Congratulations

[etotheipi]

Those who have wanted to see melee Druids nerfed into the ground finally got their wish! Since the changes to Tempest Enhancements (and in particular, Dance of Death) there have been very, very few melee Druids who are over-performing. Even while using multiple fighting lines (TWF, SWF, NF) in a non-WAI fashion, almost all melee Druids are currently still far behind top-tier melee DPS in both the DPS and Survivability categories. (And almost nobody plays the non-WAI melee Druids that do come close to comparing with other forms of top-tier melee DPS.)

Given this, one might have expected that the Druid Pass would, while fixing the non-WAI features, increase the DPS and Survivability of melee Druids who don't use non-WAI features to better compare with other good melee options. But neither has happened. Compared to current non-WAI Druids, both DPS and Survivability will take a huge hit. And given that current non-WAI Druids aren't anywhere close to top-tier DPS or Survivability, there seems to be no reason other than flavor to play a melee Druid if the current changes go live.

One of the most egregious proposed changes is the conversion of the Natural Fighting Feat from providing 6% Doublestrike to 4 Melee Power and PRR. This change will hurt 99% of melee Druids. Arguably, it will offer the tiniest of benefits to the top 1% of melee Druids. Congratulations to this 1%, I suppose, for swindling the DEVs on this issue? Torc bought your arguments hook, line, and sinker?

[adrian69]

I feel you. Defensely it's not so bad when built right but the single target DPS is very lacking. They have great AoE DPS and thus makes them very situational. They could work for that 1% who are great at playing anything, I mean I was making it work, but you have to cover a stupid large amount of gear to make it work. You need to gear as a melee, and have Ice, Lightning, Acid, and PsPs slotted and I need not say you can't fit in maximize, empower, or quicken. So yeah, I agree. While I can make it work as a tier 2 DPS build as is, the 99% will never do more than rushing through heroics to get past lives. I made some suggestions and I hope they listen. I didn't make suggestion to make them top tier, but to bring them in line with other classes like Swashbuckler or Barbarian.

[Hilltrot]

hmm, I disagree.

[SerPounce]

I understand what you're saying, but I think a big reason that you don't see a lot melee druids around isn't so much lack of power as that most people don't want to play builds that are exploiting non-WAI systems.

DPS is going to be bad, but durability will go up a bit, and the special animal attacks are going to be a lot more effective.

Hopefully in the next pass they change the excessive cooldowns and SP costs of many of those attacks and make the natural fighting feats worth taking.

I don't see druid being anywhere near top of the meta, but I think it will be basically viable without using weird exploits if they improve/fix a few more things.

[elvesunited]

Damage per hit will go up. ( base weapon + two hand str bonus + other tree weapon enhancments [but not clickies] )
critical range will greatly increase depending on weapon.
Wolf innate spells DC will improve and have a chance of actually working.
Wolf gets more options for better PRR and MRR.

Attack rate will go way down. ( No single weapon, no off hand ) but still keeping wolf 30% attack speed boost.
Doublestrike will go down.

The Highest DPS weapon for the wolf will change from one handed weapons to two-handed weapons.
( which ironically is the weapon of the one fighting feat chain that doesn't currently work with animal form )
Which means that most wolves are going to have to find a new weapon.

Some multi-class options are going to be different than what they used to be. Ranger for example might not make sense any more.

Wolves are going to be different. To early to tell if it will be better or worse as last I checked the test server, animal forms are too badly bugged to get an idea of how well they perform.

Bears on the other hand ....