Druid vs. Shaman

Today’s post is brought to you by Liz of Monstarkin who does, in fact, like her shaman very much.  Honest.

I see I got a fancy introduction so some of you may expect a fancy post on shaman healing or the like. You will be greatly disappointed! I am here to pollute C’s blog and cause trouble, hah! I was a bit worried I had to include fancy equations, but thankfully he reassured me this was not necessary, phew. With all these shamans it seemed obvious to me that I should tell you all to play a druid instead! And just for public knowledge, I have both a druid and a shaman at level 80, both reasonably well geared and I play them far too much for my own good.

Why anybody would choose to be a shaman over a druid is beyond me really.  I have decided to mention a mere few reasons why this choice would be pure madness.

Ability names

It looks as if someone ran out of ideas when they got to naming a shaman’s abilities. Lightning bolt and chain lightning, healing wave, lesser healing weave and chain heal are hardly what you would call original and inventive names. A druid on the other hand got cool names on their abilities like lifebloom, tranquillity, wrath and hurricane.

AoE

Hurricane, starfall, typhoon and swipe! Oh you know you would be jealous of that if you were a shaman! Chain lightning? Magma totem? Hah! Although the  Fire Nova is quite a nice addition it is not near keeping up with the aoe of a druid. It is much fun to aoe both while soloing and in instances. I remember it was particularly fun randomly hitting starfall in between loads of mobs and try to kill them before they killed me while I was levelling in Northrend.

Fancy hat

If we could wear hats while shape shifted, we would undoubtedly be so cool that there wouldn’t be a point in rolling another class unless you want an alt. Chefs hat on a bear, moon-crown antlers on a cat, santa hat on a boomkin and don carlos’ famous hat on a tree. Oh, yeah!

Flight form

When you accidentally fall from great heights such as the aldor lift because it randomly decides to go down just as you get to it, being able to have an option rather than the ever so inevitable splat that often follows is a life saver! Although ankh works as a feeble attempt to hide the splat matter, some of your bones will still remain behind to show everyone what really happened. Quite embarrassing, I’m sure!

Gear

As itemisation on both druid caster and shaman caster gear is far from optimal, it is tempting to look towards the feeble cloth wearers to see if their gear fits us. It is easier to get away with needing on cloth as a leather user than as a mail user. As melee druids mainly share the loot with rogues rather than a hunter who is notorious for needing on anything he can get his hands on.

Heroism

Silly little shamans think they get to decide when to use heroism. Oh, no! As with most other classes it is a druids job to yell for heroism and start ranting if for some reason heroism is on cooldown or that it is not used when we prefer it used. One day shamans will understand that druids should get heroism when it suits them, that will be good!

Pets

Obviously druids are much cooler as Blizzard has even made miniature version of some of our forms. The druid fan club is getting larger every day and even C here tends to have a baby tree following him around! Tiddly dark bear, tiddly polar bear and the tree who dances so much he needs a nap.  So far there are yet to be any baby totems running around, although I admit I’d quite like to have one of those. Shamans just aren’t cool enough!

Raids

Being able to play as tank, healer, caster or melee dps means that we could form a raid of druids only. Although chain ankhs may delay the inevitable, a group of druids would get much further into a raid than a group of shamans. Survival of the fittest.

Resurrection

Druids generally do not selfishly self-resurrect mid battle. Popping back up, claiming our reappearance saved the raid is not generally our thing. Instead we selflessly resurrect a fellow team mate.

Special mount

Birdman Anzu in Sethekk Halls has something that belongs to us druids and our cool Cenarion friends helped us reclaim what is rightfully ours by letting us summon him so we could get the ever so cool flight form and then make us even more popular by making him drop a cool mount . Of course being such a generous class, others such as Shamans are allowed to come along to try to get the mount he sometimes (rarely? never? hmm) drops.

Stealth

As we are so peaceful by nature we need not force our way through mobs while questing. The much quicker and friendly approach we sometimes prefer lets us stealth to the mob that is causing the NPC problems and take care of him quietly. It is far nicer than accidentally pulling extra mobs because someone left those bloody totems at the back with the respawns. I wonder how that happened, hmm.

Teleport

We get this teleport ability early on and it is quite handy for things like seasonal events, quickly getting to Azeroth and close to an AH. Astral recall is supposedly something to envy, but who would need to use their hearthstone every 15minutes? That sounds a bit over the top. No, teleport: moonglade is the way to go!

Totems

One of the most annoying things when levelling a shaman is trying to remember the name of all the different totems that you keep training with only a few levels apart. You are expected to know the names of almost all of them as well as knowing what they do and when to use them. Searing claw, stonestream, flamefury and strength of wrath totems- it is a lot to keep track of! Although you no longer  have to spend half the time while levelling putting down totems, recalling them and then putting them closer to the mob who has walked out of range, it is still a lot of work. As a druid all you need to know is the name of your favourite couple of totems and then nag the shaman to use them whenever they are grouped with you. Simple!

In the words of the famous druid Alamo: “Cat durid r 4 fite, tehm whos bare durid can B 4 tank” an sum shaman want 2 b durid LOL.