The Druid Class Tree: A Comparative Analysis of Why it Fails and What it Needs

Classes Druid
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March 12 Edit: Thank you to Cyrios for bringing this to the attention of the community council. I hope that it will lead to some change. I am a wordy guy, so—though I hope that you read it all, as well as the many great suggestions from the Druid community throughout the thread—I wanted to leave a quick TL;DR at the top.

TL;DR: The Druid Class Tree is demonstrably worse than any other class tree because, among other things, it lacks lateral mobility, it has wasted points, it has too many dead-end nodes, and it has too many 2-point nodes (as well as the only 3-point node in any of the talent trees – out of roughly 2000 talents and 52 class and talent trees, we have the only remaining 3-point node). In my opinion, it needs both a full rework and immediate addressing. In the short term, many of the 2-point nodes (and the 3-point node) could be reduced, many of the dead-ends could be fixed with extra connections, and the lack of lateral mobility could be addressed by moving the Wild Charge/Tiger Dash node up one row and having it connect to Thick Hide and Natural Recovery, mirroring how the Evoker tree works. In the long term, the wasted off-spec nodes could be wrapped into one “Affinity” node, the capstone abilities could be reevaluated and either reworked or unnerfed, and better defensive options could be introduced.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy and share your thoughts, comments, and concerns.

The Druid Class Tree was first introduced over a year and a half ago. Despite being the first tree introduced, and despite the community identifying flaws in the tree immediately, it has received the least iteration.

In this post, I will discuss my analysis of the Druid Class Tree’s issues as compared to other classes, then I will present my proposals for how our class tree should be fixed.

I mainly play Feral in PvP and many of my Druid-specific examples will be analyzed through this lens.

I. Fundamental Issues in the Druid Class Tree

I believe there are three fundamental and interconnected issues with the Druid Class Tree:

  1. It lacks horizontal mobility, meaning that it is too difficult to move from left to right or right to left in the tree;
  2. It suffers disproportionately from the “Hybrid Tax”; and
  3. It offers too many abilities that should be baseline.

A. The Druid Class Tree Lacks Horizontal Mobility

Below is a comparison of each class’s ability to move horizontally through their tree. I believe the key question is whether you can reach each of the endcap talents from any of the spec starting nodes. Every class except Druid can do this, and many can do much more:

Class Reach All Endcaps? Reach Whole Bottom Third?
Death Knight Yes No
Demon Hunter Yes Yes
Druid No No
Evoker Yes Yes
Hunter Yes Yes
Mage Yes Yes
Monk Yes Yes
Paladin Yes Yes
Priest Yes Yes
Rogue Yes Yes
Shaman Yes No
Warlock Yes Yes
Warrior Yes Yes

It’s worth mentioning as well that the “off-spec” starting nodes for other classes are on average worthwhile to pick up—unlike the Druid Class Tree.

In addition to this list, Hunters, Mages, and Warriors can reach every talent in the middle third of their trees, and therefore, obviously, each talent in the bottom third, and each endcap.

Druids, however, are the only class that cannot reach each endcap talent from any starting node, despite the fact that Wild Charge is right in the middle of the tree, just like Tip the Scales for Evokers. Feral, Guardian, and Balance can only cross as far as the middle branch of the tree, and Wild Charge only feeds into the middle branch.

Notably, though Blizzard decided that Feral should have the ability to cast Innervate in cat form in 10.2, Blizzard did nothing to address the fact that Feral cannot reach Innervate from its starting nodes.

B. The Druid Class Tree Suffers Disproportionately from the “Hybrid Tax”

Continuing with the above example, for Ferals to get Innervate, they would either have to completely waste points in Starfire, Sunfire, and Moonkin Form, or waste points in Rejuvenation, Wild Growth, and Improved Rejuvenation. And these points truly are a complete waste – there is maybe one use case per thousand instances for each of these abilities for Feral, and that is being incredibly generous. Similarly, Feral would have to waste these points to get to Cyclone, Hibernate, Typhoon, Mass Entangle/Ursol’s Vortex, and Nature’s Vigil. Feral also wastes a point on Ironfur to get to Thick Hide, which is absolutely critical given the dire state of survivability and defensives for Feral (and Druid as a whole). Most notably for Cyclone and Hibernate: these talent nodes are dead-ends, meaning that the talent investment in those wasted points has no further value.

