I’ll start by saying that I do think the theme fits pretty well for the Resto/Feral pairing. Nothing immediately better comes to mind, at least.
Mechanically though, I do think this tree misses the mark a bit. I’m not even against it being mostly passive, as enhancing our hots & dots does play into both specs pretty naturally. However, there’s no “moment” in this tree where I feel good for taking it. I end up thinking about Diabolist’s new demons which come in and spice up the warlock’s spells, or Herald of the Sun linking the Paladin to their sunspots during wings. Those are clear high points where you really feel the impact of choosing that tree, even if they might only come into play during a cooldown. Wildstalker is completely missing this, in my opinion, very important aspect. Like some other players in this thread have said, I would feel almost zero difference outside of raw numbers if I picked no hero tree at all.
If I could wave a magic wand and change any one thing about the tree, I would redo the capstone by changing the current flat percent increases into the tree’s “moment”. As an example, perhaps it could instead cause Thriving Growth healing and damage to store power in a seed, and when you press an appropriate cooldown (Tranquility/Berserk/Incarn?), the seed is unleashed and its rapid growth damages enemies and heals allies based on the amount stored. The goal is just to do something that gives the tree a chance to shine visually and differentiate itself from the base spec and other hero tree choice.
I’ve thought about it a bit. I think what would nail this tree is if there is some interactivity between the two different types of vines and some active or enhancing element, but nothing too complex. Perhaps if the druid uses a finisher at 5 combo points, it can cause the vines to make copies of the other? If I have 3 Symbiotic Vines rolling, then a 5 CB Bite/Rip creates 3 copies of bloodvines on the enemy. Vice versa, if the feral applies bloodseeker vines and uses a 5 CB Bite/Rip, they apply Symbiotic Vines to a party/raid member at the lowest HP.
For resto, my largest concern is overhealing. If my vines overheal, similar to how feral has a ‘jump’ in root network, either that vine heals the lowest HP ally instead, or it jumps to them.
I still feel like having Adaptive Swarm not present is a missed opportunity. Hunt Beneath the Open Sky should act like Lunar Inspiration for resto and let us cast those in cat form and generate combo points.
Strategic Infusion is not a good talent as it is. For resto, I’d suggest instead that crits on DoTs and HoTs have a chance to make Regrowth and Wild Growth instant and usable in cat form, stacking 2 times. For Feral, increase the chance of gaining predatory swiftness, and has a chance to reset the CD on Feral Frenzy. Allow Ferals to proc Implant off of Predatory Swiftness Regrowths, available x times per y time interval. This change alone would help tie the tree together nicely.
To me at least, the tree seems very uninspired. Especially when you put it next to things like the new Dev/Aug and Ret/Prot hero trees. Numerically the tree may wind up fine, but there is borderline zero interaction with our kit(speaking as feral), almost no way to control the buff, and it’s just thematically uninteresting.
I get that something regarding dots was the plan here, but this tree does not feel “hero” like at all. Additionally, having some hero trees be definitive (i.e. do X → get Y) , vs this being RPPM just feels really bad.
Dev hero tree: Featuring talents like:
Stone Deaf - You can now ignore customer feedback 80% more effectively.
and
P&L Attunement - Attune yourself to the voices of the shareholders, reducing Pinkslip hit rate by 50%.
So I like the theme of this tree with the Bloodseeker vines and symbiotic blooms, and the general heal over time/damage over time.
However, as many other players have said, this tree is BORING. Almost every single talent is passive damage/healing. Zero interaction with the feral or resto kit.
I think the only talent options I would recommend keeping in this whole thing are entangling vortex and resilient flourishing. One adds a useful and cool effect to vortex and the other is quality of life for the main proc of this tree.
Here are some ideas I cooked up that I personally think would make this tree fun to play. First of all, get rid of the symbiotic spores, just make blood seeker vines able to target foes and friends for simplicity sake.
Choice node:
Leeching vines - Bloodseeker vines on enemies grant 8% leech to allies targeting them.
Invigorating Vines - Bloodseeker vines on allies regenerate small amounts of resources over time.
Adaptive Swarm jumps from foe to foe as a priority, and your casts of Rip and Ferocious Bite against targets effected by Adaptive swarm have a 20% chance per combo point to extend the duration of your heal over time effects by 4 seconds.
Casting Swipe on an enemy effected by adaptive swarm causes the swarm to generate one stack and jump to a nearby unaffected target at half the normal duration.
