I’ve been annoyed with Solar Beam for awhile. I swear it used to silence mobs within the beam for its entire duration at some point in the past. Maybe I’m just misremembering it. But a 1 minute CD for an interrupt is an insanely long time.
The talent node should be a choice node between Solar Beam, as is, and another one called, something like, “Solar Ray” that’s a single target interrupt up on 24 second CD, to bring boomkins in line with other caster interrupt CDs.
Class tree looks much improved
From a PVP perspective, I really like the easier access to dispel and Cyclone. The new Starlight Conduit talent seems nice for people that don’t love Catweaving as Resto. It’s also nice to be able to pick up small little effects like Forestwalk or Ursine Vigor more reasonably.
Offhealing
When thinking about off-healing as a non-healer, I personally find it a lot more valuable to have a quick spot-heal like Swiftmend than something like Wild Growth or Rejuv. I’d love to see Swiftmend return as a pickable talent, especially with the class tree being more opened up for build diversity. This is an area that Druid has been very lacking compared to other hybrid classes, with Maelstrom-fueled Healing Surges, Word of Glorys, Power Word Life saves, etc.
Fluid Form
I’m gonna be straight up, I don’t like this talent, I don’t want to feel forced to take it ever. My main gripe with it is that it goes against the very intuitive use of form-specific action bars, it presents a very significant shift in how I bind spells to be able to use it and adds onto the spell bloat situation. As an example, Mangle is in the same spot as Wrath and Shred for me, and I’d need to bind it to maybe 3 different keys depending on form and spec right now before even thinking about Shred and Rake out of Cat form, Frenzied Regen in Cat form, all the while I still need to have Cat form and Bear form bound because those spells don’t actually shift me if I’m not in range to hit a target with them. Given the potential gain from its synergy with Druid of the Claw, Fluid Form might feel like a locked-in talent and I hope that won’t be the case.
Resto is a mixed bag
Luxuriant Soil removal and Abundance buff look very positive to me. I think it’s important that Abundance feels impactful and central to how Resto manages mana if it’s gonna remain a resource that it’s balanced around.
Flourish
From the moment I rerolled to Druid, this has been THE iconic central Resto spell for my money. The lack of a meaningful spike off of the ramp loop means I’m unrewarded for planning it and timing it. I love to ramp for Flourish.
Grove Guardians and Keeper of the Grove
I’m hoping that I can reasonably opt out of picking these talents if I’m playing Wildstalker. I have a few practical issues with using Treants, and something of a philosophical one about encroaching into the design space of Shaman totems. I have qualms with how it affects my decision making regarding positioning in PVP due to line of sight and range and how random and unreliable they are when picking people up from big hits. It isn’t universally loved or a core part of our gameplay for me, but the spec is clearly balanced around having them, which means many other spells (like Flourish) are weaker than they would otherwise be. Not picking it is unfathomable right now simply cuz of strength. If it’s gonna retain that strength, I’d love to be able to swap it out for other similarly strong talents. Right now, it’s 3-4 times stronger than other talents competing with it for points in similar spots.
Wildstalker and the lack of Adaptive Swarm
I can’t help feeling like Swarm is paying for the sins of other spells. I recognize the Mastery scaling problem, it came up especially in PVP, but I think the Nourish effect from Treants and from Amirdrassil set bonus really exaggerated this issue. Looking at the button bloat issue, why is Invigorate still a talent? Overgrowth also never found a place in PVE, while Cenarion Ward is largely uninteractive outside of Verdant Infusion extensions. My favorite iteration of this spec came through the moment we were able to play Necrolord with Unbridled Swarm in Shadowlands M+. It’s also nature theme left unexplored since Insect Swarm was removed and what it does fits so well with the effects of Wildstalker to me, it’s really a shame to see it go.
Call of the Elder Druid
I like seeing this talent in PVE. I think if there’s some way to give it an activation method instead of simply Shapeshifting, it would be much improved. Having it trigger when you only shift for movement or to tank a hit in Bear form doesn’t feel good.
Shapeshifting
I need to present a counterpoint to other feedback I read. For me, shapeshifting for many reasons is very much THE core concept of Druid in this game. Bear form as a defensive, Cat form for with its stuns and sprints, even Moonkin form if a caster-based damage build for Resto could be fleshed out, these are very important pillars in our toolkit for me. However, having both Catweaving and Moonkinweaving at the same time feels very convoluted in Dragonflight so I appreciate the effort to make more specialized builds in the Class tree.
Druid of the Claw
Having declared my love for Shapeshifting, I’m a little disappointed seeing how Druid of the Claw’s Bearweaving/Catweaving actually plays out. It’s a 1-gcd shift and back situation. I was hoping for something a bit more involved.
