Courtesy of mmo-champion, here are the latest changes to the druid talent trees. I imagine they are long from being finished yet, so as always, take with a grain of salt and don’t assume they will look exactly like this at release.

The talent calculator is here.

Balance
* Starsurge is now a baseline spell.
* Owlkin Frenzy is now a Tier 4 talent. Down from Tier 5.
* Lunar Guidance is now a Tier 3 talent. Down from Tier 4.
* Planetary Alignment is gone.
* Balance of Power is now a Tier 2 talent. Down from Tier 3.
* Lunar Justice is gone.
* Moonkin Form is now a Tier 3 talent.
* Typhoon is now a Tier 3 talent.
* Earth and Moon – Your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 100% chance to apply the Earth and Moon effect, which increases spell damage taken by 2/5% for 12 sec. Also increases your spell damage by 2/4%.
* Nature’s Majesty – Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish and Healing Touch spells by 2/4%.

Feral

* Primal Fury has an additional effect – your critical strikes from Cat Form abilities that add combo points have a 50/100% chance to add an additional combo point.
* Ferocity is gone.
* Heart of the Wild is back as a Tier 1 talent.

Restoration

* Wild Growth is now a Tier 5 talent. Down from Tier 6.
* Swiftmend is now a primary skill.
* Empowered Touch is now a Tier 4 talent. Down from Tier 5.
* Natural Perfection is now a Tier 6 talent. Up from Tier 5.
* Fury of Stormrage is now a Tier 5 talent. Up from Tier 4.
* Master Shapeshifter – Grants an effect which lasts while the Druid is within the respective shapeshift form. Bear Form – Increases physical damage by 2%. Cat Form – Increases critical strike chance by 2%. Moonkin Form – Increases spell damage by 2%. Tree of Life/Caster Form – Increases healing by 2%. /



My notes:

Moonkin is back in the balance tree, so I thought that would make Starsurge the level 10 talent (they were deciding between Moonkin and Starsurge, earlier), but it’s listed here as baseline. I think this might be a misunderstanding of the word baseline (when I read baseline, I think that it’s available for all druids – but I think here it means baseline for Balance, at 10).

Nice to see the first tiers fixed up a bit, but I’m not happy having to dump 3 points into Natural Shapeshifter, an ability that I will use so rarely – that’s pretty crappy. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it stays like that. It’s required to get down to Master Shapeshifter, so we have to take it for a healing boost, but I don’t like investing 3 talents into something that is near worthless (even more than before).

Welcome back Gift of the Earthmother, glad you made the cut. Still mourning Imp Barkskin, come back to us!

Nom Nom Nom no longer has a “NNF” tag – is the name going to stick?

Hmm, no more Naturalist, did it get the bump? Will HT’s cast time be changed at all?

So far, fairly underwhelming, there still really aren’t many “choices” to make, unless you take a couple of points out of healing talents to put into Fury of Stormrage etc. I’m hoping that the trees are still really, really preliminary. I won’t be worrying too much until we see more information.



Armor specialisation bonuses

The new armor specialisation bonuses:

* Cloth Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Cloth.
* Leather Specialization – Increases Agi by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Wild Leather Specialization – Increases Stam in Bear Form by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Wild Leather Specialization – Increases Agi in Cat Form by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Mail Specialization – Increases Agi by 5% while wearing only Mail.
* Tribal Mail Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Mail.
* Plate Specialization – Increases Str by 5% while wearing only Plate.
* Defender’s Plate Specialization – Increases Stam by 5% while wearing only Plate.
* Blessed Plate Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Plate.
* Astral Leather Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Elemental Mail Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Mail.
* Furious Plate Specialization – Increases Str by 5% while wearing only Plate.

I assume the bolded line above is for us. So, wear only leather armor (cloak excluded, of course) and you’ll get a free 5% intellect. Put on some cloth boots that might normally be BIS, and you’ll lose that freebie 5% intellect. This is to encourage people to gravitate towards their class-appropriate armor, but not lock you out of upgrades entirely.

