Many of you have probably been reading the patch notes (and other information) for a while now regarding the changes to druids.
Some things from the patch that caught my eye:
Symbiosis (Mastery) benefit from mastery increased by approximately 16%.
Coupled with some other changes to our talents, I see they are trying to make mastery a little more than a tank healing talent. I know I have been throwing on pieces that have more mastery on them, and if you look at the Valor Vendor, our gear is rife with it.
Making mastery work well takes some practice for me. I make the mistake of throwing rejuv on targets NOT affected by WG or not throwing WG down before Tranquility is up, etc. This will become easier once the fights have been done more (only a couple bosses are on farm for us, and we have been moving between 25 and 10s during the week).
Rejuvenation is now trained at level 3, down from level 8. In addition, its mana cost is now 20% of base mana.
Sad, but this was needed. You don't want to rejuv spam but at the same time, the change to Nature's Bounty would be moot if the cost was too high.
The instant Rejuvenation heal from Gift of the Earthmother should no longer gain bonus healing from haste too soon, and should now correctly benefit from Symbiosis
Somehow I overlooked this piece of information a few weeks ago. I had dropped to 1 point in GotEM to tweak with things, but if it will work with Mastery then perhaps adding back a point may be worth it.
Glyph of Regrowth now causes the heal-over-time effect to refresh itself on targets at or below 50% health, up from 25%.
This makes me want to take the glyph again. With my current progression, I am still not convinced I would get much use out of it. I mainly heal for 25's, and with our two holy priests, shaman and other resto druid, most folks don't stay at that critical level for very long. Perhaps later on in progression, this may make more sense. For 10s, I could see this getting more use as their are less people to draw from and tighter mana restrictions.
Tree of Life duration has been reduced to 25 seconds, down from 30.
With talents, this will last 31 seconds. There are quite a few people upset by this but I think it will pass.
Omen of Clarity can no longer trigger from helpful spells (aka heals), unless the Restoration talent Malfurion’s Gift is chosen.
If you didn't already have Malfurion's Gift before, this probably affects you a great deal.
Also note:
Mandala of Stirring Patterns now increases Intellect instead of mastery rating.
This sounds great. However, reports on PTR suggest that is is not procing off hots or dots which puts this at a really low priority for me. I know that I saved up tokens to get this but after reading the findings, I will be spending my tokens on stuff for tanking.
The tauren racial trait War Stomp can now be used while shapeshifted.
War Stomp-ing in Bear makes me sqeee! Getting myself to remember I can do that will take getting use to. Hell, some days I forget I can use a pot or healthstone in bear since I haven't actively tanked since early Burning Crusade. At least we will be closer toward Warriors and their shockwave.
What this means for my spec
I thought I had my spec set up nicely so I wouldn't have to worry about changing anything after the patch, but Efflo seems weak even in 25s. GotEM will be stronger, in theory anyway.
This is what I will probably be taking later today. I keep Nature's Cure because I still run a fair number of Heroics for the guild and I don't over gear the content so much that I want to just heal through it all. In addition, if you heal BH without Nature's Cure, you are asking for trouble.
I will drop Efflo. After a couple weeks worth of parses, I find it doesn't seem to be as effective as I wish it could be. And, as most of us know, being linked to Living Seed is just terrible. Even with Nature's Bounty and such, Living Seed still did pitiful healing. For the love of leafy things, unlink the two talents please!
Given that Healing Rain and Sanctuary are already in use for our raids, I find the green circle is not as needed. Our other tree will probably keep it, so it won't disappear from our raids entirely.
Interestingly, I find that it actually hinders me. Knowing that swiftmending will throw down a circle which may or may not be correctly placed means that I hold back quite a bit. Removing that from the equation will probably mean an increased usage of Swiftmend. And, one of our tanks thanked me when I told him I won't have green circles. I do admit that green circles with other nasty green stuff can be confusing for some to interpret (silly tanks).
There's also a ton of changes to ferals (why did you nerf bear threat?) and moonkin which are met with interesting responses on the forums.
