This is a real missed opportunity for something cool since the dungeon is so druid lore heavy.
Wouldn’t it have been awesome to have a druid rune that gives you serpent form like the druids in the instance have? It could replace cat form and function almost exactly the same as it, but give you access to rogue poisons or something similar.
You would maybe have to change a couple of the cat form ability names. Like “claw” could be “sting” or “whip”
There’s no creativity with these runes. They’re straight up retail abilities carbon copied. Can’t expect neat or cool things (except tank shaman, was a neat surprise).
But yes, totally should have been a WC Druid rune.
I wish Way of the Earth was a Retail ability.
With half the class fantasy SoD has, Retail would actually be playable right now. But instead I log in to grind level 25 mobs in Hillsbrad instead…
WC Druid Rune isn’t necessarily out of the woods, because they can always add stuff later on. Look at the SFK rune for Rogue.
Class fantasy is everything.
Oh, but that would’ve required the devs to add a Horde-zone-only rune, we can’t have that! Can’t have Alliance players be forced to put in any effort leveling or something.
How’s your alts? I got each class parked in an Inn getting rested exp while I pick which one I’m leveling next.
I have 2 25s (non-Rogue) and way too many lower than 20 Rogues.
The rune abilities remind me of a marriage between Shadowlands Covenants and Legion Artifact Traits.
On the covenant parallel side, there’s valid criticisms of choice illusions (there are clear cut best cases, even if it’s a build you prefer not to play) and choice impracticality (pick the “wrong class”, the runes for a particular niche may not be available for you at all). Neither problem is unique to Classic, but it would be nice to see some attention to e.g. Frost Mage. Seeing even one is rare because of problem 1 (FoF proc rate is too low, so Burnout is guaranteed to be better, especially right now) and problem 2 (Frostbolt ranks up at level 26, just beyond Phase 1 breakpoint).
But what the runes do poorly is squashed and ignored for what they absolutely crushed–class fantasy and world building.
For many classes, runes are obtained through very class-focused means, like the Wandering Swordsman or Gathering Monster Heads for Warrior. For priests, there’s a neat “Meditation” fantasy that requires you to kneel at places of race-based significance or having other Priests pray with you.
I challenge anyone to find that much class focus in the core game content since Legion. BFA, Shadowlands, and Dragons had increasingly class-agnostic content. From Azerite traits, to covenant abilities, to saying forget it and putting it back into the talent trees, the content portion of the game has moved steadily away from class fantasy, to simply being a “free” tack-on system. Runes make that an integral component of the roleplaying game’s world.
It’s a reason to have hope for the game.
Quite a bit of creativity in acquiring some runes…