[News] Shadowlands Class Updates

Does this also mean it won’t interact with the Water Elemental attacks now too? Last I saw the Water Bolts eat the stacks of the debuff.

As a side note, any chance of getting commentary on the Soul Wrack mechanic that was removed from the preview for Affliction? It looked like Malefic Grasp from Legion, which was a pretty fulfilling mechanic for Warlocks.

Malefic Rapture is a nice ability to complement multi-dotting, and Soul Wrack looked like a much more exciting filler than Shadow Bolt or Drain Soul.

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Yes, i understood that. I was taking off on their general statement" In an expansion that is all about choice." That is a general statement, not a class statement. I was just demonstrating how their general statement was dead wrong.

Pathfinder doesn’t force you to play or do anything. Flying gives no real competitive edge and is a convenient luxury. You’re dont have to do pathfinder at all. Choices.

Darn, I must be playing them wrong then…as I find them fun. why do I keep failing , why?!..I keep thinking the point of a game is my enjoyment…sorry guys I forget playing WoW isn’t about one’s fun…its about living up to expectations of others…I’ll try to do better and play things “properlY” from now on…fun be damned! (fyi - no I’m not talking about the hunter this posted with either…I have 5 hunters, across several realms)…

Some of the changes seem useful, others not so much. Speaking as a Fury Warrior why would I need Shield Block and Shield Slam? I’ve never had a use for a shield and I don’t imagine using one in Shadowlands

I really was hoping druid would see actual love instead of this half hearted attempt at whatever you want to call this.

Fierce felines will see their Bloodtalons Talent reimagined, tapping into their primal power. When Feral Druids use Shred, Rake, and Ferocious Bite in quick succession, the damage of their next Rip will increase dramatically.

Feral druid- Changing the mastery will not improve this build, because your forcing them to do abilities faster on an already straved rotation. Its not helping anything as well when you don’t state if the Ferocious Bite “refresh” of rip will or will not get the bonus at which time you make timing a nightmare. Overall you need to leave the current mastery alone and work on doing other changes to fix the spec dps output.

Guardian Druids in the Shadowlands can once again embrace (or bear hug) their brutish side with Berserk , reducing the cooldowns of Mangle, Thrash, Growl, and Frenzied Regeneration substantially, while also halving the cost of Ironfur.

This is cool but we need more info than substantially. not to mention even if its for Guardian only they need to have Fear removal/immunity added. Make the tank version different from cat other than abilities it works on.

Renewal also returns as a Talent choice, instantly healing the Guardian Druid for a fair bit of their maximum health.

This is an okay change, it will give druid tanks a chance to have a kinda vault heal for large spikes in damage that can happen in succession. Not the best but not a terrible add.

Swiftmend will return to its historic functionality of consuming a heal-over-time effect on the target, but with a substantially reduced cooldown and cost

I’m confused on why your deciding this now. You take away basic heals to force druids to hots then you give us a large heal to only be changed back to the original form. I know it was a heal of a way to give someone a HUGE amount back without needing to make sure another heal was on them first. To balance this I would give back nourish or healing touch as a way to not have to just use HoTs to do any healing… druids need atleast 1 constant direct heal.

Nature’s Swiftness will again allow a Regrowth, Rebirth, or Entangling Roots to be cast instantly. Communing with the wild spirits in death’s realm has reawakened Restoration Druids’ inert knowledge to cast Nourish , a Talent option that heals an ally for a significant amount. Nourish receives triple the boon from Mastery: Harmony, which increases the healing for each active Restoration heal-over-time spell on the target.

Are you trying to say Flourish Talent, are you actually now giving us a talent, or are you talking about the PVP talent which has no real need to be listed here like a fix to something your changing for all modes.

Starfall will also return to its previous design, used from Wrath of the Lich King through Warlords of Draenor . Instead of needing to telegraph the affected area, Balance Druids again call down waves of stars, which strike the surrounding ground while they stand, run, or flap for its duration.

I feel this is better than before but if you changing the design does that mean your fixing the damage output that the spell has been suffering from??

Solar and Lunar Empowerments are being strengthened and updated into Eclipses. Reminiscent of past expansions like Wrath of the Lich King , Wrath and Starfire will grant each other alternating Lunar and Solar Eclipses for a longer duration, with special moments of Celestial Alignment allowing both to occur at once. Balance Druids who master the flow of these Eclipses will be able to ensure a period of sustained power to either Wrath or Starfire at key moments of a fight. Starsurge will extend the current Eclipse to continue focusing power into either Wrath or Starfire, while Starfall instead extends your current Moonfire and Sunfire effects, giving the main Arcane Power spenders distinct roles based on situation.

So as a person who has hated balance since wrath, this change is meh at best. It’s an old tested system which frankly has little draw backs and has a clear goal. Now as a topic of DPS its hard to say if this will effectively kill or level the spec out with the other casting classes. I personally feel it will do more damage than good after the last change they did to the spec.

All Druids will be able to use Ferocious Bite , Barkskin , Cyclone , Stampeding Roar , and Ironfur regardless of their active specialization. In addition, Heart of the Wild has returned as a Talent, providing an option for Druids who want to use off-role abilities during combat.

I don’t remember this talent much and thats saying the most. I don’t remember it because it clearly wasn’t either used or good. After relooking up this old thing it shows up as a 6 min CD which doesn’t give any bonus worth a 6 min CD. It is simply out classed because you failed to balance it the first time so bringing it back as is won’t do you a bit of good unless you put it in a tier with 2 other worthless talents.
Now the other part of this or top part its really a whatever add trying to what i’m going to call “filling in”. They needed to do more to make druid look like its getting a lot but in reality is this
-Feral getting Barkskin
-Balance/Resto getting Stampeding Roar
-Ironfur and Ferocious bite will never be used by any other spec except maybe ferals using barksin as a last ditch effort tank but even then.

The Affinity Talents associated with each specialization (Balance, Guardian, Feral, and Restoration) also gain an additional utility ability. Balance receives Typhoon , Feral gets Maim , Guardian gets Incapacitating Roar , and Restoration can use Ursol’s Vortex .

I really don’t see this being of damn bit of use. It adds minor flavoring to picking an affinity but in the end will it really have any effect is to be seen. personally its another “filling in” to make the druid look like its getting great stuff.

Overall summary is piss poor. They are messing with stuff that they don’t, adding stuff that should have been either there, taking away from what we can do now, or its whatever and will be doing it anyways because we want it. To be honest it completely seems that blizzard didn’t care about what they did to druid after doing considerate buff’s/changes for the better to all other classes.

For Balance and Feral, HOTW was practically mandatory for progression in mid-MOP. (HOTW+Tranquility was the strongest healing cooldown in the game.) Feral had to juggle Dream of Cenarius in their extremely complex combat flow, which may be why you don’t remember it?

Resto PVP used it to great effectiveness as it allowed you to Ferocious Bite for a huge amount.

In Alpha, it appears they simply want it to be an emergency button based on the affinity.

Ursol’s Vortex + Solar Beam is the dream. It makes Solar Beam less crappy. Maim won’t be that good. Incap Roar is an extra interrupt and peel (great PVP potential). Typhoon has a wide range of clever uses, especially in PVP where Y-axis geometry matters…such as Blade’s Edge or Arathi Basin Lumbermill.

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Additionally, Touch of Death returns to its original design, killing an enemy with less health than the Monk. Each specialization also gains a unique benefit by dealing damage with Touch of Death.

Is there… A particular reason why? You changed ToD because it had no impact other than very very very specific circumstances. I appreciate you giving us a few baseline abilities, but is there a reason for the ToD revert?

Classic is looking better and better. No worry about a missing spell. Downranking is a game in itself. Utility is needed to survive. 3 mobs in the outside world require CC when soloing or you take a dirtnap. My Druid does not have to worry about missing Innervate or Tranquility.

Just my two cents.

While you’re giving abilities back to classes, how about giving demonology warlocks the ability to turn into a big demon again.

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sounds like your bad at classic, i aoe face roll that just the same as this.

The Priest class should just have one healing spec and the other go into a holy range dps.

Fury should go 2 x 1h so Arms can do the warriors big 2h wallop.

Hunter surv will just be left to atrophied. Focusing on the class rather than the spec sort of leaves it out somewhere in some murky muggy land.

Poor Feral. It has all the other druid package/trappings that comes with it so it can’t ever really shine.

Kul-tiran Shamans will look quite good 2handing it up.

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Yeeeees.
We could meta at the same time!

Na Ive had 60’s of most classes. Ran a 350 person Vanila raiding guild. This time I trying some things different for fun. Your Character is ALL important in an RPG.
NO where could you get from my post that I was bad or good, I’ll take it your trolling a bit. I was talking 3 elites over your level. With CC you can do it. You know what they say when you assume…

Classic Servers are filled to the brim. Retail is a ghost town. Pruning was a disaster It made all toons homogenized. Build / Spend. Talent rows are a joke. " New spells " are old spells graciously given back to us.

No amount of fantastic artwork , great zones can make up for horrible, yes horrible class design.

If they don’t totally fix that I’ll never buy a Retail expansion.

Was Replying to the message below mine … sorry If I put it out of order

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Just here to say Enhancement Shamans were a 2h strength based Melee-caster that primarily did damage with windfury, shocks and enhancing a party through totem buffs originally.

I see nothing wrong with the original design and nothing to gain from making it a dual wielding spec and plenty of ways to handle Enhancements to make a variety of them valued in different situations if you only have one weapon to enhance. Id prefer if my class resembled its original self, not some new age sissy slap master spec that barely casts spells. 2h Enh was the Manly Enh. And their prime stat should be strength or intelligence.

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TLDR: Remove Defense related GCDs. Non-reactive gameplay is tedious/boring.

It’s too boring having to know the fights and press GCDs before things happen. Defense related GCDs don’t allow reactive gameplay. Additionally, for some it’s debate between pushing more dps (rewarding thing), or using a global (just in case they might die). People want to mongoloid all the way. It’s a double negative for those healers who have to start their own globals to hopefully be in time to heal through others mistakes.

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Being a Feral player for many years, the new design of Bloodtalons is good and bad for me
The good part is that it is finally out of the loop from the 5.0 version to the present (except for 7.3 briefly leaving Bloodtalons)
dtalons that have lost the snapshot mechanism and need treatment to be effective should have left early
Without the treatment condition, the skill loop is more flexible

The bad place The new mechanism feels quite bad, but it is not very attractive
Too single to strengthen Rip, unlike the old system can strengthen various melee skills
I don’t know if this new system can be strengthened to Primal Wrath?
Just speculating on the text description that the new system seems to be a single-target DPS trend?

However, in this new Bloodtalons, I do not know whether Lunar Inspiration can compete with Predator and Sabertooth??
After Lunar Inspiration 8.1, it has completely approached the state of zero use. PVE does not consider it at all. PVP has only seen Korean players used it on the battlefield.
At present, it seems that PVP and PVE Lunar Inspiration are difficult to compete with the other two

I have a talent that I always think is rubbish. I do n’t know how you used to redesign
After the redesign of Scent of blood, it’s just a piece of garbage that just fills the vacancy of this layer
This talent positioning is completely inferior to Primal Wrath (Brutal Slash is positioned at a single target). I really can’t think of the reason for this existence?
The entire 8 version of this talent has no actual combat possibilities. If there is no change in the 9 version, I think it should be completely a talent of no value.

Balance Affnity in 9.0 Affnity still retains Atral influece? Outlaw’s Acrobatic Strikes with similar talent effects are currently removed in 9.0
Judging from the nature of the profession but losing the flexible collocation change, as a Feral player, it is reasonable to pursue maximum DPS. But this talent in this Atral influece effect makes it hard to give up Balance Affnity
It is true that Feral has Atral influece in Close combat, which is a powerful advantage. Also because of this advantage, the other two Affnity cannot have the opportunity to perform in PVE
Fighting is changing, and it should n’t be like this according to career positioning
I personally think that assuming that without Atral influece would be a loss to Feral, but Balance Affnity now has Typoon, this talent can still maintain a certain advantage. It ’s just that it ’s no longer the only option (for Feral)
Is n’t that what you guys(bz) want to see? Choose Affnity as appropriate and strengthen it with Heart of the Wild
ince Saveage Roar became a talent, the practical nature has also tended to zero. Even the talent of Inecarnation: King of the jungle may appear in a short battle
I really do n’t understand. After Saveage Roar became a talent, his positioning was really awkward.

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Please re-do Unholy DKs death coil animation. It doesn’t feel good to cast at all.

Forgot to mention that I do n’t want the survival instinct to be removed
Bark return does not mean that Feral’s viability is very strong
Feral is just as vulnerable as the survivability of real-life large cats