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…
Feral feedback
(note that I haven’t played it on the PTR so this is entirely based on the changes listed above)
This is fine. I don’t honestly pay much attention to Apex procs. I just ‘press it when it lights up’.
Also fine (with a ‘but’). Having the potential to increase the damage of bites where needed is a good thing.
However, the issue with Cat’s Curiosity not being taken is not so much that it’s a bad talent as that options are very limited in the bottom of the tree.
- Frantic Momentum is locked in because it’s the only way to access Incarn.
- Feral Frenzy will be locked in by the new tier set bonus, forcing us to path all the way to the bottom of the left side of the tree.
I can see the new talent only being taken in pure ST, and then only if it sims higher than putting the points in Carnivorous instinct. If that’s the goal, that’s fine, but if the goal is to encourage greater build diversity, the way to do that is to increase pathing options in the bottom of the tree so that Frantic Momentum is no longer locked in.
Also fine. An effective flat damage buff is valuable if unexciting.
General feral feedback
Please stop punishing us for playing feral by making us the only dps spec that has to use an additional GCD any time we use our combat rez. Let us cast it in cat form.
Likewise, let us cast innervate in cat form.
Class tree feedback
We all know the class tree is a total mess and needs a complete rework. I appreciate that’s a horrible job and no-one wants to take it on, so maybe a couple of small changes would be possible:
- Move Remove Corruption to a spot where it isn’t locked behind healer/caster only talents so that feral and guardian can take it without having to waste 2 points on talents they’ll never use.
- Get rid of the ridiculous 3 point requirement to path through Lycara’s Teachings. Druid is the only class that still has a 3 point talent node in the class tree.
3 Likes
Everyone can agree that blood frenzy had to receive target cap treatment but capping it to five targets literally destroys rage generation whenever you pull more than one pack in a dungeon.
By extension you nerf overall frequency of incarnation, less frequent ability cost reduction, nerf to frenzied regen, less ironfurs and razes, less damage leads to weaker shielding and less wildfires.
What’s the goal, to destroy the spec completely? Could you instead take a look at useless (understandably they’re filler, but very uninventive and boring) talents such as Gory Fur, Mangle (20%dmg) and much of the general tree?
Natures Vigil has already been cut in half and all of this makes it even worse. Lycara’s Teachings remains a 3 pointer. Guardian of Elune is also bad ever since the cap-nerf to Thorns of Iron.
1 Like
Making Blood Frenzy Cap makes the bear more weak in dungeons it’s destroying the rage generation going from let’s say 2000 rage to 400 or 300 even less will make the bear more weak in def , dmg and healing.
just to know bear was not meta at the start 10.2 he started being meta at 10.2.5
this will completey will destroy bear tanks in dungeons and they dont take him in raids anyway because he is not a meta in raid even they buff the tier set it still gonna face a major issue in rage because nerfing blood Frenzy like this
Moonkin feedback
I’m actually pretty happy with Balance’s current design and talent choices. There’s just one big problem with the spec: the amount of ramp-up to do decent damage. This might be fine for raid or high mythic+ dungeons but not for lower m+ or world content.
We really need a way to quickly apply Moonfire to more than two targets at once.
Class tree
One of our biggest problems right now is our bland and uninspired class tree. All four specs have to take talents they will never use to reach the nodes further down the tree, and almost none of our class tree talents are interesting. The tree needs to be redone from scratch.
Cool talents in the middle section of the tree (Feline Swiftness, Skull Bash, Cyclone, Typhoon) are pretty much unreachable for certain specs because the tree’s pathing is so bad, and we don’t have enough points to get them.
Lycara’s Teachings stills costs three points. This needs to be changed to two, so we can spend the remaining point on something else. Apart from that, there are just too many talents everyone has to take that are useful to just one or two specs: Ironfur (only useful to bears), Rejuvenation & Swiftmend to get decurse (only useful to resto because they are far too weak for all other specs), Moonkin Form (why do we even need to spend a talent point on that??).
Other talents are just too weak, too boring or too niche for their position in the tree: Improved Barkskin, Improved Sunfire, Soothe, Improved Rejuvenation, Forestwalk, Protector of the Pack.
Our talent tree could really use some more talents that are useful/handy to all the specs. Just give us something like “Mark of the Wild increases the target’s movement speed by 3%”, an additional 10% movement speed for travel form (to even out the 10% movement speed for mounts from the guild perk), or even some form of enhancement to Entangling Roots.
