Do you think Druids are in a good place right now? Are other tasks being prioritized? Is our dev on vacation or leave or something?
Can we swap with the mage dev? I’d like a rework with completely new talents EVERY SINGLE patch for a while. I’d like to have my biggest question going into a PTR cycle to be which one of my specs was going to get a handful of new talents.
Yes, I’m feeling bitter.
/cast soothe %Kaercha
I get it man. We are all right there with you.
Class Tree Feedback,
Once again I’d like to say the class tree needs some more improvements.
Hibernate needs to be baseline it’s insanely niche and generally never used in most content. In its place should be Soothe/Cyclone this then gives the players the freedom rather then a mandatory forced pick on Soothe/Cyclone (regardless if needed or not) to get to Stampeding Roar.
Stampeding Roar, Lycra’s Teaching, Circle of Wild/Heavens all moved up this also makes all the middle bottom tree look the same with Talent placements when compared to the left and right.
These changes would firstly free up one Talent point to be used for all specs in the bottom of the tree, we have more then enough needed nodes at the top/middle of the tree to use talents on, forcing us regardless if needed or not for Soothe/Cyclone feels horrible.
If a dungeon doesn’t need soothe or brought by other members it’s a waste, if I’m not PvPing Cyclone is a waste, it feels strange to be forced into these 2 abilities that aren’t needed all the time depending what I do, literally brings nothing to help just there to soak up a precious talent point.
In a perfect world I’d like to see all 2 point nodes be 1 point for its full effect aswell, but I think forcing us to place talent points into abilities that may have zero use for the content we are doing needs to be looked at and adjusted.
Also honourable mention, Fluid Form definitely needs to be baseline to Druids, no class should talent into a passive that essentially makes the class play how it should be. Feels great to have feels horrible to use a talent point to get basic QoL.
With the recent post about Warrior APM being to high, is there any thoughts on the absolutely insane high apm Guardian needs to press ironfur druing Incarn? People have resroted to footpedals and scrollwheels, and its honestly horrible design.
My Ring Finger : “Weaklings”
But really, my left ring size is actually bigger than my right and ironfur is probably the culprit.
You really, really, don’t want what she’s having…
Blizzard’s nerfing APM is just nerfing.
Tie it to something your first two fingers can hit… you’re wife/gf will thank you.
Further feedback for Resto Class Tree.
Considering Balance is getting Solar Beam instead of Skull Bash it would be a great change if as Resto Skull Bash is a choice node with Solar Beam for those players, like myself who are going down the caster route.
Returning Moonkin Form was great, giving those who prefer to “Owlweave” an interrupt choice, even if it’s a 1 min cd base Solar Beam would be a great addition.
For those who prefer Kittyweaving and getting into the thick of things and being more at risk, Skull Bash is great, but now with the Return of Owlweaving and Moonkin form we severely are missing atleast a option for an interrupt.
Clearly from seeing the changes you’ve made to Balance, class trees can be unique to the spec, why not give the option to Resto to choose between Skull Bash or Solar Beam.
Wildstalker should just have choice nodes for caster or cat. Honestly the spec could just easily be reworked to also include magical damage.
Moonfire dot damage has a chance of causing thorn vines to grow on the target, and hitting the target with Starsurge causes the thorns to burst doing aoe damage.
This is how I feel as Resto in PVP having to pick Efflorescence to access the bottom part of the left side of the spec’s tree. That talent should swap places with Soul of the Forest, really. It won’t impact PVE in anything. Either that or buff the PVP talent that enhances Efflorescence to add a snare to the opponents, so it feels worth pressing in PVP.
I would like to echo some other folks in here. The multiple berserk talents are so wasteful. 5 talent points into the 3 berserk talents, incarn and ursoc’s guidance which has been the meta build for about 3 years or so now is just not engaging. please combine at least the 3 berserk nodes. Also, the number of nodes for some of the tank specs in the bottom of the tree is completely unbalanced given the relative power of the talents in the bottom third:
Guardian: 18
Prot War: 13
Prot Pally: 16
Vengeance: 16
Blood: 14
Brew: 17
I really think that specs like guardian and brew should be brought more in line with the other tanks which is easily fixable by reducing some of the dual node talents to single point nodes.
Pulverize is probably my least favorite talent in the whole guardian tree largely because I never see it used. Here is an idea for how to change it to something more useful:
Pulverize
Melee Range
Instant 45 sec cooldown
A devastating blow that consumes all stacks of thrash on targets in a frontal cone. The remaining damage of thrash’s bleed is dealt immediately. Damage affected targets deal to you is reduced by 10% for 9 seconds per stack of thrash consumed.
Something like this creates a gameplay loop for guardian with thrash stacks and makes pulverize a viable talent choice in both aoe and group content. It would provide a good amount of damage reduction, especially if combined with other thrash buffing talents like rend and tear, and the damage output is easily throttleable by adjusting the damage of thrash’s bleed.
I would also recommend changing Scintillating Moonlight which I think is so boring as just a passive DR. To keep with the moonbear theme:
Lunar Guardian (Replaces Scintillating Moonlight)
Rank 1/1 (Only one point required)
Passive
Refreshing the duration of Moonfire on a target has a low chance to trigger a cosmic alignment causing your next cast of Swipe to trigger Starfall. Targets damaged by Starfall deal 10% less damage to you for 10 seconds.
I like the idea of tying this ability to swipe because right now it is purely a filler ability. If we tie is to maul or mangle, we don’t necessarily change up to rotational priority. This talent would give swipe a ton of extra value and make it more of a rotational staple.
Obviously both of those abilities could be incredibly powerful depending on how they are tuned but I think changes like those would help make some more obscure talents more palatable and worth taking while still keeping to the theme of the builds.
Just gonna keep suggesting this…
Looking at the initial trees
Suggestions:
Tell me I’m wrong.
Well, it’s my turn.
I’ve been testing Rdruid and even though the changes have largely favored him.
There are still some issues to address which I’ll mention below.
1 - Ways to deal with burst damage.
Let’s be honest, Grove Guardians was a very useful talent to deal with burst damage in short periods of time.
It helped in S3 and S4 so that the druid had no problems casting other healing/dps spells or doing mechanics.
But with the multiple nerfs it has received and the obvious way to restore Grove Guardians to some extent with the KOTG talent tree.
It has made this talent almost or simply dead for Wildstalker players and the worst thing is that it doesn’t make sense, since Grove Guardians itself was introduced with the purpose of lightening the burden that a Rdruid felt when having few tools to deal with the high damage received.
I would suggest restoring Grove Guardians’ strength or improving healing by 35% only for Wildstalker and if you want also 10/15% for KOTG, so that there is not a big impact but at the same time the talent is a bit more… useful, because really almost all druids prefer to do without said talent rather than use it (unfortunately they are forced to take it because there are no better options).
Another talent that was well received was “Forest’s Flow” this talent is basically our tier set of S3.
Its return is still appreciated, however.
The problem with this talent is that just like Grove Guardians returned… it was nerfed a lot but already exaggerated.
I would propose that they restore at least the effect… instead of a “60% Nourish” to a “100% Nourish”.
At least we wouldn’t break the talent, but it would be more like a lifeline in case someone was about to die without having to wait for long CDs, which we have to admit, we have many long CDs to help us deal with burst damage (which is fine, but with a very long CD which borders on the absurd).
2 - HOTS -
I appreciate that they have changed the mastery to something more versatile for Rdruid.
But there is one main problem:
-The mastery decays very quickly: With the addition of the new mastery and the tier. A new hot is being added + the hots we have, which make the mastery decay very quickly. I would propose that they change the way the mastery works so that it decays from 3 hots onwards. That will help at least, the mastery feels strong but not so broken at least so that it feels more like a gain than a loss. Because whether we like it or not, they have given us many hots that interact with the mastery in good and bad ways.
Now, changing the subject. Instead of talking about mastery, I’d like to talk about… the weak hots: Cultivation and Spring Blossoms.
These talents were meant to provide a mastery gain (the old one). Therefore, they received a lot of nerfs… however, now that the mastery has changed, it seems a bit absurd to me that these talents heal extremely low (becoming almost invisible) and at the same time harm the new mastery.
My proposal would be to bring them back to glory.
By giving them a more substantial increase to their healing, because looking at the spells… they heal less than 19% of spell power… that’s disappointing.
So I would change their values (at least a little) to Cultivation (31% of spell power) and Spring Blossoms (29.2% of spell power).
That way, it would help make it feel rewarding to grab said talents, which regardless of whether you play Wildstalker or KOTG will not have a great relevance and even feel like they are filler talents but forced because there are no better options.
3 - DPS
I’ve been testing and I’ve seen other healer streamers playing.
And I have to admit, Rdruid’s dps leaves a lot to be desired.
First, there’s the high demand with the shape change if you play Wildstalker to manage your “Bloodseeker Vines”.
Which can be exhausting or if you play KOTG you have to cast several spells to be able to have a decent dps.
But if we look at the other healers, we can see how the MW destroys both in melee and ranged dps.
Disc has a good ranged dps.
Holy priest is not far behind either.
Holy paladin has a simple rotation to be able to do it
Evoker has great explosive or over time damage
Shammy’s lightning or lava casts give a great gain along with his acid rain
And Rdruid has to struggle to do a minimally decent dps, since every time I play it or see others play it.
And then I compare it with the dps I do with the other healers and just like when I see others…
I see that Rdruid requires enormous management to be able to get a dps… decent, not even superior to the others.
Which leaves a bad taste in the mouth and also drives away many potential players from wanting to play the healer, taking into account that to do dps you require a lot of effort (but very exaggerated).
My proposal is the following (well, there are two different ones):
1 - Revert the damage nerf they gave us:
To be honest, even though they have given us a new talent that allows us to improve magic and melee dps.
It is very meaningless, taking into account that all the other healers get a direct buff to their dps spells without losing (unless they receive nerfs).
While for us to “gain” dps (in quotes), we had to be nerfed in the catweaving or olweaving area (depending on your play style), which seems too unnecessary to me.
By reversing the nerf, Rdruid could have a more even dps than his other healer companions.
2 - Improve hero talents:
Hero talents… are somewhat meh.
But the problem is that the other healers’… are much more… than ours.
They buff their damage both in single and aoe, but in a more rewarding way.
For us it’s more of a… “Oh, look we have hero talents… that buff our dps slowly or one by one”, that’s very unacceptable.
My proposal is the following:
Change the “Bursting Growth” giving it an improvement that would be:
When you use a finisher on a target with Bursting Growth, you jump to two or three nearby targets. In case there is no nearby target, the amount of Bursting Growth will be superimposed on the main target up to a maximum of 3 charges on the same target.
In this way they would help the rdruid with Wildstalker, get a decent damage in area of effect, without having to waste their hero talent…
Since currently, we have to use Sunfire and Starfire to be able to do dps… which is stupid, knowing that we are using Wildstalker and we can’t take advantage of it because it has a terrible or lousy area of effect.
In the case of KOTG, I would propose to improve the talent “Harmony of the Grove”, adding the following:
When your guardians expire, they cause an explosion on enemy targets within a 15m radius that are in combat and with damage reduced to 5 targets.
In this way, the KOTG also receives an improvement to increase its dps in aoe.
These are my proposals, they are the best I have had so far I think…
But they are mostly to ensure that the game experience with Rdruid is more rewarding for everyone and for new players.
Since it really doesn’t feel the same, due to multiple factors.
APM is also ridiculous on Resto aswell due to HoTs constantly being reapplied and severely lacking in duration it can get insane, especially as a healer.
Healers in general already have so much on their plate, Resto Druid most definitely could get some QoL improvements, HoT extensions through dps or something I’ve suggested for a while make Lifebloom a permanent HoT.
Lifebloom will function as it is now, can have up to 2 with Undergrowth, still can be moved around as needed but essentially will save so many GCDs that could be used for DPS or other Heals.
Hot extension through DPS is actually coming next patch but it’s specifically a PVP talent which is so weird.
Forest Guardian:
"Wrath, Starfire, Cyclone, and Combat-Point generating abilities extend the duration of your active heal over time effects by 1.0 sec on up to 3 allies.
Starsurge and Combo-point spending abilities increase the rate of your heal over time spells by 20% for 4 secs"
If those talents applied to pve I’d play my druid again.
We need this in PvE and apply to your group! This would be a godsend!
Please Blizzard, realize it before it’s too late.
It’s exactly the same thing you did in DF, when you implemented the “master shapeshifter” talent to the PvP talent tree and also the “Call of the Elder Druid” talent.
Which in the end, were the least used for PvP and most loved in PvE.
Here there is no exception, this “Forest Guardian” talent is perfect for PvE especially for druids who play Wildstalker or for KOTG, since it benefits or gives a gain when doing dps apart from just healing.
Come on, change or remove this talent “Waking Dream” or “Invigorate” and put “Forest Guardian” in its place. Believe me, nobody will miss either of those two talents if they are eliminated.
Please change guardian druid damage profile. Having all of our damage come from Ironfur does not feel good.
Having all our damage be ramp damage (ironfur takes rage, Ravage requires a proc, Maul takes rage, none of our CD’s do damage) is also terrible. Especially for snap threat on pull.
Even when you get past that, in a raid setting a good 15-20% of our damage comes from catweaving with no alternative for damage making us the worst tank by far considering we also don’t bring spell bop, grips, aoe silences, spell reflect, etc.
For Resto Druid,
is it possible in anyways to make Symbiotic Relationship a permanent buff on the person applied too or have it last 60 minutes and persist through death?.
Alternatively if left as is perhaps remove the cast time then making it insanely easier to apply if the player died and was revived.
Personally I’d prefer a 60 min buff that persists through death if you just have a timer on the ability.
Is still crazy that it’s left on a 5 min cd it most definitely needs to be reduced to 3 min.
Killer Instinct and Nuturing Instinct at minimum needs to be brought down to 1 point nodes for its full effect. In a perfect world so should Lycara’s Teachings, but the latter 2 must be 1 point.
This essentially frees up one talent spot in the mid tier to be used elsewhere, if Lycara’s Teaching aswell goes to 1 point we can get a further point in the bottom tier of talents which is a huge and welcomed change.
2 talent nodes regardless of class or spec feels absolutely horrible, this needs to be addressed class/spec wide.
I can’t stress this enough and how frustrating it is that a class needs to use a talent point to make the class function how it should be baseline like several other abilities we’ve had for years on end. Stampeding Roar is a prime example of auto shifting with no need of Fluid Form.
This ability should aswell auto shift you, it’s a defensive, it should work instantly not 2 gcds later, as Resto it should automatically shift you into Bear Form and apply the healing.
I press defensives cause I need it now!, this change is needed.
P.S - Thank you for bringing back Moonkin Form! Owlweaving is back and I love it.