Kyrian: Boring buff also Lone Wolf…for 10 seconds
Necrolord: Chi Wave…
Night Fae: just spams your abilities you have had for 10 years…probably just moonfire
Venthyr: another buff, but wait I get the opportunity to deal 45% of my health to myself? and get stunned? sign me up
Maybe I am disgruntled about the unknown design choices behind druid heading into SL.
There are other specs that have worse but yeah they seem pretty meh. At least we get some good powers from the conduits and legendaries right?
Convoke is like the ultimate cop-out from a design perspective. It’s like the devs admitted that they had no idea how to design a covenant ability for a class with all 4 roles and just gave up.
Dev1: OK, druid Night Fae covenant, let’s go.
Dev2: So, what do druids do again? I haven’t played one since Wrath.
Dev1: OK, let’s come at this from another angle, what do the Night Fae do?
Dev3: Where’s the Mountain Dew?!?!
Dev1: In the fridge. DUH!
Dev2: They do druid things.
Dev1: Well, that doesn’t help.
Dev3: Can I have a Mountain Dew?
Dev1: Yes, you can have a Mountain Dew just go get it.
Dev2: Can’t we just have them do more druid things? I want to get back to levelling my fourth assassin rogue.
Dev3: Roll the dice to see if I’m getting drunk!
Dev2: I don’t think you can get drunk in the My Little Ponies tabletop RPG.
Dev1: Guys, focus, we need to come up with an ability that druids get from a bunch of other druids.
Dev2: So, what if they . . . wait for it . . . just do more druid things.
Dev1: I’m intrigued, tell me more.
Dev2: I don’t know roll some dice to figure out what druid things they do.
Dev3: Are there any unicorns there?
Dev1: Yeah. that sounds like a great idea, but what if they end up refreshing the same weak DoT five times?
Dev2: Just let the dice decide, dude, let the dice decide.
Dev1: I love it! We don’t even have to code any new abilities or interactions.
Dev3: Ok, but if there’s any unicorns there I wanna do them!
Kyrian: yes quite lame.
Necrolord: highly interactive DOT/HOT on a short CD that adds a lot of flavour and even complexity to a Druid’s rotation (on single target, anyway). Track where your current stack is and where it’s about to be so you may determine who to target with your next Swarm (boss or ally), to maximize uptime on the boss and have two Swarms efficiently bouncing. Downside is its lack of AOE value is going to make it weak and perceived poorly in the eyes of the community, despite being so interactive and adding depth to any Druid’s rotation. Nice bonus hybrid elements too.
sidenote: it’s nothing like chi wave, maybe learn what the abilities do before you post.
Night Fae: interacts with specs in very unique ways, and requires proper setup. For example Boomy you want to ensure correct Eclipse timing and strength. Feral you want to have dumped CP’s, have TF on CD, and have BT stacks ready to go before using (because it uses a lot of bites). It also interacts with BT, either proccing it or if not you will have to track it to make sure you get a BT proc on your global after. Resto/Guard I don’t know as well but I know it interacts with certainly talents like SOTF (Resto), and Guard can use things like Pulv etc so I imagine you’d want Thrash stacks.
OH and Heart of the Wild interacts with it beautifully, CD’s line up and makes HOTW less disappointing. I’m selling it all short, but Convoke interacts in a variety of ways with specs and talents, and may even slightly influence talent builds. Good and valuable burst damage/healing too, not too long of a CD so still feels quite interactive (less so than Swarm, but power is much more noticeable)
Venthyr: the risk/reward is cool, but you’d have to be really bad at the game to get stunned by it, and ultimately is a let down because of that. Also it makes Bal/Feral more CD reliant, edging them closer to being ‘3 minute classes.’ However that interactivity with CD’s isn’t necessarily a bad thing, for Guardian using Berk + Legacy of the Sleeper + Rav Frenzy is apparently massive, with great synergy and the ability to do huge pulls or whatever. Can’t see great value for Resto. Obviously synergizes well with class CD’s as mentioned, but is just that, a CD that is the least interactive of the 4 due to how often you use it, but that being said while it’s up it does make you think and ensure you are optimally building stacks (e.g can use things like dash or cleanse etc to build stacks if optimal to do sofor your spec). Lacks the hybrid elements of the previously 3 abilities though.
Kind of hard doing a write-up given Druid has 4 specs, but that’s my general overview. I think you’re selling 3 of them short.
Kyrian: Create a bond with an ally. Activate new ability for 10 seconds, collecting energy from damage/healing done by you and your bonded ally. This empowers your Kyrian steward stacking 2 times. Activating the steward:
Damage: shoots a beam of arcane energy at your target dealing X% of the damage/healing collected.
Healing: Blasts a targeted area with arcane energy healing all allies within for X% damage/healing collected.
Tank: Creates an arcane barrier at the targeted area reducing damage taken by all within the barrier for X% damage/healing collected.
Necrolord: Call upon a swarm of insects moving 40 yards in front of you. Allies within the swarm are healed for X% spell damage increasing the longer they stay within the swarm, and after leaving the swarm are left with a buff increasing healing taken by X for 6 seconds.
Enemies within the swarm take shadow damage for X% spell damage increasing the longer they are within the swarm. Enemies hit by the swarm are left with a debuff increasing damage taken by X for 6 seconds.
Night Fae: I don’t see them changing this (or any of them), and it seems people actually enjoy this. However, maybe allow us to customize the abilities used during it. I don’t have any ideas for this.
Venthyr: Remove the damage and stun component. If you become idle for the 1.5s then it removes the buff and places a debuff on you increasing damage taken by the same % increase you had stacked.
Giving this ability more options than limited would be nice.
Kyrian is the worst\most boring spell and idea we have had for a while. Night Fae looks pretty cool but it prob wont be viable in pvp compared to necrolord due to it being countered by CC and having a big cd compared to necro shield + swarm ability.
i am guessing venthyr\kyrian will be the go to for PVE and necrolord for pvp (Shield plus dot).
Super disappointed in the kyrian ability though.
Chi Wave : A wave of Chi energy flows through friend and foes, dealing Nature damage or healing. Bounces up to 7 times to targets within 25 yards.
Adaptive Swarm: Command a swarm that heals (126% of Spell power) or deals (120% of Spell power) Shadow damage over 12 sec to a target and increases the effectiveness of your periodic effects on them by 20% . Upon expiration, Jumps to a target within 25 yards , alternating between friend and foe up to 3 times .
Seems pretty similar too me, minus the dot portion.
Convoke will probably be a stronger ability, but it just isn’t interesting to me. It is also easily interrupted. As a feral this is not my favorite.
Don’t even get me started on Soulshape. How is this not built into our forms already. Empower the forms we have instead of turning us into blue shape.
I think the risk/reward is cool as well, but strictly pvp this ability is a tough sell. Feral already has a 3 minute CD.
Ultimately I saw all these new abilities classes were receiving, and 2 of ours are just buffs. The only other class like this is Paladin. I believe they share the same feelings as myself…very underwhelmed. Almost like very little thought was put into some classes abilities.
Well nightfae has a conduit thing that heals them for 5% hp every 3 seconds while in soul
Shape. That might get some use in pvp.