Lore wise: Worgen is a form of druidic ability which through improper use developed into the worgen curse. It was known has a stronger feral form than cat form, But ofcourse had the drawbacks related to losing ones self to the feral side. It seems from a lore point of view extremely redundant if we’ve been taught how to control our Worgen forms, and important lore characters have been seen embracing the physical prowess provided by the form in multiple fights (Greymane v Sylvanas). It seems actually more lore breaking that we would sacrifice the stronger Worgen form to shift into the cat form. (The other obvious counter argument to this would be "Well wouldn’t that make every Worgen a feral druid, just some wield magic, others swords (warriors, Mages etc) But whilst those Worgen forego truly understanding, Embracing and learning what their own physical form can do by instead relying on other crutches (weapons, Magic etc) The druids study intensively to understand their curse and embrace it as a blessing.
Gameplay: It could either be a glyph or a racial bound only to druid Worgens. Something along the lines of “Wolfs Embrace” (Look, name doesn’t matter. Just have it treated like a standard Cat shapeshift so balance wise it’s just like any other druid, not giving worgen an unfair advantage to always have cat form active. Flavour text could read “Focus in on the embrace of the wolf” idk. ) Simply provide it a similar attacking stance to monk where the weapons unless fist remain on the back / hips and the attack animations favours the unarmed/Fistweapon type animation. By making it an additional ability separate to cat form, Still gives the players a choice.
Time investment: I mean really, Seems like very little for something that’ll make a portion (albiet small) quite happy.
Probably because our worgen form is more akin to the same as other races as our base form. My claws certainly seem like they could rip, rake and thrash.
I think if we were to get monks it would fill that niche if using our hands and feet.
Giving direct feral to us would be a huge advantage that they wouldn’t permit despite it making sense logistically.
And ESPECIALLY with the Claws of Shirvallah already using the Worgen skeleton for Feral as a talent at one point, I’d love to see both implemented separately.
Glyph of the Pack Form - Worgen-as-feral
Glyph of Goldrinn’s/Lo’gash’s Favor - Straight up wolf as feral
Glyph of the Jungle Cats - Claws of Shirvallah form.
I think it’s more of trying to maintain control. Yes they could use their claws ect ect, but that puts them far closer to the beast then what is prudent. Using more typical druid forms may allow them to keep their focus. But no one cares about Lore or story so whatever. Worgen away.
A perfect suggestion with a lot better naming conventions than I.
Side note, I really do miss the spice of the Saberon forms. Was just really a unique take. (Though I also miss glad warriors, At least WoD did add some fun in that regard, as much as a balancing nightmare it was for bliz)
Actually realized the other day, they aren’t just ‘more typical’, they’re elven forms with more leather and studs.
On the one hand, I kind of get it, since worgen druids were theoretically taught those forms by night elves in the first place, but on the other hand we had druids before the elves rescued us, so I’m not sure why they couldn’t have been taught more uniquely worgen forms.
Especially now that trolls and Kul Tirans have markedly different forms.
Maybe we’ll get more Gilnean forms and shapes when other races get their druid forms too. =/
Original story before Kul’tiran Druids was, Gilneans had Harvest Witches which were primitive druids, the Night elves that trained them taught them more refined techniques.
I guess an odd comparison would be a self taught street fighter being taught Martial arts by a grandmaster.
I guess my point was more in the other direction. Someone decided that even though no other races needed to be tutored on how to shapeshift, the race that has shapeshifting inherent to its fantasy did need that tutoring, and that it had to be the night elves to do it instead of, for example, Goldrinn or some other Wild God having taught the harvest witches how to do it.
But much like many other of my many points, that ship has already sailed, scuttled, and been salvaged for a wickerman. Presumably by the Kul’tirans since wickerbeasts are their schtick now.
Well here’s the thing, back when Worgen was first released. If you did the starting area you didn’t get access to druidic transformations until after you evacuate to Darnassus. Now I could be wrong, my memory is about as good as a steel trap, old and rusty. But I’m pretty sure that’s how it was. So from a (and I am speaking out my [REDACTED] here) “organic” story telling it wasn’t until they were among Night elves that Worgen druids learned to transform into Bear and Cat forms.
Yea those Wicker beast forms are just amazing. If they were the Gilneans druidic transformations oof, that’d probably be what tempts me going Worgen over Night elf druid.
Another thing that could have been interesting is, if the Undead had developed an affinity for Druid magic or at least the Death part of the cycle of renewal those could have been good forms for them as well.
Nah, you picked up Cat form at the appropriate level (8), and if you had heirlooms that could be as early as the second time you run into Celestine. Maybe the first if there was an experience event running?
Before BfA, it was the Gilneans who hosted the wickerman portion of Hallow’s End (they might still, I’ve missed the last few), so I get extra salt over Kul’Tirans having the drust forms. But now that Kul’tirans HAVE the wicker forms, ours just feel really lackluster.
And I get the feeling, especially after Highmountain’s travel form and Kul’Tiran and Zandalari everything that any new druid races are just going to make that feeling even more pronounced.
Though who knows how they’re going to handle mechagnome druids in anything even pretending to be a lore friendly way.
This is actually a fantastic point. I guess that would come down to if bliz wants to give us monk access, then I would say power to them (as much as I love my lore, I disagree with lore impacting gameplay. Within reason ofcourse)
I’d be lying if I said I was averse to this after having played GoW: Ragnarok. Problem is Feral druids already have this set of animations keyed towards cats and how they fight, fang and claw. Where as wolves tend to focus more on the fang part. Though I could be incredibly wrong.
As cool as it could be, it would create issues with balancing because if a worgen shifted into cat form and it was their worgen form, you wouldn’t know if the druid was out of form or in form, worse if it replaced bear form.
I think one way around this could be to make the worgen druid form’s worgen bigger or something? And have some bits and bobs on it? Idk. Hard to make it work.
I’m not saying it’d be a perfect solution, just something that feels better than us being Great Value night elf and tauren forms.
Give tauren more tauren-esque forms too while we’re at it, and non-zandalari trolls. Though at least with trolls their cat form feels sufficiently different thanks to being tigers instead of panthers. Pumas? Cougars? Whatever nelves are.
Eh. Just give it the Saberon animations and call it a day. The differences in posture and stancing would be a dead giveaway, even if the giant heckoff spear wasn’t.
I feel this could be completely valid with Bear form, Especially being a bit more of an expect chonker.
The concerns about visibility in what form the druid is in for feral, I pick up what your putting down, But there would be ways to work into that (I.E Standard walking animation would be the same as running wild animation to show the beast like form) Not to mention if we’re talking pure visual identification we have similar cases where aside from ability animations and addons showing the class that’s running at you, Identifying if it’s a warrior or a DK running at you can be difficult. But The big hit that it would be is to mages knowing if they can poly or not now that I think about it. So that’s a very valid point.
If a mage is attempting to polymorph the druid it’s going to be a bad time regardless. Even if the druid isn’t in a druid shape, they just have to hit their shapeshift button to break an active poly.
