When the announcement of the new talent trees was first released, it looked like there might be a change for spec setup. Then people started noticing parts that were not so great and feedback started to come in. This includes things like Brutal Slash, but being in a place that can cause specific build issues.
Then alpha released and the tree had not changed, but more feedback was given. The lack of updates or commentary was shrugged off as a norm, but then the rumor of the druid/priest class dev leaving came out. The rumor turned out to be true. However, it was not by Blizzard, but on twitter from the dev themselves.
So now, you have priests and druids with no changes, even though there are some decidedly bad design items in them. There are comments from people about not wanting to play DF because of how bad the condition of trees are in. That is because of the sense of no interest in fixing problems, or even a statement as to the current situation or plans.
Both classes would like SOMETHING said as to what is going to happen, if anything. We are getting close to where large changes will be hard if not impossible to make.
So priest and druid trees are basically a demo of what people can expect class trees to look like and now we don’t get our real non garbage class trees till the very end
Didn’t they confirm they see all the outrage about this on one of the recent interviews but gave us nothing more than the classic “we hear you”. Sorry but that isn’t good enough when other classes are in constant communication with their class devs via class discords which has already been confirmed. They should be transparent with why there is such a HUGE delay so close to the launch of the game for two classes one of which is probably the most played in the game…
We had a level 10 mage alt claiming how it is not that bad and that things will get fixed. In my opinion, he could have been a troll, a dev, or likely, both.
Ferals have heard that phrase so much, I will not believe it. I expect to see a Legion repeated. At the last moment, they post new trees that completely screw up all gameplay.
Some are/were having a self-reinforcing echo chamber that was all doom and gloom at best and spreading ill-thought-out conspiracies about departing developers not being replaced at worst.
Some were choosing to interpret other classes getting solid feedback as evidence that Druids never would, rather than as evidence to the contrary.
Someone being less cynical does not make them a troll, and I can’t imagine taking a massive pay cut to work for Blizzard (especially now that having that “Blizzard” on a resume might do more harm than good).
An annoying gnome, at worst.
There are 6 entire classes that still havent received a second pass. Druid being in the same situation as half the classes in the game isn’t a reason to panic and throw tomatoes at the stage.
DH’s don’t even have half of their talent trees yet. Getting that rough draft out should probably be a higher priority than giving everyone else who already has trees an update.
Almost all the second pass talent tree work looks really great. While there’s some grumbles (things like Mages hating the fights temporal warp is going to cause or what a bad idea it is to lock Boarding Party to a specific Rogue spec), pretty much everyone agrees the tree updates are massive improvements and that players are being heard. Other classes being happy with their updates should give Druids a reason to be optimistic, but I guess thats not as fun as being mad.
I love my Druid as much as the next player, but they really are not that far from greatness. The burstier aoe spender given to Balance is a much needed improvement.
Feral needs to be capable of AOE without a tier-set band-aiding the class together, and that might be as simple as a black powder or blade flurry equivalent, and changing Brutal Slash to no longer replace swipe.
Bear needs a more dynamic rotation and more freedom to use off-spec abilities in a safe manner to help allies, and it’s clear from the talent development they’re trying to get there on the dynamic bit even if the Build-a-Berserk concept makes adopting a more dynamic rotation too expensive to actually achieve.
That’s certainly not all they need to succeed (all the base tree capstones are very bad, relying solely on 3 minute dps cd’s is archaic, making 3 minute dps cd’s cost 3+ talent points just to function is insane, typhoon being locked behind balance affinity and force of nature being locked into the balance spec tree are pretty unfortunate), but if we know how much improvement only a few changes could make, surely they do too.
If you don’t share any optimism because you’ve been burned too many times, that’s fine. But at some point you have to recognize that spreading the despair isn’t helping anyone.