Warning: long rant. Also: talents aren’t final, etc – but I’m ranting anyway.

I’m not usually negative towards Blizzard. I think that on the whole they do a great job, and it’s rare that I get annoyed about anything they do. I enjoy their product, so it’s not in my nature to bash them. Yeah, I’m still disappointed about losing TOL as a form, but I know it’s inevitable so I’m not wasting too much energy getting angry about it. Getting mad doesn’t usually help – it’s not constructive, and screeching at Blizzard doesn’t make them want to listen to you.

However..

I have to award the Cataclysm dev team a big, fat, FAIL stamp for this one. Fail, fail, fail. What on earth are you thinking?

Snares sucked in TBC. Now you want to make it even worse (50%), AND make it so that if we do our druid thing and shift out, we’ll lose the buff? What happened to encouraging us to shapeshift MORE during fights?

It doesn’t transfer well to text, but right now if you could just imagine that I’m blowing a big, wet raspberry at the dev team. PHBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBT. That’s what I think of your crummy, cooldown-robbing snare.


“WotLK isn’t Cataclysm, duh.”

I know. TBC isn’t Cataclysm. WotLK isn’t Cataclysm.

We don’t know what the Cataclysm encounters are going to be like. But I believe we can extrapolate current and historical fights to predict that Cataclysm encounters will still require you to run away from bad stuff(tm) quite a bit. Plant-and-nuke fights are extremely rare, and I don’t think it’s a big stretch to assume that will continue to be the case.

We’ll still have to run away from badness. If that happens just after we’ve popped our TOL, we’ll either be forced to shift out and lose our buff OR stay in TOL and be a weak link in the raiding chain, selfishly waddling through fire so that we don’t drop our cooldown. Which one do you think the raid leader will want us to do?

Yeah, it doesn’t matter how many times people say “wait and see what the fights are like”, I can’t help feeling pretty bitter about that prospect, I’m afraid.


Seeing into the future

Blizzard have said they want us to choose when to use the cooldown, rather than just popping it every time it is available. So, using it at the start of the fight, like a healing Bloodlust, is probably not what they intend. So imagine you have to wait a minute or two minutes or until enrage before using it – choosing wisely the best time for maximum benefit. That’s fine, but it probably means that unless it’s a marathon fight, you’re only going to get to use the cooldown once per fight.

And if you’re unlucky enough to be forced to move, if you shift out, you lose your buff for that fight. Gone.

Now, on fights where you can predict those movement phases, perhaps it won’t be so bad. But remember that you’ll need to be able to see 45 seconds into the future to know you’re “safe” to stand an heal. Cancelling earlier to run away from fire, shift out of poly or snares etc – you’ll shave off the end (or most of) your TOL buff and it will be gone. 45 seconds is an awfully long time to be lucky enough to not have to move.

So how much of the buff are we going to use, realistically? I doubt many fights will allow us the 45 seconds. So are they designing it around us having the buffs for 45 seconds? Or are they assuming that we’ll usually only get an average of Xseconds?

Call me a sad sack, but I can think of a bunch of sucky things that could happen during the cooldown. Mobility is our strength; think for a second what will happen if we pop our glorious cooldown and then the tank moves or gets knocked out of range. We have to waddle at 50% speed to try to get back into range – all the while, NOT healing him. Normally, we could do our druid thing – shift to cat form, Dash to get range, pop out and save the day. We’ll still be able to do that, of course – but in the process, we get to kiss our TOL cooldown goodbye. So once again – do you shift to cat to get in range, or do you waddle forward to try to salvage your cooldown – possibly losing your healing target in the process?

Obviously that is a minor and hopefully rare problem – but it shows another reason why such a restriction would cripple us in emergencies – which is exactly what the cooldown is for.


“We want you to shift more.”

OK, so one of the reasons that static TOL was ditched was because you didn’t like that we started fights in TOL and didn’t shift throughout. You wanted us to “shift more” (despite the fact that ferals and balance druids don’t ever shift if they can help it, but okay..) because that’s what druids are about – shifting. But this new design will have us shifting a grand total of once, MAYBE twice if it’s a long fight – but, once we’re in TOL, instead of being encouraged to shift into our other forms for survivability and utility, we feel pressured to stay in (and possibly risk our safety and the raid’s safety) so that we don’t lose our buff.

And it’s not like another class betting lust and having to lose part of the buff while they run – at least when they stop running, they’ll have the tail end of their buff. When we stop running, we can’t get ours back.

So you want us to make decisions (good) – for the TOL to be something we use very deliberately (good) – but RNG can strip us of that carefully managed buff?

Don’t even get me started on Malleable Goo type abilities – with Australian lag, it can be hard enough to avoid as it is – imagine with a 50% slow. “Sorry, I was in Tree form.” Here’s hoping there are no “think quick”, RNG boss abilities like this – although something tells me that’s a pretty big ask.


Recap: before, we had no real reason to use our shifts during most fights. Blizzard stepped in to encourage us to shift more – because that’s what druids do. Cool. So, in Cataclysm, this means we’ll shift once (maybe twice) per fight – but once you’ve done that, you’ll do everything you can to AVOID shifting (or you pay a price).

What is this, I don’t even..

Gimme your hand again, I want to re-stamp it.

(FAIL FAIL FAIL.)


Make it an aura.

Please change it to an aura, Blizzard. The same way you changed Dash so that if we popped into humanoid form, we’d still have Dash if we popped back into Cat form (during the buff).

Change TOL to be a 45s aura that only buffs us while in TOL form. If we have to drop to cat form to sprint, or bear form to take a hit, or travel form to drop a snare – let us do it – but then when we go back into TOL form 10 seconds later, we can catch the end of our TOL buff, so that it’s not completely wasted.

I don’t mind losing part of my buff in order to run (just as any healer would have to stop healing in order to run away). Giving up part of my cooldown for survivability is the same as anyone in the raid – like popping Bloodlust and then having to run from Swarming Shadows. It’s annoying, but you don’t waste the entire thing. Please make it so that the TOL cooldown is like Dash, so that if we shift out and back again (during the 45 seconds), we can get the buff back for the remaining time. In this way, we lose part of our buff, but we don’t forfeit it. I don’t think this is an unreasonable request.

I can deal with my form being put on a cooldown. Honestly, I don’t mind the snare itself. I can handle that – even a horrible 50% – I’ll deal with it. I don’t mind being forced to choose when a buff will be a help or a hinderance, because we’re about to hit the phase of the fight where there are defiles or fire walls. That’s fine. I quite like having to decide when to use each of my forms – as we all should!

I get that you want TOL to be situational, so that we don’t just pop it every the cooldown is up. And that’s good, because I really don’t want another “On Use” trinket ability that I have to weave into my rotation to maximise my HPS. I want there to be an element of decisionmaking there. I agree that it should have some kind of drawback or risk attached, so that it’s not just being used on every cooldown, like a static healing buff. Making the cooldown shorter will make it into more of a “pop whenever it’s up” deal, meh. I’d rather stick with the heavy decisionmaking process, but not forfeit my buff if I do what I’m designed to do – shift!


In conclusion

With all due respect, devs – the statement, “if you waste it, you waste it” is a great big steaming pile of you-know-what.


Figure 1: A visual aid!
(I love WoW Model Viewer.)



TLDR: Let’s hope the “it may not stick” comment comes true. A 50% snare is hideous; a 50% snare that forces us to drop our deep resto cooldown to survive commonplace RNG is just plain terrible.

Premature screeching? Overreaction? Maybe. No doubt people will say “wait for more details” or “we don’t know what the fights will be like.” That’s fair. I still think it’s harsh, though. But I’m not saying “scrap it” – just reconsider the fact that it makes us forfeit our buff if we do what we’re built to do – shift in and out. Please!

Sincerely (no, really)
Keeva


PS: “The other consideration is that we plan on getting a new model that looks more like an ancient and less like a treant, so moving slower might fit.” – this is a direct quote from GC). Refer Figure 1 – since when does size govern movement speed? My multi-passenger mammoth mount prances like a ballerina when I jump, and I’m fairly certain that gnomes don’t run at 500% speed by default. I don’t think the WoW universe subscribes to the usual laws of physics, aerodynamics and whatnot.



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