Feedback: Druids

In Development Guardians of the Dream PTR
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In this thread, please discuss ongoing changes to the Druid class in the Guardians of the Dream PTR.

Balance

In Guardians of the Dream, we’d like to diversify Balance’s talent builds in different content and provide more viable options.

Wild Mushrooms was too expensive to compete with other talent options, so we combined it and Fungal Growth into a single point. Wild Mushrooms is now a choice node with a revised Orbital Strike that is no longer tied to Celestial Alignment – you can choose the steady damage of Wild Mushrooms or a less frequent, big burst of damage with Orbital Strike.

We also removed the conflict between maintaining Rattle the Stars and maximizing Starlord – we like the “save resources and spend during Eclipse” gameplay of Balance and feel Starlord epitomizes it better.

  • Damage of all abilities increased by 2%.
  • Nature’s Grace now grants 10% Haste (was 15%).
  • Power of Goldrinn damage increased by 20%. Moved to where Starlord was located in Fractures in Time.
  • Starlord has moved to where Power of Goldrinn was located in Fractures in Time.
  • Rattle the Stars has been redesigned – It is no longer a buff that stacks when you cast Starsurge or Starfall and is now a passive bonus that always reduces the cost of Starsurge and Starfall by 10% and increases their damage by 12%.
  • Orbital Strike has been redesigned – Call down a bombardment of celestial energy over the target area, blasting all enemies for Astral damage and applying Stellar Flare to them for 16 seconds. Generates 30 Astral Power. Orbital Strike still hits enemies in a 40 yard line and has a 90 second cooldown. Now a choice node with Wild Mushroom.
  • Fungal Growth has been removed. Wild Mushrooms now includes the effects of Fungal Growth.
  • Wild Mushrooms’ damage has been reduced by 20% and the Fungal Growth damage over time has been reduced to 60% of Wild Mushroom damage (was 70%). Fungal Growth’s damage over time now deals damage over 10 seconds (was 8 seconds).

Feral

Apex Predator’s value varies a lot in single target and AOE, so we’re evening that out a little.

We’re trying a new version of Ashamane’s Guidance, as we don’t love the randomness of the current version with the updated Berserk design – it’s hard to optimize its damage and resource generation without using external tracking mods. The new version will have more consistent value and rewards you for maintaining your most important bleeds.

  • Apex Predator’s chance to trigger is increased against a low number of targets and decreased against a high number of targets. Its chance to trigger is about the same as before against 4 targets.
  • Cat’s Curiosity has been replaced with a new talent: Saber Jaws – When you spend extra Energy on Ferocious Bite, the extra damage is increased by 40%/80%.
  • Ashamane’s Guidance’s effect for Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane has been redesigned – During Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane and for 30 seconds after it ends, your Rip and Rake each cause affected enemies to take 3% increased damage from your abilities.

Restoration

  • Cenarius’ Guidance’s Incarnation: Tree of Life functionality has been redesigned – During Incarnation: Tree of Life, you summon a Grove Guardian every 10 seconds. The cooldown of Incarnation: Tree of Life is reduced by 5 seconds when Grove Guardians fade.
  • Incarnation: Tree of Life now additionally empowers Wrath, causing it to deal 20% more damage and be instant cast.
  • Reforestation now grants Incarnation: Tree of Life for 10 seconds (was 9 seconds).
  • New Talent: Liveliness – Your damage over time effects deal their damage 25% faster, and your healing over time effects heal 5% faster.
  • Circle of Life and Death has been removed.
  • Grove Tending healing increased by 30%.
  • Grove Guardian’s Nourish healing decreased by 16%.
  • Grove Guardian’s Swiftmend healing reduced by 20%.
  • Grove Guardian’s Wild Growth healing from Wild Synthesis reduced by 20%.
  • Luxuriant Soil now causes Rejuvenation to have a 1%/2% chance to jump to a nearby ally (was 1.5%/3%).
  • Regrowth initial healing increased by 20%.
  • Regrowth heal over time effect increased by 42%.
  • Rejuvenation healing increased by 25%.
  • Wild Growth healing increased by 15%.
  • Wrath and Starfire damage increased by 90%.
  • Abundance caps at 12 stacks, for a maximum of 60% crit/cost reduction.
  • Cenarion Ward healing increased by 25%.
  • Swiftmend healing increased by 30%.
  • Inner Peace now reduces the cooldown of Tranquility by 30 seconds (was 60 seconds).
  • Spring Blossoms healing reduced by 25%.
  • Sunfire now costs 1.8% base mana (was 2.4%).
  • Embrace of the Dream healing reduced by 30%.
  • Flourish now extends the duration of all your heal over time effects on friendly targets within 60 yards by 6 seconds (was 8 seconds), and increases the rate of your heal over time effects by 25% (was 100%) for 6 seconds (was 8 seconds).
  • Flourish procs from Convoke the Spirits now extends heal over time effects by 3 seconds (was 4 seconds) and lasts 3 seconds (was 4 seconds).
    • Developers’ note: We are reducing the effectiveness of Flourish and increasing the power of rotational heal over time spells with the goal of moving more power into the baseline kit.
  • Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible (2) Set Bonus – Now increases the healing of Regrowth’s periodic heal by 35% (was 50%).
  • Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible (4) Set Bonus – Now increases the rate of your heal over time effects by 26% (was 30%).
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What did you even do to Resto. It’s been gutted. We really don’t have any major CD’s our throughput has been gutted. Warriors and DK’s have better raid CD’s than Resto, they have for a long time. Rally and AMZ? Why can’t druid have something like this now you’ve gutted our throughput? Flourish, useless. Tranq, even more useless, it was a garbage CD to begin with and nerfing the amount of time to get it back, I don’t want to tickle people with it. The only good thing I actually saw, that still isn’t going to be enough, is the Swiftmend buff… yay… I guess. Still have to apply a HoT, 2 GCD’s to ‘panic’ heal some moron who stood in something they shouldn’t of, they’ll be dead by the time they get a heal. I really can’t be bothered, this has left me seriously deflated, there hasn’t been a patch I haven’t looked forward too, ever. This is the first. Don’t even wanna talk about the 4-set. Please, seriously consider these changes.

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I get people being mad over Rdruid not being a ramping CD tied spec anymore but I actually love these changes and the tier set. It feels unlike other healers. I like the idea of pet healing, and it helps a lot in M+ environments. I couldn’t care less about keeping an old AoE ramping gameplay that’s been the same for forever and go for more modern triage healing, like the Holy Paladin since the rework. What’s wrong with testing new iterations of the game for a patch, people are too weak to changes.

People are talking skill expression and skillcap, but ramping as a Rdruid was one of the most braindead stuff I’ve done. Keep Lifebloom and Efflo, know timers or have your ramp timing ramps on ERT, spam rejuv, 3rd swiftmend into wild growth convoke flourish and tree form goes brrrr and then rince and repeat every ramp. Boring, barely satisfactory when done right because of the sheer AoE throughput of other reactive healers, no combos, no skill expression when comparing to the Hpal rework, not a single meaningful choice imo. It’s just a bland, repetitive ramp.

I’m sick of AoE spamming and ramping, mindless spamming to snipe other healers healing in mythic raids to scrap a bit of fun. And let’s not talk about mythic+ that basically makes ramping non viable as Rdruid just couldn’t deal with the hasty healing required for the entire patch (and pre-nerfed S1). I welcome the shift to triage based spot / cleave healing. At least with the Grove Guardian playstyle we can spend more time in shapeshift contributing to damage, ccs and whatnot while fishing / keeping clearcasts for cleave healing instead of constantly stacking tons of low healing hots to not fall behind during a raid ramp or a m+ key.

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2/3 Changes for feral are amazing.
Always a fan of less rng.

Too bad that the third change of replacing curio with this obscene buff to bite will kill my fun with feral. Who thought this was even close to balanced and fun? This has been the issue with feral for 4 years, bites being endlessly buffed till bleeds basically are only target to buff bites and not to do damage by themselves. Soul crushing.

2 Likes
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Edit: several additions(and/or extensions), re-formatting, re-wording and fixed some mistakes/mistypes.