I saw a post on here the other day asking … is Guardian going to get any changes or touched at all before TWW Releases? (Or something like that)
I dont see it on here – but I gotta ask – are we? I’ve held out hope that we’d get some form of a touch pass made on us - not a total pass made on us like has been the case for all the past Alpha/Beta cycles.
I got a few quick things to bring up for hopefully Devs to concider for us fuzzy tanks.
I love Guardian of Elune - Moonbear has been a thing I’ve loved since Legion.
The glaring problem that I have with it though – it specifically requires one talent to make use of.
Without Lunar Beam - you cant take it (I mean you could but come on) - the only way to get it - is to dive way down at the bottom of the tree to take the one lone talent to get it.
Sure there’s other Arcane-ish talents you can take on the way, but it’s the thing that makes the entire Hero Talent tree -work-.
I’ve looked at the other tanks Hero Talents , none of them require them to take a talent way down at the end of the tree. Mountain Thane makes use of Thunder Clap and is right at the top of their class tree.
I get that LB was meant to be a capstone talent but since it’s the star of Guardian of Elune – is it possible to get talents re-shuffled and get this moved to somewhere more accessible? Middle of the tree at least.
Is there any way we can get our tree looked at vs the other tanks?
Per a chart on Twitter ( thank you @lofibanshee )
Out of all the tanks - we have the most points in our tree out of any tank sitting at 49.
VDH, Brm and PPal are sitting at 46 with BDK at 44 and PWar at 42.
Could we get some useless talents pruned that people dont take to help bring us in line with the rest of the tanks ? Or even knock out some of the 2 pt talents we still have?
We top the tank charts again for most 2pt nodes with us having 7 of them.
PPal 6, VDH 5 and Brm 3, BDK 2, PWar 2.
Seeing people get changes that are really -really- good or even any at all and we just get to roll into TWW with just new Hero Talents (most of which are just passives) - feels bad if that’s how it ends up.
Edit : If you guys wanted to not make Berserk a 3-4 pt talent dump. We wouldn’t be mad at it. There’s no CD worth that many points or shouldnt be.
Long time Feral player. I’ve been testing Feral’s spec tree and hero tree for the past day, and I have a couple points of feedback after several rounds of dungeons and training dummies.
Sudden Ambush Indicator
First, Sudden Ambush needs a better indicator if it stays the way it is, similar to that of Apex, Predatory Swiftness, and Moment of Clarity. Due to how invisible the buff is, players who don’t use addons to track Sudden Ambush lack agency to choose using it on either Shred or Rake, and part of its appeal is the decision between snapshotting Rake or Shred for more combo points. With the adjustments the team is making to visual clarity recently, I would like to see this visited.
Hero Talents Disparity
After back-and-forth playing with Wildstalker and Druid of the Claw, there’s some gameplay disparities between the two I want to point out. Wildstalker has a high uptime on vines with excellent synergy in both ST and AoE due its aura damage amplifiers, Bursting Growth, and great DoT damage. In fact, Wildstalker, while looking passive at first, is quite interactive and fun to play in AoE especially, mainly because of Bursting Growth incentivizing you to find vine targets to bite. So while I doubted Wildstalker at first, I am impressed with its showing so far. However, Flower Walk in particular feels underpowered at current tuning, only healing less than 1% of allies’ health; you might as well not even have the healing aspect.
On the other hand, Druid of the Claw, the one I was most interested in, is lagging behind in the content I tested (dungeons, sustained AoE, and ST). It appears to be favoring a more burst-like playstyle versus sustain, yet Wildstalker seems to beat it at almost every niche, sometimes including burst. The low proc rate of Ravage (I believe ~2 rppm when looking over logs) outside of Berserk feels less than stellar considering its current damage. A series of vines between Ravage procs can easily outdamage it, not including Bursting Growth and damage amplifiers included with them. I wouldn’t mind keeping it a lower proc rate, but the damage just does not compete with Wildstalker in most content at the moment. On top of that, it has more contingencies, such as it being a frontal and lower range ability, which exacerbates the disparity between effort and reward in contrast to Wildstalker.
Counterintuitive Talents in Hero Tree
There’s also some clunkiness with certain talents in Druid of the Claw–the two glaring ones being Pack’s Endurance and Killing Strikes. For Pack’s Endurance, the fact that it’s a required node (no choice) and it modifying an optional talent is a weird oversight. Wildstalker also has nodes that modify optional talents (Ursol’s Vortex), but the choice node provides them an option that includes a baseline ability.
As for Killing Strikes, many Feral players usually pre-Tiger’s Fury in stealth before opening with Rake. If you do this, you will not get the free Ravage until your next Tiger’s Fury in ~30 seconds. This is counterintuitive to how many play our rotation, and it can actively harm burst during Berserk windows.
Edit: My general overview is above, but here are the specifics behind my reasoning.
