DRUID - Heart of the Wild - useless talent

[marnold2012]

I dont understand why anyone would want to spec for it. It gives you a huge boost for other specs you are not specced for?

Why on Earth if I was Feral would I spec into it, then use it and then shapeshift and start spamming wrath? Maybe I am missing something and would love for someone to make me understand this.

I don't care if wrath crits for 200k as feral under HOTW. It just makes no sense as to why I would be sitting there spamming wrath as a FERAL druid? Someone explain to me the purpose of this useless talent?

[Nicola]

Well, it's useful for when a tank dies and you can turn into a tank, or extra healing is needed and you turn into a healer or when ranged dps is needed instead of melee...

[marnold2012]

Completely USELESS again..

[DetectiveJohnKimble]

We just had a fight last tier where HOTW would have been obviously useful.

[Wondercrab]

Completely USELESS again..

I think for you it's more of a case of "I personally would never want to do the things this talent allows me to do" rather than "it's useless".
There are a great many situations where this would be handy to have, particularly on any encounter with phases that put heavy demands on a specific role within the group.

[Deleted]

Completely USELESS again..

I beg to differ, I've saved over 10 pugs so far with it. Be it tanking or healing.

[Deja Thoris]

Another herp derp I lack the imagination to see where it could be awesome therefore it is useless thread.

[Deleted]

Are you fucking dumb? Its the only useful talent as a tank, because of the 6% increased stats, and when you are not tanking, you can do whatever you wanna do

[Samania]

Well, the 6% boost is appealing to some people by itself, but it's meant mainly for if you need to pick up another role quickly.

Say you're a balance druid, and your tank dies. Well, rather than risk another death, you can pop this, go bear, and tank until the other tank can be picked back up.

Or a feral using wrath. Any fight that prefers ranged and the melee can't attack a target the entire time, this would be useful. Think Atramedes. Not doing anything other than avoiding stuff? Well, imagine if you had this skill! Or on Blackhorn in DS. Or Alysrazor when all the adds are dead. There are a LOT of places I could find uses for that.

Non-resto. Say there's a particular fight with a particular phase where your healers are really struggling to heal through it. This way, any other druid can do some decent healing and help your raid get through a tough moment.

Really, the non-feral boost is the only one I can't personally see a use for, but I'm sure someone has found one. It would be the same as non-balance for resto, basically "we don't need much healing, but we need more damage, so I'm gonna do this now."

Basically, it's a very situational spell that seems like it's mainly meant for druids who want to help their raid get through a particularly tough moment, and it can be extremely helpful if used correctly.

[Shifthappens]

Not a useless talent in pvp, you can 1 shot ppl below 30% with Ferocious Bite crit when this talent is activated. done it myself. and why would 6% passive int be useless?
NV CD is too long, DoC is only really good for Ferals and boomkins if you ask me, as a tree i wouldnt take NV or DoC

Tree > HoTW
Cat > DoC or NV + incarnation on gimmick fights where boss takes extra dmg (think Magmaw)
Boomkin > NV

[Kaleid]

I can cast a buffed Rejuvenation while in Bear Form.

[Komie]

Completely USELESS again..

No, it's completely useless to you because you're narrow minded and can't see it's applications.

/Thread.

[Pascal]

Apparently, it's a DPS increase for balance and feral for them to swap weapons and DPS as another role for those 45 seconds.

It's also amazing for a million other reasons. I'm sorry that you are too uninspired to understand that.

[marnold2012]

The 6% passive buff apparently does not work properly at the moment. Any truth to this? And explain to me how you are one shotting people with FB? LOL How big of a crit you getting?

[Samania]

I'm positive the glitch with the 6% not working will be fixed, sooner rather than later.

And if you read what that poster said, it was one hit below 30%, which isn't too far fetched when you think about it.

[Spectral]

I wouldn't call a 6% bonus to my most important stat, plus the ability to turn into any spec at any time "useless", but if you're very, very bad at reacting to things, it might not be good.

[Ashrr]

if you ask me, as a tree i wouldnt take NV or DoC

Tree > HoTW

Slightly off-topic from the OP, but NV can be very useful for a tree depending on the encounter. Think of a Zonozz or Hagara (if you stacked in the middle during Ice phase) type fight: rotating with Tree of Life, you would have had a +healing CD for every high damage phase. You can also stack them if you really need it.

So HoTW isn't automatically the best talent in the 90 tier for a resto druid, especially since Intellect isn't the super stat it used to be. A lot changes depending on encounter design and your raid's strategies.

[Deleted]

Calling it useless is not really a good idea when you clearly don't understand the talent. You need to think outside the box that just because you are a feral the only thing you do is being a melee dps and doing melee damage. Or just because you are resto you only heal heal and heal etc.

[Renwin]

Or a feral using wrath. Any fight that prefers ranged and the melee can't attack a target the entire time, this would be useful. Think Atramedes. Not doing anything other than avoiding stuff? Well, imagine if you had this skill! Or on Blackhorn in DS. Or Alysrazor when all the adds are dead. There are a LOT of places I could find uses for that..

And this is what the OP is missing here for this "useless talent." There are times where you may have to fulfill a different role within the dungeon/raid group you're in. Not every fight is a tank & spank and not every fight is about meters. You're going to be that feral druid that shoots wrath a bit when there are encounters with mechanics that favors ranged attacks. And like Samania mentioned, the other two depending on the situation. You can't quick to judge by what you see. Just try it out before you call it bad.

[clevin]

While HotW is great situationally it is a bit underwhelming as a 90 talent. I mean, it's your top tier talent... and aside from a boring stats boost (precisely the thing they said they wanted to eliminate), it's only useful in certain edge situations. Granted, those situations will happen more for cutting edge progression raiders, but for those of us not pushing the edge it's going to be used fairly rarely. When you need it, pop it and save the raid it will feel amazing. The other 95% of the time it's meh (I'm speaking as Balance/Resto). I do think giving melee a useful ranged spell for Atramedes style encounters is interesting... it just doesn't feel like an ultimate tier talent. But then none of them really do to me.