No More Displacer Beast

[Mazzeric]

We can easily debunk the notion that Resto Druid has a "survivability niche" in raiding, now that WCL has survivability stats available.

Across all bosses, and based on the top 25% of the player base, Resto Druids are actually #4 out of 6 specs in terms of staying alive across kills and progression wipes. Regardless of the perception, the numbers clearly put Druids middle of the pack at best at survivability currently - so nope, that's not a niche either.

Logs of people dying in raids don't give adequate data to suggest a class' survivabilty, I'm sorry, that's just absurd. Someone can die for literally any reason and it doesn't take into consideration fault of the player, what personals they had available and didn't use, if the raid leader called a wipe (since it includes "progression wipes"), etc.

You only need look at the top M+ groups to know that Resto Druid survivability is indeed a niche as they are able to consistently live through higher keys than other healing classes. Of course Paladin is lumped in here too, but it's not really worth a debate on whose survivability package is better since they are both situationally powerful defensively.

[Tiberria]

Logs of people dying in raids don't give adequate data to suggest a class' survivabilty, I'm sorry, that's just absurd. Someone can die for literally any reason and it doesn't take into consideration fault of the player, what personals they had available and didn't use, if the raid leader called a wipe (since it includes "progression wipes"), etc.

You only need look at the top M+ groups to know that Resto Druid survivability is indeed a niche as they are able to consistently live through higher keys than other healing classes. Of course Paladin is lumped in here too, but it's not really worth a debate on whose survivability package is better since they are both situationally powerful defensively.

Forgot the link.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...&class=Healers

It might be absurd if you're looking at small sample sizes, but WCL literally has a sample size of 150,000+ pulls for every spec. Any notion of it being skewed by individual events, etc. goes out the window when dealing with an aggregate of that size, especially because those biases will equally affect all specs. Unless you want to make the argument that top 25th percentile Resto Druid players are somehow inherently worse players than top 25th percentile players of other classes across a 175,000+ sample size of Resto Druid pulls.

High end Mythic+ is as niche an activity as 2200+ rated PvP, etc. They have already said that they only attempt to balance around every spec being able to at least do a +15 for the maximum in real rewards. The raid numbers speak for themselves.

[Peacemoon]

Tbh Displacer Beast has never fit the class fantasy and has no business being a Druid skill. Bink is a mage spell not something a cat does. Plus us druids have enough mobility without that as well. It was useful in pvp, but no

[Mormolyce]

I always found its fit into the Druid archetype kind of strange.

[ComputerNerd]

This is very important. What we see might well just be a mining fluke like the Armour masteries(Int increased by 5%+25% of SP? Happy recursion), half finished changes or simply something they were trying out at the time.

We're currently completely missing all context to these changes.

As if that has ever stopped someone announcing the sky is falling.
Common sense does not apply to someone who does not want to see it.

No change is going to suit everyone anyway.

[Crovyn]

What kind of cat is able to instantly appear at different location anyway. A short high speed sprint feels more suitable for the class.

I welcome the change and believe wild charge is will play a larger role in the future.

what kind of human is able to cast fireballs... oh wait, fantasy game :P

[andyf1]

Also, didn't blinkdogs do the whole blinking thing first ?

[Tiberria]

Now that they are doubling down on Displacer Beast, I think the key thing is to give them feedback to make them buff Tiger's Dash to a more reasonable cooldown. It shouldn't have a 45 second cooldown when stuff like Gust of Wind, Blink, Charge, Roll, Fel Rush, etc., etc. can be used up to 3 times as often. If anything, it should have a lower CD than those things, because none of them force you to sit in Cat Form for 4 seconds and silence yourself from being able to cast primary spec spells (at least for non-Feral). With that restriction, it should have a lower or at least competitive cooldown.

If they want it to be a reasonable Displacer Beast replacement, and to allow Resto, etc. to maintain some semblance of what they had before BfA, Tiger's Dash should be like a 20 second cooldown and should allow you to cast spells from your primary spec while in Cat Form for its duration. If they don't want to loosen the spell casting restriction, it should be a 15 second CD and 2 charges.

[TorikSAn]

Now that they are doubling down on Displacer Beast, I think the key thing is to give them feedback to make them buff Tiger's Dash to a more reasonable cooldown. It shouldn't have a 45 second cooldown when stuff like Gust of Wind, Blink, Charge, Roll, Fel Rush, etc., etc. can be used up to 3 times as often. If anything, it should have a lower CD than those things, because none of them force you to sit in Cat Form for 4 seconds and silence yourself from being able to cast primary spec spells (at least for non-Feral). With that restriction, it should have a lower or at least competitive cooldown.

If they want it to be a reasonable Displacer Beast replacement, and to allow Resto, etc. to maintain some semblance of what they had before BfA, Tiger's Dash should be like a 20 second cooldown and should allow you to cast spells from your primary spec while in Cat Form for its duration. If they don't want to loosen the spell casting restriction, it should be a 15 second CD and 2 charges.

About 4 seconds silence it's not truth (as i calced before). Tiger dash doesn't force you to stay full length in cat like all sprint skills (and you get 75% out of it in first 2 seconds, so last 2 seconds are near useless to stay in) In first second it give you +175% speed average, so you will move 275% MS in first second = ~20m (blink range), +125% next second, so 225% ms = ~16m, for a total 36m (that is 22m (blink range) additional range, compared to basic 2 seconds runaway (~14m)).

But i totally agree that 45 sec CD looks awfull and not right. Compared to other 15 sec CD speed boosters (unless they will be nerfed to 40-50 sec CDs too ).

[gobio]

what kind of human is able to cast fireballs... oh wait, fantasy game :P

Opposite of what you imply is true.

Fantasy != no rules
Fantasy = to define as much rules as possible.

And I have not seen a fantasy explanation (or not as detailed explanation) as to why cat could blink as opposite to "magical fireball from human".

Have you not played D&D?

EDIT : in fact, the lore maker in WOW are so afraid that you do not believe "human" could cast "fireball" that they made pages upon pages of written material defining magic in wow, where it came from, its limitation, how human get to learn magic. Its not because "oh wait, its fantasy".

[Peacemoon]

About 4 seconds silence it's not truth (as i calced before). Tiger dash doesn't force you to stay full length in cat like all sprint skills (and you get 75% out of it in first 2 seconds, so last 2 seconds are near useless to stay in) In first second it give you +175% speed average, so you will move 275% MS in first second = ~20m (blink range), +125% next second, so 225% ms = ~16m, for a total 36m (that is 22m (blink range) additional range, compared to basic 2 seconds runaway (~14m)).

But i totally agree that 45 sec CD looks awfull and not right. Compared to other 15 sec CD speed boosters (unless they will be nerfed to 40-50 sec CDs too ).

I think you are right here. I think it should be 30s cooldown and not replace normal dash. Also (me personally) would rather it shifted us in travel form not cat form as keybinds are easier for getting out of it. Especially now cancelling form gives you a cd.

[huth]

Opposite of what you imply is true.

Fantasy != no rules
Fantasy = to define as much rules as possible.

And I have not seen a fantasy explanation (or not as detailed explanation) as to why cat could blink as opposite to "magical fireball from human".

Have you not played D&D?

EDIT : in fact, the lore maker in WOW are so afraid that you do not believe "human" could cast "fireball" that they made pages upon pages of written material defining magic in wow, where it came from, its limitation, how human get to learn magic. Its not because "oh wait, its fantasy".

Well, you don't have to define all rules. But Fantasy should be self-consistent, unless the inconsistency itself is part of the nature of the world.

However, this also means that something doesn't have to be explained as long as it doesn't obviously break the established rules. We know it's possible to teleport using magic. Druids are magic users that can also transform into animal forms. Having a druid teleport while in cat form isn't an obvious breach of established rules.

[exochaft]

Enh shamans have good mobility as well (compared to feral for example) which proves this mobility madness is going crazy, everybody needs something, it has gotten to a point where if you dont have really powerfull defensives (immunities or some 90% reductions while CCed) you are dead because everyone and their mother have endless gap closers, movement speed increases and CC. They gave hybrids crazy healing, then they gut it to a point its weaker than pure dps have some instant abilities, so everyone needs the same toolkit and all of a sudden specs feel the same. And of course once you hand out freebies people will get mad when you try to take it away.

It's pretty much the arms race of mobility. I remember in vanilla where druids were the king of mobility, where as now we're severely outclassed by mostly everyone because of the constant creep of mobility abilities. I'm not so distressed concerning the removal of Displacer Beast itself but rather the implication to the overall mobility of druids.

I kinda hope they realise that having Renewal on the same row as Movement CDs is just a really dumb idea.

I swear they just don't know where to put Renewal and just stick it there. It'd make more sense to have it baseline for some druid specs versus just shoving it in the mobility tier... or just flat out remove it.

[xpose]

Good, the fact every class has some kind of instant escape made the game annoying in some aspects. Can't wait for them to gut mobility from the other classes.

[huth]

I swear they just don't know where to put Renewal and just stick it there. It'd make more sense to have it baseline for some druid specs versus just shoving it in the mobility tier... or just flat out remove it.

The tier might actually work better if they were to switch Dash and Renewal.

[Keiyra]

And I have not seen a fantasy explanation (or not as detailed explanation) as to why cat could blink as opposite to "magical fireball from human".
Have you not played D&D?

Given you bring up D&D, you should know of at least one fantasy explanation for a cat who can blink:
look up Blink Dog, look up Displacer Beast, realize blizz is lazy and took inspiration from the former, and the name from the latter, and applied it to an existing druid form: the cat. Done.

[fallenangel-succ]

Forgot the link.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...&class=Healers

Wait, did you actually just claim holy priest is the sturdiest healer?

[cparle87]

Took them long enough. This is what pruning should've done in the first place -- delete all the post-cata fluff like stampede / druid blink / wild strike, not old iconic abilities (that, admittedly, I can't think of any for druids that were removed. Nature's Grasp?).

Stampeding Roar was in Cata. As for iconic druid things we lost mark, thorns, hibernate, and abolish poison off the top of my head.

[huth]

AFAIK every Druid can still dispel poisons and curses.

Looks like they're trying Druid without Healing Touch this build.

[Tiberria]

Wait, did you actually just claim holy priest is the sturdiest healer?

If they are running cloak, sure.