While Ravage & Dreadful Wounds appear competitive in damage logs, it is not taking into account the damage you cannibalize from Bite. In actuality, Ravage is only adding maybe an extra ~30% damage to Ferocious Bite in ST. Vines are an independent entity that takes less energy investment (Rake & Rip) and total around the same amount of damage overall as Ravage in 2-3 procs. This is not including the extra 10% damage you get on vine targets or the 2%+ whenever vines are active. You could argue Dreadful Wounds adds value to Ravage, but Bursting Growth, when played correctly, also outdamages Dreadful Wounds in both ST and AoE, and it can be triggered consecutively.
Vines give a flat damage modifier that scales the rest of our abilities. So, even if Ravage was competitive, the high uptime of Vines means that our damage is scaled 12%+ almost 95% of the time on ST, and it also affects targets in AoE. On top of that, we have a talent that adds another 5% to all damage abilities for a total of 17% with a high uptime.
Druid of the Claw adds damage modifiers to abilities that do not make up as much of our damage breakdown compared to Wildstalker’s modifiers. Druid of the Claw modifies Primal Wrath’s initial damage (not useful in ST). Rip is our #1 damage on AoE, and it’s a significant portion of our ST, which Wildstalker buffs. Both buff Ferocious Bite, so it’s not as if Druid of the Claw has a competitive edge there. Druid of the Claw’s only other modifiers are on Shred and Brutal Slash; these make up a measly amount of our damage, maybe a bit more on AoE, but not enough to compete.
It’s easier to play with vines. Primal Wrath can apply rip to everything in a 10 yd radius, and Ravage is a frontal cone. There’s less room for error with Ravage, which makes the effort not worth the reward.
The node that increases Primal Wrath’s damage in Druid of the Claw is a good start to making it competitive, but right now, it loses value because of how powerful Rampant Ferocity is. Bursting Growth is also really strong, which further cements the return of biteweaving.
The defensive options in Druid of the Claw are going to make it a must pick in M+ for survivability due to how abysmal the healing is on Wildstalker, but it’s going to feel awful. You’re losing a significant portion of damage to survive. I think it’s fine that there’s a trade-off in damage, but right now, the delta is so large that it does not feel worth it.
Hibernate is absolutely situational, but it is definitely useful in PVP for shaman in wolf form, hunter pets, and other druids in cat/bear form. There’s a few specs/classes that have these very situational CC spots on the tree (priest main tree has two I believe off the top of my head)
Very much agreed, though I’m not a PvPer so I can’t comment on the PvP aspects - although they do sound reasonable to me. I’d also like to add a couple of things (and this is mostly from a Feral PoV):
On the topic of Off-healing, on having Swiftmend over Rejuv as a talent, for Feral: Rejuv is honestly pitiful for us. If you’re going to drop form to try and off-heal someone, especially considering how we get free Regrowths rotationally, it’s because it is an emergency. Rejuv simply doesn’t help; even if it was tuned better for us, a small spammable hot isn’t what you want in those situations.
Swiftmend isn’t particularly impressive either to be quite honest, but it makes much more sense on an emergency “oh crap” situation, in which we case we could cast one of our free regrowths and use its HoT to feed a Swiftmend for a bit of a spot-heal; as it stands on beta right now, rejuv is literally just a talent point tax for Ferals to get Remove Corruption. I think having Swiftmend instead of Rejuv over there would be a lot better.
On Fluid Form: I very much agree with everything said here. It feels like a very weird way to try and get around the shapeshifting GCD cost instead of simply putting Shapeshifting on its own separate GCD or something similar.
On Adaptive Swarm: I mainly play Feral when I’m on my druid, but I would just like to say that the removal of Adaptive Swarm from Resto completely kills any desire I have of playing Resto. Since the introduction of that spell in shadowlands, I just can’t think of a better fit for the spec. It’s perfect both thematically and gameplay wise IMO, besides being a beautiful spell visually. Honestly, if this really goes through like this, in TWW my druid will be relegated to only Feral and Guardian, as going back to a non-AS resto and having to deal with the treants as well is quite frankly not for me.
On Druid of the Claw: hard agree. I was very hyped for this hero talent tree, I love the idea, and adding some bear weaving to my cat / improving cat weaving on bear seems perfect to me, but when in practice it’s pretty much just a 1 gcd shift and back out, it ends up feeling like a huge miss. Especially considering that it is opt-in, as opposed to something like a tier set, if someone doesn’t like weaving different forms they can still choose a different hero talent tree (specifically in the case of feral, Wildstalker doesn’t really change up your gameplay in any meaningful way, so you can pick it if you want the more “default” feral experience), I think not really leaning into the potential of this hero tree for allowing you to really change up your gameplay with some more relevant shape-shifting is a HUGE miss.
