Druid Talent Tree Changes (Suggestions) Feedback Requested.

[mgp84]

http://war-tools.com/t57812.html

Please post comments as I will change these trees this is also being posted in the Suggestions forums from Blizzard.

[Furo]

I like those suggestions. Tho I think Berserk's duration should be raised to 20 sec or more, 15 sec is barely enough for anything. Prolly make it make us also immune to movement imparing effects, would not be OP tbh since if we even start shapeshifting when snared in berserk mode the full duration will be like 5 or less sec of effective use.

I really like the thing about Primal Precision and Primal Fury, thats exactly what these two talents need.

[mgp84]

I like those suggestions. Tho I think Berserk's duration should be raised to 20 sec or more, 15 sec is barely enough for anything. Prolly make it make us also immune to movement imparing effects, would not be OP tbh since if we even start shapeshifting when snared in berserk mode the full duration will be like 5 or less sec of effective use.

I really like the thing about Primal Precision and Primal Fury, thats exactly what these two talents need.

Done (Berserk).
Thank you for the support.

[ad1337]

You again!  I'll just copy/paste my reply from the WoR forums

I like some of your ideas but I think they are a little too drastic for Blizzard to consider at this point. Here's what I came up with, but keep in mind it's a bit more PvP focused than tank-focused since we still do not know too many specifics about level 80 tanking problems yet.

http://war-tools.com/t57827.html?b=9zo Changed talents are denoted with a (*)

Notice the changes in the General comments in the top-left.

[mgp84]

You again! I'll just copy/paste my reply from the WoR forums

I like some of your ideas but I think they are a little too drastic for Blizzard to consider at this point. Here's what I came up with, but keep in mind it's a bit more PvP focused than tank-focused since we still do not know too many specifics about level 80 tanking problems yet.

http://war-tools.com/t57827.html?b=9zo Changed talents are denoted with a (*)

Notice the changes in the General comments in the top-left.

List of comments: (And ROFL at finding you in 2 different forums)

* Perfect change for rake, making it alot easier to use in PvP, and maybe even desirable in PvE. I like what I did with it though, so maybe a mix in between them. I mean, if a target has several *Quote-Unquote* bleeds, then shouldn't he die faster? lol. So Rake makes Rip better... etc etc.
* The change to armor contribution from 10-15% goes against what Blizzard is trying to do of making Restos even more powerful while in Bear Form in arenas.
* Natural Perfection does have uses both for bear and cat in a PvP world, but only serves cat in the PvE world with a combination of Furor, and considering the fact that we will now wear rogue gear that has no intellect, maybe we will need help with the mana-energy exchange.
* Mother Bear - Change is fine BUT several people have misread this talent, and it does include yourself. Its actually 15%.
The other changes you made were either OK, didn't have any feelings about them whatsoever.

[ad1337]

Since I am mostly a PvP focused player my changes were geared towards such.  The rake thing I have though about for a long time and I like the idea of a Feral Druid having powerful DoT's as a melee class since WoW has nothing like that already.

The armor contribution change was done mostly for PvE Ferals but also to provide synergy with the other two trees as well.  The latest beta build has come up with some very huge changes in low balance that are very inviting for Resto Druids, especially since Feral Charge is no longer the 11pt Feral talent.  This way Resto Druids might actually have a reason to pick up those 11pts in Feral if they really want the extra armor and new active ability as opposed to the nice new Balance talents.  I think it would be a complete play style choice between Balance and Feral as a secondary tree for Resto, and options like that are always welcome.  On that note I would also consider adding Moonkin form to the 11pt Feral talent to open up the possibility of some Balance/Feral experimentation.  

Natural Perfection was designed mostly to be a solo PvE/PvP talent and really has no use to tank Druids, I will agree.  However, with the implementation of Natural Reaction and Mother Bear, I can see the viability of having a few talents different for each role that a Feral might find themselves in.  It's just extremely hard to give those needed PvP talents and combine them with tanking viable talents in a way that is not confusing, over the top, or unrealistic.

The Mother Bear change was done to simplify the talent.  You probably didn't notice that I changed the Master Shapeshifter for Bear form to 2/4% reduced physical damage taken instead of 2/4% increased damage in Bear form.  This small decrease in damage, however, was offset by the Shredding Attacks change to drop Lacerate down to 10 Rage and the increase in bonus Bear AP in Mother Bear. I didn't think this change would give too much of an advantage to PvP Resto Druids abusing Bear form because PvP Resto's probably wouldn't pick this talent up unless they were going into Feral as a secondary line and missing out on the new Balance goodies. Again, I like the idea of options.

I love your ideas and comments, I just wish there were others as passionate as us about our class and willing to participate in some brainstorming!

[Zenko]

I really like your Shredding Attacks change idea, and the Rake talent could actually just be baseline. Interesting ideas all around.

Here's a tree I made up a few days ago for fun.

http://www.war-tools.com/t57664.html

Solves a lot of DPS and Tank scaling issues while being balanced in the sense that you can't get everything. Although I'm not happy with my Teir 1 so I might borrow some of your ideas =p

[mgp84]

I've basically played all three specs of a druid (but I am a tank) I've healed/boomed things up to MH/BT and been a feral in the 1st three bosses of SWP (We've hit a hick up), in few words, I know give or take the ins and outs of a druid. (Maviand of Greymane) What I'm trying to get here is that from a PvE PoV, we will not be able to compete as Blizzard says we will, EVEN WITH, the new Addition of Savage Roar. Savage Roar will put us @ the level where everyone is ATM but with the addition of new talents/spells, we will surely fall behind.
From a PvP PoV, I refuse to enter arena as anything BUT a feral. I've been kind of lazy with S4 when it came out, and focusing more of my spare time getting Bears for the guild (ZA Bear Run) but I know what the issues are behind our spec (lack of snare and burst damage) any healing class (asside from maybe priests) can heal through our DPS while a 2nd player pounds through us. There lies the brilliancy of your spec, but I think that through combined ideas a midpoint between you and me would be very beneficial.

[Maenetus]

first off I'm not going to comment on the splitting of bear and cat talents besides noting that you did a good job of it.

Moving nurturing instinct is interesting. It's low enough to temp other specs, but not quite good enough to skip the balance/resto synergy

I will say you go WAY overboard on EH

18% armor
5% stam
3% mitigation

frankly druids will not need TBC level EH in WotLK, crushes are not a raid issue anymore.

[Ishmur]

http://war-tools.com/t57615.html
Any feedback on this talent tree? Its perfectly calculated to get all the "feral" resto talents, universal talents (far right, center left, Infected Wounds and Hide of Survival) and a full spec for cat (far left) or bear (center right). What do you think?

[mgp84]

first off I'm not going to comment on the splitting of bear and cat talents besides noting that you did a good job of it.

Moving nurturing instinct is interesting. It's low enough to temp other specs, but not quite good enough to skip the balance/resto synergy

I will say you go WAY overboard on EH

18% armor
5% stam
3% mitigation

frankly druids will not need TBC level EH in WotLK, crushes are not a raid issue anymore.

ATM If we equip a feral with SWP Rogue Gear we should get the following numbers: (With the added change to agility - 40 agility to 1% dodge) (Keep inmind that I used Guardian Leather Bracers/Belt/Boots for these calculations):

New Stats:
Health: 16854
Armor: 25728
Agility: 574
Stamina: 1342
AP: 2220
Hit: 112
Expertise: 22
Dodge: 51.41%
Mitigation: 68.26%
Extra 15% Post Mitigation:
26.979% Incomming Damage.

39.07% (Before 3.0 Dodge-Agility DEBUFF)
14.76% + 6% Natural Reaction + 9% Base Dodge = NEW DODGE % = 42.1%

NOW SWP Bear Gear Goes as Follows:
Health: 17624
Armor: 35185
Agility: 625
Stamina: 1419
AP: 2180
Hit: 20
Expertise: 42
Dodge: 54.8%
Mitigation: 74.63145%
Extra 15% Post Mitigation: 21.25% Incomming Damage (Physical)

42.51% from agi
16.08% wotlk + 6% Natural Reaction = 43.37% Dodge

People are yellow about the armor debuff, but my argument goes BEYOND that towards the nerf to our avoidance. DODGE just got hit with a monstruous blow and everybody seems to be OK with it. NOW if this is the way things are going to play out, I see us taking approx 6% more damage in bearform (which while some may see this as lowish it is BIG) and a nerf for nearly 30% to our avoidance levels. Thus why I felt that some things needed to be balanced out in our talent tree.


+++ The fact that kings, agility totems, and other raid/group buffs will NOT be as beneficial to us once the new system is in place.

[Maenetus]

of course it got nerfed on the top end
It's being normalized, higher on the low end, but lower on the top end.

though it's moot. You fix avoidance with avoidance, not mitigation.

and don't forget to include the removal of crushes when you calculate.

[Seraphk]

Wow... That's an awesome Feral tree. I wish you worked for Blizzard. God knows whoever is in charge of Feral Druids at this point doesn't know a damn thing about how to play one.

BTW -- I'm also more concerned on PvP with my Feral Druid, so your tree was perfect for that. The fact that Blizzard is now segregating our tree making us better tanks or better DPS is further bloating the tree to where a PvP Feral Druid is barely even possible to spec into.

Mana is also an issue. I'm surprised though that you didn't change Heart of the Wild to reduce shifting costs. The intellect will not be useful as we have no intellect on our gear and will likely not be getting any intellect on our gear. So 10% more intellect doesn't scale at all & is useless. I almost want to say they should just reduce the cost of all Shifting/Healing Spells by an additional 10% - 20% alongside the shifting cost reduction you had in Nurturing Instinct.

