New talent trees

Classes Druid
221

Feral TankDPS in cataclysm skipped out on stuff like perseverance (2% magic damage reduction per point), nurturing instinct (agi->healing SP and healing received in cat form), and having a functional interrupt. You had enough for everything relevant to DPSing except a few leftover points.

Assuming you have to bring the attack speed slow and someone else isn’t covering that (2 talent points), you were missing (Yes, I looked up talent trees to check this stuff)

  • 25% crit chance on ravage above 80% health (1 talent point)
  • 10% damage on FB (2 talent points), and slower stacking on the armor debuff from FF
  • 20 temporary energy during TF/Berserk (2 talent points, I forget if even DPS took this)
  • You might have dropped a feral glyph (3s off TF cd) for 10% mangle damage if you expected to tank a lot.

If the other tank covers the attack speed slow, you’re missing 5% FB damage and 20 temporary energy during TF/Berserk. You absolutely had BitW and stampede in dragon soul, it would be ridiculous not to have taken those with the tier bonuses. The biggest difference was that tanks were actually much squishier kitties, but they were remarkably close to a true DPS spec in every other way.

223

Typically as offtank you were alone doing a side task without the aid of the main tanks.
Add spawns mostly, 9 bloods on spine, zonozz claw, anshal… ect.

IW was generally a must.

Yes. it worked like rallying cry, raising your max energy by 20 and your current energy to match. good stuff.

Not on heroic they didnt. Not for progression or a specific difficult fights. Near the end though or for regular raids…, yes. Absolutely. In the final weeks I even forwent picking thick hide just to troll the healers and hope the raid killed my add before things got ugly :laughing:

" tical, how did you die?"
“you took a critical hit?!”

LMAO

Yes, if you skip certain talents you can essentially grab what you need. Its been a minute since iv looked at that tree, so im foggy on the details.

I do have fond memories of sitting in raid and hearing… “tical, youre off tank this fight” and being like, "/sigh fine. give me a sec… and hearthing off to respec. You opt out of things like BitW for h-spine because its useless on tendons, set bonus be damned. Thats the only thing you’re hitting. You dont skip perseverance or nurturing instinct for h-zonozz because my god that fight hurt!

I appreciate the trip down memory lane. but… so far all of you have h-dw kills dating summer of 2012 or later. 4 months into the stacking nerf.

We’re Not talking about the same fights.

At that point you didn’t even need an off tank. Any plate class like ret or dk could effectively fill the same role.

During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the Power of the Aspects spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty.

The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects. For those of you who raided in Firelands and/or Icecrown you’re no doubt aware that as time goes on we want to keep people progressing by adjusting the difficulty. For any number of reasons a group may be having difficulty on a specific encounter each week, and our intent in adjusting the content is to ensure the ability to keep progressing, enjoying the content, and gearing up. With Icecrown we progressively buffed the players, and while this slow progression (and ability to opt-out of the buff) were both beneficial, it led to an expectation of your characters power, and once you left the raid you could certainly feel less effective. For Firelands we attempted to fix that by nerfing the content instead of buffing players, but we nerfed the content difficulty all at one time, which was counterproductive for players who really didn’t need as severe a change as we made. With Dragon Soul we’re attempting to do the best of both by having a progressive nerf to the content, keeping player power constant while providing small increases in assistance over a long period of time, as well as allowing players to opt-out of the assistance by speaking to Lord Afrasastrasz. We hope you continue to enjoy Dragon Soul, and that these changes encourage you to attempt a higher difficulty, or just keep pushing to down that next boss.

224

We need something new added to the game. Playing with the same abilities for years on end just gets old. Why not add an additional row with new stuff? Even if it’s just a buff that will shake up rotations?

I was excited seeing the original post of the talent tree, but after going through the points and allocating them, I noticed that we will basically have the same exact kit we have now except maybe +1 or +2 leggo abilities with Innervate (freakin finally!)

Blizzard, are we absolutely certain this design of a talent tree is the way to go? There’s too many active abilities in the talent tree and it can be overwhelming to decide what to go with. How is a new player supposed to navigate this tree? The beauty of the original talent tree was that the majority of the talent tree contained buffs and passives to your baseline kit, and your baseline kit grew and became stronger as you leveled; additionally, the user could spec into either Balance, Tanky, or Resto points if they wanted to. A new player could make a choice of simply picking +10% to bleeds or more energy regen. Now we have to choose between Convoke, Blood Talons, Adaptive Swarm, Buffing Berserk, Cat Eye Curio, Increased bleed damage (but only to one target), Feral Frenzy, and etc… That’s a lot to take in.

Wouldn’t it be easier to balance if a lot of the abilities were just baseline and replaced with buffing our bleeds, bites, and energy regen with the bottom of the tree having us select actives?

