Sure, but what im saying is…its not like “hey i just killed this dps → let me pause the match & switch Hero talents cause this healer is giving me trouble” Its understandable that prematch/dungeon you want to optimize your setup.
BUT with how easy it is to change talents OoC will we be constantly changing Hero talent specs? Not only talents but forms?
If the Hero talents are being overestimated then we can GUARANTEE the “filler” talents wont be changed becuase constantly Hero weaving will be tough to balance
The power of SLs Covenants were locked behind lengthy quest chains & trainers - Shall we not commit to one Druid hero? or will we be identityless…
I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Blizzard has been pretty consistent with their design philosophy towards talents. I expect that changing which hero talent tree you have active will be as easy as changing your spec. I currently see no reason for them not to follow the same rules as all other talents.
So looking specifically at the Druid class tree rework that just got revealed in the context of Druid of the Claw…
It is insanely difficult to get abilities for bear-weaving and utility at the same time.
The main culprit for this is Fluid Form. This talent is just about required if you’re going to run the bear weaving set but it’s buried behind the 2-point Lore of the Grove, which is itself pretty far away from where Ferals/Guardians are going to be spending the bulk of their points. The new tree is much better than the old in that key situational utility talents (like Remove Curse, Cyclone, and Hibernate) are much cheaper to get… but our builds are encouraging us to spread our points too thin.
To make the bearweaving set work as a core defensive utility, I want to grab Ursine Vigor, Ironfur, Instincts of the Claw, and Heart of the Wild. After grabbing all of those I have spent a whopping 29/31 class talent points. Granted this path was also forced to grab all of the baseline Feral talents you want, but there’s virtually no utility in here at all. I’m one point away from grabbing Nature’s Vigil, Innervate, Incapacitating Roar, Maim, Typhoon, and Cyclone… but I only have two more points to spend on utility so this sort of undoes a lot of what Dragonflight did with granting Feral access to premier Druid utility. And Astral Influence is simply out of the question, which is a shame. Our points are simply spread too thin.
I do think that this rework fixes a lot of Feral’s access to defensive utility though. Even though I wasn’t able to reach Verdant Heart, Matted Fur, Oakskin, or Well-Honed Instincts, I think that making Bear Form a more practical defensive option helps a lot with our personal survivability. Plus I like the option to talent into Forestwalk in situations where Improved Stampeding Roar isn’t needed. Along with taking Natural Recovery on the way to Fluid Form, we’re going to have a lot more healing received.
I still feel like the tree asks us to take too many dead talents. In order to take Fluid Form, I’m forced to take Rejuvenation and Wild Growth… which I will never use. Combine this with the 2 talent points for Lore of the Grove and that’s 4 talent points that are actively not benefiting me. This tree would feel a lot better with 4 more points of wiggle room so I would love to not have to take those. I also really really don’t want to go back to the days where Innervate is prohibitively expensive for Feral.
From a Guardian perspective, any build that’s considering bearcatting cares enough about damage to definitely take Rising Light, Falling Night already, so is just 3 points away from Fluid Form (2 talent points for 10% Moonfire damage which is not useless, then 1 for Fluid Form itself).
For us, it’s Stampeding Roar which is hard to pick up without sacrificing nice survivability talents or some damage. Not too thrilled with that going from basically mandatory to costing 3 talent points that otherwise often do nothing in raids.
I do think having basically 0 time cost to shapeshifting is a bit… bold. It definitely depends on tuning, but could easily result in basically all Guardian druids maintaining Rake/Rip in single target or even switching back and forth frantically a la early legion (even non-Druid of the Claw, just they’re restricted to “not while tanking”). Or cat abilities can be so weak that it’s not worth shifting at all and the whole shapeshifting aspect of Druid of the Claw feels pointless and undertuned. Striking a reasonable balance will be tough.
It’s also just a little weird to be entering Cat Form with a CP generator when Wildpower Surge sets us to 5CP anyway. Not actually wrong, just kinda weird.
I also just feel like such easy access to and out of Bear Form + Wildshape Mastery is an incredible amount of (admittedly awkward) defensive power being given to Feral, but at least it’s not technically anything they didn’t already have, and besides I’ll leave that to Feral players to fully comment on.
I agree here, but i think Defense wise we could Even get bettet ones. Bearform and tanking all dmg while Not beeing able to Counter pressure or generate cp/ maintain Bleeds is horrible. I always Hear bearform as def but as Feral our mainform is a cat, amd our Defense should be around that we Can maintain our stuff.
In pve it Might be okay, but for Arena its Not. Once we Are Forced into bear we Are dead. And all our increased / recieved healing talents Are affected by dampening. Imagine evasion or blurr , or iceblock is affected by it. xD . I Hope the best but i was right all the time.
