On Feral PvP and Root Breaking

I've PvPed both feral and resto in the past, I'm far from the most skilled PvPer and have never played arena at high ratings, but the trends I've noticed from my casual interest in PvP is that for viable arena teams it's go Resto, or go home. Since Ferals got instant cyclone, that has been the main reason to include one in your arena teams, and now it looks likely to be the only reason to include one. Then again, why bother when you can bring a Resto druid, still have a powerful CC and get healed at the same time.

I've always had a hard time keeping up with other classes as a feral PvPer, until Cataclysm made my bleed damage admittedly very overpowered. Nerf the bleed damage, it's needed, I know that. Send me back to the days when I would do very little damage against an armoured opponent, I can live with it, because I've never been about nuke, even as a feral PvPer. I've been about control.

Powershifting has always been a staple for any druid who PvPs. It's a big part of our strategy, survivability and offensive and it's practically ingrained in the muscle memory of every druid across the land. See a root, hit your shapeshift. This has always made Feral druids more viable PvP wise, because even when druids had a lower PvP damage output, there's a lot to be said for being able to stick on your target and keep mangle or a bleed up or pop off a maim before they can escape the rest of your team.

What I'm saying is that I've always relied heavily on root breaking for Feral PvPing, it's at the center of almost everything I do against good PvPers who know how to control an opponent. I can count the number of times on one hand that I've had to do that as a Resto druid, after all, I can dispel myself and still cast HoTs while rooted, there's not much of a drawback if I'm just take extra damage, essentially I'm just burning a little more mana, I've always been able to heal myself through 2 or 3 melee hitting me in the face until some DPS save me, and I still can, if anything I would advocate giving the root breaking specialisation to Balance Druids over Resto druids, and I don't even play Balance and never have.

I'm sad to see the powershifing go, I really am. It's always been one of my most favourite aspects of druid PvP and has kept Feral PvP exciting, interesting and viable for me, even during our worst times. The reality here is, I don't think I'll be Feral PvPing anymore and I suspect a great many Boomkin won't either, time to get the Resto gear out of the bank.

Maybe I'm missing something in the high end arena here that makes this make sense, but to me, it just doesn't. I can't overemphasize how central root breaking is to Feral PvPing and how big of a hole it's going to leave us with.