I’m ok with the passive talents in the tree. I have enough to keep track of with dots and FB needed to upkeep. I was hoping they would do something about the button bloat in the next expansion anyway.
As a catweaving Resto Druid, this makes me very happy, playing into both aspects. And I really don’t mind that’s it’s very passive, as Catweaving Resto doesn’t exactly have a shortage of things to pay attention to.
For Feral, it just…well it looks as though some of the effects are at least powerful, if not very interesting.
Be nice if there was some interaction with Adaptive Swarm though?
2 Likes
I agree with the sentiment above: Wildstalker seems overall quite passive, it supports Catweaving Resto druid quite well, and it provides only flat damage buffs for Feral. Personally, my biggest issue is not the lack of gameplay changing abilities for Feral, but just the complete lack of any interaction with any Feral abilities outside of applying Bloodseeker Vines.
I also want to admit that it seems like this tree is actively trying to avoid buffing Feral’s off-healing capabilities (probably motivated by 10.1.5’s changes to reduce off healing from non-healing specs).
With that in mind, I would like to offer ideas that seem both thematic and would be more interesting to feral players:
- Any interaction with Incarn / Convoke (all the other druid Hero trees have hooks to Incarn and Convoke)
- Cooldown reduction or duration increase for Tiger Dash (similar to the CDR Elune’s Chosen get for Wild Charge)
- Energy or Combo Points granted for successful interrupts / dispels / soothes (similar to the DH class tree)
- Any interaction with Omen of Clarity (one of the few abilities that Feral and Resto uniquely share)
- A severely nerfed/limited version of Solar Beam (since Keeper of the Grove essentially stole 2 talents from Feral, it seems only fair)
Again, these are just some rough ideas, but I hope this can inspire some more meaningful interactions between the Wildstalker talent tree and the Feral talent tree.
6 Likes
This sentiment is exactly what I thought looking at this tree.
Feral gets the feral effects and won’t be using globals on heals and so basically gets 0 benefit from resto.
Also I feel that resto feral damage is highly likely to be tuned around this tree and be really bad on its base damage.
2 Likes
Retribution is also boring as hell compared to specs like enhance, frost mage, fire, sub rogue and many others.
Ret should not be the standard for what makes a enjoyable rotation. It’s very static with barely any dynamism. They even removed the wake of ashes reset which was one of the coolest parts of the rotation.
The reason why “it’s good” is because it has pretty good utility and good burst windows without losing too much damage outside of burst. That’s it. Almost no one is talking about how ret has the “best gameplay”. At least not people who actually play other specs and know how to play them.
Wildstalker gets an F tier rating. The problem is not passives, the problem is bad passives. As we have seen now and many times in the past you can make good passives, just look at the frostfire tree.
1 Like
The talents for feral seems really boring… just % increase or damage increase is very very boring and to be honest the spec tree already have a lot of these so call boring notdes and you are addding more to the hero tree.
I really wish the hero tree for druid gets a major rework if you look at pally, warlock, hunter warrior man their hero tree looks so much more interesting and fun to play. Feral sorry all you get is more damage buff.
Feral itself is already suffering this expansion (expect S1) it needs a whole redesign.
Why not have the hero tree make feral you know more ferocious feeling like Wolverine or Sabretooth go all out on it. Playing a feral now feels more like a kitty cat.
4 Likes
After taking some time to reflect on this Hero talent tree, along with the clarification that Regrowth will indeed proc the bonus heal, I want to say that while I am fine with there being no additional button to press (as Feral has a tremendous amount, especially if the meta shifts to include Adaptive Swarm and Lunar Inspiration), I still would like to see more out of this tree.
Many of the nodes are flat damage increases, as I mentioned before. I would love to see some additional utility baked into our existing toolkit that could make us more viable in many forms of content.
Neomagam mentioned adding a benefit to successful interrupts, dispels, and/or soothes - this would be amazing and exists across the board for other specs. Particularly with dispels and soothes, taking a global away from damage never feels good, even if it is the correct thing to do in a given situation. Having a successful dispel or soothe grant a combo point could be so cool, or even tie it in with granting a stack of Adaptive Swarm or Bloodtalons, or CDR on Berserk/Incarn, or maybe even just grant a stack of the new vine/bloom from this tree. Just give us something that makes us feel good for paying attention and aiding the group.
I would also love having Rebirth added back to the Predatory Swiftness list, as combat ressing is very difficult as a feral druid. You have to leave cat form, stand still for two seconds, then incur another GCD going back into cat form to continue DPSing - and if the tank is the one you’re battle ressing, forget about it, because you’re probably dead within those two to three seconds. Make it instant, make it castable in form.
There’s also so much potential to add bonuses to things that Resto and Feral often share, like Innervate. It would be amazing if Innervate also granted ferals some bonuses when it was cast, either based on how many spells the target was able to cast for free (extra energy, a combo point, additional mastery, go wild!), or maybe something that extended the duration of Innervate for how many combo points the feral spends. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that we can cast Innervate in cat form now, but there’s definitely an opportunity to do more with it through this tree.
Like others have said, there’s much more of a chance Restos will make use of the Feral bonuses from Wildstalker than Feral will make use of Resto bonuses. It’s simply too hard to get offheals out as a cat (aside from Regrowth procs, but spending every proc you get on casting Regrowth is pretty costly over the course of an encounter), so I would love to see some work being put into this tree to allow more offhealing from ferals while in cat form. If the intention is to allow double dipping between roles, then that’s what should be occurring here - because right now, it feels more like there’s two separate talent sets existing for the two specs, instead of two specs sharing a common theme.
4 Likes
As a feral main since 2005 this looks awful.
The Strategic Infusion path is 100% Dead on Arrival. I can’t think of an instance when I would ever choose this path. I’m Dungeon/Raid focused, but this doesn’t even look worth while in PVP.
The Entangling Vortex/Flower Walk node does nothing for feral PVE and looks lackluster PVP. It’s just mashing the Class Talent Tree Vortex/Mass Entangle node together without buffing the Mass Entangle side of it.
Bursting Growth looks to add some small AoE, but only 1 every 8+ seconds - 1+ global to hope the vines apply, then wait 6 seconds before they explode. Zero burst damage which is paramount in almost all encounters both PvE and PvP.
Hunt Beneath the Open Skies path might be marginally usable.
Hunt Beneath the Open Skies talent itself is a class tuning pass disguised as a talent. Moonfire can’t be cast in cat form without picking up Lunar Inspiration which is currently not considered viable in almost all situations. Sunfire cannot be cast in cat form making this portion of the talent not applicable to ferals.
Wildstalker’s Prescence (is this a typo on your part Blizz?) - Rake lasts 20% longer… uhh whoopie? Very limited dps gain in single target/patchwerk boss fights. Almost completely useless in other situations.
Resilient Flourishing - will never be taken by a feral because of Wildstalker’s Prescence
Root Network - oh another passive low damage buff that could just be a tuning pass… cool… oh and this one is not 100% uptime… cool…
Vigorous Creepers - Literally the same as Root Network, but a little more powerful… cool… so maybe just do a class tuning pass and start over on this Hero Talent thing?
Wildstalker’s Power path - seems like it could actually see the light of day in terms of actually being playable.
Wildstalker’s Power - another passive damage buff that could have just been a class tuning pass
Bond with Nature/Harmonious Constitution - limited PvE value, but I’m generally a fan of increased survivability. Still very lackluster and continues the trend of just being a class tuning pass. Also major concerns for PvP application with the very common reaction of Blizzard to nerf feral healing in PvP. Will this be meet with swift PvP healing nerfs?
Twin Sprouts - 10% chance to spread will be worthless in high cleave/high burst dungeon pulls and boss adds. The uptime on the cleave target(s) will be minimal.