Especially the last three rows really lack some interesting and cool talents. Heart of the Wild should be swapped with the new pvp talent Call of the Elder Druid or get a different choice node version with shorter duration and shorter cd. In its current version the duration is far too long to make use of it in pve. We could also need some useful talents to let us use all restoration abilities in form or cast a different defensive/utility ability depending on form when shifting every 90 or 120 sec. You could even make some talents from the spec trees available to all druids. Survival Instincts (1 charge version), Solar Beam, Force of Nature, and Nature’s Swiftness come to mind. By the way, Convoke would be a great fit for the spot currently occupied by Heart of the Wild. It would be a great choice for the class tree. It is useful for every single spec and an extremely versatile spell that can be used offensively or defensively, depending on the situation.
The class tree really needs a lot of attention. There are no real choices and the tree lacks some interesting and fun talents. When I look at other class trees, there are so many cool talents and I feel like I want to pick all of them. When I look at the druid tree, it’s more like “Let’s try to pick not too many talents that are completely useless to my spec and somehow get to Lycara’s Teaching.” This really needs to change. Please, do something about the class tree.
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Let’s talk about Balance and Feral Druids! There are a couple important changes coming in the next PTR build.
Balance
We’ve been reading your feedback and agree that it’s important for Balance Druids in PvP to have the option to reduce Celestial Alignment’s cooldown by 2 minutes to coordinate burst phases with the rest of their team. Orbital Strike worked very well in that regard, and also made Celestial Alignment a very prominent visual. So we’re going to change it back to its previous design and position in the talent tree.
One goal we had behind changing Orbital Strike’s design was to give Balance more and different options to do damage quickly at the start of dungeon packs, or when adds appear in a raid fight. To pursue that goal in a different way, we’re tweaking Balance’s Mastery, Astral Invocation. Astral Invocation increases damage you deal to targets with Sunfire or Moonfire on them, with double the bonus to your Astral spells. We like how it prioritizes applying and maintaining your DoTs - we want it to be important to keep Sunfire and Moonfire rolling. However, we’re not happy with how much damage you lose when it’s not practical to put your DoTs up, such as against enemies that die quickly.
In 10.2, we’re changing Astral Invocation to give 2/3rds of its value at all times, and the remaining third when you have Moonfire and Sunfire on targets, like it currently works. The maximum power level is the same, but this means that when you start casting Starfall on raid boss adds, you’ll have most of the benefit of Astral Invocation right away. In dungeons you may enter Eclipse so you can start casting Starfall before you finish applying Moonfires. The goal is greater flexibility while keeping DoTs important.
We also found a couple bugs where Astral Invocation wasn’t increasing the damage of a few abilities, like Orbital Strike and Power of Goldrin. We’ve fixed that, and in some cases reduced their base damage to keep their tuning as intended.
Correction: Upon review, the only ability not currently affected by Astral Invocation is their PvP talent Star Burst. There are no changes to Orbital Strike’s or Power of Goldrin’s tuning in the next 10.2 PTR build. Apologies for the error.
Finally, we swapped the positions of Aethereal Kindling and Lunar Shrapnel in the talent tree. The thinking is that increased damage is always useful, but there may be cases you don’t need extended DoT durations.
Feral
In 10.2, Feral Druids will be able to cast Innervate in Cat Form. Let’s talk about it. Some design philosophy incoming.
One priority we have for druids is to maintain clear and flavorful identities for their various forms. If you want to intimidate your foes with a roar, you have to be a bear. If you want to rip and rake your foes, you have to be a cat. For fantasy reasons, we try to restrict casting spells in Bear Form or Cat Form without a perk like Predatory Swiftness or Lunar Inspiration. We’ve bent this for gameplay reasons, such as allowing Guardian Druids to cast several spells as a bear because they’re usually unable to shift out without dying. Generally, if players can play around their form restrictions, we try to keep them in place.
Which leads us to friction. Friction is when something is harder than it could be. Shifting out of Cat Form to cast Innervate has more friction than simply casting it from Moonkin Form. However, friction is not always bad. Dealing with friction takes flexibility, creativity, and quick thinking. Feral Druids must find a safe place to shift to cast spells. Dealing with friction successfully can be rewarding. High level M+ keys have friction, but that’s why they’re fun! Figuring out how to overcome friction in the moment can help the game keep from getting stale.
So why change it now? Simply, the difference in friction for using Innervate as Feral vs. other druid specs has proven higher than we want in practice. That’s also why we’re not changing Rebirth - it’s harder for Feral to cast Rebirth, but the difference in friction is at an appropriate level.
3 Likes
The redesigned version of Orbital Strike provided much needed upfront burst to the balance druid tool kit. Reverting the change to provide cooldown reduction with pvp in mind seems like it could have been handled by making it a separate pvp talent. Thereby making both pve and pvp players happy.
Is there a chance that we will see any type of survivability buffs for ferals? I think the main complaint currently in both PvP and PvE is that feral no longer feels as a hybrid and can’t heal even if they use every Predatory Swiftness proc to heal.
Love the changes to Balance mastery, it will really help with adds that die quickly or times where we can’t just easily Sunfire / Moonfire whole packs. Also in PvP this will be for sure a welcome change to help with dispells reducing our DMG by 40-50% on our Astral DMG.
4 Likes
Nah, i dont think making it a pvp talent helps Balance druid in pvp at all, unless some of the pvp talents become baseline, like for example Moonkin Aura.
I dont know who comes up with the balance druid ideas from blizzard, but clearly has 0 idea about the class and the game itself. Nobody cares about the 2 pvp player, stop destroying the class. Give us ST dmg, RELEVANT ST dmg, not 2% and 20% RNG goldring sh*t. And this Orbital Strike change was at least a little bit of a fun for m+, but now its gone, back to boring 2 button bottom class for every content, EXCEPT for PVP, YEEEEEE!!!
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You also should redesigne Innervate. the current Innervate is close to be useless, i dont know, why u guys dont change Innervate back, to the form. like it was in Wotlk
Which identity?
we had back in Bfa/Shadowlands more Spells than now, u made a Pathing choice between incapacitating roar and Mighty Bash, while in Shadowlands we had Both
This makes using Clone in pvp situations really difficult, and also kinda outdated, i still dont know why a boomkin can cast Clone in the Owlform, and a resto druid dont need anyway to be in a Form, so Feral Druid is the only Spec who leaves the form, when he cast Clone, or Battle Rezz, and this Feels completely Clunky, and out to date in Dragonflight
Either Feral’s survival ability should be increased, or Feral should be able to cast clone in cat form
or give him another Pvp Talent which allows him to Instant Clone your opponent and consume Predatory Swiftness for it (but give Clone a Cd instead, or lower the duration)
something have to be changed, if it comes to the “toolkit” from feral, u currently use the Predatory Swiftness only to Root your opponent, because Regrowth is a global waste
6 Likes
So if you are reverting orbital strike back to how it is currently on live servers that means we dont get the proc one i guess, i hope i am worng.
From a pvp stand, i dont udnerstand why Wild Mushrooms was so nerfed after it was combined with Fungal Growth, in pvp you would always pick Orbital strike, it provides a lot more than the mushrooms could ever do, Sundered Firmament’s Fury of Elune proc is doing less damage than my auto attack with mele, and when it procs it generates 2 Astral power over 8 seconds, i dont know if you realise how bad that is of a talent.
There was a time season in the early beginings where the so called Starfall Build was soo much fun in arena, i would put dots on everyone and spam starfall that procs starsurge and that procs incarn and starfall calling down starburts, it was the most fun i have ever had on a balance druid in pvp ever since Mists of Pandaria, and Starfall got soo guttet in pvp that it is completely unplayable, also the astral power regeneration got nerfed too. I look forward to see a lot more buffs with starfall to make it good in pvp again, its kind of a shame that the most notable spell for balance druid being Starfall ever since Wrath, has just become a meme now in pvp, i know you can do pvp only changes, so nothing is stopping you.
Why did you think they made the change to revert it back, because of pvpers? those 2 ppl you recall?
The problem wasnt that pvpers wanted Orbital Strike on incarn, it was that they wanted shorter incarn in pvp cuz 2 minutes felt really good.
You dont seem to have an idea of what you are talking about, clearly.
OH btw, i am the third pvp player so now we are 3 not 2, dont forget to update your notes.
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It’s an unnecessary annoyance, just make ress castable in cat form already. Why not include it in Predatory Swiftness at least? Can you do something in good faith for guardian as well? Shifting into bear form sets rage at 25 and rebirth costs 30 rage.
Worse rogue, worse warlock, the worst type of healing with convoluted form management (absorbs>instant>overtime) and after the latest round of Bloody Frenzy nerfs, a much worse warrior.
