I would like to suggest a new playstyle for druid that falls in line with the original idea for the class. You could tell by the old balance talents they wanted balance druid to be a balance of all the forms, not solely a caster with a chicken for a form.
I would like them to introduce runes that give abilities in 1 form and added bonus to other form abilities so you are truly shifting the whole fight between different forms. I would think this would have to be a dps/support role to facilitate their place in a raid. Remove the defensive bonus of bears (on the main rune) and instead focus on increasing the damage and synergy of dots and self buffs while switching through forms.
Bear and Cat wont need too many changes aside from giving bonuses to the other forms or even just to the human form.
Human form would need a big rework. Give it some melee strikes that use your weapon to apply dots. Maybe change some of the heals to short duration buffs for yourself and party members and then obviously add in benefits to switching into your forms.
I think this would be a really cool and dynamic “balance” playstyle that really digs into the uniqueness of SoD and stays true to original design which they have stated they wanted to do with stuff like shaman and rogue tank.
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wonder twins activate! form of a squirrel, form of a giraffe = a small animal that loves nuts and now doesnt need to climb with the giant long neck
I think you’re thinking of how Diablo 4 Druid works and I am not for it.
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I’m not, d4 Druid does the same thing as wow druid. You pick a tree and you go down it. Be it bear, lightning, earth… this would be a single role (dps) that would use all the forms.
D4 druid swaps back and forth between forms depending on what spell you cast. If you cast a Bear spell, you’ll be a Bear for X seconds. If you cast a Wolf spell, you’ll be a Wolf for X seconds. If you cast a Humanoid spell, you go into Humanoid form to cast it.
From how you described it, it would essentially be that, but in WoW.
Druids have some of the best changes from runes.
- Bear tanks now equal or better than warrior tanks
- Cats with windfury - making them a desired class to be grouped with dps warriors for high end raids
- Balance looking more viable as a spec (still needs some better runes but there’s 6 more slots to fill)
- Healing looks still behind priests, shaman and paladin but looks like a bigger tool kit is on the way - needs a resurrection spell for dungeon healing.
I’m not sure making caster form a big feature works for me at all… and never at the cost of nerfing bear form. I can envisage a combined balance / healing spec that features mana free wrath that procs no cast time healing touch as a caster form - who knows what future runes may bring.
And it was a nightmare. Jack of all trades, master of none. Everyone out performed them.
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One of the seasons I played during Shadowlands had a druid resto build that I used that really leaned into this. I healed in human form but was offering my group a lot of utility with my other forms.
My damage would be a mix of kitty for swipe/bleeds and caster for damage and I’d use bear for disorienting roar and sometimes for the retail equivalent of feral charge to root an enemy. It felt really cool to be spending a lot of time using all my forms, weaving in and out while keeping my group alive.
With that said, that kind of design just doesn’t really jive with the Vanilla style game. If nothing else, shifting is extremely mana prohibitive. I think it would take a lot of runes to enable that, reducing the mana cost and offering a lot of utility that does’t otherwise exist. This version of the game also plays a lot more slowly.
Anyway, my point here is, I think the Druid class fantasy could lean into shifting a bit more but ultimately, I’m not sure that’s something that could be accomplished in this version of the game while still keeping true to those Vanilla design concepts.
Again, this is not a jack of all trades. This is a dps bleed spec that uses all forms to apply dots and get bonuses for swapping through forms.
in OG Vanilla i was one of two ferals in my raiding guild. I went pure tank spec and gear, lots of hp armor stam and great for tanking.
my buddy went feral/NS hybrid and wore hybrid gear. he was intensely frustrated by the whole thing because he wasnt really able to tank OR heal
Read my reply above, this is not a hybrid spec. It would be a dot dps spec that applies dots with different forms and gains benefits while shifting. Possibly throwing out short duration buffs as well for minor support.
oh, that’s kinda silly but interesting. if you havent you should look into Project Ascension, the most successful of the pservers that blizz is emulating with Season of Discovery. their hybrid “druid” builds were really cool, like a cat build that pops out to throw empowered wraths, or a melee/caster moonkin hybrid
I mean interesting is the goal. I’ve checked out ascension but the group I play with sticks to blizz servers now and sod is a great compromise.
I always wanted to see what a pack/wolf form spec, the wolf form that would later become the worgen, would be like for druids. It could be more of a support dps spec that has more group buffing, and support based abilities over the fully dps focus of the cat form feral specc. This could be even a rune that switches out the cat feral form to a pack/wolf form, while making changes to the different cat abilities.
a rune that focuses on swapping forms for different buffs sounds fun