Feedback: Druid Updates

[Kaivax]

In this thread, we’ll be testing and talking about Druids in The War Within. Look here for posts from the development team as adjustments and bugfixes are made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

Thank You

Before we continue testing The War Within, we’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who read and responded to the Hero Talent previews we posted over the last few months.

Looking to the Alpha

In this first Alpha build, every single class has at least one new Hero Talent tree available for testing, with the rest coming in the following weeks. We’re asking testers to initially keep several things in mind:

• There are UI elements on the talent panel that are placeholder, including things like talent icons, text, or final UI art.
• Some talents may not be functioning yet, or may be marked as not yet implemented (NYI)
• New spell visuals and audio for several new Hero Talent trees are still a work in progress. Many trees are using placeholder assets for now that will be updated over the course of Alpha.
• There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.

The combat design team has two big areas of focus right now that we are prioritizing over other concerns such as tuning or generic class updates/maintenance:

• Finish building the remainder of the Hero Talent trees that are not yet available.
• Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.

With the Alpha build being playable and all of the discussion that will occur around the flood of data, we wanted to reiterate that the responses to our blog previews were highly valuable. The feedback we received allowed us to make some early improvements or revisions while we didn’t yet have a public test environment. It allowed us to take some big early swings on certain trees, and then react to early feedback quickly.

Going forward, we aren’t planning to publish any additional Hero Talent previews in blog form, since we’ll add the remaining classes to the Alpha as soon as they reach their ready-to-test state.

Working from Feedback

Several Hero Talent trees have received changes after reading feedback to the blog posts. Some of these were tuning changes to ensure that the Hero Talent tree felt competitive, while others were significant design changes. The feedback thus far has been of great benefit to us.

Going into Alpha, we feel good about the shape of the Hero Talent tree designs. Keeping a consistent number of utility and defensives nodes across all trees, having parity between number of choice nodes, and the overall structure of the trees are things we’re confident in.

We’re also working on tweaking some core class designs as well. In some cases, it was necessary to make adjustments to the class or specialization talent trees before significant work was done on a Hero Talent tree. In other cases, we did work seeking to improve base class talent tree designs.

Alpha Feedback

Now that we’re in Alpha, we’re looking for feedback on how it feels to playtest these trees. We’re specifically curious about:

• Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree.
• Hero Talents that create frustrating or unsatisfying gameplay or rotations for your spec.
• Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.

Throughput comparisons of Hero Talent trees are helpful, but we’re more interested in gameplay, feel, and choice feedback at this stage. Also, when possible, we appreciate it when you focus posts or articles on a single spec and Hero Talent tree, rather than combining feedback about multiple issues.

Again, Thank You

We greatly appreciate all your feedback on Hero Talent trees and are very excited for you to see everything else we’re working on. Thank you!

– The World of Warcraft Combat Design Team

[Kaivax]

There are updates to the druid class tree and several specs trees coming in the War Within. We’re excited for you to play with them in the Alpha, and we’d like to share some of the design and class philosophy behind the updates.

Druid Class Tree

A core aspect of the druid fantasy is that they have 4 specializations with a variety of magical and physical powers. We want the class tree to embody druids’ ability to invest in the powers of other specializations for useful utility and defensive power. We kept the central design of there being four main sections, one for each spec. You can invest in the Guardian section to access their powerful damage resistance, or the Restoration section to unlock self-healing. Further, the talents in the bottom half of the tree are divided into “physical” and “magical” halves that you can access by investing in either Feral / Guardian or Restoration / Balance sections.

This concept of investing came with some frustrations in Dragonflight that we are looking to reduce. Some specializations invested more points in abilities they didn’t use than others. Sometimes the rewards farther down the tree didn’t feel worth the cost to get them. In The War Within, it always costs exactly 2 points in a specialization’s section to access their more generally useful bonuses. We’ve redistributed talents so all specializations have some talents in their sections that other specializations will value. And while there is a cost to access the physical and magical sections at the bottom of the tree, there are strong, broadly useful talents in them.

