Answered in tonights Q& A session, Finally !! the druid comes home, after 6 years

[ravenmoon]

Did you jus t see the Q & A response on the druid? one of the last ones, this is how I have wnated druids to be fixed to for like ever.

This is what drudis were meant to be like.. and that got derailed when everyone only used them as helaers in classic, and its been a slow change.. first specializzation taht threw away role changing, classic druids wanted specialization, but didn't want to lose feeling druidic. They did, stuck in the form forever, but at least they were useful, but then they were copy cats rather than genuinely unique. finally the vision for 5.0... LOVE IT

Here's what the dev had to say:

We are very interested in opening opportunities for more hybrid gameplay in druids, as you can see in the level 90 talent tier, while still allowing an option for players who want to never do anything outside their role. We don't intend for that added hybridization to be offset by any sort of DPS nerf. While DPSing, a druid's DPS will be entirely competitive with other DPS. We hope to see druids that do things like, "DPS in Cat Form most of the fight, but during one phase, when healing is super difficult, pop out of Cat, hit Heart of the Wild, Tranquility, and spam heals on the raid to help top everyone off, then go back to Cat and resume DPSing." In that sort of the situation, the Cat will have spent less time DPSing than other DPSers, but his/her DPS while DPSing would have been competitive, and in exchange helped save the raid when healers were falling behind. You can probably think of many situations where this would be useful in raid content, or in some 5man content, and frequently in PvP. To clarify a bit further on how the druids will perform at their off-roles: Ferals and Guardians will have Nurturing Instinct, which increases spell power based on Agility, and Balance and Restoration will have Killer Instinct, which increases attack power based on Intellect. They will have a smaller toolbox of spells for their off-role, but the strength of those spells will be competitive, when under the effects of those hybrid talents.

In case you're wondering, the question asked was:
A lot people are worried that with druids being able to do well at our other roles, we'll see the return of the "hybrid tax". It's the same old story: if we can perform any role when needed, raids will stack us, unless we don't do as well in our specific roles, in which case we're bad at what we most want to do. What assurance can we get that we won't have this problem?

Can i say.. very well said Celestalon

[Cute Chen]

I wonder what this means for other hybrid classes? Will Shamans be able to DPS and be good healers? Prot warriors able to go Battle stance and do competitive DPS?

[Bearshield]

The problem I see with the system they're planning is that if you give players the option to have ferals heal, it will become mandatory. We're going back to the "You have heals, so heal" days. I'm a tank, when the situation allows for it, I pop out and use my tranq from time to time now. That doesn't mean I want my heals to be expected. If feral healing were actually viable though, I can easily see guilds working ferals into healing rotations and expecting it. And as far as the "hybrid tax" goes, I can also easily see Blizz changing their minds on that one too if down the road kitties are matching other melees AND contributing decent healing as well.

[Zathrendar]

The problem I see with the system they're planning is that if you give players the option to have ferals heal, it will become mandatory. We're going back to the "You have heals, so heal" days. I'm a tank, when the situation allows for it, I pop out and use my tranq from time to time now. That doesn't mean I want my heals to be expected. If feral healing were actually viable though, I can easily see guilds working ferals into healing rotations and expecting it. And as far as the "hybrid tax" goes, I can also easily see Blizz changing their minds on that one too if down the road kitties are matching other melees AND contributing decent healing as well.

It'll be necessary in that situation. The hybrid tax only makes little sense when each role is highly specialised.

[Eein]

Incoming manditory spellpower staves for off-healing! dun dun dun

[Vanyali]

Incoming manditory spellpower staves for off-healing! dun dun dun

AP --> SP conversion imo. Heal while I fire off shiny wraths as a tree, nao!

[Nathanyel]

The problem I see with the system they're planning is that if you give players the option to have ferals heal, it will become mandatory. We're going back to the "You have heals, so heal" days.

Exactly. Encounter has phases with higher required healing -> ferals and moonkins have to spec Heart of the Wild to "help out". Boss is a heavy hitter -> non-heal druids need a macro to use Cenarion Ward on the tank.
WoW does not, and should not, have a "supporter" role. If I want to do group content, but don't care about doing much dps myself, and instead want to enable my guildies to do that, I spec tank or healer. If I want to deal significant damage myself, I spec dps.

It'll be necessary in that situation. The hybrid tax only makes little sense when each role is highly specialised.

You say that like it is a good thing.

[Raugnaut]

My question, that wasnt really answered, is, since Druids are gaining the fourth tree, will Bears finally have the utility other tanks have, and not be penalized for using it? Lets say im tanking Rag, and the raid needs Tranquility. The other tank has 12 secs on his stacks. I wont be able to use Tranq because the other tank cant/wont taunt, and if I go outta bear, I get one shot by Raggy. So, we wipe, because too many dps died, which could have been prevented by me using Tranquility.

[Crovyn]

The problem I see with the system they're planning is that if you give players the option to have ferals heal, it will become mandatory. We're going back to the "You have heals, so heal" days. I'm a tank, when the situation allows for it, I pop out and use my tranq from time to time now. That doesn't mean I want my heals to be expected. If feral healing were actually viable though, I can easily see guilds working ferals into healing rotations and expecting it. And as far as the "hybrid tax" goes, I can also easily see Blizz changing their minds on that one too if down the road kitties are matching other melees AND contributing decent healing as well.

Heart of the Wild allows you to be good in other roles for 45 seconds. It won't be mandatory, it's too situational for that. IT will simply be a tool for the Druid player to be super usefull.

I imagine that it will be more the other way round: People won't realize that it was the cat druid that just saved the day (sadly)

[ravenmoon]

Exactly, Crovyn is right, i'm hearin g a lot of outdated arguments on this issue, which may have been valid 4 years ago, in the old game system, but not now at all.

This is certainly not going to turn ferals or boomkins into healers, if it were, i'd have seen it, i was championing the cause for viable balance and feral raiding specs way back from patch 1.3 when all most people aside from most druids wanted druids for was for heals..and that was because no one wanted to play priests at the time, the principal healing class. As i said game has come a long way since then.

What they're doing now? this Heart of the Wild and co, this allows you to use your utilities better, it's just that some of your really good utilities as a druid involves using your other forms, which in the 4.x system you couldn't use because if you were in the other spec, well, they were pretty useless, like drop healing with a tranquility, or drop tanking with a bear form+survival instinct etc. But this was what the druid as a class was always about from it's original design, what it was meant to be. In a way, not wanting this is asking for you to continue having the extra utility locked up in another form/role unavailable. oneof the things you loved about feral was at least if you were cat dps spec, you could enjoy some of the bear forms utility without using it, but a balance druid using its bear and cat was mostly lagely useless especially in 3.x, but slightly better in 4.x, now much better in 5.x.

Already in fights i find it useful sometimes to pop a tranquility whether as a boomkin or a feral, i can manage it sometimes even when tanking even, like on Rhyolith or on Ragnaros if you time it well.

Heart of the Wild will make this even better, it really is the heart of druidsim, or rather the Heart of Shaepshifting, this is what druid shapeshifting was always meant to be like, your talent stree specialization was meant to make you as powerful as the other classes in that role, but you had a little less utility than they did, but your buck was that should for a phase extra healing, or extra tanking or extra meleeing or extra range be needed, you could pop to that form for it to help out. You were a role changer, this was what the druid was meant to be like that never really quite happened, until now we see a semblance of it happening.


e.g of this: Take a 40 man raid, you could typically go with 6 or 7 druids, if you had 2 restos, 2 ferals, 2 balance, in a phase where more tanks were needed cos of adds, maybe a balance druid could go bear form, with the two ferals and hold up.. or i you needed extra healers for phase x, the balance druid and 1 of the ferals could go heal for that period... so you wer ethe dynamci group. This never quite happened though, because there was such a high demand for helaers, as few played priests, druid players were forced to it

then the new developers from Everquest, use to that system, started itemizing them for it as a healer b/c that's how most of the players who also moving over from EQ system were use to, a game system where hybriization was meaningless for raids, and only pures (yes the term came from that game) were used, the players didn't spot the original intended use of the Druid designed by the devleopers. YES how you play a class or use it does affect how they develop a class. that's why druids were healers for so long until the druid community really made it clear they had expected more from a warcraft 3 environmet here most druids were either casting damage spells or using animal forms and instead keepers of the grove were the main healers. Also, what raids started doing was instead of using druids like that, they'd kick some classes. usually palas, druids/warriors and replace with whatever role they needed more of pures. Tanking? they'd get more warriors and lose some other class, - if the devs had prevented changing raid composition, they'd have been forced to see druids in that light, and use them like that, if druids were allowed to change gear in combat like they could up to patch 1.5, then maybe players would have seen this application and started using them like that, and then feral and balance would not have been so gimped for about 3-4 years of wow.

Do you know that you could switch gear in combat till patch 1.4/5? this was vital for a druid to fill another roll well, but htey prevented that because warrriors and rogues, rogues the most popular alliance class and warrior the second most popular, whiles shaman were the most popular horde class and rogues the second most on horde. Warriors and rogues kept switching weapons in combat to abusive the system, blizz dint' like it removed it, and without killed teh druids opportunity to shine as a role change and consigned it indirectly to ahealer, becuase well without the ability to change gear or have your forms change the stats on gear, the strength of role shifting was never seen.

Fast forward to 5.0 is the first time a druid will be abit closer to that original interpretation. It's not it, no this is not the pure role switcher that classic envisaged, but it allows it in a limited capacity, you won't be able to tank as a moonkin or cat, or heal if you're not resto, so what some of you are afraid of won't happen.

What it does allow is a form of this role switching of sorts, as far as uing abilities like tranquility,are concerned, or for those more annoying phases whn for example only range dps hits the bosss, i know they've removed a lot of those form encounteres precisely becuase of that, but it does give you some options. What it does allow is for you to use some other utilites, some cool stuff you coudn't before. It was always cool to shapeshift, you had no point, because you couldn't ever get the useful stuff locked in another tree, and then when were you going to use it? you certainly didn't want to heal half the time if you were a feral or moonkin etc. However what they've done is actually much better, because you won't be switching roles for long periods of time at all, the ability that makes you do this lasts only a short time with a long cooldown, it is for emergency periods.

I'd be interested to see this pan out. Heart of the Wild is a timed ability with a long cooldown, they really need to make it powerful enough so you can actually be effective in another role albeit for a brief period of time. that would be very interesting and have a lot of use

[Kujako]

Problem is still that as a tank (Guardian) the talent tiers they've shown fall into one of three categories.
1. Has little to no effect.
2. Has a single talent that is clearly better then the other two.
3. No real information as to what the talents do.

[TheRabidDeer]

The problem I see with the system they're planning is that if you give players the option to have ferals heal, it will become mandatory. We're going back to the "You have heals, so heal" days. I'm a tank, when the situation allows for it, I pop out and use my tranq from time to time now. That doesn't mean I want my heals to be expected. If feral healing were actually viable though, I can easily see guilds working ferals into healing rotations and expecting it. And as far as the "hybrid tax" goes, I can also easily see Blizz changing their minds on that one too if down the road kitties are matching other melees AND contributing decent healing as well.

Healing rotations arent coming back. I can maybe see something like, "oh crap one of our healers died, you feral druid help heal or we wipe"... which is good. The whole "You have heals, so heal" days only applied in the same days as "you have bandages, use them".

[jibbyjackjoe]

Healing rotations arent coming back. I can maybe see something like, "oh crap one of our healers died, you feral druid help heal or we wipe"... which is good. The whole "You have heals, so heal" days only applied in the same days as "you have bandages, use them".

Exactly. They can only do it for short periods of time, in a pinch. So. Much. Flavor! Exactly how I think andruid should be happy for them.

[traen]

What hybrids are you talking about?

Feral-Restor? I doubt that they will make feral/guardian healers viable.
I'm already able to pop up to 3-4k hps in my pvp gear on arena with instant ht+rejuv+2-3 stacks of lifebloom. With proper kiting usually its enough to heal yourself against like half of the classes.
But its not enough to heal tank or raid. If you can't pop at least 5k hps your healing is almost useless. When you healing touch heals for 12k and your tank takes 80k hits, your healing is nearly useless.
Its possible to buff cat healing so we will be able to do 10k dps for a short amount of time(limited by our mana), but it means that we will be pretty much unkillable on arenas due to our insane self healing.
Even if they will give ferals decent healing utility, it will be nerfed because of pvp balance.

Restor-Feral? Feral uses agility to dps, its no way restor will do any decent damage in cat form

Guardian-Restor? Almost impossible. You can't heal in your tank form. Paladins can. They have have LoH, the most powerfull healing CD that anyone in the raid have. But guardians will not be able neither to self heal nor to heal others in guardian form. So this hybrid is just not possible.

Restor-Guardian? No armor, no dodge without agility.. totally not viable.

Feral-Guardian + Guardian-Feral? Tanking as feral cat is possible just here and now, so I think that cat-bear is true hybrid and there is nothing to change there. Also feral tanks are best offspec dps currently in game. I hope they will not make it worse. The only problem with cat tanking is 2 gcd that you need to shift to bear and taunt. Sometimes its enough to let dps with highest threat die. Another problem is crit immunity but there should be penalty for using cat tank, right?

Feral-Boomkin? I'd love to see Feral/boomkin hybrid to be able to dps boss from range on fly phases, but its unlikely that we will get one.

Guardian-Boomkin - really strange example of hybrid

Boomkin-Restor and Restor-Boomkin. Should be viable. Its not really viable now, I hope they will add at least this kind of hybrid.

So... what are we going to get really? Feral-Guardian and Guardian-Feral that was already in game, and, maybe, Boomkin-Restor and Retor-Boomkin?

IMO, nothing will change in MoP, we will get no new decent hybrid combinations and utility.

[ravenmoon]

What hybrids are you talking about?

IMO, nothing will change in MoP, we will get no new decent hybrid combinations and utility.

QFT

so true Traen... sadly as with most new changes, people don't try to understand them proprely before posting and usually have compeltley missed what is going on here.

[Arielle]

The problem with their "hybridity" thing is that it only goes one way, Melee/Tank -> Ranged/Healer. I have yet to see a time when it would be valuable for a Ranged DPS to switch to Melee, or for a Healer to do anything else.

[ravenmoon]

i do, many pvp situations more helpful for feral cats.. but remember feral cats are losing a lot of bear ability/survivability that current ferals get, the guardian taks that, perhaps the boosted range capability might help them from HoW and Nurturing instincts and put their range capability more on par with Paladins, DKs, Enhancement shaman, Rogues, WArriorrs and Monks, i thought it was kinda silly that a class that h had a range specialization and range psells in its core was worse with range than warriors and DKs..but maybe its because it had both cat and bear stuff, now it won't.

for the range doing melee? it has always been more of a disadvantage for a range to melee, compared to it been very advantageous for a melee to be able to range, so there has not been an seirousl excuse not to make elemental shaman melee or balance druid melee a lot stronger than it is. This isn't going to change in 5.0, but at least the balance druid would be able to call on extra melee power for the times it finds itself having to use cat or bear form. I can't think of anything outside maybe if you picked up displacer beast an dwere stealthing again, you could pop HoW and open with a stronger pounce + ravage if you also had wild charge before popping back to moonkin.

whiles i forsee many instances for resto/balance/feral to spot tank or feral/guardian/balance to spot heal - i can only see in pvE the odd occasion Guardian would need to pump out more melee damage switching to cat, or resto pumping more spell damage when you just need to nuke stuff down. So yeah, the only hole in the entire ability is pVE balance meleeing or pvE feral rangin... almost every other combo is covered for PvE, and even those two have uses in pvp.

[Atomisk]

The problem I see with the system they're planning is that if you give players the option to have ferals heal, it will become mandatory. We're going back to the "You have heals, so heal" days. I'm a tank, when the situation allows for it, I pop out and use my tranq from time to time now. That doesn't mean I want my heals to be expected. If feral healing were actually viable though, I can easily see guilds working ferals into healing rotations and expecting it. And as far as the "hybrid tax" goes, I can also easily see Blizz changing their minds on that one too if down the road kitties are matching other melees AND contributing decent healing as well.

No. They will bring pures on par with abilities that raids need. They said this in the QA. So just expect pures to soon have more raid utility.

---------- Post added 2011-11-10 at 10:32 AM ----------

The problem with their "hybridity" thing is that it only goes one way, Melee/Tank -> Ranged/Healer. I have yet to see a time when it would be valuable for a Ranged DPS to switch to Melee, or for a Healer to do anything else.

Moonkin goes bear for an AoE silence, same as resto, and for a charge stun. Moon and resto go cat to remove all DoTs and activate vanish. cat goes resto to heal. any questions?

---------- Post added 2011-11-10 at 10:34 AM ----------

QFT

so true Traen... sadly as with most new changes, people don't try to understand them proprely before posting and usually have compeltley missed what is going on here.

No thats you. Blizzard knows what theyre doing. And I dont see how you can look at the MoP talents and not brainstorm the possibilities. We also know nothing of our specs and new spells.

[Sapho]

Gah tried to reply and it bugged . . . basically I love this change. If I wanted to be a mage, I'd be a mage. But i'm a Moonkin, and I'd quite like my identity back.

[ravenmoon]

---------- Post added 2011-11-10 at 10:34 AM ----------

[/COLOR]

No thats you. Blizzard knows what theyre doing. And I dont see how you can look at the MoP talents and not brainstorm the possibilities. We also know nothing of our specs and new spells.

Did you actually read what I wrote? i think you would find that I agree and fully support what blizzard has done here. and i'm agreeing with people who do