Feedback: Keeper of the Grove in The War Within

Classes Druid
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Well, it’s been a while since I’ve commented on the forum, but hey, here I am back.
I suppose the druid community is very divided, regarding the added idea or concept of the Grove Guardians in S2, because it is appealing to some and not to others.
And well, I will give my opinion from my point of view.
From my point of view as a PvEro player, I feel that the idea of adding Grove Guardians as a “panic” or “support” button in critical moments or when we don’t have cds, was the best.
Since previously in S2, in M+ we druids were among those who suffered the most when it came to healing, due to the high “Oneshot” mechanics that there were, without taking into account the ultra-dependence (I’m surprised that they complain more about the trees than the CD) with the talent of Flourish (thanks to the S2 tier), making us very weak when we did not have the “Flourish” CD.
However, with the arrival of Grove Guardians in S2 and the boost it received in S3 with the tier, it made the issue of healing and maximizing our dps feel more relaxed (because we were also one of the worst at doing dps for different reasons).

So, at least for my part Gfrove Guardians are a blessing in PvE, I would only add that they should be able to give them an improved brain or give them the ability to follow or teleport close to the caster, so that it is not wasted.

And now returning to my opinion regarding Keeper of The Grove, I would say that…
It is too much or without a doubt a very pilot or rather very beta concept.
Let me explain, comparing the others that have come out, this is without a doubt the poorest in terms of bringing something new to the table, it is practically a healing/dps buff and that’s it.
It doesn’t bring anything new or unique to the mechanics of boomy or healer, we have seen the other concepts (Mage, hunter and Priest) and without a doubt, they have had a lot of imagination because they bring different things to their gameplay, while ours almost nothing.

My complaint would be more focused on the issue of adding improvements or changing some ideas for others, such as:
“Protective Growth”, the idea behind this hero talent, is incredible, since we druids lack a more versatile damage reduction, however what bothers me is that it is only for the druid and that doesn’t really appeal to me. attention.
I would change the idea of the talent to have “Regrowth” apply an 8% damage reduction to the cast target instead of the caster.
Since we Rdruids desperately need a passive defensive CD (for the party) and this idea is very well done, it just needs polishing.

“Expansiveness”, no offense… but this isn’t a hero talent, it’s an enchantment. Ready, I said it… it’s an enchantment for healers, this talent would be better to change since it doesn’t match the concept of hero talents at all (they could add “Living Seed” and many Rdruids would be grateful and add a separate effect for Boomy ).

“Treants of the moon”, this talent is very poor, I would change the idea of using “Moonfire” to cast between “Starfall” and “Starsurge” or change the text from “every 6s” to “every 2”.

“Harmony of the Grove”, this final hero talent, needs something extra as it is too simple. For my part, I would add the following “And now your Grove Guardians cast healing pulses in a 20m area” along with “And now your force of nature treants cast damaging pulses in a 20m area”

This way you max out the druid’s hero class tree very well.
It’s not really that complicated, you just need to polish it and try to make some synergy between the talents and the druid’s kit.
And obviously not leaving it in an alpha/beta version (as happened with the druid class tree).
But to be honest, I’m very excited, I just really hope that the class fantasy theme in the hero tree is improved a little ^ ^

PS: Don’t forget about the class tree, please we druids in general are not asking for a change to be annoying, it’s just common sense because the class tree is very restrictive :frowning:

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Where is our dev interview? This is such bush league bs, if you have no idea what you are doing with the class, just say so. Keeps us from wasting our time.

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Personally I think this Hero Tree misses a lot of great opportunities to shift the power back to the player rather than further double downing on Treants.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Resto but definitely not as the main focus of healing from pets. I myself want to feel powerful, I want to feel as what I’m doing matters more so then passive healing/dps coming from Pets.

Originally when I thought Keeper of the Grove, I kept thinking we will get this as a new form like Treant form back in WotLK or replacing Incarnation: Tree of Life/Chosen of Elune with a Keeper of the Grove/Dryad form further pushing/enhancing our Healing and DPS while lowering its cooldown to really make you feel like a hero.

Maybe I was just thinking to much out of the box, and thought too much of awesome things rather then keeping my imagination more narrow minded.

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I like the tree focusing on ents. There will be another tree for those who don’t like ents. Nothing wrong with providing this as an option for one of the trees.

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i always thought tranq should be stronger the more hots you have out. greatly impactful CD for those big damage moments where you prepared well and prehotted, but on the weak side if you use it without many hots out.

that way theres some element of skill to using it well

Regarding the hero tree… I can’t say I really like this hero tree. The ents do well enough in M+ where there’s only 5 targets and their uncontrollability doesn’t matter quite as much, but they suck in raids.

I want to pick who to heal, not sit there and have 30% of my healing go on random people. If you really are going in this direction you need to make them smart heal low HP folks at the very least, though I’d personally prefer a less ent focused playstyle. Perhaps the other tree will provide that.

Also – the various % more damage and healing bits are boring. Why not take a page from the priest tree where for example applying power word shield applies 1 charge of mending, and mending applies a weak power word shield.

Maybe something like add a X second rejuv/regrowth when they cast nourish on someone? Or extend by X seconds if someone already has that on them? Still ends up being just +% healing in the end, but in a less boring way.

I’d also like to see the choice nodes be more of a choice between “Tree power” and “personal power”, rather than 2 similar flavors of “make tree better”

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For starters, I don’t like grove guardians. I think it sucks that we could have gotten a functionally equivalent, kit-interactive HoT, but got a totem instead (to call it a pet is an insult to pet classes.)

With that out of the way, here comes the wall…

PvE Resto Thoughts:

Dream Surge seems like a reasonable way to carry over some of the cleave healing associated with the current Amirdrassil tier set and gives a bit more healing to grove guardians the moment you push it. That’s good.
Not super exciting—whether I have this talent or not makes zero difference to when and why I press grove guardians (unless the healing from a dream petal is massive.)

Treants of the Moon gives some passive damage to rdruid in raid. That’s cool. Fine in M+ as well. Lackluster way to get the damage, but some free damage that rdruid has needed for a long time.

Power of Nature is a perfectly fine little bump for raid healing. Mostly useless for M+ because of the spells it affects.

Durability of Nature sounds pretty cool, but the tuning on the mini-wards can’t be very high, so it’s just a free little bonus hot (and just to keep stressing this point that pops up over and over: it’s a bonus hot that doesn’t interact with out kit, so you basically don’t feel it anymore than you feel dps in your group having a couple % of leech).

Bounteous Boom I don’t like grove guardians, so I’m obviously not going to like this, but it’s fine for people that want them doing more healing. Passive. Boring. But fine.

Early Spring CDR is always welcome on mid-CD rotational abilities. A little more uses of the spell which means a little more proccing all the things associated with it? That should feel pretty good.

Expansiveness I guess I’ll wait to comment until the placeholder for resto is gone and we have a real node?
5% max mana is half of a leg enchant. The bad half that I don’t care about. This node basically does nothing for rdruid. It should somehow return mana or increase regen rate.

Cenarius’ Might actually adds some interaction and thought from the player, which is nice. Doesn’t get in the way of raid ramping too much— just need to cast one extra regrowth before the end of your ramp so that the wild growth gets cast with 2 stacks. Also helps when rdruid goes into panic mode and can’t do anything except spam regrowth.

Power of the Dream just a passive node with no extra interaction, but that’s fine because it seems to do enough to make you feel the difference.

Control the Dream going to need some fairly substantial numerical increases to make this anything other than a meme. Cool concept though.

Protective Growth free 8% DR? Sure.
One the one hand, I want this to be a group DR attached to grove guardians, on the other hand, that might make this talent tree mandatory, and I’m really hoping I can play the feral/resto tree instead sooo…

Grove’s Inspiration I feel like we’re quickly using up all our “every tree needs a few boring nodes” passes.
It’s throughput, it’s only on a few spells. When you combine it with Power of Nature you are basically telling rdruids to spend two talent nodes to aura buff themselves. But that’s okay because it’s something we’re use to from playing all of Dragonflight with the druid class tree.

Persistent Enchantments. I’m not a number cruncher but I don’t see this coming out ahead on the choice node, which is a shame because it’s the more “active gameplay” option and should reward players for choosing a less passive style. You’d have to make sure a second Wild Growth could be reasonably hit in the incarn window. But then you’d need to give us prosperity (2 charges of swiftmend) back in the spec tree so we could soul of the forest both of them :wink:

Booming Infusion is great. Gives us instant root, which can be very relevant (even as a PvE player), and a decent way to add some damage. Change to every 3 regrowths though. 5 is a bit of a slog and leads to issues:
If I really NEED to instant root for a specific mechanic, but there’s not much healing needed ahead of time, I’d have to sit there for 5 hardcast globals to prep it? OOF
If I want to throw in some free damage with GCDs, it means the damage going out is light to moderate, which means I’m probably not hitting a ton of regrowths.
Bottom line: lower it to every three regrowths and this node is a banger.

Harmony of the Grove looks like a passive, but numerically fine node. A sad way to cap the tree off, but it will give you the numbers to compete. But then it draws your eye to the cracks in the wall:

The bigger issue with the Keeper of the Grove tree is that it takes a flexible, set-it-and-forget-it spell and turns it into another 1 minute CD that fights against other nodes on the tree. Barring an insane, massive, and not-going-to-happen overhaul to healing that values sustained healing as much as burst/window healing, it’s always going to be better to load your healing into a window and compound it with cooldowns, externals, pots, etc.
So instead of pressing grove guardians when we need them for some light healing or to fill in little gaps and give a break to do DPS or drink a mana pot (because popping a pot should be a fun moment in the game and nothing says fun like going afk for 10 seconds) we now want to get the full 9% pump on our flourish (RIP).
Then we see that Power of Nature becomes less good because we can’t get uptime without sacrificing our flourish (RIP) value. Early Spring becomes questionable because we now have to look at the exact timings and ask if we can squeeze in an extra tree that will still cover the flourish(RIP) window and also will I get a dreamstate tranq between my next flourish(you get the point) but also that flourish will get reduced but also did I leave my grove guardians capped for too long and now I’ll miss one?!?!?! It becomes a lot less fun, but if you don’t put in the work to figure that out, it might also be a dead talent providing no value (or negative value if it’s baiting you into trying to get extra grove guardian casts but missing flourish windows with them). That’s all a bit hyperbolic; I know pressing trees on CD with 3s CDR is probably still better overall, but it’s the same point: diminished value when put in the larger picture of Harmony of the Grove.
Also Treants of the Moon? That one moonfire on the boss is going to be VERY refreshed after our flourish window, but sadly it will still just be one moonfire followed by nothing unless we go back to manually moonfiring (which, you know, we can already do.) It even makes Cenarius’ Might more of a pain in the butt because we want to jam in all our trees right before flourish, which means [rejuv > tree > regrowth > tree > swiftmend > tree > Wild Growth > Flourish] and I’m assuming we won’t have the luxury of Grove Guardians being ignored by Cenarius’ Might (ironic given this is a Grove Guardian focused tree).
Finally, Durability of Nature wants trees out ahead of the damage so they can get mini-wards on people, but Grove Guardians cast wild growth when they come out, so you want to cast them as close to the damage event as possible. This node isn’t even fighting with Harmony of the Grove, it’s fighting with the spell it’s trying to buff.

Overall I think the tree does give a couple cool nodes that give players a little more to think about or play around, but it feels like a mostly passive tree that fails to get me excited about grove guardians (with the caveat that dream petals doing huge healing would make the button feel powerful.). In fact the most exciting nodes for me have nothing to do with grove guardians: Booming Infusion and Cenarius’ Might.

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Hey Kaivax.

  1. can you please clarify something for me? what is going to happen to the restoration druid talent tree - specifically in regards to the node that asks us to choose between grove guardians and nourish? does the development team really intend for a restoration druid to choose nourish? and then be locked out of keeper of the grove capstone dream surge and many of the other keeper of the grove talents that only work when you have a grove guardian active? because they can never summon any if they choose nourish?

  2. There is simply no scenario in which I would ever take Persistent Enchantments (2 more seconds of reforestation) versus an always active 6% boost to regrowth, wild growth, and swiftmend healing. I would recommend increasing the duration from 2 seconds to 6 seconds to make it a more compelling choice. Especially since the talent does nothing unless you invest in a specific restoration talent tree talent (and that talent is at the very bottom of the tree…).

  3. Treants of the moon is very welcome. druids do some of the lowest dps of any healer. can we just make sure that the treants will only cast moonfire on targets that we are already in combat with please?

  4. Early Spring: Grove guardians actually don’t have a cooldown. Can this text be updated to “Grove Guardians recharge reduced by 3 seconds” instead?

dream petals feedback:

  • you are on the right track here. I am concerned though that there is already too much visual clutter on the ground in world of warcraft (raids etc). I would recommend changing dream petals away from something dropped on the ground that players need to walk over to pick up.
  • here is what the redesigned capstone could look like: Grove Guardians also causes your next targeted heal to create a dream seed on 2 nearby allies. After 3 seconds they will bloom, healing up to 3 nearby injured allies. Seeds will bloom immediately if the target is healed by swiftmend.
  • note: players with a dream seed will have a simple visual effect of some petals swirling around them (think bone shield, but instead of bones, petals).
  • note: when dream seed blooms, the petals will float up into the air and fade away
  1. YIKES I just noticed as a balance druid I will be locked out of being able to choose Warrior of Elune since I will be forced to take Force of Nature. This NEEDS to change.
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So Holy Paladins and Disc/Holy Priests get awesome group utility which allows them to enhance their allies and Resto Druid gets x% boosts? You serious right now?

If I wanted to play pet healer I’d hop on FFXIV and level Scholar hopefully the other hero tree isn’t so boring and uncreative.

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I agree with orbital strike! Does anyone remember the short time window in the last shadowlands season when it was called syzygy? And pulsar procs also procced orbital strike? This iteration was the most fun for balance ever and it removed the one thing balance is lacking big time in low keys: burst in short periods of time.

I still can’t wrap my head around how they come up with this by mistake and then proceed to scrap it completely to make balance so dull and boring with all it’s flaws.

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My feedback for Keeper of the Grove tree is that it is overall very boring, unintuitive, and could really use a complete redesign.

This tree for moonkin especially is horrendously boring and also ineffective. Force of nature is currently a 1 min cooldown and lasts for a measly 10 seconds. Nothing makes sense in this tree due to this. You HAVE to give balance back MoP/WoD treants for this hero tree to be meaningful at all. Force of nature deals no damage, so I can boost that by 20%? Wow exciting.

The tree is full of small passive increases. 5% damage here, damage proc there, 2 seconds longer on X ability. It’s all so boring. instant regrowth with star surges is nice for moonkin in PvP, but that’s it.

There are also a lot of talents in this tree that we need more information on to know if they are useful or not. Mainly proc spells from treants and how they interact with mastery.

And let’s quickly mention the theme of this tree, which is Keeper of the grove… which is a nature caster specialist. Trees, roots, thorns, barkskin, nature magic…. Why is orbital strike, celestial alignment, or pulsar being boosted by this tree? Shouldn’t those be in the elune tree?

My best suggestion would be to scrap all of these passives and implement interesting interactions between treants and our core kit. Force of nature and grove guardians have basically zero interaction with the rest of the Druid kit. This hero tree should be where all of that synergy exists!

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Does that work in PvP? It does not in m+, pets in combat keep you in combat.

I would like an option to replace trees with a seed-themed spell that cast SM or WG centered in the target that pulsed healing to the nearest 2 allies. Virtually identical to trees but without being beholden to WoWs pet AI.

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The only thing that really bothers me about the druid class trees.
And now from the hero class tree, we are always the first to use us as a sketch or a prototype.
But many times it remains just that, a prototype or sketch or an alpha.
And that is really annoying, since with this we are already doing 2 consecutive times in which we are used as “guinea pigs”.
It is very discouraging, as it gives a bad image to the class, in which we are the meme of “Alpha Class” and I mean the concept of not having any significant change.
Now the best thing would be to change this entire hero tree idea (to make it easier for the developer) and start again using your imagination.
Since druids can be overexploited in thousands of areas with class lore or fantasy theme, they can obviously benefit in the hero tree.
For example, we could start with something simple, like bringing back “Symbiosis” and using it as a base for this hero tree.
But changing its operation to the following:
Symbiosis: You link your energy/power with an ally, empowering yourself as well as this same ally and both gaining a new power/benefit depending on the role of the linked ally.
If the ally is a tank, both receive a 6% damage taken reduction.
If the ally is dps, both receive a 4% increase in damage dealt.
If the ally is a healer, both receive a 5% increase in healing done.

In this way, we create a new talent that is more beneficial and more creative than a simple talent that increases the druid very slightly (almost not at all).

And we could add this for the last talent.

Persistent symbiosis: Now your symbiosis can be applied to another ally and they also gain a new power depending on the first ally linked by the druid.

Dps: Your abilities and those of your ally have a chance to activate a nature damage energy nova in the area of ​​both locations that increases the haste by 1% of both parties for each target hit up to a maximum of 6 stacks. lasts 10sec.

Tank: Your abilities and those of your ally have a chance to create a mini-bark skin that reduces damage by 10%, and for each damage received by any linked ally of the druid himself, they will receive 1% versatility. up to a maximum of 5 and lasts 12sec.

Healer: Your abilities and those of your ally have a chance to create a living seed on them, which upon receiving damage explodes, healing the linked allies and for each healed ally they receive 2% critical damage up to a maximum of 6 and lasts 10 seconds. .

We could even add an interactive talent for this talent.

Hero Tree Center - Deep Symbiosis:
Your abilities have a small chance to trigger a burst of recuperative energy, which will reduce the DC of all the spells of the linked allies and the druid himself by 3sec (4 procs per minute / that is 12sec in total).

Ready, this is mostly an idea, taking the concept of Kindred Spirits from SL and symbiosis from MOP.
To be able to make something more versatile or useful, to be able to give the Rdruid and Boomy something different on the table.

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I am not a fan of Grove Guardians (GG).

I use it because its the best option, but not a fan of the fact that yall seem to be doubling down on GG.

P.S. Some ideas to make GG more attractive if you REALLY want to go that route:

  • Have them atleast follow players that go around corners or out of range
  • allow us to benefit from mastery when they cast Wild Growth. Heck, give them Rejuvenation as well (a weaker version).

Druids have never been a pet class other than Force of Nature, a short cooldown where a bunch of Treants go ham.

I’m not sure I like the new direction yall seem to be taking Resto.

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Wow, quoting this for posterity. This is nearly as good as the people trying to say that Thorns of Iron is an AOE damage ability.

WoW forums, you never disappoint.

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One can safely assume that the cat/tree hero talents will cover the non-tree builds for Resto. Sorta weird since many trees seem to use their pets to give them more time in cat form, but thematically this set of hero talents being “all about the treants” does make sense to connect balance and resto.

If blizzard does not manage to provide a compelling set of hero talents for the cat/tree… tree… then yea, they are simply telling you to ignore Nourish (not that its great anyway) and be a pet healer class, but until then, you can assume that is the intent.

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The core identity of Resto Druid is about keeping rolling sets of HoTs on teammates. Summoning healing pets is antithetical to the heart of the spec; I’m surprised we decided to lean FURTHER into boring, uninteractive gameplay. I won’t ever play this hero tree, and if it’s sufficiently stronger than Windstalker I’m going to be forced to re-roll, which would make me sad.

If we’re dead-set on juicing the trees, can you make the trees into a juggling game, perhaps they cast a new unique HoT instead of Nourish. So I can treat them like an additional HoT? The only thing I like about pressing my treant button is that they apply a mini wild growth. Would be much more compelling to me than raw healing throughput on my druid healing totems.

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U mean stuff people really hate and ask everytime to be deleted but Blizz doesnt listen and make new system around these mechanics

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Couple of things I haven’t seen discussed too much here (and I apologize if I skipped over a post about it).

For one thing, a couple of the hero talents currently exist on live as spec talents, so I’m really curious what else is changing in the class and spec trees. Clearly they intend for some changes, and I’m keen to see what they are.

The other is that keeper is just one hero line available to Resto. I’m REALLY curious to see the other options, and what the parings will be. I could easily imagine the resto+guardian paring (if that’s an option) leaning away from trees and into hots and shields.

With druid having 4 specs, I don’t know if we should expect a paring for each spec, or if there will be a combo that gets skipped (4 corners of a square in the way the other classes get a triangle).

With that, I’ll say my feedback is having a spec line that leans heavily into treants is pretty awesome cause a lot of people really like it. A lot of people really dislike it, too, so I’m hoping the other parings give good options for those folks.

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The other is that keeper is just one hero line available to Resto. I’m REALLY curious to see the other options, and what the parings will be. I could easily imagine the resto+guardian paring (if that’s an option) leaning away from trees and into hots and shields.

Resto gets 2 hero talent trees to choose from, same as every other druid spec.

Hero trees:
Keeper of the grove: Balance/Resto
Wildstalker: Resto/Feral
Druid of the claw: Feral/Guardian
Elune’s Chosen: Balance/Guardian

this is all covered in the graphic blizz posted, this one, look in the top right.

I am quite curious what they will do with wildstalker, feral and resto don’t really have much in common traditionally.

I’m not a big fan of the tree playstyle, as strong as it in M+ currently, I prefer heals under my control not glorified totems that do whatever they want. I just hope it’s good because its unlikely they go away from the tree focus for the keeper of the grove.

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feral and resto don’t really have much in common traditionally

I assume it will allow us to ‘catweave’ more?

perhaps our cat abilities will automatically proc regrowth/rejuvs on nearby friendly targets so we can damage while we heal?