I have no desire to shift between Bear and Cat form and these talents really don’t give me great incentive to do so a Guardian Druid. I’d rather go the other route and shoot pew pew Elune beams.
6 Likes
Continuing the list of things I forgot were bear form only until I started looking at it, Guardian’s Leather Specialization (5% stamina for wearing all leather) is exclusive to bear form currently, meaning you’d lose another 5% of your health for being in cat form just from that. There’s not any real gameplay reason this should be bear form only, so just making this 5% stam apply in all forms would be a simple fix here.
For quick reference, with Wildshape Mastery as it currently is (retain 80% of bear form’s armor/stamina buffs) and using my current bear against a dragonflight mythic dungeon’s enemies for armor constants:
Going from bear to cat form would result in about 7.5% increased physical damage taken. This is effectively a worst case scenario, as higher armor constants (e.g. higher difficulty raids) or any amount of armor from ironfur is going to reduce this value.
Going from bear to cat form will always result in reducing max health to 1.36/1.45 = .937931, or about 6.2% less max health. If leather specialization is not fixed, this will be about 11% less max health instead.
All told looking at about 13% less EH (or ~17% less without leather spec) in cat form with the buff rather than bear form.
Obviously you miss out on generating rage as well, having ironfur stacks drop off if you spend extended time in cat form, etc, while having the counter points of healing 10% damage taken for 6s and getting 20% health/armor for 4s after shifting back, just putting those #'s out to get an idea of what’s being lost.
Bear Stuff
Yeah, the bear-only stuff is pretty uninspired. Small update I’d suggest is maybe letting Massive Attack store up to 2 charges, as it’d be annoying to munch procs during berserk, especially if we ever get to run flashing claws. Also lets you wait on procs to try and use them with Tooth and Claw.
But, you know, that also kinda highlights how you just made another Tooth and Claw proc 
5 Likes
Wildpower Surge is so cool, I hope that is tuned strongly enough to make it worthwhile to use despite the wasted GCDs from shifting.
For Feral, it’s awkward that it encourages you to spam Shred/Swipe rather than diversifying your builders for Bloodtalons. Making it a timed buff, or basing it on a spent resource like energy or combo points, would feel more a bit more natural. Not a major flaw though.
1 Like
This is great! Whenever I play resto, I love being able to weave in DMG, but never felt like I could do that as a tank. This finally opens up that optionality. There’s a lot of naysayers who immediately think that we’ll just fall over if we swap forms, but that’s not true. There will be plenty of opportunities to get in some damage while still staying healthy in mid to high keys. Less so in the absolutle highest, of course.
While I think this makes guardian way more interesting, it’ll still fall behind DH (and all tanks for that matter), if dh continues to have 7 aoe stops at their disposal.
They do. There’s a node on the left side of the tree that makes it so that when you shift to cat form, you retain 80% of your bear form armor and health as well as keep your Ironfur. Then when you go back to bear form you get a big ol’ heal.
2 Likes
Easily clears the lowest of low bars of being better than Wildstalker druid. This at least doesn’t feel like it’s just a tuning pass. Not sure it will feel as cool as come of the others that have very satisfying visuals, but it looks at least somewhat thought out.
As a feral I doubt anything that buffs bear damage is worth the globals of shifting to bear form and back. As a bear, other than in very clear tank swaps I doubt I will ever want to drop bear and risk the death.
I’m all for Massive Attack, though it will mean I have to change the music in the background accordingly =P
Yea … I wanted to post this same earlier. Wildpower surge needs synergy between bear and cat, not feral and guardian.
1 Like
This is the winning idea, imo.
2 Likes
Nope. That’s spot on. Much like the HotW talent, this is just an idea from devs to spice up open world content, it’ll have zero/negative impact on actual endgame.
1 Like
No way the Guardian side of these Hero talents goes live in TWW
Its an extremely bad version of Tooth & Claw!
Unless they plan on gutting the Guardian tree then these talents (not talking cat) are redundant…
Pop culture aside why not make it a free extra hit and call it: Wolverine strike?
or Alpha strike?
or Salmon strike? cause you know Blizz aint gonna let this thing hit for more than 100k (DF damage scaling) - and that bleed damage will be as pitiful as Thrashes DoT
Dis ability gonna hit like a wet sardine fish (cats like fish too)
ugh!
druid of the claw feedback:
frenzied regeneration also increases your maximum health by 10%
frenzied regen only lasts 3 seconds? death knight and warrior each have separate abilities that increase max health by what like 30% for much longer than that. can this be reworked into a reactive thing?
Example:
“If during frenzied regeneration your health is below 30%, heal 30% of your maximum health and your maximum health increases by 30% for 10 seconds. This effect can only occur once per 3 minutes”
3 Likes
It’s average.
Man feral is not looking great, this tree is average, the other is absolutely terrible.
No, keep the name Massive Attack. It’s baller.
2 Likes
I guess I’ll be the odd one out and say I vastly prefer Wildstalker (conceptually, at least; I do understand why people feel like it just seems like a “tuning pass”) to this tree. :S
I’m a bit tired so I hope what I say in my post makes sense.
I’ll start with the things I like: The extra defensiveness is very nice, and it does give you a nice immediate burst button because Tiger’s Fury gives one to you right away when you enter combat.
On top of that, I will say that this one has grown on me slightly, but there are still some things I’m concerned about.
For Massive Attack (which feels like a placeholder name), how does it interact with things like Tooth and Claw, Rampant Ferocity, Taste for Blood, and Apex Predator’s Craving? Massive Attack replaces Maul and Ferocious Bite, so does it also get all the benefits related to those? If Apex Predator’s Craving procs while I have Massive Attack available, does Massive Attack benefit from it?
I really, really do not like this “formweaving” gameplay and I hope that they do not end up being a requirement as part of the rotation. I’m also rather disappointed to see that Druid of the Claw did not get Incap Roar in Cat Form (though the Frenzied Regeneration node is nice) and no Leader of the Pack returning in any form, as I feel like it would have been a good opportunity to reintroduce this old buff that people have been asking for for a long time in the Cat/Bear shared tree.
Something else I want to point out is that this tree specifically mentions Swipe, whereas Wildstalker mentioned specifically Brutal Slash. This makes me think that the Druid of the Claw tree will require you to take Swipe, as it feels deliberate that it mentions Swipe and not Swipe or Brutal Slash. This would mean that this tree requires you to take Wild Slashes.
Furthermore, this part of the Wildpower Surge talent feels incredibly silly to me:
This implies that, if I wanted to get this 100% increased Swipe damage bonus in an AoE scenario, I would need to shapeshift into a Bear to get it, burning TWO GCDs to shift in and out, despite Swipe being an ability that Cat already has. The Mangle one makes sense, as you need to be a Bear to get access to Mangle, but the Swipe one just seems so odd. The Bear version of this also makes sense, as you do not have access to Ferocious Bite or Rip in Bear form.
I also don’t really like this node,
Nothing else on this tree interacts with these two talents really at all, so it feels rather random. On top of this, Pulverize is a talent that nobody takes, and I don’t think reducing its cooldown by 5 seconds would encourage anyone to take it, so this feels like a dead choice node.
3 Likes
Stop trying to make “fetch” happen…it’s not going to happen!
But this is super bland. It’s just as bland as windstalker where everything is passive and you don’t give two thoughts to it.
Yes, let’s keep this on repeat until they get it. The others still need a bit of work sure but not like Keeper…
I beg of you, don’t change the name of Massive Attack, it’s incredible! Please let that go live with that name!
Better to be bland and useful than whatever this is.
A talent that lets you get in one powerful rip on “bosses when you’re off tanking and the tank swap isn’t a dot” seems like such a waste. And tbh, the “bearcat” thing is dead already. Losing 20% of your tank for any reason is dumb. Dps aren’t going to want to chase you around while you kite mobs so you can put a rip on them.
It solves nothing and adds complexity where it’s not needed or wanted. It’s flavor for open world content, it’s useless in any endgame stuff.
3 Likes
You used to be a decent player. Not that we ever really saw eye to eye on much, but you used to be decent. Ever since season 3 or perhaps the start of 3, you’ve very much resembled one of Asmongold’s entourage. The heck happened??
Except Wildshape Mastery allows you to do this. Even allows it in M+ between abilities as white damage and a DoT isn’t going to do you in while retaining 80% of your defensives.
Yeah, something we did for 16 years and only went away from it because they boosted tank damage an expansion ago. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. But it’s far from dead. It also gives you more play with Heart of the Wild
Not when you don’t need it. Which as it stands, doing anything inside the boundaries of Blizzards balance break points, you don’t need it. Why not get in extra damage.
Now this is just being dense for the sake of being dense.
Again, something Bear tanks have done for 16 years. It isn’t adding complexity. It’s adding damage when you’re not actively tanking.
And yet, that’s where we’re going to see it used.
1 Like