Detailed Feedback for Druid Class Tree Changes

Classes Druid
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This is going to be a long post, but I have a lot to talk about and give feedback for. I posted this as a new thread because I wanted a place to specifically discuss the class tree changes instead of a bunch of discussions about different spec changes.

The current class talent tree for druids is objectively bad and considered by many to be the worst in the game. There are 5 major problems with it that I’ll list and briefly describe in descending order of importance.

  • There are a lot of wasted talent points for three main reasons.
    • There are many base rotational abilities that you have to spend multiple talent points on instead of having them as baseline or condensed into less points.
    • There are some talent points you are forced to take that are useless to you because they give you rotational abilities that aren’t relevant to your spec.
    • And there are some talents that cost too many points (such as Lycara’s Teachings.)
  • There is a terrible lack of lateral movement in the talent tree which contributes to gate-keeping and wasting talent points to get to important throughput and utility in both the middle and lower sections of the tree.
  • There are too many “dead-end” talent nodes that do not have any connections below them meaning we’re losing point value when we’re taking these “dead-end” nodes. Druids have 7 in their class tree which is significantly more than anybody else.
  • The end/capstone talents are either very weak or very niche in the case of Heart of the Wild. Nature’s Vigil was nerfed too much and is weak in comparison to Ancestral Guidance or Vampiric Embrace even though neither of those are capstone talents. Protector of the Pack is incredibly bad. And Heart of the Wild is incredibly niche for both Balance and Feral, and even Guardian gains significantly less value from it than Resto does.
  • There are certain important utility abilities that are gate-kept behind abilities that are very niche or that aren’t relevant to your spec. For example, Stampeding Roar is gate-kept behind Soothe which is niche utility, and for non-Resto druids Remove Corruption was gate-kept behind Rejuvenation and Swiftmend.

The first draft of the new druid class tree for the Alpha only partly addresses the first issue, and either completely ignores all of the other issues or in some instances actually makes them worse. These Alpha changes to the class tree need a lot of work because as it stands, the new tree is somehow even worse than the old tree.

Reducing the point value of Lycara’s Teachings and the old affinity passives (bring back Ysera’s Gift) was a good change and cutting a talent near the top of the tree was mostly good as well. However, there are still a lot of rotational talents near the top of the tree, many of which are still useless to other specs that you are forced to take to progress down the tree. They actually added in more wasted talent points for specs near the bottom of the tree. Instincts of the Claw is entirely useless to Balance and isn’t valuable to Resto if you aren’t actively cat-weaving, but there are important defensive and utility talents that are gate-kept behind it. Lore of the Grove is useless for Feral (although Guardian actually gains some value), but there are 3 important utility options that are being gate-kept behind that too. There are even more gate-keeping talents making it harder for us to pick up valuable talents than there were before the rework. Lateral movement is still awful. You can’t go from the right to the left or from the left to the right. You can’t even get from the dead-center of the tree to the bottom left or bottom right. We started with 7 “dead-end” nodes and ended with the same number after the rework. Our capstone talents are still bad. Well-honed Instincts is better than Protector of the Pack, but it’s still not strong enough to be a capstone talent. Blizzard really needs to rework this tree and give up on having 4 distinct lines for the four specs. None of the other 3-role classes have their class trees divided vertically into 3 distinct sections that can’t connect to other parts of the tree so why does druid have to have that kind of distinction.

This line of thinking is the first mistake in the creation of the class tree. Having four distinct starting points is fine near the top of the tree when you are picking up base abilities and power gains that are unique to that spec or to two adjacent specs. However, keeping that distinction the whole way down the tree with the lack of lateral movement severely handicaps druid players when it comes to making choices about important throughput and utility in the middle or bottom sections of the tree. Forcing us to invest the entire way down a different side of the talent tree in order to pick up important talents is a cost that other class trees are not forcing you to pay.

Those are my base thoughts and reasoning for my criticism of the class tree rework. Below I’m going to give my specific feedback on a change-by-change basis. It’s going to be a long list.

  • Oakskin is a good new talent and I’ve been wanting a talent that would enhance the power of Barkskin for a while now. If you buff it a bit, such as adding a free Frenzied Regeneration like you have in the old The Natural Order’s Will legendary from Shadowlands then it would probably make for a good capstone talent in a tree with capstone talents that are too weak or too niche. The only problem is its placement. The node is gate-kept behind 2 points in Instincts of the Claw which is completely useless for Balance and bad for Resto if you aren’t actively cat-weaving.
  • Fluid Form is an interesting new talent that seems like it would provide good value in saving GCDs if you’re actively form-swapping. Again, the main problem is its placement. It is mostly useless for Balance and is only good for Resto if you are actively cat-weaving to deal damage. It has much more value for Guardian or a Feral that is form-swapping for the Druid of the Claw hero tree. However, it’s at the bottom of the right side with other magic themed utility and is gate-kept behind 2 points in Lore of the Grove which is completely useless for Feral.
  • Ursoc’s Spirit is a fine talent but I don’t see it as being too significant beyond a little extra defensive value if you choose to spend a point on it. It would be more valuable if it buffed stamina in all forms.
  • Instincts of the Claw is just a damage buff to some physical abilities that can be accomplished by merely tuning the base power of those abilities. It seems to only exist to gate-keep Balance and Resto druids from easily acquiring the three talents below it and to give Feral and Guardian 2 points that they feel they need to spend for throughput. It’s two points that we shouldn’t have to spend. Among the gate-kept talents are the Incapacitating Roar / Mighty Bash choice node and Well-honed Instincts.
  • Lore of the Grove is again just a damage and healing buff to abilities and doesn’t seem like it needs to exist beyond gate-keeping the three talent points below it from being easily acquired by Feral and Guardian druids. It’s 2 points that we shouldn’t have to spend. Among the gate-kept talents are Innervate and Nature’s Vigil.
  • Starlight Conduit is fine if you want to keep putting in throughput talents into the tree, but I thought that the point of the class trees was to focus on utility and rotational abilities instead of throughput. It should be able to connect to one of the talents below it instead of being a “dead-end” node.
  • The Heart of the Wild change is only relevant because they removed Moonkin Form from all non-Balance druids.
  • Changing Astral Influence to no longer affect melee abilities and then giving it to cat form as a baseline seems like a weird change to me. Guardian druids are going to want it as well, and all non-Feral druids are going to wonder why Feral is getting the value from the talent as a free baseline while they have to spend a talent point on it. It should either be a free baseline for the class or all specs should have to spend the talent point on it to get the value. If Blizzard intends to revisit talents that extend the range of melee abilities, then it has to be across all of the classes/specs and Astral influence should be revisited or reworked since its value will change.
  • Pruning Swiftmend is a decent change in terms of wasted points and reducing the gate-keeping for Remove Corruption, but it’s just taking away another healing spell from Balance and Feral druids. Balance and Feral druids have lost a lot of their healing throughput over the last two expansions and we’ve seen them suffer more from rot damage because of it. Right now, Swiftmend wasn’t tuned high enough to be worth using most of the time, especially since it required a setup cast to apply a hot for it to consume. But that doesn’t mean that Swiftmend shouldn’t have been buffed or reworked to not consume a hot to make it more useful for non-Resto druids.
  • Pruning Improved Swipe is an overall good change.
  • Making Moonkin Form as a Balance only form is actually a bad change for non-Balance druids. It hinders Guardian and Resto druids “owl-weaving” with damaging spells and removes the ability for those two specs to do a Moonkin Form Convoke the Spirits as a damage cooldown. It also takes away unique utility to use Flap or to cast CC while remaining immune to polymorph effects in PVP. It could have been made baseline or just as easily put in Starfire’s place and had Starfire go baseline.
  • The point change to Feline Swiftness is good, but the placement is still bad. All of the other old “affinity” passives are fairly easily picked up by other specs, but Feline Swiftness is still gate-kept behind Rake and is also a “dead-end” talent with no connection below it.
  • The Thick Hide change to one point is a net positive, but nerfing our passive damage reduction from 6% to 4% on an already squishy class (at least for Balance and Feral) seems a little rough. Consider making it 5%.
  • Natural Recovery costs one point instead of two, but had its healing value taken away from it which isn’t that good. I still think that this node should be where Ysera’s Gift is put. Ysera’s Gift was a valuable passive heal that all druids had the option to talent into starting when it was added in the Isle/Throne of Thunder patch (5.2) all of the way until Dragonflight (about 10 years) when it was moved into the Resto-only spec tree. It used to be a significant part of a druid’s ability to deal with rot damage which we are now seeing Balance and Feral struggle with.
  • Astral Influence to one point is a good change not counting the fact that it no longer affects melee abilities.
  • Primal Fury becoming valuable for Guardian druids is a good change and will give the talent value in bear from when it would otherwise only be picked up to increase throughput when cat-weaving. However, it is a “dead-end” node with no pathways connecting it to other talents below it on the tree.
  • The Ursine Vigor change is good and the placement of the node isn’t that bad. Balance druids and Resto druids that aren’t cat-weaving are still going to be forced to waste a point on Ironfur for it though.
  • The stamina change to bear form for Guardian spec doesn’t seem like a change that is too significant, especially since they can gain that 10% stamina back from Ursoc’s Spirit if they want.
  • The Lycara’s Teaching change is an overall good and popularly requested change.
  • Forestwalk is still an awful talent. The magnitude and duration of the effect is too low to make it worth it. The only reason you would ever take it is if you needed to pick up Heart of the Wild, but chose to not to grab Stampeding Roar for some reason. Please replace it with something useful.
  • Well-honed Instincts saw no change since everybody only took 1 point in the talent anyways. It’s not strong enough with a 2-minute cooldown to be a capstone talent. It should honestly be a 90 second cooldown to put it on par with Renewal which is better in every way. It was too powerful in early Shadowlands when it had a CD that was less than a minute, but it seemed to be just fine when it was nerfed to be around 90 seconds.
  • The removal of Gale Winds and Incessant Winds don’t seem to be too significant. I’m not sure anybody would care that it’s gone.
  • The removal of Tireless Pursuit isn’t a very good change. To be fair, the talent was kind of niche and was only good for mostly Feral and Resto druids when they were form-swapping or in PVP. However, we’re still talking about removing movement utility from a class that is already significantly behind on the movement cooldown arms race and druid was supposed to be a class with high movement ability.
  • Moving Renewal to its new position seems like a net-negative for Feral and Guardian druids since it is now gate-kept behind the top half if the right side of the tree. Before it was easily acquired on one of the nodes right after Lycara’s Teachings. However, it does reduce the number of choices you need to make at the bottom of the tree since Forestwalk is awful.
  • Starsurge, Improved Sunfire, Maim, and Hibernate are all still “dead-end” talent nodes with no connections below them to allow you to progress down the tree.
  • Wild Charge and Tiger Dash have been moved from the free-start node in the center of the tree to the middle of the left side. This is a bad change since this talent is more widely used and more valuable than the more niche Mass Entangle / Ursol’s Vortex talent that took its place.
  • Ursol’s Vortex / Mass Entangled being moved to Wild Charge’s old spot is a bad change since it’s more niche and basically forces you to take it if you want Stampeding Roar. I know why it was moved. It was moved to make it easier for Feral druids to pick up because of the Entangling Vortex hero talent. I would like to remind you how bad Entangling Vortex is and how unlikely you are to take it in most circumstances considering the fact that if you need a mass root, you would be better off choosing Mass Entangle which is on the same exact choice node as Ursol’s Vortex and has half the cooldown which effectively allows you to permanently root groups of enemies. Why would I take Entangling Vortex when I could just take Mass Entangle?
  • Moving Cyclone to its new position is a very good change for PVP. However, it’s even more niche in PVE than Soothe is and you have to choose one of the two in order to grab Stampeding Roar which is important utility, especially in raids. Stampeding Roar used to only be gate-kept behind Soothe, but it is now also gate-kept behind Mass Entangle / Ursol’s Vortex. Stampeding Roar is essentially a talent that costs you 3 points in most PVE situations since all three of the talents above it are such niche abilities.
  • Rising Light, Falling Night is still a generic throughput talent that is gate-kept below half of the “magic side” of the tree even though it is purely generic like Lycara’s Teachings. I’ve also always disliked talents and abilities that have different values based on the time of day. Please consider moving it, reworking it, or replacing it altogether.
  • I dislike that Sunfire still costs 2 talent points. It has applied the Sunfire dot to all enemies in the radius since the AOE rework to Sunfire at the beginning of Warlords of Draenor (6.0) all of the way until the start of Dragonflight which was about 8 years. I think it’s a huge waste of a point to spend two points to re-acquire an ability that should realistically only cost 1 point. There could easily be a different talent in place of Improved Sunfire to be taken as an interesting choice instead of having another wasted point on rotational abilities at the top of the tree.
  • Remove Corruption is still gate-kept behind Rejuvenation for non-Resto druids. It’s better than it was, but Rejuvenation still does too little healing for non-Resto druids to consider ever casting the ability and Improved Rejuvenation farther down the tree also has too little value to ever be taken by non-Resto druids.

I still have more to write about the class tree and the class baseline abilities, but I’ll save that for a future post. Thank for you actually reading the entire thing if you made it down this far.

20 Likes
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100% agreed with this post.

Feels like a good summary of the entire class tree to me.

When I play other classes I like making choice in the class tree. Swapping X for Y, trading some throughput for utility in M+, or survivabilty for either as a tank. When I play druid I just see all the points that add nothing, but I have to pick to get what I want. Why are so many baseline abilities, that other specs will never press, still gatekeeping fun and useful things in the class tree?

Druid is one of the few classes that has core rotational abilities in class tree. And has by far the most. And these are the most useless abilities for off specs due to form limitations.
For all the other classes that have them they are either avoidable on off-specs (i.e not gatekeeping any good things, e.g. Kill Command, Renew), or they still bring some utility for off-specs (e.g Death Strike, Chain Lightning)

10 Likes
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As a super casual druid alt player be it guardian, feral or balance, gonna throw my 2 cents here. The talent tree in DF felt like a huge “wait what” type of thing while i was trying to pick something for a specific week m+ on guardian or resto challenge mode node for a interrupt or whatnot.

As many have voiced before, spending 5 talent points on nonsensical things just to get 1 quality of life talent isn’t good design. If we got to a point in a talent tree where let’s say, remove corruption, hibernate(only work on beasts or dragonkin lol) and soothe are all close on the same node, nobody gonna pick all 3 of them at the same time because the points not used on other bigged cds or something else will be dearly missed.

So having them spread across 3-5 other talent points people would never click on for their life if it wasn’t for one of the spells on the end of the tree, feels completely nonsensical.

Repeating the stuff people said several times over the course of new talent trees. Just picking random baselines spells, shoving them on a bloated tree and pretending that’s giving people choices, isn’t really a talent tree. Having boomkin form to pick extended attack range made sense, ok, new form, baseline stuff on the form, extra talents from that druidic thing where i only grab the form for that one talent tree, not ok. Hibernate doesn’t do much, why is it so low on the tree and dependant on a whole amount of things to be picked, that i normally wouldn’t even wan 3-5 points of the node there?

Classic let’s create a problem to fix on a later patch, but hey we forgot about it or gave up cause deadlines so just leave it there.

5 Likes
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The simple fact is that the druid class tree needed a mage tree level rework and instead they just shuffled some talents around and swapped some boring passives in.

I also don’t get their fixation with tying our durability to bear form. Stop it. It takes 2GCDs to shift in and out, while doing zero damage while in bear form. Nobody likes it. Just give feral and balance druids their own inbuilt durability.

Give moonkin form its 15% magic DR back that they took out in Shadowlands.

4 Likes
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I had actually forgotten about that magic DR they used to have tied to moonkin form.

I just went and looked at the changelog for Moonkin Form on Wowhead and it looks like that was actually removed over 10 years ago. You can see the change to the tooltip back in the 5.4 patch of MoP. No wonder I forgot it.

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Yeah, I just remember moonkin and shadow priest both losing their 15% DRs at some point around the same time period.

What angers me is we have a warlock with significantly higher base stamina, a 15% DR from soul link, a 40% shield wall, a 20% death coil heal, a health stone, soul leech, and drain life and a humongous dark pact shield.

We have a mage with temporal sheild, ice block, a 100k+ barrier, cauterize or double ice block/70% DR, blink with stun break or ice floes with shimmer.

And somehow a druid with a crappy 20% DR on a 1 min cd, a 30% heal on a 2 min cd, a frenzied regen on a 2 min cd is too much, just because we can sit and do nothing on bear form.

It’s so unbelievably bad. Give us our 15% DR back. My regrowth is healing for 9% total hp, it’s a waste of a cast. Rejuv is even worse, it doesn’t even heal above 5% hp for a cast.

Balance druid feels so bad to play in M+ because I spend a third of the dungeon high keys sitting doing nothing in bear form.

Shapeshifting as it currently functions is a curse on the class, not a boon.

3 Likes
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Healing & Survivability Problems (Especially for non-Resto Druids)

This conversation is going to be most relevant for Balance and Feral druids, although Guardian druids also may find it relevant when looking at trying to provide offspec healing when not actively tanking or when trying to top people off after a pull ends.

Druids, especially Balance and Feral, have in the past leaned heavily on the hybrid ability to heal themselves in order to deal with consistent damage and to recover their health after bursts of damage. However, over the last few expansions, the ability to provide meaningful healing has consistently been nerfed to the point where their ability to heal themselves is significantly less than in the past.

Swiftmend used to be a powerful instant heal on a 25 or 30 second cooldown that could provide you with a burst of self-healing when you needed it provided you were willing to spend 2 GCDs not doing damage to cast it and then get back into your previous shapeshift form. Feral druids were also heavily encouraged to spend a lot of Predatory Swiftness empowered Regrowth casts in cat form in order to give themselves Bloodtalons. Both Swiftmend and Bloodtalons were changed going into Shadowlands which significantly reduced their value. Swiftmend now required an extra GCD since you needed to give it a hot to consume and Predatory Swiftness no longer affected Bloodtalons so you were no longer incentivized to consume instant cast regrowths to increase your damage. These changes that resulted in less self-healing were mostly covered-up and overshadowed by how powerful Soulbinds and defensive Soul Conduits were for survivability in Shadowlands.

Another change that non-Resto druids suffered going into Dragonflight is that Ysera’s Gift and Improved Regrowth were moved into the Resto spec tree which reduced their healing options. Ysera’s Gift is a valuable passive heal that all druids had the option to talent into which is a significant boost to self-healing when dealing with consistent damage. I can remember it being added into the game back in the Isle/Throne of Thunder (patch 5.2) as a talent option and we kept the talent option for about the next 10 years until it was moved to be in the Resto tree starting in Dragonflight. Improved Regrowth was added as a baseline modifier in Shadowlands to support the power of chain-casting Regrowths since it buffed the crit chance of subsequent casts when the target already had the Regrowth hot. Regrowth is a fairly weak heal at base value that has a bunch of modifiers that are all present in the Resto spec tree in addition to Resto mastery. Let’s examine how weak our heals are right now.

Regrowth is our only baseline heal. The most valuable part of the spell is the direct heal since the hot is fairly weak and stretched out over 12 seconds. Right now, the direct heal from regrowth is approximately 8% of your max health at current tuning (and the hot is about 3%). If I adjust for crit chance, I end up with an average direct heal of about 10% of my max hp. If I’m at low health and I want to self-heal for 40% or 50% of my max health, I’m going to have to chain cast 4 or 5 regrowths on average. That is laughable if you compare that to the burst healing potential of a Retribution Paladin casting a Word of Glory, a dps DK using a Death Strike after a damage event, or an Enhancement Shaman spending some Maelstrom Weapon stacks on a direct heal.

The druid class tree doesn’t really help us very much with healing either despite the fact that there’s supposed to be an entire section dedicated to the Resto spec. All of the talent points are too expensive to take since you’re giving up throughput, utility, or defense value somewhere else on the tree and the heals are often too weak to be worth casting in most situations unless you have Heart of the Wild active.

  • Even if you take Rejuvenation it’s going to be too weak to be worth casting. It’s giving us about 5% of our max health over 12 seconds and shifts you out of form.
  • Swiftmend will heal you for about 14% of your max health on average but it’s often not worth using at a cost of at least two GCDs to get that heal out and another GCD to shift back to Moonkin or Cat form. Anecdotally, I remember Swiftmend healing myself for about 20 to 25% back in BFA and getting crits for 40 or 50% of my max health. It was a valuable self-heal even at the GCD cost and was as valuable as hitting a Healthstone.
  • Wild Growth will never be used outside of a Heart of the Wild window these days. Gone are the days when I would cast Wild Growth and a couple of direct heals to help out my healer after a pack of trash died on Bursting week in M+.
  • Natural Recovery is way too expensive of a talent point investment in Dragonflight. It’s a 5-point investment that could be used anywhere else on the tree. And it’s getting its value cut in half for the Alpha rework.
  • As it stands, nobody except for a Resto druid is ever going to consider spending a talent point on Improved Rejuvenation.

Let me post you a link to a Warcraft Logs graph of overall healing in mythic Amirdrassil for DPS specs. Change the percentiles and raid difficulty around as much as you want and take a look.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/35#metric=hps&class=DPS&dataset=75

(It will not let me post a hyperlink for some reason so copy/paste if you want.)

You can see that Balance is a clear outlier near the bottom of the graph and it’s significantly behind every other hybrid spec in the game and even behind almost all of the non-hybrid specs. Balance is down bad. Feral druids aren’t doing that well either. The only other hybrid dps spec that they can consistently beat is Retribution Paladin and Ret paladins have the potential to do significantly more direct burst healing to save themselves or another player when they’re willing to spend holy power on Word of Glory to do it.

The only self-heal that Balance and Feral druids have that is worth it when they’re in trouble, and Renewal is on cooldown, is Frenzied Regeneration. At base value it has one charge on a 30 second cooldown and requires you to sit in bear form (doing no damage) for all 3 seconds to get the full healing value of 32% of your max health. It is also a 2 GCD ability like Swiftmend since you first have to spend the global to get into bear form. And according to the Wowhead Alpha talent calculator, it is possibly being nerfed from 32% of max health down to 24% of max health.

Something needs to change and the healing of Balance and Feral druids needs to be buffed to increase their survivability unless you want to end up giving them a couple more defensives and absorb shields. Here are my suggestions for consideration to improve hybrid healing for druids:

  • A basic aura buff to the healing of Regrowth, Rejuvenation, Swiftmend, and Wild Growth for non-Resto druids. Simple enough.
  • Give Ysera’s Gift back as an option to all druids by adding it into the class tree in place of Natural Recovery. You can toss Natural Recovery into the Resto tree in its place if you want.
  • Add Swiftmend back into the class tree (and probably make Rejuvenation baseline) with a possible rework in order to make it more usable for non-Resto druids. My suggested Swiftmend rework would be this:
    • Swiftmend – 1 charge – 20 second cooldown: Instantly heal a friendly target for X healing (it should probably be around 20% of max health outside of bear form). Swiftmend will attempt to consume a Regrowth, Wild Growth, or Rejuvenation effect to increase its healing by 15% and reduce its cooldown by 5 seconds.
  • Incentivize consuming Predatory Swiftness buffs more often for damage value. My suggested fix would be to make consuming Predatory Swiftness generate 1 combo point and/or count towards activating Bloodtalons.
  • Add Improved Regrowth back as a baseline effect or into the class tree. It can replace Improved Rejuvenation or the two talents can be combined together since Improved Rejuvenation would still likely never be taken by a non-Resto druid.
  • For overall healing, you can buff Nature’s Vigil to be a more relevant value. Either the magnitude or the duration of Nature’s Vigil has to be increased to bring it up to the power of an actual capstone level talent.
  • Add in another hybrid capstone talent as a choice node with Heart of the Wild or in place of one of the other two. My personal favorite suggestion would be to pull Dream of Cenarius out of the Guardian tree and change the proc condition to be able to proc from casting spells and abilities. You could have the Resto version of the talent work for Wrath instead of Regrowth.

PS: Another long post that could probably be a separate thread on its own but I figured I would post it here since it’s a relevant discussion for multiple specs and should probably be improved partially using the class tree.

3 Likes
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The biggest issue I think the class tree has, is that it is trying to do 4 lines down, and they just don’t work that well cross spec.

They should take inspiration from the original feral tree, and merge bear/cat nodes. Giving different things based on which form you are in. Melee should be on the left, healing should be in the middle, and ranged dps should be on the right.

The capstone skills also suck compared to other classes, why not move some of the universal covenant skills there? Have Convoke as the ranged capstone, Adaptive Swarm as the heal capstone, and for the melee capstone give Leader of the Pack back.

Heart of the Wild can just be merged with the new healer Dream of Cenarius talent, as that is the main use for it.

Also, as a quality of life change, they should make Regrowth and Entangling Roots castable in all forms to compensate for the CVar changes that made /autounshift macros stop working. Now you either need to lock yourself into a form before getting into combat, or run the risk of double / misclicking and form shifting when using the procs. Paladins and Shaman can hard cast their generic heals as DPS and Tanks, it just chews through mana. Druids should work the same way, without the free cast procs it should just make you run out of mana in a few casts.

2 Likes
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I really like the new guardian/druid of the claw tree setup, but with fluid form in such an awkward position it seems like a fumble. Could we swap Forestwalk and fluid form please?

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Weak Capstone Talents in the Druid Class Tree

A big problem with the druid class tree that is often talked about is how weak all three of the capstones are for most druids. Nature’s Vigil was good, but it has been nerfed too much when it was already the weakest of the damage-to-healing conversion CDs even though it is the only capstone talent among them. Protector of the Pack was very bad and its removal was one of the changes I liked. Well-honed Instincts is better than Protector of the Pack, but it saw zero power gain and was just moved into the capstone position. Heart of the Wild is fairly good for Resto druids trying to do damage, but it is niche for Guardian druids and it is incredibly niche for Balance and Feral druids. Let me first talk about the two capstone talents that saw play this expansion.

Nature’s Vigil

Previously, Nature’s Vigil was still the weakest damage-to-healing conversion cooldown, but it was somewhat balanced against the other two by having the highest uptime because of its shorter cooldown and longer duration. However, the 30 second duration was cut in half in season 2 (patch 10.1.5). Let me compare the changes for you.

  • Nature’s Vigil had its duration cut in half from a 30 second duration to a 15 second duration.
  • Vampiric Embrace had its duration reduced by only 20% from 15 seconds down to 12 seconds.
  • Ancestral Guidance didn’t have its numbers changed but could now only convert single target damage into healing instead of also converting cleave/aoe damage into healing. Keep in mind that Nature’s Vigil already only converted single target damage and Ancestral Guidance still kept most of its value in many progression raid fights since those situations were mostly single target anyways.

Nature’s Vigil was already the weakest of the three talents despite being the only capstone among them and it was the one that was nerfed the most for some reason. Let me compare the current power of these three cooldowns.

  • Nature’s Vigil converts 20% of single target damaging abilities into healing on one target for 15 seconds with a 90 second (1.5 minute) cooldown. Again, it’s the only capstone talent among all three of these talents.
  • Ancestral Guidance is at least in the lower tier of the shaman class tree. It converts 25% of single target damage to three friendly targets for a 10 second duration with a 2-minute cooldown.
  • Vampiric Embrace is only a middle tier talent instead of a lower tier or capstone. It converts 40% of single target shadow damage to one target over 12 seconds with a 2-minute cooldown. But wait, it gets better.
  • You can spend a second talent point (San’layn) which will turn Vampiric Embrace into a 90 second cooldown (equal to Nature’s Vigil) and buff its healing by 25%. So Vampiric Embrace will convert 50% of damage into healing for 12 seconds on the same cooldown timing as Nature’s Vigil converts only 20% of its damage into healing.

Nature’s Vigil either needs its magnitude to increase above 20% damage-to-healing or it needs its duration increased again in order to be near the same level as Vampiric Embrace or Ancestral Guidance. And until it does get buffed, it’s going to be a weak capstone talent.

Don’t think I forgot about Resto druid healing-to-damage conversion either. I’m sure some of you remember Resto druids doing very good damage with Nature’s Vigil early in the expansion. The main reason, much more than any other reason, that Resto druid did so much damage with Nature’s Vigil is because the ability had absolutely perfect synergy with Flourish. Almost all of the Hots that were extended and empowered by Flourish counted as “single-target heals” for the ability and Nature’s Vigil had the exact same cooldown as Flourish. You could just macro the two abilities together and you would do massive damage whenever you did a big Flourish-ramp in raid as long as all of it wasn’t overhealing. Nature’s Vigil was essentially nerfed 3 times this expansion for Resto druid. First, they capped how much healing could be converted into damage each tick based on your spell power. Then, they reduced the duration by half during the class-wide nerf. Finally, Blizzard absolutely destroyed Flourish with a 75% nerf to the tick-rate increase which was again a huge nerf to Nature’s Vigil for Resto druids since Flourish synergy was one of the big reasons that it did so much damage. Resto druids are doing only a bit more damage with Nature’s Vigil now in Amirdrassil than they were 70 item levels ago in Vault of the Incarnates.

Heart of the Wild

As I said earlier, Heart of the Wild is a very niche talent for 3 of the 4 specs of druid. Only Resto druids see much use of the talent when they’re trying to deal some burst damage. Guardian druids have a much harder time using it in PVE. When in M+ they’re tanking the whole time so they can’t really swap out of bear form to make use of it. And only on certain raid fights can Guardian druids get good use out of Heart of the Wild. There are a lot of raid fights where you either have a hard-hitting dot from a tank mechanic or where you are splitting damage with your other tank and if you swap out of bear form, you are going to die very quickly. Also, Guardian druids started doing considerably more dps in bear form after the rework in the middle of season 2.

Heart of the Wild is even more niche for Balance and Feral druids. You will never use it to deal damage as a dps-spec druid. You may very rarely use it to heal for a bit, but those fights are few and far-between. You may sometimes take it as an extra defensive, but that is more of a PVP situation where you may be sitting in bear form for an extended duration when you’re in trouble. You can’t really survive hard-hitting bosses even when tanking with Heart of the Wild so using it to tank a raid boss is also very niche. Throughout the entire Dragonflight expansion, I have not found one good place to use Heart of the Wild as a Balance druid an any PVE situation. And I’m not counting the MDI where we saw a few runs with no healer. In the entirety of the Shadowlands expansion, I only found 3 or 4 good uses for Heart of the Wild in PVE. I know that Heart of the Wild can be powerful in a niche situation, but those situations are so rare that I don’t think it can remain a capstone talent without becoming a choice node with another capstone talent that druids can make use of outside of those rare situations.

Suggestions for New and Changed Capstone Talents

  • Nature’s Vigil should be a good capstone talent again if it is buffed to be more competitive. I suggest either going back to 20% over 30 seconds again, or buffing the magnitude to 40% over 15 seconds. Or, perhaps a middle-ground of 30% over 20 or 25 seconds would work.
  • Good job getting rid of Protector of the Pack. And please don’t bring it back.
  • Well-honed Instincts is not strong enough to be a capstone talent, especially if Frenzied Regeneration is getting nerfed again. It already feels weaker than it should in Dragonflight with a 2-minute cooldown when you compare it to either the Shadowlands versions of the endurance conduit or to the current talent Renewal. If, you decide to keep Well-honed Instincts as a capstone talent, and I don’t think you should, it’s going to need to be buffed up to be more competitive.
  • Heart of the Wild can be good in rare situations, but it’s too niche for non-Resto druids for it to take up one of the only three spots for a capstone talent. Either make Heart of the Wild a choice node with another capstone talent, or simply redesign the talent tree to have 4 capstone talents and give druids another option at the bottom of the tree.
  • New Capstone: Pull the Dream of Cenarius talent out of the Guardian spec tree and rework it slightly to be more useful for all specs. It is currently my favorite option for a choice node with Heart of the Wild.
    • Dream of Cenarius: When you use your spells or abilities, you have a chance equal to your critical strike to cause your next Regrowth to heal for an additional 200%, and to be instant, free, and castable in all forms for 30 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once every 20 seconds.
    • Resto version: Same proc conditions and cause your next Wrath to deal an additional 200% damage, and to be instant, free, and castable in all forms for 30 sec. Same internal cooldown.
    • You could change the internal cooldown to be 30 seconds or longer if you don’t want the effect to trigger as often.
  • New Capstone: I was going to suggest the Shadowlands legendary “The Natural Order’s Will” which increases Barkskin’s damage reduction to 30% and gives the druid a free Frenzied Regeneration and Ironfur when it begins and ends. You’re already half-way there by adding Oakskin into the Alpha rework, but if you go a little bit farther and add a heal to it, such as a free Frenzied Regen, it would make for a nice capstone talent.
  • New Capstone: A talent that buffs the Feral/Guardian themed utility of Stampeding Roar, Incapacitating Roar, and Mighty Bash. Either call it Ursine Spirit or perhaps Ursoc’s Blessing or something to that effect.
    • Ursine Spirit: Passive: You gain 5% stamina and the effects of Stampeding Roar, Incapacitating Roar, and Mighty Bash are changed and enhanced.
    • Stampeding Roar and Incapacitating Roar can be used in any form and no longer auto-shift you into bear form. Stampeding Roar has a 5-yard increased radius and Incapacitating Roar has a 3-yard increased radius.
    • Mighty Bash now has a 45 second cooldown and its range is increased by 3 yards, or perhaps you can have Mighty Bash have a 45 second cooldown and last for 5 seconds instead of 4.

These are just a few ideas I came up with off the top of my head for some possible new capstone talents that still focus on utility and hybrid value instead of on throughput.

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I actually disagree with this - I think it’s one of the neat things about Druid - being the only 4-class spec and class with a spec that fills every role. The issue is to be successful in your 4 individual lines, you need to make sure the offerings in each line are desirable to everyone, or you end up with the issues of gatekeeping & wasted talents that you describe. The old affinity system did this pretty well (every affinity offered something that ALL other specs wanted) but the new trees do not. Sometimes it’s as small as positioning (why is feline swiftness - something all specs would want - a dead end locked behind rake, something only feral and sometimes guardian want?) and sometimes it’s how little a talent offers to anyone outside of the spec it’s from (instincts of the claw).

It’s also strange that we have 4 lines that lead to 3 capstones, only one of which has any real identity with the line it comes from.

I would also note that the gatekeeping feels like less of an issue because there are so many bad/undesirable talents. You have a glut of points to get down the trees to the stuff you want because there’s so few things in the tree you actually truly want - but then the tree feels bad because you have so many ‘wasted’ points.

I generally agree with your point-by-point of the changes, at least enough not to have any specific response to that section.

I think the 4-line tree concept can work, but requires a bit more commitment to it. It also necessitates the removal of most of the core rotational talent points (the ability themselves and the modifiers), as these are the ones that create so many issues in “dead points” and gatekeeping. It should essentially be like the old affinities with more customization. Valuable crossover talents like yseras, feline swiftness, thick hide should be mid-way down the tree, and then each should have a strong capstone - one that’s an “auto include” for that particular spec, and a meaningful choice for other specs.

A great example is Starlight Conduit. It’s an auto-include for balance. It’s also likely an auto-include for anyone who wants to owl-weave. It would (maybe with a slight buff) be a good captstone talent for the balance line of the tree. Well-honed instincts (again with a slight buff) makes a good capstone for the guardian line, instincts of the claw (as a 1-point) for feral, and renewal for resto. This could deliver on the 4-line concept (auto-include my spec’s line, then choose from deep dive into another specs line with minor picks from the others, or a shallower dive with more broad picks) and present more opportunity for meaningful choice than currently exists in the tree. Universally-desired things like Wild charge, Stampeding Roar & Lycara’s teachings should be positioned so that they add lateral movement to the lines.

I think the issue with the 4-lines concept is that it’s not carried throughout the tree. It starts that way up at the top, then disappears halfway through and you end up with two sides to the bottom (a feral/guardian and a resto/balance) with a grab-bag of universal (pretty underwhelming) utility in the middle. It’s a workable concept (and one that fits the druid thematic well) but you need to commit, create the 4 lines properly, and be smart about providing lateral mobility between them.

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My main criticism with having four distinct lines is that there is very little, and sometimes not any, lateral movement between them. Guardian may have a line straight down the tree with defensive talents and other talents that enhance bear form and abilities you can use in it. As a balance druid I may value some of those defensive talents, but I’m not going to value spending points on things like Ironfur to get there. We have a “free-start” node in the dead center of the tree and you cannot move laterally to either side. That’s pretty ridiculous when you compare that to what you can do from the dead center of other class talent trees. Movement throughout the tree is very frustrating when you’re forced to waste points to get through useless (at least for your spec) gate-way talent nodes.

You mentioned how nice the old affinity talents would feel. And I agree, they would be nice. But, they literally just dismantled all of the abilities from each affinity and made it into the top four rows of each section to turn one old talent into four new talents. It would be nice if each line had many talents that were desirable for everyone, but that is not what we got.

I’m going to have to disagree entirely with this entire paragraph. It does actually feel pretty bad to have so few things you might actually want and to have so many undesirable talents you have to take to get there.

I did write a long post on my thoughts on capstone talents for the class tree right above your post if you want to take a look. My short answer to some of the suggested capstones is that Blizzard decided to aim the druid class tree at mostly providing utility, defensives, and hybrid value in the lower and capstone section of the tree. I don’t think passive throughput talents aimed at specific specs would be very good as capstone talents. I think a talent like that should either be baseline or put into the spec trees.

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I did note in my post that the success of a 4-line tree would be predicated on the removal of core rotational ability talents, and their modifiers. Ironfur would be candidate #1 for such a removal. And ideally if blizz isn’t willing to take them out, concentrate them high in the tree, move the useful stuff down, and improve the lateral movement so we can get into the latter parts of the tree without wasting points on the early stuff.

That’s kind of… expected? The affinities each gave 2-4 effects and were 1 line out of 7. I’m not sure you can reasonably expect one (or even 2) talents in the new tree system to provide the same effect. That’s why I referenced a more customizable form of the affinities - breaking them out into multiple talents lets me take what I want (like Ysera’s gift) and instead of also getting Wild Growth packaged in, I can spend that point elsewhere.

If we had worthwhile things to spend it on…

I didn’t mean that as a defence of the talent tree, just as an observation that the gatekeeping looks pretty bad at first. Then you mock out a build and realize you actually have lots of “free” points to get through that gatekeeping, then look it back over and realize you have so many free points because there just isn’t stuff you want. It’s all bad, and the gatekeeping being minimized by the lack of demand for points isn’t a solution, its an exacerbation of the issue.

Unfortunately many capstones are passive throughput talents, so while I agree in principle I think you’re fighting a losing battle there. Your suggested capstones are an improvement over the current, but none of them really pull me down a line in terms of desire for them. I’m not 100% on what the solution is in regards to capstones, I think there’s too much of a mess to be sorted out in the rest of the tree before we can really identify where there’s gaps for meaningful capstones & how the routing to them would work.

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I would love to hear how the Fluid shifting is going to work as a Resto druid without having the Moonkin form to aid in survivability.

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I also like how the Master Shapeshifter talent on the Resto spec tree for Alpha still requires Moonkin Form to buff Wrath, Starfire, and Starsurge.

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Probably attach it to spell IDs. Since the forms will not be incuring the GCD and starsurge isnt attached to Boomkin form, nor is anything else that you can pick up in.the talent tree as a non Balance druid.

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There are actually zero spec-specific passive throughput talents that are a capstone talent on any of the class trees in the game. The closest thing to one is the capstone choice node between Killer Instinct and Alpha Predator on the Hunter class tree for the simple fact that it is useless for Markmanship hunters as it modifies Kill Command.

Regardless, my main criticism with having 4 distinct lines that force you to invest the whole way down that line is that there is no good lateral movement between those 4 lines. That system, by design, forces you to spend wasted talent points on gateway talents which leaves you with less choice and less mobility to navigate the talent tree to get when you want. To have those 4 lines go the whole way down the tree with passive throughput capstones that would make it required for that spec to pick up would just exasperate the issues. And I don’t think it is realistic that Blizzard would remove all of the those rotational abilities from the class tree.

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To be fair, HotW does increase the damage of moonfire by 30% for Guardians, which doesn’t require the druid to leave bear form to take advantage of…

That said, a 45s uptime on a 5 minute CD for just that doesn’t seem particularly worthwhile unless you’re getting galactic guardian procs out the wazoo during that 45s duration.

RE: Nature’s Vigil – I wish they’d bring back the MoP version of it, where it would convert both 20% of healing done into damage and 20% of damage done into healing.

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This should happen any way. Druid’s rework has at least 2 for each spec (this taking into consideration that Remove Corruption and Thrash are useful in more than 1 form, but if included would make it 3 per spec). Others classes have way less. The worst offender I could find is Shaman with Chain Heal, Chain Lightning Lava Burst. And those can be either skipped (e.g. Lava Burst, because of Astal Shift; Kill Command can be completely ignored by MM; Shiv for non Assassin rogues), or have some use when picked by other specs. (e.g. Death Strike being a self heal for DKs even if using it is trading in some DPS, or Chain Lightning for RShaman).

For most classes those actives at the start of the tree are just utility, like Sigil of Chains, Mages’ Barrier, and Demonic Circle.

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I would also add that both Guardian hero talent trees offer builds that would benefit from HotW. Whether it be from Moonfire or from shifting to cat, applying HotW to the current Druid builds doesn’t communicate its value very clearly. It’s going to be a much better talent in TWW simply because there’s more reasonable builds to use it in.