Bring back Swarms for Midnight

Classes Druid
1

I did a few M+ on live recently as Wildstalker, and my god this was fun! It made me realize how sad it actually is that we will be loosing Adaptive Swarm in Midnight. Also, I think one thing really missing from Midnight Feral is a way to actively amplify your DoTs for a limited window of time (so that you can watch those enemy healthbars rot down nice and fast :smirking_face: )

So how about we change swarm instead of deleting it? My idea:

  1. Put a new talent “Insect Swarm” into the place of Innervate and move Innervate down the tree. May be make the 5y range extension from Astral Influence baseline and put Innervate there. Innervate really is not strong or interesting enough to be a capstone talent (though please do not prune it, I find it useful when healing).

  2. Use the visuals of Adaptive Swarm, I just changed the name to be more Druid-y.

  3. The talent has a 2min CD. When pressing it, you releases five swarms that attach either to friendly players or enemies depending on the target you select when clicking. If there are not enough players or enemies, the swarms will of course attach to the opposite as well. The swarms last for 20 seconds. On friendly players, they heal for an amount A over the 20 seconds and increase your HoTs by B %. On enemies they do C amount of damage and increase your DoTs by D % (tune values as needed).

  4. If a friendly player reaches full health or an enemy target dies, the swarms jump to a different target for the remaining life time, prefering the initial choice (so no alternating).

  5. This would go into the class tree because I think it should be a nice iconic ability for all Druids. Restos could certainly use it. Guardians as well to amplify Thrash. And while Moon- and Sunfire is may be less percentage of damage than Feral bleeds, it would still be useful for them?

This would remove the complexity from Unbridled Swarm where you had to pick the right target depending on the number of stacks it currently has but retain some player agency when deciding if you want to rather heal or DPS. It would also make for a nice Feral CD, I think and potentially be good for other specs? If not, could also make it a Feral talent…

2

Abilities like swarm are boring. It’s like a passive effect you have to keybind. It’s not a skill that buffs your damage. It’s a curse on your character that reduces the damage you’re supposed to be dealing until you press the upkeep button. It’s no different than savage roar was. It’s just not interesting.

3

I would agree as far as Adaptive Swarm alone is concerned. But the combination with Unbridled was actually fun and challenging to get right. Hence my suggestion to bring back some form of combination of the two.