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

Yesterday, I rolled another new druid, on another fresh server.

Partly it’s because I love starting with absolutely nothing – no BOAs, no bags, no cash, no professions.. and building from the ground up. I discovered that the first few points of fishing can be a goldmine; fish up some tattered cloth and you can vendor them for 1s each (for a penniless newbie, that’s crazy money). I’m weird, I love being broke and working my way up. I sold a stack of copper bars for 7g, (scratch that, just checked my bank alt – I sold my first Arcanite Rod recipe for 35g – chaCHING! Love that easy Moonglade money..) and I’m on my way – gradually buying bigger bags, getting my training. It’s a mini game in itself, for me.

But of course I also did it because I just get such a kick out of levelling druids. Not just playing them, but levelling them.

I know a lot of people can’t stand the levelling process, and wish they could “skip ahead” to max level. Not me – levelling is one of the most fun processes, I think. I get bored at max level; Keeva is starting to gather dust. She only gets time out of her box when it’s time for raids, otherwise I really have little drive to play her. But, a fresh druid? Om nom nom delicious levelling!

10-20, of course, is still a hideous drag; it takes a whole mana bar to kill mobs around your level, which means drinking every pull. OR you can utilise your new bear form; but Maul has a five-year swing timer.. drives me a bit batty. I guess it’s good if you’re feeling peckish and decide to go make a sandwich in the middle of killing your target. Blizzard have hinted that they were considering swapping Cat and Bear around, so that we receive our cat form earlier. This would be great – although you only start with one ability, at least it doesn’t have the swing timer of bear. Of course, if bear was at 20, that would mean no LFD tanking for 15-19 druids – so I guess we’ll see.

Whenever I mention a new druid, people ask me “how many is that, now?” and I tell them the truth – I’ve lost count. They laugh. I’m not being funny, I just don’t count anymore. Anytime I feel like doing something new, I usually pick up a druid. You’d think I would get sick of it over time.. but something just keeps bringing me back to the class, and to levelling more.

I have other classes, of course. I quite like mage – and I’ve been dual-boxing gnome mages a fair bit. They make me smile! Although the dual-boxing just makes me think how funny it would be to 5-box boomkins and have them all starfalling at the same time.. mmm, annoying! Back on topic though – I like my mage, I don’t mind shadow priest, rogue seems fun.. but at the end of a frustrating day, I get the most joy out of picking up a baby druid and levelling some more.




I’m not sure entirely what it is. Familiarity? Comfort? The fact that all my keybinds and Power Auras are already set up? I can do this practically in my sleep. I love to do lowbie dungeons as a druid – because I know the ins and outs of druid healing, I never have to worry if I’m doing the right thing, or if I’m being a bad healer.

I think mostly I chose druid and stuck with it because it suits my short attention span. I love to heal, obviously, but with the same class I can also go out and rip things apart, or shoot them with lasers, or tank. I love using all of my forms while questing – life never seems dull when you have a druid. Well, past 20 it never seems dull.

At end game, I love healing as a druid because it feels like there is pressure on us to multi-task. Keep HoTs up on the tank/s and keep an eye on them, do your normal job through the raid, and keep an eye out for emergencies too. Perhaps it’s maternal instinct or something – but I love that feeling that it’s my job to look after everyone. Of course, I love fights where I have specific assignments, too – because once I get into the swing of it, I can often stretch myself to include other people.

I just love the class, and no matter how many times I pick something else up for a while, I always come back to my druids. When I say “I’ll always be a druid” I know that I mean it. I might play other classes for fun on the side, but I really couldn’t imagine having anything but a druid as my main.


I know most of you out there aren’t serial druid levellers like me – but what keeps you coming back to your druid, instead of swapping to another class?

Possibly Related Posts:

• Slayer of Dragons
• Talent trees in Cataclysm – scrapped and redone
• Cataclysm: druid forms and other models

A preview of our talents is up at MMO – no more speculating on leaks and rumours! Blizzard has sent select fansites this preview information. As always, this information is not final, but should give us a good insight into our talents for Cataclysm.

For the full post, click here.

I won’t repost the whole thing, but here are some Resto-relevant highlights/changes:


Tree of Life (1 point) – Requires 5 points in Empowered Rejuvenation – Shapeshift into the tree of Life, increasing healing done by 15% and increasing your armor by 240%, but reducing your movement speed by 50%. In addition, some of your spells are temporarly enhanced while shapeshifted. Lasts 45 seconds. 5-minute cooldown. Enhanced spells: Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Regrowth, Entangling Roots, Thorns, Wrath

Improved Tree of Life (3 points) – Requires 1 point in Tree of Life – Reduces the cooldown of your Tree of Life by 30/60/90 seconds, and increases your damage done while in Tree of Life by 5/10/15%.

—

Nature’s Bounty [NYI] (5 points) – Requires 3 points in Improved Rejuvenation – Increases the critical effect chance of your Regrowth spell by 10% on targets at or below 25% health, and you have a 20% chance when you critically heal with Healing Touch and Nourish to reduce the remaining cooldown of your Swiftmend spell by 0.5 seconds. Increases the critical effect chance of your Regrowth and Nourish spells by 10/15/20/25%.

Swiftmend (1 point) – Requires 1 point in Nature’s Bounty [NYI] – Consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect on a friendly target to instantly heal the target for 5306. Keeva’s note: mostly unchanged, except that now it heals for a set amount rather than Xseconds. Will be affected by talents that boost Swiftmend by X%.

Empowered Touch [NYI] (2 points) – Your Healing Touch heals for 5% more on targets at or below 25% health, and your Nourish spell has a 50% chance to refresh the duration of your Lifebloom on targets. Your Healing Touch spell gains an additional 32%, and your Nourish spell gains an additional 16% of your bonus healing effects. Keeva’s note: handy for tank healing – saving GCDs not having to refresh LBs. Although it may take some getting used to if your LB is refreshing itself (but only 50% of the time).

Efflorescence [NYI] (3 points) – Requires 1 point 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 10/20/30% of the amount healed by your Regrowth every 1 seconds for 7 seconds. Increases your total spirit by 10/15/20/25%.

Revitalize (3 points) – When your Regrowth or Lifebloom heal-over-time periodic damage critically hits, you instantly regenerate 1/2/3% of your total mana. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds.

Gift of the Earthmother [NYI] (5 points) – 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. Increases your total spell haste by 4/6/8/10% and reduces the base cooldown of your Lifebloom spell by 4/6/8/10%.

Wild Growth (1 point) – Requires 1 point in Tree of Life – Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 15 yards of the target for 2905 over 6.99 seconds. The amount healed is applied quickly at first, and slows down as the Wild Growth reaches its full duration.

—

I don’t have much to comment on yet, I said most of it in my previous comments on the same leaked abilities. Still no word on the “enhancements” that TOL grants each of our abilities (although we’ve seen some leaked). And I really don’t like that 50% snare – ten bucks says that gets axed somewhere along the way. Because what I really want is to pop my “I need to do more healing because it’s crunch time” cooldown and then get stuck in fire that I am slow-mo running out of. Snares suck.


Edit: for more analysis of the changes and what I think of them, refer to my earlier post (on the alpha leaks): http://treebarkjacket.com/2010/05/06/cataclysm-preliminary-talent-changes-unconfirmed/.

Possibly Related Posts:

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

That’s possibly a dumb question for most of my audience, since most of you are already druids. But! Maybe you’re not a druid, or maybe you are but you have a friend who wants to be a druid in the expansion?

So if you’re an existing druid planning on going Worgen or Troll, or if you have a friend who wants to jump in, here’s a bit of a primer.


Resto, Balance, or Feral?

It’s probably a good idea to decide which path you’re going to take, at the very least until Level 40 when you can grab Dual Talent Specialization. This will depend a lot on your play style and what you enjoy doing while you level:



• If you want to do it solo, and fast, then feral’s the way to go. Balance is also good for soloing, but feral has the least downtime because it is not hindered so much by mana and drinking (not to mention all the stupid mobs out there who interrupt, drain mana, or cause spell pushback). Feral downtime is minimal.
• If you want to solo but also have the ability to heal some dungeons, go balance. You’ll still have good soloing ability, and moderate healing (balance is absolutely fine for healing dungeons as you level). And best of all, you won’t have to worry about changing gear.
• If you want a healing crash course through dungeons on the way to 85, then it’s perfectly viable to go resto from level 1. I suspect that when Cataclysm is released, many people will be levelling existing mains, so that might make it hard to find lowbie dungeons – but remember also that there will be a lot of players who want to level a Worgen or Goblin, PLUS the people who always wanted to play a human hunter, gnome priest, blood elf warrior, night elf mage (and so on). So I think there will be plenty of dungeons to be had.
  
Resto is the poorest spec for soloing, but it’s not awful; however, if you’re going to be doing a fair bit of questing in between dungeons, you might want to consider a balance spec from 1-40, then “learn” resto with your dual spec at 40 onwards.


BOA gear

First of all, when choosing your BOA gear, consider whether you might later like to pass it onto another character. For example, I tend to pick cloth items for my caster druids, because I know that if I choose to create a clothie later, I can recycle my BOA items. I do the same for my melee characters – shaman/hunter/feral druid all have to share each other’s hand-me-downs (so if you see any of my characters without a chest or shoulder item equipped, it’s probably in the mail or on another character). Obviously if you’re swimming in tokens, this won’t be an issue, but it’s something to keep in mind.




Also, I’ll list the resilience items – but remember that you get resilience at the cost of other stats (eg spirit), so only take these items if you can’t afford the PvE equivalent. They still give you 10% experience, so it’s worth grabbing – just prioritise the PvE ones if you can afford them.

By the way – did you know that you can mail your BOA items to your characters on the opposite faction? My gnome rogue is currently using my feral chestpiece. I believe Blizzard have also said they would like to be able to let people mail them across servers, which would be awesome if you rerolled somewhere!

Anyway – here are the items to consider:

For Resto:


For Balance:


For Feral:



Guides to help you

Now, our healing may change a bit in Cataclysm once we are given our new talent trees and abilities; but I don’t think that lowbie healing will change very much. Healing Touch will still be our dungeon heal (with HoTs, of course), and I don’t think there will be sweeping changes to how we heal at low levels.

With that in mind, WotLK levelling guides should still be a good reference in Cataclysm, so here are some guides to bookmark for later.



• Tree Bark Jacket – Levelling as Resto – my resto druid guide (currently being revamped to add even more information – watch this space).
• Restokin – Druid Levelling Guide – Lissanna sets out your levelling options, specs, and strategies – including dual spec options.
• Rolling HoTs: Med School – Healing resto at levels 1-80 – a level-by-level explanation of what you should grab, how our spells work, and how you should heal.


Do you have any tips for brand new Cataclysm druids? Or do you know of another guide to levelling druids? I’d love to include them in the next version of my guide!

VN:F [1.9.2_1090]
please wait...
Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)



Possibly Related Posts:

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

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.




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.

Possibly Related Posts:

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

Alrighty – here are my Power Auras exports for balance.

Remember: these settings have my auras show up at the bottom of my screen, off to the right of the middle. You will need to adjust the X/Y settings to put them in the spot that you prefer.


Eclipse

My eclipse notifications are actually two effects on top of each other; a coloured rune, and then the spell icon on top. You don’t have to do this of course, you can use one or the other, but as a beginner moonkin I wanted it to be as plain as day which spell I had to cast.

So I made a green rune with a Wrath icon for Solar Eclipse, and a purple rune with a Starfire icon for Lunar Eclipse, so there was no doubt what to do when they popped up.

Lunar Eclipse (cast Starfire now!)

Starfire icon indicator (with timer):

Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu0.98823529411765; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Ability_Druid_Eclipse; size:nu0.25999999046326; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.97647058823529; y:nu-471; x:nu312; customname:st48465; groupany:bofalse; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:stOnly for raid/group.; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu16; alpha:nu0.34999999403954; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu1; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu2; stacksOperator:st=; realaura:nu1; spec2:botrue; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu0; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu15; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:botrue; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:st[48518]; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:botrue; stance:nu10; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu2; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.dual:bofalse; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.h:nu1.5; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:bofalse; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.Texture:stDefault; timer.enabled:botrue; timer.Showing:botrue; timer.lastShownLarge:nu12; timer.y:nu-346; timer.x:nu200; timer.CustomDuration:nu0; timer.Transparent:botrue; timer.a:nu1; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.id:nu15; timer.cents:bofalse


Rune background:

Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu0.26274509803922; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Ability_Druid_Eclipse; size:nu0.45999997854233; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.58823529411765; y:nu-470; x:nu311; customname:st48465; groupany:bofalse; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:stOnly for raid/group.; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu2; alpha:nu0.34999999403954; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu1; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu2; stacksOperator:st=; realaura:nu1; spec2:botrue; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu0; wowtex:botrue; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu20; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:botrue; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:st[48518]; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:bofalse; stance:nu10; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1


Solar Eclipse (cast Wrath now!)

