Shifting Perspectives: Post-BlizzCon feral thoughts
by Chase Hasbrouck 
Oct 23rd 2011 at 7:00PM
Wow. Well, this certainly simplifies things, doesn't it? The biggest news that came out of the first day of Blizzcon (well, besides the new race and class) was the total revamp of the talent system. Points? Gone. Trees? Gone. Now? 6 chances to choose one of three character buffs. I don't want to tackle the specific talents they presented just yet, but think about how this changes the WoW model of a character. Essentially, it boils down to this: Talents are no longer the key determinant of character power.
This is HUGE. As a druid, you always had most of the druid abilities available to you, but the vast majority of abilities were simply not ever worth using unless you had the requisite talents to back them up. If you have ever tried to switch over to heal or cast ranged spells during an encounter while geared/specced as feral, you know what I'm talking about. This was horribly confusing, especially for new players who wanted to use every ability in the spellbook, but that's just "how it was." If you wanted to participate in endgame content, you learned how to spec optimally and only use the correct abilities, unless you wanted to end up on the sideline.
Cataclysm revamped this by introducing simplified talent trees and specialization bonuses, but that just adjusted the existing balance of power. Picking your spec provided some bonuses, certainly, but the vast majority of your power came from the talents you selected. Locking players into the talent tree that matched their specialization made decisions easier, but nothing changed the fundamental truth that power came from talents ... until now.
I don't really buy the rationale that this will prevent "cookie-cutter" builds. No matter how much balancing you do, you're either going to have one talent that's clearly optimal (which becomes the new cookie), or you don't, in which case people complain that talent choices don't matter. I could see them managing it if the talents were different for each specialization, but since all four druid specs get the same talent choices? Yeesh. Have fun with that, devs.
Also, looking at the projected talents (man, it feels odd to leave the word "tree" off), almost none of them are static buffs. The power that the old talents previously provided has to be added in somewhere, unless Blizzard wants everyone to get much weaker when patch 5.0.1 drops. I see the following likely scenarios:
- Super specialization bonuses. All of the static buffs previously present in the trees gets baked into the specialization bonus. Cat-spec druids do more melee damage, resto-spec druids do more healing, etc. This might happen, but it contradicts the "make the whole spellbook useful model."
- Stronger glyphs. Unlikely, since glyphs are supposed to present "choices" as well.
- A renewed focus on gear to drive player power. This makes some sense; cranking up the boosts provided by gear means I can't off-heal (period), and Tyler's moonkin can't rip face, though I can probably still tank a bit, and he can heal a bit. I'd be happy with this, but I don't think this is the intended plan.
- Make many more class abilities spec-specific. If they don't do anything else, they'll have to make all of the abilities' baseline power relatively strong. Based on the questions in yesterday's class Q&A, this is almost certainly the way they're going to go. A lot of the abilities that you have right now but are pointless to use as feral (think Wild Mushroom, Hurricane, Nourish, etc.) will probably disappear from your bars entirely on patch day. That makes me a little sad, but I understand the reasoning for it.
Druids finally get their fourth spec! The feral specialization will remain focused on DPS, while a new specialization, Guardian, will be added for bear tanks. My reaction to this is mixed. On one hand, I appreciate that many feral players want to ONLY tank, or ONLY DPS, and I can respect that. It also presented a large balance problem for the developers when it came to tuning encounters. See the T13 set bonus as a perfect example.
On the other, the feral druid's ability to do multiple things well simultaneously was one of the things I most enjoyed about the class. As I discussed in a previous column, I loved being able to do competitive DPS for half of a raid encounter, then save the day by tanking the second half when the tank died. It wasn't an "optimal" setup, sure ... but how many people actually get the chance to raid in optimal environments? I liked having the opportunity to sacrifice a small % of potential DPS in order to give me the flexibility to jump in as an emergency tank, and have saved several wipes by doing so. Taking away THAT choice makes me very sad. Overall, I'm sad about losing my "bearcat," but as Arielle points out, maybe this means cats and bears will get some love they were denied before. Also, props to Arielle for getting her question about the T13 set bonus asked, even if the developers totally misinterpreted it.
In closing, I'd like to address the other announcement that I was most excited about: Monks will not have an auto attack.
This is another huge change for the game, if it succeeds, as it presents a large break from the original text-based style of typing "/attack (x)" over and over. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you could actually start your autoattack in vanilla by typing /attack in the chatframe. As it stands now, autoattacks are boring. There's never any reason "not" to have them on, so the result is essentially a passive DOT that only works when you're in melee range. I'm hoping that the no-autoattack-model survives beta testing and becomes a huge success, so we can see it expanded to all melee classes for WoW 6.0 ... whenever that might be.
What are your thoughts about the new information released at BlizzCon? Check our recaps of day one and day two you need to get caught up! Excited? Sad? Let me know in the comments!
Looking for the latest and greatest in feral cat druid guides? Shifting Perspectives has the answers! Check out our cat 101 for Cataclysm. Also don't miss gearing your cat for Firelands raiding, addons for cat druids and raiding strats for feral cats, as well as our feral cat Firelands boss strats.Filed under: (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
facepalmer2 Oct 23rd 2011 7:09PM
Although it's substantially less "talents" I feel more than ever that I actually can choose what I want and what I feel will benefit my play style than having to do what in general is "the" thing to do... yay blizzard!
joshychrist Oct 23rd 2011 7:25PM
Not necessarily less talents, they may bundle more moves into the spec when you pick your spec at level 10, but I agree with everything else you say.
vocenoctum Oct 23rd 2011 8:27PM
I'd have to find it, but I recall them saying that the talents you spec into currently will simply come with leveling in Pandaburg. Instead of putting a point in Typhoon, the boomkin spec will get it at level. I'm sure all the other bonuses will be factored, but I'm also sure they will in no way be balanced except at level 90. (At least judging by every expansion update before this...)
Scunosi Oct 23rd 2011 9:08PM
@Voce That's an interesting example you bring up, because I recall them actually giving the example of "You wanna be a Bear with Typhoon? Well now you can!" I'm sure they'll be judicious with which abilities they let everyone choose from, and they'll likely just give us our main talents through leveling like you said, but hopefully they do leave a few fun ones that everyone could take if they wanted.
Solitha Oct 26th 2011 4:21AM
No, as I recall, you won't be automatically getting anything on the talent selections. You're supposed to have a totally free choice among the three items, and you cannot have more than one item on each line. Thus, if Balance got Typhoon automatically, they'd be locked out of Mass Entanglement and Faerie Swarm. That rather defeats the purpose of having the talents at all.
What they meant is stuff essential to the spec, that you get while leveling. Like, for Balance, Moonkin form. Typhoon is not an essential spell for caster DPS and is being opened up to all druids as a choice at level 45.
Hope that kinda clears it up.
akestner96 Oct 23rd 2011 7:17PM
I never thought I'd like a feature like this so much. Didn't care for Cata talent system. I bet on WoWinsider podcast this is what I will be hearing about for an hour instead of Pandaren and Monks. And I'm ok with that!
cyanea85 Oct 23rd 2011 7:17PM
I'm incredibly excited about these talent changes. I can already think of situations where I'd want to switch between different ones for different fights which is something that just didn't happen enough in Cata despite their best efforts.
joshychrist Oct 23rd 2011 7:21PM
the fact that druids are getting a bear cat moonkin and heal selection gives me hope for a shaman tank sometime in the future even though monks will be around.
Caylynn Oct 23rd 2011 8:33PM
I don't know about that. Blizz has said repeatedly they have no intention to allow shamans to tank. Of course, they've said other things before that have later come to pass. But I wouldn't count on shaman tanks anytime soon. :(
joshychrist Oct 23rd 2011 8:37PM
Yes I know, :( I'm sure someone somewhere said there wouldn't be 4 trees for a druid as well, but that has come to pass. I will wait patiently for my shaman tank spec. So many abilities that no one uses that could be used as tank abilities.
On the main topic i brought up though glad druids finally got their 4 options. :)
CollinBPage Oct 23rd 2011 11:01PM
Well with the new system they could actually get away with adding in additional specs.. Would be alot easier to manage now
Hih Oct 23rd 2011 11:33PM
Ya, I could actually see them adding Shaman tanks now that they've set the precedent of not limiting themselves to 3 specs per class. I would not be surprised at all if they did it in 5.0 even. Of course, I wouldn't be that surprised if they don't get a tank spec in 5.0 either, but at least Shamans have a ray of hope now!
Marcosius Oct 24th 2011 1:31PM
I still remember when shaman had tanking talents. Was not too long ago actually.
justinbragg911 Oct 24th 2011 8:07PM
http://i.imgur.com/77yvH.gif
Dreday5000 Oct 23rd 2011 7:21PM
This is a huge plus, now bears can get love without making cats OP and vise versa
gewalt Oct 23rd 2011 8:15PM
This might be a plus if you only ever played cat or bear. but for those of us who played both, this is the end of the feral spec we loved so much.
Dreday5000 Oct 23rd 2011 8:21PM
I do play both. I alsi felt that the tree felt gimped because of the fact that bears and cats were two distinct roles in one tree, something had to give, this time clearer heads prevailed
Sharlatan Oct 24th 2011 8:12AM
And with this change Blizard has killed the feral druid for me.
it was NOT cat OR bear spec, it was FERAL. If you personally chose to ignore half your specs ability, then you were gimping yourself and your raid of much utility and or dps.
I played a FERAL druid. I loved my feral druid. I do not want to play merely a cat OR a bear.
Awful decision Bliz, another nail in WoWs coffin which is pretty much sealed already.
Wellsee Oct 23rd 2011 7:52PM
I'm completely bummed about the extinction of bearcats. I haven't even wanted to log in since I read about it.
gewalt Oct 23rd 2011 8:14PM
words cannot describe how mad I am at the rending of feral in two.
I will likely never play my druid again after 5.0.