Jack of all trades, master of none.
Such is the way with druid.
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except that is always taken out of context as its never the full sentence. also the fact feral is the only spec to fall every single time makes it worse
YES YES YES, this! I have been trying endlessly to tell people about this. Not just mage. Warriors and paladins, for example. They have all gained insane mobility. I was always able to stay out of their range but now, warriors have endless numbers of ways to catch up to you (while doing their damage and healing themselves). Paladins are essentially ranged - while having vastly improved mobility over the years - and I will fight anyone who argues otherwise.
Meanwhile, we lost stellar drift and displacer beast over the past few years… of course we can use multiple globals to unroot ourselves but we don’t heal (maybe we should) or do damage when we do that. Unlike the constant damage, healing and stunning/rooting that all melee do while also charging towards us.
Even sitting in bear form does NOTHING anymore.
All the other issues you mentioned are totally valid, too, but as a class that has had a button called TRAVEL form since vanilla, it would be nice to maintain the mobility edge, slightly??? Please…
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They need to get whoever designed Varian’s talents in Heroes of the Storm to work on Druid. Blizzard can’t do stance dancing.
Elephant in the room: they deleted Stances and Presences then left in Shapeshifting thinking they could solve it. Well it’s been a failed experiment for them, they can’t even add talents with weight to them.
How does 10 passive damage and healing buff talents help you with Shapeshift GCD bloat? It doesn’t, nothing in these trees helps with the GCD, nothing in the trees makes it easier, QoL and desirable to shapeshift, there’s stuff there that does damage and gives DR, sure, but it isn’t desirable to use by any stretch of the imagination and it’s spread so thin out over a bunch of filler talent nodes, that’s where their design always falls flat.
The talents should be stuff like this: when you Shapeshift into Bear form you gain 100% more armor, 10% more HP and become immune to stun effects for 5 seconds while in Bearform.
When you Shapeshift into Catform you gain 5 combo points, deal 50% more damage and gain 50% more movement speed for 10 seconds while in Cat form.
When you shapeshift into Moonkin your roots become instant cast, your mana regen is increased by 100% and you deal 50% more damage for 10 seconds while in Moonkin form.
Those are talents with actual WEIGHT to them. I’m not saying they need to be exactly like that, but there should be some weight. You’re just trolling with these 2/4% dmg talents and Lycara’s, etc.
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I like the thoughts of what you said below. Talents should have weight. But can you imagine balance and feral with what you listed? Feral druids would just be shifting around the map, not using any combo building moves, and killing everything. Balance druids would be doing the same but with just rooting everything (doesn’t do much sense everyone has root removal now) and blasting everyone into the ground.
I do believe the mobility war has been going on for far too long. The removal of displacer beast and MoP force of nature to root and run was not a good look. Blizzard removed a lot of quality of life moves from druids back in the day due to “homogenization” of classes. They wanted every class to feel unique. However, in this current era, every class has what every other class has.
Defense for classes is either, shields (complete damage reduction), walls (percent damage reduction), healing, mobility.
Imo, bring back displacer, and MoP force of nature to help. Druids are a “mobile” class. If blizzard wants “class fantasy” we need to be able to get away from the classes that just zug zug the entire match.
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I wrote it in a different thread, but it bears repeating here, and again this is mainly spoken from a PvP Feral point of view, but I think it is still applicable to Druids as a whole.
This is part of the tuning coming today. While I’m appreciative of the increased healing, and have called for as much in this thread already, I can’t help but feel that this highlights again many of the issues in the Druid Class Tree.
I see this un-nerf and I get excited, thinking “hey, Regrowth got un-nerfed, now Frenzied Regeneration… maybe Well-Honed Instincts and Protector of the Pack might be worth playing around with now,” but I look around for points to give up and find none, mostly because I have to waste so many points to get critical talents like Cyclone.
As I say in the TL;DR of the original post, the Druid Class Tree needs a full rework, but it also needs immediate attention. There are both long term and short term solutions. The rework is one of the long term solutions. But we could get short term relief easily in the form of several talent point reductions:
- Lycara’s Teachings should be reduced from 3 points to 2 points (if not 1 point).
- All of the Affinity talents should be reduced from 2 points to 1 point, meaning:
- Feline Swiftness should be reduced from 2 points to 1 point (see: Fleet Footed in the Rogue Tree, which gives 15% move speed for 1 point).
