Druid changes in 8885
by Eliah Hecht 
Aug 30th 2008 at 1:00PM
The latest beta push, build 8885, had changes for pretty much every class. Druids, of course, were no exception. Balance received the bulk of the changes, though it's mostly on the level of small tweaks. A few talents were moved around in the talent tree. Notably, Insect Swarm has been pushed down two tiers and correspondingly buffed up to 5% reduced chance to hit.
The really interesting part of the Balance tree changes is some great synergy for Resto druids. For instance:
- New Talent Nature's Splendor (Tier 3): Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom and Flourish spells by 10/20/30%.
- New Talent Genesis (Tier 1): Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Focused Starlight renamed Nature's Majesty and now affects Nourish and Healing Touch as well.
Looks like yet another step in the new quest to open up the talent trees and give us more options. Oh, and the Moonkin Aura now hits any raid member within 45 yards. Edit: Nature's Grasp now trainable, 100% chance to hit.
Turning to my currently preferred tree, Feral, we don't have quite as many alterations, but there's some good stuff there too, in the form of two new talents for bears:
- New Talent Mother Bear[PH][NYI] (Tier 8): Increases the bonus attack power for Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by an additional 20/40/60%, and for each friendly player in your party, damage you take is reduced while in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 1/2/3% [corrected].
- New Talent Natural Reaction[PH] (Tier 6): Increases your dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form by 2/4/6%, and you regenerate 1/2/3 rage eveyrtime you dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form.
That [PH] indicates that these numbers are placeholder values, so don't take them too seriously. The intention in putting in these bear-specific talents is to force people to decide whether they want to be cats or bears, so you don't have one talent spec that's both a great tank and a 95% great DPSer. And I know what I just said about PH values, but damn – 20% 12% reduced damage in a full group? Awesome.
Finally, Resto got some love as well; some of it was previewed already.
- Tree of Life aura is now a flat increase of 3% healing received for the whole raid.
- Furor (Tier 1) changed to: Gives you 20/40/60/80/100% chance to gain 10 Rage when you shapeshift into Bear and Dire Bear Form or 40 Energy when you shapeshift into Cat Form, and increases your total Intellect while in Moonkin form by 2/4/6/8/10%.
- Nature's Focus (Tier 1) now affects Wrath, Entangling Roots, and Cyclone in addition to Healing Touch, Nourish, Regrowth and Tranquility.
Here we see more Balance synergy. And as for Furor, my guess is that the proposed change from yesterday (100 energy) just didn't make it in yet; beta builds are typically some days behind development versions. At least, that's what I'm hoping.
[via MMO-Champion]
Filed under: Druid, Patches, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
JAPPO Aug 30th 2008 1:07PM
Cool. first.
Lionhearte Aug 31st 2008 3:08AM
I think you have some wrong information. Furor's description is different, and Mother Bear isn't 5 points, it's 3, unless my 3 sources are wrong.
Pzychotix Aug 30th 2008 1:07PM
Note: Mother Bear only has 3 ranks. It goes up to 12% damage reduction.
In addition, the feral talents still don't address the lack of scaling with respect to gear.
Siaer Aug 30th 2008 1:35PM
Feral Scaling for cats at least looks mostly delt with. Our damage scales through increasingly bigger amounts of AP, and i think Savage Roar (40% AP increase for 34 seconds) combined with the Omen of Clarity changes (PPM up from 2 to 3.5, no internal cooldown, haste/hit/expertise all increasing the PPM (the more you hit, the more chance to proc)) are going to go a long way to increasing our scaling.
Savage Roar alone, as it stands, will be a big increase. Sacrifice 1 finishing move out of every 3 or 4 cycles for a 40% AP buff. Fully raid buffed, i sit around 3600 AP. After 1 cycle, that becomes a flat 5040 for 34 seconds.
What remains to be seen is just what the 40% is calculated off. Fully raid buffed, with shaman totems, enchance shaman AP increasing buff and trinket procs, i can hit 5000 AP. Savage Roar running and suddenly that is 7000 AP for the duration of the procs/temp buffs.
And that is just using current numbers. I would anticipate our AP should well be higher coming into raid content. Staff of the Forest Lord will likely last until level 80, where you can then find a staff (Hewn Sparring Quarterstaff) from a normal Lightning Halls that grants about 350 or so more AP, and that does not take into consideration the extra we get from the rest of our gear.
Once raid content opens up in beta will be when we see how the scaling goes, but Savage Roar alone looks very promising.
Pzychotix Aug 30th 2008 1:46PM
Oh god. Don't start on cat scaling if you don't know where we are. Napkin math isn't going to cut it.
We're not anywhere close to what our scaling should be. At the moment, with level 80 abilities, we're STILL doing less than what rogues are capable of at 70.
Feral cat scaling needs a TON of work, and right now we're not seeing any of it.
RogueJedi86 Aug 30th 2008 1:11PM
Don't forget that Nature's Grasp is being made trainable, with 100% chance by default. I think that's what the new Tier 1 Balance talent replaces. Now all druids will have that Root Shield. I'm sure that can be a big deal.
Shefki Aug 30th 2008 9:26PM
Not implemented yet though in this bulid. Nature's Grasp is just flat out gone from the game now.
eddiebinde531 Aug 30th 2008 1:30PM
This Balance/Resto synergy is going to help so much in those dungeons where you need to do some slight off-healing when the main healer is lacking or just is otherwise pre-occupied. I'm wondering though just how often people will pick-up Genesis, then again I haven't looked at the latest Beta calculators to look at the trees.
Runy Aug 30th 2008 1:49PM
Where are you getting the 20% damage reduction from? Mother Bear provides, at best, a 12% damage reduction if you have four other people in your party.
Additionally, you might want to take the typo out of Natural Reaction (or add a [sic]), even if Blizzard DID make that mistake themselves.
Runy Aug 30th 2008 2:17PM
Of course, if we're counted as a party member, then it'd bring the total damage reduction to 15% for a full party, but that's still not 20%.
Autumnbear Aug 30th 2008 1:59PM
Muahaha!
Now that Blizzard is expanding the class choices from 6 to 7 in the character creation screen (to accomadate the Human version of a Death Knight), we now have room for a future expansion (such as the Emerald Dream) to allow more class options per race, even if said race is 'maxed out' at 6 choices so far.
Good thing for being so buddy-buddy with our bestest friends, the Night Elves: seems merhaps one day Humans could become Druids themselves, and put that sweet Human Spirit racial ability to good use.
P.S.: I'm weeping with joy at the new talent 'Natural Reaction'. Rage gain for successfully dodging? Yay! ^_^
Gureivarial Aug 30th 2008 2:20PM
Meh I dont like the NG change, having it as a talent was better, not everyone had it but everyone could get it.
100% proc cant be bad I guess, its more reliable.
But takes away a lot of strategy I liked.
Frank Smith Aug 30th 2008 2:28PM
"the trees got some love as well"
then you list Furor in the changes for trees.
maybe read it.
Kaneda Aug 30th 2008 2:49PM
Furor is under the Restoration tree.
Jack Spicer Aug 30th 2008 3:03PM
Nature's Grasp as a trainable skill is an awesome change!
I mean, everyone was demanding it, and druids have almost no survivability in arenas.
Mith Aug 31st 2008 1:52AM
"I mean, everyone was demanding it, and druids have almost no survivability in arenas."
Are you kidding??
Ryuhou Aug 30th 2008 3:44PM
So, what happens to the druids that used to be good at balancing +healing with +spirit? Is spirit gonna be useless now?
Max Aug 30th 2008 4:15PM
This sucks. I hate how they take shit out of our tree and put more shit in it to make the Arena Resto's talent theft a little more forgiving, then make us invest in things in Resto just to get what we already had in the first place. Our tree is so bloated, the last thing we needed was more useless crap to spec around. Where's our big damage boosts?
Fizzed Aug 30th 2008 4:37PM
"it's mostly on the level of small tweaks. "
No. They removed all of the balance pushback talents. That is not a small tweak. IMO, its a big huge hit with the nerf bat. It amazes me this article doesn't touch on that.
I know the mechanics behind pushback are changing, but giving balance druids no pushback talents is going to hurt in PvP. We'll be toast vs. Melee.
Shefki Aug 30th 2008 9:26PM
Read the article. The pushback talents are now in the resto tree on the very first tier in the Nature's Focus talent now. You can argue if 70% pushback avoidance for more spells is better than the 100% for 2 that was available before.
The wrath pushback avoidance has been replaced with spell haste for all spells.