Druid Changes - 1.8

[Kevin]

OK, I apologise, I'm guilty of something I've criticised other people for of spouting back a phrase commonly used by the WoW public without properly considering it

And it's not appropriate, you can be an under-powered variant or even a level 1 alt and still do well in endgame raids if the other people can pick up the slack

But the question is, is a non-Resto Druid an underpowered variant in end game raids?

I would argue that, as I explained previously, it is indeed that and that while you may not need Resto to function in MC you might need Resto to secure a place on a raid if you're raiding with people who are seeking to optimise, people who aren't tolerant of interesting but sub-optimal builds (ie 99% of the end game raiding population)

In 1.8 if you're mainly nuking then are you pulling the weight that a mage or a warlock would? Even with the +3% buff to others I suspect that overall more damage would be done by the group if they had a specialist

If you're nuking and healing as appropriate then can I question your raid organisation? Why aren't the specialist healers doing the healing?

If you're mainly healing with the occasional nuke tossed around then you're surely sub-optimal without Resto

I'm not denigrating your build but I am questioning it. I don't see how it would help most teams as much as a Resto build would. Maybe in your raids you have too many healers so it helps if some of the druids are Balance and some of the Priests are Shadow. Or maybe your guild is sufficiently ahead of the difficulty curve that it doesn't require everyone to optimise

But from your specific situation, it's hard to draw a general assertion that counters the one I made up-thread. Specifically, that Balance spec means a half-strength nuker is taking the place of a real nuker. Sure you have versatility but I really can't see how a big raid needs hybrid versatility. And I'm also thinking that 20 in Balance (which will get you more crits + bigger crits) plus Innervate and Nature's Swiftness is simply a better hybrid than a mainly Balance spec since Innervate and NS add flexibility which is what the hybrid role is about

So please make the case for those of us who would like to try end-game Feral or Moonkin form in raids beyond the rather basic outline you've given. Because that outline to some extent comes down to my guild lets me and I'm a good player. The only concrete tactical thing that you've mentioned that's a positive resulting from your talent allocation is Nature's Grace. Can you give details of your damage meter rankings if you and other nukers are going all out?

As for the LL and variants while it's partly true that we champion underpowered variants for their own sake, one of the ways we've always done it is by demonstrating that variants can be really good. Will that the case with 31 Balance Druids in 1.8? Or with 31 Feral Druids?
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Well take a look at Skan's and my post's earlier. A 1.8 balance druid will be a better nuker than a mage in MC, because mages aren't very good single target nukers right now as it is. As mentioned a 1.7 balance druid brings some nice benefits to the table with hurricane. We already try to have warriors that aren't actively tanking make sure a thunderclap stays up on most of the mobs. I could see hurricane being more valuable on the core hound packs than an extra innervate. Though all druids will have that in 1.8 but slowwing attacks by 20% means less serrated bites and less damage. Not sure if the 10 seconds of less damage that it does right now and the high mana costs justifies it anywhere else in MC in 1.7.

As for only healing now and then. On trash mobs two priests can pretty much provide all the healing you need. 4 priests, 2 druids, and 2 paladins can pretty much provide all the healing you need on most of the boss fights as well, heck that is probably more healing than you need if things go right. But things don't always go right, so having a nuker that can change over to healing is a good thing for me.

My resto/feral druid in cat form in her hybrid gear (higher mana pool less agi and strenght gear) is able to sustain 130 DPS in instance like scholo and strat, similarly equipped roges (meaning same number of set, blue, and green pieces, my gear is still pretty poor) are at about 160 to 170 DPS in the same places from the runs I remember so in that gear I run about 80% of a rogues DPS. Not sure how that will translate to Molten Core as I've never gone cat there though I have tanked corehound packs in bear form because of class balance for that raid. I still have 3650HP and 4230MP in this gear (which is 200 HP more and 900MP less than my current normal MC gear). My crit rate in cat is only 12.25% with 8.21% dodge in this gear though. Though it is only a base attack power of 500. If I went full feral in 1.8 in this hybrid gear (not my full out cat or even my bear/cat balance gear) I would have 4850 mana (20% more intellect), 117 more AP, 4% more dodge, 4% more crit, my backstab would cost 2 less energy, my ferocius bite would 15% more damage and all my other specials besides shred would do 20% more damage. That much more attack power is 9 more DPS right there. Ferocious bite, is about 30% of my total damage when my numbers are higher so it would be about 39 of the 130 DPS I do. A 15% increase on that is 5 more DPS. Claw is about 10% of my DPS so a 20% increase to that is about 2 more DPS. 4% more crit would be about 5 more DPS as well, so 21 DPS more now. Yeah I'm only 88% of a similar level of gear rogue but I still have 4850 mana that can be used to jump out and heal. I'm also boosting 3 or 4 other peoples (depending on the group I'm in) crit by 3%. Lets look at 3 rogues of the similar gearing take that 170 DPS (I've got some save MC data that has rogues anywhere from 130 to 205 DPS). Basic calc says that will put them all at about 175 DPS. So 15 DPS there if just 3 rogues. Mine was at 151 so if you give that 15 DPS to me I'm at 166 so I'm now almost as good as rogue and if things go wrong I can still heal nearly as well as I used to be able to with full resto spec. Actually since my healing touch will be a 3 second cast now I might heal better because I'll have fewer of them CT interrupted and hence land more of them and healing touch is still the most mana efficient heal I have at 3 second cast it will also be the best healing per second spell. It's 588 HP/s 2.61 HP/MP untalented right now. 618 HP/s 3.22 HPmMP fully talented right now. With just the speed up talent it goes to 686 HP/s without any other talents behind it. A full resto in 1.8 won't have the same mana efficiency as they do now since they will only be able to get 10% vs the current 15% mana reduction (though a split resto/balance can drop the cost by 19%) on healing touch. A weak rejuv doesn't really matter in MC.

So what do I give up for this, really? I give up a few hundred HP per heal but my 1.8 feral/restoration spec, compared to my 1.7 restoration/feral spec will actually be able to heal more HP/sec with a faster healing touch. Actually the build I'm thinking about will still have +8% to all my healing so I'll give up a chance to avoid interruption while casting not healing power and in a MC group that should matter. I give up innervate which honestly seems to me to be something that is only needed when things go wrong or if you are thin on healing. I lose natures swiftness which again is only really needed if things go wrong. In a group of 3 rogues I'll be essentially as good as a rogue in mostly blues and greens and if I want to go full cat gear (another umm 210 AP with 1.8 talents) it'd be even better than that though I'd lose versatility because I'd cut my mana pool a lot. There are some pieces of wildheart that I'm missing that would help me get more AP while holding onto my mana pool, there is other gear I could get that is blue that would make me better than this right now as well and there are purples that I could wear that would probably let me tweak the hybrid gear even better if I had them. But anyway you can have a rogue that is in blues and greens for gear that can also heal if things go wrong with a 1.8 feral druid. That in my book makes up for the loss of innervate or NS.

This build will give up a fair bit in healing 5 mans though where I find that I've used innervate a lot more often and since I won't have the interruptiong avoidance getting aggro in a 5 man is more of a problem as well.

Of course to me restoration builds have always been more about being a better only healer in a 5 man than being a better raid healer. Unless you let the druids be the primary healer on the main tanks most of their healing power is wasted in the high end raids anyway. A druid is a better single target healer than a priest, paladin, or shaman (the exception being a priest that is fully invested into greater healing and uses that as the primary heal spell but priests don't do that). But they aren't as good as healing multiple people as any of those classes because they have to burn a lot of mana to do so. Regrowth even when it crits is bad on the mana pool since you are looking at about 2 HP/MP without the HoT and well you lose a lot of what the HoT can heal when others are slapping heals on there as the tick will either not go off because of full health or you won't get full heal from the tick or you casting another regrowth a few seconds later and overwriting your own HoT and wasting it. In MC where you generally have several people casting faster heals a druid is wasting a lot of mana to be able to land a heal or is sitting around watching healing touch get interrupted a lot.

So yeah with the damage boost to feral (and I'm considering the boost you can do to others as a boost to yourself for purposes of should I take this druid over this rogue or this hunter or this other druid) and to balance yeah losing an innervate or a natures swiftness is fine. Actually on the last 3 Molten Core runs and one Onyxia run that I've had Taranna on (and our alliance is not flush with healers) I've used Natures Swiftness twice and only one time did it seem that it mattered and innervate once, and that was on Golemag as was one of the natures swiftnesses. Check with your druids see how often they actually use these skills and check how often they feel those skills make a difference. So yeah I've used them combined 3 runs out of 4 and I don't think they prevented a wipe in any case, I do think they prevented the death of an off tank but the tanking would have been picked up by another warrior and we still wouldn't have wiped anyway.

Now again those skills have made a big difference when I've been healing 5 mans or even just in my duo with Treesh's rogue, I'll be a lot less comfortable as a 5 man healer without them, if I'm the only healer (which I often have been) but I won't really miss them in a raid most of the time.

So I don't know if that will convince you. But I'm not all that convinced the skills are that valuable in 1.7 and the alternatives you will have in 1.8 make them seem even less so. Heck a 1.8 moonkin giving 3% more crit chance to a heal spec paladin might give you as much mana back as a innervate would have over the course of a boss fight. Then again maybe I don't use innervate and NS as much as or as well as I could.