Casting thrash on an enemy effected by Bloodseeker vines will cause the vines to duplicate onto a nearby enemy target. This effect can only occur every 10 seconds.
Resto: Gain the affects of Predatory swiftness. Feral: Predatory swiftness also affects Wild Growth.
Casting Wild Growth guarantees a Bloodseeker vine to spawn on a nearby target. Feral: on enemy targets. Resto: on friendly targets.
Casting adaptive swarm in cat form generates 3 combo points.
Choice node:
Dense Growth: Bloodseeker vines can now stack multiple times on the same target, but may only effect one target at a time.
Expansive Growth: If you proc a second Bloodseeker vine on the same target, it will automatically spread to a new target and refresh the duration of both vines.
Bloodseeker vines and adaptive swarm on friendly targets increases movement speed.
If your target is effected by your Rake, Rip, Thrash, and adaptive swarm, then combo point finishing abilities have a 20% chance per combo point to gaurantee a Bloodseeker vine will spawn on a nearby target.
Feral is pretty uninspired. It’s just “moar dots” and passive increases. Managing more DOTs isn’t going to make Feral feel any better. I really like the theme, the idea of actually having other parts of being a druid matter (roots, thorns, etc) - but the application of it is boring and feels like it’s going to make the rotation even worse. You actually have an opportunity with this particular tree to make Feral more like Aug - spread barkskin, apply speed boosts more frequently, etc.
These Hero talents seem like a huge missed opportunity. I see Druid of the Claw, but not Druid of the Fang, Talon or anything pertaining to Wild Gods.
This tree adds yet another dot. It should have leaned more into stealth, ambush and reentering stealth after X number of combo points for Feral.
The name Wildstalker invokes images of being hunted by a cougar or mountain lion whilst in the forest or mountains. It should reflect that.
I have NO clue what Resto and Feral have in common. I mean, how does a Treant stalk anything. It’s slow and creaks when it moves. It would be like getting stalked by your 90 year old grandfather who uses a walker that squeaks.
Build on the synergies that already exist amongst each specs talent trees. This hero tree seems to be adding an unnecessary level of complexity.
Feral: Rip or Primal Wrath applies seedling pods on your targets and lasts the duration of the Rip or Primal Wrath. Ferocious Bite or Maim on the target increases the potency/range by 10%. When Rip/Primal Wrath duration ends or is cast again, the seedling pods burst open leaving a pool on the ground covering 10 yards that heals friendly targets and dealing damage to enemies that are standing in it. If I got 3 Ferocious Bites on the target before the Rip expires, it increases the range to 13 yards and heals/damage 30% more. Primal Wrath is smaller creating multiple pools 5 yards across.
Resto: Targets affected by Ironbark or Thorns increases the damage done by the target by 5% for each heal over time active on them and extends the duration by 0.3 seconds per healing tick up to a maximum of 6 seconds. Casting Wrath on targets affected by your Thorns damage irritates their open sores increases damage done by your Wrath spell by 1%, accumulating with each consecutive cast.
this already seems more interesting than what we got and for feral would make a interesting play style. it would also create a fun mini game where you see how massive a pool you could make
I would love if the tree solved some of the more mundane and clunky form limitations, for example as Resto it would be nice to Dispel and especially Soothe in form once again.
It feels so bad Soothing a mob on these raging weeks only to have to press another gcd to go back into Catform to meld+stun it (same would apply to Maim if the class tree was decent and had the option to Maim once again). Even in general Soothe feels so crap to spend a GCD on to dispel a single mobs enrage in a pull, where that mob is also dying soon after anyway… losing form on top of this is particularly feels bad. Same with dispel in general, but particularly with the Afflicted affix constantly pulling you out of form it just doesn’t feel great.
We were once expert Soothers but it seems that’s Evoker now.
Also Rebirth as Feral is so incredibly clunky because even if you attempt to battle rez, you lose form, but a lot of the time someone with an instant-cast Brez gets them before you finish the cast and then you’ve just lost form + wasted time casting to achieve literally nothing. Then because you’re out of form like this you’re now energy capping, your Tiger’s Fury is falling off. It annoys me even thinking about this now and all the times I tried to brez on prog and just lose form for nothing. I’ll take a form loss if it’s instant cast at the very least, then my brez actually goes off.
Definitely would be in favour of baking in some of these things into a node.