Druid of the Claw is a great thematic throwback for both Feral and Guardian druids. A time when we were a fluid extension of one another.
Please consider the following tweaks to really bring this hero spec into its full potential.
Wildpower Surge:
[Feral] - Shred and Swipe grant Ursine Potential. When you have 8 stacks, the next time you transform into Bear Form, your next Mangle or Swipe deal 100% increased damage and generates 15 extra Rage.
[Guardian] - Mangle grants Feline Potential. When you have 6 stacks, the next time you transform into Cat Form, gain 5 combo points and your next Ferocious Bite or Rip deals 50% increased damage for its full duration.
Please consider removing the Feral and Guardian differential here. Simply make it:
“While in Cat Form, gain stacks of Ursine Potential by casting Shred/Swipe/Brutal Slash… While in Bear Form, gain stacks of Feline Potential by casting Mangle…”
Reasoning & Disclaimer:
This is primarily PvP oriented in philosophy and I think it does play into the Guardian side of things too (but I’m not a tank, so IDK). However, my thought process here is that when I go into bear form to utilize my Feline or Ursine Potential, I don’t want to feel like I’m in and out within seconds. If I have to stay in Bear form longer because I’m being trained, let me feel rewarded by eventually gaining Feline Potential while a Feral and have big burst after sitting in Bear Form for so long (it’ll take a long time to proc Feline Potential as a Feral Druid). Same goes for Guardian, if they are off tanking and weaving in dps at the moment, let them be rewarded for that gameplay to eventually proc Ursine Potential.
If the 100% and 50% modifier increase is far to OP for the primary spec to ever get, have Ursine Potential modifier halved or drastically reduced for Guardian druids and Feline Potential halved or drastically reduced for Feral Potential. The tuning nobs are there, but just having that flavor would be nice. Edit: additionally, remove the modifier completely for the primary spec and just reward the full combo points or extra rage, that would also work just fine.
(If these stacks are permanent buffs too, that would be very nice. So I don’t feel pressured to keep my stacks up to do other Druid things).
Pack’s Endurance:
This is a boring standalone Talent. Please consider moving this passive onto Empowered Shapeshifting (kinda fits thematically too, since Stampeding is usable in bear/cat already, you’re empowering it further). And replace Pack’s Endurance (keep the name, it fits!) to the ability to use Frenzied Regeneration in Cat Form (this works for both Feral/Gaurdian because Guardian now has a purpose of going into Cat Form more regularly with Wildpower Surge, it allows both specs to utilize Frenzied Regen regardless of which form they’re in. Alternatively, let Guardian cast Dash in Bear form and Cat cast Frenzied Regen- so they both have a clear benefit.
I do not like how Druid of the Claw relies so much on auto attacks. I don’t like auto attacks to begin with, I think they are outdated and lazy gameplay and they are annoying to rely on. If developers can not remove auto attacks from the game, they could at least marginalize them by not making any talents or gear procs rely on them.
Use an ability, get a chance at something. Not just get in range and wait.
With this hero talent tree like this, I’m not going to use it. I’m not a fan of disco bear but I will play Elune’s Chosen before I use this one. I think class designers can do better.
I really like the theme and the idea of bear and kitty weaving for both specs.
Flavour wise this is amazing.
Here are some pain points from a pure spec flavour perspective.
Kitty & Bear Weaving
I could be mistaking, but I see kitty weaving capabilities for bear (a great choice btw for players who like tanking but guardian is to linear of a tank for and prefer some complexity for some % more in extra damage).
However feral will most likely never shift into bear and basically has frenzied regen as an additional “defensive” in cat form.
I encourage you to go a step further with this (via choice nodes) and really lean in. Let a kitty have bear DPS phases.
Like Ravage Shifts you into bear form for 2 globals/abilities (you shift back automatically into cat) your “some ST and AOE bear spell” is free deals xy% more damage twice. Not this but I hope one understands the idea.
I guess it is up for discussion if people would like some automatic weaving as spec defining flavour really.
Would love to hear some thoughts on that!
Ravage
I personally think a bigger better 2.0 FB, proccing from AA randomly sometimes making FB hit harder, is kind of bland gameplay wise. I think at some point you won’t even know if you are pressing FB or Ravage and they become the same button. This would be a sad state for a keystone talent. The capstone talent is rather uninspired as well. Compared to other classes (the same thing with wildstalker) the tree is a very bland xy% increase on some abilities. No real gameplay interactions (at least some unlike wildstalker which is 100% passive and non interactive) like saving BS for after Ravage. But that is super minor.
I’d like to know the general sentiment towards one of the following design proposals.
