Ability bloat/unnecessary spells

[Aboubacar]

I've seen a few threads on this topic in other class threads so I thought I'd start a druid one. Going to start with a couple of abilities that I don't think druids need and hopefully you guys can go from there. This is from a resto/balance standpoint. Not as familiar with feral dps or guardian.

For the most part, in my opinion, these are extremely situational abilities that very rarely get used:

1. Soothe

2. Entangling roots (since u can now pick up FoN for instant roots and nature's grasp to peel melee)

3. Nourish

4. Bear Hug

and faerie fire for certain specs (integrate it into other spells. don't have too many ideas with this) Not completely sure on this one. The prevention of stealth was pretty unique but with 10s duration in pvp much less desirable. In PVE it's rather awkward for balance/resto to apply (and why is a caster applying sunder not CoE?)

Looking for other ideas or thoughts on the ideas that I listed here. A lot of the ability bloat was toned down in MoP by not giving all the specs all the spells, but usually things like mangle and rake are on your cat bar anyway so it doesn't actually lead to this button bloat issue that has been brought up.

[Shinrael]

Overpower
Faerie Fire
Sunder Armor
All the blood DK damaging spells ( aside from death strike, heart strike, blood boil and rune strike )
Expel Harm ( useful but it sucks having both it and Jab )

[Cyous]

Teleport: Moonglade is OP.

[Aboubacar]

Teleport: Moonglade is OP.

If they actually still had druid-specific quests there still like all the form quests (which i really miss) it would be useful. There's no need to actually bind that spell so I don't think it would qualify.

@silverrendy, since this is on the druid class forums I was trying to specifically address druid spells that are uneeded.

Faerie fire specifically is in a really weird spot. It's extremely situational for balance and resto. Nearly never used in PVE. Probably used even less in PVP when they nerf the duration to 10sec (stealth counter portion). Idk, seems like it's fading out, but it's a really iconic ability I'd hate to see go.

Idk if I've ever seen a bear use bear hug either... not sure what that spell's intended use was lol.

Soothe is one of those things thats fading out too. There's no boss enrages since MSV that require enrage removal. That's already covered by shiv and tranq shot iirc. Pretty simple, don't make enrage removal mechanics. Removing enrages in pvp atm wasted gcd.

[Deleted]

I've seen a few threads on this topic in other class threads so I thought I'd start a druid one. Going to start with a couple of abilities that I don't think druids need and hopefully you guys can go from there. This is from a resto/balance standpoint. Not as familiar with feral dps or guardian.

For the most part, in my opinion, these are extremely situational abilities that very rarely get used:

1. Soothe

2. Entangling roots (since u can now pick up FoN for instant roots and nature's grasp to peel melee)

3. Nourish

4. Bear Hug

and faerie fire for certain specs (integrate it into other spells. don't have too many ideas with this) Not completely sure on this one. The prevention of stealth was pretty unique but with 10s duration in pvp much less desirable. In PVE it's rather awkward for balance/resto to apply (and why is a caster applying sunder not CoE?)

Looking for other ideas or thoughts on the ideas that I listed here. A lot of the ability bloat was toned down in MoP by not giving all the specs all the spells, but usually things like mangle and rake are on your cat bar anyway so it doesn't actually lead to this button bloat issue that has been brought up.

nah entangling roots is classic i like it. dont like the others though.

[Aboubacar]

nah entangling roots is classic i like it. dont like the others though.

Why do we need nature's grasp, mass entanglement, force of nature, and entangling? Seems excessive.

[Cyous]

Why do we need nature's grasp, mass entanglement, force of nature, and entangling? Seems excessive.

"Flavor."

/10chars

[Bzl]

I've seen a few threads on this topic in other class threads so I thought I'd start a druid one. Going to start with a couple of abilities that I don't think druids need and hopefully you guys can go from there. This is from a resto/balance standpoint. Not as familiar with feral dps or guardian.

For the most part, in my opinion, these are extremely situational abilities that very rarely get used:

1. Soothe

I use this VERY frequently in PvP on warriors or DK's. If this gets removed, all warrriors and DK's damage versus me will go up around 10-15% on average. Where will that put me in PvP?

2. Entangling roots (since u can now pick up FoN for instant roots and nature's grasp to peel melee)

Again, PvP. If you manage to sleep a shaman or another druid, and you dont want to spend a 30 sec cooldown when your final hibernate is about to wear off; this is the way you want to do it; a no CD root effect punished with a cast time. Its fairly balanced, and it makes sense as a spell for druids.

3. Nourish

Has some importance because of the weird way it works, i.e "high" base heal, so good at low ilevel, also refreshes harmony and lifeblooms. However it completly falls out of any sort of rotation when your knee deep in heroic raiding; the only thing I might see it good for is refreshing harmony when you are idle, but yes, this spell needs to be "redone" in some way, or else it would be a viable candidate for removal.

4. Bear Hug

You dont have this spell neither as resto nor balance. And it makes sense giving Guardian druids at least one instant stun mechanic.

and faerie fire for certain specs (integrate it into other spells. don't have too many ideas with this) Not completely sure on this one. The prevention of stealth was pretty unique but with 10s duration in pvp much less desirable. In PVE it's rather awkward for balance/resto to apply (and why is a caster applying sunder not CoE?)

I agree. It feels clunky, but you NEED it on your bars for when you meet other rogues or druids. How about integrating it into all damaging spells from druids; dealing direct damage applies the debuff for 8 sec; dealing damage another time increases the stack to two, and ups it to 15 sec, and dealing damage a third time caps it at 3 debuff stacks and 20 seconds. I'm not sure how to solve it, but this should be one of the things that falls victim to ability bloat fix.

Looking for other ideas or thoughts on the ideas that I listed here. A lot of the ability bloat was toned down in MoP by not giving all the specs all the spells, but usually things like mangle and rake are on your cat bar anyway so it doesn't actually lead to this button bloat issue that has been brought up.

Also, it might not be as big; but playing as a resto druid, do we need moonfire? I feel the only times I've used it is when I wanted to keep something in stealth. Its a large loss in DPS (if you ever heart of the wild dps), and it provides close to nothing. Could this spell be removed with very low implications? Probably. I'm just afraid it might be "too iconic" for druids.

Why do we need nature's grasp, mass entanglement, force of nature, and entangling? Seems excessive.

We dont. Its a talent. You pick it if you think its good. If not, then pick another talent.
Nature's grasp/ME are both tools for the escape artist in PvP. If you have multiple melee's like rogues or warriors on you, ME can and probably will save you a buttload of times. If one of them however trinkets, that Natures grasp might be the edge you need to survive. Its also great versus hunters; when the hunter and his pet is so far apart that neither spell will cover both, and a combination can allow you to move behind a wall and heal up.

Just because you guys dont use these spells does not mean that its okay to remove them. This discussion needs input from all the different angles of our class, PvP and PvE. It seems like the majority of players here prefer playing PvE; which will naturally create some bias in this discussion, but please be open minded here.

[Alzu]

I use this VERY frequently in PvP on warriors or DK's. If this gets removed, all warrriors and DK's damage versus me will go up around 10-15% on average. Where will that put me in PvP?

Nowadays DKs don't have anything we can dispel and warriors are quite non-existent in PvP (at least at higher ratings) so that is not really an issue. Also, other healers don't have that luxury and we are in the end balanced like them against all classes (at least they try to) so removing Soothe wouldn't be such a big deal. Still I'd like to keep it as it is used against warriors, even if it's not super good.

Nourish can go, while some players still use it, I find that they use it just because they can. It has lost its usefulness.

Roots cannot go. It'd remove a form of CC completely for resto druids and is, in my opinion, something druid-like that has been with us always and will always be. Nature's Grasp would indeed be still there but it is much much worse than roots themselves.

Moonfire is something that is used heavily in resto druid dps and it cannot go. With HotW, a moonfire with 0 crits will almost outdamage a crit wrath. Cat is very rarely used because the DPS is more or less the same as wrath spam, you lose your ranged benefit and don't gain anything. Also it's an instant dot that can be used even outside of HotW just to get that extra pressure in arenas.

I personally don't feel like resto/balance druids have anything else than Nourish that should be gone. Everything else is used quite frequently Can't speak for feral/guardian though.

[Juvencus]

Moonfire is your only instant damaging spell though, which offers double bonus with the dot. Without it, killing totems and hitting stealthed mobs/player would be a pain.

I believe MoP removed a satisfactory amount of abilities, but we still have too many but with viable uses. What we need imo is a merge of abilities e.g Nourish with more used spells or making some effects passive like they did in MoP with talents and some removed spells.

[Aboubacar]

snip

@Bzl
The whole idea was to discuss incredibly situational abilities that aren't needed. There's no reason to soothe in pvp you're wasting a global you can rejuv or dot something else. Soothe and nourish are abilities mentioned by Blizzard that are likely to go on the chopping block next expansion to make room for the lvl 95/100 spells that would be coming.

You're just arguing to argue and mentioning a situation you happen to use something even when there's no reason to. Obviously damage and defensives and base resil would all be balanced around not being able to remove enrages and they probably already are. You could be peeling the dk/warrior but you're running around trying to remove their 10% damage buff???

Name one guardian that uses bear hug. It roots the bear too and the damage isn't that high.

Resto needs moonfire and wrath to do damage with/without HoTW, the same reason all specs have very basic bear and cat abilities.

All base heals are under consideration to be removed. No one uses nourish unless their oom or very undgeared and it's extremely rare for resto druids to be oom. That's almost certain to be gone and haven't heard of many druids using it to keep harmony up with these regen/gear levels.


As for your root argument... You spec mass entanglement/FoN (balance/feral) against melee heavy teams. Glyph Nature's grasp. Once you've used all of that roots are on full DR, how are you going to possibly root again? Not to mention that you're risking a full CS lock.

Of all the spells I mentioned in the OP FF probably the least likely to go mostly since it's been in the druid toolkit since the beginning of time and I don't really see a way to integrate FF into all the specs differently. I didn't say I don't use these abilities. I'm suggesting that they're used very very rarely and that druids could live without them.

- - - Updated - - -

Bear hug doesn't even do damage to targets immune to stun btw.

[halfawake]

I prefer they don't get rid of any spells at all but then again I still miss dampen and amplify magic on my mage : /

[exochaft]

Name one guardian that uses bear hug. It roots the bear too and the damage isn't that high.

/raises bear paw! In fact, I use it quite often not only for the stun, but for the damage and the self-rooting. On your average mob I'll do over 300k damage from just this stun alone, which is more than enough to use it as often as possible. The root is useful especially if you do not want to move, like I tend to use Bear Hug on an add when facing a Zandalari Warbringer with fear so I'll just stay in place while feared... you can use this against some raid mechanics beyond just the stun/damage, too, if you're good at it. However, my biggest gripe about the ability is this: it's buggy as hell with respect to whether it will stun a target when any other stun spell will work (and you'll get rooted if it doesn't work in this case, at least we can power-shift out of it if you don't want to be rooted). I haven't seen this problem arise much recently, but it can happen in odd situations.

Anyways, I suppose I'll comment on other abilities mentioned. But first I'd like to say that beyond an ability being a CC, likely targets for button bloat cutting should not be used commonly in both PvE and PvP.

Nourish is likely the unfortunate result of what the recent blue post about healing was talking about. In fact, it's pretty much all those slow, efficient base-line heals that are being phased out due to how mana regen scales as gearing improves. Nourish is the victim of not needing to be mana efficient, so either the ability itself may go or mana regen will change to have the need for such abilities. This ability is likely on the fence in terms of being cut depending upon what Blizz decides to do about the general issue.

Soothe is also a borderline case, as its sole application has gravitated to PvP mostly. Yes, it's been used in PvE/raiding in the past, but the ability is becoming less and less used and/or needed. Nostalgia is probably the biggest thing going for the ability, as I still have fond memories of thinking it worked like Priest's Mind Soothe and getting eaten alive back in the early days of WoW. However, Soothe is just like Mind Soothe, being one of those abilities that was very useful in certains areas and very useless in most... and Mind Soothe got the axe in the end despite how much I personally enjoyed it and used it to sneak around mobs I wanted to skip. Since its PvP applications are dwindling, Soothe will likely disappear if it becomes a target.

Now, there are a bunch of druid abilities that were mentioned in the OP and by subsequent posts, such as Faerie Fire, Moonfire, etc... basically core abilities to a spec(s), situational to "waste of space" to other specs. I briefly touched upon this in a different thread, but this is more of a unique button bloat problem exclusive to druids, and will likely have the devs working hard to get the solution right. Especially to people new to druids, having twice as many spell book pages as any other class for a spec is pretty daunting, and most of it has to do with all druids having access to the basic caster form, Bear Form, and Cat Form, all of which have some baseline abilities.

This problem is likely worse for Guardian/Feral druids since many abilities that we even want to use often/occasionally require caster form or overflow outside of the Bear/Cat Form default bars, causing players to either need to macro abilities together to save space, move buttons around manually depending on the scenario, or bite the bullet and fill up +4 bars with abilities. If you've played a more stream-lined class, and I used Warlocks as an example in another thread, the button bloat issue is night and day since most other classes can have all core rotational abilities easily binded with situational outliers neatly fit in. On my druid, I literally take screenshots because I cannot remember where my sea of abilities go, and it's usually when I'm playing and go "Oh crap, that ability isn't where I'm used to!" that I figure out I misplaced or forgot to put an ability on my bars. The problem is compounded if you need to adjust your abilities between PvE and PvP (PvP likely having the worst button bloat of all classes/specs for Ferals/Guardians). While the situation does exist for Resto/Moonkin, most of the abilities for Bear/Cat Form are few enough to fit on the form-specific bars and be comfortably tucked away.

The actual solution to the problem is likely not going to be an easy one, and there will be gnashing of teeth in the end almost certainly. The quick and easy solution would be the separation of forms by spec and further separation of abilities by spec, however the backlash would be too large if that were the only change by itself. Who knows, maybe by default each spec could have its specific form, and we could receive minor glyphs to allow limited access to secondary forms (for example, a Moonkin would have default access to caster and Moonkin forms, but need to glyph in order to have access to Bear Form or Cat Form). The reasoning would be that by default, new players could streamline their abilities towards what they typically will need 99% of the time, while the minor glyphs still allow the option to control your own button bloat to a comfortable level. It's certainly not a perfect example, as it still would have many flaws, but to truly fix druid button bloat, there will almost certainly need to be further restrictions to abilities.

[Bzl]

Nowadays DKs don't have anything we can dispel and warriors are quite non-existent in PvP (at least at higher ratings) so that is not really an issue. Also, other healers don't have that luxury and we are in the end balanced like them against all classes (at least they try to) so removing Soothe wouldn't be such a big deal. Still I'd like to keep it as it is used against warriors, even if it's not super good.

I would greatly appreciate your contribution to the discussion if you kept it real. And by real, I mean true.

Last time I checked, Unholy DK's could still provide Unholy Frenzy, a spell close in effect to heroism. >"DK's has nothing we can dispel" mehehehehehe nope.jpg

Warriors might not be dominant in higher brackets; but they exist, knowing how to reduce their burst by 10% if you know you have 1 global to spare could save your life.

You can also dispell boomkins enrage (15% more dmg).

I'm not completely sure, but I think you can dispel vengeance as well from tanks.

So theres that.

I think you might want to fall back on some starting level tutorial before you throw a fit. I'm just trying to defend soothe in the current state of the game, and comparing us to other healers and their abilities then makes little to no sense. Priests can dispel proccs and buffs, same for shamans, does that automatically imply we are underpowered? We can dispell enrage effects, other healers have different traits.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fueling this fire because I'm very much interested in shaving off some of the numerous abilities I have to keybind, but I just don't want to see this end in a circle-jerk where nobody points out why we have these abilities in the first place, and what their usage is. Right now for instance, most of you are making it look like soothe is an ability non will ever use, and this is very true for most PvE senarios, and for bad players and beginners in PvP, but it actually has its place higher up. If it were to face removal, damage across the board will have to be adjusted as well; and this is bad;
Essentially it makes it fractionally harder for the good to be better, by removing an ability that allows us to go above and beyond the peons of 1300-1800 rating

[Checksmix]

@BZL spells that are only good vs certain specs of certain classes need to go. They would need to be buffed/nurfed to compensate though (sooth/hibernate). The game is no longer about opening your spell book and needed certain spells sometimes. It's all cookie cutter now and those spells don't fit.

Vengeance isn't an enrage

[Divisible]

I would greatly appreciate your contribution to the discussion if you kept it real. And by real, I mean true.

Last time I checked, Unholy DK's could still provide Unholy Frenzy, a spell close in effect to heroism. >"DK's has nothing we can dispel" mehehehehehe nope.jpg

umm you can't dispel unholy frenzy

[Juvencus]

@BZL spells that are only good vs certain specs of certain classes need to go. They would need to be buffed/nurfed to compensate though (sooth/hibernate). The game is no longer about opening your spell book and needed certain spells sometimes. It's all cookie cutter now and those spells don't fit.

Vengeance isn't an enrage

It is. But does it even apply in PvP? Last time I checked they wanted to remove it but broke it in pve so they returned it temporarily (Yes in cata, that long since I pvp'd :P )

[Zstr]

I've seen a few threads on this topic in other class threads so I thought I'd start a druid one. Going to start with a couple of abilities that I don't think druids need and hopefully you guys can go from there. This is from a resto/balance standpoint. Not as familiar with feral dps or guardian.

For the most part, in my opinion, these are extremely situational abilities that very rarely get used:

1. Soothe

2. Entangling roots (since u can now pick up FoN for instant roots and nature's grasp to peel melee)

3. Nourish

4. Bear Hug

and faerie fire for certain specs (integrate it into other spells. don't have too many ideas with this) Not completely sure on this one. The prevention of stealth was pretty unique but with 10s duration in pvp much less desirable. In PVE it's rather awkward for balance/resto to apply (and why is a caster applying sunder not CoE?)

Looking for other ideas or thoughts on the ideas that I listed here. A lot of the ability bloat was toned down in MoP by not giving all the specs all the spells, but usually things like mangle and rake are on your cat bar anyway so it doesn't actually lead to this button bloat issue that has been brought up.

speak for yourself
Soothe is very usefull to dispell enrages,
Roots is melee enemy CC
Noruish I see lots of our druids healiers using it, can't speak more of it as I don't play resto
and Bear Hug is fucking OP, it's awesome ability to stun and melt target hp

and I miss thorns, they shouldn't remove ability more abilites are fun to play with, even they take space in spellbook

[Grinia]

@Bzl
The whole idea was to discuss incredibly situational abilities that aren't needed. There's no reason to soothe in pvp you're wasting a global you can rejuv or dot something else. Soothe and nourish are abilities mentioned by Blizzard that are likely to go on the chopping block next expansion to make room for the lvl 95/100 spells that would be coming.

You're just arguing to argue and mentioning a situation you happen to use something even when there's no reason to. Obviously damage and defensives and base resil would all be balanced around not being able to remove enrages and they probably already are. You could be peeling the dk/warrior but you're running around trying to remove their 10% damage buff???

That argument is inane. Obviously you either don't track buffs when you're PvPing, don't care about taking 10% extra damage from warriors/15% from moonkins or just don't PvP. There is reason to Soothe in PvP; not always but definitely sometimes. On a warrior, it's reducing 10% damage and sometimes removing fear immunity (especially helpful when stacked with their other CDs.) I have no idea how you heal, but I'd always choose to mitigate damage and heal through the reduced damage than try to heal unmitigated damage.

Damage, defensives and base resil being balanced around not being able to remove buffs is even more stupid. It's a pas de deux where players try to counter each other. According to you, let's remove Dispel Magic from priests, let's remove Spellsteal from mages, Devour Magic from Felhunters because entire classes and their toolkits should depend on straight up damage and nothing else, right? Just because you refuse to use an ability because you're lazy doesn't immediately mean that the spell has no use.

[Arielle]

Things Guardians don't need:

Moonfire
Hurricane
Ravage
Maim
Innervate might as well be removed if it's going to be as terrible as it is.