Feedback: Druids

In Development The War Within Beta Test
43

As a Guardian Druid, I am very excited for both our hero tree options (Druid of the Claw and Elune’s Chosen).

However, both are heavily reliant on a specific talent deep in a tree (Fluid Forms and Lunar Beam). There was attention given to other class/spec trees to move critical talents higher up in the tree and I’m hopeful that treatment will be made here.

If Fluid Forms is not moved higher in the class tree, I would ask that it at least be positioned deep in the feral/guardian side of the class tree. This talent is mandatory for a Druid of the Claw, but is on the opposite side of the class tree from the specs that access Druid of the Claw - which creates a massive talent point tax to using this hero tree.

6 Likes
44

Not an expert by any means but this is my main problem with Guardian right now. I’d love to play Druid of the Claw but I don’t want to take Fluid Forms and I certainly don’t want my bear to be cat weaving all the time. The beauty of Guardian, to me, is the playstyle and that doesn’t include cat weaving. The hero talents lock us into one extreme (Physical Catweaving Bear) or another (Arcane Bear).

Elune’s Chosen is super fun sounding (Go Go Galaxy Bear!) and much closer to the current playstyle but, to my very amateur eye, taking lunar beam means I have to either drop Raze, Incarn or Rage of the Sleeper. I may even need to take Fury of Nature, Elune’s Favored, Moonless Night, and Scintillating Moonlight (maybe?). It seems like I’d also need to take Lore of the Grove in the class tree to really maximize my arcane damage.

Lunar beam also isn’t fun to press and puts us in the Death 'n Decay / Consecration crowd and I’m pretty sure Death Knights and Paladins both loathe those things.
With the current hero talents, we’re either catweaving or standing in a ground effect and losing power we already had in trading Raze for Lunar Beam.

EDIT: I want to add, the new Sky Riding method feels absolutely awful. Please remove it from flight form, give a separate toggle for flight form, or give me ground travel form back on a separate button.

5 Likes
45

I think this is the key part. With some of these core issues for the class, looking at what feels strong/weak doesn’t really matter. Cause no tuning will make having 7 non capstone dead ends in the class tree feel any better. Talents that don’t do anything at all for you spec (like Instincts of the Claw, or Ironfur for Balance) don’t just feel “weak”. They are completely useless, so having to take them for something you do want will always feel bad. And no hero talent adjustment, beside a rework of the hero talent trees will do anything for that either.

6 Likes
46

#showtooltip
/use [@mouseover,nodead,help][@target,nodead,help] Remove Corruption; [@target,harm,nodead] Soothe;

Or can go one step further and add Cyclone in too, because realistically you probably never playing Soothe+Clone together with how the tree is designed.

#showtooltip
/use [@mouseover,nodead,help][@target,nodead,help] Remove Corruption; [known: Soothe,@target,harm,nodead] Soothe; [known: Cyclone,@target,harm,nodead] Cyclone;

You can (and should) apply same logic with things like Rebirth, Revive, maybe Innervate, and even more rotational stuff like merging Rejuv/WG with dmg binds too.

It do be wild seeing druids complain about binds but probably use 5-10 extra binds by not using help/harm or their shapeshift specific bars properly. Probably something Blizz could explain better in the game itself.

3 Likes
47

Fluid Form either needs to be baseline or added to a central location in the tree, where the choice node between Ursol’s and Mass Entanglement is.

10 Likes
48

The Druid tree and the Guardian tree need massive amounts of help. Please give us magic damage mitigation somewhere by default.

Please also fix the Guardian tree so it isn’t awful.

The connections on the Druid tree need to be improved, we have to take useless talents to get to anything good, and all our capstones continue to disappoint.

5 Likes
49

Guardian Druid

I think that Raze should be higher up in the tree. It feels extremely bad to go in a M+ dungeon without it, and you might have to drop it if you are an Arcane bear

5 Likes
50

So, one thing I noticed is that wildstalker’s hps seems really low. This is the dps hybrid, so I do understand, and I don’t have details/recount to really see what the difference is. It was still entirely doable so far, but that’s just my experience.

One other note for the druids-druids should not rely on flight form for the dungeon dawnbreaker. You’re in combat a lot so there is a big risk of becoming your ground mount self instead of the bird. And when timing matters that seems likely to get you killed.

51

I agree with this even if I don’t want to personally Owlweave over Catweaving. I think the shapeshifting into a damage form is important for class fantasy and important for easing up the keybind issues Resto might have with so many rotational buttons for damage and healing at once. Removing damage buttons would just make it feel worse though.

2 Likes
52

My only real feedback is to give us Adaptive Swarm Back.

Adaptive Swarm is:

  • Thematically, one of the most Druid-like spells we have.
  • Aesthetically, pleasing and appealing. Both the original incarnation in Shadowlands and in Dragonflight.
  • Practicality, it is a superb ability in the fact that you can keep it up as a small small heal across any party size.
  • Fun, frankly it is just extremely fun and I love using it and having it. I always thought that it should be the one skill that Druids got to keep from Shadowlands because of how damn fun and fitting it is as a druid to use a swarm of bugs to heal our allies. And even more fun to watch it split a bunch and heal multiple people.

Overall, the spelll has become (to me at least) a core Druid Spell, and I think it should stay.
I can see why you might want to nerf it a bit or to even change how many times it can split or something, but I can’t imagine having as much fun without it.

10 Likes
53

On the subject of easing up keybinds, can we just remove thrash and bake it’s bleed effect into swipe?

You can literally make it a talent so it still costs a talent if you want.

In fact, that IS a talent option for feral, and I always take it, but resto cannot do it.

If we want to free keybinds I feel like getting rid of the ability that’s only used once to apply a dot on a pack and then never used again should be the first one to go.

It costs more energy than swipe, it does less instant damage. The ONLY benefit is the dot, so once your dot is applied you do not use it again and switch to swipe. Seriously, bake the dot into swipe and let us remove a keybind.

9 Likes
54

My biggest issue is some fun factor loss on flight. I love going light speed on my dragon mount and popping to flight form to ‘halt & hover’. That is now gone. I do love having skyride mode on my travel form…but it would be nice if the flight form was on a separate toggle from mounts. Personally I would forgo skyride on my forms to have back the ability to snap out of my dragon mount. And, honestly, this would give me a REASON to use all the freaking mounts I have if I can’t skyride in travel form.

10 Likes
55

Some feedback for Keeper of the forest in dungeon testing Resto:

  • 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. This could be due to damage profile, utility, defensives, or something else.
  • it doesnt feel particularly required for 5-mans but the power of base Treants alone in dungeons makes it my preferred for actual healing, unlike wildstalker which i’d take more for damage. Treants fill in such a key gap to resto’s healing profile in dungeons the hero tree is just kind of icing.
  • Not having moonkin form makes the dps rotation kind of weird, having to stop my Starfire/starsurges to go cat and convoke feels pretty antithetical to the spec but can be worked on. This pushes it away in dungeons where healer damage is more important.
  • Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.

  • the icon for blooming infusion should probably be changed, the Thorns icon is pretty deeply ingrained to druid as Defensive or reflect, not free instant cast.

  • treant of the moon count as our own moonfire, doesn’t stack and its not a choice node so im not really sure what the point is on single target, especially if you have multiple treants out, it should stack like their wild synthesis Wildgrowths, but keep the mastery interaction for balance.

  • Dream surge interacts pretty horrible with pets, watching dream petals be wasted because i healed myself and they went onto my own Treants instead of nearby damaged party memebers felt almost as bad when i healed the demo locks and it wasted themselves on some imps he then imploded.

  • Durability of nature’s wording impies it casts the cenarion ward every time, currently it isnt even garunteed on the swiftmend from summons and is random every nourish they cast.

  • Hero Talent trees that you feel are either too strong or too weak in power level compared to other options.
  • Protective growth is very boring and has near 100% uptime because of resto’s photosynthesis and rampant growth talents, while having the potential but feeling undertuned to use as balance.
    I think this is the kind of talent that should work differently between spec, probably upping it to 10% DR for balance so its noticeable, and giving resto something like the last X targets of your regrowth get X% reduced damage, and some reflect (cause thorns is still missing) to make it actually interesting to resto instead of just 8% DR thats always on.