Enjoy patch day!
Showing posts with label Druid Forms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Druid Forms. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 8
Thursday, November 18
Alamo is back!
For those who don't know who Alamo is he is a legend. Seriously.
Everything you need to know about Alamo
After some wonderfully funny posts, he dissapeared for a while. This morning, I found him again, just in time for Cattokissem!
ALAMO teech a CATTOKISSEM!
Again, Alamo, you are my hero.
Everything you need to know about Alamo
After some wonderfully funny posts, he dissapeared for a while. This morning, I found him again, just in time for Cattokissem!
ALAMO teech a CATTOKISSEM!
They even maek a new form just for this!!
ALAMO teech abowt the CATTOKISSEM!
HEY GUSY! So ALAMO is just hiburninatin and hafin sum dreem where him is all in sum green thing with floaty bits and elf and stuffs and then him is WAKE UP and heer they got a doragn gonna eat all the world! THIS is sum FANSY STUFF!
A Thing is all carzy now, so maybe alamo gonna rite a thing before hims brekfust, for babee durids and for peeple to understand what a DUIRD DO! So now, while hims all awake and stuffs, ALAMO gonna teech U about this whole stuff!
1) See, Kanye, him dont like a Bush, and Blizzard, they is dont liek a tree! So DURID aint got no more to be a tree. Alamo like a tree, but not when make a leef all over the carpet.
2) They make a new thing, with CAT and KISS! But mostly CAT dont kiss, just jump on a thing and KILL IT ALL DEAD!
4) But Crazed MOON DURID, is ok to make a kiss right on the ECLIPS!
5) But dont only kiss a cat, because u know: CAT IS 4 FITE!
6) So DURID gonna be so storng heer, maybe everbuddy gonna be a durid thees day!
7) We got a bare. Him is not nise bare because him is gonna eat a fase! Bares mostly like the taste of fase!
6) OK now a Bare, him like sum HEVY METAL! BARE GOTTA THRASH. Just liek a thing wares short and high top sneeker and shake long hare reeeely fast! But also, ware sum plug in an ear wen you make this THRASH, becawse it make a thing bleed!
7) Also, all bare make peeple go fast when him RORE!! This is good, because a bare is deseptively fast. A Fast BARE, this is danjerus BARE! Bare don't even allow in OLIMPIC, becawse wonse upon a time, a bare run a rase in OLIMPIC. Maybe he dosen't win, but everduddy win after, becawse a BARE EAT ALL OTHER RASE MEN! Don't rase a hungry bare, is what sumbuddy shuld tell peeple.
8) MOON DURID, O yes wow man! Moon Durid hang out with 70's rock band and now make a MUSH ROOM from a SECRET PLASE! Mushrooms make a thing ECPLOAD! Espeshully a brain, if u listen to a moon durid backwards, u hear some CARZY THING!
9) Everbuddy liek a LOLCAT, make a funny say with a cute picshure! But now, picshure is not so cute, becawse a DURID now haf a TROLLCAT! Troll is make a talk all liek YAH MON. Maybe when trollcat and moondurid make a party together, is nobuddy remember not nothin next day!
10) WOLF MAN can also make a durid. WOLF MAN DURID, O man Alamo dosen't even haf to wear hims hot topic tee shirt no more! Now got all WOLF and CAT and BARE and MUCHROOM and SEEL and stuff all in same plase!
11) MAYBE I MAEK TOO MANY NUMBER!
Again, Alamo, you are my hero.
Saturday, April 10
/Facepalm pt 1
It was unveiled recently the druid changes for Cata and there are certainly mixed reactions within the community.
For the restos, a few things were announced. Some weren't wholly unexpected and some where a little "meh".
Tree Form
Let's just get this one out of the way. A few months ago, Blizz said they regretted having their players not show off their armor designs and hide behind forms. The rational behind making tree form a cooldown instead of a shapeshift was not only designer ego (imo) but also to give restos offensive capabilities like all the other healers. I disagree with this line of thinking. Maybe because of the pvp aspect it is cumbersome, but for a pve player I do not find it all that bad, especially since they made slight changes to the overall mechanic already.
