#0 - Sept. 25, 2006, 11:45 p.m.
At the moment, many druids are disgruntled with their class. The outdoor restrictions on several druid abilities, the lack of spell interrupts in anything but Bearform, the lack of crowd control abilities, the poor itemisation for anything but healing and the poor scaling with equipment have been growing concerns of the druid community. Furthermore, the lack of utility for Feral / Balance druids in raids have been a nuisance to many druids and gives cause to many conflicts within guilds. These are problems that must be fixed by the new talents.
Balance
Cyclone -> Without any outdoor or mob restriction, this is potentially a very powerful spell, granting the druid time to heal or to flee, depending on the situation. However, when I looked at this skill, I immediately had to think of Deathcoil. Deathcoil is instant, damages the target, heals the player and does not make the target immune to other damage. Moreover, Deathcoil is useable as a spellinterrupt. Cyclone compares pale to this. So to improve on Cyclone, I'd suggest making it instant, but reduce the time to 4 seconds (still gives the druid time to heal) along with a 90s cooldown. Then we would a really nice "Oh crap" button that is useable when everything else fails. Something that druids really need imho. Alternatively, make improved Wrath or Control of Nature reduce the cast time on Cyclone.
Lunar Guidance -> Nice talent for only 3 talent points. Not too high in the tree, so also useable by resto druids to improve on their healing.
Nature's Warrior -> Decent talent for only 2 talent points. Gives slightly more survability versus casters which is what Balance was lacking. Even though 4% 'resist' will not save the day, the extra 4% hit makes it decent enough to consider.
Dreamstate -> Great talent, will solve the mana issues for many PvE balance druids. Slightly less useable in a PvP build, but for only 3 talent points you get a nice deal.
Moonkin -> Moonkin was slightly altered. Finally they're becoming Battlemages. However, for this change to be of any use, druids need to be awarded Hybrid status by Blizzard. Moonkins as battlemages can only become really viable if our weapon timers no longer reset whenever you cast a spell. So for now, Moonkin is still in the poor shape it was before.
Improved Faery Fire -> Nice improvement to Faery Fire and probably a must-have for many raiding Balance druids. However, the rather high position in the tree along with the limited effect are setbacks. Decent talent nonetheless and make balance druids slightly more attractive to raids. Unfortunately, it is doubtful whether it will be enough for many guilds to allow balance druids in their raids.
Twilight's Wrath -> Great talent, scales very nicely with gear. Nothing more to say about it.
Force of Nature -> Barov's Peasant Caller on a 3 min cooldown. Unless the damage is significantly higher, the AI significantly better (no more running away to some random mob 40y away instead of the selected target) and their HP a lot higher (no more dying in 1 AE), this talent is utterly useless. We'll have to wait to see how it works, but for now I give this one a thumbs down. Especially since Priests get a very similar skill for free.
Conclusion -> All in all Balance did get some nice new talents. However, it still lacks a viable spell interrupt and as such, survivability versus casters. The tier 9 talent is rather insulting in it’s current form. My main gripe however is that there is very little that defines a Balance druid and makes him different from a mage or a warlock. I would’ve liked a bit more originality for the talents.
Feral
Maim -> Finally a spell interrupt for cat. It was long awaited and something catform really needed. However, to actually benefit from the interrupt, it needs two things. It needs to turn off the auto-attack (similar to Gouge) and it should not break on bleed damage. Because right now, if you wish to use Maim, you should not use Rip, Rake, Pounce, Lacerate or Mangle. It effectively locks out 5 feral abilities, which is too high a price for an otherwise great ability.
Lacerate -> Nice new ability for bearform. Even though aggro generation has never been a bear’s main concern, it allows for some more steady aggro on resist heavy fights, where we cannot rely as much on our Maul to keep the aggro. However, it would be nice if the bleed damage could scale with gear. We do not need yet another ability that doesn’t scale with gear.
Flight Form -> Will probably cause many whines from other classes, because we will look cool with it. The 3s cast time seems enough to balance it, provided it will be useable in combat. If not, it will just be a neat toy for 2 levels.
Nurturing Instinct -> Nice Hybrid ability. Especially makes NS + HT more powerful. Probably won’t be used by full feral druids though.
Survival of the Fittest -> Again a nice Hybrid ability and probably a must have for many feral druids. However, I regard it as a disadvantage that it is on the same tier as Heart of the Wild. Two 5 point Hybrid abilities in the same tier is one too many. Switch Nurturing Instinct with Shredding Attacks and put Survival of the Fittest in tier 5 and we would have a very good looking feral tree.
Primal Tenacity -> Great talent for any druid. Any druid. Which in fact makes me wonder why it has to be that high up the tree. It would be great if this could be a tier 1/2 talent so that Balance and Resto druids also have a reason to put some points into Feral. Natural Weapons is in the Balance tree for a reason as is Furor in Resto. Let this talent be the reason resto / balance druids spend points in Feral.
Improved Leader of the Pack -> A 100 HP heal for the rogue every time he crits? Not bad at all, I am confident many will love this. Good thing there is a 6s timer on it, else the whine from other classes would be flooding our forums.
Predatory Instincts -> Once you’re this high up the tree, this is a nice addon to your talent build. Especially pure catdruids will love it as it gives them some protection from AoE’ing bosses as well as an upgrade to their own dps. Very nice talent.
Mangle -> A lot has been said about this already so I’ll be brief. The fact that it is an instant attack for bear and more powerful than Claw in catform make it a worthy talent. Plus Rogue and Warrior’s will like the increased damage on the Rupture and Deepwound abilities.
Conclusion -> Overall the Feral changes look quite nice. A nice bit of both hybrid and raid utility was added as well as a decent upgrade to the overall dps and survivability. It would be nice if Blizzard could rethink the position of the various talents in the tree though as there is still room for improvement there.
Restoration
Lifebloom -> A HoT that people don’t want to dispel for a change :D. Not quite unlike Unstable Affliction for Warlocks. For now, I am a bit concerned as to how this will scale with gear. A 600 heal isn’t all that impressive, especially when you take the global cooldown into account. You’d have to spend 4.5s casting to get an 1800 heal when dispelled. If it isn’t dispelled, it’d heal for 2619 HP in total. Not bad for 660 mana (3x 220), but not impressive either. The way it scales with gear will make or break this spell, so no final opinion yet.
Empowered Touch -> Making Resto druids scale a bit better with gear is always a good thing. Pity is only affects HT, but then again, it costs only 2 talent points. Good enough.
Living Spirit -> Great talent. However, our tier sets have been focused more and more on mp5 as have a lot of druids. Now to make this useful, we have to start picking up Spirit. Good way to make Spirit more useful and great when combined with Innervate. Just give itemization to support it.
Natural Perfection -> Survivability for Resto Druids. Great talent, however, I wish this would be lower in the tree as it would be very useful for any druids that does PvP. Tier 5 or 6 would be ideal for a talent like this (allowing tier 7 in another tree as well).
Empowered Rejuvenation -> Not quite unlike Empowered Touch, except this time for HoTs. Seeing as how we have many more of those, this talent is more useful, if it wouldn’t also be more expensive. Would only take this if going for Tree of Restoration (see next).
Tree of Restoration -> Our 7th Shapeshift, this time a healer form. Even though requested by quite a few druids (and hell, I would love to shapeshift into a tree), the implementation is very poor. It cuts off one of the most powerful healing combo’s (NS + HT) and on top of that disables your free movement. Healers are already a prime target in PvP and a healer that can only move at 50% speed is dead before he can cast his first heal. Add to that the fact that PvE encounters have required people to be more and more flexible (even running from C’thun Dark Glare is treacherous at 50% speed) and you have a very, very limited 9th tier resto talent. The movement penalty needs to go for this form to be of any use. Shifting in and out simply isn’t an option when it costs 864 mana every time you do.
Conclusion -> The changes to Restoration look very poor. With imp rejuv now being required for imp regrowth and gift of nature required for swiftmend and one could argue that Resto has been nerfed. Even though some scaleable talents were added, neither imp rejuv, nor gift of nature scale with gear and were always low on the priority list for druids. Making them vital through these changes is an insult to every resto druid and makes it very likely very few druids will ever spec beyond 21 points in Resto.