So if a cloth item drops and it’s a big upgrade, you can still use it, but you’ll need to weigh up the loss of mana/regen/crit etc. Edit: forgot that in Cataclysm, Intellect also grants Spellpower, so unless it’s a *very* big upgrade, 5% int will probably win out, meaning you’ll usually be hurting yourself taking cloth.

Personally I don’t know why they don’t just give us each one type of armor, lock us out of the other types, and fix the available loot so that we don’t covet another class’ gear all the time. I’d *like* to only wear leather, and I don’t think we need incentive programs or punishments for deviating – get rid of the problem at its root and restrict us to one type each. Then there won’t be any crying over pallies taking cloth, or everything being hunter armor, or whether it’s fair for balance druids to compete for BIS cloth pieces. Restrict us to one class, but make sure there are fair amounts of drops (with desirable stats) for everyone.

My two cents!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Blizz dev chat on Twitter – druid question roundup
• Cataclysm: the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees
• Slayer of Dragons

Another Blizzard dev chat on Twitter today – here are the druid-related questions and answers. Full questions are here.



Q. Will druids finally get shapeshifting on a separate global cooldown like hunter aspects & warrior stances?
A. We have no plans to remove shapeshifting from the global cooldown. Shapeshifting can be used to escape Root and Polymorph mechanics, and so cannot have no global cooldown.

Q: Any plan to make “Crit Immunity” passive from choosing a tank tree instead of spending talents on it?
A. No, and you can blame the druids. We want a tanking specialization in Bear Form to feel different from a DPS specialization in Cat Form, otherwise it doesn’t feel fair to other classes when the Feral druid can do everything with the same talent specialization. We try to put crit immunity in talents you would normally take.

Q. Is Moonfire designed to be a damage-over-time spell with an instant cast nuke, or the other way around?
A. Both. We want the instant nuke to be more meaningful in Cataclysm, especially on the move.

Q. Can we expect more fun talents and maybe even shiny new abilities in further iterations of the new talent trees?
A. Yes, the current beta trees are still very much works in progress. As paladins in particular will see shortly, that ongoing work certainly can include fun talents and shiny new abilities.
Note: I put this in because I’m fairly certain it applies to us as well. Hopefully we’ll get shinies.

Q: What is the conversion rate for intellect to spell power for Cataclysm? Will it differ with each class?
A. Each point of intellect grants one point of spell power, excepting the first 10 points. This is vaguely similar to attack power, where each point of strength or agility gives two attack power, excepting the first 10 points. We realize this slightly reduces the spell power per budget on items, so we also increased the amount of spell power granted by caster weapons, and that increase entirely makes up for the deficit. Those weapons will continue to have spell power as well as intellect, and the amount of spell power will be significantly larger than in 3.3.5.

Q. Last time I checked the Feral druid tree, there were only 5 points in the first tier which means NO choices. Is that getting fixed?
A. Still working on early Feral.

Q: Cat and Bear builds are only off by about 3 talent points. Why not just consolidate fully at that point?
A. This is definitely one of our concerns. We don’t want a player to be able to have an optimal DPS specialization in Cat Form and be able to tank. We will definitely engineer the Feral tree such that being a viable tank, or even off-tank, will have some cost in terms of lost DPS while in Cat Form. The druid talent trees currently in beta are very rough and need more polish.

Q. What’s the deal with Typhoon? Is it going back into talents or will it be a standard druid spell?
A. Typhoon is now back in the tree. Sorry about that. : )

Q: Any word on that cosmetic Tree of Life Form glyph? Some players are sad to lose Tree of Life Form completely.
A. The only new glyph we are ready to announce right now is the Glyph of Divine Shield, which reduces the cast time of your Hearthstone whenever Divine Shield is active. ; )
Sigh, making light of something that concerns a lot of people, and that we’ve waited months to hear news about… poor form. Why not just say “not at this time”?

Q: Moonkin: What are your plans for Eclipse, and why does it infect so many of our talents? What are your plans to make Moonkin fun?
A. The model we are trying now lets Solar and Lunar Eclipse procs last for about 45 seconds, and each spell of the appropriate type that you cast moves the bar back closer to the middle again. The buff is canceled by reaching the middle. This should let Moonkin “hold” the buff for short periods of time when they need to move or get out of the fire.

Q. Why was the Feral druid’s mana reduction cost removed from King of the Jungle? And what happened to two combo points on critical strikes?
A. These are data errors that will be corrected. Neither is intended to be cut.

Q. Skull Bash has a 1-minute cooldown. Is it supposed to be that way, or can we expect it to be lowered to the likes of Shield Bash?
A. The base cooldown is 60 seconds to keep the ability from being used by Balance and Restoration druids to layer too much crowd control. A Feral tree talent reduces the cooldown to 10 seconds, putting it in line with Kick and other similar interrupt abilities.

Q. Druids were always a “jack of all trades, but master of none” and usually mocked when specializing. Will new talents change this?
A. In my own raids, I find druids of all 3 specializations that excel at their chosen specialization. So, I don’t understand your question.

Q. Druids now get Swiftmend at level 10 for being Restoration, but it is a talent in the tree. What is the plan there?
A. This was a data error and has been corrected.



These are just for fun.

Q: Are there any plans to add Ghostcrawler in-game as a critter or elite crab?
A. Ghostcrawler would be very emo were he to gaze down from his Throne of Lies and behold the mass crustacean slaughter that would result in having more manifestations of his persona in the game.

Q: What size shoes does Ghostcrawler wear?
A. I generally go barefoot on the yacht. Around on the office, I am often carried on gnome palanquin, so shoes are not required.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cataclysm talent update, armor specialisation
• Wanted: more Resto Druid blogs
• Cataclysm: the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees

Today’s new beta build brings us the first glimpse at the ripped-apart-and-rebuilt talent trees, courtesy of mmo-champion.

A summary of the changes to talent trees in Cataclysm:

1. Each tree/spec has been reduced to 31 point length. There are more than 31 points in each tree, but the last talent is the “31 point talent”, the one that requires you to spend 30 talents in the tree.
2. Players will now get a total of 41 talent points to spend.
3. When you hit level 10, you will be asked to choose a spec. This will unlock a unique spell/ability and some passive bonuses, and will also lock you out of the other two trees, until level 70. After level 70 you can put points into the other trees.

Blizzard have mentioned that this is a “first pass” for all of the trees, and some clases, including druids, are not as far along in development – so expect changes. The work-in-progress talent tree is here if you want to play around. In the meantime though, here’s a quick idea of how things like for now:


What cool stuff do we get at level 10?

Balance: Starsurge + pushback reduction on balance spells
Feral: Mangle + ? + Vengeance (damage taken in bear converts to AP)
Resto: Swiftmend + pushback reduction on healing spells + Meditation


What’s our 31 point talent?

Balance: Starfall
Feral: Berserk
Resto: Tree of Life (duh!)


What’s changed, or new?

There’s nothing *new* in the tree (since the official preview) – the new talents are the same that they had already announced. So no new toys.

However, they’ve removed the “+X% spellpower” type filler talents, meaning that our trees are now all “meat” and no cheap fillers.

Nature’s Focus (pushback protection) is stitched in. Subtlety is gone. Good riddance, you point-leeches.

I believe we will be getting a talent point every second level or something like that – so at first glance, it seems like we’re getting all our talents super early – but I think they’ll be stretched out. Even so, great talents like Imp Rejuv, Living Seed, Nature’s Bounty – they’ve all been moved further up, which is nice. Strangely, Empowered Touch is quite far down – I would have thought we’d be given that earlier, for dungeon-ing.

The really nice toys are at the bottom – Efflorescence, Swiftmend, Emp Touch, Emp Rejuv, Wild Growth, and of course, Tree of Life.

In the balance tree, I’m sad to realise that Solar Beam is now out of reach for standard X-0-31 builds. Bum. I kinda liked that idea. Looks like Genesis and Moonglow are it.. still not sure what’s happening with Nature’s Grace. With only 10 points to spend, we can’t get any further down into the balance goodies.



Notable omissions/scratched talents

- Imp Tranquility
- Imp Barkskin
- Subtlety
- Naturalist (will the cast time of HT be reduced?)
- Omen of Clarity (to be trained)
- Improved Tree of Life (will the cooldown be reduced?)
- Master Shapeshifter (why bother with Natural Shapeshifter at all?)
- Gift of the Earthmother (boo, I was looking forward to the T8-style heal)
- Nature’s Splendor (from the balance tree) – will our HoTs be short now?



AMG IT’S BROKEN

Don’t stress, the trees aren’t broken, they’re just REALLY preliminary. Look at the resto tree – Master Shapeshifter is gone (since it was a flat buff to output), leaving only Natural Shapeshifter – but what do we trees care about saving a few hundred mana every 5 minutes? That means we have to waste 3 points to get to the next tier.

Bears, too, are forced to waste points in cat talents just to progress.

The balance and resto trees are both showing their Level 10 freebies as talents, so I’m not sure what the story is there. Update: Blizz have said they’re considering giving balance druids Moonkin at 10; Swiftmend is probably just a mistake, since the trees are so early in development.

I think what we have here is all of the talents that Blizzard wanted to keep, but thrown together in a hurry to release. I wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed it out ASAP in order to distract people away from the Real ID drama. So what we have is a super preliminary glance at what the trees MIGHT look like – but until they reshuffle, it’s hard to know what our specs will turn out to be. The scrapped talents might come back, the talents may be shuffled around, etc. We really know very little, so far.

My concern at the moment isn’t really the talents, but what is happening with TOL. So far, it’s a pretty mediocre ability – 45s on a 5min cooldown, to get a 15% buff, throw instant Regrowths (okay), double Lifeblooms (but we can only have them on a single person at a time, so that’s pretty crappy), 2 more WG targets, and we’re not sure about the rest. I’m not really sold at this point, because it’s basically a 15% healing buff with some weak bonuses sewn in. I want to know, at the very least, if they are going to let us shift in and out (to get to safety) without losing the rest of the buff.

I guess the only thing about the talents that worry me (at this early stage) is the fact that it looks like you can max out your tree easily, and there’s really no room for individuality or thoughtful decisions. I think the 31 point trees look to be moving us towards being even more “cookie cutter”, which is odd, because Blizzard made statements that they wanted our choices to be more meaningful. I wonder if anything will change in that respect.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cataclysm talent update, armor specialisation
• Blizz dev chat on Twitter – druid question roundup
• Slayer of Dragons

*giggle*

Internet Dragons!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cataclysm talent update, armor specialisation
• Blizz dev chat on Twitter – druid question roundup
• Wanted: more Resto Druid blogs

We won; no real names on the forums.

It’s a hollow victory though – because (like many others) I feel that something has changed, now. They hid the knowledge of the Real ID plan from us. When they introduced it in-game, I thought it was a nifty thing. I’d missed my cross-server buddies. I liked using it. But, shortly after that, they announced the forums plan – which, obviously, had been in planning for a long time – so why did they pretend that Real ID in your friends list was the full extent of the plan for now?

I feel deceived.

And because I feel deceived, I’m not sure I can ever really believe them again, nor stop worrying about when the next big announcement will be, and at what cost.

I want to leave this game when either A) real life drags me away (kicking and screaming), OR B) the game actually ends. But for the first time, I saw myself quitting. Real ID on your friends list, and even on the forums – I can handle that. But the question was – where next? In the armory? In trade chat? In mouseover tooltips?

