Shifting Perspectives: Bear and resto druid changes ahead for patch 4.1
by Allison Robert 
Mar 8th 2011 at 5:00PM
Hail, druids. We've got another exciting patch coming up, and this week I wanted to take a look at the changes currently in store for both bear and tree druids (with a few notes that inevitably touch on cats as well, as some feral changes are pretty general).
And far be it from me to omit the most important change:
Zarhym
Prowl has a new icon.
Well, thank God for that.
I've collected all of the bear- and restoration-related 4.1 PTR changes here, and we'll go through them one by one.
Zarhym
Efflorescence has a new spell effect.
I have to redownload the PTR and hadn't seen this yet, but fortunately a few players nabbed video. I've embedded one at the top of the post and have to say the new effect looks really nice. Anything that distinguishes a helpful spell effect from its nastier boss AoE cousins in raids is always a good thing.
On the downside, resto players doing Naxxramas for nostalgia can no longer throw the raid into a blind panic with strategically-placed Efflorescences (is that even a word?) on Grobbulus.
Zarhym
Lifebloom now costs 7% of base mana, down from 11%.
Lifebloom's bloom effect has been reduced by 20%.
Lifebloom's bloom effect has been reduced by 20%.
The first one here is actually (if I recall correctly) a reverted change from an earlier PTR build; the latter is revamped from what was a blanket 20% nerf to Lifebloom's base healing. As with all things PTR, nothing that we know is written in stone, so portions of this article may well be obsolete within a few days.
For anyone new to the druid class as of Cataclysm, it's traditional for Blizzard to diddle endlessly with Lifebloom right around this point in an expansion. The component of the spell that developers decide to nerf/buff is the instructive point. If they go for the per-second tick, it's a PvE nerf; if they go for the bloom, it's a PvP nerf. What we have here is most assuredly the latter, but we'll see what happens as PTR testing continues. For the moment I think it's safe to assume that developers are trying to minimize any nerf's potential effect on tank healing.
Zarhym
Stampeding Roar's duration has been increased to 8 seconds, up from 6. The movement speed effect has been increased to 60%, up from 40%.
Since snow removal has constituted a good 75% of my waking existence from late December to the present, raid time has been pretty thin on the ground. I haven't had the opportunity to examine Stampeding Roar usage on a case-by-case basis during raid encounters as a result. Ashamed as I am to admit this, the ability was getting the most use from me while running back from wipes, as it was one of the few times it was guaranteed to do something for multiple people. I always figured there were encounters I just hadn't seen yet where it wound up helping players other than myself, but the 10-yard radius tended to eighty-six most of its usefulness while tanking. While slightly more helpful while healing (assuming I had the time to jump to cat/bear), it was still a crapshoot; any encounter requiring the raid to spread out (which seems to be most of them) by necessity meant that Stampeding Roar wasn't going to hit a lot of players. The high energy cost of the ability in cat form sure doesn't help either.
From the opinions I've canvassed, PvP players aren't hugely enthusiastic about the change either; Stampeding Roar is overwhelmingly seen as an ability that's potentially useful but undermined by a punishingly small area of effect. Neither of the proposed changes addresses this, so SR is probably doomed to stay banished to the Siberian section of many an action bar.
Zarhym
Swipe's (Bear) cooldown has been reduced to three seconds, down from 6.
Mmph.
While a good boost for "Hold threat on everything or the DPS dies" situations, this won't have much impact on bear tanks at level 85, because Thrash is by far the better AoE threat ability. It's going to be felt most below level 81 by leveling bears -- what few of them seem to exist -- who have Swipe and only Swipe for AoE threat. It's just unfortunate that the solution for the hassle of AoE tanking on a bear seems to be a return to Wrath's much-derided Swipe spam. Granted, a 3-second cooldown doesn't constitute spam, but ... still.
As an aside, my TankWatch™ project continues. I don't have sufficient data to go live with an article on it just yet, but this is the tank representation I've seen in 5-man dungeons from levels 15-42 so far:
- Paladin: 66%
- Warrior: 25%
- Druid: 9%
Zarhym
Feral Swiftness now also causes Dash and Stampeding Roar to have a 50/100% chance to instantly remove all movement impairing effects from the affected targets when used.
True story: When the change to shapeshifting's no longer removing root effects in patch 4.0.6 was first announced, we got a peevish question from a feral reader over the team line wanting to know how cats were going to PvP with the change. Within a second of each other, both Sacco and I replied: "Poorly," and Chase opined that the change needed to be reverted because "Right now, feral druids are the only ones that have a shot of wrecking our frost mage overlords." As Diziet observed on Arena Junkies, the change turned the feral from one of the most to least mobile specs in arena overnight, and the removal of Fear immunity from Berserk also meant that the PvP trinket basically had to be used for a Fear or root removal, but not both.
I don't technically cover cats anymore in the Tuesday column (you've got the extraordinary Chase Hasbrouck, a.k.a. Alaron of The Fluid Druid, for now), but the loss of functional root immunity bled through to the bear, and this still irritates me. I saw it as one of the few truly unique things about a tank that's borrowed so heavily from warriors.
Regardless, this will provide ferals and more specifically cats with two Get Out of Snare Free cards before we go back to getting destroyed by Ice Lance. Also interesting is that the Stampeding Roar version should theoretically affect more players than just yourself (or it would if the 10-yard radius were anything other than the exact point of contention among PvP players).
Either way, this is not the last we're going to see of the developers' efforts to tinker with cats in battlegrounds and arena, although I hope it's the last time that bears are going to be collateral damage in that process.
Zarhym
Gift of Nature (passive) also reduces Tranquility's cooldown by 2.5/5 minutes.
The wording on this one is a little odd; Gift of Nature is one of the passive bonuses you get for speccing into the restoration tree, and it doesn't have ranks. So either Blizzard's referring to an as-yet-unknown talent here that accidentally got the Gift of Nature label, or speccing into the resto tree automatically buys you a 5-minute bonus on your Tranquility cooldown.
The change is arguably most interesting for what it's not, because we've been waiting to see what the developers cook up for a damage-reduction cooldown. Shaman have gotten a new totem, but the Tranquility change is definitely not the same deal. Stay tuned, folks.
Zarhym
Efflorescence has been redesigned. It creates a healing zone at the feet of a Swiftmend target, but this healing zone now restores health equal to 4/8/12% of the amount healed by Swiftmend to the three most injured targets within 8 yards, every one second for 7 seconds. This periodic effect now also benefits from spell haste, but the individual ticks cannot be critical effects.
This is something that merits its own post, to be frank -- but as Keeva at Tree Bark Jacket observes, it's a good thing -- or at least we think it is. The haste scaling is the most compelling improvement here, but I'll see how the new version of the spell performs on the PTR and report back.
What race should you choose for your druid? What happened to Tree of Life? How can you get started as a bear or cat in Cataclysm? Shifting Perspectives has the answers!
Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Necromann Mar 8th 2011 5:09PM
I'm slowing lvling my feral/feral bear/car through outlands and I'm happy with the swipe cd reduction.
Ysera Mar 8th 2011 6:40PM
Admittedly, Thrash IS better than Swipe, but you use BOTH while tanking at 85. They both have a 6 second cooldown. That leaves room for 1 Swipe, 1 Thrash, and 4 other spells. Just because you have Thrash does not mean you ignore Swipe.
The way you worded the article made it sound like (while tanking past level 81) you no longer use Swipe.
This change is a straight buff to AoE threat for Bears, which is awesome.
mackejn Mar 8th 2011 7:46PM
Well the major complaint I see thrown around about buffing swipe is that it's insignificant. the amount of threat from it is basically nothing. While it is a buff, it's just not one that's going to have a huge effect. It's basically a poor band aid on a huge problem. Threat is threat but there are orders of magnitude in terms of effect. A thimble is not going to bail out a half sunk boat. That's not to say the situation actually IS that bad. It's just percieved that way. There is quite a polarizing effect on this issue. There's clearly a problem when compared to dk's, but how much of one is up for debate. What compounds the problem even further is that Blizzard dev statements show they DON'T see any problem at 85.
Hogleg Mar 9th 2011 11:47AM
as far as PVE threat goes, thorns being castable in bear form would even help a little. What about some kind of aoe threat with feral charge? Something to differentiate us from warriors would really be swell.
I dont want us to be arguing for the fury warrior DPS tanks of early BC...what I want is a way to offset the way druids seem to have issues establishing aggro with anything but a mangle.
I hate the changes to fear and root breaking, but I don't PVP, so I will cope. I wish they could just do pvp changes to abilities without effing up the pve, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
arcaniadia6 Mar 8th 2011 5:18PM
I still don't get why people complain about frost mages so bad. If you have no resilience, yes they can hurt, but so do most classes, and with the recent frost nerfs our damage is pretty pathetic, doing at most18k damage during DF agaisnt someone with decent resilience.
nikdaheratik Mar 8th 2011 5:35PM
They complain because, even as a DK, there's an incredibly small window to actually kill them, and if you have equal resil you lose 1-1 because they can just keep kiting you and when you catch up, you still can't pop that little ice barrier.
That being said, the real solution is to CC them and hit them last, or bring in a hunter.
VSUReaper Mar 8th 2011 9:16PM
It's because people feel like there is no counter to frost mages.
