Class Tuning Incoming -- February 7 (Updated)

[Asmodyus-farstriders]

Any bets on this next patch (Feb 7th) causing MORE issues and taking 8+ hours to implement?

[Gumblé-thrall]

Very safe bet.

[Lemonshark-dalaran]

@Meier-chogall

nerf spam

what nerf spam?

[Siameren-lightnings-blade]

Well, that’s too bad. I thought it would be a cool idea to have Druids actually swap forms in combat.

[Draginazz-zuljin]

Lol. You must be playing with some terrible warlocks.

[Trippÿ-stormrage]

I wonder if they’re going to add any positive brew tuning.

[Tytantus-old-blanchy]

It’s crazy how bad warlocks suck now

[Sharingan-uldum]

It’s actually becoming quite laughable. Trying to raid I’ve seen numerous groups only pick up 1 just for HS and summons. Then refuse to grab more

[Dáddý-area-52]

It’s almost like Affliction got nerfed this patch and is still unsufferable to play. The current play is to simply not take a major cooldown now because of how bad Darkglare is and you still have to deal with a 6 second uptime maintenance buff that can’t be pandemic’ed (so you have to refresh at 5.9 seconds for optimal play). All while juggling 6 DoTs and preparing for dumps.

Congrats for all that you get to still do less damage than people green parsing on better specs.

[Mikoshi-illidan (Mikoshi)]

@Brewa-hyjal

“More nodes!” is the bad thinking Blizzard fell into in 10.0.5 that ended up making the tree worse than it was before.

Going to disagree at least in theory. I have no issues with there being distinct branching choices in the talent tree. The core problem with bear at the moment is that we NEED both sides for mitigation.

They can have a bloated last tier on bear talent tree work, but only if our mitigation choices are heavily weighted toward middle and above on the tree.

[Murdercarpet-zuljin]

@Megacup-proudmoore

Please buff some random skill on some random class by 254% thanks

I think that’s how they do it now. They have a random buff/nerf generator. It randomly chooses a class → spec → ability and randomly buffs or nerfs it by a random percentage.

[Murdercarpet-zuljin]

@Thrunn-senjin

Do Guardian Druids have to communicate feedback via the front page of reddit to communicate effectively?

@Gumblé-thrall

Bears are not enjoying their spec. So that would be why they are doing it.

The only “feedback” they pay attention to is dropping participation numbers and unsubbing.

And their response seems to be, “We’d better do something, even if it’s wrong.”

@Brutic-area-52

Seriously, how do they make such a massive change to the way the spec feels to play without any dev notes on why? We literally get paragraphs for the smallest changes now and this was swept under the rug, mid season and they push us into a spec that feels so much worse to play for optimal performance.

It’s almost as though they think a good design principle is to make people learn to “adapt” to bad changes.

@Kittsuera-lothar

Would reducing the attack power gains from mastery to 1% for every 1% vs live 2% for every 1% and then reducing the amount of mastery stat need to gain 1% in half such that the Attack power doesn’t change but the health and healing taking is effectively doubled from mastery?

They’re reading this and getting as far as:

@Kittsuera-lothar

Would reducing the attack power

And thinking, hold my beer.

@Sentenzà-illidan

You dropped your /s considering Bears are rated as the only F tier tank massively behind every other tank.

That poster learned everything she knows about Guardian from watching “Bear attack!” videos on Youtube.

@Betton-azgalor

you’re buffing guardian druid that is unkillable right now and making no other changes?

Watched the same Youtube “Bear attack!” videos.

@Stagheim-stormrage

These are all simple tunings that would take a good developer about one or two afternoons to test.

You are making unsubstantiated assumptions about the balance skill level of the team. And assuming they test… HAHAHAHAHA! I think they avoid testing because they’d rather release stuff completely broken than “spoil” it by letting people see it during testing.

@Azaela-silvermoon

Can you tell the developers to just quit? You guys can’t handle a MMO, and need all new staff.

The designers like the idea of the “challenge” of learning how to make ambitious changes to something they barely understand.

[Slowpo-illidan]

please read below agreed shaman is garbage and this changes ptr are bad

20 posts

70 Highmountain Tauren Shaman[25665]

I’ll start with stuff I’d like to see changed (sorry, this might be a little long), followed with some feedback on the newly-added talents at the bottom.

Class Tree:

1. The number one issue as a resto shaman is you really want to play 2 capstones in a raid setting, which means you are extremely limited on talent points. A very standard resto shaman build in raid is essentially locked in on 30/31 Class points, and the 10.0.7 update hasnt solved that. The primary reason for this is because of Totemic Recall + Earthen Wall Totem - I like this interaction, however I’m not a fan that it’s stripped shaman of a lot of its utility because the talent points to get it are so costly
2. The loss of Focused Insight will definitely impact resto shamans mana pool (and throughput) quite considerably. Good shamans were using Flame Shock upwards of 5 times a minute, so there will need to be some healing and mana changes to compensate losing this. I do agree though, that Resto Shaman has too many modifiers currently, and this is one that can go if spells are compensated slightly.
3. The Swirling Currents change feels worse for every scenario except specifically for a raiding resto shaman. I understand the want to reduce the number of modifiers (and agree, it was getting out of hand) however this one in particular did not feel intrusive to the specs playstyle and is something I think would be fine reverting.

Spec Tree:

1. There are too many nodes in the top section of the tree. Resto druid has 11 different nodes (all 1 point each), Preservation evoker has 9 different nodes (all 1 point each), Holy paladin has 11 different nodes (all 1 point each) - Resto shaman has 13 nodes and 3 of them are 2 talent points. It’s impossible to not spend a bunch of your points just in this top section, which further limits what you can take in the middle/lower sections of the tree.
2. Flash Flood needs replaced - this talent is currently not used in any content, and was only used in PvP in BfA + Shadowlands because of the issues with the previous talent trees.
3. Improved Primordial Wave is not taken in any content unless you want to path to Continuous Waves or Tumbling Waves. This talent either needs buffed or (preferably) scrapped.
4. Improved Earthliving Weapon is not taken in PvE content. I believe this talent is taken in pvp (and pvpers correct me on the reasoning if im wrong here) primarily for dispel protection on low hp targets. The additional healing this talent does is very poor, especially for 2 talent points.
5. Torrent needs to be 1 talent point. Every other talent in the middle section is 1 point, and Torrent has been worth ~1% healing per point spent for this tier. It makes it really hard to path through if it stays 2 talent points, especially with the newly-added Healing Tide and Mana Tide upgrades you may want to get.
6. Earthen Harmony shouldnt gatekeep Ascendance, and Deeply Rooted Elements shouldnt be separated from Ascendance. Instead, I’d rather see Ascendance take place of Earthen Harmony, and then put Deeply Rooted Elements (or an even better upgrade to Ascendance) below Ascendance, similar to both the Elemental and Enhancement trees.
7. Water Totem Mastery doesn’t feel good to path through. You only take this because it’s mandatory to get to Cloudburst Totem/Living Stream Totem.
8. Of all of the modifiers that resto shaman has, I think Master of the Elements is probably my least favorite. I understand it’s very good for damage in a M+ setting, however you’re often using it to buff Healing Rain (Acid Rain), which means you’re casting Lava Burst in AoE roughly every 10 seconds, which makes it feel really intrusive.
9. I think the Spec tree (especially in the ‘capstone’ area) needs more impactful passive buffs. Shaman suffers from a lot of button bloat, and the middle and especially the capstone area adds a lot of new buttons to the spec. I think the 4pc bonus from Sepulcher of the First ones would make a great addition as a 2-point talent somewhere in the capstone area, as well as the 4pc from Antorus, which could also be a 2-point passive. There are many things you could put in this area, but they need to be good enough to warrant sometimes picking over Downpour, or Primordial wave for example, not things like Improved Primordial Wave or Improved Earthliving Weapon.
10. Wellspring nerf needs reverted. Wellspring (and downpour) are both in a scenario where as soon as they’re worse than Chain Heal you simply stop pressing them. The 30% nerf to Wellspring would do just that, and Wellspring currently is not overperforming compared to the rest of the nodes at the bottom of the talent tree, or compared to other healers abilities (Dream Breath for example is nearly double the amount of healing of Wellspring).

New stuff in 10.0.7

1. Tidebringer feels good - this isn’t something I always see myself playing, but will be an incredible pick up on fights that require you to spread out a bit more like Halondrus. This is exactly the type of passive talent I was hoping to see added to the tree.
2. Spiritwalker’s Tidal Totem - I wasn’t a huge fan of the legendary back in Shadowlands, but as a talent that you can easily swap out I think this is a fine addition, and could see myself using it occasionally. It currently does not work on the PTR, though
3. Mana Tide Totem Bonus - I realize this is a work in progress, however I do think the main reason I’m not too stoked about this bonus is because the standard Mana Tide Totem just isnt very good. Spending a talent point to buff something that isn’t very good doesn’t feel very good, but if the base spell of Mana Tide Totem was a bit better then this would be something I could see myself taking.
4. Current Control - Really like the addition of cooldown reduction for Healing Tide Totem, however I don’t think 30 sec is enough to warrant picking in most scenarios. There aren’t many encounters that operate around 2.5 minute damage timers, so this talent would be incredibly niche. If this reduced HTT’s CD by 60 seconds like Inner Peace for druid, we could at least fit 2min damage timers much better, which would be wonderful.
5. Tide Turner - I dont think this is near powerful enough to warrant picking except maybe in a PvP scenario? The key issue with Healing Tide Totem is that it’s weak in a raid setting, the 10.0.5 change already made it a bit more of an impactful CD in M+ and PvP, so I think this talent needs to simply buff the healing of HTT in general, not just on a single target.

TLDR: These changes didn’t really fix the core issues with the shaman tree, although I’m glad to see a few of the dead talents (Ever-Rising Tide and Nature’s Focus) gone. I think as it stands though, this was a nerf compared to what resto shaman was before.

[Menbearpig-sargeras]

I mean blizzard is such an indie company and they have the best devs and knows what is wrong with each spec and certianly will balance the spec all withing 1% of each one

There will not be overpowerd spec like Port warrior, HDH, WW monk, rouge right? Surely there will not be undertrun spec like guardian druid, fire mage, SV hunter.

I mean they have the best dev who knows the spec and who are passion about the game and 100% will not promote a fart boy working envirotment right?

[Clssck-zuljin]

With the updates coming to RET Paladin, will there be changes to the Paladin class tree, or just the RET tree?

Will Prot/Holy be looking at updates as well?

[Thundertaker-alleria]

Trust me, we’re confused too. Its like they consistently get this crap backwards.

Healing specs based on damage? Here, have more heals.

Healing spec not based on damage? Sorry your heals suck, have some more damage.

[Gumblé-thrall]

Blizz,

Any word on alterations to these changes so that we actually get something that will help us?

Just posting it again:

Just to keep them consolidated, here are my recommendations:

Mastery scaling nerf reverted so the stat is worth stacking again for magic damage.
Ursine Adept allows all druid instant cast spells to be cast in bear form.
(side note, you could also do this with Heart of the Wild and allow us to pick an affinity spec where we could use spells from that affinity in Bear Form… default heals, but if you wanted more single target, Rake and Rip could be fun to throw from Bear, or if you were AOEing, Sunfire would help alot. Basically figure out some way for Bears to use those talents in the General tree that we spec to get down the tree that we cannot use while we are tanking)

Spec Tree:
-Connections added:
=Killer Instinct to Feline Swiftness
=Sunfire to Remove Corruption
=Nuturing Instinct to Astral Influence
-Maim usable in bear form for 20 rage.
-Matted Fur reduces your Barkskin cooldown by 10 sec.
-Well-Honed Instincts 1 pt talent for “up to once every 90 sec.”
-Ursine Vigor added “and you retain your armor for 2 sec after leaving Bear Form.”
-Renewal reduced to a 30 sec cooldown.
-Heart of the Wild changed to 20% improved, active at all times.

Bear Tree:
-Survival Instinct upped to 2 charges, Improved Survival Instincts removed.
-Brambles doubled in value, reflects magic damage as a mini block.
-Beserk:Ravage becomes Beserk, all three nodes rolled into that node.
-All talents in row 5 dropped to 1pters for the same benefit.
-Layered Mane up to 25% chance for both effects to occur.
-Rend and Tear choice node moved to where Beserk:Unchecked Aggression used to be.
-Rage of the Sleeper moved to where Beserk:Persistence used to be.
-Lunar Beam increased by 400% and cooldown reduced to 45 sec.
-Tooth and Claw and Pulverize apply buff to the druid, not the targets.
-Tooth and Claw affects all damage, not just physical.
-Ursoc’s Fury increased to 50%.
-Dream of Cenarius cannot occur more than once every 10 sec.
-Ursoc’s Guidance changed to 10 Rage for 1 sec off Incarn and Surv Instincts.
-Twin Moonfire changed to Moonsfury: “Moonfire debuff hits every target with your Thrash applied to it.”
-Thorns of Iron 40% of your armor and increases in damage up to 5 targets before splitting.

[Cufs-thrall]

The fact that Guardian druids even made it pass beta in this sorry state just shows how little the devs know about their own game. My 382 warrior is out performing my 405 full tier Guardian druid… and it’s not really even close. Hopefully Microsoft will clean house of these incompetent devs.

[Kogy-echo-isles]

Let me be yet another person to chime in and say that Tooth and Claw is broken. There is no magic damage mitigation that actually works for Druid. The tooltip for Tooth and Claw says “damage” not “physical damage” or “non-magic damage”.

And no, don’t just fix the tooltip. Druids desperately need some way to avoid magic damage, putting them in-line with the rest of the tanks out there.

[Attimis-moon-guard]

@Menbearpig-sargeras

I mean

@Menbearpig-sargeras

I mean

I mean… lemme go grab the popcorn.

Okay. Continue. You make a fantastic clown!