Implant - Gives a tiny bit of RNG protection, but raise major concerns about actual proc rate of Bloodseeker Vines and uptime. It also highlights that is path has no interaction with Thriving Growth itself other than the final buff to damage in Vigorous Creepers which I already commented on above.
For Ferals this is a non starter Hero Talent tree. All the talents might as well just be class tuning and there is below zero class fantasy.
The Restos may disagree, but you might as well have Sylvanas burn this entire tree to the ground from a feral perspective.
2 Likes
Just based on some key words … I don’t think you understand how hero talent trees work. There is no pathing … You get everything in the tree.
4 Likes
Overall … my initial reaction looking at “Thriving Growth” was underwhelmed especially with ‘meta’ classes now having incredible aoe burst, dot classes need npcs to be ‘alive’ and have players abilities to do their thing (rip/rake/thrash/bugs).
As I worked through the rest of the hero talents I was happily surprised with the last row and node of the tree. After reading them over, there is an interesting synergy between them and ‘Thriving Growth’, although I have my reservations.
- Bursting Growth – Lets start here. When Bloodseeker Vines expire they explode and do AOE damage to 5 targets. The wording says ‘expires’, however what does that mean. Do active vines (6 secs or less left) ‘expire’ on targets that die or does the actual bleed need to expire (time = 0). My initial assumption was a target dies with a vine, it expires immediately and explodes. However, after re-reading ‘Resilient Flourishing’, I’m not sure. If vines never reach to time zero to explode, this talent is dead.
- Resilient Flourishing – Targets afflicted with vines die, the vine jumps to an unaffected target for the remaining duration. This is where I questioned “when does the vine expire?”. What happens if all targets are afflicted and the vine can’t jump, does it expire on death and therefore does it trigger bursting growth? Shrug.
- Twin Sprout – same question… valid nearby targets, I’m assuming that mean ‘unaffected’. So nothing happens if Twin Sprout triggers but everything is affected. Sigh.
- Root Network and Vigorous Creepers – both depend on how many vines are created and how long they last. A Rip tick triggers a vine, but the target immediately dies, both these talents do nothing at that point. We’re doubling down here.
Lastly, Thriving Growth… Rip/Rake has a chance to cause vines to grow on target. This is the crux of everything above. What is the % chance and what is the target cap that triggers vines. Will the formula for Thriving Growth be the same of Apex right now? Apex was neutered (and still needs to be buffed imo). Which means we’ll see the same return with Thriving Growth and likely DOA for me.
The game play sounds interesting, but has no control and leaves too much to chance.
Additionally…
- There are some decent healing increases for feral in the tree, however it’s a band-aid on feral survivability. I would prefer this being addressed in the class/spec tree first.
- Entangling Vortex – hmm, don’t we have a choice for mass entanglement? Shrug.
- Implant – Underwhelming. Once season 3 and 4 tier are done and Feral Frenzy goes back to 1 minute cooldown, Implant will be meh.
- Bursting Growth – Implement a means to explode vines at will. Similar to Demo Warlock and Imps.
If you made it to this point… thanks.
2 Likes
I disagree.
It might be community-based then. Among my group of friends that I run keys with, we have 3 people (out of a rotation of about 10-ish) that LOVE the current Retribution gameplay and rotation.
Being FOMO isn’t quite enough enough, in my opinion, to elevate something to the most popular spec in the game. There are many more reasons than those you listed as to why Ret is tops right now.
But, whatever. We don’t have to agree since Blizz isn’t going to listen anyway.
No, I haven’t been following too closely to the hero talent discussion before now, but it makes no difference between getting them all or only a subset, my overall evaluation is still relevant.
The entire tree could be condensed into a tuning patch and I wouldn’t know the difference. It’s the talent version of this meeting could have been an email.
1 Like
Fomo made s priest rework really liked by some people just because it was doing good damage even though in terms of actual gameplay it wasn’t an upgrade compared to what we had before. In fact, s1 s priest was more fun.
