Druid - Cataclysm Preview Compilation

[Elunedra]

There is one thing I am wondering. Maybe I am a bad reader, don't know how to read things properly. So ToL form doesn't change your resource system, doesn't give ToL-only abilities. Isn't that the same with being a boomkin? Not that I have played a boomkin before.

doomking form doest chance your resource no, it doesnt give doomking only abilites

verry tru

but it does give mana regen on crit, else u be oomking again

[Elunedra]

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s unbuffed health. For boss encounters we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Feral tree and the druid is in bear form -- these values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Feral tree and are in bear form, so you won’t see Balance, Restoration, or Feral druids in cat form running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today -- there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so the Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is that all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

and mindless stamina stacking wins :/

meh i am a tank that like avoidence but now stamina will even give threat >.<

[WiredJ]

I loved the Blizzard reference to the JOHN FUCKING MADDEN diagram. It was a pleasant surprise that they knew about that, hehe.

[Deleted]

There is one Moonkin form only ability called Owlkin Frenzy. However you have to put seperate talents to get that, but its still a Moonkin form only ability: "Attacks done to you while in Moonkin form"

[Deleted]

There is one thing I am wondering. Maybe I am a bad reader, don't know how to read things properly. So ToL form doesn't change your resource system, doesn't give ToL-only abilities. Isn't that the same with being a boomkin? Not that I have played a boomkin before.

From what I've read of the other blue posts is that while the feral forms are obvious, the moonkin is not.

The explanation given for keeping moonkin as opposed to Tree of Life is the following:

0) All healers need to be able to heal (as equally as possible within the limits of their core mechanic) and with the new changes in Cataclysm to be granted as many utilities to support themselves including CC/light damage. In other words, healers cannot afford to be specialists in Cataclysm.

1) Whereas to be able to dps as well as other classes, a hybrid class like a druid MUST be a specialist.

2) The whole point of a form is to giving up utility in order to specialize.

3) Druids are the form class. Therefore, druid dps are forms.

Of course, it helps that it seems Cataclysm = Guild Wars, i.e. much bigger emphasis on pvp.

I am completely neutral about this. I'm not a fan of pve players being forced to change just because of pvp (which seems to happen so often even during an expansion). But for the start of a whole new expansion, which has not even reached test servers, I'm equally willing to give Blizzard a good go at it now that they've stated that druid healers will be balanced in caster form not including ToL.

[Hiroxified]

There is one thing I am wondering. Maybe I am a bad reader, don't know how to read things properly. So ToL form doesn't change your resource system, doesn't give ToL-only abilities. Isn't that the same with being a boomkin? Not that I have played a boomkin before.

The same can be said about moonkins, yet this isn't happening, why? it appears a double standard.

I've said this before, but we don't think giving up everything (hyperbole, but you get the idea) to go into a dps form is that big a sacrifice, because you're being compared to and presumably want to fill the role of classes and specs that do nothing but dps. It's not a big deal for a druid to give up healing to dps like a mage, because the mage can't heal.

But giving up abilities to heal is tough when priests, paladins and shaman don't have to. If this was a single player game, we'd probably do something like say druids have to fully commit themselves to healing, but if they do, they'll be 10% better at healing than any other class. In an MMO, it doesn't feel fair to do that. So instead you make sacrifices just so you can heal as well as everyone else. But that ends up feeling unfair, so we give you most of the abilities you'd typically ever want to cast, and pretty soon the Tree of Life talent is just changing your visual. If it was super compelling gameplay, we'd probably be talking instead about ways to keep it.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/24262387043/cataclysm-class-preview-druid/
This pretty much explains it.

[Deleted]

I like the whole nature's torrent thing. Though it makes me wonder if druids will have to deal with seeding, leechers and trackers now...

Also, I bet MushroomBomb likes the whole 'shroom thing.

[Naivedo]

Start off tanking one mob as a bear, stack Vengeance then get real tanks to pull off and go kitty or go bear when the mob starts to AOE = win. ;D

[Hiroxified]

Start off tanking one mob as a bear, stack Vengeance then get real tanks to pull off and go kitty or go bear when the mob starts to AOE = win. ;D

I'm pretty certain they will have Vengeance removed when switching into Cat .

[cretz]

seriously this is a fail change what they are doing with tol, for casuals it's maybe fun but for me as beeing a resto in an end game guild it's bullshit, who dose dps as a healer on a hard modes in icc 25?atm stuck on hc lk 25... i neved wanted to do dps as a tree and prob will never do... i asked some of the preists , shaman healers how many offensive spells they did and they said thay could count it on theyr fingers ... so i guess the dps sacrifice it refers more to pvp... i hate the tree change, it was something i liked , i was different...
and the 6% aura from tol i bet it won't be introduced into the druids passive talents ... it will be on only when you pop tol and that is lame, now resto druids have nothing unique ... prolly they will make the pala one better now, it always was that palas were the cream de la cream for blizzard...

cheers

[Farahawnee]

Hmm... What are they going to do with the ToL Aura now? Make it passive to us in caster form too? Or are we losing the normal passive bonus for a boosted %heal increase on a cooldown? I'm adopting a wait and see attitude here, but it sure ruins all the fun I had joking about tree form in raids.

I guess now I won't have to waste mana shifting in and out to root adds or cast faerie fire on bosses. They say our heals will cost more mana because conserving it will now be important, then they change our iconic form so we can dps too? WoW, that sounds pretty contradictory to me.

[Hiroxified]

seriously this is a fail change what they are doing with tol, for casuals it's maybe fun but for me as beeing a resto in an end game guild it's bullshit, who dose dps as a healer on a hard modes in icc 25?atm stuck on hc lk 25... i neved wanted to do dps as a tree and prob will never do... i asked some of the preists , shaman healers how many offensive spells they did and they said thay could count it on theyr fingers ... so i guess the dps sacrifice it refers more to pvp... i hate the tree change, it was something i liked , i was different...
and the 6% aura from tol i bet it won't be introduced into the druids passive talents ... it will be on only when you pop tol and that is lame, now resto druids have nothing unique ... prolly they will make the pala one better now, it always was that palas were the cream de la cream for blizzard...

cheers

Honestly that is just unreasonable & irrational QQ'ing.

Firstly, there are no Hardmodes in Icecrown Citadel, you as a endgame player should obviously know that.

Secondary I've always felt that it wasn't the look of Tree of Life but the fact that we are using healing-over-time abilities that made us special & unique.
Regarding the 6%+ aura from Tree of Life, the 100% Polymorph immunity and the immortality to snare effects, Blizzard has promised us that these would be given to us by the Mastery bonuses or in some other way.

I'm pretty excited about the whole Tree-of-Life-being-a-cooldown-thing which is a thing I personally have been missing, on for example Plasma Blast in the Mimiron Hardmode fight.

Also the new Tranquillity changes which seem logically enough.

'cheers'

[huth]

Resto is going to lose polymorph immunity either way. That means that both cat and bear will also no longer work against it in the base versions.

The main reason for ToLs removal is, that with all the changes coming to resto, ToL would literally do nothing more than change your visuals.

Spending a whole talent point just to look differently is a bit much.

[Deleted]

They have stated that you will be more powerful in ToL and your healing will be balanced around caster form. You will be as powerful in caster as you are in ToL right now. ToL will be a new spell for restos with the same name but we can hope for a new graphic and some new mechanics (shift into ToL in every 2 minutes for a short ultimate healing boost for example). Personally im expecting it to be some kind of Avenging Wrath for druids.

The other new spell resto will get is the druid type healing rain (regrowth with aoe healing bed thing). Its not a new spell, rather an old mostly unused spell in a new cool usable form.

Third is the defensive dispel.

Also it was just a prewiev, other new stuff waits. What about a redone Tranquility??

On the whole it can be 4 fresh buffon on your action bar that really have a meaning.

[Togarox]

I feel a little better about the ToL changes. Still a little wishy washy but I guess I'll have to wait and see what it looks like on beta.

[Wotch]

Honestly that is just unreasonable & irrational QQ'ing.

Firstly, there are no Hardmodes in Icecrown Citadel, you as a endgame player should obviously know that.

Secondary I've always felt that it wasn't the look of Tree of Life but the fact that we are using healing-over-time abilities that made us special & unique.
Regarding the 6%+ aura from Tree of Life, the 100% Polymorph immunity and the immortality to snare effects, Blizzard has promised us that these would be given to us by the Mastery bonuses or in some other way.

I'm pretty excited about the whole Tree-of-Life-being-a-cooldown-thing which is a thing I personally have been missing, on for example Plasma Blast in the Mimiron Hardmode fight.

Also the new Tranquillity changes which seem logically enough.

'cheers'

If there are no "hardmodes" then why are there under 400 guilds in the world working on heroic LK?

Honestly what the is the point of a CD for a druid when every GC is taken anyways and not using a GC to heal is potentially a raid death. CD's are all but useless when not healing someone every second can result in the death of that person. Tree of life should stay the way it is now. A healer shouldn't ever be dpsing in any situation. I believe that trading off offensive abilities to improve healing was a great mechanic and is it really that hard to pop out of form to dps if you really want to? If cataclysm raiding is even remotely similar to wrath wasting time by switching to a new form will be more of a hindrance imo. if they really want to change it to a CD based effect do something more like what they are doing with priests (karma or whatever) where when you cast a certain combination of spells you transform into the tree and it resets all active hots. Also changing up the healing style from hots to a larger focus on nourish and god forbid healing touch? That is just wrong. since vanilla hots have been the staple of druid healing. Don't take that away.

Being balanced around always being in one form is how it should remain. A CD to shift into a new form to boost healing is an unnecessary and will probably be rarely used in most in game content.

And why make feral "rotation" even easier. It is already one of the easiest rotations out there. What is difficult about maintaining 1 buff roughly every 30 seconds 1 bleed every 15 and 1 every 30? There is so much down time waiting for energy Regen that thinking about it doesn't even take any effort. Add thrash as a cat ability similar to how there is a swipe and mangle for bear and a swipe and mangle for cat. another button to hit instead of just using shred as fast as possible for a 15 second interval would be nice.

Guess this means I will be heading back to a class with a real rotation and useful core abilities

[Fasc]

Resto is going to lose polymorph immunity either way. That means that both cat and bear will also no longer work against it in the base versions.

Not necessarily. They stated they will have to look at the Polymorph immunity in light of giving Restoration Druids a magic dispel mechanic. Feral/Balance won't have access to that ability and removing the immunity from them would feel pretty lame since the reasoning is for Restoration Druids. There is always going to be a persistent undertone that Feral/Balance can't have nice things in PvP because Restoration just takes them, something of this magnitude would be pretty lame to be sure.

Perhaps make it such that if you spec for the magic dispel your shapeshifting no longer frees you of Polymorph effects? Or just make it such that you have to use Bear or Cat, thus Polymorph while somewhat ineffective still forces a global to shift to a form and then out and interrupts casting.

[Fasc]

Guess this means I will be heading back to a class with a real rotation and useful core abilities

Have fun mashing AB/AM as a Mage or "facerolling" as a Retribution Paladin or whatever class you think requires more attention and "skill"

The way you break it down even the Enhancement Shaman and Shadow Priests (the only other classes with as many buttons to manage or more to Feral) are JUST watching a few timers and CDs and waiting around for them to pop up.

[torth-sucks]

I´m really excited about the changes to druids and I can´t really see why some people are crying their eyes out. So what if tree of life becomes a cooldown? We´ll be able to dps and stuff when no one is taking damage without having to pop out of form all the time. Blizzard has been working on this game a long time now and I would be very surprised if they made changes that made the game less fun for us. Wait til the changes go live, try them out and if you still dont like them, let the developers know. Dont start the mindless QQ already

I promise it will be less fun i dont want to pop out of tree form and "dps and stuff". If i did i wouldnt have rolled a druid. If u do want to do that then u shouldnt have rolled one either.

[torth-sucks]

doomking form doest chance your resource no, it doesnt give doomking only abilites

verry tru

but it does give mana regen on crit, else u be oomking again

Last time i looked tree buffs give you crit sp healing done and immune to poly effects.