Other then that it plays fine in the current dungeons. From a purely themetic point i think their should be 3 dream petals default with the improvement bringing it to 5, with no change to the actual total healing they do. Theyre pretty hard to see with only 2 of them to the point i dont even notice and treants are pretty baseline so theres no thats a keeper of the grove feeling watching me heal.

2 Likes
56

Yep, I was struggling to keep people up with wildstalker but was doing good with keeper. It’s entirely possible that wildstalker becomes the preferred hero talent later when groups need more dps than healing. I wish we had details/recount to get a good number for the hero specs, and what could be changed.

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Random aside, not directly actionable per se, but the consensus from the Feralcord on the default/starter build for feral was :dracthyr_uwahh_animated:

It took a bit for them to even parse what the intention might be for it, and more than a little tweaking was needed to get it into a ‘try this and see’ state.

I feel like something that we’d really benefit from is a lot more nodes on the tree doing different things for different forms. Lore of the Grove, for example, could also add to Shred’s damage and put some magic defense on Ironfur or something.

Organizing things better might help too, so that we don’t have one mitigation node in the upper middle, one in the lower right, one in the lower left, one in Kun-lai, and one on the Shaman’s authenticator.

1 Like
58

with elune’s chosen, the balance talent sundering firmament/ orbit breaker doesn’t seem to proc boundless moonlight which feels really odd and the rotation just feels lopsided. Due to the arcane nature of the Elune’s Chosen tree we tend to want to stay in lunar eclipse and favor it very strongly over solar. It just doesn’t feel good. also on beta right now there is no real UI element to track Eclipse with the default ui.

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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.

Have you stopped to consider, maybe people think BT is fun?

3 Likes
60

Some feedback for Wildstalker in dungeon testing Resto:

  • 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. This could be due to damage profile, utility, defensives, or something else.
  • From a damage perspective it could feel mandatory for keys as, based on a cursory look from the combat log it does much more damage then keeper.
  • In reality the healing style from it is so bad its feels like you’re handicapping yourself pretty majorly running it in dungeons. The random low heal proc heal style it offers is pretty much the opposite of the controlled single target focus of dungeon healing, it’ll probably be really good in raids where we play towards blanket buffering and can get more consistent uptime on spells like root network with hot extensions.
  • Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.

  • Why does this tree lack parity between resto and feral so much? Outside of the uptime from Protective growth and the way resto/balance actually summon their treants, the bonuses to both specs seemed pretty equal. This tree lacks the most basic equality in it core starter node; that Resto has to take talents to use bloodseeker at all, feral will always have acess to symbiotic blooms through regrowth being baseline, none of bloodseekers triggers are baseline to restoration.

  • resilent flourishing again with the lack of parity, does 2 things for damaging vines only 1 for healing. Add when symbiotic blooms heals a full health target it jumps to anearby injured ally. Would also help with the bad rng of the spec where it spawns on people who no longer need healing.

  • This tree in general is really bad at pathing in the general druid tree, most of the right side is mandatory for resto healing, this tree takes even more from that to pick up extra cat and balance abilities that are required to fully access the hero trees. Hunt beneath the open skys is a good example, i want to path left to pick up feral stuff but need to pick up sunfire, (which is blocked by starfire and gets no benefits from this tree) for this to fully work. I feel like im forced to give up a lot defensively/utility wise to use this full hero tree, stuff that i keep just fine with Keeper.

  • resilient flourishing doesn’t affect symbiotic blooms from implant, This feels like an oversite.

  • i wouldnt say root network is hard to track but its pretty useless too since there’s only 1 way to guarantee and that only causes a single stack of the buff for 4 seconds. I’ll never be able to force 5 stacks for 10% increased healing right before a large damage event the way i can summon 3 treants with keeper for its 9% heal increase.

  • this applies to all resto druid hots but it adds another one to track when we’re already stuck using 3rd party addons if we want to see all the ones we already had.

  • Hero Talent trees that you feel are either too strong or too weak in power level compared to other options.
  • implant feels pretty weak it could be full duration and not make much of a difference.
  • Lethal Preservation feels weak too, its very niche maybe have it do damage/healing to the target soothed/cleansed on top of the aoe heal to make it a better reward for using utility.
  • Harmonious constitution and bond with nature is a good choice node in theory but in group content unless you know you’ll need pretty consistent self-burst healing Harmonious feels pretty weak compared to Bond. Resto has to much self healing from other sources (now mandatory cause pathing: renewal, well-honed, any of our aoes, lifebloom cause photo) that buffing regrowth on just us doesn’t really seem worth it.

Some good things: visually its much better/clearer then Keeper with the vines and blooms. The flowers and grass from bursting growth and flower walk are better than keepers petals and theyre just secondary passives, while petals is suppose to be the core spell/visual of keeper. It’s also interferes very little with the resto kit in terms of the spec half of the tree, not really forcing talents one way or the other so if someone likes core resto this is much nicer than keeper with its forced treants.

61

Feral felt really fun in the several hours I played earlier. Pressing TF feels really satisfying for the first time in a long time, AOE feels fun, talent options feel even more diverse than DF with great synergies. Tiger’s Tenacity a notable favourite from earlier. But here to comment more on Hero talents and Class tree.

Wildstalker :drop_of_blood: :tanabata_tree:

Strategic Infusion → great node, kit interaction etc. Crit value could be a lot higher, as I found I am spending fair few globals in it refreshing DOTs after using TF, plus spending CPs with energy from it. Duration is fine & it’s fun having a limited window to squeeze out builders after TF, but such a good node deserves to be more impactful, plus so Vines don’t totally dominate WS.

Vines VFX → fantastic, nice perceptible feel to the proc that makes you feel like you’re pumping, but also extremely intuitive with bursting growth & target swapping, & slower Feral with space to breathe really plays into it. Could even go for more emphasis with the VFX tbh because it’s so well done.

WS Overall → loved it, great recent changes to bursting growth, implant & so on. Simple, but nice synergies with kit and how you can build. This tree can make TF feel really satisfying which I love. Bursting growth felt nice especially with things like Convoke.

Druid of the Claw :cat2: :bear:

PW spam with Bestial Strength better damage-per-energy wise than Bite/RF (even with TFB) which I assume is unintended, as would get confusing swapping between hero trees and doing opposite things, but if the intention is to only weave with Ravages, then Ravage probably doesn’t proc enough. Would be good to get some clarification but I’m going to assume this is just unintended from the PW energy changes & will be fixed with tuning. I do like that the extra PW dmg adds some incentive to maximise Rip uptime to better anticipate Ravage procs, but I don’t really think spamming it until Ravage procs is for the best.

Ravage VFX → very satisfying IMO, however…
Ravage range → could be bigger, as the VFX looks like a huge cleave that will hit everything… but then doesn’t even hit some targets RF does :sob:

Ravage buff duration → could use a few extra seconds, as there’s already enough urgency in using it quick in case another proc overwrites (did notice it overwrite few times albeit rare). Didn’t have many procs expire, but can happen if procs at a bad moment, especially late in a pack feels very wasteful, would be good to carry it over into next.

Wildpower Surge → trash for Feral. Issues with it being tied to defensive usage.

  • No way I’m giving up a valuable talent point in bottom for Fluid Form (more on this later) just for this, when it’s only use is defensively.
  • If I’m using Bear defensively, I’m probably going to react and press my Bearform bind rather than Mangle bind, because chances are it’s an emergency and I may be out of range, or just naturally the key I’m used to when reacting quickly.
  • I think the talent just works better as throughput, like the Guardian version, because it’s a planned, rotational weave.
  • Can understand not wanting ‘Bearweaving’ to be gameplay/throughput with other changes already happening for Feral for TWW for players to adjust to, but I strongly believe in future this should be reconsidered as it’s a cool/unique fantasy befitting of the tree, works well with Fluid Form, & not overly complex. When the time is right ofc.

Otherwise issue with DOTC is the choice nodes felt pretty locked. I love the FF CD vs builder dmg, but Empowered Shapeshifting is locked, & not sold on the Agi vs attack speed (hard to say though if it’s competitive choice).

Also this trees Ravage procs with Windfury totem… sounds incredibly hard to balance. Going to feel so bad without WF, but at same time it’s so important for melee to make it into the top specs on the WF chart else you’re losing dmg to others/risk being benched & so on. Windfury is just the most frustrating thing in general & I generally can’t fathom how it’s still ok for 1 specific melee spec to have a unique raid buff when game is designed for 20 spots. Needs a serious look at or at least a fat nerf so it stops making the game worse for literally all other melee.

Druid Class Tree :cat: :owl: :bear: :evergreen_tree:

Fluid Form → adds quite a bit of QOL from a Feral druid perspective, especially with little things like Rebirthing or when you accidentally press Regrowth.

  • But I can’t really see myself picking this too often sadly (again, as Feral). Not struggling with energy capping all too often so no urgency to spend energy 1gcd faster with this (plus might overcap CPs anyway!)
  • Asking me to give up a point in the end section that can otherwise go to defensives/utility/movement is a big ask.
  • Worth moving earlier in the tree imo.

Ironfur → dislike that this is still something you have to talent.

  • Notably as Feral we don’t need IF to path to Thick Hide, so we will never talent Ironfur, but then we lose niche situations where we can attempt to briefly off-tank things, as that’s cool thing about this spec/shapeshifting, & Druid of the Claw yada yada.

Maim → even more costly to use in M+ now, would be good to see energy cost reduced, or buffed in other ways like longer duration in PVE so you can use at lower CP at least.

Lore of the Grove → Could add Regrowth healing into it. Obviously it’s still worth taking even without LI for talents below, but if you did want it to feel more consistently useful for Feral/Guardian that’s an option.

I think Instincts of the Claw directly to → Well-Honed Instincts could be good. Makes Oakskin droppable, albeit niche, as I want to say some situations I won’t need it, e.g. if I choose Verdant Heart already & need other points. Not a big deal though.

Stampeding Roar → not the biggest fan there’s incentive to give up this raid utility as the 2 points before it are questionnable in raid. Not end of world, but tree does kind of break when you don’t take it, as in too easy to get everything you want.

Nurturing Instinct → we will pick this sometimes for minor throughput, but have to lose a point in a defensive to route this way. Would like to see the healing increase much higher for Feral to mitigate that. I will say if we do ever need dispel as Feral it makes up for that, but pretty rare for raid at least.

Otherwise I think the tree has pretty decent options as DPS, Feral/Boomie feel pretty equitable. Bear/Resto get taxed a bit more, especially Resto and in M+. I think Improved Rejuv could be baseline to save Resto with a point & maybe an alternative node to path to Lycara’s useful for all specs could serve that spot well.

Raid Buffs :crying_cat_face:

Will keep this brief but biggest Feral painpoint for me is raid buffs, would be good to look at how many melee buffs are required, especially go try make comps as Feral when your tanks are Guardian/BDK (meaning the buffs from War/DH HAVE to be mdps, you need 2x pala so 1xret 1xholy, then WW or MW… then Poison, Windfury etc on top. No rdps options to cover tank buffs. My own situation there is minimum 5 melee raid buffs and 6 if WW is good, do I really want to wait 6-9 months waiting/prepping for new content only to gamble for 1-2 melee spots hoping Feral is better than every other melee (including a 2nd of other melee). It’s unrealistic to think MOTW is useful for obtaining raid spots outside of RWF hyper min-maxed comps (RWF being top 5~ or so guilds) or niche guild setups, when Druid covers more roles & specs than other buffs & most guilds have multiple. It’s just a punishing inequitable system that gives certain players guaranteed raid spots, loot (& tier set) prio and so on just for what they play, while players like myself have to deal with enormous stress & gamble to play every tier. This matters more to me than anything Feral-specific related & I just can’t comprehend how this hasn’t been addressed, but yeah that’s my own experience & I know so many others feel the same so maybe one day we will be heard.

7 Likes
62

Druid of the Claw Ravage not replacing Raze with some sort of souped-up-Raze feels really bad to me.

1 Like