- Thick Hide should be reduced from 2 points to 1 point – if it needs to come down from 6% damage reduction to 5%, that is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
- Natural Recovery should be reduced from 2 points to 1 point.
- Astral Influence should be reduced from 2 points to 1 point – especially for Feral and Guardian, for whom the talent is already nerfed from 5 yards to 3 yards.
When you count the wasted points needed to even path into these Affinity talents, it is clear that their true cost is already more than 2 points.
Talent point reductions do not require a full rework – See: Patch 10.2 Notes, where the Monk Class talent Escape From Reality was reduced from 2 points to 1 point.
We could also get short term relief in the form of dead-end clean-up and making Wild Charge/Tiger Dash enable lateral mobility in the tree by moving it up one row and having it connect to Natural Recovery and Thick Hide.
There’s no reason to let the Druid Class Tree languish for another 6 months (at least) in this state when there are several simple and minor changes that would grant some relief until the tree can be deservedly and properly reworked.
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I love this concept. Maybe not as OP as some of these like you mentioned. But definitely versions of these maybe with choice nodes so we can choose the types of benefits we shift. Shifting as a class fantasy and part of our power could work quite well if done right.
Main updates after seeing the Druid of the Claw Hero Tree:
- I really like the power they’re putting into shapeshifting as people have recently called for here – I think that there needs to be a reduction in the GCD for shifting though.
- As a PvP Feral, I would LOVE to take Ursine Vigor with the Druid of the Claw Hero Tree, but the points just aren’t there to spare. We still will be in need of a reduction at the very least of Lycara’s Teachings, but we should also see a reduction of the Affinity talents as well (Feline Swiftness, Thick Hide, Natural Recovery, and Astral Influence).
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Agreed. Recently, in PvP, I’ve been playing more of the Ursine’s Vigor, bear form can use moonfire with magic DR, and moonfire direct dmg does more when the dot is already present. I’ve done that out of necessity for dealing with the relentless melee train. Moonfire being the spell I can cast the whole time is meh, but if they could add starfire procs (like moonkin gets), Fury of Elune, and starfalls (the more from the sky abilities), maybe with a limited time allowed to “cast”, that would be great.
However, despite its limitations, it has its fun moments where you feel super-powered as you shift, and you need to time the shifts right to manage the damage you take while weaving in moonfires to keep pressure. So again, if more useful abilities were added into the mix, there could be some interesting and rewarding play there.
I think there’s potential for them to lean into all of that style more as at least an aspect of our different trees giving us some options on how to empower our shifting. They could even be part of the current affinities in our druid class tree (with reduced required points to get them as many have already mentioned).
Let’s just hope they think carefully about it while keeping it simple, fun, nd rewarding.
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Still waiting for some sort of response from Devs on the druid class tree 
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Hehehe… you’re in for a long wait my friend.
Yeah, I’m not holding my breath for a developer response.
However, it is frustrating – to put it mildly – to see specs get brand new talents, talent balancing, and talent point reduction:
- Mistweaver
- New Talent: Dance of Chi-Ji – Your spells and abilities have a chance to make your next Spinning Crane Kick deal an additional 300% damage.
- New Talent: Peer into Peace – 5% of your overhealing done onto targets with Soothing Mist is spread to 3 nearby injured allies. Soothing Mist now follows the target of your Enveloping Mist or Vivify and its channel time is increased by 4 seconds.
- Resplendent Mist now causes Gust of Mists to have a 30% chance to do 75%/150% more healing (was 50%/100%).
- Peaceful Mending is now a 1-point talent and increases the healing allies receive from Enveloping Mist and Renewing Mist by 40% while Soothing Mist is active (was 25% per point).
And to see other specs basically have their talent trees redesigned:
- Holy
- Empyreal Blaze has been redesigned – Holy Word: Chastise causes your next 2 casts of Holy Fire to be instant, cost no mana, and incur no cooldown. Refreshing Holy Fire on a target now extends its duration by 7 seconds.
- Pontifex has been redesigned – Flash Heal, Heal, Prayer of Healing, and Circle of Healing increase the healing done by your next Holy Word spell by 6% stacking up to 5 times. Lasts 30 seconds.