Controversial Feedback Resto Owlweaving
Please bring back Moonkin Form, Even if it’s baseline for the class.
With so many new talents to promote “Fluid” dps options for Resto, although I’d argue Fluid Form should be baseline for Druids overall but I’ll take a talent option.
You simply are removing a playstyle for those who love a Caster DPS option as Resto but more so remove a huge part of class fantasy of Shapeshifting.
While I may be in the minority of preference in a caster dps option for Resto, to me it was the peak fantasy of what Druid was utilising all forms.
Bear for Defence, Cat for Mobility, Moonkin for Damage and Healing as Night Elf/ Tree form.
It literally was perfect harmony (too me) of being a Shapeshifting Druid.
With this change of removal of Moonkin form, you’ve essentially locked in the only way to dps on the side “Effectively” as Resto is by Kittyweaving, this is more apparent especially with Wildstalker double downing on this giving even more damage/healing in Cat Form.
Please rethink the decision of completely removing Moonkin Form from Resto completely, it was a solid dps for many who preferred the caster option rather then melee, but more so stays on theme being a Shapeshifting Druid that utilises different forms for the situation needed.
Keep flight form using normal flight while mounts use skyriding.
As a Balance druid player, it feels bad having Incapacitating Roar and Well-Honed Instincts gated below Instincts of the Claw, right now in Dragonflight we can have Innervate and Nature’s Vigil with those 2 gated talents, but now in TWW you are forced to waste 2 talent points to have a little bit more CC and survivability.
Feral-
I’m going into this expansion as a feral main player since Legion. The changes to slow down feral feel odd and clunky. If the bleed damage is scaled through the roof it might make up for the slow feeling, but currently any class with some bursty damage feels much better per button press.
Druid Talents-
This has been an ongoing problem since the new talent trees were brought in, but it should still be talked about and fixed. There are still too many pathing issues for the different specs, and multi point nodes that feel like a waste when you’re trying to get down the trees. Take a lesson from the TWW monk talent tree. You can get everything you want and still have a point or two to play with. Druid tree is still too much give and take. The positioning of Innervate, Well-Honed, Incap Roar etc being stuck behind talents on opposite sides of the tree mean that you have to invest in nodes that you may not otherwise want in order to have that extra survivability and utility.
Just my $.02, but at this point I’m pretty set on parking my druid in town as a crafter and playing my monk full time. I’d like to continue as a Feral/Guardian main, but it just feels off right now to me.
I play primarily Resto, so I’ll just give feedback on that.
I like the new druid class tree better than the previous version. It’s acceptable to me for the most part so I won’t nitpick it too much. Two minor issues though: 1) Fluid form feels like an unnecessary use of a talent point. Might as well just switch with a macro. 2) Incapacitating Roar / Mighty Bash, Oakskin, and Well-Honed Instincts being gatekept behind a purely cat/bear 2-point talent is kind of a bummer. Obviously I don’t mind it too much as Wildstalker but those are two very valuable Tier 3 talent points just to spec into survivability.
Wildstalker: Love it, but the proc rate for symbiotic blooms currently seems really low. Bloodseeker vines proc just fine, but on 3-5 healing targets (which is what you’d be getting in dungeons, arguably the best place to play Wildstalker) you barely notice the blooms. Keeper of the Grove seems better for raid anyway in case y’all are worried about too many blooms being active when applied to larger groups.
Keeper of the Grove: Also love. The dream petals are visually pleasing but I don’t really notice their effect too much. I don’t know the range on them but it seems to be a bit short. I was thinking it would be similar to Evoker’s Emerald Blossom but the only reason I know they’re even activating is because of the pretty colors.
technically no. If fighting in mid air would put you in combat. Which in turn make flight form go to travel form (ground only)
You’d need to be WAAAAY above them, and to hit them with Debilitating Roar or another stun, then hit flight form between them hitting the ground and you hitting it. That was a fun time in Mists…
+1, this so much
Skyriding flight form is fun but is so much less convenient than the regular form for doing world content, quests, moving around, etc
Firstly, I love having the ability to use druid flight form in the dragon riding style. However, not being able to use the form normally, and a dragon riding mount separately is pretty upsetting.
I would suggest adding another ability for druids, in the general tab. “Switch Travel form style” or something. That way we can fly and gather normally and then mount up on a dragon and fly away. Rather than switching the flight style over and over again.
Thanks!
Why is guardian being completely forgotten and neglected? No tuning no changes not even an acknowledgment of its existence? Are we really getting nothing?
That being said I really love Elune’s Chosen it’s very fun! I do think Lunar Beam should move higher in the tree the same way they moved Wake of Ashes for Ret Paladins higher because the hero talent solely depends on it. But otherwise I enjoy it I just hope we have a slight rework or at least some reorganizing of our guardian tree.
1)Dream Blooms(Keeper of the grove) need more range. The range for AOE heal is extremely short. ALSO, please make it so that it doesn’t heal the treants
2)Mini Cenarion Wards(Durability of Nature) are very inconsistent. Idk if this is intended but I get the procs randomly. I think that that least the initial swiftmend heal should always guarantee a proc.
DISCLAIMER: This is going to be a gigantic all of text.
I’m going to do my best to format this in a way that makes it bearable to read.
- I understand that you guys are looking for specific things – Some of my feedback will address some of the concerns you are looking for, but I really think that limiting feedback to what feels strong/weak won’t really address some of the core problems I see at the moment.
- This feedback is largely about theme/feel of the talent rework, some pathing issues with the general/feral talent tree, the Druid of the Claw Hero talents.
- This feedback is primarily regarding Feral and Guardian specs.
Flight Form:
- Druid Flight Form as dragon riding is really fun when there aren’t latency/stability issues. I have very much enjoyed getting around the zones.
- The lack of responsiveness for the first 1-3 seconds of getting into bird form before it actually takes off though is extremely aggravating. I get this is probably server lag – but it is driving me insane more than any other laggy component of the game.
- It’d be nice if the dragon riding and regular flying were a bit more merged. Like if at low speeds it worked like normal flying, and then worked like dragon riding when you use a dragon riding ability – until you slow down too much.
General Talent Tree:
The general druid tree has a lot of problems.
- There are 25 abilities you can spec into in the general tree – 27 if you count both abilities on talents where you have to pick one or the other.
- While it’s fine to have a couple abilities to spec into – having this many feels quite uninspired.
- Druids in general have too many buttons to keybind. I’ll talk more about this later but I think it would be fairly simple to reduce the bloat without reducing how much utility we have.
- Having talent points pre-spent for you is probably a good indicator that those talents don’t belong on the talent tree.
- Talents like Skull Bash are mandatory, and don’t belong as options on a talent tree.
- There are several places on the tree where there are no good options to choose, and it forces the player to take things like Iron Fur, Improved Barkskin, or Maim just as filler to be able to progress the tree. The other options in that tier aren’t even remotely thematic for a druid of the claw Feral Druid.
- As a Guardian Druid of the Claw it isn’t as bad, because it makes sense that you would want the damaging Cat abilities and the tanking abilities.
- It makes less sense as a Feral Druid of the Claw taking tanking abilities with no intent to PvP, since you’re probably going to die still if you try to tank anything, nor would you use Ironfur to DPS while in Bear form as a Feral Druid.
- If you want Stampeding Roar, you have to spec into either Ursol’s Vortex/Mass Entanglement, and Soothe or Cyclone in order to get to it.
- This just adds to the button bloat/feeling like you’re forced to take Utility abilities you may not want to put on your bar… and if you aren’t going to use it, it’s a wasted talent.
- Matted Fur, Ursine Vigor, Ursoc’s Spirit are all pathing road blocks to move further down the tree, yet do very little for Feral DPS, and they largely feel like wasted points.
- At least one of these needs to be a hybrid Feral DPS talent.
- The entire bottom left of the tree does almost nothing for Feral DPS. I get that it’s a shared tree – but each spec should have useful things in every tier… and if there isn’t room – then make some of them do X for spec X and Y for spec Y. I would argue that the entire bottom of the general druid tree is just extremely underwhelming as a whole for Feral DPS.
- Heart of the Wild is fundamentally part of what is wrong with Druids. We’ve shoehorned the hybrid functionality built into our kit into a 5 minute CD. Shapeshifting should be the cornerstone of playing a druid… not a 5 minute CD gimick to combine with Convoke. I really think this ability needs to be completely reworked.
- Fluid Form:
- This talent is fantastic. It thematically feels good, like it’s something Druids should have always had.
- It’s worth having the conversation if this should even be a talent. I would almost argue that you could just take all shapeshifting off the GCD, or at least remove it for Cat/Bear as part of the Druid of the Claw Hero Talent selection.
- Pathing for Fluid Form:
- As a Feral Druid, I have to spend 7 talent points that do not match the theme of being a bleed cat/bear druid… in order to be able to spec into Fluid Form.
- Three of the points spent give me healing abilities, 2 of which I can’t use in cat/bear form. This feels like it contributes to the button bloat/unimpactful talent choices.
- The points spent on Lore of the Grove are two points that thematically are completely wrong for a druid of the claw.
Ability Bloat:
Here are some suggestions for dealing with all this button bloat:
- Stampeding Roar could just be a talent that gives Dash 2 charges, and allows Dash to boost your team’s move speed. That’s one button down.
- Make Heart of the Wild a passive talent. Another one bites the dust.
- Natures Vigil. Most people just macro it into their other abilities. Make it passive. Another one down.
- Hibernate, Cyclone, Entangling Roots are all just different forms of CC. We don’t need 3 different CC’s that can only be used on certain targets, outside on a Wednesday. Just get rid of two of them and make it work on any target. This game needs less CC anyways. Two down.
- Soothe/Remove Corruption. Make it remove a curse on a friendly target and remove an enrage on an enemy. Now we have interesting gameplay choices, dispel your friend or the enemy on a shared cooldown. Another button down.
- Frenzied Regen/Regrowth. Just pick one or the other for Feral/Guardian to use as a self heal. Regrowth is problematic anyways since it’s proc reliant and will throw you out of bear/cat form if you press it too early without a macro. Another one.
- Ursol’s Vortex, Mass Entanglement, Encapacitating Roar, Typhoon. Just merge all of these into one enemy displacement ability on a 15-20 second CD, or longer with charges. That’s 3 more down.
That is 10 less required keybinds, while maintaining a ton of utility. If people want more flavor, add some glyphs to spice up the way they look or work.
Alright, That’s the general tree down. Let’s talk the Feral Tree.
Feral:
- Tiger’s Fury.
- I don’t know any other way to say it, so I’m just gonna be blunt. Not being able to reset the CD for Tiger’s Fury doesn’t feel good. It took years to get Tiger’s Fury to feel good, and it resetting on death of a bleeding enemy was a unique part of playing Feral over other Energy based classes. That is just a tough pill to swallow.
- Coiled to Spring.
- This is basically a wasted talent unless you’re actively mismanaging your combo points. Taking this talent is like advertising that you are probably not a good player. I get the idea here, making talents to help players who struggle with the rotation… Probably should just make the rotation easier instead of branding struggling players in their talent tree… or find a more subtle way to help them.
- Predator.
- Increasing the damage of your CP generators by 40% of your haste is kind of a strange way to word a damage increase… It seems like there is a big push for haste stacking now that we’re hurting a lot more for energy… So I’m guessing this is to help with having less Mastery, or enable players to stack haste/crit to focus more on a Shred build? Either way maybe there is a better way to word this so it’s more clear if this is like 40% of your % of haste? Or if it’s 40% of your raw haste rating as flat damage? I haven’t had time to really dig into this yet but I figured the tooltip could use some better clarification.
- Thrashing Claws.
- I like this idea, I’m all about removing button bloat. But nobody is going to take this because it’s not optimal. Again, if we want to make the rotation easier, let’s just do that – instead of letting people waste talent points sabotaging their DPS so they can enjoy the rotation more. It should at least be competitive.
- If you make the rotation easier but the DPS still competitive and people take the talent that makes the rotation easier – that should probably tell you what you need to know.
- Pouncing Strikes/Sudden Ambush.
- These talents have a stranglehold over this part of the tree. You have to take Pouncing Strikes to get to Rampant Ferocity or the 30% increased Rake damage… and if you’re taking Pouncing Strikes it makes no sense to not take Sudden Ambush. … despite not really wanting to take them.
- Primal Wrath.
- I can tell we’re trying to clean up the mess that is “Do I Ferocious Bite for Rampant Ferocity, or just Primal Wrath again for better AOE damage?” I think this is gonna require more science/numbers game but from the talent selection alone – it kinda feels like we lost something here. I personally enjoyed the Bleed-splosion from reapplying Primal Wrath as a thematic part of playing a Bleed spec… We’ll see how this plays out over time.
- Survival Instincts / Berserk.
- This is hands down the worst part of the tree. There are no choices here. You have to take Survival Instincts to get Berserk, and you Berserk is mandatory. As do the other two Berserk talents. This just feels like obligatory talent point spending… not like a meaningful choice. I really think these Berserk talents need to be combined into one talent, and Survival Instincts/Berserk should just be baseline.
- We’re already horrendously starved for points at the bottom of the tree. This is a great spot to spice things up.
- Blood Talons.
- Honestly, I have never liked this talent. It is either completely trivialized by an addon like Hekili, or super annoying. When I’m playing this game, I wanna focus on avoiding mechanics, interrupts, positioning, actually watching to see what is going on in the game, not looking at buffs to see how many stacks of Bloodtalons I have.
- Lion’s Strength being the backup choice here if you don’t wanna deal with Blood Talons is just a DPS loss. If we wanna make the rotation easier, again – let’s just do that instead of punishing people for prioritizing fun. The whole name of the game is fun.
- I think this would be a really good talent to change for Druid of the Claw though, to incorporate bear weaving for big cat DPS. I’ll get more into this when we talk about the Druid of the Claw.
- Apex Predator.
- I’m all about this talent, but it does kinda seem like it’s kinda mandatory. I don’t wanna see it nerfed because it’s fun. I just can’t imagine not taking it for any of the other options… certainly not from a thematic standpoint.
- Just in general – the whole bottom of the tree feels like we’re starving for points… and this one is really hard to justify not taking.
- Feral Frenzy.
- Super cool talent, always loved this one. If we’re not gonna get the Tiger’s Fury reset – this one would be cool to add a reset to, since it’s already pretty similar to Marked for Death. Wouldn’t take it over Apex Predator as it is though.
- Ashmanes Guidance.
- This is a pretty uninteresting talent. 3-6% damage increase after Incarn… Thematically it’s just boring. It’d have to mathematically smash to ever take it.
Alright – Druid of the Claw time.
Druid of the Claw:
- Thematically… Cat/Bear Weaving. It’s fire. I want it. I need it. Give me more of it.
- I don’t think it goes far enough. Ravage is awesome – but I think Wildshape Mastery should be the focal point of this tree, and Ravage should be the ability you cash out with while Cat or Bear weaving.
- I think we missed a huge opportunity here to oscilate between spending energy in cat form, then swapping to bear form to build/spend rage while our energy recharges.
- Wildpower Surges is kind of weak imo. Cat/Bear weaving for a single GCD is really a missed opportunity.
- It takes WAY too long to build stacks for this.
- Also the proc for this needs some kind of UI weak aura alert or something because tracking it without an addon is awful. Same thing with Ravage.
- Whenever I see the proc for Ravage, my instinct is to use it like I use Apex Predator – but it requires that you’re cognizant of your combo points… which makes it feel kinda janky for a proc.
- Dreadful wounds is really boring / trying to extend the duration isn’t fun gameplay.
- Packs Endurance requires Stampeding Roar, which then forces you to spec into all the stuff to take Stampeding Roar. I’m not a fan.
- Claw Rampage – again, forces us to maximize on Berserk Uptime, forces us to spend talents on the Berserk Talents. Not optional.
- Killing Strikes/Ruthless Aggression are both just really boring. Adds nothing to my gameplay.
Just in general it seems like the benefit for cat/bear weaving isn’t really that impactful… and I’d love to see more reasons to do it for both Guardian and Feral.
I have a few kinda whacky ideas if you’re up for gettin’ wild. These might be terrible ideas. Feel free to disregard entirely.
Druid of the Claw overhaul Ideas:
This is going to involve reworking some base abilities to promote synergy between cat and bear – It’ll also help some more with button bloat.
- Incorporate Fluid Form into the Druid of the Claw talents.
- Make Thrash a Bear form ability, that turns you into a bear.
- Rework Thrash and Rake. Thrash now applies the Rake DoT. The Rake DoT now stacks 3 times and benefits from any talents that affect Thrash. The Rake Ability now applies 3 stacks of Rake to a single target, and turns you into a cat.
- Remove Swipe (Fewer buttons). Remove the CD from Thrash. Thrash now does the equivalent of Swipes initial Damage when it reapplies the 3rd stack of Rake.
- Any talents that affected Swipe now affect Thrash instead. Brutal Slash would need a rework. It’d be a numbers game.
- Remove Rip. Put Primal Wrath in the General Tree where Rip is, If Primal Wrath only hits one target, it applies a full duration Rip. (Less button bloat baby)
- Ravage for Guardians your next Shred is an AOE and generates 5 CP. Additionally the CD on Mangle is reset and you go Berserk for 5 seconds. If generating 5 CP causes you to go over the 5 CP cap, each Combo Point wasted is granted as x additional seconds of Berserk.
- Ravage for Feral, When it procs - your next Thrash is empowered does a bunch of AOE damage, turns you into a Bear, and empowers your next Mangle to be an AOE that does bonus damage, Mangle causes enemies hit to take x% additional damage from your Feral abilities (Like Blood Talons, Savage Roar, or Old school Mangle).
I don’t really have any attachment to how it gets done. I just wanna cat/bear weave… and not in a dumb way like Owl Weaving where you’re GCD capped watching DoT timers like a hawk. I mean more like using Bear Form and Cat Form like an Ebb/Flow to dance from Energy to Rage as a resource/add more synergy between Bear and Cat.
TL;DR -
One last thing I wanted to add – Now that I’ve started trying other classes and I’m getting a better feel for what a big hit looks like, and how fast things die on other classes – Druids feel pretty weak compared to some other classes. Retribution Paladins are ABSOLUTELY INSANE compared to Feral for just running around/questing. They’re running around 2-3 shotting everything with a health bar, and everything they do cleaves… and all their CD’s are super short w/o having to manage energy… and the rotation hardly requires any nuance… They feel like a more coherent combo point class than druids lol. I’m actually kind of upset at how playing the Druid feels in comparison to how absolutely cracked Ret is.
Losing the Tiger’s Fury reset makes questing and running dungeons feel way worse…
Alright – Sorry for the great wall of brain dump. Thanks for comin’ to my TED Talk.
Hope it helps. I’ll be doing more write ups as I test more things with other specs/classes.
The Druid class tree has 52 total points with 21 active abilities. The new redesign Monk tree which is amazing by the way has 49 Total Points with 9 active abilities.
It currently is possible to spec into Improved Stampeding roar without even having stampeding roar as a talent The druid tree needs the same affect as some of the other classes. some of these abilities just need to be baseline or spec specific and new cool effects designed for the class. there were so many great things designed for monks. abilities made passive and cool effects for existing abilities. this tree in some cases got worse for pathing.
There are many places in tree where it feels bad to get down the tree taking 2-3 dead talents just to get to things that are useful.
Things that should be baseline or removed from tree.
Starfire - Baseline -
Sunfire - Talent - Additional functionality baked into 1 point.
Ironfur - Baseline -
Rake - Baseline -
Maim - Telent -
Skull bash - talent - additional talent would like to see talent for inturrupting succesfully
Hibrinate - Talent -
Cyclone - Talent -
Soothe - Add effect to something else. - Talent what if it was tied to our natural dispell or starsurge? lets remove this keybind
Stampeding Roar - Talent - lets put improves branching off roar so we can choose if we want reduced CD.
Nature’s vigil - Remove it, Bad for the health of the game. it just gets macroed into abilities. Was nerfed out of existance in dragonflight
innervate - Baseline
Heart of the wild - Talent -
Typhoon - talent -
Wildcharge / Tiger dash - Talent -
Mass root / Vortex - Talent -
incap / mighty bash - Talent -
Making those 5 abilities baseline would prune druid tree down to same total points as monk. I think you could go even further and prune even more abilities to baseline and instead add meaningful nodes that improve their effects like what was done to the monk tree. I would like to see most of generic stat talents removed and placed into power of spec trees. make the druid tree flow from one corner to the other. If you start on one corner of tree its hard to get to the other side.
Guardian Druid Feedback
Lunar Insight: “Moonfire’s damage over time has a chance to automatically refresh itself on the target.”
Glistening Fur: “Bear Form & Moonkin Form reflect up to 5% of all incoming damage. The more damage taken, the greater the reflection.”
Moondust: “Moonfire laces the area around its impact with Moondust, causing nearby allies to gain 20% movement speed for 6 seconds.”
Elune’s Grace: “Movement speed is increased by 4% for each enemy affected by Moonfire. Up to 40%, does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.”
Stellar Command: “Increases the damage of Moonfire & Sunfire by 10%. Increases the damage of Fury of Elune and Full Moon by 15%. Increases the damage of Lunar Beam by 30%.”
Astral Insight: “While Incarnation: Chosen of Elune or Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc is active, all abilities and spells cast during their duration deal an additional 20% damage as Arcane. All abilities and spells cast during the duration of Convoke the Spirits deal an additional 40% damage as Arcane.”
Arcane Affinity: “All Arcane damage done has a chance to call a Full Moon to the targets location. This can occur no more than once every 45 seconds.”
Swap the location of The Light of Elune with Arcane Affinity. This will make these two choice nodes (given the above changes are made) far more impactful and - as a result - more enjoyable to play.
It relies pretty heavily on the Fluid Form talent within our Class Tree, which is awkwardly placed on the more spell caster side of that tree, just feels bad to spend the necessary points to obtain it. I’d recommend moving Fluid Form towards the center of our Class Tree, perhaps swapping its location with Forestwalk?
The shifting from Bear to Cat feels great, but damn does it hurt to lose all of your Rage. Dumping Rage isn’t hard, but it would be lovely if there was a built-in mechanic to further buff our damage dependent on how much Rage we lost. Below is an idea on how to better design Wildshape Mastery.
Also, in reference to Fluid Form and its relationship to Bear Form. In practice, waiting for Mangle to come off cooldown or otherwise holding onto it in order to shift into Cat, apply bleeds and then use Mangle to go back into Bear feels clunky at best. It would be great if Wildpower Surge offered a cooldown reset of Mangle built into it, offering us a smoother experience when shifting from Bear, to Cat, then back to Bear. This is also detailed below.
Wildshape Mastery: “When transforming from Bear to Cat Form, you retain 80% of your Bear Form armor and health for 6 seconds. Also, your first Shred or Rake casts in Cat Form gain 1% damage for each point of Rage you had at the time of transforming from Bear to Cat Form.”
Wildpower Surge: “Mangle grants Feline Potential. When you have 6 stacks, the next time you transform into Cat Form, you will gain 5 combo points and your next Ferocious Bite or Rip will deal 100% increased damage for its full duration. Also, if you spend these five combo points within the first 6 seconds of shifting into Cat Form, the cooldown on Mangle resets.”