Some people standard of quality begins and ends at “this spec does good damage”.
My standards are a bit higher than just that, i need some interactions within the spec, cdr, cde, procs, etc… Ret has very few. No cdr, no cde, one of the very few procs is art of war. Divine purpose and empyrean power which both have pathetically low proc rates.
The ret rework was not a success in terms of actual gameplay, they even removed the WoA proc which was one of the best part of the pre rework ret.
Ret also has a problem of giving up close to 30% of their st damage for aoe.
It’s not a good spec when it comes to gameplay. It’s average, the definition of average. There are no significant pitfalls, but there also aren’t significant positives.
1 Like
Wow. You would think after 16+ years, they (the devs) could have asked Pat Sajak to buy a clue. It is very apparent they do not play feral spec. Looking at the buffs to the dps for feral., … … … like I stated before 5% to 15% buffs to bleed effects??? Really? Wow, the disconnect with the player base could not be more pronounced. 2005 feral design is calling, and they want their development design back. This whole idea the feral druids should not have decent heals, decent dps, decent survivability because they can stealth and have a jack-of-all-trade idealism is out-dated. The idea of you can’t dps because you can heal…it would make you too OP (which is BS in today’s game). You cannot have survivability because you have stealth (which is a garbage reason but has been the whine of players since day one). You cannot have a good self-heal because melee shouldn’t have that (but let’s be honest, feral has THE WORST self-heal in the game). These all seem petty, and outdated, but this is exactly the mentality these devs currently have. They are using a template that was used in vanilla wow and part of the reason they pulled all the survivability talents out and created Guardian (we cannot have a tank that can dps / can’t have a cat with survivability) spec in Cata. In retail, these development decisions for years past, hold ZERO weight in the current game. If they continue to clutch their pearls about past feral design decisions, then, well, feral is going to continue to be looked at as the joke spec that, unless in a solid group of players, is going to be ranked right there with Survival hunters. I can’t wait to see the feral/guardian combo, where the dev, in their holy power, decide it is time to give us back all the things they stripped off the spec when Cata became current. That might bring us up to par… but given their (the dev) track record, I am expecting a quadruple bogie.
4 Likes
While I really like the focus on Hots and Dots, I wish this promoted the mix between feral and resto a bit more.
Things like doing Hots as a resto would do damage to enemies near, making the healing side feel a bit more like a ‘dotter’ and having that passive damage.
And vice versa, while doing feral dps, you’d be healing/hotting up your team.
Maybe even somthing wild like, casting certain hots puts bleeds through these ‘roots’ on your enmies, or while in cat form your moves are also applying rejuvenates out on your team. Allowing for that mix of dps and healing all in one class.
In particular the ‘roots’ and spreading between team mates/bursting all seems super fun and thematic, but they don’t seem to mix… Just dmg does more dmg, and healing does more healing. And I cant speak for feral too much, but all my hots do is overheal at this point anyway, so adding more just is more thats effectively wasted.
4 Likes
I just don’t see where I’d pick this as either resto or feral. It looks bland, uninspired, and there’s nothing stealth related in it to call it a “stalker.”
It slightly buffs DoTs and HoTs… how unique…
I think a lot of the issues come from the base tree, then the spec trees, and now this just makes all the talent trees look even more messy.
6 Likes
Completely agree, this does not feel like a combined talent tree like I’m seeing in some other specs. It should really play up the Nature as an interconnected community" aspect. Parasitic roots that damage enemy while at the same time healing allies would be much more on theme. Not separating them.
And as a feral I feel like most of the healing benefits are inaccessible, so even less of a interconnected feeling.
2 Likes
So what does this Hero Tree actually provide to Feral Druids?
Bloodseeker Vines - A random chance to apply a Bleed DoT from Rip or Rake damage.
After appropriate talents
Last 2 seconds (33%) longer and spread to “unaffected targets” on death
OR
Increase your ability damage by 2% per application
Deal AoE damage when they expire
Have a 10% proc chance when applied to generate another DoT
OR
Guaranteed application from Feral Frenzy
And increase damage of your abilities by 10% on those affected.
And let’s add up those other changes in the tree
+5% damage done in Cat Form
+5% healing done in Cat Form (leans into Predatory Swiftness and only those procs)
+10% Moonfire (can’t cast in Cat Form without Lunar Inspiriation) damage
+10% Sunfire (can’t cast in Cat Form) damage
+6% Rip damage
+4% Ferocious Bite damage
+8% critical strike chance on Shred, Rake, and Brutal Slash only during Tiger’s Fury/Prowl (does not apply to Swipe, leans toward Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane for 2nd Prowl)
+20% Wild Growth (can’t be cast in Cat Form) duration
+3% Rejuvenation (can’t be cast in Cat Form) healing
+6% Efflorescence and Lifebloom (can’t be cast in Cat Form) healing
+20% Rake duration
+10% healing received (instantly negated by Dampening in Arena) OR +50% Regrowth healing on self (requires Predatory Swiftness and only those procs)
Ursol’s Vortex roots people “when it pulls” OR +10% movement speed during Barkskin (leans toward Improved Barkskin talent)
Here’s the problems I have with this tree →
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- 6/11 Hero Talents are “tuning adjustments” that could be applied AT ANY TIME between now and The War Within, with the push of a weekly hotfix if desired. It also shows a significant lack of innovation and laziness on the class balancing team.
Orcs can’t even be Druids (except Rala Wildheart in Warspear, remember her? 10+ years Blizzard? WHERE ARE THEY?) and it looks like all the peons at Class Design could come up with was “make numbers bigger”.
- 6/11 Hero Talents are “tuning adjustments” that could be applied AT ANY TIME between now and The War Within, with the push of a weekly hotfix if desired. It also shows a significant lack of innovation and laziness on the class balancing team.
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- Bloodseeker Vines is another passive DoT that only “deals damage” and/or “buffs damage done” while it is active. Where’s the additional damage of Bleeds similar to Survival Hunters? Where’s the Bleed damage becoming Nature damage and giving us armor penetration? Do these vines even do Bleed damage, or do they do Nature damage? They do none of these things.
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- There is no mention of being able to cast any of the healing-based abilities in Cat Form and no changes to how Predatory Swiftness works to accommodate them. With the Druid Class Tree already a heavy limitation on choices and options, healing talents are wasted entirely if they cannot be cast in Cat Form or do not have any interaction with Predatory Swiftness. Symbiotic Blooms does not even exist for Feral without Regrowth casts via Predatory Swiftness, as switching off Cat Form to cast Wild Growth is impractical, in addition to the talent points required to take Wild Growth in the first place.
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- Numerous ability buffs are simply meaningless in Cat Form or in the current playstyle of both Feral and Restoration. Why are there Moonfire and Sunfire buffs when you grant an objective damage increase in Cat Form and the suggestion is for Resto druids to DPS in Cat Form when not needing to heal? Why are there buffs to Cat Form healing done when you simply cannot heal in Cat Form outside of Predatory Swiftness procs AS FERAL on ONE ABILITY? Did the folks in Feral and Resto design even talk to each other before they made this tree?
Overall, we get some tuning adjustments to abilities, and another proc we have to watch over with priority helper addons/WeakAura scripts to figure out a semblance of a rotation and timing for our abilities. My biggest concern is that the main Druid Class Tree will remain largely unchanged from current iteration and will continue to limit the flexibility and fun to be had in playing Feral Druid.
11 Likes
If more people play ret after the rework than before it is objectivly a success ^^
even if you have other preferences than the masses 
If this is a bleed focused hero talent tree, why not have the first talent turn moonfire into a bleed, so it scales with mastery. Give it a new name that describes its bleeding better.
Make one of the later talents spread the new bleeding version of moonfire to other targets. Lets say if your Thrash hits a target affected by the new moonfire it also spread it to nearby targets.
4 Likes