• Talents are no longer the prime determinants of player power; they are now merely utility skills. You can fulfill your core DPS/healing/tanking role in a raid with no talents at all, you'll just be slightly less good at it. Rogues, as a comparison, only have one tier of talents that affect their DPS, just as we do; everything else is survivability, crowd control, or movement.
• Talent choices must be reasonably balanced; otherwise, we're back to everybody picking the same thing, which leads to the developers balancing around everyone having that thing, which causes complaints about not having choices. This balance has to extend to both PvE and PvP.
• The benefits granted by talents can't be so strong that they cause significant changes in class desirability, or we're back to the shaman stacking model again. Admittedly, any advantages are still going to be min-maxed by heroic raiding guilds, but the perception that it's required cannot be allowed to exist.

Talent analysis

Heart of the Wild This talent is, to put it mildly, controversial, though the controversy itself is quite old. The irresistible force of "I rolled a cat/moonkin/X to do just that; I want to min-max that and don't want to do other stuff" slams right into the immovable object called "developers want to encourage being a hybrid." Any class that has had the option to use procs for healing or DPS (shaman, paladins) has seen this before. While I generally come down on the Whatever Best Helps Your Raid side of this argument, I can understand how it pushes people out of their personal comfort zones if they're expected to help fulfill the responsibilities of a role they didn't sign up for.

Looking at the talent itself, though, it's far too broad. I think a big part of the initial negative reception to this talent was the idea that this will let druids of all roles do all things. This is a bridge too far; the mechanics changes needed in order to have all four specs be able to fill any of the other three roles in a useful yet balanced manner would be overwhelming.

Instead, I think a much more likely role for this talent is to let you fill a single different PvE role effectively. Feral and guardian druids will be able to do each other's jobs, as will restoration and balance druids, but that's it. Don't get too wrapped around the numbers/text yet; I'm confident that Blizzard will add the necessary changes to make the off role performance effective, such as crit immunity for ferals. Certain bits will definitely disappear as well, such as the hit rating increase by 100%; if that stays, that incentivizes the purposeful reforging away of hit to make HotW a DPS cooldown, which it is not intended to be.

Actually, a better question for discussion is how effective the off role capabilities should be. You obviously don't want ferals/balance with HotW to be more effective than standard tanks/healers, but if it's too underpowered, then nobody will bother to talent or use it. Some 80% to 90% capability is probably a good target. It wouldn't be something you use all the time, obviously (see key fact #1), but for those occasional encounters where the raid leader really needs 2.5 healers or 1.5 tanks, it could definitely work well.

Dream of Cenarius Let's break out the old SAT analogies. In my view, Dream of Cenarius is to Heart of the Wild as Soul of the Forest is to Incarnation -- a choice between a short cooldown/passive ability that's less effective, or a bigger cooldown that's more effective. That's a good choice to be forced to make.

Blizzard has to be very careful how it plays this one, however, as the possibility to incentivize unwanted behavior is definitely there. Damage spells increasing healing done by 30%? Heals increasing next ability's damage by 30%? Hey, this talent is now mandatory, as your resto druids all now have to hardcast a Wrath before they pop a preplanned Tranquility, and your ferals/moonkin end up having to toss out a random Regrowth on anybody before they Rip/Starfall to max their DPS. Is this good design? I don't think so. It wouldn't surprise me, if this talent stays as is, to see DoT and HoT effects excluded from the buff.

Disentanglement This isn't a bad talent (though obviously much more PvP-focused than PvE-), but it's out of place in this tier as is. This is supposed to be a tier that gives druids reasons to deviate from their primary role, not the crowd control or healing tier, and this is elements of both. This isn't motivating people to use different roles; it's motivating people to use a shift for a buff, which means people will simply powershift every 30 seconds to proc the heal.

Talent design recommendations

Even though I think these talents are much better, there are still a few tweaks I'd like to see made. Any other changes you'd recommend? Let me know in the comments!

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Looking for the latest and greatest in feral cat druid guides? Shifting Perspectives has the answers! Check out our guide to soloing instances and raids, as well as our top gear recommendations and feral guides to the Siege of Wyrmrest Temple and the Fall of Deathwing.