Essentially for Feral and Guardian, Hibernate might as well be a single node that costs 4 talent points that connects to no other nodes, and Cyclone might as well be an additional 3-point node on top of that, or a 6-point node on its own if you don’t want Hibernate.

No other spec has to deal with this kind of hybrid tax on their utility.

C. The Druid Class Tree Has Too Many Rotational Abilities Unique to One Spec

The “Hybrid Tax” noted above really brings this point into focus. There are way too many rotational abilities for each spec in the Druid Class, that should just be made baseline or rolled into a 1-talent-point package.

Compare what other hybrid classes have to go through to get to their utility. For instance:

  • Monks: Disable and Paralysis are both 2-point investments, one point for Tiger’s Lust and one point for Disable/Paralysis. Spear Hand Strike is only 2 more points after that, one point in Improved Paralysis and one point in Spear Hand Strike – or you could path through Ferocity of Xuen which is just a flat 4% increased damage dealt, a useful talent in all situations. Ring of Peace is almost unavoidably in the exact middle of the tree. Leg Sweep is baseline.
  • Paladins: Lay on Hands is a starting talent that feeds directly into Cleanse, that feeds directly into Repentance/Blinding Light. The Blessings are right in the middle of the tree, stemming from Avenging Wrath, a must-pick talent node. Hammer of Justice is baseline.
  • Priest: All Priests can easily get to Void Shift, Leap of Faith, and Mass Dispel. Psychic Scream is baseline.
  • Shaman: All Shamans can get Wind Shear with a 2-point investment, maximum, one of those points being in Astral Shift, which would be foolish not to take. That directly leads into Static Totem, Earth Elemental, Tremor Totem, and it’s a small jump to get to Hex from there. Everything is cheap and centralized.

Now look back at the Druid Class Tree. Hibernate is a dead-end with a 3-point investment (that is only ever useful to Balance Druids) leading up to it. Cyclone is a dead-end with a 5-point investment (that is only ever useful to Restoration or Balance Druids) leading up to it. While no Monk wastes talent points on the way to pick up Disable or Paralysis, and no Paladin wastes talent points on the way to pick up Lay on Hands, Cleanse, and/or Repentance, Druids – Ferals especially – are basically told “you can have these utility abilities if you forfeit at least 3 of your class talent points.” And unlike these other classes, Druids do not have any similar utility abilities baseline, not even Soothe.

To my knowledge, not a single other spec has to spend a talent point to buy a rotational ability for another spec in their class that they would never use, full stop, let alone a rotational ability that, because of the layout of the tree, is the sole gateway towards key utility abilities.

We already have a hybrid tax built into our actual playstyle. For a Balance or Feral Druid to cast healing spells, we have to drop form; Ferals and Guardians have to drop form to cast Cyclone; non-Guardians have to get into bear form to cast Incapacitating Roar; we have to get into bear form to use Frenzied Regeneration. With all of this effective hybrid tax in the way we actually play, it’s just obnoxious to have to experience the hybrid tax essentially out of game too through these talent node taxes.

II. Proposals for Improving the Druid Class Tree

1. Either consolidate rotational abilities into a single talent point or make the rotational abilities in the Druid Class Tree baseline.

As mentioned above, there is no reason we should have to pay a minimum of 3 useless talent points to dip into things that the other specializations of our class have access to. Druid, a class which has at least a higher than average – if not the most – number of abilities, should not simultaneously start with the least number baseline abilities. Again, it is as if we are forfeiting our talent points.

Bring back talents like: “Balance Affinity,” which would include Starfire, Sunfire, and Moonkin Form for a single point; “Restoration Affinity,” which would include Rejuvenation, Swiftmend, and Wild Growth for a single point; “Guardian Affinity,” which would include Frenzied Regeneration and Ironbark in a single point; and “Feral Affinity,” which would include Rake and Rip in a single point.

If this cannot be accomplished, the Affinity-related talents — Feline Swiftness, Thick Hide, Natural Recovery, and Astral Influence — should be brought down from 2-point nodes to 1-point nodes.

Feline Swiftness as it is right now (a 2-point talent for 15% movespeed) is strictly worse than Fleetfooted (a 1-point talent for 15% movespeed) in the Rogue tree. I understand that one-to-one comparisons like this are difficult to make from tree to tree because of the different balancing considerations required, but it’s not like there is any compensation in the Druid tree—the Rogue tree is demonstrably better in its lateral mobility, lack of dead-ends, lack of wasted nodes, and — especially relevant here — its very few 2-point nodes.

Additionally, given the investment in wasted nodes that it takes to get them, these nodes are already essentially costing more than 2 talent points.

2. If the above cannot be accomplished, introduce an actual benefit to having those off-spec abilities.

If having Starsurge meant that my Ferocious Bites had an X% chance to fire off a Starsurge at Y% effectiveness, or having Rejuvenation meant that casting Regrowth had an X% chance to also cast Rejuvenation, it would not feel like such a waste to pick up these points.

Additionally, I would like to specifically call out Ironfur here. It is something that basically every spec has to path through to get to Thick Hide because our survivability is so dismal, and yet only Guardian ever has a use case for it. No non-Guardian Druid is sitting in bear form, waiting to generate enough rage to use Ironfur – not only because it would take too long, but because it’s absolutely worthless. I think that for non-Guardian Druids it should be usable out of bear form, and/or that in bear form it’s much more effective, that it affects magic damage too, and/or that it reflects damage taken.

3. Fix the pathing in the tree to promote significantly more horizontal mobility.

See: the Evoker Class Tree. There is no reason that Wild Charge should only funnel into the middle branch. Look at Tip the Scales, and change the pathing of the Druid Class Tree to imitate that. Move Wild Charge to row 4 and make it also connect to Thick Hide and Natural Recovery. This would allow all Druid specs to access all three bottom third branches from Wild Charge.

On this note, fix the pathing such that we don’t have a situation where something like Soothe is an absolutely mandatory talent. It is such a niche ability, it has no business being the sole gatekeeper to Stampeding Roar which is used more often by orders of magnitude. I would swap the position of Stampeding Roar and Soothe, and then make Stampeding Roar connect out to Matted Fur and Improved Rejuvenation, with both of those also connecting back to Lycara’s Teachings.

4. Lycara’s Teachings: Not only should this node be a single point, or two points maximum but it should be a much more interesting ability related to Lycara, along the lines of Lycara’s Sash, Lycara’s Twig, or Lycara’s Fleeting Glimpse.

Out of the 2000+ talent nodes across the 52 talent trees, Lycara’s Teachings is the only 3-point node. It should be a single-point-node, and it should be changed altogether to something vastly more interesting. This is in the bottom third, where presumably our most interesting and gamechanging talents should be. A 2% per point stat increase is a joke.

5. On the topic of bottom-third talents: make any of them worthwhile. Additionally, Oath of the Elder Druid should be a choice node with Heart of the Wild.

My perspective is mainly from playing Feral in PvP, but we place at most 6 of the 11 points we could spend in the bottom third – Mighty Bash, 3 points in Lycara’s Teachings, Renewal, and Heart of the Wild. I would love to want to play Protector of the Pack or Nature’s Vigil, but they are far too expensive to get to, and they have been nerfed so much that they are worthless. Equally suffering from being too expensive and also worthless are Forest Walk, Ursine Vigor, and Well-Honed Instincts. Well-Honed Instincts is made worthless by the negative PvP modifiers to Frenzied Regeneration, which are holdovers from Shadowlands and Dragonflight Season 1 where for some reason Feral’s aoe was doing too much damage, so its healing got nerfed.

I wish I wanted to play any of these talents, but they are simply too costly to get to, and do not carry nearly the payoff to make it worthwhile.

6. Eliminate or greatly reduce the number of dead-end talents we have.

Do you realize that – not counting the final 3 endcap talents – we have 8 dead end talent nodes? Here is how many other classes have:

Class Dead End Nodes
Death Knight 0
Demon Hunter 2
Evoker 5
Hunter 1
Mage 0
Monk 1
Paladin 0
Priest 0
Rogue 0
Shaman 0
Warlock 0
Warrior 1
Total 10

Druid has 8 and all other classes combined have 10, with 7 of 13 classes (a majority) having none at all. It’s insane that we not only have one of the heaviest trees, one of the least mobile trees, one of the most taxing trees, but on top of all of that, our heavily taxed points investment all too frequently leads to a complete dead-end instead of continuing down the tree and therefore fails to offer some semblance of future value.

