Yeah, it happens. Anyway, while I was recouping, I went over the 2.4 notes again. I'm just a little confused as to why every class was questioned for feedback when the devs have so clearly not listened to any of it. There was a 100+ page sticky in the druid forums that discussed many times in detail some of the more annoying facets of druid play:

• feral druids are the only class in the game who do not get weapon procs
• feral druids are the only class in the game who have to spend mana to use bandages
• feral druids are the only melee class in the game with no snare

There are hundreds more (and I've listed a number of them in previous posts), and the devs decided that adding a 0.0009% damage increase to Lacerate was the right move. I know I know, no one else got buffs or changes either, it just seems odd that they would ask for this feedback, then not use it a month later in the next big patch (2.4).

Okay, moving on to PvP talk again. Another patch, another non-druid-nerf patch... as predicted.

I did 3s this weekend with my brother's warrior, my druid, and my gf's brother as an enhancement shamang. We started off well, rolling 5-1, but then we got his team out of the abysmal 1450 bracket into the 1600 bracket and started hitting some tougher teams. Our bane seemed to be the two-healer+warrior teams. Shamang+pally+warrior in particular was difficult. Eventually, our bursty damage would take down the shamang, but not long after our shamang would get dropped, then it became warrior+druid vs. warrior+pally, and we're notoriously bad at that matchup for some reason. We probably went 4-4 against that team at the end of the day.

Also, we got from 1467 (I think) to 1692 (or something) and plummeted all the way back down to 1622. I'm not completely concerned about it, but I want to help my gf's brother out and get him some gear. He does surprisingly well for only having 1248 unbuffed attack power and 200 resilience. Most noticeably, he does decent damage because of his better-than-average PvE weapons. Personally, I feel like as he gets more PvP gear, the team will only do better and better. It is remarkably easy for our team to ghost a priest with a purge-bot on him.

Priest casts Power Word: Shield, dispelled, priest casts Pain Suppression, dispelled, priest succumbs to warrior+shamang windfury damage, the match is now 3v2. I doubt this will hold true in the higher brackets, but I think it has some potential. RPM, for instance, will give us some trouble, I'm guessing. Though, if our shamang ups his game a bit and starts playing a little smarter, then he'll bring a good force to the team. I would see the mage poly'ing my warrior to start, then the rogue jumps the shamang and the mage unloads fat damage on him too. Meanwhile, I heal as best as I can, and the rogue walks over to either switch targets (dumb) or blind me (smart).

After blind, I trinket and continue healing. This is where smart play will help. The mage will need to counter-spell me to finish the burst train on the shamang. So, my shamang needs to drop Grounding Totem right then. If counter-spell gets burned on a totem instead of me, their burst is almost done. By this point, my warrior will have a good amount of poly dr up, and will have intercepted the priest and started the beatdown. This lets me know that the dispeller is now in trouble, so I'm free to root the rogue and cyclone the mage, allowing my shamang to trinket and get on the priest as well. The priest, being a priest, will have started running around the pillar hoping to get some lucky "out of range"s on my warrior and the shamang and will be spending a lot of time out of LoS on the mage, so the mage's damage will be negated for a while that way.

NOW, I can switch cyclones and roots on the rogue and the mage and keep them out of the fight for a good while, and I don't have to heal as much, so my mana will be doing well. This is the point at which the rogue will have decided that I need to die, and started chasing me. Without a warrior to help the spamstring rotation, the rogue will never catch me / get me below 75%, and what's worse is that by the time he reaches me on the other side of the map, I will have a full duration roots to use on him behind a pillar with CloS and trinket both on cooldown. Most likely, he will have burned imp sprint earlier to get over to me, so he's just flat out stuck at this point, and I can go back to harassing the mage until the priest dies.

I know what you're thinking... yeah, we faced one or two of these matchups yesterday. We won more than half of them, but we lost to SRM every time. Why? Simply because bloodlust made the mage and the rogue drop such poop-inducing damage on the shamang that even ns-ht couldn't keep him up half the time. Bloodlust, adrenaline rush, blade flurry, slice and dice, along with 1.75 frostbolts and 1.75 waterbolts on a frost-rooted shamang with 200 resilience equals a dead shamang very quickly. I figured out that I need to cyclone the mage MUCH earlier in the fight so that the shamang foolishly pops bloodlust and the mage will be "immune" to it.

Another thing that made us lose that match a lot was charge and LoS issues. My warrior would charge a mounted shamang, and my warrior would end up where the shamang WAS, so out of range for hamstring. Then the rogue would cheapshot my shamang and put the beat-down on him while my warrior was running around trying to hamstring the shamang (which he would always eventually do, but it usually required intercept). So, my shamang kept thinking (probably because of lack of PvP experience) that he needed to stay mounted (right move) and jump off the bridge in blade's edge and get a pillar between he and I while snared to the point of regular movement speed while mounted (wrong move).

Sigh... we need to practice more. I told him, quite a bit for a long time after the match, that he needed to just continue running towards me on his mount without breaking LoS and that I would cc them the best I could and keep him alive through their onslaught. He, of course, claimed that would have made him dead, and so I explained how I can't heal through that kind of burst when he LoS's me and not the mage (or warrior... some times) and the rogue is constantly on him. Long story short, he seemed to understand the plan, and thought it was decent enough to try out next time. Sadly, we didn't get to try anymore yesterday. I want to play that team a lot more in the future, I think it has potential at an 1850 rating run if nothing else. Also, seeing priests explode is hilarious. Okay, priest is at 90%, there's shield, he's at 80%, there's pain suppression, 75, 70, 65, 50, pain suppression is gone, 10, dead. It's amazing how when PW:S and PS are finally gone my warrior and enhancemang combo renders the priest into a fine pink mist.

... I definitely want to see more of that ...