So let's take a look at what is actually stated:
"Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade. We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well). Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time."
Every time this topic comes up, I think back to the Shadow Priest. Now, I don't wish to screw the SPs over; Blizz has been doing (enter sarcasm here) a good enough job fiddling with the class already . What strikes me is the line of reasoning applied to druids is not conversely applied to the SP. Is it not "unfair" to the Shadow Priest to not be able to dps and help heal like an Elemental Shaman? Or is the Moonkin form trumping that altogether?
Regrowth and an interactive mechanic
"Restoration druids will have a new talent called Efflorescence, which causes a bed of healing flora to sprout beneath targets that are critically healed by Regrowth."
Hmm, so they wish to bring back regrowth into a larger prominence? Some of us knew that a forced use of regrowth was happening, but without more information, it is hard to see what exactly this mechanic may do. It is a HoT? Is it an PBAOE thing? Actually, now that I think about it, I think it would be awesome to have a PBAOE mechanic into our hots. Shamans get a Heal Rain spell so having something that is a tight, small radius hot that acts differently than WG would be neat and be great into the Tank Healing or Melee Healing role.
Haste and Crits
"All heal-over-time spells (HoTs) will benefit from crit and haste innately in Cataclysm. Hasted HoTs do not reduce their duration, but instead add additional HoT ticks. Haste will also benefit Energy generation while in cat form."
This, I like a lot. Not much more to say about this except yay for the kitties! I expect though this will not be a huge amount of love for the Cats as Blizzard has a tendency to want to keep Cats in the middle of the pack (pun not intended) as far as dps meters. I expect this haste to be balanced out by something else later.
New Spells?
Nope.
"Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation."
We do have a lot of tools in our tool boxes and am happy there won't be something new to add. However, they do need to keep the class fresh or we will start to get bored. I am curious about the wording used, though.
Tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom reminds me of BC days and rolling. What I think actually makes greater tank healing is the use of managed hots with Nourish.
Spot healing a group with regrowth and nourish. Now I am starting to get a complex and think maybe I am doing things wrong. Spot healing a group for me means a combination of WG along with something else, depending on the type of damage and the situation. It is strange to me that Wild Growth isn't really mentioned at all. Maybe I am reading too much into things.
Top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuv. Again, interesting wording choice here. Rejuv is very powerful right now. Depending on the Glyph and gear etc, Rejuv can be a great blanket for consistent damage or solid fast hot for heated encounters. If I wanted to top off a lightly wounded target, I would use Nourish or WG, not Rejuv because of wasted ticks. Again, I am beginning to think I am doing things all wrong now if this is how they see the roles of our spells.
And lastly, Dispels
"Druids will lose Abolish Poison with the dispel mechanics change, but Restoration druids will gain Dispel Magic (on friendly targets) as a talent. All druids can still remove poisons with Cure Poison and remove curses with Remove Curse"
Of of the things Abolish Poison had going for it was its ability to be sustained. This seems rather vital in a pvp situation as hunters and rogues can apply a variety of poisons in quick sucession.
Cure poison is just one poison "counter" and yet costs the amount of mana as the Abolish version. In addition, it is not a cure over time so for encounters similar to Naxx, you will not be able to cast and leave it which would normally free you to do other things.
So, more spamming, more mana drain. Color me excited... no.
Adding dispel magic is interesting. The dispel changes actually require its own post, so refraining from addition comments for now.
Finally, a message to Blizzard, with many thanks to Keeva
For the restos, a few things were announced. Some weren't wholly unexpected and some where a little "meh".
Tree Form
Let's just get this one out of the way. A few months ago, Blizz said they regretted having their players not show off their armor designs and hide behind forms. The rational behind making tree form a cooldown instead of a shapeshift was not only designer ego (imo) but also to give restos offensive capabilities like all the other healers. I disagree with this line of thinking. Maybe because of the pvp aspect it is cumbersome, but for a pve player I do not find it all that bad, especially since they made slight changes to the overall mechanic already.
So let's take a look at what is actually stated:
"Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade. We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well). Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time."
Every time this topic comes up, I think back to the Shadow Priest. Now, I don't wish to screw the SPs over; Blizz has been doing (enter sarcasm here) a good enough job fiddling with the class already . What strikes me is the line of reasoning applied to druids is not conversely applied to the SP. Is it not "unfair" to the Shadow Priest to not be able to dps and help heal like an Elemental Shaman? Or is the Moonkin form trumping that altogether?
Regrowth and an interactive mechanic
"Restoration druids will have a new talent called Efflorescence, which causes a bed of healing flora to sprout beneath targets that are critically healed by Regrowth."
Hmm, so they wish to bring back regrowth into a larger prominence? Some of us knew that a forced use of regrowth was happening, but without more information, it is hard to see what exactly this mechanic may do. It is a HoT? Is it an PBAOE thing? Actually, now that I think about it, I think it would be awesome to have a PBAOE mechanic into our hots. Shamans get a Heal Rain spell so having something that is a tight, small radius hot that acts differently than WG would be neat and be great into the Tank Healing or Melee Healing role.
Haste and Crits
"All heal-over-time spells (HoTs) will benefit from crit and haste innately in Cataclysm. Hasted HoTs do not reduce their duration, but instead add additional HoT ticks. Haste will also benefit Energy generation while in cat form."
This, I like a lot. Not much more to say about this except yay for the kitties! I expect though this will not be a huge amount of love for the Cats as Blizzard has a tendency to want to keep Cats in the middle of the pack (pun not intended) as far as dps meters. I expect this haste to be balanced out by something else later.
New Spells?
Nope.
"Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation."
We do have a lot of tools in our tool boxes and am happy there won't be something new to add. However, they do need to keep the class fresh or we will start to get bored. I am curious about the wording used, though.
Tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom reminds me of BC days and rolling. What I think actually makes greater tank healing is the use of managed hots with Nourish.
Spot healing a group with regrowth and nourish. Now I am starting to get a complex and think maybe I am doing things wrong. Spot healing a group for me means a combination of WG along with something else, depending on the type of damage and the situation. It is strange to me that Wild Growth isn't really mentioned at all. Maybe I am reading too much into things.
Top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuv. Again, interesting wording choice here. Rejuv is very powerful right now. Depending on the Glyph and gear etc, Rejuv can be a great blanket for consistent damage or solid fast hot for heated encounters. If I wanted to top off a lightly wounded target, I would use Nourish or WG, not Rejuv because of wasted ticks. Again, I am beginning to think I am doing things all wrong now if this is how they see the roles of our spells.
And lastly, Dispels
"Druids will lose Abolish Poison with the dispel mechanics change, but Restoration druids will gain Dispel Magic (on friendly targets) as a talent. All druids can still remove poisons with Cure Poison and remove curses with Remove Curse"
Of of the things Abolish Poison had going for it was its ability to be sustained. This seems rather vital in a pvp situation as hunters and rogues can apply a variety of poisons in quick sucession.
Cure poison is just one poison "counter" and yet costs the amount of mana as the Abolish version. In addition, it is not a cure over time so for encounters similar to Naxx, you will not be able to cast and leave it which would normally free you to do other things.
So, more spamming, more mana drain. Color me excited... no.
Adding dispel magic is interesting. The dispel changes actually require its own post, so refraining from addition comments for now.
Finally, a message to Blizzard, with many thanks to Keeva
Sunday, August 23
Will you stay Tauren/Night Elf?
They are hoping to add race changes along with faction changes in the near future. Which got me thinking... do I want to stay a cow?
The alliance kind of got lucky here and have their new race, the Worgen, able to be druids. This is a yummy blend of all that is shapeshift-y and I think it's cool. On the Horde side of things, Trolls will be able to rock it with the claws, feathers or leaves. (See the chart for more a visual look at the class/race combos)
I believe they said that they were looking into different looks for the new races as they shapeshift into druid forms. It would be a stretch to have a troll druid have horns in Cat form (tusks now on top of the head?) so having a unique look makes sense.
Am I on board with Trolls being druids now? Kind of. I wish it were Orcs, as being tied to the elements seems a smoother transition to being tied with nature. However, Trolls are one of the oldest races in Azeroth (and the least played) and a sense of evolving past their cannibalistic ways seems like a good move.
Will I go troll? I might. If anything, for the booty shake over the Electric Slide.
What about the rest of the Druids? Any thoughts so far about changing? No pun intended...
The alliance kind of got lucky here and have their new race, the Worgen, able to be druids. This is a yummy blend of all that is shapeshift-y and I think it's cool. On the Horde side of things, Trolls will be able to rock it with the claws, feathers or leaves. (See the chart for more a visual look at the class/race combos)
I believe they said that they were looking into different looks for the new races as they shapeshift into druid forms. It would be a stretch to have a troll druid have horns in Cat form (tusks now on top of the head?) so having a unique look makes sense.
Am I on board with Trolls being druids now? Kind of. I wish it were Orcs, as being tied to the elements seems a smoother transition to being tied with nature. However, Trolls are one of the oldest races in Azeroth (and the least played) and a sense of evolving past their cannibalistic ways seems like a good move.
Will I go troll? I might. If anything, for the booty shake over the Electric Slide.
What about the rest of the Druids? Any thoughts so far about changing? No pun intended...
Wednesday, August 5
3.2 is here!
After an awesome weekend on the Aion beta, filled with pizza rolls and coffee, it was time to jump into 3.2 on WoW.
Of course, it was laggy, I crashed a few times, and there were too many people on the JC vendor, but I managed to at least get my Orphan quest done and try for one of the pet raptors in WC. All this while others in my guild tried the new 10 man and 5 man versions of the instance.
New forms
Apparently, everyone was going to be a black bear/cat which disappointed me. Kir has been a black cow since the start of the game and I must admit I was little upset and sad to have to change her.
However, I like the white versions of the forms and I will be sticking with them for a while. MMO Champ has a good graphical layout of what you will look like with each color scheme.
Pets
I grabbed the raptor in Dalaran and finished up my orphan week quests to get my very own Wolvar.
See, I when the expansion first came out, I thought I would get one from doing their dailies, but I guess better late than never :)
He's so cute.
Only took me 20 runs or so to get the new Raptor from WC.
JCing
Now that everyone is off the freaking vendor, I can buy my patterns without too much pain. Our guild is separating out the patterns so some are taking tanking some are taking caster stuff, etc. in order to make sure the love is spread through the guild.
Nothing yet from the new instance, as our server practically died as folks were stuck in death and could not release. Hopefully tonight's run will be smoother.
Of course, it was laggy, I crashed a few times, and there were too many people on the JC vendor, but I managed to at least get my Orphan quest done and try for one of the pet raptors in WC. All this while others in my guild tried the new 10 man and 5 man versions of the instance.
New forms
Apparently, everyone was going to be a black bear/cat which disappointed me. Kir has been a black cow since the start of the game and I must admit I was little upset and sad to have to change her.
However, I like the white versions of the forms and I will be sticking with them for a while. MMO Champ has a good graphical layout of what you will look like with each color scheme.
Pets
I grabbed the raptor in Dalaran and finished up my orphan week quests to get my very own Wolvar.
See, I when the expansion first came out, I thought I would get one from doing their dailies, but I guess better late than never :)
He's so cute.
Only took me 20 runs or so to get the new Raptor from WC.
JCing
Now that everyone is off the freaking vendor, I can buy my patterns without too much pain. Our guild is separating out the patterns so some are taking tanking some are taking caster stuff, etc. in order to make sure the love is spread through the guild.
Nothing yet from the new instance, as our server practically died as folks were stuck in death and could not release. Hopefully tonight's run will be smoother.
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