The concept of multi-form gameplay is a failed one. Cat weaving in Resto COULD work in a less bursty environment but it isn’t tuned very well for the amount of effort and attention needed. I don’t even know why a Guardian druid who is offtanking would ever switch out of the main form when he does inferior damage in all alternative forms? Some classes even outperform our DPS-role healing through their own leech effects.
What flavor, what identity? It’s a bunch of half-baked concepts stitched up together, sort of like giving Survival Hunters an Arcane Shot just because.
2 Likes
Nice changes to Balance. What would be very nice now is some help on survivability for both feral and balance.
Regrowth is currently so weak its not worth casting…out of combat its faster to eat/drink for healing, its that bad.
Protector of the Pack is also so weak that it actually dont make any difference on Regrowth either.
If druids are supposed to be a hybrid class that casts heals than the heals should be worth casting…we (the dps specs) are currently outhealed by warriors and mages ^^
Rejuventation 3-4k per tick with 600k health a underwhelming considering it costs a talent point. It seems like the healsin class tree havent been adjusted for the specs that dont have a mastery that affects healing.
4 Likes
Upon review, the only ability not currently affected by Balance’s Mastery, Astral Invocation, is their PvP talent Star Burst. There are no changes to Orbital Strike’s or Power of Goldrin’s tuning in the next 10.2 PTR build. Apologies for the error.
2 Likes
Even Warriors Outheal us in Pvp, and the Funfact is, Ignore Pain has no global cd, but Regrowth cost a Swiftness Proc + a global cd, and Heals for Nothing
and before i forget, the Normal Druid Tree needs a Rework, the Pathing is so so bad aswell, for every druid Spec
6 Likes
Yes even with 50% versa (in pvp) on guardian the regrowth from Dream of Cenarius + max protector of the pack + 20% from Verdant Heart +6% from Nurturing Instincts heals for like 20% of my health.
Maybe something getting lost in mechanics somewhere
3 Likes
What about the tier set that is coming in 10.2, 2 piece tier set bonus feels not really impactful at all, but its cool that u get to cast wrath or starfire fast as that makes you go into eclipse faster, however, the damage of these two spells is still pretty low, maybe the new mastery will change that and make them not wet noodles.
The 4 piece tier set looks nice, however it might feel bad losing all this dot damage and recource generation from the season 2 tier set.
I am going to say it again, can we please buff starfall in pvp, i want it to be good and viable to have a big aoe damage in pvp, like the start of the season 2.
It is sad to not even spec for starfall because of how bad it is.
I get it that probably the mastery rework is going to buff it, as of course, that buffs everything in terms of damage because you do not rely that much on dots anymore, you now probably will min max with dots, at least in pvp because every one keeps dispeling it.
Also on a defensive note, can we do something about it, because boomies are very not as tanky as they were in shadowlands and against most classes you cannot really do anything, they pin you down and they micro cc your wild charge 9/10 times because Wild Charge is very underwhelming when you have warriors and dks and monks and dhs with infinite ways to catch you, in some games you would have to not play the game but sit in travel form and run around the pillar to kite them, because if they connect to you, you die.
Can we trade Wild Charge for Displacer Beast?
Or at least can we have some form or roots, look at resto druid, you made Force of Nature really insane for them, why cant we make force of nature be as cool as the ones on Resto druid, i am referring to MoP Force of Nature for feral and balance druid.
And also can we move away from sitting in bear form, to not die, i rather have mobility and outplay enemy team with it and a little self healing, than to sit bearform and hope that the healer can keep me up. Bear form simulator is not fun, not a single balance druid likes it.
I can’t wait to see what will happen with the 5-target cap to Blood Frenzy once players start doing dungeons. Sure, druids are slightly stronger than other classes right now (key 32 compared to around 30 for every other tank), but no one accounted how integral this one talent is to overall Rage generation in multi-target situations (read more than one pack pulled in a dungeon, an approach which won’t be changed in this modern version of the game where no CC is needed and you just facetank and kite).
If the devs want the game to slow down, buff individual mob damage, force use of CC and introduce a hard aoe cap for every dps specialization. Maybe even introduce a properly telegraphed mechanic here and there so doing dungeons doesn’t feel like playing rifts in Diablo 3 where everything is a DPS race with no chance of dying, until you suddenly get one shot by something you couldn’t see, let alone react to in time.
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