Heart of The Wild

[Drilnos]

Currently Guardian Kitty ( and Guardian Boomkin for that matter) DPS is lower than 0-Vengeance Bear

0 Vengeance Bear: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/9...8w5/details/9/
Guardian -> Moonkin: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/2...h2/details/12/
Guardian -> Cat: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...dje/details/9/

Not saying that they can't be fixed though. Also I have to admit that the double passive bonus from HotW for Guardians is too good to ignore (which is also currently bugged :P )

Hm. I hadn't seen those before. Seems rather counter to the whole point of the talent to me, but the numbers could change. Half the reason I change forms on a tank swap is so I'm not fighting the other tank for aggro, since I tend to tear it off him pretty easily, so I'd have to dial back on the dps if I wasn't swapping out of bear anyway.

[Keiyra]

Horrible talent by design. Potentially great idea in concept, but horrible by design. And oddly enough Completely contrary to blizzards overall design goals for MOP. They are purposely dividing specs from hybrid classes to further segment the healer roles from the damage roles from the tank roles. This is painfully obvious when you take into account the healing spells a feral loses, the damage abilities resto loses, etc.

And after all those game altering adjustments us hybrids are getting....then they turn around and give us a horrible talent that attempts to put the hybrid back into hybrid class.

There is no way in hell a resto druid is going to save a raid by popping into tank form in his/her resto gear after a tank goes down. It's equally useless in pvp as you will never be efficient enough in these other roles without the gear and abilities that role would get normally.

HOTW is a very big 'screw you' from blizzard in my opinion. HOTW at the very minimum should give us access to all abilities the class has in it. Especially since the CD is 6 mins long which is absurd.

I agree with you in general, but I think a big reason they are pushing this kind of talent (along with other healing+dps talents across the other classes) is because they want them to be used in their new toy of PvE Scenarios where folks wont always have a tank or a healer in the group.

But yeah, when you have to tack on passive stat increases as a bribe (which you just got rid of from the previous talent trees) its pretty clear you can't figure out how to make the talent attractive to players in its current form.

[exochaft]

...when you have to tack on passive stat increases as a bribe (which you just got rid of from the previous talent trees) its pretty clear you can't figure out how to make the talent attractive to players in its current form.

I don't think the non-passive portion of HotW wasn't attractive to some degree (assuming it works correctly), it just pales in comparison to shorter CD's of the other talents. If you consider Nature's Vigil being the "obvious choice" baseline talent of the tier, HotW would have to be at least double in power if it did not have passives to be relatively on par with NV (if you assume 60 seconds of NV versus 45 seconds of HotW over 6 minutes). That would make HotW a massive burst CD potentially, and I'm fairly certain we would never see that happen. However, I'm not foolish enough to believe all these changes happened in a vacuum, much of this has to do with Entanglement being removed as a talent and the remolding of the lvl 90 tier talents towards a new end.

Long story short: the passives on HotW aren't a bribe, they're the true balance against NV, and you can almost think of the on-use portion of HotW as a bonus to picking passives (which would be pretty boring by themselves).

Now if we want to focus on the on-use portion of HotW, even without the WoL parses one could tell they're pretty weak just by using them... or maybe I just have a good sense of the damage I put out when playing with it. On the upside of things, I'd say it's proof that they've effectively separated each druid role. On the downside, they were too effective in separating roles to the point where their current on-use of HotW doesn't work so well. It's a combination of not having every tool in the toolbox and Mastery not being useful for the transformation.

Would it be easy to fix HotW by giving us the tools or Mastery? Well... I'm not going to assume I know exactly how they code it, so I don't have an exact answer. If you give druids access to all the tools and they only become usable with HotW activated, that would likely work while cluttering up our toolbars with unnecessary crap 99.8% of the time (made up statistic, of course). If you give druids simultaneous access to the Mastery bonuses of all specs simultaneous... well, I just don't see that happening, would seem rather weird and a potential bug-fest. The likely solution would be to buff the everliving daylights out of the primary stats and/or spell modifiers for the on-use portion of HotW.

Regardless of whatever route Blizz decides to take to balance these talents, they cannot make the damage/healing/tanking of the on-use HotW too good, as in it must always be sub-par to a druid picking the role as their primary spec. I can already hear the sharp inhaling of people wanting to cry out angrily against this, but it's truly for the better. If you cannot see how HotW could be abused if a druid could switch roles and be as effective at any role regardless of their spec for 45 seconds, you probably cannot comprehend the problem with the slippery slope that is/was Bearcat... although I suppose HotW could technically be worse since it would involve all specs.

[Mrbleedinggums]

I could see some benefit from HotW. You're doing some 5 mans, the tank/healer dies and your battlerez is on cd. Oh hey, pop cd, and either be able to effectively heal the boss or tank it and not suffer a wipe. Same with a raid, OT goes down, pop cd, hold it off for just a bit more while the raid finishes off the boss. It's all situational. That is why you can change these talents as you go.

[Deleted]

I'm pretty sure a Feral or Boomkin popping HotW to heal the flag carrier and save the game would happen way more frequently than saving the tank or the raid in a pve scenario. "Yeah go ahead and heal everyone, I'm sure the enrage timer is not a problem"

At least that's my point of view.

heal with what ? you really believe with 1.7 cast of healling touch you will be able to save someone ? cause apart from HT i dont see anything else that you could use as feral or moonkin to heal someone in order to save him
and what i find really fanny is that HOTW says that non resto speccs reduse the cost of all healling abilitys by 100% what abiltys exacly they all got removed

[Juvencus]

heal with what ? you really believe with 1.7 cast of healling touch you will be able to save someone ? cause apart from HT i dont see anything else that you could use as feral or moonkin to heal someone in order to save him
and what i find really fanny is that HOTW says that non resto speccs reduse the cost of all healling abilitys by 100% what abiltys exacly they all got removed

I just said, imo, that it will be used more often. Doesn't mean that it won't be a rare event.

[Deleted]

I'm pretty sure a Feral or Boomkin popping HotW to heal the flag carrier and save the game would happen way more frequently than saving the tank or the raid in a pve scenario. "Yeah go ahead and heal everyone, I'm sure the enrage timer is not a problem"

At least that's my point of view.

useless talent because in pvp as soon as u pop that a class with a minimum of brain tunnels u. I think is better take dream of cenarius for pvp. And 6 mins cd is too long.

[Karnalsyn]

useless talent because in pvp as soon as u pop that a class with a minimum of brain tunnels u. I think is better take dream of cenarius for pvp. And 6 mins cd is too long.

Yea I agree. As cool as Nature's Vigil is...I'd still take DoC for pvp I think. The sustained increase to healing as long as you are rolling rejuvs or cenarion wards or whatever on yourself, will give you a much longer life in combat.

[Deleted]

I was thinking it might be usable in 2's for a resto with a weapon swap macro; switch to a limited feral play style. Its prolly not as useful without a pole arm equipped. Depends what the on use bonus ends up being though.

[huth]

I was thinking it might be usable in 2's for a resto with a weapon swap macro; switch to a limited feral play style. Its prolly not as useful without a pole arm equipped. Depends what the on use bonus ends up being though.

Well, you can still swap weapons in combat. Also keep in mind that you get your entire Int added to your agility in cat and bear if you're Resto or Balance.

[Arielle]

Well, you can still swap weapons in combat. Also keep in mind that you get your entire Int added to your agility in cat and bear if you're Resto or Balance.

Agility =| Weapon Damage. You will need a weapon swap.

[huth]

Read what you quote. Seriously.

[Tobywongg]

Looks like he quoted the correct part. Agility is less than weapon damage, so a healer staff and especially MH/OH will not be viable.

[Chimaera]

Looks like he quoted the correct part. Agility is less than weapon damage, so a healer staff and especially MH/OH will not be viable.

Let me state it again for huth. You can change weapons in combat. Huth said that in the post that was quoted.

[Arielle]

Let me state it again for huth. You can change weapons in combat. Huth said that in the post that was quoted.

That's only because you can't swap gear in combat. It has nothing to do with weapons. Of course you can weapon swap, but the talent shouldn't be completely useless unless you do.

Also something I just realized, you can't switch trinkets in combat.

[Deleted]

That's only because you can't swap gear in combat. It has nothing to do with weapons. Of course you can weapon swap, but the talent shouldn't be completely useless unless you do.

Also something I just realized, you can't switch trinkets in combat.

All True; weapon is the only item you can swap in combat/arena, If it is balanced around not having to weapon swap it might be a good DPS gain over hard casting wrath With HoTW active. Although seems that resto is locked out of Savage Roar the 'on use' component would have to make up for some or all of that.

[Ashrr]

From a PVE perspective:

I'm not 90 yet on the beta so I haven't played with this talent but as a resto druid, I could think of some uses for it. In the last expansion, there were quite a few opportunities for healers to throw in a little dps to meet the checks. Rag HC P3, Spine Tendons, Chimaeron P2 to name a few.

Non restos could use it assist the healing in places like Beth'tilac's Devastation, Spine Rolls and others. Sure they're gonna be wasting a major chunk of the duration but sometimes it's needed.