Let me explain my case.
Take a macro where 1 button on your keyboard does: moonfire, rake, mangle (3x actions) depending on what form you are in. Then you would need another key bind to switch your form.
Now with this talent we can switch into a form by pressing shred for example, but you can no longer have mangle on the same button which in return, makes you have another key bind.
So, it’s literally a lateral movement but… it now makes it worse. How does it make it worse?
Well, if your keybinds are 1, 2, 3, 4, you’re going to have to macro 1 let’s say moonfire, 2 shred, 3, mangle it’s not as “fluid” as if 1 is rake and moonfire both starting abilities depending on what form you are in.
Also, another way it makes it worse is let’s say I’m in no form and want to go cat form on a big AOE pull in mythic plus. I hit shred to go into cat form, now I’ve burnt 40 energy getting into form and if i dont take the talent and keep it the old way, then I have to use another global but get to keep 40 energy.
To me its a lateral movment and a complete waste. If anything it makes it worse. But I could see it useful to people that dont know macros.
5 Likes
I was excited for it as resto, until I realized they took Moonkin Form out of the Druid Talent tree… it wouldn’t have really messed with my bars.
8 Likes
yeah, i really think all forms should be available but empowered under specific specs
It should just be baseline. Fluid form is kinda required for druid of the claw builds it should exist but it should just be baseline, it can be improved though.
3 Likes
The benefit of fluid form is the GCD you’re saving shifting into the next form. There’s no value from the impact on the keybind.
Thankfully, because it’s a talent, if you aren’t going to use it, you can simply select something else.
1 Like
Why would anyone other than a kittyweave resto druid doing m+ consider taking this? Or maybe pvp?
Boomkins/Feral are never not in moonkin/cat form, unless you have to go bear for a defensive. Even if that was the case, you would be wasting the global you save on this by having to cast mangle.
Bears are never not bears, unless they go into caster form accidentally, because they hit regrowth without a proc.
Idk, wowhead is suggesting to take this talent as resto for m+ so maybe that global is a big deal.
1 Like
one of the druid of the claw talents lets you keep bear armor and health for while after switching to cat form
They need to just remove GCD from shapeshifting!!
8 Likes
It’s very lovely for catweaving as Resto, but seems to be marginal at best for anything else.
Ferals use Fluid Form every time they shift out of cat to use their utility in order to get back to cat quicker. For instance casting Rebirth or Incapacitating Roar. Balance does something similar every time they use Dash. If Ferals go Druid of the Claw, bear form becomes a major defensive spell for them and will see use significantly more frequently.
I’m also not sure why you think the global you save is “wasted” on Mangle? Using a GCD on Mangle is obviously better than using it on nothing but shifting and the extra rage you generate from that Mangle can be used to immediately fire off a Frenzied Regen or an Ironfur (which remember persists back into cat form for Druid of the Claw Ferals).
If Ferals go Wildstalker, they might be using Wild Growth to weave in while pooling energy in order to trigger more blooms on their allies. (The Feral changes to make them a slower spec mean more time pooling energy). Again, Fluid Form helps them return to cat quicker.
Druid of the Claw bears retain 80% of their tankiness while in cat form and could viably use cat form as a damage bonus every so often. Especially if they’re currently the off tank in a raid scenario.
I was excited for it until I tried it, it really messes with my current key binds. I wish they just took away GCD for form shifting.
9 Likes
Yeah it definitely messed with my keybinds a bit. I was able to mostly stick to my current paradigm since bear form and caster form didn’t have many buttons. So I was able to add to those easily. I swapped my bear form button with mangle but then I had to find a new button for regular bear form.
Might take some muscle memory relearning but we’ll see. I’ll probably end up messing with it again before not too long.
Getting a free mangle is better than not, but that’s not really the main benefit for DPS druids. You’re right that nobody would feel good taking Fluid Form for that.
It’s the global saved going back into their primary form. That first global going back into cat form goes from doing literally nothing to generating free damage, one or two combo points, and possibly even one or two rake applications (depending on your current rake snapshot).
2 Likes
Fluid Form single-handedly fixes one of my biggest pet peeves of Feral compared to other Druid specs, in that Feral was always punished more than other specs for using their brez. Which is a bad thing to punish people for. I’m happy to take Fluid Form just for that without even mentioning the other benefits.
1 Like
Yea, trust me… saving that global cooldown in pvp is massive. So many times I switched from bear form to cat form to break a snare and had to wait for another global cooldown before I could attack with shred or rake. More often than not, I’d never get an attack off because I was instantly snared again and needed to shapeshift again to break it.
And I have a macro that cancels travel form, switches me to cat form and then shreds. Now when I use that macro, it will save me a gcd when using shred.
That’s true - But my problem with it, is it’s something we used to have for a looong time (power shifting) till they removed it. Now they are using a talent spot to give us a lesser version of it. For a long time player of druid this just feels really bad - and they do it a lot (take away stuff and give it back later as a talent but a lesser version of what we had) so it makes it even more annoying.
But that’s my rant of it.
I find OP’s complaint fascinating, because while I completely agree that the scenario they describe is an awful match for Fluid Form, I was surprised to read that people set up their Druid bars this way!
By default ever since vanilla, Swapping into these various forms completely switches your bar to a fresh bar full of buttons, so there’s no need to do any of this? in a world where your entire bar switches when you switch forms, Fluid form actually feels incredible and doesn’t bloat your bars at all!
anyway I do think it’s a bummer that for people that prefer this macro way are in this weird spot, but I’m curious why you would go out of your way to avoid the whole bar switching thing for this design instead?
There are macros that switch you into a different form and spam an attack ability with the same keybind. So I’m not sure what the big deal is. I can go from bear form directly to cat form and then use shred all in one keybind. The issue always was the global cooldowns between the cat form and shred.
My only issue with all this is if I’m in cat form, I have no room for mangle on my “cat form” toolbar. So I still need to manually switch to bear form first and then use mangle rather than just hit mangle and have it auto switch me into bear form. But once I’m in bear form, I have plenty of keybinds leftover for shred and rake. So it’s not a big deal going back into cat form for an attack.
But now that I think about it, I can just remove the bear form macro keybind from my cat form toolbar and put mangle there 
If you run out of space on any particular form’s bar you can write a macro that looks something like this:
#showtooltip
/use[form: 2] catFormAbility
/use[noform: 2] otherFormAbility
This will make a button that changes what it does depending on what form you’re in. (1 is bear, 2 is cat… and I don’t remember what Moonkin or Travel Form are since I don’t macro them very often).
You can put this macro on any of your bars, not just your form bars, and watch it change accordingly. Put as many lines as you want to make it behave differently in every form of you want.
Don’t quote me on the syntax for that macro though. I did it from memory off the top of my head so I’m not 100% sure it’s correct, but the end result should at least look similar.
Yea, sounds nice.
But if you are in cat form with the fluid form talent, all you need to do is put mangle where your bear form would have been. Previously, I had to have a combined cat / bear form macro keybind to click before clicking mangle when trying to break a snare and attack my enemy. Now I can just click mangle. And if I want to change back into cat form, I can just click shred or rake to break the next snare and attack my target.
I was able to do that before, but it was clunky because of the one extra global cooldown.
The only “form” macro I’ll need is the one I use for all forms. It is a single keybind. It switches to any form depending on what I’m doing. If I’m in a building it switches between cat and bear. If I’m in water it switches between bear and swim form. If I’m in combat outside it switches between cat and bear. If I’m trying to run away while in combat, it switches between bear and travel.
That is the only form keybind I’ll need. All my other keybinds can now be used for abilities I had little spare room for on my toolbar. This literally frees up two keybinds for me on each toolbar. I now have 2 free keybinds in cat form, 2 in bear form, and 2 in caster form.
I honestly don’t understand what the original poster is complaining about.