There seems to be a lot of druids who don’t realize that their energy has always regenerated when they’re outside of cat form. You just don’t benefit from it because your energy amount is reset when you go back into cat form. There are plenty of add-ons that can show you your energy and mana regardless of what form you’re in, and that’s because you can get that info from the client whenever you want, even without add-ons.
The game UI might hide the energy bar, but if you use the command
/dump UnitPower(“player”, Enum.PowerType.Energy)
after shifting in and out of catform, you can watch your leftover energy regenerate back to 100 at the same rate of 20 energy every 2 seconds. This once again raises the question: Why is shapeshifting resetting energy tick timers? They didn’t in 2.1 and energy regeneration rates are clearly still unchanging in 2.5.1, so why did they suddenly start doing so with regeneration-based resets in 2.2? This was brought up to EU Community Manager Tharfor during TBC who assumed it was “overlooked” and then it was never mentioned again until energy was reworked again in 3.0.1, getting rid of ticks entirely.
My only guess is that there is some left over scrap of code from 2007 that is accidentally treating shifting as a change in regeneration rate, or perhaps changing it for only a millisecond and then changing it back, which is causing the reset.
I assume blizzard noticed the resets, saw they existed in the reference client, and decided to slap the “not a bug” label on it.
I think the same can be assumed for the fact that the partial energy ticks you get when shifting into cat form are given WHILE you’re in caster form, and then removed when catform sets your energy to 0. For a time, these ticks were given as energy AFTER you shapeshifted (which more closely represents the 2.2 patch notes), but it seems this was deemed “not blizzlike” and changed near the end of the pre-patch beta.
My point is this:
Based on documentation we have and the data we can get from the client, it seems that shifting resetting ticks and trolls blood potions resetting ticks both fall under the idea of “Accurate to 2.4.3, but not accurate to the patch notes or intentions” and I think it would make sense to have them both removed. Unless Blizzard want’s to also label Trolls Blood resets as “not a bug” simply because it’s accurate to 2.4.3.