I’ve sat on my thoughts about wildstalker and everything I said in my prior wildstalker post still remains truw to this day. its boring and ineffective, and entirely rng. if the vines proc rate follows other similar effects then its likely wildstalker wont even be the “aoe” pick for feral and just wont be a pick at all, especially compared to druid of the claw for feral for several reasons.
as it stands, if wildstalker does nothing to make you tankier you default to druid of the claw because it does make you tankier.
i will admit that this is a larger game issue overall, defensive creep has occured rapidly over dragonflight and is clearly visible with each class rework, and it getting exceedingly worse with the hero trees. this means the game has to do more damage to feel relevant and forces every soec that isnt as tanky out of high end content rapidly. so if one of your hero trees allows you to live better it is hard locked in.
i am also concerned that druid of the claw is basically a bite tre and bite damage always wins over dots because blizzard doesn’t want to allow dots to do real damage anymore.
Now Feral has two distinct trees revealed I guess I am maybe slightly more open to this idea of Bloodseeker Vines as an RNG proc DoT, but it would be good to at least get some kind of tangible feedback on spawns and/or interaction with kit so you either know when one spawns or you can react to one spawning, especially single-target, as Massive Attack being a buff you consume is something you will notice and pay some attention to (+lots of kit interaction) whereas Vines lacks in all these areas. Basically things along the lines of each vine spawn consuming a tiny portion of Rip on its target (passive interaction with Rip speeding it up slightly and can notice the Vine spawn + multi-vine spawns on ST), x energy gained or clearcasting when one spawns (spec doesn’t need this at all however), speeding up all/certain other bleeds you have on target (maybe makes 20% longer Rake passable?) etc, things like this (just throwing whatever out there) would all be noticeable - especially when you chain proc either natty or through Twin Sprouts etc. Otherwise builder interaction when targeting Vine spawns e.g. some kind of empowerment, also potentially Vigorous Creepers (capstone) 10% amp snapshotting DOTs rather than just dynamic (this probably too gameplay influencing?) Even just an LI snapshot or something with Vines would be neat given it only has one currently, e.g. Hunt Beneath the Open Skies x% Moonfire when cast on Vines target for full duration. Shredding a Vine giving some enhanced Dire Fixation debuff or enhanced Vine debuff etc. Anyway trying to keep this all quite vague but basically passive RNG proc is more tolerable if there’s kit interaction.
Also somewhat related to above there is possibly a missed opportunity with multiple stacks on one target having some kind of benefit, currently I imagine based off the preview there’s actually no feeling to proccing multiple Vines on single-target and very little benefit as capstone doesn’t seem to stack (would notice the timer refresh I guess, but probably won’t notice when Twin Sprouts spawns 2x at once), unless the visual effect somehow reflects multiple spawns at once on target, but again if there’s no interaction who cares. Root Network node is OK-ish here in this regard but also meh with 2% dmg per stack, there’s no way you actually track this buff as it won’t be significant enough to change gameplay, so you won’t really know your stacks and flat % damage again isn’t perceptible in any way (node is fine though doesn’t need changing, ideally something core to Vines is what you notice/interact with).
I can probably imagine how getting multiple procs will be more noticeable in AOE, with various potential visual effects spread on targets plus debuffs on nameplates. At the very least, maybe the capstone amp should be higher to better incentivize targeting Vines, as 10% is a bit insignificant. Also incentivizes dumping energy during the window, bit like our current tier set. I’d say stronger capstone is like the bare minimum of making this passable in terms of interacting with kit if nothing else changes.
Either way maybe pointless posting this now but looking forward to whenever the testing goes public if anything will be changed. Thanks
I cannot begin to describe the sound I made when I saw that Dream of Cenarius, has returned and I am really excited to see it reimplemented. I have missed this ability! I am happy Blizzard listened, and a huge thank you to the devs!
The addition of Call of the Elder Druid and it’s interaction with restoration makes me now excited and hyped up for Wildstalker! The other talent additions look like good additions for Druid, and I’m looking forward to these changes.
I can only second all the people who voiced their concern about this being “not enough”.
The tree is way to passive. If the Bloodseeker upon expiration exploded with 3 seconds of rake and rip damage, it would at least have a management component of “having the target bleeded up”. (just making stuff up bare with me)
Even the Capstone is a flat 10% dmg increase passive.
Strategic Infusion for example should be something like Rake deals damage as if you were stealthed, instead of 8% crit. For a wildstalker you know. It even has a “stealthy” symbol.
Overall this is very uninspired from a flavour side, and way to passive from a gameplay perspective.
Please cook some more.
My question is this: is there any hope for these hero talents to get changed at this stage? They are just so boring and in many many ways are just so passive. I was hoping hero talents would add flavor to the class both in appearance and in gameplay and it feels like both of the resto trees fail to do either of those.
I would say that seeing as we just started alpha where hero talent testing is a major focus point for Blizzard, this is arguably the most likely stage for hero talents to be changed.
I couldn’t begin to tell you whether or not they will be changed or to what degree… an annoying quirk about Blizzard’s communication is that they tend to be very tight-lipped about what design changes they’re considering until after they’ve already happened. So we have no idea how happy or unhappy Blizzard currently is with the Druid hero talents. But what I can say is that right now is the very best time to give well-reasoned feedback about them.
Thank you, I hope they do make it more exciting then. I’m not the perfect person to say “wildstalker should do xyz” but I do hope they make it something I can be happy about.
I do like the idea, as resto, of having a choice that fancies cat form at least, even though I personally don’t enjoy energy as a resource. If only I could get a resto/bear combo, but alas.
Honestly that’s not even a bad thing. I took a few courses in game design (more for board games than video games but a lot of ideas still apply) and one of the things that you learn about the feedback process from the developer side is that players are very good at finding problems and very bad about finding solutions. So just identifying what points about Wildstalker you don’t like and articulating those pain points is very good feedback even if you don’t suggest any solutions to them.
We have additional changes to Wildstalker that make it less passive and is looking more exciting to play. I’m happy with the attempt to make rejuvenation a meaningful spell in the rotation.
This helps ease my concern about overhealing.
I love this change from just a node that simply increased the duration of Wild Growth and Rake, and adds some utility/support for Feral Druid as well.
Great changes! I like the power being put back into Rejuvenation and being able to have an element of control in a passive tree. I feel like I can now properly plan around being able to Swiftmend to grow a bloom and then put rejuvenation on them for some extra group healing.
20% still seems a bit weak compared to the power and control that Implant provides, but I’m also not much of a numbers person. 20% could be huge. But, this is a good change for those who want a more passive build.
I think Wildstalker is beginning to get a better identity and playstyle fantasy that helps it strike out from Keeper of the Grove. From a restoration perspective, all the changes seem like strong changes which addresses the player’s concerns.
My only real gripe still is that Hunt Beneath the Open Skies should have a Lunar/Solar inspiration built into it as well since Fluid Form is so far down in the tree, but it will be required for Resto, and a better interaction with Feral since it seems largely a node meant for Resto.
This is backwards from the rdruid raid playstyle (which, sidenote, also needs some major help)
The symbiotic growths proc from regrowth and then proc aoe from being hit with rejuv. But rdruid has to ramp out rejuv THEN spam regrowth. So we will ramp ramp ramp and not proc anything. Then we will spam regrowths that put out blooms and then we will…not trigger them because casting rejuv during an abundance window is bad.
And even though it’s worst for raid, even in M+ you’d generally want to put rejuvs up before regrowth, so the direct healing benefits from the extra mastery stack.
The aoe proc should trigger off regrowth, not rejuv.
So I’m sure that every Feral who wants to play Druid of the Claw is happy that Blizzard seems willing to work on buffing talents in that tree, but Wildstalker needs something.
It is good that there is a distinction between a direct damage tree focused on Biting, and a tree focused on Bleeding, and hopefully they will give similar damage increases, but, the other parts of the 2 trees are a problem.
I’ve been plenty critical of Druid of the Claw, as it relates to Bears, as I don’t think shifting into Cat Form while tanking is going to be the amazing return to form people think it is, BUT… the ability for cats to jump into bear form as a defensive and be able to get damage out of it while not feeling crummy for going bear is something I think is good. Shifting to deal with mechanics DOES feel very druid-esqe.
However, looking at Druid of the Claw, it is getting a 4% DR that can be kept up for up to 12sec on all targets hit (admittedly dependant on procs) and the ability to shift into bear as a defensive that should work pretty well.
Wildstalker gets none of that. All of its defesive increase is getting a bit more self healing. That could be good on paper, but it looks like all healing is getting heavily nerfed going into TWW.
Hopefully Wildstalker gets looked at for what defensives it provides, because I doubt they will just make it the obvious choice for max damage, and if Druid of the Claw is just as good for damage AND has defensive power built in, it becomes the obvious choice.
What about changing Harmonious Constitution to be something like, “For each Symbiotic Bloom generated you gain 1% stacking damage reduction for 10 seconds. Generating a Symbiotic Bloom doesn’t refresh the duration.” This way it can actually be useful and somewhat skill based, it’ll work for both resto and feral, and most importantly avoid capping at 1 stack for single target encounters w/out adds.
Something Blizzard said recently has me a little concerned. It was something to the effect of “shapeshifting is part of the fantasy” of playing a druid.
While that is true thematically, it really does not work in a practical sense. When I’m playing Feral, I don’t WANT to shapeshift out of my chosen form unless the benefit of doing so greatly outweighs the negatives… it’s also not “fun”.
Look at what Blizzard tried to do in Torghast. Many of the druid powers involved gaining buffs by shifting, and they were not fun to play around. If I wanted to play Feral but had to constantly go into Bear form just to survive large pulls, why not just swap to tank spec in the first place (which is often what I had to do anyway).
I get what you are trying to do, Blizzard, but until shapeshifting is completely off the GCD BOTH WAYS, it is going to continue to be a mechanical gameplay misstep.
Same thing with totems for shamans. Each one has a gcd. Very obnoxious and is one of the reasons few play it in pvp, especially enhancement. The sad thing is it doesn’t look like the gcd will be removed this expansion.
I was just farting around on a target dummy in town with my feral druid. I pretended I was being endlessly snared like it was real pvp. Try switching from cat form to bear form non stop while also pressing shred or rake after the shapeshift and tell me how fluid that feels.
It’s probably the worse melee experience in the game. Heck, it’s probably the worst melee experience I had in any of the popular MMORPGs.
I have no clue wtf people at Blizzard are thinking when it comes to the global cooldown and shapeshifting for feral. Maybe they should do the target dummy test like me for about 5 minutes to see how it feels. Instead, they want to blindly force shapeshifting into our gameplay because of some fantasy lore?
Why is it when I’m in travel form (or caster form) and hit my shred key, I’m not turned into cat form with a shred follow up? Why do I have to manually change to cat form and then manually hit shred?
Sure, it sounds trivial when discussing this in a forum, but in a fast paced pvp situation, it makes feral feel awkward. I should be able to hit my shred key and auto transform into cat form and be able to use shred. I know you can code it because I automatically go from cat form to caster form when using my regrowth key. I do not need to manually switch to caster from and then hit regrowth.