Resto:

  1. Positive:

  • It’ll most likely feel really good to heal dungeons again because of the spot healing buffs. Big yay!

  • Grove Guardian’s add an additional button for on-demand spot healing. Yay!

  • Circle of Life and Death removed! No more tiny duration HOTs! Yay!

  • Most of the new Druid Forms look amazing! Especially the foresty/flowery ones!

  1. Feedback:
  • Flourish will feel bad to press in dungeons with the reduced duration and will further disincentivize mastery stacking which is already largely undesirable in higher keys due to limited interactions with damage output (aka only Nature’s Vigil which took a big hit in current patch)…and especially bad in raids in conjuction with the Luxuriant Soil nerf(25% tick rate with a 1/2% chance to proc will barely be noticable).

Please reconsider keeping it at 100%(or at the very least 75%, but really, keep it at 100%) and nerfing it in some other manner, preferably by increasing the cooldown and please don’t touch the duration (at least not any more than you already did).

  • Grove Guardian’s are largely passive and their Nourish casts I presume can be failed/interrupted by LoS/range (going to feel bad in tight dungeons and possibly while splitting the raid into groups that are standing/moving just in/out of range of the treants). They are, as far as I can tell even with the nerfs, going to be leaps and bounds better than anything else you could spend those points on for dungeons(including Tranq).

Maybe that’s the idea but I’d prefer if it was baseline tbh or if Tranquility was returned to baseline (with some strong/interesting Tranq talent choices for raiding). Rdudu without Tranq(even in dungeons) = sad times.

I’d also prefer if the Grove Guardian’s closely followed the player at all times and radiated healing (or kept casting swiftmend on a CD that reflect the intended Nourish throughput) or something similar instead. Preferably with some flowery effects, maybe adding the Flourish ground effect to the treants. Would be like having a moving magical forest, healing the group/raid (aka awesome, especially during the new Cenarius’ Guidance modified Incarn).

In general having pets/guardians (that you can’t control beyond where they spawn) who hard cast, can fail those casts and have to walk after people/NPCs who are running out of range or LoSing and potentially continuously failing several casts in a row just feels and is bad IMO.

  • (Edit: Cenarius’ Guidance-)Incarnation: Tree of Life passive treant spawning is boring and reduce the skill cap further. I’m not sure if “functionality as been redesigned” means the previous functionality is completely removed? Does it no longer interact with our healing spells at all? That would be really sad. Edit: I just realized this was the Cenarius’ Guidance talent, not the base Incarn talent, derp.

I’d like to see them spawn from Wild Growth/Swiftmend casts or (if they were to become baseline) having 2 spawn instead of 1 when casting Grove Guardians during Incarn or something similar instead. We’re already losing some control over who gets healed with the introduction of Grove Guardians, please don’t make even more of our interactions with them passive.

  1. Other/requests:
  • PLEASE make the base Treant Form do something healing related again as well as granting slight armor and immunity to polymorph effects (outside of pvp if you have to keep the current rather sad state of affairs a thing there for mage/shaman balancing reasons, or make it give you 1 stack of poly immune w/ a CD in arenas/BGs, perma immune elsewhere). This is a major class/spec fantasy that is thrown away (outside of Resto Incarn which is optional) just for PvP balancing. It still, after all these years, feels like such a loss for no good reason.

Also new Treant Forms/skins plx with different flowers/vegitation etc. and let us choose to use the old one…even for Incarn/Grove Guardians (also re-add the old base Treant functionality holds thumbs).

  • I’d like to see all Incarnations change the appearance of your forms in some noticable manner plx. Or just let us pick any of the existing forms to turn into when pressing Incarn…via glyph/barber.

  • Buff Tranquility by reducing channel time while keeping other values intact plx (or make that a talent and make Tranq baseline as suggested above).

  • I really really want Glyph of the Forest Path to apply to Stampeding Roar (for allies too) or even better make the forest path effect baseline on Dash and Stampeding Roar.

  1. The most important request:
  • Add a Druid Legendary to the Emerald Dream patch plox or riot.

Also it should be a staff that is visually based/similar on/to Staff of the Verdant Circle but even more awesomely woody, foresty & flowery kthx.

