Please Make Moonkin Form Cosmetic

Classes Druid
1

Please make Moonkin Form a cosmetic choice like Treant Form is for Restoration Druid.

The champion Druid of Azeroth should not be required to use a Moonkin Form to be able to cast powerful spells at this point. Turning into a Cat or Bear makes much more sense because you’re using claws, teeth, and primal fury to attack your enemies. Spellcasting is something any humanoid can do proficiently, as far as lore reasons go.

As for mechanical reasons, the armor bonus is super negligible and honestly not even noticeable, 10% damage increase is really not even THAT big of a number if you think about it, and the chance on being hit procs of Starfire could be just a Balance Druid passive in the spellbook with no need for a form to activate that. (Also, the extra GCD going into Moonkin Form feels clunky which is just a personal gripe of mine.)

As far as being immune to Polymorph effects in PvP, I can’t see why there couldn’t be a PvP talent added to the game to facilitate that benefit. Or they could even add that effect to an already existing PvP talent. (Or once again, a Polymorph immunity could become a Balance Druid passive in the spellbook baseline, though I’m not certain if that would be too overpowered.)

If Moonkin Form was a cosmetic option, players would be able to customize the way they wished to present themselves in game. Whether they would still choose to use Moonkin Form if it became optional or had a personal preference to remain in humanoid form. I think giving players the agency to customize how they wish to appear in game is something Blizzard would agree is important.

Blizzard has already taken at least some small baby steps towards this goal when they made it so Shadow Priest’s Shadow Form now shows your character model even more than before with the Glyph of Shadow. (I would like if Shadowform was an outright cosmetic form like Treant Form as well by the way.)

I want to say as well I think all the new datamined 10.2 Guardians of the Dream Moonkin Forms look wonderful, and if Moonkin Form were to be made cosmetically optional I would still use those forms from time to time on top of my humanoid caster model (Night Elf).

I would love to finally be able to fully enjoy my Balance Druid without the arbitrary cosmetic requirement of Glyph of Stars, and from what I gather, I think a lot of people feel the same way.

12 Likes
2

I’m not usually a person who enjoys when other people suffer in the same way as me, but this take seems pretty ridiculous to me given how bear and cat are tied to their respective forms. I still have to leave cat form to battle rez and innervate as a feral druid and it wasn’t until dragonflight that I didn’t have to weave into moonkin form to maximize my damage, with each of those activities wasting a GCD to shift back into cat form (and 2 GCDs in the case of owlweaving).

Balance druids already get access to nearly their entire kit of utility and deal all damage without wasting GCDs shifting between forms as a result. Meanwhile guardian druids can’t leave bear form while actively tanking for obvious reasons and feral druids are frequently burning GCDs to access the same utility spells balance druids can do in moonkin form. It’s not like I can shred and rip from my humanoid form with a small damage penalty if I wanted. If there were some parity among the specs in this regard then I would be more amenable to this suggestion; until then, this complaint is rather infuriating to hear.

1 Like
3

Well it kind of sounds like you are wanting Balance to suffer if you have to. I don’t understand why you would want Balance players to “suffer” the same as Feral or Guardian anyway when you could be advocating for quality of life improvements to your own specializations.

Why aren’t you on the forums making your own post about how you think Cat and Bear form should be able to cast Innervate and Rebirth without leaving animal form? I don’t see why this would be a bad thing or lore breaking in any way.

You’d never have to “owlweave” again if Moonkin Form became a cosmetic option, so I don’t get the point in saying this?

We can cast Regrowth, Rebirth, and Innervate in Moonkin Form. Okay… so that would mean we can do those things in humanoid form too right? Which literally negates the logic of this point. We can do those things anyway in Moonkin Form or out of it. Sorry the game developers don’t want to give Cats and Bears quality of life? Advocate for it then!

I feel like you took the 1 little thing I said about the GCD being annoying and ran with it through your entire post. When my post was mostly just about giving the players more customization.

You said you don’t usually enjoy others to suffer the same as you yet instead of advocating for more quality of life for Bears and Cats, you just gatekept my suggestion entirely because you feel like you got the short end of the stick.

I really don’t understand why people in the forums always do this. People rip other’s suggestions down all the time in order to maintain some kind of strange status-quo in their mind of how the game “should” be. Meanwhile, a game with more quality of life and cosmetic options is what we really should be striving for.

4

Play a mage, you are a druid.

5

You can only beat the dead horse so many times before it’s not worth the hand pain to keep punching…

The issue is that the class has had a lengthy history of guardian and feral being treated like second class specs compared to resto and balance. After so many years of advocating for feral and guardian to get some of the same basic improvements like using our abilities in form and getting nothing, it’s easy to become very jaded to see the other specs keep getting richer. I mean feral and guardian still have one of the most dysfunctional class trees because of the need for Astral Influence…

You’re right it’s not balance druids’ fault for these decisions. But until the other specs can get some of the basic quality of life changes balance and resto have had for a while, it’s going to be a tough pill to swallow if they get even more.

That’s not a true statement. If the time required to generate ~75 energy is more than the time required to shift out of cat form and back and cast at least one balance spell, owlweaving will be correct. In fact, the change you’re proposing would make owlweaving even more likely because there would be one fewer GCD before we can get back to cat abilities.

And to make sure it’s clear, the issue I and most ferals have with owlweaving isn’t that we wind up going into moonkin form. It’s that to maximize our DPS we have to shift from our melee form into a caster form of some sort and use a caster ability. If moonkin form went away and instead of going into “owl” we had to drop to our humanoid form, it would feel just as bad as when we were shifting into moonkin.

But your request isn’t just customization, it’s actually a performance increase that could impact both resto and feral due to saving the GCD getting to a form where you can get full value out of balance spells. If instead your suggestion was an ability to have your moonkin form to maintain your humanoid form without the astral tint from glyph of stars, I wouldn’t have as much of an issue with it.

As I said earlier, we’ve been asking for these kinds of improvements for more than a decade. After seeing expansion after expansion where the simple improvements balance has had for most of that time, it feels like Blizzard intentionally is sending us a message they’d prefer us play the favored spec.

I don’t want status quo, I’ve just reached the point where it feels pointless if the devs feel we don’t even deserve the basic QoL changes the other specs have had for years.

6

Sorry but a Draenei Warlock saying this is hilarious to me.

Why does really no one care that Restoration Druid uses their caster form? I’ll tell you why, because majority of people want the cosmetic option.

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In fact, I do think it was a mistake for Blizzard to remove Tree of Life as a form that boosted healing output. I think there are more design options when certain abilities are limited to specific forms because it allows Blizzard the ability to keep druids from becoming too good with their jack of all trades abilities which would inevitably require druids to be worse at their primary functions (AKA, the hybrid tax). If a non resto druid had to spec and shift into a healing oriented form to get any oomph behind their heals, that would create a trade off the druid would have to incur in order to play in a hybrid capacity if that’s where the group would see the most success.

Also, your requested change isn’t just cosmetic. Your motivation for wanting it might be solely cosmetic, but your proposal would have performance benefits for balance, resto, and even feral. That’s my main sticking point. If your proposal instead was for a glyph like Glyph of the Stars but without the astral effect, that would be perfectly fine and I wouldn’t have even responded.

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I’m sorry friend but your issues with Guardian and Feral specs are something that I have no control over, and for you to come in my thread and face off with me over those issues is really on you.

Those are your demons to fight, not mine. I personally don’t enjoy playing those specs as much as Balance Druid (and Restoration Druid), so of course I’m not going to be the voice or advocate for your specs in my thread.

If you would rather come into other people’s threads to vent your frustrations yet you think that making your own critique thread is not worth it or “beating a dead horse” then I would ask myself who are you trying to blame for your issues?

Are you blaming me now since Blizzard apparently isn’t listening to you? That isn’t even slightly fair.

Whether your specs get quality of life improvements or not, I still wish to see Balance have the cosmetic option to choose whether or or not to use Moonkin Form/ Glyph of Stars. It is what it is. I hope you get what you want too. Keep chugging on!

1 Like
9

I’ve never wanted to downvote something so hard. Shapeshifting is a huge part of what makes a drood a drood and making pewpew wookie form cosmetic would eliminate the need for the form. I personally miss the days of tree form being a permanent form also because I think its a very big part of the droods identity to require a specific form to do specific specs.

2 Likes
10

Shapeshifting is really only for melee druids or defensive purposes/utility. Even in vanilla balance and resto druids do not shapeshift as they are spellcasters primarily. U only use cat for bleeds or feral charge/stealth or bear for defense or interrupt/stun. Balance druids have always done both with or without moonkin form tbh and personally I can do both, idc. Atleast make glyph of stars less sparkly so we can see gear. :cloud_with_rain:

3 Likes
11

You know why they brought out tree form…because droods overwhelmingly griped about not having a shapeshift form like there counter part specs in vanilla. Shapeshifting obviously serves a purpose but its also part of the entire drood lore and it also makes them stand out from other classes. By all means if we’re going to remove the requirement of pew pew wookie form let’s just remove cat and bear to because obviously not everyone wants to be a bear while tanking and not everyone is a fan of the feline persuasion.

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12

I really just don’t agree with this in 2023.

What makes a Druid a Druid to me is that you cast Arcane and Nature spells and your character reveres nature.

Balance Druids also still need to shapeshift into Cat and Bear forms-- so it’s not like I’m asking for shapeshifting to be deleted. Balance Druids use Bear Form for defensive protection all the time, we use Cat Form for Prowl and movement speed (we can even use it for the stun).

To me its a very “Classic WoW” player mindset to want to keep things the way they are for the sake of it when most people in the game just want to have a character they can cosmetically enjoy in every aspect of the game. It’s like when people get mad about Transmog being in the game because it somehow diminishes the original gearpiece or something.

It’s funny to me as well that most of the classes I see saying “NO! Druid need to keep cosmic chicken form because they shapeshift!” are never even posting on their Druids or even play a Druid at all.

I cannot remember the last time I have seriously witnessed in game a Restoration Druid using the Treant Form. I’m not even kidding. Maybe once or twice a month hanging out in Valdrakken, but no one wants to use it. The same goes for Balance Druids in the game almost always using Glyph of Stars.

I don’t think this is a bad thing or detrimental to the Druid lore. Hardly any Druids in the lore or in game NPCs ever even use Moonkin Form to be able to cast powerful spells. I’ve said multiple times that if people still wanted to shapeshift into Moonkin Form, the option would still be there. Moonkin Form just would not be absolutely required for the people that prefer to be a nature loving, spellslinging Balance Druid in humanoid form.

3 Likes
13

The benefits of Moonkin form are not negligible. There is already a glyph for an Astral Form. The best Blizzard could do is make an alternative “toned-down” Astral Form glyph.

1 Like
14

Bake the armor bonus into our Balance spec, bake Owlkin Frenzy into our spellbook as a passive in all forms, and bake the 10% damage bonus into our Balance spec.

Bam. Pretty easy imo.

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15

I think its odd when certain classes don’t want to be visually distinguishable. Like in a good raid a shadowpriest will always position in a way which enables efficient movement, so seeing where they are makes it easier for healers to position between efficiency and spatial grouping. On the contrary a spec like balance being the ranged source of stamp roar (shaman totem is kinda worse) enables them to take a central position in the ranged group as they benefit the entire raid by taking a middle ground. Most classes have visual distinctions as well, but not nearly as potent as balance and shadow have traditionally been. I think its odd that blizzard gave in with shadow form, maybe shadow priests want to be confused as healers so people can move around them, but its always a casual thing to care about how you look in combat anyways, the absolute last thing you have to really notice while in combat is your own character model, its kinda odd for a druid to care how they look, but then again we’re suddenly getting cats who want to look like dinosaurs willingly.

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Sorry but I give people a little more credit to their intelligence to be able to distinguish between party members. 99% of the time, healers are looking at the raid frames anyway, not the physical representation of the character model on the field.

I find this statement to be hilarious. Of course people are going to care about how they look in the game. It’s a game where we play dress up with transmog and everyone wants to look cool. What are you even talking about? This isn’t Classic WoW. Like what??

2 Likes
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you have to either be trolling or completely unaware of the scope of modern gameplay if you think people at upper levels play whack a mole with raid frames, hilarious if you’re a druid and do this

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Hmm I’m not. I give people more credit than needing to see a giant moon chicken in their raids to be able to coordinate and distinguish between classes.

FFXIV players do it all the time and there’s no forms for any of their Jobs. Your logic is really not there for this one chief.

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Bosses have mechanics which require formations and reforming the raid, constantly and sporadically. Sometimes its knowing one person is moving right and another is moving left, when they are easily distinguishable its easier for raid members to give them the right of way, since there are multiple things happening at once.

I wouldn’t expect you to understand any of this because you spend your time raiding swapping between staring at yourself and raid frames.

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Meh, not ever really worth engaging with anyone that makes personal or patronizing statements like this. So to that I say, have a good day friend! :slight_smile: