Feedback: Druid Updates

[Kaivax]

In this thread, we’ll be testing and talking about Druids in The War Within. Look here for posts from the development team as adjustments and bugfixes are made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

Thank You

Before we continue testing The War Within, we’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who read and responded to the Hero Talent previews we posted over the last few months.

Looking to the Alpha

In this first Alpha build, every single class has at least one new Hero Talent tree available for testing, with the rest coming in the following weeks. We’re asking testers to initially keep several things in mind:

• There are UI elements on the talent panel that are placeholder, including things like talent icons, text, or final UI art.
• Some talents may not be functioning yet, or may be marked as not yet implemented (NYI)
• New spell visuals and audio for several new Hero Talent trees are still a work in progress. Many trees are using placeholder assets for now that will be updated over the course of Alpha.
• There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.

The combat design team has two big areas of focus right now that we are prioritizing over other concerns such as tuning or generic class updates/maintenance:

• Finish building the remainder of the Hero Talent trees that are not yet available.
• Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.

With the Alpha build being playable and all of the discussion that will occur around the flood of data, we wanted to reiterate that the responses to our blog previews were highly valuable. The feedback we received allowed us to make some early improvements or revisions while we didn’t yet have a public test environment. It allowed us to take some big early swings on certain trees, and then react to early feedback quickly.

Going forward, we aren’t planning to publish any additional Hero Talent previews in blog form, since we’ll add the remaining classes to the Alpha as soon as they reach their ready-to-test state.

Working from Feedback

Several Hero Talent trees have received changes after reading feedback to the blog posts. Some of these were tuning changes to ensure that the Hero Talent tree felt competitive, while others were significant design changes. The feedback thus far has been of great benefit to us.

Going into Alpha, we feel good about the shape of the Hero Talent tree designs. Keeping a consistent number of utility and defensives nodes across all trees, having parity between number of choice nodes, and the overall structure of the trees are things we’re confident in.

We’re also working on tweaking some core class designs as well. In some cases, it was necessary to make adjustments to the class or specialization talent trees before significant work was done on a Hero Talent tree. In other cases, we did work seeking to improve base class talent tree designs.

Alpha Feedback

Now that we’re in Alpha, we’re looking for feedback on how it feels to playtest these trees. We’re specifically curious about:

• Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree.
• Hero Talents that create frustrating or unsatisfying gameplay or rotations for your spec.
• Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.

Throughput comparisons of Hero Talent trees are helpful, but we’re more interested in gameplay, feel, and choice feedback at this stage. Also, when possible, we appreciate it when you focus posts or articles on a single spec and Hero Talent tree, rather than combining feedback about multiple issues.

Again, Thank You

We greatly appreciate all your feedback on Hero Talent trees and are very excited for you to see everything else we’re working on. Thank you!

– The World of Warcraft Combat Design Team

[Kaivax]

There are updates to the druid class tree and several specs trees coming in the War Within. We’re excited for you to play with them in the Alpha, and we’d like to share some of the design and class philosophy behind the updates.

Druid Class Tree

A core aspect of the druid fantasy is that they have 4 specializations with a variety of magical and physical powers. We want the class tree to embody druids’ ability to invest in the powers of other specializations for useful utility and defensive power. We kept the central design of there being four main sections, one for each spec. You can invest in the Guardian section to access their powerful damage resistance, or the Restoration section to unlock self-healing. Further, the talents in the bottom half of the tree are divided into “physical” and “magical” halves that you can access by investing in either Feral / Guardian or Restoration / Balance sections.

This concept of investing came with some frustrations in Dragonflight that we are looking to reduce. Some specializations invested more points in abilities they didn’t use than others. Sometimes the rewards farther down the tree didn’t feel worth the cost to get them. In The War Within, it always costs exactly 2 points in a specialization’s section to access their more generally useful bonuses. We’ve redistributed talents so all specializations have some talents in their sections that other specializations will value. And while there is a cost to access the physical and magical sections at the bottom of the tree, there are strong, broadly useful talents in them.

Overall, we want you to feel that you’re picking and choosing the powers of other specializations as you customize your druid, and that you have interesting decisions to make in every gate no matter your specialization or what type of content you’re doing.

Astral Influence and Increased Melee Range

Astral Influence no longer increases the range of melee attacks. We are revisiting increased melee range talents across the game. These talents make the melee experience inconsistent across classes in a way we’re not happy with, so we’re removing most of them. Default melee range has increased since these talents were originally created, allowing specs with increased range to attack from well outside where it appears they should be able to. Cat Form now increases melee attack and ability range by 3 yards, for the moment.

Berserk, Celestial Alignment, and Incarnation Durations Reduced

Feral’s and Guardian’s Berserk and Balance’s Celestial Alignment have a 15 second duration in The War Within (down from 20). Incarnation forms, including Tree of Life, have 20 second durations (down from 30). Druid cooldowns’ long durations meant their power was more spread out than other class cooldowns, and the very long Incarnation durations made them hard to balance against other talent options.

[Kaivax]

Balance Druid

Our top goals for Balance Druid in The War Within are to ease some of the constraints on their rotation, open up a greater variety of builds and play styles, and tune their balance and resource generation.

Primordial Arcanic Pulsar Removed

Pulsar is an undeniably powerful effect, granting a strong damage buff and triggering Eclipse effects. However, it’s extremely constraining, reducing the value of any effects that don’t align with its 40-45 second cadence. Plus, since its progress is based on resources spent, encounters with intermissions or mechanics players can’t control can misalign their ability timing with no real recourse. Similar to Rune of Power, we believe Pulsar’s power is constraining Balance Druids too much, and we are removing it. You’ll be able to choose between Orbital Bombardment’s 2 minute cooldown and an empowered version of Celestial Alignment with a 3 minute cooldown.

Build Variety

Second, Balance uses similar builds for different types of content, with very little variety. Removing Primordial Arcanic Pulsar will help by reducing the power of “required” talents that synergize with it. We’re working to even out the power of talents in each tier of the tree and adding some new talents to allow you to specialize more in different aspects of your toolkit like periodic effects, stronger builders, or free finishers. Our goals are that there are different ways to play that you can try, and that you have more power to customize your build for different fights or types of content.

Astral Power Generation Reduced

Balance’s Astral Power generation increased a lot in Dragonflight. We’re pulling back some of those increases to slow the pace of play just a little, make pooling gameplay more interesting, and to provide some space for Hero Talents and other bonuses to provide Astral Power without going overboard. While this and changes like removing Pulsar are nerfs, Balance’s base ability damage is going up to compensate. Overall, Celestial Alignment and other cooldowns will hit a lot harder when they are active.