I don’t subscribe to most of the arms-flailing, slippery slope cries – but after this, it’s hard to ignore that we could be heading towards a transformation, chipping away at our privacy (and immersion) bit by bit, until we’re all playing World of FacebookCraft.

And the sad, sad realisation for me was that if they did that, I simply couldn’t continue to support them. I can’t support a company that thinks it is ok to share everyone’s personal information. None of us signed up for that.

RealID can be a COOL feature, a feature that people will LOVE and embrace – but ONLY if you listen to us when we tell you the features that we need included – like the ability to hide from friends-of-friends, to use aliases if we want (after all, once we’ve found our RL buddies, they can add a note to say “this is Keeva”), and ways to appear offline. And NEVER force it on us, or make it opt-out only.

Treat us like you value us. Give us the features we need, and make it opt-IN.

I would hate to leave – I love the game, and I love this blog especially, and I’m not ready to give it up. But yesterday, I was genuinely concerned that the time to quit was somewhere around the corner. Blizzard’s statements don’t do anything to ease my concerns:

Q: Is there a possibility that a future game will require a person to use their real identity?

A: We haven’t announced any plans along these lines.

Sidestepping makes me a little nervous (not that ANY of us are surprised that it’s a “not at this time” response). I don’t think this is over.

I am not normally a cynical person – and excuse the melodrama – but this hit me pretty hard, and I felt pretty depressed over it. I saw my beloved game going downhill, and fast, because the bosses at Activision Blizzard don’t seem to be in touch with their customers. It seems that this time, 50,000+ voices made a difference, and they listened. But that doesn’t for one second convince me that they are actually in touch with us after all.

For now, I’ll keep playing, keep enjoying, keep looking forward to Cataclysm.

But I’m afraid I see this as a stay of execution, not a pardon.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cataclysm talent update, armor specialisation
• Blizz dev chat on Twitter – druid question roundup
• Wanted: more Resto Druid blogs

Make me a moderator. No, really. I mean it.


We don’t need real names to weed out the trolls. We all know that isn’t going to work. Look:

• Trolls still be trollin’.
• This will force valued posters away, which is a sad loss for the community.
• Some have already quit, and that makes me sad.
• If the bosses can’t see the potential for bad stuff happening, they’re idiots.
• We play this game for INTERNET DRAGONS, not to be Bob Smith the Warlock.

But since there are, MANY bloggers expanding on these, so I won’t go into my feelings at length. What I will say is this:

We don’t need real names to restore civility on the forums.

What we NEED is more people to stomp on the pointless/nasty posts that make the forums horrible.

That’s all. It’s that simple.

Trolls be trollin’. Real names won’t sort that out. That’s crazy talk. What we NEED is people to stomp on the troll posts, the rubbish, the spam, the bots, the abuse, the negative.

And I’m more than willing to put on my stomping boots and lend a hand. Here’s a visual aid!

Keeva’s note: I figure when Real ID is in full swing, everyone will
be able to find my embarrassing photos, so I’m getting in first.
TADA! Wellies.

I have written to Blizzard a number of times with forum issues, and asked if there is a way that I could “help” with moderating my realm forums. Either they don’t have enough moderators on the job (to be able to keep an eye on everything), or the current system isn’t working. How does it work, anyway? If I flag a post, does it ping a mod? Do you need 10 flags before it pings a mod? Do you need 10 of a single poster’s offensive posts to be flagged before it pings a mod? I genuinely wanted to know about moderation, how it worked, and if I could help to improve it. I never got an answer.

I don’t even know how to get a mod’s attention on the forums (the biohazard flag doesn’t seem to do anything), so I usually just email Blizzard direct – which is very effective, I must say – but this just highlights the fact that moderation on the forums seems very hit and miss, and that if you want something done, you have to tug on someone’s sleeve and ask for help directly.