7. Design useful defensive options, and/or add previously solid defensive options into the tree

Please put The Natural Order’s Will back into the game. It is a defensive ability that is not just strong, but a great form of skill expression, since you have to have the foresight to pre-bear stuns. It’s not just giving Druids a BoP (like Rogues with their new Cloak PvP talent).

Please make Strength of the Wild more useful. Make it so that Mangle increases the duration of our bleeds. Make it so that Ironfur reflects damage or applies to magic damage, and costs significantly less rage. It’d be really cool as well if Feral could have some form of Ursoc’s Fury…. I don’t know, there are so many options and we have access to none of them. Please do something.

Frankly, there are many other things that need to happen with the actual talent nodes in the Druid Class Tree, so I will leave this part to the class designers, with just a request that we get some actual useful defensive options in the tree – it would be nice to have any button at all that made someone think twice before continuing to relentlessly train us down; Thorns doesn’t do it, Bear Form certainly doesn’t do it, Survival Instincts is way too short to do it (why don’t we have a second charge?). Things like Ursine Vigor have potential, but as mentioned above are currently too expensive and not worth getting.

Conclusion

It’s fairly simple: the Druid Class Tree is a travesty. It was this way when it was introduced, and it has not significantly changed for a over a year a half now (seriously, go look at the mockup Wowhead released on June 4, 2022). We now see how good class trees can be – the Rogue and Warrior trees have always been pretty great, the Demon Hunter and Paladin reworks have made those trees fantastic. It is beyond me that Druid has not been touched in a year and a half, and it’s only emphasized further now that we are in the middle of the most Druid-centric patch WoW has ever seen.

It must be fixed, and it must be fixed as soon as possible.

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Decent write up, however, I would tone the wording down some. No dev is going to want to read that (if they even read these forums lol) with how many times you called the talent tree absolute :poop: (even though it could use some work, to many talents you are forced to take that you never use, and the pathing is not great, definitely agree about more horizontal pathing through the tree).

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Honestly, mission accomplished for me if what you read from my post is that the tree is “absolute :poop:” because that means I got my point across with, in my opinion, very tame rhetoric. Below are the three instances where I think I wrote anything that approaches an aggressive tone.

I call several talents “worthless,” basically in two buckets:

  1. Actually worthless talents, such as off-spec rotational spells or increases to magic/physical damage done for specs that don’t deal primarily magic/physical damage, for example, Starfire, Sunfire, Moonkin Form, and Nurturing Instinct for Feral; and
  2. Talents that are too costly to take for too little reward, such as Forest Walk, Protector of the Pack, Ursine Vigor, and Nature’s Vigil.

I stand by my statements. These talents are worthless in that they are either never taken because they are too expensive or not worth the talent point investment; taken but never used because they are necessary to path to other talents; or taken and occasionally used because there is no better alternative (see: Protector of the Pack’s occasional use in single target raid instances, for example).

Additionally, I refer to the first bucket of talents as a hybrid tax, which I state that I find “obnoxious” when it compounds the other issues inherent in the tree and the hybrid tax we already experience gameplay-wise, synonyms for “obnoxious” are “extremely unpleasant,” and “objectionable,” all of which would be accurate in my opinion.

I called Lycara’s Teachings a “joke” for:

  1. Being the only 3-point node out of all of the 2000+ talents in all of the 52 talent trees;
  2. Being in the bottom third of the tree, where presumably the most impactful talents should be; and
  3. Offering merely a 2% stat increase per point.

This is perhaps my least accurate choice of words, however, I also feel it is the most tame.

And finally, I stated that the tree is a travesty, which is defined by the Brittanica Dictionary as “something that is shocking, upsetting, or ridiculous because it is not what it is supposed to be,” which I feel is entirely fitting.

If you have any specific suggestions, I am happy to hear them and make the edits if I agree that it will improve the message and/or the delivery. I have never had pride in authorship in any of my writings, whether it be for school, work, or hobbies, and I am happy to edit if there are edits to be made – as you can probably see by the many edits I’ve already made to the main post and this reply.

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All good points.

All been brought up many times over the last year.

And we are still with the same poor class tree design.

The shear fact that so few of the capstones are even being used. I might take 1 per spec, where my paladin I take all 3 because they are good (and like you point out, the paladin has efficient pathing to pick them all up without major sacrifices).

