I just hate the fact that we have to spend 4 points on getting berserk/incarn which are must haves in m+…
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No. You’re not.
All the Druid trees are universally hated.
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I’m right there with you.
What I believe are critical and fun talents are so spread in the Guardian tree now, I don’t quite understand why they adjusted the position of the Moonfire talents in the first place. Here’s just a list of what I think is problematic.
Berserk
This single ability requires the use of 3 points plus an additional if you decide to take Incarn, all spread relatively even across various parts of the tree. It just feels really awful that the power that Incarn and Berserk brings requires such a wide collection of talents that negates taking any deep trait due to point allocation.
Laser druid build
I liked the original placement of Scintillating Moonlight and Twin Moonfire. I feel like with the placement change that took place, we’ve spread the talents much like Berserk where you have to pick a plethora of talents across 2 distinct paths to maximize this build. It would make more logical sense for these talents to be substantially closer in proximity and path with Fury of Nature and Elune’s Favored and Galactic Guardian so it feels natural to be focusing on the “laser” build.
Left path just feels like a catch all
I feel like quite a lot of the druid talents were just thrown together without any rhyme or reason for where they ended up. It seems so odd to be forced to pick Brambles or Bristling Fur in order to get things like Earthwarden and Pawsitive Outlook.
Talent pick dependencies
Another problem I find with the Guardian tree is that there are talents that directly impact other talents and they’re either not within the same path with a node dependency at all or they’re seemingly inverted in nature.
For example, why is Gore in row 2, which triggers a free Mangle while Mangle itself is in Row 3? It would seem more logical that you must first obtain Mangle and then only afterward would picking up Gore. The current approach just seems very “throw it at a board and see where it sticks”.
Another example is Ursine’s Adept. It seems odd that you could theoretically ignore this talent entirely but still be able to pick up things like Scintillating Moonlight, Twin Mooonfire, Galactic Guardian, Fury of Nature, and Elune’s Favored all of which revolve around Moonfire; however, you wouldn’t be able to use it in form. It may seem silly but design decisions should account for this to avoid newbies making such mistakes.
I really think it would behoove them to think about the overall relationship of these talents. If you find that building out a laser build or a thrash-based build or whatever with talents correctly organized leads to a tree that isn’t symmetrical or even in some way as it seems they want, then either that’s a clear indication that the talents in the tree should be consolidated in some way or simple reimagined.
I for the most part find it allright just wish they would put all the moonire stuff in the same row. Bits being to the right and middle just feels bad.
I don’t know about that.
I kind of like the resto tree set up.
The general druid tree is junk
Guardian, like Naros pointed out is a kind of hot mess. There are a least some interplay between talents, but generally a lot of things don’t make sense.
Feral is more of the same.
Too many of the spec specific trees I feel that I basically have to build the same as I have now and by the time I do that, I’ve had to take so many filler talents to get to key utility items, that I’m not left with any real wiggle room. But the choice between the utilities and other talents, the other talents generally aren’t strong enough to make them worth giving up the utility function.
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Because that’s not baseline mangle – it’s Mangle(Rank 2): 20% increased damage vs. bleeding targets.
i found it weird that both beserk talents are required to move onto the bottom of the tree, while in feral it’s optional.
came up with this mess:
Only problem with that build is that beserk is 15 seconds and incarn is 30 
yeah, I saw that type of build before and I have to ask myself…how is that going to work?
Druid trees suffer from a huge design problem, which is how to make the general tree feel good when it has to work for 4 entirely different specs.
It’s like if Blizzard had to make one general talent tree that would feel good for prot warriors, aff warlocks, assassination rogues, and mistweaver monks.
Yeah that talent tree is going to feel bad.
The hunter trees are suffering from the same sort of problem. They need to make their general tree work for a pet class, a non pet class, and a melee class.
It just ends up un-fun and sloppy.
Oh I assumed that there was no concept of baseline anymore.
In that case, then I wonder why Ursine Adept is what gives us the ability to use Moonfire and other spells in forms. You would think that bit of that talent would be baseline too, no?
It’s one thing where you put all the pet class stuff in one-third of the tree, all the melee stuff in another third, and the non-pet class stuff in the final slice; however, where that breaks down is when you have stuff that blurs between the specs.
If you’re playing the spec that falls in the center of the tree, you likely have little or no problem. If you’re playing the spec on either edge of the tree, you get boned because you may have to take unnecessary talents to reach nodes on that far tree that you want.
In my opinion, the class tree makes little sense. It shouldn’t even be a tree at all. In fact, I’d argue that it simply should be a grid of talents, with no dependencies, that you allocate talent points at your own discretion.
The benefit is if you’re playing Feral and want a Moonkin talent, you can gain that talent in the class tree easily without being at a disadvantage because you’re the farthest from the Moonkin subsection of the tree, meaning you would today have to spend unnecessary points to go down the Moonkin tree where-as Resto could maybe leap over at some neighboring node.
That same philosophy applies to the Hunter tree where you eliminate the issue or concern about there being a pet-class, non-pet class, or a melee class.
If there are things in the class tree that don’t fit that design well or you want there to be some dependency and forced choice, move it into the spec tree and make sure all specs have it somewhere in their tree.
To me, that solves all the problems with the class tree design.
An alternative would be to keep the class tree, but rip all the utility from it. Put all the utilities into a grid as I suggested above and then allow the player to allocate points into the class tree or class utility grid as they see fit.
The biggest concern I’ve seen so far, particularly when it comes to utility, is why must certain classes allocate points into spells they’re never going to use to gain a utility. It just seems like an over-engineered and unnecessary design.
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Yeah I agree with most of this.
A giant grid would be great. The trees that people seem to like more (shaman, rogue) are way more grid-like and full of single point talents. It’s pretty clear to me that this method is more fun.
I hate how certain class trees are becoming “if you are this spec, this side of the tree is for you!” like druid and hunter. It’s just lazy and not fun to me.
People don’t like the druid trees right now because the druid problems are core kit problems that the trees don’t fix.
All the trees currently feel aimed at getting you to play one of the shadowlands playstyles you had available. That’s great, if your shadowlands playstyle was good. (I’m not talking tuning, I’m talking gameplay. Tuning can always be fixed.)
Guardian doesn’t feel good as a 3minute CD hero. Balance doesn’t feel good without an AOE AP dump. Feral…I don’t play it but all the feral players seem to agree it just doesn’t feel good at all.
Resto actually feels pretty damn good. But being a HoT healer just comes with strengths and weaknesses. Dedicated Resto players I know have been loving it though, especially with 4pc.
I love them bringing back trees. I don’t like that the trees currently aim towards making us pick a playstyle that doesn’t seem to patch the larger issues we’ve had with playing that spec this xpac. (Guardian laser bear seems super fun, but also a little tedious and may also not fix our core-gameplay loop dilemma)
That said, I totally believe their radio silence is because the community leaders over in the alpha have correctly pointed out the issues, and hopefully they are talking about what they can feasibly do to help. PS it’s worth noting that fundamentally reworking our class might actually end up being too risky a decision for them and they may decide against it. Software works that way. Something 15% broken might be better than trying to improve it and accidentally breaking it 20% somewhere else.
But that’s the whole point of the alpha anyway. You’re supposed to try things, see how it works, see where the gaps are, and determine are the gaps something you can fix in the time you have or do you need to roll back and start from a different perspective.
We’re seeing none of that.
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Playing Build-A-Bear-Workshop with the 3 minute cooldowns feels bad, most especially since it’s what the entire build for M+ is probably going to revolve around.
The entire feral tree is a joke, with huge amounts of feedback available.
I’m looking forward to the older stuff like the drain-life-moonfires coming back, but even then it can use some work.
There’s a lot they have to do with all of this.
And for those that say “there’s still time! Don’t rush them!” need I remind that prepatch is live in about 4 months if they are indeed shooting for a December launch.
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It’s horrible. I’ve played druid for 17 years now, tank for most of it. Might switch classes if they don’t fix these trees.
It’s fine to say its horrible, but what is it about the talents you don’t like. Remember, if you want the designers to actually improve the spec, you need to tell them what you don’t like about it rather than just a generic “I think its bad” with nothing to support why.
yes I hate it, want this 3 minute hero playstyle to die.
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It’s unlikely they will read anything I type or implement it. And since I’m not getting paid, I really don’t want to go through the work to design their tree for them when it’s highly unlikely they would look at or incorporate my work.