[Kaivax]

Feral Druid

Our top goals for Feral Druid in The War Within are to slow down its rotation a little to make Energy usage more tactical and to bring more clarity to playing the spec. We’re also trying to restore more of Tiger Fury’s identity and excitement, and simplifying some talent functionality to free up more choice in where you spend points. Many of these changes will read as nerfs – the goal is to build a healthy rotation and talent balance and buff damage to make that rotation competitive.

Energy Generation Reduced

Feral gained a lot of strong Energy generation talents in Dragonflight. As a result, it lost some of its feel as a spec where sometimes the best thing to do was pause to let a DoT tick down or for your Energy to recover. In some environments, Feral had more energy than it could spend and became GCD limited instead of Energy limited. We’re going to pull back on the power of Energy generation talents in The War Within. We want players to tactically take a breath now and then to ensure they have energy to refresh Rake, or to get ready to activate Bloodtalons, or to maximize Ferocious Bite damage.

As a part of this, we are removing Predator’s ability to reset Tiger’s Fury when an enemy dies and changing Raging Fury. As a result, Tiger’s Fury will never have 100% uptime. Maximizing the value of the Energy it generates and applying bleeds while it is active will become more of a way to express your skill (though there will also be talents to help with this if desired).

Clarity

Feral Druid has a lot of factors that influence what button you want to press at any given moment. Some of those are healthy, such as whether to refresh a bleed on a dying target, or whether to try to sneak in another Ferocious Bite before you need to refresh Rip. But some are difficult for many players to intuit without reading a guide. Should you Shred or Swipe on two targets in Berserk? Is Primal Wrath or Ferocious Bite with Rampany Ferocity more damage in AOE?

We want to give every button in Feral’s toolset a mostly consistent job. We’re removing the bonuses to Shred and Rake in Berserk, and removing bonuses that gave AOE value to Ferocious Bite. Feral’s AOE strategy will be based on dealing group damage with Primal Wrath and Tear Open Wounds while funneling Ferocious Bites into priority targets with Apex Predator.

[Kaivax]

Restoration Druid

In The War Within, we’d like to reduce active keybinds, increase the base power of Rejuvenation, and offer some new Heart of the Wild gameplay.

We experimented with a passive design for Adaptive Swarm, but ultimately feel reducing both the keybind requirements and party frame clutter is worth replacing it with a new effect. Restoration Druid reached a point in Dragonflight where we felt there were one too many heal over time effects within the talent tree that affect both the tuning of Mastery and the space on friendly unit frames.

Luxuriant Soil also had our eye throughout Dragonflight and in part has led to Rejuvenation at a baseline level feeling rather unimpactful and leaving Restoration Druids not having as much control over their healing output as we would like. We are replacing its effect with the goal of bringing up Rejuvenation’s power and making its effect feel directly impactful on the target it is cast on.

With the removal of Adaptive Swarm, we’re opting to replace it with some new Heart of the Wild synergy that both increases the uptime of the effect and enables the Druid to focus on the hybrid gameplay further for its duration.

[Kaivax]

We greatly appreciate your feedback and we’re looking forward to your thoughts on Druid changes. There are a few topics we’re especially interested in hearing from you on:

• How does it feel to build characters for different types of content? Do you feel you are able to get the tools you need?
• How do the changes help or not help in specific situations that are relevant to you?
• Are there sections of the talent trees that you feel don’t have enough meaningful choices?
• Do you see any degenerate or unintended impacts on rotations, including:
  • Using single target abilities in AOE or vice versa.
  • Being flooded with resources faster than they can be spent.
  • Feeling forced to use (or never use) particular abilities due to how the class is played.

Overall, our goal is to provide interesting choices and options in talent trees that deliver the fantasies of druid and its specializations, including appropriate tools for different types of game content. Do you feel the talent trees for your specialization enable builds you’ll enjoy?

[Adarel-sargeras]

I agree with the goals of increasing the base power of Rejuv, and I like the hybrid thoughts behind Heart of the Wild. Very early thoughts on both follow.

Rejuvenation

In early dungeon play, I’ve noticed that Rejuv actually feels extremely suboptimal to cast. This may partially be related to tuning, but most of the hero talents related to healing buff Regrowth far more than Rejuvenation which disincentives the use of Rejuv.

For example:

• Cenarion’s Might is the key offender here, providing a much-needed boost to healing throughput, but requiring that I don’t use Rejuvenation or else lose the buff. It rewards spamming Regrowth, which I personally feel is uninteresting play, and which is objectively counter to the heal-over-time playstyle. Even if Rejuv felt impactful, it would come at a significant cost.
• Thriving Growth similarly provides zero effect from Rejuvenation, incentivizing play that avoids it. This is especially unfortunate for catweaving. Adaptive Swarm often provided some cushion to allow us to remain in catform longer. Without it, I would expect Rejuv to fill this role. However, if Rejuv cannot spawn any Symbiotic Blooms, it feels like a very poor use of a non-cat GCD.

Heart of the Wild

Love the concept of supporting more hybrid play. The one problem I have with this talent’s current implementation is that it rewards limiting when I catform and maintaining a counter on when my last proc is up.

Further, I am sometimes using cat form to move more quickly to avoid damage, and if I happen to need to do that when my 1-minute window is up, I will waste a damage buff/healing window. This feels extremely punishing for what should be sensible play.

It would be much better if this were an active 1 minute cooldown that I could choose to deploy.

Thanks for reading!

[Felinae-amanthul]

We haven’t really gotten a good look at it yet - but I would like to be able to switch druid travel/flight form between dynamic and standard flight modes independent to how mounts are working - I feel that the druid class fantasy it would be consistent with druids being able to control how fast they fly separate to mounts. Even if it was just flight form (as distinct to travel form) that was always standard flying.

[Keylae-sargeras]

Hi There!

I started playing Feral at the start of Amirdrassil and Balance Druid since Uldir (I will post my thoughts on Balance in another thread), both at a level of achieving Cutting Edge each raid tier and mid-high tier M+. It took me awhile to pick up on Feral but I appreciated the challenge of it and enjoy it so much that I’ve made it my primary spec. Here are some of my thoughts regarding Feral Druid in the current alpha iteration.

@Kaivax

Our top goals for Feral Druid in The War Within are to slow down its rotation a little to make Energy usage more tactical and to bring more clarity to playing the spec.