- Decent dmg output
- Decent defenses (assuming geared)
- Excellent control
- Sheep
- Snares
- Immobilizes
- kiting/running
Malon Mar 9th 2011 4:28AM
@nikdaheratik:
Not to quibble too much, as I know Frost Mages are much better 1v1 right now than many other classes, but Ice Barrier is only a 12k absorb (and that's with a glyph); it scales very badly with gear, too. Our defences come more from our kiting ability.
I'm a pure PvE Mage, and I support Druids getting root removal on shifting back. It was a stupid change.
Erthshade Mar 8th 2011 5:19PM
There's a few other statistics that would interest me with regards to druid tank balance in the dungeon finder: what percentage of the dungeon finder population have been playing druids in any form, and what percentage of those have been tanks as compared to dps or healers? A 9% druid tank rate wouldn't be as surprising if, for instance, only 5% of all people are leveling new druids at all.
restodr00d Mar 8th 2011 8:21PM
He only counts tanks, he mention it in another post but can't remember wich one
Noctune Mar 9th 2011 5:22AM
im playing my feral druid and from my perspective i have just started tanking on him in HC.s
I have a iLevel of 346 atm and sometimes feel im getting mauled by a hammer.
All depends on how mutch time i got.
If i got 2h time worth of playing il que as a DPS and do the dailies while waiting. if i don't got that mutch time il Que as a tank and suck it up .....
the question is why does it feel like some healers are extreamly weak when i have to fire off both my CD survival buttons on normal trash mobs and we get 2-3 wipes it just breaks my heart. playing as a cat druid gives me the chance of switching to do both healing (Tranquility / Barkskin) and use BattleRes and can switch to Bearform to cover for the tank.
altiarwolf Mar 8th 2011 5:27PM
I'll take a wait and see... I'm having such an issue with my DPS right now on Moonkin I'm thinking about changing to cat or complete class change.
whtguy82 Mar 9th 2011 9:00AM
I know what you mean on dps issue dps for boomkin. Having a hard time holding my own against other classes in heroic runs.
Shade Mar 8th 2011 5:34PM
You seem pretty keen on calling out frost mages as OP. I've said it in a lot of other venues over the past few weeks, but here it is again:
By definition of "OP", the only way for you to not get wrecked by an OP class is for you to be OP in a balancing capacity. There is no such thing as a "non-OP counter" to an OP class or playstyle. Conjure the image of someone "overpowering" someone else. That means that no matter what the other person does, it is completely impossible for them to survive the encounter.
Think Superman in a fistfight. You can be the best martial artist in the world (read: most skilled player), but no measure of skill will ever give you a chance against him, since he could flick you on the head and make your brain explode. If, on the other hand, you were given a big chunk of Kryptonite... well, that's not exactly fair either. Just because it's balancing you against an OP player doesn't mean you can't take that rock and smash in the heads of the "balanced" classes with it.
This is not a defense of frost mages or a claim that Blizzard has any right or need to keep one class OP. This is a reminder that OP doesn't mean the same thing as "annoying" or "difficult", and that employing double standards isn't going to solve the class imbalances.
Artificial Mar 8th 2011 6:19PM
"I've said it in a lot of other venues over the past few weeks..."
Well, when you feel the need to leap into repeating it at the slightest tangential mention of frost mages, that'll happen. It's pretty much an off-topic comment here, but, uh, thanks...
Shade Mar 8th 2011 6:27PM
@Artificial
I feel the need to repeat it "at the slightest tangential mention of frost mages" because that 'tangential' mention has, for the past several weeks, always been chained to a feral complaining about the removal of shift spamming.
Given that an entire section of today's article was dedicated to the discussion of how the change to Feral Swiftness affects shift spam, I think I'm justified in dedicating a comment to that particular part of the article.
Thanks for straw-manning, though. My point was that ferals are complaining about being underpowered when for a few weeks now they've been using an OP class as a standard of what "balanced" means. I didn't offer a single bit of analysis about frost mages.
Sterb Mar 8th 2011 6:53PM
I'm sorry, I read through your wall of text three times and still couldn't figure out what you're trying to say.
Shade Mar 8th 2011 7:08PM
@sterb
Sound byte version: Shift spam was OP. Blizz killed it and that was the fair decision. Frost mages are still OP but that has absolutely zero bearing on whether Blizz was right in killing shift spam.
Sorro Mar 8th 2011 10:20PM
So, how often did you complain about shift spam before the announced 4.0.6 nerf?
Yeah, I thought so. Sorry, but your princess is in another castle.
Rezina Mar 8th 2011 7:54PM
I have 2 tanks, pally & bear. Well, sortof. I learned tanking with my pally, and soon gave up bear-tanking around level 50 or so because of the lack of aoe attacks. Now my bear is a Thunder Chicken.