WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS TALENT SPOILERS.
I respect your right to not look – so don’t read if you don’t want to know!

Also, a standard and very obvious disclaimer: These are VERY preliminary, grabbed by mmo-champion. They could be inaccurate, full of errors, incomplete, etc. Or Blizzard could change them at a moment’s notice. I’m simply going to summarise what the changes appear to be right now. They are obviously subject to massive change, so don’t take any of these as final. Nor should you take too much notice of numbers, as Blizzard often uses placeholders.

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UNCONFIRMED TALENT CHANGES


Link to the new talent tree:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid#18v87ThC4QRLU,,11927

Here’s my summary of what’s gone, what’s new, and what’s been changed. There are some weird changes in there – remember, take them with a grain of salt for now. Also – some talents seem to have different first ranks to their subsequent ranks. I don’t really understand why – it could be an oversight, something to do with masteries, or just a mistake. I suspect it applies to all ranks, but is displaying incorrectly. If you can shed some light, please let me know. Edit: As Alamein commented, it’s quite possibly the old talent text sticking around in some (but not all) of the amended talents. It certainly seems that way. I’ll make that leap and edit it for now – but if something changes, I’ll fix it up.

First up, because it’s probably what most people were waiting for:
ToL is on a 5 minute cooldown, and lasts 45 seconds (part of Imp ToL reduces this cooldown by 30/60/90 seconds).


NEW talents

  • Blessing of the Grove (2) – Increases healing done by Rejuvenation by 2/4%, the direct damage of your Moonfire by 3/6%, and the damage done by your Claw and Mangle by 2/4%.
  • Perseverance (5) – Reduces all spell damage taken by 2/4/6/8/10%.
  • Efflorescence (3) – Requires 3 points in Living Seed. When you critically heal with your Regrowth spell you also sprout a bed of healing flora underneath the target, healing all nearby friendly targets within 15 yards who stand on them for 10/2/30% of the amount healed by your Regrowth every 1 sec for 7 sec.
  • Fury of Stormrage (3) – You have a 2/4/6% chance when you cast Nourish to cause your next Wrath spell to be instant cast and cost no mana, and when you Moonfire a target that is at or under 25% health you have a 0% (assume this should be 20%)/40/60% chance to cause your next Starfire to be instant cast. Lasts for 8 sec.

Perseverance looks PvPish, unless you might take it for encounters with lots of magic damage splashing around. I haven’t actually played with the tree to see how many floater points we have left over – but I’d probably at least take 2/5 points here instead of Subtlety.

I like Efflorescence – it may help fill the hole left by not being able to “spam” WG on melee. Could also be handy for fights where the raid stacks. Group hugs!

Fury of Stormrage is a DPS talent, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see how many points we have leftover. I don’t mind doing a bit of DPS on trash or in small groups etc, so if there’s room.. sure, why not. Not in a pure healing build, though. But again – hard to know what’s going to be expected of us and our specs.


Talents DELETED

  • Improved Mark of the Wild
  • Intensity
  • Gift of Nature
  • Living Spirit



Talents UNCHANGED

  • Nature’s Focus
  • Furor
  • Subtlety
  • Natural Shapeshifter
  • Master Shapeshifter
  • Omen of Clarity
  • Tranquil Spirit
  • Improved Rejuvenation (tooltip updated to include Swiftmend)
  • Nature’s Swiftness
  • Living Seed
  • Empowered Rejuvenation (tooltip updated to include Swiftmend)
  • Moonglow
  • Nature’s Majesty
  • Nature’s Grace



CHANGED Talents

  • Naturalist – effect unchanged, but now required if you want to take Nature’s Swiftness (replaces Intensity in the tree).
  • Improved Tranquility – threat reduction effects unchanged. Grants 25% damage reduction while casting Tranquility, rather than a cooldown reduction. I assume rank 2 is 50% damage reduction.
  • Nature’s Bounty – Increases the crit chance of Regrowth by 10% on targets at or below 25% health, and you have a 20% chance when you critically heal with HT and Nourish to reduce Swiftmend’s cooldown by 0.5sec (**Rank 1 info only – don’t have 2-5 info yet). This talent is now required if you want Swiftmend.
  • Swiftmend – effect unchanged, but mana cost 12%, down from 16%.
  • Empowered Touch – Your HT heals for 5% more on targets at or below 25% health, and your Nourish sell has a 50% chance to refresh the duration of your Lifebloom on targets. (**Rank 1 info only – don’t have 2 info yet)
  • Natural Perfection – no longer gives crit, just reduces damage.
  • Revitalize – When your Regrowth or Lifebloom heal over time periodic critically hit, you instantly regenerate 1/2/3% of your base mana. Seems to imply that it will no longer return power to your allies, just mana to yourself.
  • Tree of Life – Increases healing done by HoTs by 15%, increases armor by 200%, but reduces movement speed by 30%. In addition, some of your spells are temporarily enhanced while shapeshifted. Lasts 45 seconds. 5 minute cooldown.
  • Improved Tree of Life – Reduces the cooldown of your ToL by 30/60/90 sec, and increases damage done while in ToL form by 5/10/15%.
  • Wild Growth – 37% of base mana, up from 23%. Heals for 686 over 7 sec, down from 1442. 10 second cooldown, up from 6. So – weaker, more expensive, and slightly longer cooldown.
  • Improved Barkskin – No longer has the ability to reduce the chance that Barkskin is dispelled.
  • Gift of the Earthmother – Increases the healing done by your Tranquility on targets at or below 25% health by 4%, increases the healing done by the bloom effect of your Lifebloom by 2%, and your Rejuvenation spell also instantly heals for 3% of the total periodic effect. (**Rank 1 info only – don’t have 2-5 info yet)
  • Genesis – now affects Swiftmend.
  • Celestial Focus – no longer provides haste (just reduces pushback while casting Starfire, Hibernate and Hurricane).
  • Nature’s Splendor – When you cast Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth or Lifebloom you have a 33/66/100% chance to increase its duration by 3sec. (Partial points in this would be awful for HoT rotations, so it’s probably an all-or-nothing talent)



My thoughts

Interesting stuff. Being “forced” to take Naturalist hints at what has been implied – HT will be a more popular spell. There’s also a few mini buffs to Lifebloom, hinting at it becoming more popular, perhaps. And of course some to Regrowth, plus the addition of Efflorescence – so I’m sure that will be used more, too. That’s good, I like Regrowth. I enjoy using a range of different spells – and I hope Blizzard does stick to what they’ve said about moving us away from blanketing (but still having HoTs as our strength).

I’m not disappointed by the WG cooldown change – 10 seconds is fine by me. Nor the cost – I don’t mind if it’s a bit more expensive. But I *am* disappointed that it’s now less than half the strength (if those numbers are correct).

I’m also disappointed that Revitalize no longer seems to give power back to party/raid members. I loved bringing a unique ability – particularly for the melee. But this is probably something else to discourage us away from Rejuv blanketing.

The cooldown on ToL doesn’t seem too bad, especially when it’s cut by 1.5 mins with Imp ToL. But where are the juicy details of the spell changes? WANT.

ToL’s “snare” is back – I’m concerned. If we use ToL as our “OCRAP” button for boosted healing, that could coincide with times during a fight where you (and the rest of the raid) are trying to get out of bad stuff. Imagine popping it on Sindy then being pulled in – you’d have to pop out again (wasting the cooldown) in order to run out to survive. Hello Archimonde. I’m not sure whether this is going to stick – I hope not. I don’t think a snare is a good trade off for buffed heals for 45 seconds. But we’ll have to wait and see the effects of ToL before we can make the call that being caught in or out of it will be good or bad.

Imp ToL also boosts damage while in ToL. Hmm. I can only assume that some of ToL’s weird spell effects will include damage spells (say, instant Wraths for a really random example). Otherwise – why on earth would you pop a healing cooldown and then waste it by standing there, nuking? That’s all I can think of – that it will also do weird and wonderful things to our DPS abilities to become a healing AND/OR dps cooldown. Maybe?


It’s hard to know how things will effect us – without knowing more on the mechanics, health pools, encounter damage etc. But it’s interesting to get a first taste of the changes.

I’ll report more details as they crop up (and I’ll comment more once I’ve digested the info a little better) – but once again, unless it’s posted by Blizzard as final, you should take all information as incomplete and NOT finalised.

I know that some bloggers are taking the high road and choosing not to report on any leaked/ unconfirmed information – personally I think that many people want the info, even if it’s full of alpha/beta holes, so I don’t mind filing for moral bankruptcy and putting it up (E&OE). Of course, it will always be behind BIG warnings, and no titles will include specific spoilers. I do respect people’s right to not know.

Regardless, it’s important to remember that all information is unconfirmed and not finalised unless stated otherwise.



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