1 Like
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This is literally how you ramp on every progress too except it is more dictated by your guild healing CD rotation. Nothing new here. This is how I ramped through all of DF and most of SL and it was never anything expressive. There is no “when and how you can keep those ramps rolling”. You’re literally ramping asap once getting back your cds according to incoming damage mechanics (delayed by a maximum of 10 to 20 seconds). Anyone with a tiny bit of preparation and a heal lead will just need few adjustments depending on targeted mechanics and whatnot. The only difference would be Verdancy builds (Kurog type) that was just an increased maintenance on two targets in your efflo.

Monks already have a pet healing type mechanic where you cast relevant spells to empower/activate your pet healers (chiji for example), and it could completely be done as a core concept on druid instead of going back to the bland feeling rejuv ramps.

For m+ it just strengthen the available time to do other things, druid core concept being a HoT / preventive healer. The LB / regrowth build was merely a bandaid spec to be able to deal with mechanics. It felt terrible, and terribly underpowered in anything above 20s.

Also why even consider “not having the 4p” ? There is no point thinking about “not having the 4p” as the entire season will be designed around them, especially with week 1 catalyst.

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These restoration druid changes completely took me by surprise, i’ve been loving the ramp playstyle, revolving around setting up for flourish ever since legion expansion.

First of all, the nerf to flourish seems like a bit too much, flourish should honestly stay the same, 8 sec duration, 100% increased tick rate.

Sure, pls go ahead and change convoke, but instead of making it a useless talent that you by no means would take. Shake the bag and change it to the better non rng talent or delete it and come up with something new to take it’s place.

At the same time Luxuriant Soil is being nerfed, which in addition with the flourish makes this talent undesireable. To me things like this is sad, i have liked this talent and to nerf talents so hard to make room for a completely different playstyle feels weird.
Especially when these talents are still kept around, different choices should be able to be made.

As of right now, we resto druids doesn’t have a major raid cd like other healing specs, that’s fine. But to my pov, something should make up for this. This has to my knowledge been that we’re able to have massive throughput in certain windows and decent coverage in between.

The trees is a cool addition, but shifting a currently RNG based playstyle made of flourish procs in convoke and good luxuriant soil procs, straight to a RNG based clearcast and pet based playstyle. Where it as of right now, seems like it will have no requirement of skill to perform well.

Healing should revolve around the healer healing the people who needs to be healed, and not casting a bunch of trees, hoping they heal the right people.

I actually loved everything about the current druid, besides convoke and like seeing this change towards allowing for the use of a less RNG based spell, Tree of Life.
The idea of tree form having its cd reduced by trees fading is cool, and allows for a less rng like playstyle with tree form instead of Convoke.

And please don’t make our tier set bonus rely on RNG procs.

Make us resto druids be in charge of the potential of the spec and not smart healing trees.

I don’t know anything about damage patterns coming in the content arriving with 10.2, but as of right now experiencing this current patch, healers are in need of heavy ramp healing, to handle these major damage patterns.

Best regards,
Andemór

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This Talent is nice, when it comes to Single Target dmg

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I’m pretty unhappy with the proposals here for one main reason; that it utterly destroys the ramp based gameplay druid has been built around since Legion. Planning when to ramp, getting the timing right and seeing the payoff was the most engaging and fun part of the spec. It’s been the spec’s identity for a long time. Yes, all the rng rejuv spreading right now, really isn’t great, but I don’t think crushing our healing profile is the right approach. I’d much rather see us revert back to something like a late BFA style resto, where we had powerful ramps, but we really had to watch mana and time things carefully if we didn’t want to oom. Higher skill ceiling, bigger payoffs.

There are definitely things about resto that could use changing (rng rejuv spreading / convoke rng), but changing the very nature and identity of the class, are not those things, in my view. That part of these proposals feels deeply alienating and unsatisfying and for me, overshadows anything else good that might be happening.

I’m also very concerned about raid spots and healing profile. Without any meaningfully powerful cds, druid will bring little which is desirable mythic raid-wise. A flat, consistent healing profile just isn’t as desirable as strong cds or dr, which several other classes still bring in spades. When you plan healing, you plan around the hard parts of the fight and what cds you have to counter them. Without Flourish as it is today, we have very little to offer.

I’d would much prefer Flourish to be nerfed to a 2 min or 3 min CD, with its old power, than a nothing button on a 1.5 min. Or to have some of the problematic talents like Lux Soil changed to be Flourish buffing nodes, so you get a weak Flourish for 1pt and you spend more pts to buff it up (perhaps not necessarily to what we have now - you might have a choice between it ticking a lot faster or extending a lot longer - which would create interesting choices in what healing profile you wanted based on the fight; or go back to a flourish / g’hanir split over a few nodes). So there’s a choice of a more consistent playstyle or a ramp based playstyle, depending on where you invest.

I would also very much like to see the RNG element that has plagued this season removed and am glad that it looks like we might play Tree over Convoke. It’s never fun to play the exact same way on two pulls and end up with vastly different outcomes just because Convoke didn’t proc or soil didn’t spread as well. And I think there are changes here that move in the right direction. I’d be absolutely fine if all those RNG elements - e.g. lux soil, convoke - were removed.

Finally, on Innervate - please consider making innervate baseline resto and self only and then balancing mana around nobody having external innervates. Making mana matter is a worthy goal, but keeping external mana around while doing so is deeply problematic. Even now the difference between prog one week with no innervate and the next week with two, was very large, but not particularly fun either.

15

The class tree could really do with some additional links to make skull bash, dispel and Rising light possible to get without spending 2-4 points on completely useless talents.

This is fairly easily solved by linking:

  • Thick Hide and Feline Swiftness to Skull bash
  • Sunfire to Remove Corruption
  • Natural Recovery to Rising Light, Falling Night

Easier access to imp sunfire, hibernate and typhoon would also be nice, but not as needed and would require more complicated rework of the tree.

1 Like
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Resto druid:

Make skull bash easy available, the pathing is rough and currently only works for feral and guardian.
Almost every other healing class has easy access to an interrupt.

DPS rotation
Im worried about the dps increase of wrath and starfire. Its nice that you have buffed them but I did some dps testing on ptr and when im doing full rotation with cat and mf, sf I get almost less damage then just spamming wrath.

Resto druids always had a great and engaging dps rotation I hope you will keep it fun… Spamming wrath or starfire is no fun imo.

Nature Vigil
Make nv 30 sec for resto druid, it was such fun…

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About feral:
Apex Predator - I like the idea behind evening it out cause in PvP specifically it felt bad to take almost always and vs pet classes it just sometimes felt broken. You might want to have Primal Wrath also apply it’s own Rip separate from our main Rip so you can more easily balance AoE and ST?

Saber Jaws - Is this for sure the direction we want to go? Do we want to go back to FB being 75% of feral DMG (I’m exaggerating here, but I think you understand my point). Also how will this work with Convoke? Don’t want to see Convoke super OP and a guaranteed oneshot in PvP.

Ashamane’s Guidance - am I reading this right? This will basically be a 6% DMG buff for 1min? Maybe something more interesting like having Ashmane sometimes copying your finisher when outside of Incarn and reducing the CD of Incarn by 1-2-3 secs every time this happens?

Can we also try to get some more connections in our class tree to make it easier for ferals to get Cyclone if we want it to be the main playstyle for PvP? Also ways to get maybe Typhoon, Nature Vigil would be nice.

Can we also get some survivability buffs in PvP? According to 2100+ solo shuffle stats feral seems to have one of the lowest HPS in the game and a 75% death rate in games. Maybe some talents to buff our healing? Maybe just a baseline buff to our healing? Maybe a PvP talent that would require us to not take something but we get healing in exchange? Maybe some other way to buff our survivability?

Thx for the changes. Thx for feedback.

1 Like
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Saber Jaws Doesnt Work With convoke, and Apex procs.

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The druid tree needs a complete revamp…

There are multiple extremely situational abillites that we are forced to take. Ironfur and Soothe are example of this. The bottom 3 talents are all super weak and Heart of the wild has a 5 min cooldown and a really boring effect. You are forced to take boomie form to get the extra range, healing increase etc… Lycaras teaching is randomly 3 points for just passive stats. Arena players forced to take wild growth but it’s never used in arena. There are countless issues but it seems you are unaware.