Overall, we want you to feel that you’re picking and choosing the powers of other specializations as you customize your druid, and that you have interesting decisions to make in every gate no matter your specialization or what type of content you’re doing.

Astral Influence and Increased Melee Range

Astral Influence no longer increases the range of melee attacks. We are revisiting increased melee range talents across the game. These talents make the melee experience inconsistent across classes in a way we’re not happy with, so we’re removing most of them. Default melee range has increased since these talents were originally created, allowing specs with increased range to attack from well outside where it appears they should be able to. Cat Form now increases melee attack and ability range by 3 yards, for the moment.

Berserk, Celestial Alignment, and Incarnation Durations Reduced

Feral’s and Guardian’s Berserk and Balance’s Celestial Alignment have a 15 second duration in The War Within (down from 20). Incarnation forms, including Tree of Life, have 20 second durations (down from 30). Druid cooldowns’ long durations meant their power was more spread out than other class cooldowns, and the very long Incarnation durations made them hard to balance against other talent options.

[Kaivax]

Balance Druid

Our top goals for Balance Druid in The War Within are to ease some of the constraints on their rotation, open up a greater variety of builds and play styles, and tune their balance and resource generation.

Primordial Arcanic Pulsar Removed

Pulsar is an undeniably powerful effect, granting a strong damage buff and triggering Eclipse effects. However, it’s extremely constraining, reducing the value of any effects that don’t align with its 40-45 second cadence. Plus, since its progress is based on resources spent, encounters with intermissions or mechanics players can’t control can misalign their ability timing with no real recourse. Similar to Rune of Power, we believe Pulsar’s power is constraining Balance Druids too much, and we are removing it. You’ll be able to choose between Orbital Bombardment’s 2 minute cooldown and an empowered version of Celestial Alignment with a 3 minute cooldown.

Build Variety

Second, Balance uses similar builds for different types of content, with very little variety. Removing Primordial Arcanic Pulsar will help by reducing the power of “required” talents that synergize with it. We’re working to even out the power of talents in each tier of the tree and adding some new talents to allow you to specialize more in different aspects of your toolkit like periodic effects, stronger builders, or free finishers. Our goals are that there are different ways to play that you can try, and that you have more power to customize your build for different fights or types of content.

Astral Power Generation Reduced

Balance’s Astral Power generation increased a lot in Dragonflight. We’re pulling back some of those increases to slow the pace of play just a little, make pooling gameplay more interesting, and to provide some space for Hero Talents and other bonuses to provide Astral Power without going overboard. While this and changes like removing Pulsar are nerfs, Balance’s base ability damage is going up to compensate. Overall, Celestial Alignment and other cooldowns will hit a lot harder when they are active.

[Kaivax]

Feral Druid

Our top goals for Feral Druid in The War Within are to slow down its rotation a little to make Energy usage more tactical and to bring more clarity to playing the spec. We’re also trying to restore more of Tiger Fury’s identity and excitement, and simplifying some talent functionality to free up more choice in where you spend points. Many of these changes will read as nerfs – the goal is to build a healthy rotation and talent balance and buff damage to make that rotation competitive.

Energy Generation Reduced

Feral gained a lot of strong Energy generation talents in Dragonflight. As a result, it lost some of its feel as a spec where sometimes the best thing to do was pause to let a DoT tick down or for your Energy to recover. In some environments, Feral had more energy than it could spend and became GCD limited instead of Energy limited. We’re going to pull back on the power of Energy generation talents in The War Within. We want players to tactically take a breath now and then to ensure they have energy to refresh Rake, or to get ready to activate Bloodtalons, or to maximize Ferocious Bite damage.

As a part of this, we are removing Predator’s ability to reset Tiger’s Fury when an enemy dies and changing Raging Fury. As a result, Tiger’s Fury will never have 100% uptime. Maximizing the value of the Energy it generates and applying bleeds while it is active will become more of a way to express your skill (though there will also be talents to help with this if desired).

Clarity

Feral Druid has a lot of factors that influence what button you want to press at any given moment. Some of those are healthy, such as whether to refresh a bleed on a dying target, or whether to try to sneak in another Ferocious Bite before you need to refresh Rip. But some are difficult for many players to intuit without reading a guide. Should you Shred or Swipe on two targets in Berserk? Is Primal Wrath or Ferocious Bite with Rampany Ferocity more damage in AOE?

We want to give every button in Feral’s toolset a mostly consistent job. We’re removing the bonuses to Shred and Rake in Berserk, and removing bonuses that gave AOE value to Ferocious Bite. Feral’s AOE strategy will be based on dealing group damage with Primal Wrath and Tear Open Wounds while funneling Ferocious Bites into priority targets with Apex Predator.

[Kaivax]

Restoration Druid

In The War Within, we’d like to reduce active keybinds, increase the base power of Rejuvenation, and offer some new Heart of the Wild gameplay.

We experimented with a passive design for Adaptive Swarm, but ultimately feel reducing both the keybind requirements and party frame clutter is worth replacing it with a new effect. Restoration Druid reached a point in Dragonflight where we felt there were one too many heal over time effects within the talent tree that affect both the tuning of Mastery and the space on friendly unit frames.

Luxuriant Soil also had our eye throughout Dragonflight and in part has led to Rejuvenation at a baseline level feeling rather unimpactful and leaving Restoration Druids not having as much control over their healing output as we would like. We are replacing its effect with the goal of bringing up Rejuvenation’s power and making its effect feel directly impactful on the target it is cast on.

With the removal of Adaptive Swarm, we’re opting to replace it with some new Heart of the Wild synergy that both increases the uptime of the effect and enables the Druid to focus on the hybrid gameplay further for its duration.

[Kaivax]

We greatly appreciate your feedback and we’re looking forward to your thoughts on Druid changes. There are a few topics we’re especially interested in hearing from you on:

• How does it feel to build characters for different types of content? Do you feel you are able to get the tools you need?
• How do the changes help or not help in specific situations that are relevant to you?
• Are there sections of the talent trees that you feel don’t have enough meaningful choices?
• Do you see any degenerate or unintended impacts on rotations, including:
  • Using single target abilities in AOE or vice versa.
  • Being flooded with resources faster than they can be spent.
  • Feeling forced to use (or never use) particular abilities due to how the class is played.

Overall, our goal is to provide interesting choices and options in talent trees that deliver the fantasies of druid and its specializations, including appropriate tools for different types of game content. Do you feel the talent trees for your specialization enable builds you’ll enjoy?

[Adarel-sargeras]

I agree with the goals of increasing the base power of Rejuv, and I like the hybrid thoughts behind Heart of the Wild. Very early thoughts on both follow.

Rejuvenation

In early dungeon play, I’ve noticed that Rejuv actually feels extremely suboptimal to cast. This may partially be related to tuning, but most of the hero talents related to healing buff Regrowth far more than Rejuvenation which disincentives the use of Rejuv.

For example:

• Cenarion’s Might is the key offender here, providing a much-needed boost to healing throughput, but requiring that I don’t use Rejuvenation or else lose the buff. It rewards spamming Regrowth, which I personally feel is uninteresting play, and which is objectively counter to the heal-over-time playstyle. Even if Rejuv felt impactful, it would come at a significant cost.
• Thriving Growth similarly provides zero effect from Rejuvenation, incentivizing play that avoids it. This is especially unfortunate for catweaving. Adaptive Swarm often provided some cushion to allow us to remain in catform longer. Without it, I would expect Rejuv to fill this role. However, if Rejuv cannot spawn any Symbiotic Blooms, it feels like a very poor use of a non-cat GCD.

Heart of the Wild

Love the concept of supporting more hybrid play. The one problem I have with this talent’s current implementation is that it rewards limiting when I catform and maintaining a counter on when my last proc is up.

Further, I am sometimes using cat form to move more quickly to avoid damage, and if I happen to need to do that when my 1-minute window is up, I will waste a damage buff/healing window. This feels extremely punishing for what should be sensible play.

It would be much better if this were an active 1 minute cooldown that I could choose to deploy.

Thanks for reading!

[Felinae-amanthul]

We haven’t really gotten a good look at it yet - but I would like to be able to switch druid travel/flight form between dynamic and standard flight modes independent to how mounts are working - I feel that the druid class fantasy it would be consistent with druids being able to control how fast they fly separate to mounts. Even if it was just flight form (as distinct to travel form) that was always standard flying.

[Keylae-sargeras]

Hi There!

I started playing Feral at the start of Amirdrassil and Balance Druid since Uldir (I will post my thoughts on Balance in another thread), both at a level of achieving Cutting Edge each raid tier and mid-high tier M+. It took me awhile to pick up on Feral but I appreciated the challenge of it and enjoy it so much that I’ve made it my primary spec. Here are some of my thoughts regarding Feral Druid in the current alpha iteration.

@Kaivax

Our top goals for Feral Druid in The War Within are to slow down its rotation a little to make Energy usage more tactical and to bring more clarity to playing the spec.

Reading this at first kind of disappointed me. I think a lot of Ferals feel that it is a fast spec, but it only feels that way during Smoldering Frenzy windows or usual Berserk/Tiger’s Fury windows. The time between Fyrakk on pull and his shield intermission is a prime example of feeling too slow. During that period, Ferals are only refreshing bleeds (also feels underwhelming tuning wise) and spending generic Ferocious Bites but we get those little periods of excitement during Smoldering Frenzy when we can unload. With The War Within, we lose Smoldering Frenzy and potentially lose Tiger’s Fury uptime from live Raging Fury/Predator. While I appreciate the transition to favoring more haste, it just feels too slow right now. I however don’t want to discredit the efforts into making Tiger’s Fury more impactful on the alpha talent tree.

@Kaivax

We want players to tactically take a breath now and then to ensure they have energy to refresh Rake, or to get ready to activate Bloodtalons, or to maximize Ferocious Bite damage.

I can agree with the sentiment that there are a lot of factors that influence what button we Ferals press at any given moment and plethora of things we need to keep track of to maintain damage, but this aspect of “tactically” waiting doesn’t sit right with me. I can’t help but to think while we are waiting for energy to accumulate, my other raiders are building combo points, rage, astral power, holy power, etc in order to spend it on something massive. I think the thing that could sate that dissatisfaction would be having bleeds and spenders feel more impactful.

I am keeping in mind a lot of these things will need to be fleshed out during tuning and can change depending on getting better gear or tier set bonuses. Also not trying to bash a slower playstyle, but just trying to make sure it feels meaningful and is an asset to the raid, M+, or PvP team. Looking forward to more updates!

[Petemolyneux-hyjal]

Hey there -

I primarily play Balance Druid in raids (Heroic/Normal, usually AOTC each season), and M+ (got KSM only a couple of times, not for lack of skill, but usually due to time commitments beyond raiding 6h a week).

I’ve played since Vanilla, with only a year away from the game since 2005. I love it dearly, and I know it’ll be my GOAT for my whole game-playing life. I’m very excited for the future of the game and franchise, and the Worldsoul Saga in particular.

My observations so far will be more limited to initial gut feeling about things in the Alpha after 3 or 4h of play, and won’t be ultra-deep stuff that you might expect from CE Mythic raiders and such, but hope they’ll offer some perspective that might resonate with other Balance Druids who are more on my level, haha.

General:

• Echo what others said above about feeling like Druid in particular needs to be able to switch instantly between Skyriding and Steady flight, as part of the druid class fantasy.
• Re: all classes, not just druids - not having Steady flight available from the start feels very strange. I respect the quest and levelling design may be accounting for the slightly higher challenge curve that comes with Skyriding (dragon riding), but I think accessibility and immersion should come first. As a druid, going into flight form and being unable to fly like I normally do feels bizarre. (I say this as someone who truly loves skyriding/dragonriding and think it’s one of the best things to ever happen to WoW).
• This isn’t a problem yet, but with druids in particular, running out of talent loadout save slots is probably going to become a thing again. If it’s still 10 per character across all specs, I know I’ll run out again, as I have in DF, which seems at odd with the design goal of supporting a greater variety of different talent loadouts and playstyles for Balance Druids in particular.

Balance Druid:

• Cosmetic: can we get an option to remain in regular caster form, instead of either Glyph of Stars (persistent blueish haze/color) or Owlkin Form? I LOVE the Owlkin forms we received in 10.2, and am grateful for the art love here, but I still firmly desire being able to see my hard-earned gear on my character in combat. Generally can’t do that with either Glyph of Stars or Owlkin Form. This is an issue for Shadow Priest too (my last main), and for Evokers to some degree. This is a pretty big one for me, as I feel like I look the same all the time unless I head off to the barbershop where all my options (as good as they are) are limited and fixed, probably for many years to come. The allure of getting more transmogs (a big draw to the game for most classes and specs) is diminished for us, somewhat.

• Overall Flow of Combat:

Eclipses: This may not be a popular opinion at all among other Balance Druids, but I was secretly hoping for a dramatic change to the eclipse system. I like the class fantasy of going into an eclipse to empower my spells, but mechanically, it has always felt clunky to me and the guildies I’ve spoken with. It remains unintuitive to me that one should use a single-target filler to empower a cleave spell, and vice versa. You can’t help but feel you’ve been ineffective in the few seconds it takes to re-enter an eclipse, and that happens multiple times in every encounter. It’s also super punishing if you screw up and go into the wrong eclipse, or if the state of combat changes and you’re suddenly dealing with one target or multiples, but are currently in the opposite eclipse. I want some way to regain agency over my power flow, rather than waiting for the ‘wrong’ eclipse to finish so I can enter the ‘right’ one. Obviously, I’ve gotten used to all this in my rotation over the years, but it still feels strange.

DoTs: It feels clunky to have to manually dot up enemies. The talent that gets two Moonfires out helps, sure, but it feels like lots of ramp/setup. It would be wonderful to have talent options to apply or spread dots faster, just like Shadow Priest and other specs/classes. That feels missing here.

Shapeshifting: Super grateful to see Fluid Form as a talent, but wondering if it can be extended to allow Moonfire and Sunfire to take you into Moonkin Form, too (and perhaps even Starsurge/Starfall)? If combat has already begun, or an enemy surprises me out in the world, my first casts are my dots, not Wrath/Starfire, so I’m incurring the GCD penalty anyway to go into Moonkin Form first. Also, I kind of thing Fluid Form should be baseline… but maybe that’s being too greedy.

Hero Talents: I was (and still am) very excited for this concept overall. I know we were told to expect these to not be transformative to gameplay, in the way that a spec completely changes how we play, but I think I still expected… more than what I’m feeling so far in the levelling experience. Perhaps the flavor and utility of these hero talents will become more impactful at max level.

As a slightly more casual player, I think I’d even be fine with them being the way they are mechanically, but would love more of a visual/flavorful punch. While leveling, there’s nothing that really tells me (or other players) that I’m either Elune’s Chosen or a Keeper of the Grove. Or maybe there is, and I missed it.

• The extra AOE splash damage from Fury of Elune in Elune’s Chosen was either very minimal visually, or I’m just super unobservant and didn’t notice it most of the time.
• The Treants in Keeper of the Grove don’t look any new/different as far as I can tell, and I didn’t really feel the difference of having them around (vs. regular non-hero Force of Nature), outside of seeing a couple of extra Moonfires go off. I think having the treants look different, have new models, or even be customizable somewhat would really sell the fantasy to me of being this ‘tree-warden’ or master of the forest.

Bugs:

• I think devs are probably aware since other boomies have encountered this, but right now, Incarn/CA talented into Orbital Strike is a 100% client crash. The workaround shared with me is to do an @cursor macro, which is probably how I’ll play it anyway come 11.0, but yeah.

Random observations:

• I chose the Starter Tree initially, just to mess around with while leveling. I know it won’t be ‘meta’ in the slightest, but I just wanted to get going and see what the new zone was like. It was bizarre to realize that with a couple hero talents, I had 140 AP (thanks to Astral Communion and Expansiveness together), and was suddenly able to pool and cast 4 Starsurges. I can’t say that felt bad. Machine-gunning Starsurges (at least 3x) was something we lost awhile ago (end of Shadowlands, I think?) that I know most Boomies I spoke to were sad about. Having that option back is fun, though I imagine a meta talent tree for endgame PvE won’t include it…

I haven’t done any dungeons and such to really put the spec and hero talents through their paces, but will post again soon when I do.

Overall, excited to see how this all plays out!

(I apologize if I made any errors in describing talents or gameplay systems above. I don’t have quite the aptitude for describing all this and understanding the deeper intricacies of talent interplay and synergy the way some CE raiders do, but I think the more casual perspective is valid to share here, too).

[Keylae-sargeras]

I have some additional follow-up to my original post regarding Feral in TWW Alpha. I logged a variety of talent builds that I watched and adapted from “Cheesey” on Youtube. However, I cannot post the logs here on the forums.

Disclaimers: This is my first time alpha testing and in depth logging on Warcraft Logs. Also want to note that my character is level 73 (463 ilvl) with only 3 talent points in the hero trees, no gems/enchants, no raid buffs, forgot Mark of the Wild on the AoE logs, human error, and no Weakauras/name plate addons for tracking buffs, bleeds, etc. Lastly, the sample size is obviously low. The logs are only in 2 minute increments.

Single Target
Wild Stalker with: LI, AS, Incarn, CoLaD- No HotL or MoC = 133K, 132K, 138K

Druid of the Claw with: LI, CO. AS. Incarn, CoLaD = 118K and 122K

Druid of the Claw with: DB, BrS, SJ, Incarn, SotF, Apex- No HotL = 125K and 130K

3 target AoE
Druid of the Claw with: CI, Incarn, AG, CoLaD, TOO, DCR = 216K and 268K

Wild Stalker with: CI, Incarn, AG, CoLaD, TOO, DCR = 244K and 257K

Hero Tree Thoughts
Druid of the Claw - feels more focused on bites, less rewarding for the “slow” playstyle you’re looking for, and seems like it is less damage than Wild Stalker; except on AoE but not “winning” by a large margin. For spec “identity,” I feel like I want to play this tree over Wild Stalker, but at the end of the day I will choose what performs better in raid/M+.

Wild Stalker- seems to be more in line with the “slow” playstyle. I actually kind of like it. Performs slightly worse on AoE though. Cosmetically, the big red vines on the target look pretty cool.

Both- Ravage and Blood Seeker Vines both feel uninteresting. Ravage changes Ferocious Bite automatically and randomly while the vines proc at random. I see mages getting a really cool Phoenix and wonder how something like that could be translated to Ferals; I don’t know.

Feral Issues/Gripes
Resourceful Hunter: just seems… underwhelming.

There seems to be a “lull” in the rotation between cooldowns. Not sure if it feels this way because I am playing it wrong and/or playing it “too fast” with spending combo points and resources OR if this is intended. Perhaps this will change with more optimized stats, particularly into haste.

Coiled to Spring: I don’t like this talent because it seems like it rewards you for bad game play or “luck-based” game play where you have max combo points but proc a combo point while waiting to Rip or Ferocious Bite. This goes into my next issue.

There is the emphasis to make energy usage more tactical and have more clarity when playing Feral. I do like this. However, the amount of things that “proc” is something I’m not a huge fan of. How can we be expected to make thoughtful choices with energy/spending combo points when we don’t know if we will get lucky with an Omen of Clarity, Sudden Ambush, or Frantic Momentum proc. As I have been testing, I feel that I have been getting bombarded with random combo point procs. I get all of these combo points and I want to spend spend spend (to not overcap and to just do damage) but then I run the risk of running out of energy really fast. I’m not anti-proc, just something more manageable. I really hope that this is not a situation where I would have to shift into another form (on low energy, outside CDs) to do more damage. I want to play a cat.