Please give this a look:
And let us know your thoughts here!
So far my first thought is that the tree looks very boring. Thereās a lot of just percentage increases to our normal abilities and the only addition is the vines, which we donāt interact with or do anything different when they proc.
To be honest, from a Feral perspective this looks like a tree made for a cat-weaving Resto Druid. Itās much easier for them to double dip with it than it is for Feral to benefit from the healing aspects.
29 Likes
My biggest question is: why doesnāt Thriving Growth work off of Regrowth?
Otherwise, completely agreed with Reshyk, this tree appears to be constructed from a Resto/Catweaving perspective, and not at all from a Feral perspective.
It really highlights for me the issues with the class tree for all Druids, but especially for Ferals. From a Feral PvP perspective, I frankly donāt feel like I have the points to spare in the class tree to pick up Rejuvenation, even though itās on the top row.
While in single target, we could forgo the Astral Influence range extension (even though it is the only connector to a crucial versatility/damage and healing buff in Rising Light, Falling Night) in cleave situations where our talent points are locked in, the choice becomes: Heart of the Wild or picking up Rejuvenation so I can pop out of form every 12 seconds to give this Hero Tree actual crossover utility for Feral. Having to choose between a capstone and a row 1 talent canāt be the intention, right?
If the Druid tree were addressed (like the Warrior tree, which Blizz is aware of, given the developerās note regarding Shockwave) to the point where I had flexibility to actually take Rejuvenation or the main function and flavor of the tree worked with Regrowth, perhaps this tree would be more interesting in the blend and crossover between Feral and Resto. But as it stands now, it seems like another thing to either track or ignore that will just passively do a little more damage for Feral.
18 Likes
As a pve feral, would I ever notice or care that I selected wildstalker? If I just didnāt select a hero tree, would I feel a difference? I feel like the answer is clearly ānoā.
26 Likes
Was there any way of making this more boring? Your hots proc a hot, your dots proc a dot? Might as well replace the whole tree with āgain 500 mastery rating and %10 increased damage/healingā and call it a day. The whole tree is is on par with a single node like Cultivation on the regular talent tree (the whole thing is basically tantamount to Hpal 2p tier set bonus: your holy shock can proc a hot/dot). I was really looking forward to this because Iām a PvPer and feral affinity is a high skill way of playing resto druid but holy mother of elune this is uninspired. Maybe have a look at the Chronowarden tree for evokers for some inspiration.
Hereās some constructive feedback: if even your capstone nodes (top and bottom) donāt change your gameplay flow, theyāre bad. The possible threads are obvious: target adaptive swarm, maybe make it a āsmartā spell that applies hots/dots that donāt exist on the target upon jump, extend your d/hots on jump, make rip/rake on a nearby target count for resto mastery, make consuming predatory swiftness give energy or a proc. Itās so easy really. If youāre really keen do something with stealth since, you know, itās called wildSTALKER but I donāt trust you guys to pull that off in a manner that wouldnāt be completely infuriating to play as or against.
18 Likes
I was so right that this tree was heavily going to favor Resto which I hoped I wasnāt and I have no hope now for Druid of The Claw which is going to heavily favor Guardian druids. As a feral main this displeases me greatly, also lol shoving that %50 regrowth way to make it go back to how it should normally be. When all our other specs donāt have that nerf lol.
Feral is going to be stuck in SL/DF damage while every other class/spec is going to be doing 800k+ damage and more without PI/Aug buffs. To say Iām outright angry/disappointed is an understatement and if I have to change classes next expansion for those who do stick with it I hope one day you treat their dedication better as they deserve better.
Especially if you keep these āHero Treesā as they currently are as they sure donāt feel heroic lol. x3 But I imagine every other class and Spec will get tuning/tree changes, but druids I expect the same treatment we got for our class tree in DF
10 Likes
The Wildstalker tree seems incredibly lackluster for those selecting it as a Feral Druid. There is no active interaction with Bloodseeker Vines, outside of Implant. It is essentially an extra bleed that has a chance to proc - we cannot control when it happens, there is no change to our rotation because of it, there is no gameplay connection with it besides ādo more damageā.
And, speaking of ādo more damageā, there are far too many talents in this Hero tree that do just that. Hunt Beneath the Open Skies is a flat damage increase. Strategic Infusion is a flat damage increase. Wildstalkerās Power is a flat damage increase. Root Network is a flat damage increase. Vigorous Creepers is a flat damage increase. The only thing this tree brings us, outside of flat damage, is a slight healing taken increase through Bond with Nature / Harmonious Constitution and a minor utility addition through Entangling Vortex.
Although I canāt speak with complete confidence about Resto, I feel they would get so much more use out of this tree, as catweaving is fairly popular - however, healing as a Feral is often much harder to achieve (see other comments about the problems with the Druid class tree), and with Wildstalker, you canāt even reliably proc Symbiotic Blooms with your normal rotation, unless you take Implant.
I was really hoping to see some things that would spice up the Feral gameplay or give us a way to provide more healing or support while in cat form (or at the very least, added Rebirth back to Predatory Swiftness). I was also hoping we might see some further interaction with Prowl, such as giving us a Vanish type ability (that isnāt connected with Feral Incarn). This tree attached some extra damage to Prowl with Strategic Infusion, but still doesnāt give us a way to Prowl more than once per combat - unless youāre a Night Elf.
A lot of the other Hero talent trees seem to take some daring steps into changing up the rotation, adding abilities, or giving some amazing QoL changes. There was such an opportunity give us something amazing, and they justā¦ didnāt give us anything substantial at all.
Wildstalker is bland. Could be a good damage increase, but thatās all in tuning - so at that point, why not just delete all of these talents and add a single node that says āIncreases damage done by x%ā?
14 Likes
Iād certainly agree with the prevailing sentiment that the tree at least looks very passive. The idea of ābleeds on bleeds on bleedsā certainly - at least to me - feels like itās in the right ballpark, but Iām not totally sold on this iteration. I think if youāre going to lean into the bleed aspect for Wildstalker you should keep direct damage (i.e. Shred/FB/Swipe/BS) totally out of it and leave those for Claw.
I think for this tree you should seriously consider targeting Bees (i.e. Swarm) as your main focus. Itās an active talent that only Feral/Resto share, is DoT/HoT focused, fun (at least from the Feral side of things), and rewarding when done correctly. It also presents a great opportunity to fix a lot of the QoL issues that keep the talent from being used more (line of sight and/or distance causing stacks to drop for example).
8 Likes
I like the tree thematically but I think the class tree needs some cleanup/condensing for Feral to be able to even talent in to healing buttons outside of just Regrowth if the intention is that weāre to be able to proc Symbiotic Blooms as Feral.
Also hoping that Bloodseeker Vines and Symbiotic Blooms look visually appealing and arenāt invisible or barely visible when they spread; I want to flood the field with vines and I WANT people to be able to see it.
Edit: Can Regrowths cast from Predatory Swiftness get the functionality of applying Symbiotic Blooms like Natureās Swiftness is getting? Doesnāt have to be a 100% chance but a chance at all would be very nice.
6 Likes
Same. After the Mountain Thane preview I was looking forward to what cool new visuals Druid would get but Iām not seeing a ton of opportunity for cool visuals here other than the vines/blooms. So I hope they look really good.
4 Likes
Love this idea. I mean, it could be as simple as changing the vines into a stack of Swarm. Iāve always enjoyed Feral more when it was bleed-heavy as opposed to Bite-heavy, and I thoroughly enjoyed Shadowlands Necro Feral in single target watching things rot down, as well as beekeeping in aoe scenarios. Blizz seems to have no issue forcing talents with these trees (see: Lunar Beam for Guardian, Grove Guardians for Resto, Full Moon and Force of Nature for Balance), and if we were generating Swarm stacks passively, we wouldnāt technically need to talent into it (for argumentās sake; Iād be happy to talent into it).
Iād love to see the Wildstalker tree changed to be Adaptive Swarm-based.
4 Likes
I find it interesting that - assuming Oracle gets reworked into another support style tree - resto druids are the only healer (so far) without a support style hero tree.
Iām a little worried about these odd man out situations because it feels inconsistent and increases the risk of one healer being way stronger than others purely on damage.
As far as wildstalker in particular, I dunno. I feel like if I take this as resto Iām not even going to notice that it exists? It just passively improves healing and doesnāt really shake up gameplay in any meaningful way like Light Smith or Chronowarden.
I guess it incentivizes you to go feral for dps abilities?
Although this does bring up my real problem with this tree: The class tree for druid is such an overly restrictive mess I worry that if this is remotely strong, Iām making some impossible choices about what bottom of the tree choices I need to give up so I can get all the earlier talents I need. And thatās not fun.
3 Likes
On a fantasy/mechanic side of things: I really love the fantasy and aesthetic of the tree. This is the kind of lore-fantasy that I love, and itās how Iāve imagined my own druid. This was the one tree thatās left me really excited for Hero Talents.
What I donāt love is that both the restoration options are passive. Keeper of the Grove appeals to the pet healing, and the Dream Petals apply and function on their own with little input from the druid. To me, to counter that gameplay, Wildstalker would have to be much more active in what it does, but this just seems to lean into it more, just without the buffs to our treants.
Resto has two incredibly passive options. The only real motivation to get into cat form is a slight healing increase on rolling HoTs, and thatās pretty uninspired. Itās just baseline catweaving with some damage multipliers, when this tree could heavily lean into the fantasy.
Meanwhile, balance can now choose between pet-lite gameplay that leans into the old Force of Nature talents and being able to enhance their own astral abilities, which is awesome. I presume Guardian gets the choice of being a more magic oriented tank, and a physical one with Druid of the Claw (even if we havenāt seen it yet, I can only imagine that this is what happens). This is good, especially for Balance. They have two very clear options.
So far, I agree with the sentiments stated above. If I pick Wildstalker, I should be making a meaningful choice in the gameplay I want to engage in. With this current iteration, I could honestly just be playing resto druid as it currently is in Dragonflight. I was hopeful for some sort of disc-style elements with adaptive swarm, where we could apply it like atonement and our catweaving DPS could heal our allies - that really changes up some of the core gameplay.
On the feral side, thereās no way to control how these dots are applied beyond the Feral Frenzy node. Itās just a passive thing, that again, I wouldnāt notice if I was a Wildstalker druid or not. There should be more control over when and if you can apply this bleed.
I think one of the things missing here is incentives for the resto druid to try and proc the bloodseeker vines on an enemy beyond āI do more damageā. Same goes for feral. Weāre automatically going to proc one, but I think there needs to be some utility or incentive to actively try to engage in the other.
I get that itās kind of difficult to make a tree for two druid specs that vary greatly (like Balance and Bear), but Adaptive Swarm is something that resto and feral share. Thatās such a gimme.
4 Likes
This talent tree looks like it took inspiration from Balance/Feral play instead of Resto/Feral in the form of Hunt Beneath the Open Skies talent.
Adding something like Thriving Growth to AoE spells sounds like it is going to be strong and focus on casting AoE getting a massive amount of Symbiotic Blooms on the entire group. Not sure if there is a lower chance to proc for AoE spells versus ST, if not it doesnāt make sense but okay.
Symbiotic Blooms almost sound like it going to replace Adaptive Swarm.
2 Likes
I used to main feral and still keep up with it in the hopes that it will become a spec I can enjoy again.
Yeahā¦Wildstalker isnāt doing that for me. This tree looks incredibly boring. Itās really just a bunch of passives that I would never notice while playing feral. Even worse, it expects you to pick up talents that are already nearly impossible to pick up for feral, such as Ursolās Vortex, Wild Growth, and Rejuvenation. In pvp at least, almost no one is playing those talents because the druid class tree is far too restrictive. I canāt imagine it is much different on the pve side of things. Feral struggles so much defensively in pvp and none of this really helps because a good amount of these passives are buffs to healing spells ferals canāt even take.
You could give me Wildstalker right now on my druid alt and I wouldnāt even notice the difference for either feral or resto except some slightly bigger numbers. That really doesnāt make me very excited to play my druid when compared to other hero talent trees that introduce meaningful gameplay choices and new utility.
I hope Druid of the Claw is better than this, or this tree gets reworked, otherwise it will likely be yet another expansion of not playing my feral druid. And on that note, please fix the druid class tree. First to get worked on for DF and the absolute last to get touched. Tragic.
7 Likes
For resto the core points looks to be a new version of the germination luxuriant soil combo, just with more than just rejuv as the trigger, looks like itāll work well in raid compared to the smaller group focus of keeper so iām relatively happy with it.
Feedback for the nodes
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entangling vortex/ flower walk node; For feral this is a pure utility choice. For resto, depending on tuning i could see this being a utility vs through-put choice and could promote popping barkskin as a rotational ability, but again thats all down to tuning.
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Resilent flourishing; has a secondary affect for feral that doesnt affect resto, i think something simple like symbiotic bloom jumping if the target it heals is full health would be a good equivalent
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vigorous creeper; is this just mastery again or does it function as mastery for the blooms. The prior would be prefered but if blooms work like treants where theyre only one way for mastery and this is meant to fix them iād prefer they just function as a full hot baseline and this node be reworked.
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beneath the open skys; I get the idea is passive healing while in kitty form for our already rolling hots but its completely wasted if you donāt like being in catform as resto; which yah its the tree shared with feral but keeper doesnāt require we be in boomy form for its bonuses. Think it should be reworked or moved to a choice node.
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strategic infusion; pre-legion mastery but crit instead of flat healing, short form maintenance buffs are boring and tedious up it to like 10 seconds.
Other than that, i got nothing, its so simple but effective that i feel like iāll set it and forget it while continuing to play like normal, and i like that as an option compared to how reliant keeper is on treants uptime.
1 Like
Extremely boring as many people above have said. I think itās quite disappointing, especially combined with the flavor text right above the talents. The flavor text sounds so awesome and yet the tree is full of complete passives.
Wildstalkers are druids who feel such an affinity for the remote wilds of the world that they live amongst them, mostly in cat form, hunting to perpetuate the cycle of life and death and destroy those who would despoil nature. They use their healing powers to restore life to barren spaces and the creatures who live there.
This is exactly what Iāve always imagined as being the best of playing druid, specifically feral, and this tree does none of that.
I think that not touching Adaptive Swarm in any way at all misses a huge opportunity on what this tree could be capable of, cautiously. As long as the tree does not generate new/free swarms, it could be extremely fun. New/free swarms however would quickly diminish the actual fun of playing Adaptive Swarm.
Feral basically doesnāt interact with the Symbiotic Bloom in any shape or form, for several reasons. For one, taking the abilities that proc it from the Class Tree is near impossible with the massive amount of required talent points for just your basic damage and ārequiredā utility (if youāre not taking Innervate in raid you may as well not have a raid spot). This is also compounded by the fact that if you wanted to take, say, Wild Growth, and cast it for some blooms (to maybe proc), you spending 1.2 seconds to cast Wild Growth and then an additional GCD to return to cat and start doing your real rotation again. Just feels like something is missing here. What is the last sentence of the Wildstalker flavor text supposed to imply? Is the Wildstalker doing healing from cat form? Should we expect that from the Wildstalker hero tree? (Healing in cat form has left a sour taste in my mouth, with the recent change of āautounshiftā marcos breaking, I will be honest.)
The vines are boring. Even if they are very cool visually on enemies I think the effect is boring and it has zero impact on gameplay beyond some free passive damage and an increase to Taste for Blood, which is also passive. Longer Rake is actually not that great for Feral gameplay as it interferes heavily with proccing Bloodtalons.
At the very least this tree isnāt encouraging a poor rotation/gameplay, it just changes nothing about what you were already doing. I also think, just looking at it, it looks quite weak for Resto druids in particular, when looking at how overloaded Grove Guardians is as a spell baseline on top of all of the things that Keeper of the Grove does to them.
12 Likes
This. When I initially read the text, it felt like it was hinted at being able to cast these listed spells (Wild Growth, Efflo, and Regrowth) in cat form, but I think some clarifying could be done here.
If this is the case, color me intrigued.
1 Like
The text of the Wildstalker Thriving Growth talent is being updated to reflect the latest version of its design.
It should read " Wild Growth, Regrowth, and Efflorescence have a chance to cause Symbiotic Blooms to grow on the targetā¦" not Rejuvenation.
7 Likes
There isnāt much to say, itās incredibly boring.
Just because you wanna make hero talents mostly passives, doesnāt mean you have to do it like this.
Take a look at frostfire for what you should do.
This batch of hero talents overall has been more miss than hit.
4 Likes