Reading this at first kind of disappointed me. I think a lot of Ferals feel that it is a fast spec, but it only feels that way during Smoldering Frenzy windows or usual Berserk/Tiger’s Fury windows. The time between Fyrakk on pull and his shield intermission is a prime example of feeling too slow. During that period, Ferals are only refreshing bleeds (also feels underwhelming tuning wise) and spending generic Ferocious Bites but we get those little periods of excitement during Smoldering Frenzy when we can unload. With The War Within, we lose Smoldering Frenzy and potentially lose Tiger’s Fury uptime from live Raging Fury/Predator. While I appreciate the transition to favoring more haste, it just feels too slow right now. I however don’t want to discredit the efforts into making Tiger’s Fury more impactful on the alpha talent tree.

@Kaivax

We want players to tactically take a breath now and then to ensure they have energy to refresh Rake, or to get ready to activate Bloodtalons, or to maximize Ferocious Bite damage.

I can agree with the sentiment that there are a lot of factors that influence what button we Ferals press at any given moment and plethora of things we need to keep track of to maintain damage, but this aspect of “tactically” waiting doesn’t sit right with me. I can’t help but to think while we are waiting for energy to accumulate, my other raiders are building combo points, rage, astral power, holy power, etc in order to spend it on something massive. I think the thing that could sate that dissatisfaction would be having bleeds and spenders feel more impactful.

I am keeping in mind a lot of these things will need to be fleshed out during tuning and can change depending on getting better gear or tier set bonuses. Also not trying to bash a slower playstyle, but just trying to make sure it feels meaningful and is an asset to the raid, M+, or PvP team. Looking forward to more updates!

[Petemolyneux-hyjal]

Hey there -

I primarily play Balance Druid in raids (Heroic/Normal, usually AOTC each season), and M+ (got KSM only a couple of times, not for lack of skill, but usually due to time commitments beyond raiding 6h a week).

I’ve played since Vanilla, with only a year away from the game since 2005. I love it dearly, and I know it’ll be my GOAT for my whole game-playing life. I’m very excited for the future of the game and franchise, and the Worldsoul Saga in particular.

My observations so far will be more limited to initial gut feeling about things in the Alpha after 3 or 4h of play, and won’t be ultra-deep stuff that you might expect from CE Mythic raiders and such, but hope they’ll offer some perspective that might resonate with other Balance Druids who are more on my level, haha.

General:

• Echo what others said above about feeling like Druid in particular needs to be able to switch instantly between Skyriding and Steady flight, as part of the druid class fantasy.
• Re: all classes, not just druids - not having Steady flight available from the start feels very strange. I respect the quest and levelling design may be accounting for the slightly higher challenge curve that comes with Skyriding (dragon riding), but I think accessibility and immersion should come first. As a druid, going into flight form and being unable to fly like I normally do feels bizarre. (I say this as someone who truly loves skyriding/dragonriding and think it’s one of the best things to ever happen to WoW).
• This isn’t a problem yet, but with druids in particular, running out of talent loadout save slots is probably going to become a thing again. If it’s still 10 per character across all specs, I know I’ll run out again, as I have in DF, which seems at odd with the design goal of supporting a greater variety of different talent loadouts and playstyles for Balance Druids in particular.

Balance Druid:

• Cosmetic: can we get an option to remain in regular caster form, instead of either Glyph of Stars (persistent blueish haze/color) or Owlkin Form? I LOVE the Owlkin forms we received in 10.2, and am grateful for the art love here, but I still firmly desire being able to see my hard-earned gear on my character in combat. Generally can’t do that with either Glyph of Stars or Owlkin Form. This is an issue for Shadow Priest too (my last main), and for Evokers to some degree. This is a pretty big one for me, as I feel like I look the same all the time unless I head off to the barbershop where all my options (as good as they are) are limited and fixed, probably for many years to come. The allure of getting more transmogs (a big draw to the game for most classes and specs) is diminished for us, somewhat.

• Overall Flow of Combat:

Eclipses: This may not be a popular opinion at all among other Balance Druids, but I was secretly hoping for a dramatic change to the eclipse system. I like the class fantasy of going into an eclipse to empower my spells, but mechanically, it has always felt clunky to me and the guildies I’ve spoken with. It remains unintuitive to me that one should use a single-target filler to empower a cleave spell, and vice versa. You can’t help but feel you’ve been ineffective in the few seconds it takes to re-enter an eclipse, and that happens multiple times in every encounter. It’s also super punishing if you screw up and go into the wrong eclipse, or if the state of combat changes and you’re suddenly dealing with one target or multiples, but are currently in the opposite eclipse. I want some way to regain agency over my power flow, rather than waiting for the ‘wrong’ eclipse to finish so I can enter the ‘right’ one. Obviously, I’ve gotten used to all this in my rotation over the years, but it still feels strange.

DoTs: It feels clunky to have to manually dot up enemies. The talent that gets two Moonfires out helps, sure, but it feels like lots of ramp/setup. It would be wonderful to have talent options to apply or spread dots faster, just like Shadow Priest and other specs/classes. That feels missing here.

Shapeshifting: Super grateful to see Fluid Form as a talent, but wondering if it can be extended to allow Moonfire and Sunfire to take you into Moonkin Form, too (and perhaps even Starsurge/Starfall)? If combat has already begun, or an enemy surprises me out in the world, my first casts are my dots, not Wrath/Starfire, so I’m incurring the GCD penalty anyway to go into Moonkin Form first. Also, I kind of thing Fluid Form should be baseline… but maybe that’s being too greedy.

Hero Talents: I was (and still am) very excited for this concept overall. I know we were told to expect these to not be transformative to gameplay, in the way that a spec completely changes how we play, but I think I still expected… more than what I’m feeling so far in the levelling experience. Perhaps the flavor and utility of these hero talents will become more impactful at max level.

As a slightly more casual player, I think I’d even be fine with them being the way they are mechanically, but would love more of a visual/flavorful punch. While leveling, there’s nothing that really tells me (or other players) that I’m either Elune’s Chosen or a Keeper of the Grove. Or maybe there is, and I missed it.

• The extra AOE splash damage from Fury of Elune in Elune’s Chosen was either very minimal visually, or I’m just super unobservant and didn’t notice it most of the time.
• The Treants in Keeper of the Grove don’t look any new/different as far as I can tell, and I didn’t really feel the difference of having them around (vs. regular non-hero Force of Nature), outside of seeing a couple of extra Moonfires go off. I think having the treants look different, have new models, or even be customizable somewhat would really sell the fantasy to me of being this ‘tree-warden’ or master of the forest.

Bugs:

• I think devs are probably aware since other boomies have encountered this, but right now, Incarn/CA talented into Orbital Strike is a 100% client crash. The workaround shared with me is to do an @cursor macro, which is probably how I’ll play it anyway come 11.0, but yeah.

