View Full Forums : Druid Talent changes not in 1.7


Bovus
08-03-2005, 11:15 AM
The Druid talent changes won't be ready in time for patch version 1.7, unfortunately. As soon as the changes are locked down by the designers, we'll preview them, ideally using the interactive talent calculater.

Here is the link to the thread:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=4297686&p=1&tmp=1#post4297686

Caydiem states later on that:
Keep in mind that this does not mean there are no significant Druid changes in 1.7.

She also states that the Ferocious Bite combo point bug (lose all combo points on a miss/dodge/parry) will be fixed in 1.7, and that:
In 1.7, there are a number of (yes, positive) changes to Cat Form. Again, I'll try to procure specifics later on.

My own observation:
Unless Blizzard's itemization people are completely seperate from the group that works on class balance/abilities/talents, I don't have great confidence in any forthcoming changes. The BWL class trinket shows a complete lack of understanding of the druid class.

guice
08-03-2005, 09:52 PM
What's the class trinket?

Bovus
08-03-2005, 10:56 PM
http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=19340

Rune of Metamorphosis
Use: Decreases the mana cost of all Druid shapeshifting forms by 100% for 20 seconds.
Shapeshifting mana cost reduced by 100%.

guice
08-04-2005, 12:47 AM
Eww ... Wonder what the cooldown time is. They do want druids to use their shifting more. I think the problem though is that there isn't any situation that requries a druid to constantly change shape like a warrior would change stances.

I think their idea of a druid is one that shifts to bear to OT, unshifts to heal, shifts to cat to DPS when not tank and then unshift to heal when needed. Basically a twitch shifting. Not too shabby, but why not just stick to caster form? They are trying to make druid forms more raid friendly...right now they are just your primary backup healers and I don't think they've intended us to be that way...

Bovus
08-04-2005, 03:38 AM
They are trying to make druid forms more raid friendly...right now they are just your primary backup healers and I don't think they've intended us to be that way...

As the only class with combat rez, and with 2 stackable HoT spells, we are highly desirable as primary healers on raids or 5-man instances. Oh and there's that Innervate thing.

With current itemization, the druid's tanking ability will only deteriorate over time. One thing you see on plate items you don't see on leather is +defense. You need this more than you need pure AC against the most difficult mobs. Don't get me started on Agro Mgmt.

While I'm ranting, I certainly hope that Blizz puts a +defense talent into the Feral Tree (ideally at a low level) even if it only applies in bear form. Shaman can raise their innate defense by 10 (2 per talent point) at the second or third level in the enhancement tree. Aside from the Redoubt Cloak, I haven't come across many items a druid can utilize with +defense. I suppose there may be some rings/trinkets. I just don't know what they are.

mekell
08-04-2005, 09:31 AM
What i really want out of the talent changes (since it doesnt seem to be in the 1.7 feral update) is scaleable weapon damage. I know im not the only person that sees this as an issue. Druids will become the king of the middle ground (and maybe thats what blizzard wants, i'm just not sure). As weapon damage continues to scale up for everyone else, ours simply does not (Except for stats slightly affecting damage). As a result, they buff our base damage up every once in awhile to keep us up with the newest weapons in the game. However, the people that do not have access to those weapons will have a disadvantage vs a druid whos been buffed up artifically, because a druid doesnt need access to those weapons to get the extra damage increase. It just doesnt seem right. I am a programmer, but i will not pretend to even know anything about how the dps calculations are done, but it certainly must be possible (and logical, i might add) to scale damage with weapons damage. It keeps everyone on a level playing field, which makes so much sense to me, i hope its as obvious to them and they are making it one of the talent abilities in the feral tree.

guice
08-04-2005, 09:51 AM
When I think shamans, I think "Horde Paladin." So I try to compare shamans to pallies. This isn't EQ, as you know; WoW's class rules are much different. Just the viewing their version of a druid is evidance of that.

As the only class with combat rez, and with 2 stackable HoT spells, we are highly desirable as primary healers on raids or 5-man instances. Oh and there's that Innervate thing.Well, I was refering to second to Priests. And our rez was built as an "oh s*" rez. It's not ment to be a "oh, somebody died, go ahead and rez them really quick."

Lawdawg
08-04-2005, 10:47 AM
This was posted last night by Cay Diem: I don't have access to blizzard sites from work but thottbot provides the text of all blue posts on the forums. Here is the text:

"In the upcoming content patch, there are significant changes to Cat Form. Here's the run down:

Cat Form's base damage (not attack power, but the cat form's "weapon" damage) has been increased.

Each point of Agility now adds 1 Attack Power.

Rip's damage per combo point has been increased.

Ferocious Bite's damage per combo point has been increased. In addition, extra energy now converts to damage at a higher rate.

The global cooldown on Tiger's Fury has been replaced with a one-second self cooldown. Its duration has been increased to six seconds.

Rake's damage has been increased.

Also, the combo point problem with Ferocious Bite -- wherein the points would go away on a miss/dodge/parry -- should be resolved.

I have also been informed that talent changes for Druids (which should, among other things, further enhance Feral viability) are still on the way and currently scheduled for the content patch after 1.7.

There is a school of thought that talent changes should be made to increase the Feral form viability, and the developers are of that mind also... but they were also not satisfied with the level of effectiveness for all Druids, regardless of specialization. The changes is 1.7 should boost that significantly. "

I am quite surprised by the bolded portion of CayDiem's post. Why would they need to increase Druid effectiveness overall. It seems to me that Druids are pretty strong in PvP, PvE and healing instances. Now we do need a feral boost (scalability) and changes in the talents to make feral or balance specs more viable. But as a class I think we are pretty solid in all aspects of the game. But if the boosts druid as whole, that will be gravy, because I enjoy my resto spec and plan on staying with it.

guice
08-04-2005, 11:16 AM
Well, one of the hardest issues balancing a class like a druid is the whole "Jack of all trades" senario. How do you make druid forms useful in raids when you have the next best thing avaliable?

Healing is always a hurting nitch so any class with even remotely a good number of heal spells will always be nitched into that healing role. Unless WoW suddently gets a surge of priests, druids will almost always be pushed into the nitch of healing.

I as I said on the Monkly forms: "There's such thing as a feral druid?! :lol:"

Druids are pretty much of no use in raids if they aren't rest. spec. :(

headphonics
08-04-2005, 12:45 PM
Druids are pretty much of no use in raids if they aren't rest. spec. :(

I disagree. Just like a paladin, hunter, warlock, or shaman, a druid can play the role of a support class, even outside the typical warrior/mage/rogue/priest/single support class party. Say you're in a Strat run with two priests, but only one paladin, when usually there are two. Even if you're not restoration specced, you can throw some feral damage in there (and no small amount, if you've got a nice set of feral gear), off-tank as needed, and off-heal when necessary. You might even play the role as the primary off-tank, instead of the single paladin, if only one warrior is present, as I am of the opinion that a warrior/druid can tank better than a warrior/paladin. Even if you don't need to heal or tank, I get 150DPS+ in high end raid instances like Stratholme and Scholomance in cat form. Not as good as a rogue or a mage, but still, not what I would call useless.

And even if you're the main healer, being restoration specced is far from NECESSARY. How often do you go on 10-person+ raids with only one healer? I do it rarely, so even as a feral or balance druid, you can easily cover the role of primary healer, or secondary if a priest is around, in most raid instances. Some parts of UBRS might be difficult, but on the whole, druids are fully capable of main healing even without NS and Innervate. I've done it.

guice
08-04-2005, 12:59 PM
In a group, I agree. However, I'm more refering to a raid. 10 man or above where generaly you have all your classes covered and normally "lack healers" based on current trends.

Hudge difference between single grouping where you're limited to 5 people out of 9 classes unlike a raid where you can easily get every class or a "proper" balance.

Bovus
08-04-2005, 07:02 PM
How do you make druid forms useful in raids when you have the next best thing avaliable?

In 40 man the answer is easy, you don't, beyond hitting bear to live through some agro.


Druids are pretty much of no use in raids if they aren't rest. spec. :(

I wouldn't say they are of no use. Just like Enhancement Shaman are still of use in MC. Shaman don't melee there, they certainly don't tank there. They are spamming Lesser Healing Wave and dropping totems.

Enhancement and Elemental Shaman, and Feral and Balance specd Druids aren't useless. It's just that they have many talent points allocated which don't serve any purpose to a 40-man raid.

Are they less effective? You bet. Do we hold raid slots for people with a particular talent spec? No way.

headphonics
08-04-2005, 09:11 PM
Exactly. I still disagree with you there, as I've found myself in many situations in a raid where I've been doing stuff OTHER than healing, be it tanking, or throwing in a few extra DPS in feral or caster form.

The main point I was trying to make, though, was that even a non-restoration specced druid can heal well enough that they would never be useless as long as the raid needed healers. As Bovus said, we may be less effective in our primary role (healing), but definitely still useful.

Stormhaven
08-05-2005, 09:51 AM
I have a small beef with the "Each point of Agility now adds 1 Attack Power." bit. What happened to the druid complaint about having to carry around 3 to 4 different armor sets?

We're in the same freakin' boat that we were in four months ago. We now need an Int set for caster, Str for bear, and Agi for cat.

W.
T.
F.
?

Create
08-05-2005, 12:01 PM
We're in the same freakin' boat that we were in four months ago. We now need an Int set for caster, Str for bear, and Agi for cat.
Propose a solution then. If you say "convert int to [insert stat here] while in [insert form here]" I'll laugh at you and be subsequently banned, I'd assume.

