BlizzCon and Druids: Feel the love
by Robin Torres 
Aug 9th 2007 at 11:00AM
I may write about Pallies and Shammies, but my main is a Drood. When Onnix and I were leveling from 60 to 70, we discovered that our battles went much faster when I was specced Moonkin rather than Tree. While I had happily grown up a healer, I had always found soloing rather slow when I was Resto. One taste of the Boomkin and I was hooked. The problem? Currently, the gear for the Balance tree is sparse. So I started leveling up a Pally.
BlizzCon showed that Blizzard understands the plight of healers and DPS specced hybrids and they are going to do something about it. While they are very happy with the Feral spec, they will be showing Restoration and Balance some love.
The juicy details are after the jump.
Free Spell Damage for Healers!
It never really has made sense that someone who is ubergeared and speced to heal has to respec or go to an alt in order to do the solo PvE content. Blizzard's developers have confirmed that they will be incorporating free Spell Damage into gear for healers. While this change will not make healers be as good at DPS as an equally geared Mage, they will definitely be at least as quick at downing mobs as the poorly geared alts healers are currently switching to in order to enjoy soloing. This should be great news for Restoration Druids.
Spirit Revamp
This is long overdue. Currently, Spirit just doesn't do enough to warrant it being on so much gear. While the Mana bar will not regen as fast as the Energy bar, the changes to Spirit will improve Mana regen more than it is now. They are also talking about adding another aspect to Spirit to make it even more valuable to Mana users. Personally, I'm hoping for some kind of Spell Power increase the more Spirit you have. The improvement of Spirit as a stat will help both Trees and Oomkins.
Tweaking the Tree
Blizzard agrees that the Tree Form, while achieving the unique healing role they envisioned, still needs some improvement. Plans for the future include being able to remove poisons and curses in Tree form. There is also some talk to be able to use Barkskin as a Tree, which seems like something Captain Obvious would suggest. I hope that if they don't allow Trees to use Barkskin, they at least increase the survivability of that form. Update: Seems Trees can already use Barkskin. It's been a while since I've been a tree. I guess Captain Obvious has been at work again. Thanks, Ryan!
Balancing the Boomkin
Blizzard agrees that the Balance tree needs to be tweaked to take the OOM out of Boomkin. Along with mana efficiency, they also see the dearth of PvE items for Moonkins as a problem. They will be introducing more gear for the Moonkin spec as well as fixing the mana issues in some undisclosed way.
Arena Representation
Blizzard has been watching the low percentage of Druids in Arena teams for a while. They have seen, however, that as Druids refine their skills, they are showing up more in Arena teams. We Droods know that our class takes a little finesse to use all of our skills and spells to the best advantage and Blizzard sees that the Arena problems may just be a larger learning curve for our class. We are still underrepresented and Blizzard is evaluating the situation to see if we need some Arena PvP utility tweaking or if we just need to L2Play.
Feral Fun
The Feral tree is working pretty much as intended. The bug with the Night Elf cat form range will be fixed and the range for both races will be tuned, otherwise it doesn't seem that they will be doing much for the Feral spec.
Overall, I am very excited about the changes for Druids. Do you feel the love?
Filed under: Druid, BlizzCon, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Pandoire Aug 9th 2007 11:15AM
http://www.mat-taylor.com/blog/
ryan Aug 9th 2007 11:13AM
druids can use barkskin in tree... changed that a little while back
Todd Brown Aug 9th 2007 11:17AM
I definitely feel the love on this one.
lavos.determination Aug 9th 2007 11:15AM
Trees can already use Barkskin.
Orin Aug 9th 2007 11:15AM
Depending on how much "free spell damage" they give healers, that may make the balance/resto hybrid that much more viable over ToL spec druids. As it is now it's hard to justify being ToL if there is more than one in the raid already...
Spirit is also pretty hard to justify stacking vs MP5 for a Druid. You really need to work hard at having as much gear and talents as possible, and doing a lot of math to work out a balance between the two.
Overall though I am eager to hear more about the changes Blizzard has in mind.
Vaca Aug 9th 2007 11:22AM
I'll feel the love when I see the balance gear actually drop off a boss.
PyroAmos Aug 9th 2007 11:44AM
they'll prolly do it like
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29524
reduce +healing by 1/3 then add what they took off as dmg/healing, so you still have the same +healing, but some +dmg as well, so if an item has +90 healing, it'd be reduced to +60 healing and have +30 dmg/healing added, so the total is +30 dmg/+90 healing. Currently that crafted set is the only set that is like that, but I think what they're talking about is changing alot of healing gear to the same basic formula, or maybe just making everything like that in the next expantion and makin' us wait for it to get those sets.
native Aug 9th 2007 11:48AM
i'm very happy to read this.
with all the pvp i've been doing lately i was planning on respeccing balance on my lunch break and then spending the afternoon researching upgrades on the armory. :)
i've been straight feral so far (lvl 60) but i'm a slow lvler anyway and what the heck. might be fun to try.
PyroAmos Aug 9th 2007 11:48AM
BTW thats equally good for all the healers, priests, shammans, n stuff, since that part is across all healering gear, not just durid.
ezkial Aug 9th 2007 11:49AM
in regards to feral range.
"range for both races will be tuned, otherwise it doesn't seem that they will be doing much for the Feral spec."
i dont think they are going to fix or tune the range further than the current tauren range. i could be and hope i am wrong, but i doubt it..
Egen Aug 9th 2007 11:50AM
Yeah it was nice to see Blizzard say they are going to be looking at Boomkin some more, but to be honest, I'm pretty happy where we're at right now.
Sure, mana is an issue, but if you spec with Dreamstate & Intensity its far less of one. Some of this is gear dependent of course. And if you get a shadow priest in your group you won't have mana issues at all.
As for lack of +damage leather drops, ok thats a little frustrating, but we can wear cloth, so I think that really offsets alot of the lack of leather gear. And if you say you want it for PVP, well there are alot of PVP leather damage items.
Maybe I'm just happy they they actually made moonkin a viable raid spec finally, but I really like where the balance tree is at right now.
- Solume: Boomchicken
Urthona Aug 9th 2007 12:03PM
YES
Zul'Aman have caster leather plz? And a damn Idol for Hurricane! I want my AOE.
I'm Feral now cause my guild needed me to tank, but that hasn't stopped me from making caster gear a priority. The only improvements I'd like for Feral are these:
1) Ability to eat Healthstones in feral forms. I understand they think we need opposable thumbs to open health pots, but healthstones should be swallowed whole like candy.
2) Ability to fire off an innervate in feral forms. Asking too much?
3) "Aspect of the Bear". This is an idea we kicked around back when we were collecting Moonglade. How about a set bonus that allowed three seconds of bear armor and stam to persist after shifting into caster form? This set bonus would eliminate the requests for ideas 1 and 2, and let us shift a LOT more in fights... I love me some save-the-day shapeshifting.
Chadwick Aug 9th 2007 12:12PM
One cool idea at Blizzcon was for Spirit to affect threat. That would make me a happy mage.
crsh Aug 9th 2007 12:27PM
Yeah it's nice to see these adjustments made to druids and pallys; I'm all for it. Seems like they actually put some real thought into it.
I play a priest, I'm starting to doubt they assigned anyone for the past year to the class since they just re-hash the same crap about Circle of Lawlling without addressing any other issues.
Baluki Aug 9th 2007 12:56PM
Simplest way to fix the damage-dealing healers problem is this: Add a property to the +Heal stat that gives you 25% of your +Heal as +SpellDmg. It could work like this:
(H - S) * .25 = B
H = +Healing, S = +Spell Damage, B = Bonus Spell Damage
It's a delicate balancing act though. Healers need to be able to solo, but they shouldn't do enough damage that they can be reliable damage-dealers in PvP or PvE. A healer should still HEAL when grouped.
Slayblaze Aug 9th 2007 1:20PM
If they start changing things up as this suggests,then I think it should work both ways. In other words +healing gear should also include an element of +spell damage as #7 and #15 suggest. I've seen some really nice +Healing (only) gear drop that would be excellent for Mages and Warlocks, yet since it's +Healing (only) they are not allowed to roll - nor would they really want to since it is only +heal. If that also included an element of +spell damage then it might actually be useful for Mages/Locks. Shadow Priests too I suppose.
After all, the Mages/Locks have Druids (and sometimes even Pallies) rolling on the cloth drops so it would only be fair to make the +healing also increase damage to give the clothie damage-dealers have a few more options. Not that they don't already have good options, but several instances - Kara comes to mind - are quite heavy on the +healing gear that excludes the Mages/Locks.
Alcyon Aug 10th 2007 6:05PM
The cat range bug has been a huge frustration in pvp. I for one will be greatly excited to have a 5 yd attack range all of the time instead of some of the time.
thush Aug 9th 2007 1:42PM
The UI for changing forms still feels a bit "clunky." They need to make changing forms feel smoother IMO. If they don't want to get rid of the global cooldown for casting into a form, they should at least auto-queue the commands so there's no lag or inability to change if something goes awry. Example: going from cat to bear should be as smooth as going from cat to caster. The devs should revisit this in the UI...I'm sure they are smart enough to figure something out. Other than that, I have no complaints at all.
Scruffy Aug 9th 2007 1:57PM
@16
Make +healing affect VE. That'd make me a happy priest....
High healing, lower damage, and less threat but without a holy/disc respec? *swoon*
Coherent Aug 9th 2007 2:21PM
You'd think it would be a no-brainer that spirit needs an upgrade. Spirit essentially reduces downtime, while other stats increase killing power. Ummm, who cares about shorter downtime if you're gimped because of it?
The five-second rule basically means that spirit is totally useless when you're actually in a fight: What does a mage or priest do when they're not casting spells in combat? That's right... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Spirit needs a HUGE upgrade to make it worthwhile at all, let alone actually useful and desirable.