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Great thought-out piece. Completely agree. Druids are so neglected. All they do is mess us up when were in a decent place.

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HYBRID TAX also… EVEN WORSE HEALING THAN DPS SPECS

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I assume they’re eventually going to roll through all the classes and fix them with these “reworks”, but I also assume Druids will be last because of the complexity

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100000% agree.

If someone looks in our direction we take half our HP splash damage

But all in all this is a great writeup and I agree with everything said.

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Oh it’s actually worse than this. One of the few changes Blizzard did make was adding another mandatory talent (Rising Light, Falling Night) behind the balance-only path. So not only do we have an outdated tree that didn’t function well from the beginning that has been nearly ignored, one of the only changes to it effectively subtracted 1 talent point from feral, guardian, and resto druids for a small throughput (and half the time miniscule defensive) gain.

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Yes, my worry is that Blizz will “fix” the tree with the hero talents in 11.0. This would be a huge mistake. Blizz needs to fix the foundation first — meaning the base class tree — before building on top of it.

I take some small solace in the fact that they haven’t really previewed any actual hero talents for Druid yet. Perhaps that means changes to the class tree are in the works.

But truly, the disparities between our tree and every other class tree need to be addressed. We need to be brought up to speed with every other class.

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The druid was the first hero talents previewed. Just like with DF. And I’m sure yet again they will be the last to see any tuning, if ever, just like DF.

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You’re right, for some reason I blocked from my memory that they partially previewed the two Balance hero talent trees at Blizzcon, that’s my bad.

Hopefully Blizz can break the cycle and iterate on these faster to keep them in line with other classes—and hopefully that doesn’t detract from efforts to iterate on the class tree.

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i agree with this… outside the weird guardian/resto/boomkin “rework” if you want to even call it that they haven’t really done anything to any to fix the class tree or help the obvious mana issues of resto (yes they still heal well but being oom each fight isn’t fun to see or deal with) and squishiness of balance/feral

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That’s my worry. We were first in DF…and our baseline tree is still in that same alpha stage of development. Now to repeat that on on hero…I’d rather someone else go first.

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(Let me preface by reiterating that I think about all of this from a Feral PvP perspective.)

I have been thinking a lot lately about the specific lack of defensive options for Druids in the Class Tree – which seems crazy to me when Guardian should have at least a 1/4th representation in the tree. It just isn’t possible today to build a truly “tanky” build, even if you choose all of the defensive options. And frankly, all Druid specs seem to suffer defensively, though Feral and Boomy certainly suffer the most. So in the context of discussing how to rework our class tree, I want to examine the current defensive options and some old defensive options through various expansions to see what types of talents would really add interesting and defensive options to our current gameplay.

Current Options

Here is a comprehensive list of our defensive options. I think that our options are both too few in number and too weak. I’ve sorted the options into “Good,” “Okay,” and “Bad,” with explanations for why I’ve placed the talents in each category.

Good

  • Improved Barkskin: Barkskin’s duration is increased by 4 sec.
  • Verdant Heart: Frenzied Regeneration and Barkskin increase all healing received by 20%.

These two are actually very nice, and inexpensive to get to in the tree. We need more talents like this. Verdant Heart, like many of the options listed below, does suffer from dampening, but it is still good for where it is on the tree and the investment required (top third, 3 points).

  • Matted Fur: When you use Barkskin or Survival Instincts, absorb [X] damage for 8 sec.

This talent is fine for 1 point, however from a PvP perspective, its value quickly drops off as soon as dampening starts.

  • Renewal: Instantly heals you for 30% of maximum health. Usable in all shapeshift forms.

Basically required. It is good, but nothing special. Again, suffers greatly from dampening.

Okay

  • Thick Hide: Reduces all damage taken by 3%/6%.

This talent is basically required, but also gets dropped by PvP Ferals if we have to take Remove Corruption because the rest of the tree is far too heavy. In fact, most high ranking Ferals just forego Remove Corruption, because it is better to leave their team at a disadvantage in terms of dispelling curses than it is to make the Feral that much squishier. It should be one point, and given how dire the defensive situation is, should probably do more than 6% damage reduction if nothing else is changed.

  • Rising Light, Falling Night: Increases your damage and healing by 3% during the day. Increases your Versatility by 2% during the night.

I don’t hate the day/night mechanic, but it would be better, in my opinion, if it was a choice between different offensive buffs or different defensive buffs, not sometimes a defensive buff and sometimes not a defensive buff. This talent is fine, but very expensive to get to – as noted above, for a spec like Feral, I have to completely waste 3 points in Starfire, Sunfire, and Moonkin Form to get to it, so it’s really a 4-point node for 2% Vers some of the time.

  • Ursine Vigor: For 4 sec after shifting into Bear Form, your health and armor are increased by 10/20%.

This is a good talent on paper, the issue as always is that it’s too expensive for too little payoff. Only the extra health helps against magic damage, and we don’t have the points to spend if we need to also pick up Cyclone. This should be a single point and much further up the tree.

  • Well-Honed Instincts: When you fall below 40% health, you cast Frenzied Regeneration, up to once every 120/90 sec.

Again, this talent is fine. But it is on a much longer cd than it was in Shadowlands, and as a PvP Feral, there isn’t even room for me to put a single point into it if I have to pick up Cyclone. Furthermore, because Frenzied Regeneration has been nerfed so hard, it has lost much of its potency. It barely makes the “Okay” category – I strongly considered putting it in “Bad.”

  • Heart of the Wild: Abilities not associated with your specialization are substantially empowered for 45 sec.

As discussed in the original post, I think this could really benefit from being a choice node with Call of the Elder Druid. It is a really long cooldown for an effect that isn’t really even a guaranteed save. I feel like it shouldn’t be commonplace to die through a 5-minute cooldown…

Bad

  • Killer Instinct: Physical damage and Armor increased by 3%/6%
  • Ironfur: Increases armor by (120 * Agility / 100) for 7 sec.

As mentioned in my original post, Ironfur needs to do much more. It costs too much rage to be used by anything but Guardian druids – if a Boomy or Feral is sitting in bear form long enough to build up that rage, we are dead and/or have lost all offensive pressure. Additionally, there is the continued issue that these talents and bear form itself only address physical damage, when nearly every spec has a significant portion of its damage profile made up by magic damage.

  • Forest Walk: Casting Regrowth increases your movement speed and healing received by 5% for 3/6 sec.

I mean, this is beyond useless. If at least the 5% became 10% when you put two points in it, it might be worth considering for Feral, but it also means we’re losing more value in dampening and pretty much unable to cast Roots because all Predatory Swiftness procs will need to go into Regrowth. Plus it’s just too expensive for too little payoff.

  • Protector of the Pack: Store 5% of your damage, up to (Spell power * 5). Your next Regrowth consumes all stored damage to increase its healing.
  • Nature’s Vigil: For 15 sec, all single-target damage also heals a nearby friendly target for 20% of the damage done.

Again, these are just too expensive for far too little payoff. They’ve been nerfed to the ground and we can’t afford to get to them. Furthermore, they continue to suffer from being just an increase to healing, drastically falling in effectiveness as soon as dampening ramps up.

Of the 49 talent nodes that we have in the tree, we have 4 talents that I would consider “good” defensives, 5 talents that are “okay” (two of which are very rarely taken), and 5 talents that are plainly bad. We really need an update to this tree and the defensive options that it should possess.

What We Could Have

I can’t help but think of all of the effects that we had in the past that could have made it into the tree:

Shadowlands Legendaries

  • The Natural Order’s Will: Barkskin reduces damage by an additional 10%. When it begins or ends in Bear Form, you gain Ironfur and Frenzied Regeneration.

This would be a fantastic re-addition that would really boost skill expression. Right now, we can die through pre-bear and Barkskin, which is frankly absurd. I don’t think we should be unkillable in bear form or anything, but if a Druid has the foresight and skill to shift to bear before a stun chain and decide that Barkskin needs to be traded out too, there should be very few circumstances in which that Druid dies, and that’s just not the case today. This is also true in PvE situations where certain boss abilities hit incredibly hard, and high skill and anticipation still aren’t enough to save us.

  • Oath of the Elder Druid: Effects of Thick Hide, Astral Influence, Feline Swiftness, and Ysera’s Gift increased by 75%. When you shift into your Affinity’s form, you gain Heart of the Wild for 10 sec, once every 1 min.

As discussed above, a choice node between something like this and Heart of the Wild would be a much more fun and unique playstyle that would allow for more skill expression. The internal cooldown stops this from being overpowered and introduces a high level of complexity and tracking.

