BC Druid Talents

[Watto44]

From the wording of the Twighlight's Wrath talent I would assumed that Moonfury is still applied before +damage gear, which kind of stinks.

The main thing that I thought of when I saw the "new" (cough cough, splutter, choke) balance talents was the fact that spell casting resets a druids swing timer. Would smell very bad if that is still the case after the expansion patch, but other than that moonkin is starting to look more appealing. Although, it's a shame there isn't an "improved moonkin" talent - similar to the improved leader of the pack one - that shares the mana restoring properties of moonkin with your party.

On the feral front I definately like what a see. One gripe is that feline swiftness is still restricted to outdoor environments. Really blizzard, that is just plain annoying. Roots I can live without - particularly since I'll be getting a cyclone! - but having to plod around in a slow cat form is just plain silly. (On a side note: my mage can cast a fireball while he's under water, but my cat can't run fast because he's in a tent?!)

I'm looking forward to experimenting with maim and cyclone in a pvp environment. I've often wondered what would be more powerful for a druid: a kidney shot or gouge? With maim I think blizzard got it right. I like the synergies between mangle and the various bleed skills we have (including the new lacerate, which looks sexah).

The resto tree didn't really excite me that much, but from the sounds of things blizzard wants to beef up the role of HoTs in instances. If they pull that off, a resto druid could definately find themself a nice niche as the king of the HoT.

Unfortunately the one thing that I really, really wanted to see wasn't included. :( I wanted feral charge to be usable in all forms: charging mookin ftw!!! :w00t:

[Quark]

Seems relevent here ...

Since the druid expansion talent and ability preview went live we have seen a number of common questions come up, and we wanted to provide answers to some of those in a single post you can easily refer to. While researching these questions we also came upon some additional information on the druid class moving into the expansion.


* While in Tree of Life form you will indeed be able to cast Regrowth.
* Maim will turn off your auto-attack, and maim will not break on bleed or other damage over time effects.
* Natural Weapons will affect Moonkin form when doing melee damage.
* Lifebloom can be stacked up to 3 times by each druid . With each Lifebloom stack, the heal over time portion will stack, but the large ending heal is only applied once. Each successive Lifebloom cast that adds to the stack will refresh its duration.
* Swiftmend will not work off of a Lifebloom.
* We’re looking into the possibility of Improved Faerie Fire affecting Feral Faerie Fire.
* The benefit of Spirit for druids is currently planned to be increased slightly while in the caster, moonkin, and tree of life forms resulting in a higher rate of mana regeneration.


Please keep in mind that the above information is subject to change as are all of the ability/talent previews and expansion information currently posted.

The Spirit change is a great change coming much later than it should have, in my mind. They still haven't addressed the fact that tree form kills spells druids need to do their job and slows them down to boot ...

[TheDragoon]

That Lifebloom change is interesting. If I am reading it correctly the way it sounds like it will work is that you can stack it three times and then cast an additional Lifebloom periodically that will reset the duration for all of the Lifeblooms. If you kept doing this, you would quickly get to the point where you have three times the HoT power of a single Lifebloom continuously applied for the mana cost of a single Lifebloom every so often to reset the duration. It means you would never see the end direct heal, but that sounds like it would be quite a bit of HoT power.

[Monkey]

Seems relevent here ...
The Spirit change is a great change coming much later than it should have, in my mind. They still haven't addressed the fact that tree form kills spells druids need to do their job and slows them down to boot ...

You're referring to decursing/depoisoning? I think the tree form kills those spells on purpose, similar to how it kills Healing Touch. The tree looks like it is meant to be a different healing role, not just a mo'better-resto. With the tree, the new version of lifebloom, allowing HoTs to stack, and the massive increase in player survivability, I think Blizzard is trying to make it effective to heal in a strategic and less reactive manner.

Imagine the healers clustered around the MT (Main Tree) in a 25-man raid; the tree can use HoTs to pre-emptively heal people before they take damage and swing in for the swiftmend if necessary. Meanwhile, other healers tackle other 'jobs' including big well-timed heals on tanks, decursing, innervating, spamming flash heal, etc. And the tree can always shapeshift back to caster to do any of that if necessary. I wonder if they'll do anything to improve the UI so that healing is less about staring at where ever you have your raid groups parked and waiting for lines to move.

What they really haven't addressed yet: Will Tauren stormcrows and trees have horns? You know only two things come from Mulgore...

[Quark]

You're referring to decursing/depoisoning? I think the tree form kills those spells on purpose, similar to how it kills Healing Touch. The tree looks like it is meant to be a different healing role, not just a mo'better-resto. With the tree, the new version of lifebloom, allowing HoTs to stack, and the massive increase in player survivability, I think Blizzard is trying to make it effective to heal in a strategic and less reactive manner.

It's not just those. You're missing out on:
Healing Touch
Remove Curse
Abolish Poison / Cleanse Poison
Innervate
Reincarnate

Tell me, how "mana efficient" is this form going to be when you need to shift out and back in just to Innervate and Res, two mainstays of the druid healer.

And the increase in player survivability -> are we sure that will carry over to raids? Excuse me if I'm doubtful, but there's two ways to make healing a challenge: spike damage and high enough DPS that mana efficiency becomes a big issue. Are you so sure Blizzard is removing the spike damage, which is necessary to allow HoTs to become non-risky mainstays for healing?

Then there's the 50% slow on top of that. Again, are you so sure Blizzard is going to kill one challenge of raiding - mobility - just to make this tree form work?

The more I think about this talent the more I think it's a complete waste, which would make for the two trees I'm specialized in the most (Rogue - Combat and Druid - Resto) both subpar for the expansion.

[Tuftears]

Here's the math on lifebloom as I see it:

Heal over time: 243 over 7 seconds - probably 39 per 1-second tick - receives 58% of your +heal *
Instant heal: 600 - receives 43% of your +heal
Costs 220 mana

Suppose you have +1000 healing: you can wait for 6 seconds on each Lifebloom and gain the following benefits.

6 ticks x1 lifebloom: each tick heals 39+82.8 or 121.8, or 730 total
6 ticks x2 lifebloom: each tick heals 121.8 x 2 or 1461 total
7 ticks x3 lifebloom: each tick heals 121.8 x 3 or 2557.8 total
Instaheal: each lifebloom heals 600+430 or 1030, or 3090 total

Total healing: 7838.8 healing for 660 mana, or 11.88 heal per mana. Holy mana efficiency, Batman!

* based on Blizzard statements on how +heal applies to Lifebloom

[Tuftears]

On the other hand... Suppose you only get one Lifebloom instant heal, not three stacked Lifebloom instant heals. That would be the 'Blizzard hates druid' way to read it:

6 ticks x1 lifebloom: each tick heals 39+82.8 or 121.8, or 730 total
6 ticks x2 lifebloom: each tick heals 121.8 x 2 or 1461 total
7 ticks x3 lifebloom: each tick heals 121.8 x 3 or 2557.8 total
Instaheal: Blizzard-hates-druid lifebloom heals 600+430 or 1030

Total healing: 5778.8 healing for 660 mana, or 8.76 heal per mana.

Versus one lifebloom alone:

7 ticks of 121.8: 730 total
Insta-heal heals 600+430 or 1030
Total healing: 1760 healing for 220 mana, or 8 heal per mana.

By comparison:
* Rejuvenation rank 13 heals for 1060 over 12 secs for 415 mana; with +1000 healing, that's 2060 healing for 415 mana, or 4.96 heal/mana
* Healing Touch rank 13 heals for 2707-3198 for 935 mana; average with +1000 healing is 4.23 heal/mana
* Regrowth rank 10 heals for 1215-1356 + 1274 over 21 secs for 1030 mana, +heal broken up between instant and HoT, so 3571 heal is 3.47 heal/mana

For those who argue that heal-over-time spells are worthless, I'm going to say that we have to learn to heal in a more mana efficient way. If HoTs are more mana efficient - and you can see Lifebloom is going to be far away the most mana efficient heal we have - then we need to say 'druids are responsible for X people that are going to take steady, not spiky damage'. And because their most efficient HoTs are insta-casts, druids can do this on the move, for multiple people.

[Monkey]

It's not just those. You're missing out on:
Healing Touch
Remove Curse
Abolish Poison / Cleanse Poison
Innervate
Reincarnate

Tell me, how "mana efficient" is this form going to be when you need to shift out and back in just to Innervate and Res, two mainstays of the druid healer.

And the increase in player survivability -> are we sure that will carry over to raids? Excuse me if I'm doubtful, but there's two ways to make healing a challenge: spike damage and high enough DPS that mana efficiency becomes a big issue. Are you so sure Blizzard is removing the spike damage, which is necessary to allow HoTs to become non-risky mainstays for healing?

Then there's the 50% slow on top of that. Again, are you so sure Blizzard is going to kill one challenge of raiding - mobility - just to make this tree form work?

I'm pretty sure that tree form will be attractive enough to have at least one tree per raid. Which actually seems OK to me, given the changes in raid size. Blizzard must walk a fine line with the resto 41-pt talent--The tree must be good, but not too good. If the tree improved all support aspects of the Druid, they risk making it mandatory and consigning all druids to tree status in raids. If all a raid's druids *do* want to be trees, other healers can handle big heals, the Mages can decurse, and the new guys (Shaman or Paladins) can remove poisons. The Grove can handle all healing over time and bandaid spike damage with swiftmend while other healers handle the big heals.

As for mana efficiency in regard to innervate and rebirth, I think it'll be pretty darn good given cooldowns, the improvements to druid spirit regen, the tree's own efficiencies, and the incentive for a raid's Main Tree to have high spirit for the +healing bonus to the healer party. That being said, I think giving the tree innervate would be quite reasonable. Innervate's basically a HoT for healers, right?;)

And regarding mobility: Yes, the Tree will be slow, but not stationary, and the aura extends for 40 yards. Other healers will still be able to run around. And because the tree can only cast instant-cast spells, it can keep moving while others need to stop and cast.

[oldmandennis]

The more I think about this talent the more I think it's a complete waste, which would make for the two trees I'm specialized in the most (Rogue - Combat and Druid - Resto) both subpar for the expansion.

The talent trees are obviously not going to be spot on right in the beginning. On the other hand, you really have very little idea what is coming in the expansion, so it is WAY to early to say what is and isn't good. Challenging fights come in all shapes and sizes, the tree will obviously be better on some then others.

As far as mobility goes, with most of the tree's strength in instant cast spells, it can constantly be in motion. If you brought one to the twin emps, it would just require a bit more foresight to start moving early. The mana regen would be a very nice boon for that fight. The ability to keep Hots up on a large number of people would be great for healing the wall on Huhu. Obviously for C'thun or Satura, tree form would not be a good idea.

Shifting twice a fight for your res and innervate is not a problem, especially not with the amount of mana a tree will be providing.

Basically they have added a fifth tree to druids. You have Moonkin, Cat, Bear, Healing Touch, and Tree. That sounds like a good thing to me. With a bonus that the still very strong HT build now has a crapton of points left over to do something like be a bear for off tanking. Maybe this 0/30/31. One thing I would be suprised if they did not do is have zones that vary from tank and spank to 6-8 adds... it would probably be very nice to have a bear that could pick up an add and hold it for a while, then shift and heal when the boss moves into phase 2. Think ZG snake if the snake adds were not CCable. Or Sulfuron.