Random observations:

• I chose the Starter Tree initially, just to mess around with while leveling. I know it won’t be ‘meta’ in the slightest, but I just wanted to get going and see what the new zone was like. It was bizarre to realize that with a couple hero talents, I had 140 AP (thanks to Astral Communion and Expansiveness together), and was suddenly able to pool and cast 4 Starsurges. I can’t say that felt bad. Machine-gunning Starsurges (at least 3x) was something we lost awhile ago (end of Shadowlands, I think?) that I know most Boomies I spoke to were sad about. Having that option back is fun, though I imagine a meta talent tree for endgame PvE won’t include it…

I haven’t done any dungeons and such to really put the spec and hero talents through their paces, but will post again soon when I do.

Overall, excited to see how this all plays out!

(I apologize if I made any errors in describing talents or gameplay systems above. I don’t have quite the aptitude for describing all this and understanding the deeper intricacies of talent interplay and synergy the way some CE raiders do, but I think the more casual perspective is valid to share here, too).

[Keylae-sargeras]

I have some additional follow-up to my original post regarding Feral in TWW Alpha. I logged a variety of talent builds that I watched and adapted from “Cheesey” on Youtube. However, I cannot post the logs here on the forums.

Disclaimers: This is my first time alpha testing and in depth logging on Warcraft Logs. Also want to note that my character is level 73 (463 ilvl) with only 3 talent points in the hero trees, no gems/enchants, no raid buffs, forgot Mark of the Wild on the AoE logs, human error, and no Weakauras/name plate addons for tracking buffs, bleeds, etc. Lastly, the sample size is obviously low. The logs are only in 2 minute increments.

Single Target
Wild Stalker with: LI, AS, Incarn, CoLaD- No HotL or MoC = 133K, 132K, 138K

Druid of the Claw with: LI, CO. AS. Incarn, CoLaD = 118K and 122K

Druid of the Claw with: DB, BrS, SJ, Incarn, SotF, Apex- No HotL = 125K and 130K

3 target AoE
Druid of the Claw with: CI, Incarn, AG, CoLaD, TOO, DCR = 216K and 268K

Wild Stalker with: CI, Incarn, AG, CoLaD, TOO, DCR = 244K and 257K

Hero Tree Thoughts
Druid of the Claw - feels more focused on bites, less rewarding for the “slow” playstyle you’re looking for, and seems like it is less damage than Wild Stalker; except on AoE but not “winning” by a large margin. For spec “identity,” I feel like I want to play this tree over Wild Stalker, but at the end of the day I will choose what performs better in raid/M+.

Wild Stalker- seems to be more in line with the “slow” playstyle. I actually kind of like it. Performs slightly worse on AoE though. Cosmetically, the big red vines on the target look pretty cool.

Both- Ravage and Blood Seeker Vines both feel uninteresting. Ravage changes Ferocious Bite automatically and randomly while the vines proc at random. I see mages getting a really cool Phoenix and wonder how something like that could be translated to Ferals; I don’t know.

Feral Issues/Gripes
Resourceful Hunter: just seems… underwhelming.

There seems to be a “lull” in the rotation between cooldowns. Not sure if it feels this way because I am playing it wrong and/or playing it “too fast” with spending combo points and resources OR if this is intended. Perhaps this will change with more optimized stats, particularly into haste.

Coiled to Spring: I don’t like this talent because it seems like it rewards you for bad game play or “luck-based” game play where you have max combo points but proc a combo point while waiting to Rip or Ferocious Bite. This goes into my next issue.

There is the emphasis to make energy usage more tactical and have more clarity when playing Feral. I do like this. However, the amount of things that “proc” is something I’m not a huge fan of. How can we be expected to make thoughtful choices with energy/spending combo points when we don’t know if we will get lucky with an Omen of Clarity, Sudden Ambush, or Frantic Momentum proc. As I have been testing, I feel that I have been getting bombarded with random combo point procs. I get all of these combo points and I want to spend spend spend (to not overcap and to just do damage) but then I run the risk of running out of energy really fast. I’m not anti-proc, just something more manageable. I really hope that this is not a situation where I would have to shift into another form (on low energy, outside CDs) to do more damage. I want to play a cat.

[Rhemstrix-tichondrius]

Druid Class Tree

I really don’t like the concept of having the class tree “split” into the different sections. It forces you to take many talents that do nothing just to reach the things you want underneath. I don’t believe other classes have to ever take a point let alone multiple that actually do nothing for them. I would much rather have a more hybrid tree, even if it’s just a minor stat boost for the other specialization, as long as it does something.

• Balance access to Thick Hide feels bad picking up Ironfur because this talent point is thrown away but required to reach mobility and survive-ability. Killer Instinct is too many points to invest so you lose utility or damage.
• Instinct of the Claw another 2 points that do nothing only to access powerful defensive and utility talents. I would appreciate if these 2 points did anything for balance.
• Lore of the Grove similar situation to previous talent for Feral. If they need to pick up innervate they have to throw 2 points in the garbage.
• Fluid Form this talent doesn’t do enough to be worth taking. It might have some worth if it caused Frenzied Regeneration to be cast out of bear form transforming you into bear form. Or possibly Skull bash if a 15 second ICD was put on Solar Beam. Frankly, if Frenzied Regeneration didn’t take 4 GCDs to go back to damaging that would be fantastic.
• Renewal Feral throws away a lot of points to be able to reach this and Typhoon because they don’t have magic damage baseline. Nodes above could have some better cross spec synergy.

Druid Balance Tree

• Astral Smolder this is a good change from critical hit. I think a better change would just be to make it 100% and decrease the DoT damage to compensate. There is enough going on with Starlord, Orbit Breaker, Touch the Cosmos, and possibly Umbral Inspiration or Starweaver. Enough is enough with things to track, if we can just think “make sure you cast a builder every 6 seconds”, rather than trying to track another proc that would be swell.
• Waning Twilight I’ve hated this talent the entirety of Dragonflight. I understand some people probably like it. If Astral Smolder moves to 100% it becomes a little more palatable. But overall the AoE dot ramp up time is tiresome and annoying to play around.

Druid Hero Talent

• I think the clear winner for play-ability is Elune’s Chosen. This is the set it and forget it choice. Given how much balance loses damage in high mobility, the more astral power the better.
• Keeper of the Grove I am hoping is not better overall for damage or encounter timings. It enforces a strict 1 min cooldown that you should keep aligned with Incarnation every 2 or 3 minutes. That leaves little time to optimize the usage in between, you’ll likely end up firing it off on your next eclipse and not doing much with it.
• Control of the Dream compared to the other option in this choice node this is not much of a choice. Unless this tooltip is incorrect, 5 seconds off of a cooldown hardly seems worth taking over Power of the Dream.

