Yet another piecemeal beta update, just to pass on some small tweaks.
(Full info over at mmo-champion)


Nerfs

  1. Efflorescence nerfed quite hard (it was reportedly quite OP) – 4yd effect, down from 15yds. At first I thought that 4 yards seemed really tiny – it would rely on people to stand quite close to each other. But if it means a 4 yard radius, and therefore an 8 yard diameter circle around the target, that might not be so bad. Perhaps a tiny bit heavy handed? Maybe an 8 yard radius would be better, so that people don’t have to clump too much. Will have to wait for feedback and possible tweaks.


Buffs

  1. Fury of Stormrage is now Tier 4 (was 5). Also reduces mana cost of your Wrath spell by 50/100%. I assume this means that instead of “your next Wrath is instant cast and free” it means that rank 1 is “instant and 50% mana”, and rank 2 is “instant and free”.

    Edit: my initial thought was “does that mean Resto druids can spec 2/2 and get permanently free Wraths?” Then I edited myself because I thought it couldn’t possibly be right. But Lissanna says that in beta her wraths are now free with FoS. Um..? Lissanna says the proc now increases damage in addition to decreasing cast time. The tooltip now reads:

    Reduces the mana cost of your Wrath spell by 50/100%, and you have a 5/10% chance when you cast Nourish or Healing Touch to cause your next Wrath spell to be instant cast and cast (sic) no mana. Fury of Stormrage lasts 8 sec.

    So – speccing 2/2 seems to make your Wrath completely free; when you *proc* the ability, it’s also faster (or instant), and according to Lissanna, does more damage (although that is not in the tooltip). I’m still guessing some kind of bug/oversight.

  2. Wild Growth mana cost reduced to 27% of base mana, down from 55%. Any improvement on mana cost is nice to have, although I find it hard to say “yay” when we don’t really know what our mana management is going to be like – I actually do want mana to be a bit of a challenge, but it’s hard to judge yet. I expect more tweaks over time.

  3. Gift of the Earthmother moved from Tier 5 to 6. Rejuvenation spell instant portion increased from 3/6% to 5/10%. Nice – that little insta-heal is one of the things that I’m looking forward to. It’s not a big deal, but I like it.

  4. Nature’s Bounty now increases critical strike chance on Regrowth by 20/40/60% (up from 10/20/30%) and now has a 33/66/100% chance to proc (up from 20/40/60%). Ok, so working with the nerf to Efflorescence above, it means you’ll be proccing Ef a lot more – instead of being a chance proc on a chance crit, it will be a guaranteed proc on a chance crit, but that chance is now much higher. But, the area of effect is now only 4 yards around the target, which reduces its effectiveness on fights where people cannot afford to stand close to each other. It will likely be fine for melee, but seems quite situational for ranged healing. Without being able to test for myself, I’m not sure of how this will work out, but I’m leaning towards it being a bit restrictive. Higher rate of proc but smaller area of effect – it feels a bit weak on paper. Again, will have to wait for the number crunchers and the anecdata.

  5. Nature’s Cure (Tier 5) – Empowers your Remove Corruption spell to also remove a magic effect from a friendly target. There you are, we were wondering when you’d make an appearance!


Tweaks/other

  1. Empowered Rejuvenation is now Swift Rejuvenation. Reduces the GCD of your Rejuvenation by 0.25/0.5seconds.

  2. A bunch of balance spells have had their ranges increased (all are now 40yds except FF and roots at 35yds. There’s no more Nature’s Reach in the Balance tree, so these spell changes compensate for that.

  3. Rebirth and Revive are both 40yd range, up from 30. Very handy little change.

  4. Heart of the Wild is now Tier 1 in the restoration tree (swapped with Furor to the feral tree). HotW increases your maximum mana by 5/10/15% (used to be Int). Along with giving you rage/energy for your feral forms, Furor also increases your total intellect by 2/4/6%.

  5. Empowered Touch has been changed from 10/20% extra to HT only to 5/10% to HT *and* Nourish. So, a smaller bonus, but applies to both spells. I think they’re having a bit of a tough time working with HT and Nourish; after all, we haven’t used both spells in tandem before – so expect lots of tweaks before release.

  6. Naturalist moved from Tier 2 to 1, squashed into 2 ranks (was 3). Now reduces cast time of HT and Nourish by 0.25/0.5sec (was 0.15/0.35/0.5).

  7. Natural Shapeshifter also 2 ranks, down from 3.



Nothing terribly exciting – just tweaks, mainly. It’s nice to see our magic cleansing ability finally show up.

I’m following the Efflorescence story very closely – Blizzard have said a bunch of times that although we don’t have any new buttons to press, we do have some cool new stuff – Efflorescence being one of them – and I’ll be very interested to see how it is tweaked and moulded over time. I can’t test it out for myself, but high proc with a 4 yard effect (basically an 8 yard diameter?) seems like they have swung right around and made it a bit too weak and situational, depending on the encounter. 15 yards from the target would mean a 30 yard diameter circle around the target, so yeah, that is a bit much, I’d say. But 4 yards – is that a bit too small? In any fight where you are forced to spread, it will be near useless – I hope it is not so situational.

I’m looking forward to hearing more feedback and seeing it in action. I hope it isn’t relegated to the back of the shelf and only brought out for particular gimmicky fights where people are stacked.

Edit: I missed the change to Thorns: Thorns now lasts 20 sec, down from 10 minutes. Damage increased by 1400% (Deals 447 damage instead of 32). Hmm, ok, so you’re REALLY spiky for 20 seconds, instead of not-very-spiky for 10 minutes. Sounds great for soloing, although annoying, having to recast all the time, but I guess it’s not much different to casting Insect Swarm on each mob – only with Thorns you’re putting the DoT on yourself and waiting for the mob to proc it for you.

Can we assume you’ll be able to cast it regardless of your form? I imagine it would be good as an aggro buff on the pull and until things have stabilised – as a bit of free extra aggro on the tank, courtesy of your friendly resto druid (or perhaps courtesy of yourself, if you can cast in any form). And since Thorns will be buffed in ToL, I’m assuming you can couple Thorns with Barkskin and really mess with rogue in PvP… ?

Interesting, but I’ll admit that I don’t know enough about tank aggro and PvP to be able to say whether this is cool or stupid. The general consensus seems to be that it’s stupid, but that’s not always anything to go by..

Edit 2: Talent trees are up if you want to have a look: Druid talent trees beta build 12803. They’re really starting to shape up well – it feels like you have to make some choices, rather than easily filling up the tree with points to spare. And it’s good to see that the ToL snare is gone.



Possibly Related Posts: