Feral Charge and Growl, which is going up to 30 yards, it's not really a huge problem once you learn to manage your targetting properly.

It's also about adjusting your tanking style if your party is AoE heavy. If your group has a burn order and focuses on single target DPS, you can just Swipespam whenever Mangle is on cooldown and be fine. If you've got Blizzards and Rains of Fire and Hurricanes and Volleys and Chain Lightnings going down, you have to adjust. Or you've got to tell the Rogue to use Tricks before using Killing Spree. ;)

I'm guessing you ran Karazhan a lot during BC - that's the only way you could have collected that many straw men.

No, a Hunter is not going to replace a tank or a healer. Good job figuring that out. Of course, no one is arguing that point. However, if a Hunter can do 15% more damage than any other DPS class, guess who they are going to replace. Try really hard.

And if one class is better than all others, and it isn't their stats but rather their abilities, then there is something out of balance regarding their abilities. Hunters got a whole host of buffs with WLK - and I think it's great that they (finally) got a proper system for their pets. No one is asking for that to be taken away. There's another straw man.

I'd go on, but I've reached my daily limit for cliches per run-on paragraph.

Normally I like the BRK, but in this one case I can't disagree more. What the game really bloody DOESN'T need is a staff of PR people taking what the devs might have been actually thinking and turning it into grey, lumpy inaccuracy and fibbery.

I'd rather have Ghostcrawler talk to the player base like an actual human being than have to read through six paragraphs of spin to guess at that same information. Or to be give then No Comment chorus line until a day before the PTR gets updated.

Anyone who cares enough about this game to read the forums, to read WoW Insider or MMO Champion or whatever other sources they prefer - either already possesses the maturity to understand the situation or else grow up a little bit.

This is coming from someone who probably plays his main for almost as many hours per week as I spend at work. If something like "To The Ground Baby!" got you that upset, you need to step away from this game for a while because you have over-invested yourself in it.

Well, why would anyone ever, EVER take a hybrid anywhere if this is the case? And when you say hybrid, can I assume you mean Druid / Shaman / Paladin? Priests have a DPS tree, after all, and Warriors have two DPS trees despite being the defacto tanks of the game.

To this argument, I would say that people who roll straight melee classes should have read THEIR class descriptions. You rolled a class that can only ever be melee. This shouldn't have been a surprise. Maybe you just like the style of play, or maybe you don't want the responsibility of healing or tanking. So you will never get asked to do it.

Maybe the reason it's so hard to find healers and tanks is that, outside of instance / raid content, there's a lot less they can do with their characters.

That all being said, I've leveled all four heal-capable classes and all three tank-capable classes. I've healed Disc, Shadow, Feral, Balance, Enhancement, Holy and Ret. I've tanked Feral, Balance, Fury, Arms and Ret. You can't get away with it once you bounce up around 70, but pre-endgame having an alternate set of gear and rounded knowledge of your class is part of being a hybrid.

But that doesn't mean they should do WORSE in their given spec and gear than a comparable specced / geared "pure" class.

If it's something you've discussed with him before, and if you've asked him multiple times to pay closer attention or to follow the strategies and he just doesn't perform? Here's what you say.

"We tried to make this work, but you suck at tanking, you don't listen, and you don't learn. And you don't try to improve. The other nine or twenty-four people you are pissing away an evening for are tired of it."

/gkick

It IS getting the shaft, from the Druid perspective. If Bearform tanking isn't raid boss viable, and Catform DPS completely undesirable in that same raid, what functionality is there for a Feral Druid? Being the "best tank" for 5-man content is not a niche. That's kind of like saying that Mages should be happy because it's easy for them to kill Hogger.

What this smacks of, to me, is Blizzard continuing to not itemize for Feral Druids - only this time they're not even going to bother to pick up the slack afterward. With three plate-tanking classes in the game instead of two, Druids are likely being marginalized for developmental convenience.

Hell, before Blizzard patched in some leatherworking recipies, the best pre-Tier Druid tanking chestpiece in BC came from a quest in Hellfire Peninsula. And even then, the Heavy Clefthoof was a blue and felt like it until you either downed Mag or (eventually) got badge loot. And at that point, you're pretty much socketing for Defense.

In short, Druid itemization for tanking is pretty much still a mess, and the fear is that Blizzard is just saying, "Screw it! Make 'em tank trash."

Of course there aren't as many songs - DLC is what really brought home the cash for Guitar Hero III and Rock Band. So why include stuff on the disc if they can just sell it to you later on a per-purchase basis. Honestly? This entire game should have been a downloadable add-on to GH3 with a price point of, say, $40. That this thing is going to retail, and likely at full price (if the GH2 expansion is a model to work from) is kind of shameful.

They're going to burn people out on this genre before it ever has a chance to hit its stride. It's one thing to add extra content for extra cash after the game is truly finished, but it's another thing to skimp on content and then release it later with an additional cost associated with it. If this title launches at the $60 price point it will not only fail, it will DESERVE to fail. In short? This:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/15/reading-between-the-lines/

Druid. . . easier to gear. . . /sigh

Druid has, by far, the fewest gear selections for tanking of the three tanking classes - once you graduate from the Just Starting Kara gear, you're looking either entirely at Badge Loot or Tier pieces for all of the main slots with a few high-end craftables thrown in there. The number of tanking upgrades that are both Druid specific and dropped inside the actual raids can be counted on one furry paw.

That all being said, each class does have it's high points. I'd say the Druid high point is excellent physical mitigation and the highest potential threat generation - especially while still wearing high mitigation gear. The low point? Spell damage mitigation, which often requires Druids to either build a STAM-centric set or else invest in resistance sets to be remotely viable.

If Factor 5 really is building a new graphics engine, that's a good thing. The Rogue Squadron launch title for the GameCube is still, to this day, one of the best looking GC games ever produced. F5 knows how to build an engine, and their texture work is second to none. Yeah, Lair was a big pile of poo - but saddled as it was with Sixaxis, why act surprised?

Kid Icarus has amazing potential as a game - and that's despite the fact that it was a one-hit wonder (GameBoy port not withstanding) that hasn't been developed since. Add to that the fact that Kidiky was an intentional Metroid clone that featured Eggplant Wizards, squealing Grim Reapers and a Archangel retail clerk with a Brooklyn accent. . . where was I going with this?

Oh yeah, Factor 5. Don't count them out. They made a series of spectacular flight-based combat games and then produced one dud. What remains to be seen is if they can do for Kid Icarus what Retro Studios did for Metroid - usher in the transition from 2D to 3D, update the concept, but retain the particular flavor (and challenge) of the original.

I mean, worst case scenario, we'll get a Greek Mythology version of Prince of Persia with some flying and archery thrown in. I'd buy that.

Roots as a form of crowd control are completely imbalanced in instances, so we're told. Except, you know, for Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman, where roots are completely acceptable and don't throw anything out of balance at all. /slapbliz

My problem with how roots have turned out is that they are SUPPOSED to be overpowered outdoors. That's the price Druids pay for having no CC indoors. If we can lure an opponent under an open sky, we get an advantage. If they can keep us indoors, we get a disadvantage. But because so much PvP is outdoors, roots have been nerfed to work no better than any other snare.

They break on damage (sometimes their own), they are a root and not a stun or incapacitate - and those would be fine limitations if we could use them however we pleased. When roots were the best CC in the game, the indoor/outdoor limitation was fine. Now that they're like anyone else's CC, the mechanic ought to be rethought.