[Felinae-amanthul]

I agree with this

It forces you to take many talents that do nothing just to reach the things you want underneath. I don’t believe other classes have to ever take a point let alone multiple that actually do nothing for them. I would much rather have a more hybrid tree, even if it’s just a minor stat boost for the other specialization, as long as it does something .

Playing balance I am constantly having to compromise and take points in things I never use to get to points I do need, and the interrupts and CC and survival points are scattered around so many different points in the tree. For a class that is supposed to be about utility to balance out for the lower DPS compared to other DPS classes - it feels really punishing that taking a good variety of utility abilities is so restricted. (Feral and Balance are currently in the bottom 5 for DPS specs on a regular basis on retail, we are also among the most squishy classes)

I feel like there should be more opportunities to move sideways lower down in the trees, a way to travel across at the mid point would be great.

[Ravenrakez-tichondrius]

Hi, I’m raven, long time feral player for the better half of my life, and since I’ve had the pleasure of testing the alpha i wanted to give some feedback on the spec tree and druid of the claw tree specifically:
first, the spec tree, the changes are great, the energy feels about as perfect as it could, savage fury is a great concept for a talent.
i have some "wishes/suggestions, for example i think that savage fury could swap places with tiger’s tenacity, making a shorter, faster paced burst contend with a longer duration on tiger’s fury, making it a more interesting choice than +5s duration vs 3 combo points per 30s in your burst. Tiger’s tenacity is in a very awkward place currently, and i think it’d help if the talent was a little more accessible, to hopefully give it a place in some talent builds in the future.
resourceful hunter is a little out of place, i assume a placeholder. i think it would be cool to change it to restore health and maybe a little bit of energy when targets with your bleeds on them die, in a similar fashion to old predator, but without increasing tiger’s fury uptime, while also making a great outdoor/solo content talent, in which dots often feel awkward to apply for reasons of mobs dying too quickly to have good value from them.
most of my testing so far was done using the druid of the claw hero talents, and oh boy, the person who made these has done a fantastic job. you can now shift into bear and go back into cat form, retaining an insane amount of stamina and armor if using the ursine vigor and ursoc’s spirit talents in the class tree, making you feel infinitely happier about going bear form for a mechanic and making it feel like youre being rewarded for playing safe, instead of the contrary. ravage feels good to press, the cone is big and forgiving, even hitting mobs who are slightly behind you (this is good, cone and frontal abilities like this one can feel very frustrating if their hitboxes arent generous), the bleed feels strong on aoe, the spell effect and sound feel satisfying. the only issue ive had playing with it, is that ravage procs happen on auto attacks, and outside of berserk and incarn, they feel fairly far between and inconsistent, (just like apex predator, but that’s taking away from the last topic), making it feel a little sad when you go a whole tiger’s fury window without getting one. i think it would be more fun to have ravage procs happen in a way that feels more in control of the player, like for example “reaching 100 energy causes your next ferocious bite to become ravage (30s cooldown)” or “spending 10-15-ish combo points causes your next ferocious bite to become ravage”, just something in the players control would feel nice, because for feral specifically, some parts of the rotation, that feel very necessary and rewarding, are frankly just pretty random.
this leads me to the last topic of this long long post, the problem children sudden ambush and apex predator.
these two talents are my biggest problem with the current state of feral, because they proc on a flat, random percent chance, which is subject to a lot of variance. there will be boss encounters where you happen to randomly only get two apex predator procs in 3 minutes, then there will be pulls where you get 12, with 7 of those being inside of your cooldown, trinkets, potion window. not just that damage variance feels frustrating, but getting multiple procs of a free big damage spender in a row just feels disruptive to your gameplay very very frequently. at times, you might be wanting to refresh your rake, or even just press your feral frenzy, but the game decided youd be getting spammed with two, three or rarely even four apex predator procs in a row on five combo points, with some of those potentially also proccing sudden ambush, which youd normally really want to use on a builder, but you cant, because youd be overcapping.
lastly, sudden ambush has the same problem, sometimes, you will just get good luck and have a stealth snapshotted rake for the whole fight, other times, you wont. this isnt a large issue with feral in current dragonflight feral, however if rake becomes a more significant part of our toolkit’s damage in the war within, i think it would be appropriate to change sudden ambush to simply always proc after a ferocious bite, to also remove a lot of the spec’s frankly “requiredness” of weakauras.
anyways, long post, lots of thoughts, the direction of feral is great and i hope to see many more great things in the future, see you all in the new expansion, kitties :3

[Shinrael-area-52 (Shinrael)]

Hi, I’m Shinrael and I mostly play Feral or Guardian. This post is going to be focused on Feral specifically. A lot of this feedback is going to be based around the pacing of the rotation more than tuning. I’m going to break these down by Hero Talents and then close out with feedback on the Class tree.

Druid of the Claw

I really like the concept of this tree. Its interesting, has defensive/flex implications, and is a great callback to when the two specs were the same tree. I think designwise this is ALMOST perfect. There’s two glaring issues that are showing up when playing this as a Feral.

Wildpower Surge

This talent feels bad to play, especially considering that from a design perspective its one of the coolest in the tree. This is a choice node deep in the tree, and as things are you almost never take it. It does similar damage to Shred in single target without the combo point. The talent basically begs you to take Fluid shifting. There’s a consideration here for pressing Brutal Slash while in Bear Form for double damage (at the cost of Combo Points), but because BrS/Swipe does not interact with Fluid Shifting, this costs two globals and invalidates talent.

What feels like is missing here is some sort of reward on returning to Cat Form or a more substantial reward for going into Bear Form (especially in multi-target situations). Right now as a Feral there is little reason to take what is functionally the more “complex” talent that should have more throughput in a choice node.

Killing Strikes

This talent has created a pacing issue in the rotation. It does fill the role as the more complex/throughput talent of the choice node well, but the talent almost screams for Predator and also creates pacing issues in dungeons similar to what Assassination Rogues deal with during Spiteful week or Chain Pulling.

I say almost because honestly, the new pacing with the lack of Pred resets in combat feels ok. The larger issue is between pulls. I find myself wanting to sit on TF near the end of a pull or just pressing it and using the free Ravage as a pack is cleaning up.

The gameplay loop being pushed seems to be: Open>TF to activate Ravage>Ravage to apply Dreadful Wound with TF buff>Extend Dreadful Wound through the pack. Without a reset going into combat it feels very clunky to play.

My suggestion is to tie Predator resets to Prowl (so Shadowmeld can’t benefit from this). Maybe even tie the resets to Killing Strikes if there are balance concerns with Wildstalker. This allows for a much more fluid feeling opener and adding extra impact/skill cap to your Incarnation by allowing you to Prowl during it to reset your Tiger’s Fury (or just fix any desync that might have happened during your rotation).