In my opinion the following should be baseline and replaced with either buffs to energy regen, max energy, dots, or core abilities (more shred, rake, rip, thrash, or moonfire :slight_smile: damage)

  1. Savage Roar - This used to be baseline… why not make it baseline again? (replace with reduced stun/fear duration)
  2. Primal Wrath - How can anyone do AoE without this ability as Feral? Little to no damage comes from swipe and thrash. (replace with increase damage of Thrash and Swipe by X%)
  3. Make Lunar Inspiration baseline. This ability is awesome and never gets used because our mastery does not buff it.

Additional Suggestions:

  1. Where the heck is Leader of the Pack / raid and/or party crit? It’s missing and I can’t seem to find it :frowning:
  2. Swap Berserk: Jungle Stalker with Draught of Deep Focus and make Draught work on more than one target.
  3. Update Adaptive Swarm with something similar that doesnt jump to friendly targets and heal them. I know that covenant abilities were the same for every spec, so there needed to be a healing component, but since it is now officially in the Feral tree and not a “Druid” talent, there’s no reason to have it jump to an ally to heal them.
  4. Remove Brutal Slash or remove the charge component of it. Having both Swipe and Brutal Slash at the same time seems wonky.
  5. All of the Berserk choices in the tree need to be closer together. If I want to buff Berserk, and select all of the points for it, it’s kinda crazy that points are on the opposite sides of the talent tree.
  6. Replace Improved Incarnation and Convoke. It really seems like a filler IMO. Maybe give the 1 minute CD of convoke like the covenant leggo here?
  7. Cat-Eye Curio - Swap with Berserk: Relentlessness. This would pair Moment of Clarity with Cat-Eye Curio. Honestly, MoC + Cat-Eye is fun, why not let people pick it earlier?

Finally, I feel like things web out too much. It just looks complicated graphically. I feel like I have to break out my Calculus book looking at it. Instead of having people spec diagonally everywhere in the tree, maybe have more vertical choices with the occasional diagonal line? (For example, how the Death Knight talent tree looks).

1 Like
225

Look again :slight_smile:

You’ll find it.

226

Somewhat disagree with your take on balance druid. At first glance, the balance tree seems pretty good. I personally have a few small gripes with the pathing, as well as the classic “fix starfall” complaint, but overall this seems pretty strong.

There are talents that interact with and/or buff our DoTs; however, none of these really alter the builder/spender, maximize eclipse uptime gameplay loop. These buffs really interact with passive dmg and increase possible AP generation. For example, the CA buff, at worst, saves us a couple of GCDs, but at it’s best, will mutli-DoT a large pack giving us free damage, a bunch of streaking stars, and a decent high chance for a moon proc. This doesn’t really change our rotation - we still press our 3 min CDs during big pulls or during boss fights - but it does give a significant buff to what was a fairly lackluster 3 min CD.

We won’t truly know where this stuff all lands until they assign dmg and scaling values, but at first glance, it seems kinda strong. Here’s to hoping that druid is in a good place in 10.0.

227

Can they decouple Syzygy from Primordial Arcanic Pulsar? I has the potential to be a really cool ability, but I don’t know that it’ll ever see play because it competes (and likely loses to) Primordial Arcanic Pulsar.

Shame to create a cool new passive that might never see play.

228

Thanks Kaivax, Here is some general thoughts I’ve had.

I’m very happy to have trees back, with that said here is my thoughts for Balance druid.

Wrath currently just feels so bad to press in aoe and with enough adds you don’t even press it which makes our solar eclipse pointless in those situations. We once had wrath empowerments that would cause wrath to splash which could be an option, or something that gives solar eclipse something in aoe that will outpace the option of just choosing to press starfire and ignoring the solar eclipse all together. Alternatively let it splash but instead of wrath doing its damage to other targets it forces an empowered tick of sunfire to flare up on nearby targets. I’m not sure the best route forward but something that allows solar eclipse to not just be a disappointment on AOE would be very nice.

I also wouldn’t hate the idea of implementing some WotLK flavor into our stuff. So right now where Lunar is the AOE if they made it so that when starfire hits 2 or fewer targets its crit chance is increased it would feel better in the single target aspect of things. This leaves the AoE aspect alone and lets Lunar have its place of not just being a burden in single target fights.

I think both of these things are sort of acknowledged by in the Blessing of Elune/An’she node in the tree but that choice just lets us slightly mitigate the problems of the ST/AOE focused eclipses instead of solving it.

I understand not wanting the lines between the eclipses to be blurred but because our eclipses are in a forced rotation and apart from choosing which eclipse we start in we have no agency in the flow, both need to be good in whichever situation.

Something that might fix this, possibly adding a stance bar style chose and just lets us pick which spells we want to empower and we use those? I think it could make for some interesting play, the boss spawned adds, we jump into lunar to cleave them down, or just one big add we hop back to solar to focus fire the one mob. Gives us total agency on which spells are empowered and when so we have that choice.

Another thing is the cooldown on stellar drift should go or possibly make stellar drift a cool down that greatly improves starfall for the next cast or something would be preferred. Also starfall being stackable or hasted has been asked for since shadowlands beta, do you think this will be something the team can look at?

Other than these the tree looks very good. I’m very excited to jump in there and see how it feels.

229

I kinda wish the current feral 4 piece was built into berserk for next xpac

6 Likes
230

I recommend switching soothe and wildcharge in the class section of the tree. Stampede improvments, the stat increase and wildcharge are pretty much always useful since more mobility can only be better for you and the group but soothe is extremely situational. Unless every raid boss and dungeon will have an enrage mechanic there will be times it’s just a dead talent blocking 3 good ones.

Switching soothe and wildcharge would fix this, Soothe could still be grabbed easily by any spec since it’d be a new starting point for the center tree but could also be skipped by people coming from the resto or guardian sides of the tree which would then go straight into wild charge. No dead soothe blocking the tree and the row mostly stays the same emphasizing the hybrid shapeshifting aspect of druids.

2 Likes
231

Why is sickle not in the tree?

I guess you could get the same effect by significantly buffing frenzyband thought. That would be fine.

Otherwise, we are back to the world where our big CD is very lackluster in keys.

2 Likes
232

Convoke and adaptive are unimaginative and uninspired spells that are over powered and people just like them for being over powered.

I’d rather see the spells vaulted and new more fitting and inspired spells with a decent amount of usefulness with them.

1 Like
233

Sickle is in the tree on the right side?

234

Thats Frenzied assault. Frenzyband leggo.

235

Currently no way to spec for the synergy of Dark Titan’s Lesson and Photosynthesis, seems like a mistake making a choice between one or the other, the talents should had just been spread further apart in the tree. Making it more difficult to spec for synergy of the talents.

No Resto version of Force of Nature, sad.

Adaptive Swarm being a DK-like ability isn’t really true to the Druid motif or class fantasy. Should had just brought back Insect Swarm with nature damage, insects pollinate flora or are eaten by carnivorous plants. Would had played more into the class fantasy to have Insect Swarm back functioning like a replacement for Adaptive Swarm.

Tree of Life is ugly, give us a prettier looking wandering ancient option please.
Tree form needs more polys in an update and a green leaf color option.

1 Like
236

I agree. I think one thing they can do is revert Nourish back to its Original Form, where it refreshes Lifebloom on the target.

It would make either choice viable, play slightly differently, and also make Nourish a bit more playable compared to other talents it competes with. It needs more than a direct heal based off of mastery, and the original perk of the spell was way more interesting. I think they need to look at how druids are actually playing the class from patch-to-patch. :100:

237

I like the new trees.
They need some work, of course, but they are pretty good.

My constructive criticism would be that the choice nodes are a bit… bad. Choosing a path down the talent tree is the choice. Putting in a mini-choice (like forcing you to choose between predator and Sabretooth) seems to be just redundant.

Why not, if you want them to be meaningful, set them as talents with prerequisites so you can take both if you make a sacrifice elsewhere.

Also I don’t think you should be able to pick up all the capstone talents, which is the case on some of the trees but not others.

238

New Moon/Fury of Elune shouldn’t be a capstone . Why is Goldrin a 2pt talent? Why are Stellar Inspiration and Umbral Intensity 3pt talents?

To elaborate, at minimum, either New Moon/ Fury of Elune should be a “base spell.” Since a lot of “base spells” are being picked up either forced early or easily further up the tree, these 2 spells should be placed there. Since New Moon was introduced in Legion, should have stayed a base spell over being a talent.

As for the other stuff, there feels like way too many multi-point talents that seem to have too many points. I get trying to limit what people can get at the end of the tree, but, feels like every other talent has at least 2, with the 2 that I mentioned egregiously having 3 vs their other paths.

239

*Feral tree IMO
Currently, the strengthening elements of AoE and ST are arranged in ST and AoE line.
It is terrible that the survival ability is also torn to the left and right.
Berserk is much weaker than the current situation by losing the Sickle even if all the enhancements are taken.

It can be said that it is the worst talent tree that only looks flashy and has fewer choices and worsens the problems that Ferals have.
I hope the developers to remake everything.

5 Likes
240

I would rather New Moon be a powerful capstone choise. Choise between Convoke and New Moon. Convoke is a fire and forget option that ‘can’ do good dmg, while New Moon would be more skillbased and involved in the rotation.

Personally I would also like Incarn gonne…bored of an ability that makes u do good dmg for 30 sec than tank dmg for 2min30sec.

2 Likes
241

It needs to be a worthwhile build-up.

I mention this as an alternative talent choice in my Dragonflight talent tree post, but what if it does something to this effect:

“Full Moon grants Celestial Alignment for 4 sec.”

Exact duration pending, of course, but this way you’re guaranteed a massive Full Moon regardless of where you are in your rotation, you get several additional seconds worth of your major cooldown, AND you have another opportunity to reset your eclipse cycle (assuming it remains unchanged).

I agree that it can suffice as a capstone talent choice. It just needs to be worth it.

3 Likes