why do so few people play druid?

[Ana]

Yes. That's HT4. Aka the go-to healing spell for druids. Downranking from there suffers from penalties.
I'm pretty sure I already said that.

[moghedanbanned]

Because 7-10 SUCKs stuck in caster form. It plays like a weaker damage mage with

Because 10-20 SUCKS stuck in Bear form. It plays like a weaker prot warrior. And we all know how awesome it is to level a prot warrior.

The best part of turning 20 is you can get travel form.

20-60 plays like a weak rogue. Compared to the first 20 levels, a version of Stockholm Syndrome develops in which you start to feel grateful to your capture class for the great bounty they have bestowed uponst you.


You need 13 points in resto to heal a 5 man dungeon while leveling.

At 60,

Feral Bear is weaker than a Warrior still.
Feral Cat is weaker than a Rogue still.
Boomkin is flat out pointless in the current incarnation.
Resto can do one thing JUST AS GOOD as a priest. As long as the situation remains precisely as predicted. But with none of the fun toys.

Now, if you could do all of those things at the same time... that would be pretty cool. Lots of people would be willing to be able to be a slightly weaker version of everything. Shapeshifting was a much marketed by ultimately uninspired part of DAoC. That is kinda the point the Druid was designed to fill in Beta. What if WoW had a class that "changed class" based on shapeshifting. A cat DPS form was added to the base bear from the RTS and the class performed well enough. Talent Trees then crapped all over that. Now, you have to pick ahead of time which one role you want to be able to be a weaker version of. If that's the case, then why not just bring the better version of that incarnation? Even so, there was really no time to go back and "fix" the base feature of druid.

Still, the allure or idea is intriguing, and people are pulled to it once or twice in their lives. But that's it... once or twice. Once you have leveled the druid... you really don't want to level another druid... Ever, or at least not at 1x on a vanilla server. And at this point, most everyone has leveled a druid one or twice before.

And that is basically the life of the class through Vanilla. It's a second rate remnant of a design for a time that never really existed. Is it really a surprise that attracts the fewest followers?

[Ziphr]

Its been said already, people prefer to play the classes that do what druids do.... but better.

Even as a geared out resto druid, Im leveling a healy priest to do dungeons with because I find them more enjoyable.

That said~
There is one great reason to play a PvE druid at 60. Not only is the class pool small(which is fine, you dont bring many to raids anyways) but also, because most good players prefer to play a 'more capable' class, there is actually a very small population of good druids available.

And while a resto druid might not have the same general 'presence' in raids as say a holy priest- that doesnt mean you want to take just any asshole to fill the spot. So if you're a good player you'll be doing a huge favor to your guild to give them a strong resto druid rather than playing some other healer and forcing them to take some asshole who really is only there to res and innervate.

innervate himself, because he doesnt have mana to res.




nvm out of seeds.

[Undertanker]

You need 13 points in resto to heal a 5 man dungeon while leveling.

Ha!

Funny. Get good son.

[Mirabai]

^Please refrain from that kind of attitude. You're correct, but there's no need to be high and mighty.

On the topic of "bad druids": I think the wide-spread notion of druids being worse healers than priests/paladins/shamans works as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. There's often no real expectations on druids. If I'm only brought along to innervate priests and combat res people, surely I don't have to push my healing - I'm already doing my job!

A lot of druids seem to not set the bar high enough for their raid performance. Which is sad, considering what a proficient druid can achieve.

Note that I'm not claiming that druids are better at healing than other classes, I'm simply addressing the harmful mentality surrounding restoration druids.

[smilkovpetko]

^Please refrain from that kind of attitude. You're correct, but there's no need to be high and mighty.

On the topic of "bad druids": I think the wide-spread notion of druids being worse healers than priests/paladins/shamans works as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. There's often no real expectations on druids. If I'm only brought along to innervate priests and combat res people, surely I don't have to push my healing - I'm already doing my job!

A lot of druids seem to not set the bar high enough for their raid performance. Which is sad, considering what a proficient druid can achieve.

Note that I'm not claiming that druids are better at healing than other classes, I'm simply addressing the harmful mentality surrounding restoration druids.

You should not worry much about this harmful mentality because this mentality is not only toward druids but also been surrounding prot/retri paladins over years due to our bugs.

[Bioness]

20-60 plays like a weak rogue. Compared to the first 20 levels, a version of Stockholm Syndrome develops in which you start to feel grateful to your capture class for the great bounty they have bestowed uponst you.

I laughed.

[Undertanker]

So I can't tell him to get good, w/o people letting it go. But people can provide incorrect information based off their random guesses and lack of basic healing skill, and that is okay?

[Bioness]

I'll also add that in an "optimal" raid composition, Druids are the class with the least slots usually at 2-3 Druids. Divide 40 by 8 (classes) and you get 5, as in if everything were equal you would have 4-6 of each class.

And before you go "well my guild runs 6 druids", look at the top guilds on the realm and you will never see more than 3 in a raid with full core raid members.

Druids are not a bad class, but because of Blizzard's mentality back then, they are simply not able to be the best at any role.

[milkribs4k]

Few players who are really serious about this game wish to spend a lot of time building up a Druid when they have doubts about if the class is even viable.