This doesn’t fix the problem with combat resets, but that issue is already there in the tree, this just makes it worse. The solution may just end up being “play Wildstalker on Spiteful weeks”

Compare to Guardian who simply need to Mangle to get value from this.

Wildstalker

This tree feels really cool to play in Single Target, but suffers with some serious button bloat problems, especially in AoE. It also is very hungry for talents in the class tree so it makes it very difficult to build and feel good about.

Moonfire & Sunfire

This one is very weird. The 10% damage amp on Sunfire more aggressively pushes it into our rotation. Druid of the Claw does the opposite by proccing Ravage off of Auto Attacks, which I like for that Hero Talent and I like how this pushes Sunfire into our rotation.

With the energy changes in larger packs, I’m finding myself not having enough energy to press Moonfire when Double Clawed Rake is an option often enough to feel good. These larger packs do benefit from pressing Sunfire when you’re waiting for some energy though.

With the innate 10% bonus damage on Moonfire you almost always take Lunar Inspiration and that seems intended. It just mostly will gain value on 1-3 target pulls.

One thing I would like to see is to make the Lunar Inspiration a choice node with a new talent called “Solar Inspiration”. This creates flavor for the more Sun oriented Druids (Can you tell I play a Tauren) but also allows us to weave Sunfire in on AoE packs with energy and let Moonfire fill the “Fluid Shifting” part of the rotation on boss fights in dungeons.

This feels like a very busy build to play in AoE situations. Removing the incentive to shapeshift in AoE while maintaining that identity in low target situations will help alleviate that issue.

Implant & Feral Frenzy.

This talent exists on a very clear choice node. Do you want focus single target damage or more AoE damage. By and large Feral Frenzy feels a lot better from a pacing perspective as a 30 second cooldown instead of a 45 second cooldown. This talent makes that issue more glaring however.

This talent feels like it really shines when you press it with Tiger’s Fury and are able to lean into some burst with it. Especially if you throw Adaptive Swarm and the target also has a natural Bloodvine on it.

Personally I’d love to see Feral Frenzy brought down to 30 seconds because I think it feels better to play. If that isn’t an option I think that Implant should reduce the cooldown of Feral Frenzy by 15 seconds to allow it to sync with Tiger’s Fury and create a better rotational flow.

Class Tree

The class tree is a huge improvement over the previous iteration but there are some issues outstanding that I would like to see fixed.

Fluid Shifting

I want to start out by saying that this is probably my favorite new talent from TWW. It does have a pretty glaring problem around button bloat. Druid already struggles with button bloat in a big way. Part of how most druids handle this is by putting certain skills on their form bars. For example I bind Shred and Mangle to the same button and my current form will decide what happens. Now I need to add several more buttons to my bar.

I’m not sure what the fix is here. Maybe a choice node that removes the GCD lockout on shifting with a cooldown on the effect? This helps make Swipe even an option for Druid of the Claw using Wildpower Surge as well.

Lore of the Grove & Instincts of the Claw

Speaking of Fluid Shifting. Some of the best utility in the tree is currently locked behind these two talents that each cost two points. I’m trying to speak for all Druids here a little. Wildstalker and Elune’s Chosen have less of a problem, but Boomkins in general and Druids of the Claw/Keepers of the Grove feel very bad to build here.

You’re spending two points that generally give you literally nothing to get access to things like Incap Roar, Innervate, Well-Honed Instincts, Nature’s Vigil, and Heart of the Wild.

From a Druid of the Claw perspective, Fluid Shifting feels like a REQUIRED talent but is functionally costing you 3 talent points with zero gain for two of them. This feels very bad.

From a Wildstalker perspective everything feels so hungry for talent points that things like Hibernate and Remove Corruption are functionally unreachable because you’re spending so much trying to get your throughput and critical utility that you can’t reach other pieces of critical utility. This hurts more because both of these talents are needed for Affixes (with Hibernate especially feeling very unreachable). It makes these Hero Talents feel unplayable in two affixes.

The top of the tree overall feels very heavy, and the bottom of the tree feels expensive and unrewarding.

I think there’s room to consolidate some talents at the top end and reduce costs at the bottom end while still making some interesting choices exist within the tree. For a concrete example a Wildstalker with this build is spending points on

• Starsurge
• Improves Sunfire
• 2x on Lore of the Grove

And these all feel very required to get the most out of the Hero Talent. This leaves literally zero “spare” points for utility and burns two points on picking up Lore of the Grove to get access to Fluid Form.

Moonkin Form

I think its great this is off the talent tree, but can we just have it be baseline for all druids. I’ve spent time collecting different Chicken Forms. Part of the fun of Druid Gameplay is access to these different forms. Being able to use Wild Charge as I fall or Flap to do some fun things was always very fun and opened some creative gameplay options that will be gone.

Self-Healing

The issues with Moonkin Form are also partially true for Swiftmend. With Swiftmend and Protector of the Pack gone our ability to pop ourselves up quickly between pulls feels much more limited across the board.

Without Protector of the Pack our Regrowths feel much more Anemic coming from Predatory Swiftness and Dream of Cenarius when playing Bear.

Its not a talent that was taken often, but that is because it wasn’t very accessible in group content unless you were using it for some thing very specific. I’d like to see it return in a different part of the tree. It was underwhelming as a capstone but could be very exciting in other places as an optional utility point.

[Kaivax]

We’ve been playtesting, and iterating, and reading your feedback about Feral.

We hear that you’re sad to lose the combo of getting AOE value out of Ferocious Bites cast with Apex Predator, and we do want Apex Predator to be an appealing AOE talent. Since we also want to bring significance back to maximizing Tiger’s Fury windows, we’re also not happy with compelling you to overwrite Rips benefitting from Tiger’s Fury with Primal Wrath in AOE to deal damage with Tear Open Wounds. So we’re trying a different version of AOE gameplay by restoring Rampant Ferocity and removing Tear Open Wounds.

This retains the rotational clarity that’s a priority for us - in AOE you’ll maintain Rips with Primal Fury and spend additional combo points and Apex Predator procs on Ferocious Bite. The bonus to Rip and Rake damage from Predator will remain single target, as we don’t want this to feel like a maintenance buff in AOE and would prefer to keep its role funneling damage into your priority target.

One side effect of this change is that Ferocious Bite and Rampant Ferocity will become a higher percentage of your damage dealt in AOE. We know that part of feeling like a bleed-focused spec is seeing your bleeds being a big component of your damage dealt, and this change will reduce that. We’re still committed to bleeds and DoTs remaining a critical component of your gameplay and rotation.

[Kaivax]

@Kaivax

So we’re trying a different version of AOE gameplay by restoring Rampant Ferocity and removing Tear Open Wounds.

@Kaivax

Ferocious Bite and Rampant Ferocity will become a higher percentage of your damage dealt in AOE.

Please note that the updates described above will be coming in future Alpha builds.

[Shinrael-area-52 (Shinrael)]

One large concern I have coming out of this is that the energy income changes (especially with Predator) are going to make the rotation feel much slower like this. With Primal Wraith and Soul of the Forest you could keep a comfortable pace with pressing Primal Wraith. Bite is almost double the cost of Primal Wraith and spending that much energy in AoE we are going to find ourselves pooling much more.

This also confuses the Bestial Strength talent in Druid of the Claw. At what point does Primal Wraith beat out Ferocious Bite when using that Hero tree?

If the goal here is to maintain rotational clarity, maintain the strength of bleeds, and keep Apex Predator an appealing AoE talent, why not bake Rampant Ferocity into Apex procs explicitly and leave Primal Wraith as the main AoE spender?

EDIT: Speaking of confusion. How does this interact with Ravage? Does Ravage double dip into Rampant Ferocity when it already has a cleave component? Does RF not work with Ravage at all?

EDIT 2: To add onto this. If you really don’t want Ferals to override Rips outside of Tiger’s Fury, Rip and Tear is going to need to change along with the duration of Primal Wraith.

The duration of both is short enough that even applying at the end of a TF window, you are reapplying an unbuffed Rip to everything halfway through your TF downtime anyway.

[Petemolyneux-hyjal]

Hey there -

Posted earlier, and here’s some more feedback, after more time on the Alpha with my Balance Druid, and more dungeons.

Class Tree:

• Some of the changes feel good, but we have a long way to go.
• More survivability options is great.
• Nice to have an easier path to Remove Corruption, but:
• It feels bad to pick up some talents I know I won’t benefit at all from in order to get others further down that feel mandatory. I don’t think this is as much of a problem with other classes, based on what I’ve heard.
• Examples: Well-Honed Instincts and Oakskin feel mandatory, since Balance Druid’s survivability is poor; but they’re locked behind Instincts of the Claw, which we don’t benefit from.
• Some talents continue to feel either way too niche, or are talents I’d never pick up at all, making them seem pointless on the tree. Like Forestwalk (Too small a movement increase, for too short a time, at too high a cost (standing still and casting for 1-2 seconds). Will never take it.)

Balance Tree:

As I mentioned in my last post, I continue to have a (controversial) take that I’m not sure other Balance Druids have: eclipses somehow still feel clunky and unintuitive (though I’ve gotten used to it after several years of playing the spec now). In my previous post, I talk about how punishing it can be to be in the wrong eclipse (whether it’s your fault or not as the player), and the desire for more agency over power flow. I know Eclipses won’t go away, and I’m not sure I even want them to, since it’s cool on paper. I just know it has problems.

Some kind of build that relies less on ramp would be awesome. It always feels like it takes too long to get going as a Balance Druid. I know it’s a dot spec, and that that’ll always be part of the play, but I believe the other dot classes have options – sacrifice something else to get faster/better dot application.

Specific Talents:

• Waning Twilight: Not feeling in control of when this is up stresses me out. Moonfire/Sunfire are easy, but I find myself just waiting for Astral Smolder to kick in. I suppose one answer is to talent into Stellar Flare or Mushrooms to have more control over the 3rd dot, but every guide and talent optimization out there says to never take those except for very niche fights. IDK what the fix is here, because I like the idea of Waning Twilight in general…
• Light of the Sun: I don’t think we ever take this. And not being able to help my group interrupt as often feels bad. Can this simply be baked into the regular Solar Beam talent? And/or, could we introduce a QOL thing here where the cooldown is lowered if you whiff and don’t interrupt an enemy?
• Astral Smolder: Having this be a nearly 50% chance to apply (instead of relying on Crit, which we never go after) is nice. In practice, I found it wasn’t up much more, but I need to test some more.
• Orbital Strike: As a result of other changes (like Pulsar’s removal), I’m really, really hoping this is tuned to be viable. I desperately want a 2m CD version of this spec. It feels really bad on retail right now to have your damage be so spread apart. Fights that last certain lengths, preventing you from using it a 3rd time always make you feel weak, esp. when you’re looking at meters to gauge your overall contribution. I love how this talent changes the feel of casting CA/Incarn, and really makes you feel like you’re launching a strike from outer space. This is peak Balance fantasy/cool factor to me, and I’d love to see more of this ‘feeling’ infused into the Elune’s Chosen tree in particular.
• Nature’s Grace: I love the philosophy of bringing successful tier set bonuses into the talent tree. This is a prime example. Season 4 of DF right now without this bonus feels terrible, so I’m glad to see this back as a QOL option. More of this please!!
• Astral Communion: I’m no theorycrafter, so maybe this will still never be taken, but I like the idea of the AP boost more often, and I’ve always liked the idea of a larger AP max, so that we have the option to pool more, which can create more interesting gameplay. I hope this is tuned (perhaps with more AP gain) to ensure it’s viable for end-game content. It feels really good.
• Wild Mushrooms and Convoke the Spirits: Nothing to say here, except that I hope they get tuned to be viable. I think they’re fun talents that I feel like I never get to use in end-game, and only in my fun-mode open world/world questing build.
• Denizen of the Dream: For real, I just never know when this thing is up. I’m sure there’s some Weakaura to track it, but I really would love to feel like I can see this thing and enjoy its presence on the battlefield. Can its visual impact and presence be increased? Perhaps a more striking animation for when it enters the battlefield, at least?
• Touch the Cosmos is fun. I have yet to try it with Starweaver to see if we become crazy proc machines with lots of free Starsurges/Starfalls – could be fun.

Elune’s Chosen (Hero Talent Tree):

Visuals/aesthetics and the Fantasy:

• Fury of Elune’s extra flash of energy is the only big visual ‘sell’ of the fantasy in this hero spec, and it doesn’t feel nearly enough compared with what I’ve seen with hero specs like Voidweaver (the combination of Entropic Rifts, Void Blast, Voidwrath/Flay, and a mobile Void Torrent do an amazing job at selling a strong fantasy of being a dangerous, void-powered shadow priest), or Scalecommander (a Mass Disintegrate, which I think we’ve only seen bosses use, combined with seeing an NPC Evoker swoop in, and having steering control for Breath, all do an amazing job at selling a fantasy of being an elite field commander). I don’t look or feel any different as Elune’s Chosen. My Furies of Elune go off more often, my damage goes up by a flat % (always a boring talent choice), and a new extra flash of light ends the animation. It feels…sparse. (The Crescent Moons added with Full Moon were so small/quick that I basically missed them in combat)
• It feels good to be so flush with AP, but that’s very mechanical, and not really about class/hero fantasy to me. Still, good.

Specific Talents for Elune’s Chosen:

• Boundless Moonlight: I think the cool factor has to be upped here. A small flash of light and a bit more damage doesn’t look or feel anywhere near as interesting as Voidweaver’s Entropic Rifts, Templar’s Light’s Guidance/Hammer of Light, or the Sunfury Mage’s Spheres and Phoenix.
• Nine of the fifteen possible nodes on this talent tree (i.e. more than half of the tree’s nodes – Moon Guardian, Lunar Insights, Glistening Fur, Elune’s Grace, Stellar Command, Arcane Affinity, Lunation, Astral Insight, and the capstone, The Eternal Moon) are all flat number boosts. Damage output or AP up, damage taken down, or cooldowns reduced. It’s super boring.
• Lunar Amplification: Interesting twist here, forcing me to think about alternating between Nature/Arcane more to amp up my Arcane damage. My first instinct though is annoyance, as it feels like one more thing to have to track to optimize my play, but I’m intrigued enough to give it a shot.
• Atmospheric Exposure: More damage is fine. Creates more burst windows for me to try and maximize, I suppose. If FoE is going to pop off randomly more often (which I don’t hate), it’s going to make me feel like I have to react quickly to capitalize on those damage windows. Don’t know how I feel about that yet, but there’s something interesting here, maybe.
• Moondust: OK. A slow. Interesting. I feel like this is worthless in raids, but dungeons/open world, it has potential. One more way to crowd control, in addition to Typhoon, Vortex, Roots, etc. It does feel out of place with everything else going on in the Elune’s Chosen tree, though
• Lunar Calling: Problematic. I don’t think I’ll ever take this. Locking myself out of Solar Eclipse feels like too big a risk unless I’m 100% sure the encounter will be all cleave.
• The Light of Elune: More FoEs. OK. Cool. I don’t mind the idea of my space lasers showing up more often and giving me more damage windows and AP. The RNG of it all is going to annoy people, though.

Ideas for Elune’s Chosen:

For me, selling the fantasy visually is huge. It feels non-existent here right now.

• Can FoE and the flash of light at the end look more intense if I’m in this hero spec?
• Can the Crescent Moons look more intense and different? I pictured them swooping in, perhaps on an arc, but right now, they look like smaller Full Moons that chase the regular Full Moon down. It’s easy to miss.
• Atmospheric Exposure could use a strong visual cue to help sell the fantasy. It would be awesome if some kind of effect could indicate that they’re under pressure from the Exposure, and more vulnerable. I’d take anything really. The appearance of some celestial effects or bodies around them, that sort of thing. It would also go a long way to cue me that it’s time to nuke them.
• The Light of Elune: If this were reworked to be less RNG, and more of a stacking build-up that I could visually track with some kind of cool visual effect, I feel like there’d be two wins: I’d be more sold on the fantasy of imbuing the enemy with the Light of Elune, and I’d be able to plan better for the damage window created by FoE. (I know I complained earlier about having more things to track, but I’m trying to find ways to make this more interesting, haha).

In terms of mechanical changes:

• My note above about The Light of Elune also includes an idea about making it less RNG, and more of a stacking build-up. Could give us more agency over controlling our damage windows.
• Nine of the fifteen nodes being flat number boosts is very boring and underwhelming. I feel like there’s a lot more potential to have interesting stuff in these nodes. If even half of them could be replaced with more interesting things mechanically (with the other nodes or regular Balance talents tuned to compensate), I’d be super happy.
• I feel like we desperately need something to help with dot application (maybe FoE or Starfall on fresh targets apply all dots, including Stellar Flare?) and dot refreshes (maybe each FoE refreshes all dots on the target?). Shadow Priests have a few ways to talent to apply/refresh dots easily. I think we only have Orbital Strike for Stellar Flare application, and that’s it. Starfalls extend dots, which is great, but no fresh application or full refresh.
• Maybe a talent to change how FoE works if it’s only hitting one target, to make you feel less bad about this AOE-cleave-oriented spell hitting just one enemy/boss?
• This might be far too OP, but could ease with minimizing ramp: what if a hero talent here, or FoE itself, served to reduce the burden of entering an eclipse? i.e. sped up Wrath/Starfire cast times, or even allowing you to enter an eclipse with just 1x Wrath or 1x Starfire? I recall a Torghast power that worked that way. Probably way too OP to be a persistent part of being Elune’s Chosen, but if it were tied to FoE, even as a proc chance, it could feel good.
• Perhaps adding more utility effects to FoE to make it feel empowered when you’re Elune’s Chosen, compared with regular FoE – a minor gravitational pull, or a one-time pull-in effect, like Ursol’s Vortex? Or maybe using 1x Wrath or 1x Starfire on a target affected by FoE is what triggers an Eclipse?
• I personally love having NPC allies spawn to do stuff – Denizen of the Dream could be cool, but feels very invisible to me. Could a Lunar Entity spawn during FoE (even as a proc chance) to assist with damage, or dot application? Maybe while it’s up (or while FoE is up), Moonfire gains an AOE application function, like Sunfire does with Improved Sunfire?
• Turreting continues to feel bad in some fights. I can’t be the only Boomkin that misses mobility during Starfall. Perhaps FoE or Starfall (or something else) could help restore some of that mobility? The ability to cast Void Torrent while moving as a Voidweaver was huge for me when I tried it out – you really feel elite on the battlefield, and have more control while this crucial spell is being cast. How can we bring some of that mobility back to Balance? I assume casting while moving during Starfall was considered too OP, and that’s why it was removed. Maybe it’s casting while moving during FoE instead, which is on a cooldown?

I’ll post more as I continue to test, or generate ideas. Thanks for reading!

[Petemolyneux-hyjal]

Oh, and I’d be remiss not to ask again:

Could we please have an option to remain in caster form for Balance? No blue aura (Glyph of Stars), no Moonkin Form, just us in regular old humanoid form?

Don’t get me wrong: I love the beautiful Moonkin Forms created for patch 10.2.

But I really want to enjoy the hard-earned gear and appearances I’ve gotten over the last 20 years. Not being able to see most of it in combat is a bummer. (ditto for my Shadow Priest brethren)

Having this as an option (via Glyph or Barber Shop) would make me, and I suspect many other Balance Druids, very very happy.

Thank you!