It would be 10x easier to balance these things if pve and pvp weren’t mixed together like this. Just create a seperate talent tree for pvp. Problem solved. But likely - it won’t happen.

1 Like
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It’s becoming extremely important now in PvP with the push towards Wild Attunement and Cyclone. We are being forced into taking Cyclone already with Wild Attunment giving free frenzy and now if tier starts working with it it will be an additional 10% DMG and 5% burn. If we are putting so much power into a spell and forcing it we shouldn’t be making people waste 2-3-4 talents to do it.

Also let’s think about games where you can spam cyclone vs games where you can’t cause you got 2 melees on you just focusing to not let you cast it a single time in a game. It’s like a totally different game, in one game you feel invicible in the other you feel like you and your class just sucks. Just give us a talent where cyclone is instant cast but has a 20sec CD and duration lowered by 1 sec or something. Let’s even out the lows / highs a bit or something.

21

General tree needs work. Multi-form gameplay for specs other than resto isn’t feasible and always underperform (such as cat form in guardian) so it doesn’t feel like you’re building a coherent character but rather picking the least worst parts in order to advance towards the bottom of the tree.

3 Likes
22

Just to add after recent changes, the Flourish CD reduction to 1 min does nothing I’m afraid and is the wrong direction. A button that feels like it does nothing at 1:30, still feels like it does nothing at 1 min. This isn’t the ramp well + get good payoff playstyle, that has made druid fun since Legion.

Please consider doing the opposite. Lengthen the CD to 2 mins and buff the tick rate / extension.

Or, broaden the rework - remove lux soil entirely and/or remove tranq also and give us flourish buffs/flourish upgrade nodes to compensate (tick rate increase / hot extension / overheal redistribution during / etc). Really go to town on making Flourish even more iconic. That would be so much more exciting.

Ultimately, the spec without a meaningfully powerful Flourish, is just not fun.

1 Like
23

Could the new PvP tallent Call of the Elder Druid be also enabled for feral? This would be a simple and amazing solution to some of feral’s defensive problems in PvP. Thank you.
Edit: Or even better make it a choice node with HotW in the general druid tree.

1 Like
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Balance:

Pro:
As far as I can see, Balance’s current slight under tuning on single target will be fixed or at least be closer to being middle of the pack

  • Power of Goldrinn damage increased by 20%
  • Damage of all abilities increased by 2%.

These Will help that single target lack by a bit, it does feel like the easy way to tune Balance single target, while adding some overall increase so nothing too bad there, might even be enough

Cons:

  • Nature’s Grace now grants 10% Haste (was 15%).

I mean, at this point it feels like it’s going to be nerfed each tier since gear is stronger each tier, just still feels bad that we’ll need make a decision on taking a point that gets worse each tier to reach the single target powerhouse talents, or going via the Aoe route for single target without shooting ourselves in the foot.

(2) Set Bonus: When Eclipse ends or when you enter combat, enter a Dreamstate, reducing the cast time of your next 2 Starfires or Wraths by 40% and increasing their damage by 60%.
(4) Set Bonus: Starsurge or Starfall increase your current Eclipse’s Arcane or Nature damage bonus by an additional 3%, up to 15%.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/class-sets-in-guardians-of-the-dream/1666443

  1. since the 2set is just 2 spellcasts presumably OUTSIDE of eclipse, it just means that the 40% haste on the spell is covering up the 5% you lose. Just hoping that “When Eclipse ends” also means when we enter Incarnation like Nature’s grace used to work, atleast we’d get some really fat Starfires or Wraths, but still feels like a downgrade IMO
  1. Losing the abberus tier set means we lose 18% dot dmg, and we lose the chance on an empowered shooting star, this means we lose some AP generation and some dmg overall, which means we’re also slower on SS/SF casts
    the 4set kind of replaces this by adding lets say average 9% dmg to nature/arcane, so all dmg is increased from that school, not just the dots
    but considering you’d need 5 SS/SF casts in each 15sec eclipse, which won’t happen in the first 5 second you won’t get the 15% max dmg or 30% while incarn from Primordal Arcanic pulsar is on, you’d only be at nearly 30% on a full 30s Incarn 3min pop, this sure makes Incarn even more valuable

I really hope this Tier set can be completely redesigned, mostly because these bonuses are even more boring than the current abberus tier ( essentially just +% dmg ), and its 2set seems fairly weak, even more so if it doesn’t proc going from single eclipse into Incarn double eclipse . The 4set will most likely leave us to play Starweaver instead of the Rattle the stars that has just been updated, because free casts = getting to that 15% bonus dmg each eclipse faster, which leaves me to my opinion surrounding the Orbital strike/mushroom redesign,

The redesigns are great, but i have sinking feeling that the point will go without use on most Raid occasions where single target is usually king.
since the new tier set will do nothing to promote the use of any particular ability, or changes our playstyle is some fashion, we will most likely not change much in our single target build, perhaps even opting to use Elune’s guidance to max that 4set bonus and absolutely leave the Mushroom/Orbital point behind

Mushroom sadly deal Nature damage, so outside Incarnation, you’d want to use solar eclipse and waste Starfire dmg to promote Mushroom damage, and 2-3 starfire casts are about the same strength as 1 mushroom cast by using Astral Smolder and Wild Surges

Orbital Strike might be useful, but it means breaking another part of your kit, losing Radiant moonlight essentially changes the Second full moon you’d get into a CD by picking Orbital strike, But makes you lose the 25% on Orbit breaker, but sadly both become less powerful as there are fewer enemies, and Radiant moonlight remains powerful no matter enemy count, We could give up that one point of Balance of all things, but that doesn’t seem worth it most occasions except maybe a Fortified week M+.

Overall I beg, Please change the Balance Tier set bonuses to something kit altering, I have loads of ideas of course, but won’t bother since i’d be adding like 5 paragraphs of ideas to an already lengthy post

Resto:

I can understand why, but I do not agree
most every change in this list will lead to a diminished version of what exists, the only change will most likely be that now our strength will be around the use of Incarnation, instead of blanketing the raid in Rejuvs that, that we then use to freely cast regrowth.

If all these changes NEED to happen, I hope you can revise

  • Cenarius’ Guidance’s Incarnation: Tree of Life functionality has been redesigned – During Incarnation: Tree of Life, you summon a Grove Guardian every 10 seconds. The cooldown of Incarnation: Tree of Life is reduced by 5 seconds when Grove Guardians fade.

They make perfect sence and will be strong when combined with

(2) Set Bonus: You and your Grove Guardian’s Nourishes now heal 2 additional allies within 40 yds at 40% effectiveness.
(4) Set Bonus: Clearcasting now causes your Regrowth to also cast Nourish onto a nearby injured ally at 200% effectiveness, preferring those with your heal over time effects.

But when this set is gone, its power goes with it, so please, although I would change some more things. Please add either or both 1) the free Clearcasting every 5 second and/or 2) the cooldown reduction aspect by Lifebloom blooms and Regrowth crits.

And if at all possible let the Grove Guardians’ spell make use of the druids talents, like their swiftmend and wild growth use our Improved and Unstoppable Growth, or Swiftmend makes use of verdant infusion. Alternatively, let Grove guardians cast a Lifebloom on a target instead of a Swiftmend, and let the that Lifebloom give us all our own regular Lifebloom benefits.

I can happily accept a different playstyle surrounding Incarnation, or having pets that heal, using Nourish casts, and less use of Rejuvenation spam, these are all thing I can accept, their strength is just a matter of numbers tuning, but taking away that part from the incarnation passive, alongside all the cutting in all the other talents’ strengths just feels like every part of what Resto currently has in those moments of raw strength, moments of glory you could even call them, they feel washed away by this, no more chance to pop an absurd amount of power, just sadly meandering along.

25

Hey! Tried this new BG Blitz, ran as a fully pvp-geared guardian druid. I know my way around this class and spec. And just wanted to tell you that a DH totally destroyed me, i used all def cooldowns several times, didnt matter. So maybe we have a balance issue here…