Will the new system of downranking mean that mods will be stepping into all low-ranked threads to see if there’s bad stuff going on, without the need to flag posts?

How many forum mods do we have? How often are they watching? Do they watch all the time, or do a sweep once a week? Is there one for each realm, or only a handful, responsible for all of them?

There’s just so much rubbish on the forums, it’s not surprising that it’s hard to keep up with it all.



Let us self-moderate

The solution is simple though. Blizzard – allow us to self-moderate. Take a leaf out of WoW.com’s books – have the terrible posts greyed out by downranking them. You’ve already said you’re going in that direction anyway – we don’t need real names on top of that. Let us help keep our community neat and tidy. Let us grey out all the rubbish. Nice bright blue posts are the valuable ones, and dark grey (almost black and illegible) for the trolls or the pointless posts. It really is that simple.

Reporting posts is fairly time-consuming (and paying enough moderators to clean them all up must be prohibitive, I’m guessing). Downranking posts is EEEEEEEEEEASY. Click, done. Relegated to the junk pile, or raised up as a shining beacon of WoW-wisdom.

Let the community look after the community. Put on a few more “real” moderators, but let us all do the bulk of it.

I’ll clean up this town, one malicious post at a time.

RARRRR! *stomp stomp stomp*

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cataclysm talent update, armor specialisation
• Blizz dev chat on Twitter – druid question roundup
• Wanted: more Resto Druid blogs

This post: +1 internets. Just go. Right now.

http://greyshades.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/an-open-letter-to-blizzard/

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cataclysm talent update, armor specialisation
• Blizz dev chat on Twitter – druid question roundup
• Wanted: more Resto Druid blogs

I don’t normally repost verbatim news from the big sites, but this is pretty big, considering the Cataclysm coverage we’ve all been chatting about for a while now.

Blizzard has decided to scrap the current talent tree design. The original announcement is here, but here are the main points:

• The talent tree goals from Blizzcon 2009 were to remove the mandatory passive talents, and make talent choices more fun.
• After releasing the previews for druids, priests, shaman and rogues, and getting feedback, Blizzard realised that the new trees didn’t fit the design goals.
• In a future beta build, the talent trees will be overhauled dramatically.
• The goal is still to remove the “lame” talents, but Blizzard don’t think it’s possible with the size of the current trees.
• To resolve this, the trees will be reduced down to 31 points.
• This will reduce the number of total talent points and the speed at which they are awarded while levelling.
• Your rotations won’t change and you won’t lose any cool talents. What will change are all of the filler talents you had to pick up to get to the next fun talent, as well as most talents that required 5 of your hard-earned points.

Talent trees as you know them: GONE.

Here’s a summary of how it will work:

When players reach level 10, they are presented with basic information on the three specializations within their class and are asked to choose one. Then they spend their talent point. The other trees darken and are unavailable until 31 points are spent in the chosen tree. The character is awarded an active ability, and one or more passive bonuses unique to the tree they’ve chosen. As they gain levels, they’ll alternate between receiving a talent point and gaining new skills. They’ll have a 31-point tree to work down, with each talent being more integral and exciting than they have been in the past. Once they spend their 31’st point in the final talent (at level 70), the other trees open up and become available to allocate points into from then on. As characters move into the level 78+ areas in Cataclysm, they’ll begin seeing items with a new stat, Mastery. Once they learn the Mastery skill from their class trainer they’ll receive bonuses from the stat based on the tree they’ve specialized in.

My first thoughts were, “AMG, my precious talentz,” but if you read it all and take time to absorb it, it does make sense. This is the part that I particularly liked:

We want to focus the talent trees towards your chosen style of gameplay right away. That first point you spend in a tree should be very meaningful. If you choose Enhancement, we want you to feel like an Enhancement shaman right away, not thirty talent points later.

When talent trees are unlocked at level 10, you will be asked to choose your specialization (e.g. whether you want to be an Arms, Fury or Protection warrior) before spending that first point. Making this choice comes with certain benefits, including whatever passive bonuses you need to be effective in that role, and a signature ability that used to be buried deeper in the talent trees.

Basically, we’ll have access to some of our abilities earlier, rather than having to slog through lots of 3/3, 5/5 type talents to get down to what we want. For example, say it was Swiftmend (just an example). Imagine having Swiftmend as a baby druid. Or Starfall. Or Leader of the Pack. These are all just examples – we’ll have to wait for the trees – but you get the idea.

I’ve been levelling another druid lately (surprised, aren’t you?) and whining my way to 40 about how I need Innervate so badly. In Cataclysm it looks like Innervate will be learned at 28 – that makes me really happy. A tiny change like that will make a huge difference to uptime while questing.

So imagine having some of our “signature abilities” unlocked from level 10. Here are some examples that they gave:

For example, having Lava Lash and Dual-Wield right away lets an Enhancement shaman feel like an Enhancement shaman. Other role-defining examples of abilities players can now get for free at level 10 include Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam, Mutilate, Shadow Step, Thunderstorm, Earth Shield, Water Elemental, and Penance.

There are level 40, 50, 60 talents and abilities in there.. that’s pretty exciting. We could see things like Nature’s Swiftness, Swiftmend, Wild Growth.. or even Tree of Life (which, with its damage buff component, would actually make sense, for levelling). All those times I’ve hit my WG button in lowbie dungeons.. maybe we’ll actually get it early, now.

Level 10 Boomkins, anyone?

I’m really excited to see more of this – levelling in this game is something that I love to do (hence the billion baby druids), and the possibility of having more of our cool abilities up front, as soon as we start doing dungeons and getting into the meat of levelling.. that would be really great.

And, the other thing that I like, is the fact that I never really enjoyed splitting talents between trees, in the early levels. Do I work down to Omen, or do I pick up my feral stuff first? Ugh.. decisions. This way – with linear trees to 70 – I don’t have to worry about that. Of course, the flip side to that is the concern that the linear trees will be too… linear – affording us little individuality and wiggle room for “fun”. For now though, I’m looking forward to seeing the new trees, and how it will affect us at early levels.

Hopefully the beta build won’t be too far away!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cataclysm talent update, armor specialisation
• Blizz dev chat on Twitter – druid question roundup
• Cataclysm: the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees

In case you haven’t been checking out MMO, and you missed it on BBB, here are the troll and worgen forms. While I do love putting pretty pictures in my blog, I’ve linked rather than put in as images, just in case a) you don’t want to spoil it for yourself and/or b) you don’t have your sunglasses handy.

Troll bear
Troll cat
Worgen bear
Worgen cat

MMO has a bunch of different in-game models (I can’t wait for an updated version of model viewer, *drool*), including hostile mobs, critters, humanoids, mounts, and pets etc, if you’re interested. Obviously it’s just the tip of the iceberg, can’t wait to see everything.

As for the druids, I like the cat stripes and mohawks; I don’t really like the tusks. I think they’re too thick, and look a bit odd, particularly on the bear model. I’d rather be able to have smaller, narrower tusks – still blatantly troll-y, but not so massive. Besides, a blue bear with a yellow mohawk – I don’t think anyone is going to be mistaking it for a run of the mill grizzly.

We know Tree of Life is getting a makeover, but not sure about Moonkin – Blizzard have implied they might not get to it by Cataclysm release; but of course that leaves us wondering whether they will just give everyone the existing models, or whether they are working on Troll and Worgen forms. That in turn could mean they update the Elf and Tauren Moonkin model “to be fair”.. or they might not.

I can’t wait to see.

And I can’t wait to see the new Tree – I’m praying they haven’t just reskinned an Ancient, that would be very disappointing.

I had already decided to have a Troll feral druid in Cataclysm; now I am even more excited about him.

Wouldn’t want to PvP as a Troll kitty though…….

