Druid of the Claw: Let Us Live the Form-Weaving Fantasy

Classes Druid
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Feedback on Druid of the Claw Hero Talent (Feral & Guardian)

When Druid of the Claw was first announced, I was genuinely excited. It immediately brought me back to Vanilla, where I’d be weaving between cat and bear form mid-combat—a playstyle that I originally fell in love with.

Unfortunately, despite the potential of DotC, the actual gameplay & theme has not changed. The core fantasy of shifting between forms—something so iconic to the Druid archetype—is barely realized in its current form. It is still just a quick defensive/speed shift and that’s it.

A Foundation with Potential

There’s still hope. The current design contains a promising foundation, particularly through Wildpower Surge, but the implementation is underwhelming and undertuned. The theme is there—it just needs better execution.

I believe the key is to maintain the core fantasy:

Feral Druids tapping into bear form, and Guardian Druids tapping into cat form, with a fluid and rewarding interplay between the two.

Proposed Design Improvement

A thematic solution would involve building up stacks during combat (passively over time, or in a more controlled way—such as after X finishers for Feral or X defensives for Guardian). Upon reaching a threshold, Wildpower Surge would trigger a temporary transformation:

  • Feral Druids: Wildpower surges through cat form, causing an instant visual transformation into bear form for X seconds.
    • Shred becomes Mangle and generates combo points.
    • Gain all Bear Form passive benefits
    • Energy remains the core resource, and all other abilities remain usable.
  • Guardian Druids: Wildpower surges through bear form, triggering a temporary visual transformation into cat form for X seconds.
    • Mangle becomes Shred and generates rage.
    • Gain all Cat Form passive benefits
    • Rage remains the resource, and the standard bear toolkit stays functional.

This approach allows each spec to retain its core gameplay mechanics and feel, while visually representing the form-switching fantasy. It also introduces a unique rotational flavor without breaking the flow of combat.

Tuning & Mechanical Considerations

Naturally, some tuning questions remain:

  • Should Mangle/Shred in this state have cooldowns?
  • Should they deal bonus damage?
  • How frequently should Wildpower Surge be available?

These are all easy tuning considerations.

Choice Node Conflict

As it stands, this talent competes directly with Empowered Shapeshifting, which offers more control and passive bonuses—making it a more reliable option in PvE environments.

Given the thematic strength and potential gameplay depth of Wildpower Surge, I’d recommend:

  • Moving it off a choice node, or
  • Tuning it to be the standard/default choice, but retain passive option as viable.

Wildpower Surge has the potential to become a truly iconic part of the Druid of the Claw identity. Even if it’s not implemented exactly as described here, I believe something that brings this form-weaving fantasy to life is essential to fulfilling the promise of this hero talent.

5 Likes
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These are excellent ideas!!! Sound like blizz needs to give you a job at the druid dev team!

The current dev team for pretty much all classes just plainly sucks and feels boring with meaningless changes and NEVER actually addressing what the community clamors for.

I just hope they don’t plagiarize your ideas and actually give you credit…

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This was exactly my thought on hearing that we’d be getting Druid of the Claw.

How that might look in practice? Not sure, but to give some spitballs:

On Guardian, including both among some mutually exclusive choices...
  • Form-dependent effects no longer end upon leaving their respective Forms; you may swap back into said form to again benefit fully;
  • You retain half the passive benefits of your most recent Form even after changing to another and briefly retain the remaining half and half of all active effects, fading over 5 seconds;
  • Wildsurge as an oGCD major empowerment for your abilities within 10 seconds up to X resource generated or spent, in many cases including Bleed-consumption, on a reducible 45s CD;
  • Learn Berserk: Frenzy, Frantic Momentum, Predator, and either Bloodtalons or Apex Predator’s Craving (empowered and revised slightly for greater contextual parity against each other);
  • Movement speed in Cat Form and Armor in Bear Form increased per nearby enemy or ally;
  • Able to generate Rage from Energy spent and Energy from Rage spent, including an over-cap margin at diminishing efficiency;
  • Heal from bleeding damage dealt, allowing one to bank further later sustain via Rake and Rip and gain movement speed for each suppressed enemy (this portion increased multiplicatively by any other movement speed increases);
  • Berserk CDR (and over-charging) from actions performed (ideally in ways that synergize with empowering Bear via Cat);
  • Stampeding Roar now imparts part of the larger of your own movement speed bonus or temporary HP bonus (the latter if any only if we buff Rallying Cry first);
    You may now use Travel Form in combat, to a less limited degree, and Wild Charge from Travel Form may now punt enemies out of your path, Wild Charge from Bear Form will tackle and drag enemies in your path, and Wild Charge in Cat Form will partially shirk targeted projectile attacks against you;
  • Ultimately, you happen to be able to speedrun easier dungeons, disrupt positionally trickier M+ pulls (with enough external miti), and greed while not needing as much tankiness far better than a normal Guardian.
And on Feral...
  • Form-dependent effects no longer end upon leaving their respective Forms; you may swap back into said form to again benefit fully;
  • You retain half the passive benefits of your most recent Form even after changing to another and briefly retain the remaining half and half of all active effects, fading over 5 seconds;
  • Wildsurge as an oGCD major empowerment for your abilities within 10 seconds up to X resource generated or spent, in many cases including Bleed-consumption, on a reducible 45s CD;
  • Gain Attack Power based on bonus Armor;
  • Learn Raze, Tooth and Claw, Gore, Berserk: Ravage, and either Vicious Cycle or Flashing Claws (empowered and revised slightly for greater contextual parity against each other);
  • Movement speed in Cat Form and Armor in Bear Form increased per nearby enemy or ally;
  • Able to generate Rage from Energy spent and Energy from Rage spent, including an over-cap margin at diminishing efficiency;
  • Greater Energy maximum and able to spend up to 50% more Energy for up to 50% more potency;
  • You may now use Travel Form in combat, to a less limited degree, and Wild Charge from Travel Form may now punt enemies out of your path, Wild Charge from Bear Form will tackle and drag enemies in your path, and Wild Charge in Cat Form will partially shirk targeted projectile attacks against you;
  • Ultimately, you happen also to be able to briefly off-tank at far less DPS cost than for a normal Feral.
Similarly Wildstalker would have gone the other way, with HoTs and DoTs largely combining to allow for paced burst and added sneaky flexibility:
  • Ultimately, Cat Form gets a reason to weave in heals and Wrath while Resto gets more reason to weave in DoTs;
  • DoTs count also as HoTs for the purposes of heal (and damage) amplification from HoTs (Resto);
  • A portion of excess healing to or others is naturally transferred to allies affected by Bloodvines;
  • Moonkin form reskinned to be smaller, rougher, and more predatory-looking,
  • Resto gains MP and Energy per DoT or HoT tick; Moonkin creepily vine-wrapped Moonkin in yellowish- or pale-purplish-green growth based on Astral/Nature damage dealt; Cat Form likewise increasingly wrapped in bloodvines;
  • Bloodtalons modified and deepened;
  • Bloodvines steadily consume Bleed duration (1 in 4 seconds) to store that damage within themselves for further purposes or to instantly finish off an enemy, if able;
  • HoTs count also as DoTs for the purposes of bleed tick procs;
  • Your DoTs and HoTs sprout actual vines on the ground;
  • Treants replaced by Bloodseek, an oGCD that will cause Bloodvine growths, to grow surreally fast to briefly impale nearby enemies on their vines, with range greatly increased against already bleeding targets;
  • You can then oGCD-cast Tangling Crush on a target that’s just been impaled, per an ICD, to consume surrounding Bloodvine resource for immediate damage;
  • Wild Growth and Tranquility will also add resource to your Bloodvines, but the efficiency of this transference diminishes as the size of the Bloodvines increase;
  • Physical and Bleed damage dealt has a chance to germinate a Bloodvine and feeds all existing Bloodvines from damage dealt;
  • Ironskin and Barkskin may be used even on cooldown, sacrificing Bloodvines to coat self or target ally in a barrier with bonus Armor based on the size of said barrier and, in drawing nearby Bloodvines onto you, allowing more immediate access to star-call;
  • You may Prowl if not in the line of sight of enemies, and enemies wrapped in vines have their “sight” range greatly reduced while your own chance to be “detected” is reduced based on the density of vines around you;
  • Invocations allow for instant-cast modified Wraths, directing “spears” of Bloodvine growth and cause your vines to move with and collapse around you;
  • If chosen, Invocations and Tranquility also automatically grow vines in the surrounding area rather than merely feeding what’s already there;
  • If chosen, you can now Prowl in your Natural and Moonkin forms and you generate Bloodvines around you while Prowling and triple the amount of Bloodvine growth on your initial actions for 6s and count each action as if it had all been dealt entirely as DoT/HoT damage/healing.

Now, each of those go a bit above what we’ve done with Hero Talents thus far, but… I suspect they’d all be a good deal more interesting if this degree was more the norm.