Zak Preston

No, it's not: the left chart is for DPS. №1 DPS druid is lower than №100 rogue on Elysium. Wolfshead helm is terrible for PvP: you lose stats or you lose a precious slot for Goblin Rocket Helm\Gnomish MC cap. But the worst part is that unlike PvE, you can't afford yourself powershifting like you would for PvE rotation just because you lose too much mana you could use for heals, roots and reshifts. There is nothing more pathetic and helpless than an oom feral. Once again, root is not a disable (like stun, sap, sleep, fear), it's a snare, and snared players can use engineering, projectiles, racials and so on. To interrupt with feral charge you need to shift into bear form and be on a certain distance, so it's not an on-demand interrupt and you may be not fast enough to jump into bearform and increase the distance in order to be able to "interrupt". If you claim to be an experienced feral PvP-er, then it's weird that you are asking these questions. You seem to be asking the same questions over an over again, so I won't be surprised your druid is not pre-bis or even 60.

open raid stats and check top rogues' and druids' rankings in MC and BWL: the average performance of top-50 rogue is 2.5x better than the top-50 druid. Of course you can't compare PvP and PvE, but I'd say that in PvP the gap is even wirse. Problem is that ferals use powershifting mechanics with wolfhide helm (I hope there is no need to expalain what it is) and all the top-ferals DPS are on alliance side. Have you wondered why? -- Because with full raid buff (and Blessing of Wisdom) your mana regen is quite decent and even with 3.5k mana pool you can reshift at least 15 times. But in PvP environment you don't have wolfhide helm and full raidbuff, and you need mana for constant reshifts to kite enemy (break roots\slows). So no powershifting or you are very much oom and dead. But another problem is not only low damage, but lack of CC: you don't have a reliable on-demand interrupt, you don't have gouge, sap, combat reset (vanish), which means your only viable tactics is hit-n-run, and even in hitting ferals are bad.

I have r13 feral druid and a semi-decent geared rogue. Rogue is way better in everything but carrying flags.

Feral druid in catspec has 50% armor reduction (bearform) at best on elysium and you can't use barkskin in forms. But I suppose you haven't played druids on vanilla either.

don't act like kid: rogue's cc chains are extremely diverse and it doesn't mean that rogues land 3 backstabs in a row in 1 stun duration.

I am comparing feral druids with with most popular melee classes in PvP: warriors and rogues. And you have to compare classes in PvP if you are defining "Best PvP-melee class right now". Now you are trying to explain how to beat a rogue to an r13 druid. Sure you can, but rogue should be seriously undergeared or relatively bad. Even with FF on rogue can vanish to break roots, blind, use evasion and sprint to kite you and when he is out of CDs he just pops prep and repeats the whole cc chain again. Once again, if you are in bear form, you don't deal damage, if you are in cat form, you can be killed in ~3 backstab crits while being stunned or blinded.

Nice, you've mixed CC and defensive cooldowns for druids =) What feral's flexibility are you talking about right now? Run or just... run? Feral's Bash (bear stun) has 1 min CD and you need to go to bear form to perform it (spend additional GCD), all the roots require you to be in caster form to apply them. And can you actually compare roots + 2 stuns to rogue's stunlock combo? I hope you do realize that the enemy can hit you back while being rooted. 2 conditional stuns are not even remotely enough for CC-chain. Ferals were very strong at the server start when none had good gear and they could use to full extend the +9 weapon dmg enchant (which is roughly equal to 54 strength) and +8 weapon dmg weightstone (another 48 strength) that in total were equal to additional 244 AP. but even than an equally geared dagger rogue could deal roughly the same damage Now most melee classes have shiny awesome tier sets, while ferals are stuck with pre-raid rares and occasional BWL drops (plus BG rep rewards).

Itemization: unlike rogues and warriors, druid's tier sets are exclusively for healers. There are a couple of quite good pieces from BWL, but in general we are still stuck with devilsaur set and 5-mans rares up until AQ. In terms of PvP: ferals deal less damage compared to rogues and have significantly less CC. The problem is that vanilla PvP is too bursty, which means that you can be destroyed in a couple of lucky crits. If you say that ferals are on par with rogues in terms of CC, then i have bad news for you: you haven't played rogues or ferals. Because otherwise you could add grenades' stun, rochet helmet, net-matic trinket and even gnomish MC cap. But in general the problem is in lack of offensive and defensive CDs + terrible CC.

Complete and utter trash for PvP: damage is significantly lower than the rogues or warriors can output, huge troubles with itemization, literally no reliable CC (no slows, conditional interrupt) and no reliable defensive CDs. If you are caught in human form -- you are dead, if you are caught in cat form -- you are dead. Shamans, priests and pallies just outheal your damage and laugh in your face... Maybe something changes with AQ release...

There is only 1 active EU-based premade and 2 Chinese premades on alliance side ATM. Back in my days there were like 7 no-life grinding premades and like 3-4 semi-pugs. Why? Because none wants to PvP without having decent rewards.

same people don't want PvP gear to be updated because "REEEEE! Not blizzlike!!!!1111" and same people vote for premades nerf because "REEEEE!!! Not fun!, idc if it's not b-like!"

do you realize that weapons are already updated?

do you have any pvp sets? or you are just making theories? The lvl 58 and lvl 60 rare sets are completely 2 different entities and they shouldn't be "updated". The problem is that your lifetime rank doesn't allow you to buy the gear if you have decayed. But u said enough already to show how incompetent you are ROFL

Your point is not valid: the best DPS increase give weapons, which are already at full potential. The PvP gear for now is sub-par even to t1, while it should be sub-par to t2. In this case keeping the pvp gear nerfed is completely retarded: the 5 pieces of t1 can be acquired in 1-2 MC runs, while the r13 set is farmed for hundreds of hours. But the most fun moment is that non-PvP-ers shouldn't take part in the vote at all. You guys didn't no-life grind that trash (this is the state of epic PvP set ATM) for months.

Vanilla WoW is quite unbalanced by it's nature and the lack of customization often forces people to compose quite awkward and weird gear sets. It's now awkward to see rogues in the Mask of the Unforgiven and Truestrike shoulders when this rogue is in pre-BiS gear, but it's completely retarded when an almost BiS fury warrior uses Truestrike Shoulders just because he has no other option. Hybrid classes lack +hit on their gear completely and are forced to downgrade some of their epics to blue items only because... they can't sacrifice their hit rating. This problem has been solved with the introduction of Jewelcrafting and +hit gems, that added so much needed customization to gear. Lt's look at feral druids: not only their itemization is screwed by design (all tier sets are for restos), but they also completely lack +hit on their gear and have no +hit talents. I'm r13, have full Field Marshal set and I have only +2% hit rating (Don Julio's Band and Tarnished Elven Ring). To reach +9% hit cap for PvE I literally have to switch most of my epics to Devilsaur Set and Truestrike Shoulders , which is completely absurd and I'm still ith +7% hit chance instead of +9%. The suggestion is to add the (Lesser) Arcanum of Accuracy: +1% hit chance enchant on head\legs: 1 x Pristine Black Diamond 4 x Large Brilliant Shard 2 x Skins of Shadow 1 x Frayed Abomination Stitching 2 x Blood of Heroes This can be added to Dire Maul questgiver or to Burning Steppes quest giver. Implementation of this enchant will solve lots of itemization problems for many specs and will definitely improve the overall gaming experience.

it's not better, it's just irreplaceable.

TBC was the best for selected few specs that formed limited amount of combos. Most hybrid classes were kinda terrible: feral druids, ench shammies, retri still were gimped. WotLK has removed or made negligible the "hybrid tax" and made most specs more or less viable, but didn't homogenize too much.

same as custom changes to DM trash packs, custom nerf\buff of some pieces of gear, respec cost and may-many more As I stated in OP, most melee classes struggle with gathering a hit cap and are forced to change their epics to pre-raid rates (Truestrike shoulders, mast of the unforgiven, devilsaur set). nah, banning premading from the game is unbeatable.

Sure, and you could PvE just for fun, without any rewards too. People have spent months of no-life grinding 40-60 hours per week and in result get a sub-par even to t1 gear. And what sense does it make to upgrade only weapons and not the sets? Then r10 PvP gear will be better than r13 one. Fun part is that ZG rares will be on par or even better than r13 epics. This is ridiculous. MC is farmed even with pugs ATM, to say nothing of guilds. So if a fresh-60 joins a guild that already farms BWL and doesn't need t1 sets, this fresh guy can get a superior set of gear in 2-4 weeks, spending 2-8 hours in total. How fair is it?

Instead of updating PvP sets (both rare and epic ones) for people who have spent hundreds of hours farming them, instead of making some sensible changes to retardedly grindy honor system to make it less grindy, Elysium devs want to make it more grindy, chaotic and even more punishing? Bravo! Let's ban premading! "Shut up, PvP guy!"

dungeon-2 set or t-0.5 was a catchup set that allowed more or less fresh players to get pre-raid gear. Basically Blizz has updated pre-raid gear. r12\r13 epic PvP set is has lower item lvl than t2: 72-74 vs 76 respectively, so it's obvious that it should be updated at or after BWL release.

I see no reasons why would any melee hate this

damage and CC are vastly subpar to the ones rogues and warriors have. Rogues can stunlock, warriors can crit for 3-5k, while you can't neither of those. Perhaps boomkins will be fine with AQ release,

Proofs? It seems that you don't know that uncommon, rare and epic items of the SAME item level (ilvl) will have completely different stats budget: Let's check rogue sets: Dungen-1/T0 set: 51-63 ilvl, lvl-58 r10 set is 63 ilvl. But who wears full dungeon set anyway? t1 is 66 epic ilvl, while lvl 60 r10 set is 66-71 rare ilvl t2 is 76 epic ilvl, while upgraded r12\r13 set is 72-74 epic ilvl Right now r12\r13 set seems to be ~60-62 epic ilvl

The problem with PvP gear is even more complex than we thought: r7-r10 blue gear (for lvl 58) for now is on par with t0 dungeon set. The situation is quite awkward: why would you ever spend 4-6 weeks to get a blue PvP set if you can easily obtain pre-bis gear from 5-mans? ZG relese will make PvP set even more obsolete and useless. There is no single point to grind up r10 for lvl 58 blue set because it's terrible for most classes. r12-r13 gear has item lvl lower than t1 and is in general worse than t1 (in terms of stats budget). For some classes t1 (to say nothing of t2) is way better than the nerfed Field Marshal's set. What is the point to keep r12/r13 gear nerfed with t2 content release? People spend hundreds of hours to grind these sets to get an equivalent of nerfed t1? If I recall correctly, updated lvl 60 pvp gear was supposed to be slightly worse than t1, while unnerfed r12\r13 was supposed to be slightly worse than t2. For now it's completely counter-productive not only to rank for a blue gear, but for r12\r13 gear also: in most cases t1 set is much better and is much more accessible.