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cataclysm talent update, armor specialisation
• Blizz dev chat on Twitter – druid question roundup
• Cataclysm: the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees

Wowhead have released their Cataclysm site – http://cata.wowhead.com/. It’s very shiny! Just don’t mouse over the vortex thing, or you’ll be trapped staring at it for hours…..


I don’t have a beta key (yet, I hope!), so I can’t experiment personally, but I’ve been digging around in Wowhead’s database to see if I can find some more information.

Unfortunately there’s still nothing on the buffed spell effects in the new Tree of Life form, but there are a few interesting tidbits. Here are a few I’ve found. Remember, though, that none of these are final, they could be incomplete or incorrect (and I could also be misinterpreting tooltips, missing something, etc). Remember also that the Wowhead database contains old abilities mixed with new, so sometimes it can be hard to work out what is correct. But – nonetheless – here are a few snippets to tantalise!


Cat form learned at level 10, bear form learned at level 15



The druid abilities section shows that cat form is now learned at level 10, along with Claw (Demo Roar is also in the list, but that is an example of an old ability in the new database).

Bear form is learned at 15, along with Maul and Growl. Dire Bear Form doesn’t seem to exist anymore, but shows up on bear form ability tooltips. Hey, it was never very “dire” anyway, so if it’s gone, no biggie – just means adjusting the numbers at later levels of bear. Beta testers will be able to confirm.. but it’s not exactly ultra-important.

Cat at 10 will mean faster levelling, rather than enduring the 5-year swing timer on Maul. Not that this will be a problem anymore anyway, since Blizzard is doing away with “on next attack” mechanics like Maul and Heroic Strike. So that might make bear-ing a little less painful when all you have is Maul.


Insect Swarm trained at 20

It looks as though Insect Swarm is a trained ability, picked up at 20. This was guessed by a lot of people when IS disappeared from the talent trees.


Remove Corruption

Remove Corruption is trained at 24 – removing 1 magic effect, 1 curse, and $3 poison. Not sure what the $3 will end up being.


Innervate at 28, based on the caster’s max mana pool

Holy moly, Innervate trained 12 levels early!

It’s also going to be based on the caster’s max mana pool, not a percentage of base mana. So it will still give the same amount whether you use it on yourself, a hunter, a mage, or a paladin – but I assume the “max mana pool” allows it to scale according to level and gear, rather than just by your base mana at level X.


Lifebloom: one target only

As predicted by some, Lifebloom appears to be limited to a single target only. I assume this means LB will drop off your first target if you put it on someone else. This nudges it squarely into “main tank healing only” territory; it has never been as effective as a raid healing tool as it was in TBC, but this change will make it even rarer to “toss the odd lifebloom”. I personally don’t use LB much for raid healing, but I know some who do. And obviously this means you can’t slow stack LBs on two targets at a time – another fairly rare practice these days, but still handy.


Efflorescence numbers

Efflorescence, the “stand in my HoTs puddle” spell that you get after critting with a Regrowth, is worded: “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% of the amount healed by your Regrowth every sec for 7 sec.”

I am going to take this to mean that if you crit for 10,000, each person standing on your prize petunias will be healed for 1,000hp/sec for 7 seconds.


Master Shapeshifter DOES buff your caster form

Master Shapeshifter buffs caster form as well as Tree of Life, by 4%. This was a bit unclear to many people because some sites showed the “caster form” wording, and others didn’t.


Swiftmend heals for a static amount

Swiftmend will no longer heal for X seconds of Rejuv or Y seconds of Regrowth. Instead, it will heal for “5229″ (subject to change!), unbuffed/talented, regardless of whether you are consuming a Rejuv or Regrowth. This means that you’ll never have to try to Swiftmend a Rejuv for a larger Swiftmend than a Regrowth Swiftmend.


That’s all for now!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cataclysm talent update, armor specialisation
• Blizz dev chat on Twitter – druid question roundup
• Cataclysm: the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees