Force of Nature-choose the treant spec to use

[Bathtubs]

I know as a Guardian Druid, Force of Nature is not normally the best talent choice so I was talking with a friend about a way to make it more viable. The idea I had was to allow druids to choose which spec of treants to use. It makes the talent more versatile and usable in different situations. Some specific scenarios where this change can be useful include: Say you want to level as boomkin but the mobs you're trying to kill are too strong and hit too hard. Instead of using the boomkin treants for more damage, you could spec into the guardian treants to tank the mob or the resto treants to provide some quick heals while you try to kill it. Another scenario could be in pvp. Since I like to pvp as Guardian, the treants are useless in a pvp situation. It would be nice to use either kitty treants for bash or resto for pocket heals.

Please comment with any suggestions/thoughts to improve upon this idea.

[Raugnaut]

That would be fairly excellent actually, especially since they seem to be turning feral treants into balance treants that melee next patch.

For Guardians, current treants are only useful in very niche situations. Currently, their main use would be in certain strats with bosses that don't move (Ji'kun, Sha of Fear, Tortos) without any melee- cast treants on the boss and let the boss melee them for a bit of a breather on tank healing (or to soak certain moves, such as Talon Rake on Ji'kun, maybe Dread Thrash on Sha of Fear). Its a very niche ability in raid that requires excellent raid cooridination.

[Bathtubs]

I wish more people would comment so that blizz might actually see my idea haha

[Tarazet]

Nowadays, bears are running in Feral spec in PvP so they don't have the flag-carrying debuff. But that's off topic.

I started a thread about how to fix the tanking treants. Consensus was that they should do more damage and generate Rage for the Druid, if they want to come close to competing with Incarnation: Son of Ursoc.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...orce-of-Nature

[Grubjuice]

how mechanically would you choose which treant to use?

for example, the easiest way would be for the talent to give you 4 separate treant spells (Feral Treant, Guardian Treant, Balance Treant, Restoration Treant). you can write the specific treant type into a macro like
/cast [mod] Restoration Treant; Guardian Treant

and in the spell book the four types could be organized into a pull-out menu like shaman totems or warlock demons.

[Grubjuice]

but that might be TOO versatile. it could also be organized like a holy priest's chakra spell, you can only switch which type of treant you use once every 30 seconds.

[Bathtubs]

I kind of like both ideas. Would be nice to generate rage for the druid tank

[huth]

It's a pure throughput increase tier. Allowing you to choose which treants you drop would make it a utility CD, and therefore, no longer fit into it's talent tier.

[Tarazet]

It's a pure throughput increase tier. Allowing you to choose which treants you drop would make it a utility CD, and therefore, no longer fit into it's talent tier.

The current treants do nothing for throughput and can't hold aggro off of bosses. The only usefulness they have is if you're soloing in Cat Form, and why would you do that if you can be a bear and eat all the things? Maybe they work in PvP for aggroing Warlock/Hunter pets.

[huth]

You can't just look at them from a Guardian's view, though. All specs can get the talent.

[Tarazet]

You can't just look at them from a Guardian's view, though. All specs can get the talent.

We can certainly look at the Guardian's treants from a Guardian's point of view. They are designed to taunt something, maybe melee it for a few hits and then die. They don't do it very well. They did make a PTR hotfix so that they generate Vengeance for the Druid when they take damage, but if they're doing that without actually fixing how they work, I don't see the point and it just tells me they don't know what they're doing with that talent.

[Bathtubs]

At the moment the treants seem to be only useful for boomkin/resto once they reach certain haste break points. I like the hotfix that gives the guardian vengeance when the treants take dmg, but agree that they die too easily. An idea I had about Guardian Treants was to either have them have the armor of the guardian casting the spell or have them cast savage defense or frenzy regen when the guardian uses those abilities.

[Noradin]

The should do a combination of permanent misdirection and healing the tank for damage they deal (which should include a small AoE), maybe some kind of sacrificing or interception (maybe even take debuffs that would have been applied?). Would be great if they spawned next to the target instead of the druid (if one exists).

The role of the tank is to deflect damage from the raid and keeping the attention of the enemy. Treants should help with that just like they help the other specs with their jobs, instead of taking the attention of the enemy away from the tank, which would take away the control of the enemy that is the most important part of being a tank.

Funneling healing and aggro to the tank while taking (some) debuffs upon themselfes - that would be helpful to the tank seeking to fill his role.