Feedback: Druids

[Kaivax]

Greetings, Druids.

There are several updates to the Druid Class Tree coming in Season 2. We’d like to share some of the design thinking behind these changes. Overall, our hope for this tree design is that you are able to painlessly take the core abilities and defensives you need for your spec, and that you have some interesting choices you can make with the remaining points, especially in the middle and bottom gates.

Nodes that Don’t Benefit Your Current Specialization
The top feedback we heard on the Druid class tree is that it’s frustrating to take nodes for abilities you never use, or that provide bonuses that don’t benefit you. We have rearranged and redesigned talents so that druids never have to take more than one node that doesn’t benefit them in the normal course of play of their spec, and most druids won’t take any.

As part of making these changes, we’ve changed a number of damage nodes like Instincts of the Claw and added some new ones. We’ve adjusted the balance of several spells and abilities to account for these changes. Overall you shouldn’t see big changes to your spell damage or damage composition in appropriate builds for your spec (with the exception of Restoration - see below).

Utility and Interrupts
We wanted to make it easier for Druids to access important class utility. We’ve made Remove Corruption easier to access for all specs, and moved Skull Bash to make it less expensive for Restoration Druids to reach. Balance Druids can no longer take Skull Bash - instead, Light of the Sun has been moved from their spec tree to Skull Bash’s location in the Class Tree. Fluid Form now also affects Skull Bash, shifting the druid into Cat Form if necessary when they cast it.

Restoration Druid Damage
There are a couple of aspects of Restoration Druid damage that we’re not happy with:

• It’s demanding to play, requiring Druids maintain magic DoTs and shift in and out of Cat Form while healing.
• When Restoration Druids take all possible damage talents, they don’t have enough points to invest in defensive talents or useful utility.

We have made some changes in the tree to encourage Restoration Druids to specialize in either physical or magic damage (if they choose to deal damage at all), but not both. The Circle of the Wild / Circle of the Heavens choice node gives a massive 25% bonus to the damage type of their choice. We hope this change frees players up to take more defensive talents and makes the spec easier to learn and pilot for players who are interested in playing it.

[Fionola-proudmoore]

Removing Moonkin form from resto (honestly all druids) had removed some utility. Currently only Balance druids can disengage and flap. So I currently do mediocre or no dps in keys because I do not get any shapeshifting benefits.

[Whelptress-sargeras]

@Kaivax

We have made some changes in the tree to encourage Restoration Druids to specialize in either physical or magic damage (if they choose to deal damage at all), but not both. The Circle of the Wild / Circle of the Heavens choice node gives a massive 25% bonus to the damage type of their choice. We hope this change frees players up to take more defensive talents and makes the spec easier to learn and pilot for players who are interested in playing it.

This seems like a good attempt to ease up dps and the rotation but ignores the reason a lot of druids are stuck doing the hybridized damage, the removal of moonkin form forcing all resto druids who want to damage into cat form to use convoke as a dps cooldown, and nothing is being done to change that here.

Even if i take the talents to improve my magic damage and focus on that, I’m still going to be better off switching forms to cat for the damage convoke and then going back to spell weaving because there just isnt another option, especially as convoke works its way back to being a better cooldown for both wildstalker and keeper in Keys.
Incarn would need to be changed to be a decent dps cooldown alternative or starsurge needs a trigger to let convoke use the caster dps varient to fix that problem without just returning moonkin form.

[Jerauld-uther (Jerauld)]

Just give back refreshed CD on Tiger’s Fury or at the very least have a talent on kills reduce CD by 3-5 seconds.

[Laze-lava-lash]

So the tree is still going to potentially have a dead talent? Really? How is that possible? Maybe change the node based on spec like you do for other classes? Or just do some really really basic design work to make sure that doesnt happen?

One other suggestion - make every talent worth taking, regardless of spec. If I take rejuv as a non resto druid make it heal enough where its worth me pressing. Add a CD or something if its unbalanced. Because even some of the talents I have to take to get up the tree that arent “dead” are so undertuned they are just as useless as dead talents.

[Treejuvenate-area-52]

The issue with RDruid isn’t it’s complexity, it’s a metric ton of effort that isn’t proportionate to the reward, especially in raid.

Look at the top parses of DPS and HPS on later Mythic fights like Silken Court. Mistweaver and Disc can blast out 2 to 3 times the DPS of RDruid during an encounter and do just as much HPS. We don’t bring DR to the table which is already a huge downside in raids.

The best thing you all could do for Resto at this point would be able to put some kind of DR on one of our abilities, even if it’s only 10%, and/or unnerf Flourish to it’s early Dragonflight state where the HoT tick rate was +100% instead of +25% to give us back our throughput niche.

The issue isn’t overcomplexity, it’s lack of reward for the effort put in, and the fact that we cannot give DR or absorbs in any way to party members means our ceiling in M+ pushing is below the specs that can by definition.

[Deaththane-sargeras]

(post deleted by author)

[Lunagoat-sargeras]

Tentatively I like the changes overall, but I do have one concern. Resto druid in M+ uses convoke for DPS a lot in cat form, but with the removal of moonkin form resto druids that would prefer to do magic damage have no way to use convoke offensively. It seems to me like this will always make cat physical DPS a good bit better than magic DPS in a M+ context.

I still think moonkin form for non balance druids should come back, I miss flapping.

[Furrylover-ragnaros]

Currently for M+ the Rdruid requires a greater effort compared to other healer specs to perform at least decently.
Both in the area of ​​healing and dps, but it is not because of complexity as they say.
But because the reward for the effort required is… insignificant, in that a druid has to change his form to cat and apply all the cat dots + boomy’s… he does the same dps as a Disc priest who only uses his pet + mind blast + smite.
We can use the first boss of MOTS as an example.
A druid to take advantage of his maximum dps has to apply = Rake, Rip, Trash (optional), Moonfire, Sunfire (Optional) and use Shred and then Ferocius Bite.
While a discipline priest must use = Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, Pet and Smite…
He literally has a reduced amount of spells to do damage… and with that he can still do much more dps than a druid and that’s not even mentioning the shape shifts you need to do all that.

And healing… we can’t talk much about it either, since many classes respond to damage very easily and faster than the Rdruid but the difference is that they have less steps than us.

[Kaercha-area-52]

This is a great start. I’m excited to see how this works in practice. One note, though, resto Druid desperately needs a DR external for group play. Maybe change WG bonus from SM to be a DR instead of extra hps.

[Morriee-zuljin]

I know we should just be happy that Guardian was even mentioned in patch notes and got any changes, but is there any chance you could move Lunar Beam up in the talent tree so it isn’t as punishing and punitive to take compared to like, every other hero talent tree in the game in terms of talents?

[Saithis-shandris (Saithis)]

@Kaivax

It’s demanding to play, requiring Druids maintain magic DoTs and shift in and out of Cat Form while healing.

no it’s not? You literally created a hero talent system that revolves around this entire cat weaver fantasy…

I’ve catweaved for a long time, and I think you guys are responsible for having it become more “demanding”. You guys changed healing style to feel more spammy by having the main heal profile be “set up all your healing for big regrowths”. That was traditionally a sub optimal way to cat weave in previous eras. I’m surprised you guys still don’t understand why Rdruid feels so clunky now.

So the idea behind catweaving is that you want to get your lifeblooms/hots out as fast as you can and then shift into cat to deal your damage freely without having to actually channel your heals until hots need to be refreshed, or you need to use regrowth/cd’s, etc.

All of HoTS feel soooo weak now - you eliminated any sort of spot healing we had before.

Adaptive Swarm was perfect for maintaining that “heal over time style” fantasy druids are known for, and spells felt impactful.

Resto Druid felt really good to play for a while there (Legion - DF S1-S3)…why are you guys changing the class so dramatically? It was never so complex that you had to remove Adaptive Swarm, Moonkin Form, Flourish from us…was it? You guys never explained why you did that btw…

Furthermore, I think you guys need to buff Tranquility via the HERO TALENT TREE. Keeper of the grove’s iconic ultimate ability should have some sort of presence there - or you’re missing the mark. It makes it seem like whoever designed that hero talent system, doesn’t know the history of Keepers…

Anyway, our spec has never been about spamming regrowth, that’s not why someone would pick resto as their healer.

Also, it’s a shapeshifting class. One of the most special things about Resto specifically is that I get to shift into ALL of my animal forms in any given M+ (Cat, bear, travel, caster, Moonkin)…that’s what made us so beautiful compared to the other specs which are attached to one form at the core. Why would you want to remove this?

You guys had such a unique, fun playstyle that hit the Druid fantasy better than any other game out there - and you watered it down to an empty shell.

I think Resto is not only capable, but amazing in terms of its damage and healing numbers; but when you remove buttons that feel good to press, or change a beloved playstyle for no reason - I don’t think it does WoW any favors. You will have a very hard time if you ever want to add cool ideas/abilities to the class someday, once you’ve dumbed it down to be a linear, one button healer.

I will play a LOT more, if you can stop listening to whoever is telling you the class is too “demanding or hard”. Like who the heck is saying that? It’s not on the forums, in discords or from top Druid streamers…so??? Kaivax, you gotta save us please!

(omg i’ve been a long post andy this week )

[Nickmo-akama]

If they add moonkin back they should definitely add starsurge to fluid form also. That would be so cool to seamlessly switch back n forth without having to press the button switch back n forth. They should really add more spells to fluid form. Add swipe, trash, starsurge, rip, fb, moonfire, sunfire to this. That would be really cool imo. To have your druid shifting in and out depending on what you are using without having the clunky extra global

[Kaercha-area-52]

It might also be good to have cateweaving finishers extend HoTs.

[Aktavote-frostmourne]

No no no no.

Lunar Beam should be at the end of an additional row, that can only be attained by taking talents that don’t mesh with each other, so we have to ignore the stuff that does.

We have 19 talents that go to waste, perhaps they could consider making it less busy and condense/combine some of them for us.

[Sudowoodo-saurfang]

I want to see Moonkin form back for all druids! I adds a lot of class fantasy and is fun to use as other specs while waiting around just flapping etc!

I never played DF when feral had Tigers Fury reset on mob kills, but I would love to see a form of this back as in keys between big pulls it can feel bad with dry spells of little to no energy etc while waiting for everything to come back up. More fluid and consistent game play would be nice.

One big change I would like for interrupts is the use of Skull Bash while using Convoke the Spirits. Warriors can use while blade storming so it would be nice to be able to use as well.

[Nikdruidne-tichondrius]

The finishers are making the hots heal 25% more, the builders extend them.

[Kaercha-area-52]

Yeah, I think it should be reversed.

[Etamalgren-drenden (Etamalgren)]

Give all druids moonkin form again. I don’t care if it’s 99% cosmetic for non-balance specs, I want to be able to use moonkin form as a guardian druid.

[Brambles-moon-guard (Brambles)]

Can Wildstalker get a change or adjustment on the Hunt Beneath the Open Skies node, then? With the focus on physical OR magical DPS, it just seems to either defeat the purpose or make the GCD to shift not really worth it. Part of the clunkiness is having to shift in and out constantly. Just make it a lunar/solar inspiration ability, and be changed into Physical damage if Circle of Wilds was taken.