- Lightwell has been redesigned – Creates a Holy Lightwell. Every second the Lightwell will attempt to heal a nearby party or raid member within 40 yards that is lower than 50% health and apply a Renew to them for 6 seconds. Lightwell lasts for 2 minutes or until it heals 15 times. Cooldown reduced by 3 seconds when you cast Holy Word: Serenity or Holy Word: Sanctify.
- All healing done reduced by 7%.
- Holy Fire mana cost reduced to 0.4% of base mana (was 1%).
- Holy Word: Chastise mana cost reduced to 0.6% of base mana (was 2%).
- Resonant Words now causes Holy Words to increase the healing done by your next Flash Heal, Heal, Prayer of Healing, or Circle of Healing by 20%/40%. Lasts 30 seconds.
- Divine Word now increases the effectiveness of your next Holy Word spell by 30% (was 50%).
- Casting Holy Word: Chastise with Divine Word active now increases damage dealt by 20% and refunds 15 seconds from the cooldown of Holy Word: Chastise instead of its previous effect.
- Casting Holy Word: Sanctify with Divine Word active now blesses the target area and heals 5 targets (was 6). Healing done increased by 25%.
- Casting Holy Word: Serenity with Divine Word active no longer increases the critical strike chance of Flash Heal, Heal, and Renew.
- Healing Chorus now increases the healing of Circle of Healing by 5% stacking up to 20 times (was 2% stacking up to 50 times).
- Prayerful Litany now heals for 100% more to the most injured ally it affects (was 30%).
- Harmonious Apparatus has been renamed to Voice of Harmony and its icon has changed.
- Voice of Harmony now causes Holy Nova to reduce the cooldown of Chastise in addition to Holy Fire.
- Gales of Song is now a 1-point talent with the values of the previous 2-point version.
- Orison now has a connection to Pontifex.
- Divine Service now has a connection to Say Your Prayers.
- Empowered Renew and Rapid Recovery have been removed.
- The final 3 rows of the tree have been reorganized.
When at this point, the Druid Class Tree could be patched over until the full rework with just a necessary talent point reduction on Lycara’s Teachings and the Affinity Talents (Feline Swiftness, Thick Hide, Natural Recovery, and Astral Influence).
These trees were at least passable; the Druid Class Tree is a travesty, and objectively the worst tree of all 52 talent trees by any meaningful metric. I’m struggling to understand the priority system when it comes to which trees are getting looked at and tuned, changed, or fully reworked, and in what order, which is where developer communication would really help – though as I said, I expect none.
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Yeah, this 100% is what gets me too. We see them say that feedback means a lot to them and they take it seriously; however, the Druid Class tree has had big problems since launch and the most we got were some minor adjustments one time.
When something is universally disliked about a class, you’d think they’d chime in to either say why they are keeping it the way it is, or talk about their plans.
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The silence from Bliz on the Druid class tree is deafening.
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have you picked out the color of the dragon you wished for because that will happen first. maybe what flavor snowcone you want since hell will freeze over first?
they were pretty much dead silent about the druid class tree since it was first shown. its still as much of a mess as it was then and we were first to be shown. they had the most time to make the better and they are going a entire xpac with a shoulder shrug. blizzard says feedback means alot to them but based on there response it means something to them as long as your not a druid. no other class would have got ignored this bad this long which is amazing since the playerbase likes to act like druid is blizzards favorite class
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Very good post, everything i read makes total sense. All good points.
To me the trees should have been designed in a way where each point invested will benefit you, regardless of your spec. If they could achieve this Id be happy already
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All of this stuff was pointed out at the start of the xpac, and repeated every PTR until most druids got sick of repeating themselves.
You’re not wrong, but until we get some info from alpha/beta, I expect absolutely nothing for the rest of the xpac.
“I expect nothing, and I’m still let down!”
(…seriously, it would be nice if Blizzard did something to make the druid class tree less bad…)
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Not going to happen in the last season of the expansion.
Looking at the hero talents though, it’s almost a safe bet to assume they’ll be messing with the Druid talent trees (class and specs) going into TWW
Not that I doubt you, since I agree it’s more likely than not that they’re going to do significant work with the Druid trees come TWW, but what about the hero talents specifically makes you think that?