This is interesting for sure. I absolutely think that there should be some sort of interaction with single-target finishers (Bite, Rip, Maim) and the Vines. I’m not sure if I love the implementation you suggest, but I like the train of thought. My original idea was that Biting (or Ripping/Maiming) a target affected by a Vine could create a single stack of Adaptive Swarm, and maybe Swiftmending a target affected by a Bloom does the same? I’d say Regrowth, but I haven’t played Resto in forever and from reading the rest of the thread, I’m gathering that Regrowth isn’t really used all that much by Resto. Who knows what tuning it would need, but I feel like this is the kind of active gameplay hook that is supposed to be in these trees.
I understand that these trees are supposed to be mostly passive to avoid button bloat, but I really think they should introduce some option for activity with their mechanics, and this would do so without adding more buttons.
I thought the same thing too with Adaptive Swarm being a missed opportunity. However, it would force people into a node that maybe won’t be the play for the next expansion. It’s possible they could remove it altogether and I’m not a fan of tier or otherwise forcing you into a talent node. I’m an oldy so I loved how tier worked back in the day when you had options on what you wanted to play as far as talent-wise and the tier would change depending on what you chose or buffed multiple options so you had some choice over what you wanted to use.
Unfortunately, they reverted tier back to buffing a single talent build rather than multiple pathways. It would require more balancing being that the tree is bigger so if they didn’t want to do it they could instead buff basic baseline abilities rather than forcing people into something they don’t like. I think the same idea should be held here. Don’t force a player into a talent node they aren’t comfortable with or that they dislike for personal reasons.
Right now, Adaptive swarm is standard but will it be standard in the next expansion? Who knows. It’s very possible that something else will be more effective.
Ya and besides, if Swarm presumably amplifies the dmg from Vines/Blooms, then there’s no missed opportunity at all, it already interacts with a lot of what the tree offers.
It’s cool to see so many people in the thread wanting Swarm interaction, but it’s quite literally already there in a fairly prominent way. If you add more you risk force locking the talents, which, at least for Feral, can start a chain reaction of locking some other talents. 1 point or 2 point Swarm keeps you engaged in their own ways without needing to add further mechanics that could potentially upset that.
Yes but in the reveal at Blizzcon they specifically stated that they didn’t want the Hero trees to impact your talent build choices so I think that’s why they kept it separate from leaning on specific talent choices. We unfortunately already get that with tier. They wanted to leave as much to player choice as humanly possible with Hero Talent Trees.
Although they didn’t really keep to that providing they have a resto build that is heavily on Grove Guardians with is a choice talent node so I guess I should take what they said with a grain of salt.
I think adding a node that makes thorns/blooms do something garunteed would feel better; keep them as a chance to spawn from bleeds and hots for the first node but rework later ones to do something tied to a button press once theyre out, something we’re already doing rotationally but could use some extra oomph.
Like instead of bursting growth being on expiration; it does the aoe every swiftmend and full combo rip/bite, more controlled instead of just hoping they spawn, and thus despawn, at a good time outside of optional implants garuntees.
More stuff to play with/manipulate the over time nature of both specs would work too. Tigers fury and wildgrowth trigger a tick speed increase on all targets affected by the growths, tranquility and berserk double the duration of all active growths, lifebloom blooms and final ticks of rip spread 1 growth to another target garunteed.
Really anything thats provides a garunteed response from an input instead of more rng spawning and flat % auras. Will swiftmend bursting blooms cause me to delay the whole soul of the forest wildgrowth aoe set, probably not; but it is extra healing when I decided i want it, not just because a bloom timed out in the intermission phase or walking to the next pack and thats what the tree is lacking to me.
The truth is that it looks disappointing, personally I think it is a wasted opportunity to:
Bring back Saberon’s form
Create a feral healer that focuses on healing with instants and bleeding enemies, with a melee or quasi-melee playstyle.
Introduce a blood sapling that feeds with your bleeding and that you can make bloom to generate an AoE of massive healing/damage.
It feels like they played it safe and failed to deliver anything interesting or even make sense with what is expected from a name like “Wildstalker”. Personally I think they should bring this back to the drawing board, even if it’s just to change the name
So, I agree with most of the posters here that the Wildstalker tree seems to be very passive, but I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing, at least from a Feral perspective. Feral has a lot going on already, so I don’t think it needs a lot more layers.
I do like this idea, though.
As a former White Mage main in FFXIV, the concept of “Blood for the Blood Lily!” is ingrained deeply in my skull.
This is by far the most boring of the four trees, but maybe that’s your intent? I could see why you’d want some hero talent trees to be low-impact and simple, and others to be more complex and spicy. It’s probably a smart approach since different players like different levels of complexity.