Well, one of the hardest issues balancing a class like a druid is the whole "Jack of all trades" senario. How do you make druid forms useful in raids when you have the next best thing avaliable?
Food for thought: Make the forms stronger but increase the cost of shifting. Would you support this? I like playing a support class and tend to shift alot if there's someone else on main heals. I'd say no, as a consequence. We know they're changing the tree and I'm convinced they'll relate form damage to weapon damage in the near future. Hopefully this will make us a much closer 2nd place.

Rune of Metamorphosis
Use: Decreases the mana cost of all Druid shapeshifting forms by 100% for 20 seconds.
I think a permanent % reduction that stacks with swiftshifting would be more helpful. I'd also like swiftshifting to be a permanent % reduction to all shifts, not just the second within the time limit.

Bovus
08-05-2005, 01:20 PM
Propose a solution then. If you say "convert int to [insert stat here] while in [insert form here]" I'll laugh at you and be subsequently banned, I'd assume.

I was thinking about that myself, but it is horribly unwieldy, when all the itemization people need to do is throw some STR/AGI on our set items (thinking of Cenarion in particular, Wildheart has STR on some pieces, just not enough of it) or caster blues.


Food for thought: Make the forms stronger but increase the cost of shifting. Would you support this?


No, as it would penalize us in PvP severely. Moving Swiftshifting over to the Feral tree (below Charge heh) would help offset this type of approach.

Still, making the forms stronger is something they seem to be doing little by little anyhow now. Does it keep with high dps melee weapon
proliferation? No, but it helps a little.

We know they're changing the tree and I'm convinced they'll relate form damage to weapon damage in the near future.

I'm not convinced, and actually like the idea of our feral damage being fixed + talents. How workable this is long term when everyone you fight (pvp) has 50+dps base weapons is the problem. With the weapon damage being factored in, we would then have to carry cat and bear weapon sets in addition to gear sets.

Ultimately, were stuck in the same boat as the pure casters when it comes to dps output. Blizz has stated they have plans to accomodate this shortcoming, including but not limited to new spells coming into the game. Let's face it, they aren't idiots when it comes to designing the game basics, and they knew this was going to be a problem at the start of things. I'm interested to see what will come out in the future.

Itemization is probably the easiest thing to be critical about in MMORPGs. /em points at Velious. I have faith they will do some creative things to keep all casters from being left in the dust. Now, whether they also consider Feral boosts through itemization, that is another story entirely. The option to simply boost Feral damage/mitigation by x % every y months is available to them as well.

I'd also like swiftshifting to be a permanent % reduction to all shifts, not just the second within the time limit.

Agree completely. Make it a 20/40/60 reduction.

Badgemagus
08-05-2005, 01:29 PM
I disagree. Just like a paladin, hunter, warlock, or shaman, a druid can play the role of a support class, even outside the typical...

We ARE a support class.

I'd also like swiftshifting to be a permanent % reduction to all shifts, not just the second within the time limit.

Agree or reduce the cost all together.

guice
08-05-2005, 03:11 PM
Make the forms stronger but increase the cost of shifting. Would you support this?No. Cause the cost of shifting is over all irrelevant in druid's ability to shift forms. I do, however, like a perm % decrease in shifting, this would support twitch shifting a bit more.

Jareck
08-05-2005, 05:53 PM
All MMO's have this problem once people begin gearing up in "end game" gear. Casters are always going to be underpowered in the end because melee dmg is unlimited while spell dmg is limited by mana.

If you fix this by increasing the power of spells, then you break pvp in the other direction as melees can't keep up with burst damage of a caster.

I think that base dmg and not necessarially talent damage needs to be the focus of the change, as 95% of all end game druids will be primarially restoration based due to the incredible usefulness of innervate vs. balance/feral. I don't like it when you MUST have the 31 point talent in any tree to be compared to other classes in usefulness (meaning adding something to "fix" this high in the feral tree).

Solution to this would be to increase the availability of other mana rate increasing items, etc. The downside would be the uproar of the majority by taking away one of our class defining niche's.

All these solutions are double edged swords really, but pretty much every change in a game like this is anyways.

Badgemagus
08-05-2005, 06:48 PM
Agree'd except for rogues who can do huge burst damage if dagger spec'd.

Willain
08-05-2005, 07:40 PM
I have a small beef with the "Each point of Agility now adds 1 Attack Power." bit. What happened to the druid complaint about having to carry around 3 to 4 different armor sets?

We're in the same freakin' boat that we were in four months ago. We now need an Int set for caster, Str for bear, and Agi for cat.


I don't agree - if the AGI change goes through, a set of gear heavy on AGI would work great for cat _and_ bear. While one's attack rating would suffer in bear, the defensive benefits (AC, dodge) from the AGI would, IMO, benefit bear form.

Badgemagus
08-05-2005, 07:54 PM
Good post man.