I could see something passive like every time your rip deals damage gain a stack… xy stacks FB is Ravage. At least make it so the proc is planable and you can pool resources around it. Speeds up in AoE with a critical point of every FB being Ravage for the feels good pulls from time to time (let’s say 25 mobs). I think that would provide a nice gameplay feel.
Or go wild and go in the Bloodtalons direction and make us perform a sequence of some sort to get FB as Ravage (and make it hit REALLY HARD ).
This example means to “make it interactive” but keep the “non button bloat an ability gets better” vibe.
TL:DR
Ravage feels like FB hitting a bit harder and as a random proc sometimes, this is just to little. Especially with the interaction of Ravage and Ravage DoT making you wanting to play around it at least a little bit (Brutal Slash to extend DoT for example).
Flavour wise lean more into “automatic” shape shifting purely for flavour if possible for this specific hero tree. Would really sell the fantasy.
I may be the only person on this thread who thinks a bear shouldn’t focus on dps. They are a tank, their primary job is to grab and hold aggro so the rest of the team can burn. I feel the same for heals, keep the tank going, HOT and heal the dps as needed. Yes, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing mid to high damage in a fight, that’s part and parcel. But it shouldn’t be the goal. My two cents.
I haven’t tanked on my Druid seriously since WotLK, but I remember the wipes if I or any other tank class lost that aggro due to one or several others in the raid kept generating high threat.
Hell, I remember kite-off-tanking on my thunderchicken and holding aggro well enough to keep the raid flowing well (yes, a moonkin off-tanking in moonkin form was actually possible and even viable back then)
On to now, looking at the tree as is, yes, I have pretty much the same concerns that were already touched upon here and in the other tree forums, but I’m getting more and more encouraged to get back into tanking again. Finally, Blizzard are going in a direction very much long awaited.
I’d actually disagree with you here. Not with the conclusion, but with the reasoning.
Aggro management hasn’t really been a thing for tanks for a few years now. Outside of a few minor irregular circumstances, so long as everyone is doing what they’re supposed to then no one except the tank is going to have aggro. But there’s reasons besides that why tanks should care about their damage. The only time I ever see tank aggro matter is in a raid situation where one tank’s damage is significantly higher/lower than the other and it creates tank swap problems. (Please don’t be the tank that forces your co-tank to deliberately handicap themselves to avoid ripping threat from you. Please actually learn your damage rotation to avoid those kinds of problems.)
The first reason is that generally speaking, tanks do damage in order to generate the resources they need for their defensives. Call it Rage, Holy Power, Runic Power… whatever you want. It’s generated from your damage rotation and gets spent on defensive abilities. So even if a tank’s main goal is staying alive, they should be doing their damage rotation correctly.
The second is that tanks can easily do both damage and defensives at the same time. Defensives are generally oGCD while damage is GCD. A tank usually doesn’t need to choose between damage and defense. So if those goals aren’t exclusive, why shouldn’t a good tank do both? You could get into a discussion about higher end play where tanks actually do make decisions to give up some survivability for damage because survivability only matters to the point where you stop dying, but I’ll leave the point at the lower level for now.
The third reason is that damage is damage no matter who it comes from. Yes the tanks will do less damage than the DPS but you don’t have to choose between DPS damage and tank damage, you can simply have both. There’s a lot of problems in WoW that you can solve by simply killing them before they become a problem. The faster enemies die the sooner they stop smacking you and the easier your primary job of tanking becomes. Tank damage makes that happen sooner just as surely as DPS damage does even if it’s not as large.
So ultimately I don’t think it’s good to use the aggro argument to talk to other players about why tank damage is good, largely because I don’t think it matters and there’s much better reasons to argue for tank damage. In this case, I’m not even sure that the argument applies since the Druid of the Claw signature ability is both a damage ability and a defensive ability given that any mob hit by it will do less damage to the Druid. Damage aside, the defensive utility is obvious.
True but those are the sorts of things I file under “unusual circumstances where everyone isn’t doing what they’re supposed to.”
If you have especially bursty DPS specs paired with a slow ramp tank, there can be problems on pull, but those problems shouldn’t last beyond the opener and tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
This is true. Also, as far as raid tank aggro issues, when one tank gets a weapon upgrade well ahead of the other or gets a severely impactful single target set bonus (think warriors this tier), you can get some weird “tank sitting on their hands to let cotank establish thread” scenarios.
Those suck, and nobody likes they. I miss vengeance… the good kind that made tanks awesome in MOP.
Disorienting roar breaks instant on dot dmg is weird for Druid. We deal dmg with dots and bleeds.can it work like dragonsbreath on only break on direct dmg hits? Otherwise it’s just an other pseudo interruption effect. It should be a setup for. Clone - like db is with sheep
