I wish they’d put Adaptive Swarm in place of HotW, along with giving it a 100% chance to split every time it jumps. That would give you a net damage gain without leaving form, it would fit in well with the other forms as you’d be bumping up healing on allies and bumping up DoT damage on enemies. It also fits in with all 4, they could rename it to Insect Swarm, or just make the damage type be Nature over Death or whatever.
As for damage nodes, you already have other damage nodes, like giving 6% more stats pending on your form change, 6% increased physical damage done.
Anything else, besides this I feel, should actually be placed in their respective spec trees over the class tree.
Putting AS in over on the class tree also frees up 1-3 talent slots, too, for the other 3 spec trees.
I just don’t want more CDs, I actually want this game to move away from CDs and more into higher sustained damage for all specs and classes, higher sustained healing for all healers over burst.
I heartily agree that our capstones stink. I only took one out of the 6 available (3 guardian, 3 druid).
I’m working up some numbers to try to give some comparisons and hope to have a post tomorrow ready for it. But when I look at the numbers, I’m really impressed with my moonbear build. While I miss ranged silences, with the power of moonfire ranged agro isn’t an issue, and outside of 1 dungeon, LOS pulls are pretty simple.
But I did a comparison last night of a same ilvl druid and prot pally. I chose those to start as they are the tanks I’ve been playing non stop since TBC. Been playing BDK since start of BFA. Warrior I played in Vanilla and into TBC but not really much since then. Monk…never. VDH…started SL with it but lost interest. Not enough buttons.
Long story short though, my guardian build was doing over twice the damage and three times the self healing that my paladin was doing with similar ilvl and the same instance. 50% of my dps was coming from Moonfire, and I wasn’t even going that hard on using it, really just on pulls as I ran in and then on guardian procs where it was critting for 17k per twin moonfire. I was pulling 12k DPS where my paladin was only able to pull around 7k. I do have the maul and thrash talents as well, but maul was still only pulling about 5% of DPS. It did hit like a truck with 15-17k crits when fully buffed by mangle and procs. With the arcane self healing, that part alone was giving me about 2k HPS just on rolling DOTs from Moonfire. The only time that changed was when I took Ursoc’s talent and the absorb prevented almost all the damage. When I did Arcane healing plus ursoc plus untamed savagery, I was doing 80% of the healing total.
I’m not running an incarn build as I hate it. I’m not feeling huge down times right now just because there is always something going on. I have found I’m not using swipe nearly as much since there is less need for fillers with moonfire/maul build I’m running.
As I’ve said before, game play is improved from SL, but that’s a really low bar. I think there is potential, but definitely needs more. DPS and sustain seem to be there, just needs a few more tools and better gameplay IMO.
Like why can’t my guardian get Swarm?
I’d love a true ranged silence.
The regrowth talent has potential to help feel like a hybrid tank like my pally does, but with a 20s ICD, I don’t see much use for it.
Nature’s vigil could be interesting, haven’t played with it yet.
Even a simple tweak like HotW lets you cast some healing spells or DPS spells (like sunfire) while in bear form during its use could be interesting, or letting my retain the armor and health of bear while in cat form. Something.
For all other classes it seems talents do something new and interesting, add something, For druid specs in general its just about getting back basic abilities and adding % numbers to make them functional/viable.
4 talent points for Barkskin.
9 points for Moonfire…
7 points for Thrash, 1 for getting the ability, and 6 in spec tree (including Blood Frenzy)
20 points on 3 abilities…summs up druid so far in DF!
I am a Bear main and on the Beta. The DF tree sucks like a gaping chest wound. The “thrash build” feels ok but you lose a lot of Pro’s. The “moonfire” build is a freaking meme.
exactly what I was thinking besides my original post in here at the beginning of this thread that needs addressing. Granted Bears will function I’m sure, but that’s not my point.
Why is Berserk being broken up into so many talent points just to get the same effect it always has been.
It only reinforces they couldn’t come up for a point per point idea to give more flavor to the class like some others classes and instead said , lets break up a lot of common bear talent and make them spend a lot of extra points to get it back.
From what I gather, though it wont happen to a Guardian as many powers are hidden behind berserk talent choices… a feral druid that picks no berserk talent points gets a power in game that literally reads “you go berserk for 20 seconds” and gains nothing… lord when i heard this I couldn’t stop laughing.
So un-surprised at this lack of concern for druids that this went into game like it is.
What I fear most, is that it’s going to be a last minute they’re going to rush to skim the forums and feedback… throw something together and go live… no testing, no feedback, no further tweaking. which could be good, yeah… we could get something OP or we could get brokenly bad.
How is moonfire build a meme? Performance is there, and its not like all I’m doing is hitting moonfire. I’m only using it on pulls and with galactic procs and it alone is pulling 6k DPS. I’ll far take this over a meme worthy incarn build we currently have to endure.
I do agree, the tree is junk compared to others. For example, I love the warrior trees. Lots of actual real decisions to make and pathing to do with talents. But the main warrior tree vs the main druid tree is a good example of how the druid tree is subpar for guardian. All throughout the warrior tree, there are items that impact all three specs in a meaningful way. Very little fluff in the way.
However on guardian, I have to pick some talents (like sunfire) that I can’t even use in guardian, just so I can reach typhoon. Same with spreading out berserk abilities across 3 talents.
Again, I think guardian so far on beta is performing well, just the trees are lackluster and not very inspiring and really do not offer much in the way of exciting game play.
I agree, but the bad thing for Druids is: they have all 3 roles they need to cover in that 1 general class tree. They have 4 different specs that, again, they all need to be covered in that 1 class tree.
It doesn’t feel good, but, part of that reason is we have more specs than every other class in this game. We have more things that need to be covered, including all 3 roles.
Paladins, Monks, Druids are the only 3 classes who can do all 3 roles, and Druids are the only class who can do all 4 roles when you split DPS into melee and ranged.
While it’s a strength it’s also a weakness for class design because what could they do that gives good potential to all 3 roles, all 4 types of roles, then? Not a whole lot.
I don’t like that they broke CDs up, I don’t even like that there are CDs in the tree at all. I’d rather they design everything around sustained damage and beefy tankiness.
The capstones are trash, but what stuff does anyone actually want? We don’t toss around any ideas besides vague crap like “I want a DPS talent” and it’s like…“well, yeah, but what kind? What do you think it should look like, be, how should it work? What does it increase?” Etc.
Like, I love the lunar things, and wish they would all be grouped up and then end in a capstone for an arcane ability. Maybe bears get to call down full moon as well every 30th or 50th Moonfire tick, and have it based off of Attack Power over Spell Power. Then again, that’s taking the very idea from Balance, too.
Maybe throw in some Torghast abilities that were fun. Things like “Increase Maximum Health” and then a passive “Deal 1/2% of your Maximum Health per second to every nearby enemy you are in combat with.”
Maybe something like “The lower health percentage the target, the more damage your abilities deal to them.” “The lower health your target, the damage they deal to you is reduced by up to X.”
“You now inspire those around you, increasing their health by 5%”
“You redirect the damage of all allies within 40 yards, redirecting 5/10% of all damage they take to you.” This can be toggled on or off, or it deactivates if you fall below 30% HP.
“Your Mangle now always hits an additional 1/2 targets, but deals 5/10% reduced damage.”
“Maul rage cost reduced by 20% and damage increased by 20%”
“Maul automatically makes your next Thrash trigger 2 additional times.”
“Ironfur reflects X percent of physical damage taken back at the attacker.”
That’s definitely the challenge. Could be solved by making some useful changes make to capstones. Even a minor change to Furor could be impactful. For Guardians, let us keep the HP, Armor, and any IF/Defensives we have going for the 4s window. Then we can choose if we want more feral, resto, or boomkin game play. It would give us the shapeshifting, but not make it as useless as it can be right now. Simple, and effective.
But I think the problem is more that abilities are locked behind shape shifting. For example, for paladins (and I assume monks), I can use the general tree to buff damage, healing, and utility, and since I don’t have to shape shift, I can utilize most of it anytime while tanking without penalty.
So a simple change to Furor could solve a lot of these issues, since shifting out of bear at the wrong time can end up getting splatted on the wall.
That depends, cast-time spells like Vivify or Flash of Light do come with a small penalty that the caster cannot parry, dodge, or block the incoming attacks during the cast, but that penalty is generally substantially less critical than say a Guardian druid shifting out and casting a heal in caster form.
The more I test on beta, the more I’m leaning to tanking on Pally right now. CD’s for miles, utility, fairly mobile now, and fun interactive talents like Sacrifice can be used to buff damage and healing.
My friends are trying to compel me to play Warrior at this point. I recently made the choice to cancel my pre-purchase over the ongoing lack of feedback about Guardian druid.
As much as I would love to play the new expansion, I also feel there is a point where you have to make the harsh decision to stand your ground about what you believe in.