Either way, if the Feral Druid talent tree looked anything like this I'd be happy. At this point, I'm in Beta playing my Death Knight and I see nothing but a Feral Druid playing ideology (hybrishish, tanking -- DPS -- PvP in the same trees, great fun). I'm about to just say forget being a Feral Druid & roll DK despite not wanting to do it since everyone and their entire family, even those cousins they don't know about, will be rolling DKs. But, it's exactly like a Feral Druid ideology only 10x better.

[mgp84]

Wow... That's an awesome Feral tree. I wish you worked for Blizzard. God knows whoever is in charge of Feral Druids at this point doesn't know a damn thing about how to play one.

BTW -- I'm also more concerned on PvP with my Feral Druid, so your tree was perfect for that. The fact that Blizzard is now segregating our tree making us better tanks or better DPS is further bloating the tree to where a PvP Feral Druid is barely even possible to spec into.

Mana is also an issue. I'm surprised though that you didn't change Heart of the Wild to reduce shifting costs. The intellect will not be useful as we have no intellect on our gear and will likely not be getting any intellect on our gear. So 10% more intellect doesn't scale at all & is useless. I almost want to say they should just reduce the cost of all Shifting/Healing Spells by an additional 10% - 20% alongside the shifting cost reduction you had in Nurturing Instinct.

Either way, if the Feral Druid talent tree looked anything like this I'd be happy. At this point, I'm in Beta playing my Death Knight and I see nothing but a Feral Druid playing ideology (hybrishish, tanking -- DPS -- PvP in the same trees, great fun). I'm about to just say forget being a Feral Druid & roll DK despite not wanting to do it since everyone and their entire family, even those cousins they don't know about, will be rolling DKs. But, it's exactly like a Feral Druid ideology only 10x better.

Thank you, I appreciate the input. The reason behind NI is purposefully to allow better play of shapeshifting in the expansion. But TBH, do you really think we will need more than 30% int, 20% Mana reduction from NI, and 30% Natural Shapeshifter? I mean that's 50% less from the original cost and an extra 10% int (though I know that int being unavailable in our WotLK gear will be harmful).
The extremely funny thing is that ORIGINALLY about 3 years ago, Blizzard had SEPARATE roles spread through talents WITHIN the feral tree, BUT they decided to merge them, NOW we are REGRESSING back to Tank or DPS focus (Which IMO is the biggest BS since EZ Mode Raiding).

[Ajaxthegreat]

http://war-tools.com/t57812.html

Please post comments as I will change these trees this is also being posted in the Suggestions forums from Blizzard.

These changes are fantastic. I can't get everything i want to be both a top flight bear and cat, but i can be amazing in one role and still effective in the other. To be honest, the sweeping changes you suggest are probably the only way I will still play my druid (unless I respec resto) :-/

[mgp84]

You still need 14 points in resto, what about merging natural and master shapeshifter, moving naturalist to deep feral and furor to feral t1? OOC from trainer.

And wtf is feral ff doing as 51pointer?

Feral FF is now trainable if you read the tooltip. Merging Natural and Master is somewhat OP, Blizzard WANTS you to spend 5 talent points for 4% increased damage in tier 3. Furor to Feral T1 is Blizzard's way of saying: We want you to "Hybridize" your build. Every other class has it this way, why should we be special?

[mgp84]

Bump for Feedback

[Furionstorm]

The extremely funny thing is that ORIGINALLY about 3 years ago, Blizzard had SEPARATE roles spread through talents WITHIN the feral tree, BUT they decided to merge them, NOW we are REGRESSING back to Tank or DPS focus (Which IMO is the biggest BS since EZ Mode Raiding).

While I agree that druids are hybrids and should be able to multitask, i.e. boomkin that can heal somewhat, cat that can pick up offtank mobs, bears that can reasonably dps, etc, I don't think that Blizz should combine feral talents to the point of where you can do both optimaly, thats not terribly fair since any other class would have to respec. I think Blizz is trying to make alot of players make a choice as to how they wanna play, granted, all of the trees still need some work, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

[mgp84]

While I agree that druids are hybrids and should be able to multitask, i.e. boomkin that can heal somewhat, cat that can pick up offtank mobs, bears that can reasonably dps, etc, I don't think that Blizz should combine feral talents to the point of where you can do both optimaly, thats not terribly fair since any other class would have to respec. I think Blizz is trying to make alot of players make a choice as to how they wanna play, granted, all of the trees still need some work, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Sure, then make us on par with other classes for speccing into those talents. So far, feral DPS does NOT scale with other classes even after WotLK, and tanking mitigation STILL doesn't compare to warrior or paladin or even deathknight.

[Koumaru]

Do you have some numbers to back up your claim about mitigation?

I've only seen data to support that we're right up there with warriors and possibly a bit ahead of paladins.

And though Berserk was nerfed for PvP, it was buffed for PvE tanking.

Right now, it's a good time to be a bear.