From this post (http://blue.cardplace.com/cache/wow-general/7147176.htm):
And no, not even if you ask nicely will we keep a Restoration spell on a Balance-only form. ;)
When I read that, I first saw it as a Balance form... which isn't too far off, I guess. But, my thought is, and this is totally and purely speculation:

What would you want to see out of a Restoration shapeshifting form, if they added one in the expansion?

(Priests would probably need something to compensate, etc, etc, but I'm just curious about the druid side of it.)

How about a treant (or a smaller version of one of the ancient models)? Or maybe go straight up with the centaur-like Cenaurius form.

I always figured the Cure Poison still worked because it was gained through a quest rather than trained like the other restoration spells, I guess that is just the source of the bug.

Priests would probably need something to compensate, etc, etc, but I'm just curious about the druid side of it.Priests have flash heal and soon greater heal will be a 2.5 sec cast. In addition, they have fade if they overheal.

In comparison, druids have regrowth, which is extremely inefficient to chain cast and still inefficient if the target is not taking continual damage, and 0.5 second loger cast time on their big heal. Priests have it better not only on the short cast times, but not the long cast times as well.

If we ignore the fact that innervate usually goes to the priests, druid have longevity to balance their relative lack of burst. Druids do have better burst, but only with a timered ability. Our timered abilities make us better, but only once in awhile.

That leaves druids with one advantage: powerful regens. That means that a druid/priest duo healing an MT is better than a priest/priest duo. That's our role.

As 5-man content is sure to increase in difficulty, it will be tuned to the higher healing output of a priest. Consequently, there is a good chance that a druid will require a paladin in the group for the next 5-man.

No matter what I do I can't quite keep up with the full-on specialists even though my talent spec is more specialized than theirs. My 'off' ailities, the one I did not spec for, are severely lacking. I can pass in content 10 levels down with my uber gear.

What's this all boil down to? Well, I'm bitter about being a hybrid in the endgame.

I'd love a restoration form that could boost our healing output by say, 10-20%, and limit our spells to restoration only. The only damage I really do nowdays is from Insect Swarm rank 1 and the occassional moonfire spam at 1-2% on bosses.

I think we'll end up with something different. To fit with the overall ability theme so far they'll give us a timered, set-duration ability. It would work similar to shadow form except would increase healing and limit spells to restoration, would last somewhere around 20-30 seconds, would boost healing output somewhere around 25-30%, and would be on a 10-20 minute timer.

Well, that's what I envision anyways.

What I am really hoping for is they will release the quest for our epic travel form (raven).

If there was a 'form' for the Restore tree, I would want a form that increases all healing output by 5%-10%, and combat hp/mana regen increased by 30%. I think that's fair and not overly powered. We'll be awesome for those long drawn out fights. A virtually endless pool of mana, especially with the 15% mana regen from Reflection, and another 15% mana regen from 3 pieces of the Stormrage set. 60% mana regen while casting, and 30% hp regen while in combat. Yum. :]

hehe that would be hot. :] 100% travel speed with no mounting cast time? Instant seeya later!

What I am really hoping for is they will release the quest for our epic travel form (raven).

If we are talking practically about the effects of a resto form how about we use my ancient/ treant idea and then...

Ancient form druid has continual effect of Barkskin, but movement and attack speed are reduced 30%;
Druid may root to one spot, while rooted threat is reduced from all healing spells by 60%, and effects of all healing spells increase 15%

Imho, the 3 things healing druids are missing are 1)regular res 2)away to deal with agro besides bear form/situational roots 3)king of the big heal hill (after 1.10)

The first problem isn't going to go away... and lowering the timer on battle res to even 5mins really doesn't eleviate the heart of the problem.

The second one would prob be somthing that could be addresed in a healer form. More Armor like moonkin/bear seems played out... maybe an increased dodge rate to help deal with rogues/hunters... that'd make us a bit weaker to warriors with overpower for some balance.

The third is somthing a healer form could solve by increasing the potency of Healing Touch or all our heals.

Personally I'd like to see a Dream State or Elder Form as opposed to a Treant. Somthing like +150 healing, +8%dodge, +12/mana 5sec OR preferiably a better spirit/mana regen ratio.

If we are talking practically about the effects of a resto form how about we use my ancient/ treant idea and then...

That sounds cool. I'd like to turn into a tree. The barkskin idea is good. Even cooler would be a kind of anit-shadow form (elder form from Rockwell) where our whole shape took the form of those leaves that are the effect of casting NS or OoC, or we glowed white. This form would give us a reasonable boost to all heals (+150), and we could only cast resto spells, as well as a phase shift type ability. This would put us on even playing field with priests as far as fade / aggro drop goes. Mana regen seems to be pretty good with all the gear we can get... maybe some kind of cooldown reset for innervate (similar to mage's cold snap) which can be used once per hour or something.

Druid may root to one spot, while rooted threat is reduced from all healing spells by 60%, and effects of all healing spells increase 15%

Considering Blizzard's stance on rooting in dungeons, seems like this wouldn't work in instances outsize of ZG / ZF. Also with Pally's Blessing of Salvation, I really dont have a problem with taking aggro, unless something goes wrong. My suggestion about the phase shift would effectivley give us a way to dump aggro. That would be sweet ^^

Lets disregard the indoor rooting issue for the sake of argument. How about of instead of reduced threat while casting, you can root to actually turn into a tree, work it much like hunter's feign death, dropping all aggro and leaving combat but unable to cast or attack.

If you went with this idea we could add a heals all party mebers within 30 yards of Ancient Druid for 20 hp every 5 seconds, sort of a passive low key tranquility, keeping the group assist aspect of the other trees.

i opt for a talent that would give us more armor in a caster form. priests have inner fire. pallies have plate armor. druids get owned in our caster forms. give us a talent to boost AC in caster forms and i think it'll be fair. yes, we do not have aggro reduction skills/talents such as fade, but then again, why not just roll a priest then?

I like the idea of turning into a tree and dropping all agro. That way I can be cool like rogues, and hunters and gank in neutral towns and loose agro from guards!
On a side note, I do like you're sig gwmort quite funny

Hmm.. maybe something similar to Moonkin? A special form with an armor bonus and an aura that gives a +3% mana regen to nearby group members but only allows restoration spells to be cast. Take innervate away and make it a trainable skill for all specs at lvl 40. This might seem overpowered but I guess it's viable in the future after all the other classes have been buffed and it's the druids' turn again.

Nah druid as feral is overpowered on the oher hand mages suck. They surely need to be buffed.
A resto form though wouldnt be bad.

There's some good ideas here but I think many are missing something critical: New dungeons are going to be tuned for the increased healing output of priests. We will soon NEED a way to increase our burst healing in order to retain the ability to solo heal new 5-man content.

We can't have it always as it'll unbalance priests. It's going to have to be timered and it's going to have to increase healing output, not regen.

Sorry if someone's already said this but I'm too lazy to read all the posts.

Bear - Tank (Warrior)

Cat - DPS (Rogue)

Normal Form - Healer (Preist)

Moonkin - Caster (Mage)


Those seem more or less the four most basic classes in WoW for the roles they play and we can kinda sorta imitate them all. =)

If Blizzard introduce a new "restoration" form, experience suggests it would likely be very similar to an existing WoW model. For example, if you look at the way a hunter's pet moves, eg if it's a bear, the actual movement is very similar if not identical to the way druid bears move. The same is true of druid cats and hunter pet cats. Even moonkins already had an existing model when they were introduced.

Of the ideas listed here, I like Gwmort's Ancient idea best. However to be honest I think it's unlikely there will be a restoration form anytime soon - the vast majority of druids still opt for restoration as an endgame form. Giving them an endgame talent that makes the restoration tree more powerful would cause more and more druids to switch to restoration. Blizzard seem to have a track record of trying to balance the different trees, so that there are roughly an equal number of all specs out there. Why would they pimp up the one tree that is already the most popular?

I don't like to be the negative one but I think we've seen as much of a change as we're going to see in the druid talents for a while to come...


Mages are getting their talents redesigned next apparently. If they get invisibility back I'm going to cry. :P


-Annik