Legion Legendaries/Artifact Traits

  • Ailuro Pouncers: Equip: Gain 1 stack of Predatory Swiftness every 15 sec. Additionally, Predatory Swiftness now stacks up to 3 times.

Many Ferals have been asking for a stacking Predatory Swiftness – the ability to stack up a 3x Regrowth heal would feel much more impactful and consume fewer GCDs.

  • Skysec’s Hold: Equip: Frenzied Regeneration heals you for an additional 12% of your maximum health over 3 sec.

Or we could remove the unnecessary and oppressive negative modifiers on Frenzied Regeneration.

  • Protection of Ashamane: When you shapeshift out of Cat Form, you gain 100% increased dodge chance and armor for 5 sec or until you shapeshift back into Cat Form. Can only occur once every 30 sec.

This sounds broken, but like Call/Oath of the Elder Druid the 30 second internal cooldown gives this an insane amount of skill expression, especially considering that we could try to use this for either defensive options or landing Cyclones.

Torghast Powers

  • Cloak of Thorns: Barkskin and Ironbark deal (50% of Spell power) damage to all attackers.

Right now, Thorns does not dissuade anyone from tunneling us down. A non-dispellable buff like this could change that, if it is tuned correctly.

  • Lycara’s Twig: Shapeshifting increases the damage or healing of your next Shred, Mangle, Wrath, or Regrowth by 200%.

I would add Frenzied Regeneration to this if it is not unnerfed. Again, this would be a much better invocation of Lycara than what we have in our tree.

  • Plague-Hardened Hide: Ironfur lasts 3 sec longer and persists outside of Bear Form.

This should absolutely be in the tree. As discussed in the original post, Ironfur is a complete waste right now for any spec that isn’t Guardian.

Conclusion

In sum, there are so many options to add to the tree that would give us interesting and meaningful choices to make. Please rework the tree and consider adding some of these among the many changes already suggested.

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with how blizzard treats druids as a whole im at the point where its just throw out the whole thing. purge everything and start the class over from scratch. take the mage dev and have them work on boomie have the dk dev work on guardian im torn on who to go with for resto and ill take any dev that makes feral not feel like the red headed step child. jut outsource each spec to what ever devs work on those specs because obviously there doing something right unlike anyone working on druids. our class tree is the prime example of nobody knowing what there doing working on the class. it was shown first along with dk but was in worse shape than the dk tree was and hasnt really had anything done to improve it in all this time. bear was on a borrowed power crutch since they lost the legion artifact and the moment they had something going it got nerfed into the ground. i dont hear much about resto oddly so idk how thay are, boomies i always hear complain even when there doing good so idc as much and feral is self explanatory. it would be nice if the most versatile class in the game wasnt such a mess

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Great write-up here and some good responses. I’d say there is a bit too much PvP feral lens coming through here. Ursine vigor has its place in PvE because as you push keys there are a lot of things that just outright 1 shot you, that being said, almost every other class has more actual hp than feral, some by upwards of 20% along with having other forms of extra defense in the way of plate armor or avoidance/AOE DR in their tree. Druid is horribly squishy and the only answer in the toolkit a lot of the time is “drop at least 2 GCDs of uptime to go bear and live the high damage”…

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Just want to bump this so that it remains relevant. I’m sure everyone who has played a Druid knows the class tree is awful.

Not sure what else to add other than to hope this thread or one like it is on top with 1000 replies when the Blizzard intern deigns to visit the forum, on the off chance it gets them to bring it up to a real dev over the water cooler 3 months from now.

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Buffs on Tuesday are a welcomed change. I enjoy Feral a lot. However… I will be re rolling in S4 and into the next xpac.

Just cant see the light at the end of the tunnel that will make Druids actually competitive with other classes that can fill the same roll we fill with all of our specs. All we bring is a 3% vers buff which honestly a raid can do without.

Sure Balance has good AoE, Feral has very good ST… but both of our dps specs are bottom of the barrel when its a mix. It sucks and again I cant see blizz changing much here.

GL Druid mains.

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The PvP bear form nerf is hilarious. Blizz is so out of touch. Now that Frenzied Regen is usable, but bear form isn’t, it’d be a perfect time to put The Natural Order’s Will and/or Call of the Elder Druid in the tree.

Druids need defensive help, and we need it now.

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