DF Talent Trees

Classes Druid
1

I’m starting to be concerned about not seeing any Druid changes. I play alts, but resto Druid is my main. It is my favorite by far and I have no intent of changing.

There have been so many changes to other classes. I understand the dev may have left or whatever.

We have to be close to Beta release with no changes…

EDIT…

I’m just going to add this as an edit.

I scrolled through the feedback and look at the trees for resto Druid. It was described as basically the same it is now. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it, but I want something new to play with also. The players railed against borrowed power (understandably), but at least borrowed power brought new stuff like: convoke, adaptive swarm, verdant infusion, circle, etc…. A ton of the talents on the tree right now. I’d really like to see a change in the way resto Druid’s dps in their downtime or nourish being viable outside of pvp or something like that. If shaman’s healing circle thing can do damage, then why can’t efflorescence? Or why can’t our mastery stacks also include our DoTs? It would obviously need tuned, but it would be fun to see.

I just dont’ want to go into a new space with minor passive changes. Ok, I’m done complaining now.

5 Likes
2

My feeling is that there is something coming. Their comments about balance AOE being something they were trying to figure out, just no solutions yet gives me hope. (Comment was during the 9.2 5 launch when starfall was boosted by 15%)

3

Based on what, we have no class developer. It’s not just going to magically appear from thin air.

1 Like
4

While the individual who worked on convoke the spirits left blizzard, doesn’t mean that the entire team is crippled.

But as to what I meant (Abysial is my other toon) was the season 4 patch notes

  • DRUID
    • BALANCE
      • Starfall damage increased by 15%.
        • Developer’s note: Balance AoE has gradually fallen off in recent months, we believe due to Starfall not benefitting as as much as other comparable spells from increased Astral Power generation and Haste, as gear levels increase. We are looking into different solves for the future, but for now are giving it a boost to better compete in the current content.

That was posted Aug 2.

Might be a pipe dream with hopium, but considering that every other class has received some change, I’m willing to believe they are working on it, just have little to share.

5

While I’d like to believe that, I’m running out of reasons to believe otherwise. Despite being the first talent tree revealed, Druid is now the the class with the least amount of tree changes and one of the only ones that has received 0 feedback responses from Blizzard whatsoever. Even the recent additions like DH have a short blurb explaining some of the design philosophy behind the tree.

It’s hard to call… how long has it been? Five weeks? I’ve lost count. Five weeks of complete silence and lack of movement anything other than being crippled. I’d like some sort of notification that Blizzard has SOME sort of plan for Druid in DF.

I’m generally not a conspiracy theorist so I normally wouldn’t believe that Blizzard would be so unprofessional as to have no backup plan when the Convoke dev left but that’s beginning to have been a while ago now. That excuse is becoming staler and staler and they don’t need a dedicated dev for a community manager to give us a status update in the Druid feedback thread. So what exactly is going on? I don’t know and it’s making me increasingly concerned.

1 Like
6

I did say I might be puffing hopium. But it’s not out of character for them to keep their mouths shut until they have something concrete to share.

Over wows 18 years the team has changed media tactics quite a few times. This is the most open and transparent they have EVER been. And they are achieving it by being very careful.

Last week we were in the same group of classes that hadn’t heard anything. Death knights were also growing frustrated by lack of communication.

I believe we are a harder class to iterate on due to the several identities we have and the powerful synergies we have. And a toolkit most other classes drool over.

That leads me to believe we will take longer than say warlocks/mages/hunters. The focus of those classes are dps with some neat utility.

We, we are a utility tool kit that can do all 4 roles. Our class identity at one point was doing many things, just not well at times.

So! As I said I am hopeful. There is tons of communication come back and feedback is being listened to. The many changes to the various classes already implemented shows they are trying. I believe we will be addressed.

The last two expansions (Shadowlands and BFA) by the time they released the class, it was set in stone. Doesn’t seem to be the case here

1 Like
7

I feel like (and I think quite a few others are as well) there’s a mildly high chance we launch almost as is and then with the new hotfix tech they have we finally get a fix once they get a dev who cares enough and knows enough to fix us. Just hoping it’s not too long into the season, or all the specs are going to suffer the “Feral curse” (community stigma that we’re trash because of previous expansions).

It is indeed incredibly disheartening to see so many specs get so much fun stuff from other expansions and community ideas and while we wait for changes we’re stuck with “here, it’s Shadowlands stuff but worse, good luck”.

8

Yeah, a new dev hopefully

:rofl:

I’m sorry for you droods

9

But even the Death Knights will admit that their class dev isn’t very personable and does not use the forums to communicate, they know this, they’re used to this.

The main concern at this point is the fact we know the class designer has resigned and thus far there is no real indication that someone is working on the class with any meaningful substance when compared to every other class in the game.

No one is asking for a list of what changes we are to expect at this point, we’re well beyond that at this point. What we want to understand is whether someone is actively working on the class as the silence paired with the resignation gives the impression that the class is in limbo with no active designer.

I hate to be cruel, but there is very little synergy and our toolkit is far weaker for at least 2 of our specs than just about any other class or spec in this game, so I can’t get behind this.

Yes, but hybrid taxation has been dead for expansions now.

There was a 1200 post feedback thread just on Guardian woes in BFA and the designers listened to feedback for other classes and specs, Guardian was left unchanged, and none of that feedback was actioned.

Their track record and history say otherwise. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.

10

I do not intend to purchase the game if the class launches in disarray and I strongly suggest that if anyone else cares about the class as I do, you’d consider that too.

Apparently, our opinions, communication, and feedback here aren’t enough.

See my above comment.

11

Problem is, a hotfix isn’t going to remedy the real issue. We need actual development with all the druid talent trees. A hotfix isn’t going to do it after release.

I can really only speak for the feral tree and the base druid tree, but both of those are abysmal. Furor as a top talent is a joke, pathing is garbage and classes like warrior who are getting covenant powers as part of their base kit (spear?! FTW). Seems like a majority of druids went with convoke … move it to the base druid tree, just like warriors.

Hate being a doomsayer, but Blizz’s track record speaks for itself with druids in the past. I’m biased, but WoW druids have an iconic place in the lore. Show it some love.

12

The wow community is very passionate. Unfortunately this has lead to a few problems for Blizzard in regards to communication.

A small portion of us have become “armchair developers “. This been a boon and a bane in the past.

The community track record about asking for posts on dev thoughts is one that some can call toxic. Everything from the dot shock flood posts of shamans in classic to almost full on meltdowns.

When Ghostcrawler was open and able to share thoughts he did. Some were very grateful, others would lambast him for speaking and offering nothing.

I fully agree the community has been ignored in the past by Blizzard. No arguing it. But on the other side of the coin, the community as a whole has earned silence.

I took Cata and pretty much all of shadowlands off. But I’ve played at various levels of commitment the rest of wows time. I’ve been through excitement and dismay. Have a long trail of broken toons collecting dust on shelves because of one change or another that I didn’t enjoy. I hope my Druid doesn’t get added to the collection.

As I said, I’m either on a tank of hopium, or I’ve just gotten used to it. Any case I’ll play something in DF to see and enjoy it. I hope everyone reading this can find a way to enjoy it as well.

Good Hunting!

13

That’s a risk you take, but it’s also part of the role too. I’m not saying that it’s acceptable for the community to be hateful toward them, but you should expect some level of criticism and scrutiny, some will be constructive, and some will most definitely not.

There are most definitely better ways a community can provide feedback that doesn’t come across as personal attacks or overly emotional, but as a public figure in the IT world, you also have to accept that you have some responsibility in how you consume that feedback so that it gets evaluated in an impartial way. You have to understand that the commenter is passionate about the topic at hand, they’re upset, and while it may seem very personal sometimes, they are most definitely more upset at the design than they are with you personally.

There will be people you can’t convince, no matter how hard you try. But I think in those cases there is the potential to find some common ground even with them, “throwing them a bone” so to speak to appease their frustration and problems without necessarily compromising your own design goals in the process.

Compromises go a very long way to building a healthy and engaging community.

I disagree, I don’t believe there is ever any justification for something like a 1200 post thread about Guardian druid during the BFA alpha/beta cycle just falling on deaf ears. The only excuse is either Hubris, lack of caring, or both.

I wish I could have the same sentiment but I’ve been burned too many times now. I want to see action and thus far nothing convinces me I should refund my pre-purchase.

14

Blizzard not saying anything on Druid/Priest is a major feels bad for anyone main’ing those classes.

At my job I don’t want to talk to clients, so the project manager is the bridge between me and our client.

If a developer doesn’t want to talk publicly, then get someone else to be the bridge between the feedback (players) and the developer. It’s really sad to watch all those classes get feedback, mechanical reworks, talents moved around to be more optimal, and I’m just here trying to make builds that will be hot garbage because no thought went into the trees.

2 Likes
15

That’s the role and job of the community managers after all, right?
Something just isn’t right in my book.

16

Yep. I checked a blue tracker website to see what classes got communication yesterday. There was a lot more than I was expecting. All, but paladin, priest and druid had some sort of communication.

More important than that, they were all posted by Kaivax.

It is pretty obvious who is doing the majority of communicating.

17

That may not imply much outside that Kaivax is willing to be the face for communication. But in either case, I’m still confused about the lack of druid communication.

1 Like
18

I still believe it’s due to not having anything to share. And possibly trying not to screw themselves like they did with BFA → Shadowlands.
I’ll use Enhancement Shaman as an example. In I think it was 8.2 they said that a number of playstyle adjustments were coming, they arrived in 9.1.5 (roughly). The shaman community was and had been depressed and jaded. ( wasn’t first time they were ignored)

I get and understand that the BFA and Shadowlands beta Cycles pages and pages of class feedback were ignored. I feel burned by them as well. I picked up Druid when the Zandalari became aval and really enjoyed the Balance playstyle of BFA. Shadowlands Balance felt like I was choking on a spoon trying to do something.

The difference with Dragonflight is literally the lack of borrowed power. Legion,BFA,and Shadowlands were choked back by the multiple complex systems that were ultimately abandond either as the expansion progressed or expired.

From what I’ve gathered, at that point they were focusing on the elite players and trying to rein them in by adding system after system and ultimately failing at the goal of slowing them down. ( unless you consider driving the players away). Ion has said in interviews they give up on that.

So for Dragonflight the goal for classes seems to be 1) capture current playstyles of specs/classes into the talent system. 2) listen to feedback and adjust. All the systems dev time that was wasted on borrowed power is back into making classes as fun as possible (not everyone will be satisfied, but satisfying everyone is not an achievable goal)

So, am I on hopium? Probably. But my experience with this game is that it’ll move forward. Some will like, some will hate.

Please don’t think I’m dismissing any points of thought about Blizzard failing us. They have, more then once. I just don’t get worked up about it anymore.

For reference, the last MMO I obsessed over was a little thing called Earth and Beyond by Westwood. When it was eaten and shut down by another bigger company I came to appreciate a simple fact.

The property is theirs, I’m simply renting space and spending time there.

Again, hopium for favorable results. Good hunting

19

The problem is thus far, they’ve failed on both goals in my book with Guardian. The tree does not even capture the complete and current playstyle at all.

20

If that is the case though then the question now becomes “why hasn’t there been anything to share since alpha started?”

The Druid trees obviously aren’t perfect and there’s been no shortage of feedback on them. I don’t really believe that they nailed Druid on the first try when every other class is getting weekly tweaks. They have plenty of fuel with which to create something they can share so why is it taking them so long to do so?