#1 - April 25, 2012, 1:20 a.m.
Disentanglement: Still a self-heal/root breaker tied into our shapeshifting. Great to see it back as an all-spec option, but rather boring for what I'd consider a MoP-caliber talent.
Dream of Cenarius:
Wrath, Starfire, Starsurge, and melee abilities increase healing done by your next healing spell by 30%.
Non-instant casts of Nourish, Healing Touch, and Regrowth increase the damage done by your next damaging spell or ability by 30%.
Each of these bonuses lasts 30 sec
They removed the 30sec CD on the buff. I don't know what they expect us to do with that. Are resto's expected to flip between healing and wrath-spam in order to be better healers? Are balance expected to do the same in order to be better dps? Is there any reason ferals or guardians would use this for more than a quick save, if that? Sure, it has some situational utility, but at what cost? Will we actually be gimping ourselves if we don't use this dps/heal buff every time it's up?
I guess I'm really just confused as to where Blizzard would think this would be a worthwhile talent to use, if it seemingly forces us to dance between healing and dps to keep the buff(s).
Heart of the Wild
Dramatically improves the Druid's ability to perform roles outside of their normal specialization for 45 sec. Grants the following benefits based on current specialization:
With the latest build, that wall of text has finally been cleaned up in such a way as to be understandable to those without a PHD in Linguistics. Let's break it down, then:
Non-Guardian
While in Bear Form, Agility, Expertise, Hit Chance, and armor bonuses increased, and chance to be hit by melee critical strikes reduced.
So, we get buffed so that we can actually survive in bear form for some length of time, but do we actually have the tools necessary to do the job of tanking effectively? We have Might of Ursoc (+30% health) and barkskin (-20% taken) as our available CDs, which leaves us rather squishy even for a bear, since we're left without the guardian mastery (+armour) or even Savage Defence (+% to dodge). This leaves one to question how any druid would even have the longevity to last 45 seconds in bear form.
Non-Feral
While in Cat Form, Agility, Hit Chance, and Expertise increased.
This seems to give us the basics in doing decent cat dps, but we are left without any energy cd's, or any of the heavy hitting finishers that ferals have access to. The only spec this may benefit would be guardians, and only because they share some spec-specific abilities (see mangle, thrash) Balance and resto would never go this route as they are ranged casters who will never have the tools to dps in cat form effectively.
Non-Restoration
Healing increased and mana cost of all healing spells reduced by 100%. Guardian Druids may also cast Rejuvenation while shapeshifted.
So Guardians get a self-hot for 45 seconds, great, now where are the other spec-specific perks in this talent? This version is pretty nice, though. Completely removes the cost of healing spells for 45 seconds, so I could see a non-resto hitting this than channeling tranq. Balance would get the most of this, since, coupled with the moonbeast glyph, they can throw out free heals if needed pretty easy. Again, though, we run into that brick wall of having a very limited pool of spells to heal with, so even this talent begins to pale in light of that drawback.
Non-Balance
Spell Damage and Hit Chance increased. Mana cost of all damage spells reduced by 100%.
This could only benefit resto druids. Bears and cats will stay in melee range flitting between animal forms, so this won't do a thing for them. It'll be good on a burn phase where all healers are not required. But again, lack of dps rotation due to specialization, and how many resto druids took Malfurion's Gift?
This tier is so risky for Blizzard, as either all druids will go for the root breaker, or be bullied by their raid into choosing one of the other talents, potentially forfeiting their dps/hps potential in favour of situational utility. I sincerely hope Blizzard has another tier in mind should this one be shown to fail in beta once lvl 90 is unlocked, because if this is all we have to look forward to come 90 in live, and it doesn't work, there will be a whole bunch of upset druids to contend with.