Wrath icon indicator (with timer):

Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu0.9843137254902; anim1:nu1; g:nu0.9921568627451; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Ability_Druid_EclipseOrange; size:nu0.25999999046326; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; y:nu-472; x:nu311; customname:st48461; groupany:bofalse; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:stOnly for raid/group.; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu16; alpha:nu1; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu2; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu2; stacksOperator:st=; realaura:nu1; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu0; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu16; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:bofalse; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:st[48517]; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:botrue; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu2; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1; timer.a:nu1; timer.dual:bofalse; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.id:nu16; timer.cents:bofalse; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.enabled:botrue; timer.Showing:bofalse; timer.y:nu-346; timer.h:nu1.5; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:bofalse; timer.Transparent:botrue; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.x:nu200; timer.Texture:stDefault


Rune background:

Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu0.074509803921569; anim1:nu1; g:nu0.48627450980392; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Ability_Druid_EclipseOrange; size:nu0.45999997854233; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.11372549019608; y:nu-470; x:nu311; customname:st48461; groupany:bofalse; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:stOnly for raid/group.; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu2; alpha:nu0.10000000149012; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu1; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu2; stacksOperator:st=; realaura:nu1; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu0; wowtex:botrue; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu19; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:bofalse; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:st[48517]; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:bofalse; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1



Long cooldowns

This is useful to remind you that an ability is “ready to go”. You could also attach an alarm sound, to alert you to when something comes off cooldown and is ready to go again – this is very useful. Just don’t use it on short cooldowns or it will drive you nuts.

Note: the timers you see on the icons are where the cooldown timers will show when the ability is not ready. When it’s ready to go, you’ll see an icon; when the ability is down, you’ll just see a number in that spot, telling you how long you have to wait.

Starfall icon (with cooldown timer):

Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu0.93333333333333; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Ability_Druid_Starfall; size:nu0.15999999642372; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.96470588235294; y:nu-512; x:nu234; customname:st53201; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu15; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu21; alpha:nu1; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu1; spec2:botrue; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu0; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu17; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:botrue; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:stStarfall; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:botrue; stance:nu10; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu2; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu0; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.dual:bofalse; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.h:nu1; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:botrue; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.Texture:stDefault; timer.enabled:botrue; timer.Showing:botrue; timer.lastShownLarge:nu2; timer.y:nu-328; timer.x:nu149; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.Transparent:botrue; timer.a:nu1; timer.CustomDuration:nu0; timer.id:nu17; timer.cents:bofalse


Force of Nature (treants) icon (with cooldown timer):

Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu0.93333333333333; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Ability_Druid_ForceofNature; size:nu0.15999999642372; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.96470588235294; y:nu-431; x:nu233; customname:st33831; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu15; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu21; alpha:nu1; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu1; spec2:botrue; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu0; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu18; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:bofalse; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:stForce of Nature; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:botrue; stance:nu10; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu2; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu0; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.dual:bofalse; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.h:nu1; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:botrue; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.Texture:stDefault; timer.enabled:botrue; timer.Showing:bofalse; timer.y:nu-275; timer.x:nu149; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.Transparent:botrue; timer.a:nu1; timer.CustomDuration:nu0; timer.id:nu18; timer.cents:bofalse

Possibly Related Posts:

• Talent trees in Cataclysm – scrapped and redone
• Resto Druid calculator!
• Cataclysm: druid forms and other models

Our guild has been without a Moonkin for a long, long time. And even when we had moonkins in the past, they were unreliable or had bad connections. Basically, I can’t remember when we ever had a solid moonkin in the raid.

The raid leaders really wanted one, badly, and were discussing the option of someone swapping to play one. I hated the idea of someone having to give up their main, especially since soon we’ll work on getting our Icecrown drakes. Kinda crappy to miss out on all the achievements and boss kills, just so we can have a buff.

So I volunteered to give it a go.

They laughed.

Can’t really blame them, I’m dual-spec resto and I’ve been resto since I very first started playing, over 4 years ago.

But I was serious. If I did it, it would mean nobody gives up their main character. Plus, I already have pretty awesome gear, and would only have to make a few adjustments to get hit capped and be ready to go – a bunch of my gear is perfectly acceptable as boomkin gear already – so I’m not going to have to be loot trained to a bunch of gear. And, of course, they know I’m reliable.

So I set out to become a Moonkin.

I figured I would share what I did – for anyone else who has been a healer for a million years and suddenly wants to raid as a Moonkin (and isn’t sure where to begin). It’s certainly not an in-depth guide at all, just the steps I took to get myself up to scratch in a big, fat, feathery hurry.


Steps to becoming a moonkin in a hurry

Step 1: Make your UI a bit more DPS-friendly.

Healer UIs and DPS UIs (generally) have some fundamental differences. At the very least, they tend to have elements that are more detailed for one spec than the other. For example, a healer UI will generally shift focus to raid frames, where a DPS UI will usually have frames, but they won’t be focus.

I wanted a hybrid UI, so that I could use it for both resto and boomkin. My trademark “empty” UI wouldn’t cut it if I wanted to DPS. Here’s what I had to do:



• Make sure my player and target frames are nice and clear, and show all appropriate buffs, debuffs, target-of-target, cast bar, and nice clear fonts. I use Pitbull4 for this.

• I kept Grid as-is, because I use it for decursing, finding people who need to be innervated or revived, etc. But boy is it hard to ignore Grid and resist the temptation to heal! I moved Grid closer to my character, but I still prefer not to have it right under my character, because that makes me antsy about not being able to see “behind” me. This is personal preference only.
• PowerAuras – oh how I love you. I’ve set my PowerAuras up to tell me when my cooldowns (Starfall, treants) are ready to go – but also, most importantly, which Eclipse buff I have. PA also tells me that I have debuffs up on my target, as appropriate. (see the rotation section for an explanation of my Power Auras)
• I updated my spreadsheet of key bindings. In Moonkin spec, I’ve had to swap my 1-2-3 (etc) easy bindings to my damage spells. Normally, Alt-W is Wrath, Alt-M is Moonfire, and so on. But having to keep pressing alt hundreds of times a night would probably break my wrist and give me RSI over time, so I had to fix it. In resto spec, my easy bindings are for healing. In balance spec, they are for damage spells – but I can still pop out of form and use my heals.
  
It took me a while to get into the groove with the new bindings, but some time on the target dummies got them cemented in. It won’t take long to have them ingrained, like my healing binds.



Step 2: Fill in the gear gaps

My gear was pretty good as it was – lots of high level ICC spellpower stuff (obviously). But I didn’t have any hit, so I needed to work out what I could gather together ASAP.



• So I headed to Graylo’s site to check out his gear suggestions.

• I brought out my spreadsheet, and decided what could stay, what I could bring out of the bank, and what I’d have to go chase.
• I was super lucky and picked up a few nice balance items, and gemmed them with hit.
• My crit was low so I grabbed the Sundial of the Exiled (heroism badges) to help boost it a bit.

So now I’m hit capped – I can work on ditching more and more pieces of resto gear and working on my moonkin set.



Step 3: Learn the rotation

Four great sites to visit when you’re absolutely clueless but you have to know how to be a raiding moonkin yesterday:



1. Restokin – Moonkin basics for the new level 80 Raider

2. Restokin – Eclipse Basics & Rotations for Beginner Moonkin (in pictures)
3. Wow.com – Balance 101
4. Elitist Jerks – Moonkin PvE DPS (3.3.3)


Once you understand the rotation (and you will, if you visit the above) and you have your keybinds set up, you can spend time on the target dummies, practising.


The importance of a good Eclipse mod

A moonkin’s DPS rests quite heavily on how well we perform our rotation, specifically within eclipses. It’s absolutely essential that you have a good mod that alerts you to your eclipse procs and cooldown, so that you can time your spells properly.

I use Power Auras to do this – as well as to let me know when my long cooldowns are available. Please excuse the mess, here’s my work-in-progress:



Lunar Eclipse (cast Starfire now!)



Solar Eclipse (cast Wrath now!)



So as you can see in the above pictures, I can very clearly see my debuffs (Faerie Fire, Moonfire, Insect swarm) and their timers. The treant and starfall icons are actually Power Auras indicators that only show when I am able to use those abilities. Basically, they say “I’m ready – use me!”

But the most important part is the eclipse indicator. Now, most people prefer a HUD (heads-up-display) style for their eclipse (see Kae’s examples at Dreambound), so that they can keep an eye on their character’s position (and any fires, etc) while they watch their procs.

Personally, I just can’t seem to get used to it. Plus, I find that with a lot going on around my character, I can sometimes miss indicators. And I’ve never had any problems watching frames AND keeping myself out of bad stuff, so I don’t worry too much about having all of my information in the centre of my screen. So instead I decided to put a big, pretty indicator right next to my target frame.

Again, this is entirely personal preference (and it may even change over time!)


The difference these things can make

I think I’m doing pretty good, so far. I started out doing about 4300DPS on the dummies, being under the hit cap, wearing resto T10 and a healer weapon, no glyphs, fumbling with my new keybinds, and mis-timing my eclipse rotations pretty badly.

With some tweaking, a few gear changes (and gems) and some practice, I was doing 6800-7200. I think that’s pretty good so far, considering how much resto gear I still have (and how much crit I don’t have, ugh).

The numbers aren’t really important, they will vary according to your entry level gear – I was pretty lucky to jump in with 25man ICC resto gear, which acts as a pretty good crutch until you can gear “properly”. I really just wanted to put those numbers in there to show how much of a jump you can make in DPS if you tweak your gear, improve your UI, and practice your rotations until you get the hang of it.

I know I said I’d never be a Moonkin – I never really enjoyed it before. But I’ve never raided as a Moonkin before either – it’s quite fun!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Slayer of Dragons
• Talent trees in Cataclysm – scrapped and redone
• Resto Druid calculator!

At the risk of starting to sound a bit like a broken record, I’d like to talk about the Cataclysm preview again. Yay! Just for something new and different

I wanted to go back and give more thought to the changes, past my initial reactions. Initially I was very disappointed; I didn’t want another healing spell, but I had my heart set on a tank mitigation ability, something I felt we were missing compared to the other classes. I had hoped this would be the time that they gave us one to bring us in line – but no luck. Plus, I was selfishly disappointed that we didn’t get a “new toy”, like all the other classes – pretty lame, a new expansion and no new ability. And, obviously, removal of tree form was very upsetting.

But there’s more to the preview than just new toys and graphics, and I want to expand on my thoughts.



On flavour and art

First, a quick word about the concept of “flavor”.

GC is right when he says that tree form, these days, is basically all art and little function. But implying that it’s “just” art, or “just” flavor – that’s just wrong.

Our tree form is not “just art”. For many of us, it’s our identity. (For those people saying “you’re not losing tree form, it’s just on a cooldown” – well, then it’s no longer our identity. I don’t believe I would be a “tree druid” if that tree was only able to come out every 3/5/10 minutes.)

Think of all the things in this game that are just art or just flavor. Even further – think about the additions and improvements made to the game that are purely art or flavor. Anytime there is an updated graphic, a new mount, a new hunter pet, hair styles, toys, and gimmicks – with the exception of mounts (which contribute to achievements) they add nothing to our gameplay or progress. It’s all for fun, for flavor.

I know this is a bit of a stretch of the imagination, but imagine saying to hunters:

We’ve decided to consolidate hunter pets into one class of hybrid pets, rather than having various pets with different roles. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a hunter to give up his choice of animal because it isn’t in the pet family that he needs; so instead, all pets will have the same basic stats and function. Also, we have decided to allow hunters to only tame wolves, cats, and bears, as our design goals for exotic pet types haven’t worked out over the last few years, and we now realise that all other exotic pet types add nothing to the hunter class except for art. All pet abilities from the former classes will be available in their basic forms, but will be renamed appropriately.

We knew this would be a controversial change, and I’m sorry if taming a purple spotted chazwazza was what drew you to the hunter class.

Ok, so it’s a stretch – I doubt Blizzard would ever do that – but the point is – in the past, Blizzard have opened up MORE options for hunters to tame different looking pets. Some have had new abilities, but many are just the same types of pets with new skins, or the same kind of abilities, but retooled to suit that family of animal. Why? It adds no function or performance – it’s purely art. It’s just to keep hunters happy by introducing some new and different skins. Hunters love their pink tallstriders, or matching their pet according to their race or RP style.

Same goes for giving races a bunch of hairstyles from the other races. It’s flavor. Hairstyles may seem trivial, but they make a difference. Look at the time spent updating the feral druid forms. Time, money, and artist/developer time poured into creating things that add nothing to the game, “just flavor”.


I can tell you right now that I have thrown characters out PURELY because of aesthetics. I can’t stand the way human females run, so I abandoned playing them. I’m not kidding. It’s not petty to hate the way a character looks and to refuse to play it for those reasons. Now, I’m not going to toss my druids out because of the tree form change – but the point is that aesthetics ARE important to people. I wish Blizzard would see just how important this is to us.


But, honestly – ToL on cooldown will be a BUFF to our class

First – let’s get something straight:

I like the idea of the cooldown, I just don’t like my appearance being put on cooldown with it.

That’s it. It’s really that simple (don’t let the walls of text fool you!)

Some druids are confused over the changes. I took for granted (bad habit) that everyone would assume, as I did, that all of our current ToL perks would not be lost, but rather woven into our resto talent tree and given to us in “caster form”. Currently, Blizzard balances all of our healing around being in tree form, meaning we are on par with other healers while in tree, but when we shift out to caster form, we are below average.

It wasn’t meant to be like that; Tree was meant to be an occasional buff – you’d jump in to cast some HoTs and conserve some mana, but back out again to use Healing Touch (…*snicker). But what happened was that over time, it simply became mandatory for healers to be in tree form for maximum output. So we got “stuck” in a form that wasn’t really amazing.

The changes aim to fix this problem – to balance around caster form, so that we are even with other healers, and not forced into a form full-time in order to be competitive.

This, I wholeheartedly agree with.

We shouldn’t have a weak healing form and a normal healing form, because it forces us into that form to do as well as the other healers. Note: yes, cats and bears are forced into their forms so they can imitate rogues and warriors, but that is another issue entirely, as these forms grant them new abilities not available in caster form. Resto druids shift into tree form and gain no new abilities – just some weak aura bonuses, basically.

This is the crux of Blizzard’s design change: they can’t make us uber in tree form, it would be unfair to other healers. But if tree form healing is balanced with the other classes, then our caster form is weak, meaning that we are locked into that form just to be on par with the other healers, and this is unfair.

Of course, many druids don’t mind that. It certainly never bothered me before – but it’s hard to deny that it’s a bit unbalanced to have a form that doesn’t make us great, it just makes us – even.

Many people’s reaction is to say, “Then make tree better.” The problem is that there’s not much you can do to fix it. If you make ToL stronger, then the classes are unbalanced. Short of giving tree a whole set of new abilities when you shift in (which would be a bit nuts), I can’t see a way that tree form can be “fixed”.

Originally we could only cast certain spells – but over time Blizzard has given us the ability to cast HT, Rebirth, Innervate, Thorns… more and more we are creeping towards being able to do everything in tree form, which makes the tree graphic even more of a purely cosmetic buff, rather than a functional one. If we can cast everything in tree form – then we’re just a caster druid in a tree suit. The auras and other buffs can be easily worked into other talents.




Basically – and obviously it hurts to say it – tree just didn’t work out. They had a vision for it – and it didn’t work out.

So they want to take it back, and give us something more useful. You’d be silly to fault them for that.



What we lose/keep/gain:

As I said before – when they take tree away, we’re not going to lose those tree perks. Blizzard will stitch them into the resto talent tree innately or change our talents to make sure we don’t lose out. I’m confident that our talent tree will be reworked quite a bit in order to facilitate this.

Here’s what I assume we will lose/gain:



• LOSE: Polymorph “immunity”. I’m torn about this. On one hand, I don’t care a whit about PvP. But on the other hand, I think it’s a bit unfair that resto will be the only spec that can be polymorphed. Of course, we can shift to cat or bear to get back out, but I can’t help feeling slighted that we will be the only spec vulnerable to poly in the first place. However, it’s only returning to the way it was before tree.
  
Armor bonuses – I have no idea what they’ll do here. Perhaps we’ll have an armor talent, but it seems a bit alien to be running around as a humanoid with a whole bunch of armor. But if priests have Inner Fire, a druid armor talent probably isn’t too far-fetched. The problem though is this – how many of us would take a talent that was purely devoted to armor? On some fights, it’s highly valuable, but on many fights where we don’t get hit, it would be useless. Would we bother taking it for PvE? Hopefully they will work our armor back into something else, because I doubt I would take an armor talent unless I had spare points.
  
And to be honest, I like having a reason to shift to cat or bear, as a resto druid – it reminds me of our versatility, and it always give me a buzz to do it. Running back in travel form on Archimonde, sprinting away from oozes on Putricide.. I even remember shifting to bear back in AQ days! I enjoy using my other forms, despite being a healer. So I don’t mind much about poly immunity. PvP restos may disagree.

• KEEP: All existing aura effects and bonuses. As above – these will either become innate bonuses, or will be reworked into the tree accordingly. Once upon a time our tree form gave us discounted healing, to the point where popping out of tree and healing for a short period of time would put a real strain on your mana. Blizzard felt this was unfair (see above – we shouldn’t be stuck in a form to be as good as other healers), and made it so that as long as you had the tree talents, you could have the mana discount anytime.
  
This is basically what I see happening to our current tree perks – they will end up part of other talents, or “if you spec deep enough to get XYZ, you will gain these innate bonuses.” There’s really no need to worry that we will lose our tree auras etc. Blizzard will balance us.

• GAIN: Here’s the exciting part. We didn’t get any new spells, but the ToL “cooldown” has great potential. We don’t know what it will be yet – but I’m hoping that it isn’t just a flat spellpower buff (ie: 500 extra spellpower for 15 seconds), but a raid or tank-saving ability. GC has hinted at Tranquility becoming more like Divine Hymn; I think I would be quite pleased if the ToL “cooldown” gave us access to a Divine Hymn-like ability. Something that has the potential to save the raid.
  
Who knows – but it’s exciting to wait and see what it ends up being. We didn’t get a new spell, but this cooldown has the potential to be our “shiny new toy” for Cataclysm.


We don’t need more healing spells. We have enough. My hope for Cataclysm was a castable Barkskin or other tank cooldown; maybe they are yet to give us that – inside the new cooldown. We’ll have to wait and see what they come up with – I really hope it’s worth the wait.

Also, I think it’s worth mentioning that some people are complaining that healer cooldowns suck, and we shouldn’t have to hit a button every few minutes to maximise our throughput. I’m hoping that our cooldown isn’t that kind of cooldown – like a proc that gives you 500 spellpower every few minutes. I’m hoping that it will give us something unique that will save the raid – not just “for a few seconds, you do more healing.” That would be boring.

Of course, the length of the cooldown will determine the strength of the buff; a raid-saving ability like Divine Hymn has an 8 minute cooldown (a shorter cooldown would mean a weaker bonus and less chance of it being awesome). I could handle the ToL cooldown being long if they reworked Tranquility like Hymn. Particularly if they kept Imp Tranquility; it would become fairly desirable for raiding (for a change).

TLDR: I doubt our cooldown will simply be “you do X more healing for Y seconds”. I’m hoping for something more specific and interesting.

So, while I was disappointed at first at the lack of new spells, the “OK” tweaks and mastery bonuses, and the removal of tree form to a cooldown, overall I am actually excited to see how things pan out.



On healers being able to DPS

Generally speaking, I don’t give a crap about DPSing as a resto druid, pardon my language. I know that many druids out there feel the same. But, let’s face it, there have been times that we’ve needed to, and people have scoffed. I’ll never forget going to Leo and being told “you’ll probably die to your inner demons.” For the record, I was specced 11 into balance (which, at the time, got you to Insect Swarm, and was not cookie-cutter) and I pwned my demons, much to the surprise of the raid.

I LOVED being able to spec partly into a few DPS talents, without losing too much in resto. I was so sad when they rearranged the balance tree and I had to give up my insect swarm! Ultimately, I would love to be able to go back to one of those part balance specs, without feeling guilty about giving up points in the resto tree. I’m excited to see our tree reworks so that I can see how much I’ll be able to spec into balance. This is something I’m REALLY looking forward to.

Now – do I want or expect to DPS in raids? Rarely. Only if we outgear, usually. Or in the dying seconds of an enrage timer fight, like Blood Queen, when I make the judgment call to switch to DPS. Or if the raid leader calls for “all DoTs”, and I know that I can stand there and keep Moonfire up on the boss in between weaving heals.

I don’t want to DPS in raids – but I absolutely ADORE being a utility class. Keeping a debuff on the boss without making my HoTs X% weaker or wasting GCDs to swap in and out – or having people around me think I’m a bad healer for being “out of form” – that’s pretty exciting for me.

And, of course, there are obvious PvP implications for druids to be able to CC and DPS without sacrificing the strength of their healing.



Face facts: It’s too late to save our current TOL

I believe it’s too late to “save the tree” in its current, clunky form – and that the cooldown-style buff is inevitable. This change WILL go ahead. There’s just too much about tree form that doesn’t work. So, bring on the cooldown buff, let’s hear it. Let’s see how you fix up our talent tree to compensate. I’m excited to know how it’s all going to change.



• I agree that we shouldn’t be “stuck” in tree form, where tree form only just brings us level with other healing classes, rather than setting us apart.

• It will be good to not feel stupid or “bad” if I realise I’ve been healing out of form by accident.
• It will be good to be able to debuff a boss or use CC without wasting GCDs to get back into healing form.
• I know that overall, this will be a buff to my class. This could be the raid-saving cooldown I’ve been hoping for.
• I agree that we shouldn’t waste talent points to pick up a form that is mostly cosmetic.
• I’m excited to see how they make the new tree form look.
• And yes, it will be refreshing to be able to be a caster occasionally.


Overall, it’s a buff to our class and its mechanics. I just don’t want to lose my ability to look like a tree at will. I don’t want to lose my ability to “be a tree”. That’s all I ask. Let me be a tree when I’m standing around in Dalaran. Let my raid leader say “stack on the tree” in raids. Let me keep my tree slap, tree dance, and hilarious tree-cower. Let me run around with my little sproutling twin. Let me keep my tree-flavored legacy.

I really hope that Blizzard considers a toggle to fill the void left by removing tree to a cooldown. Bears, cats, moonkins – and trees – we should all have our identifying forms.

Let us keep our beloved tree, even if it is only a cosmetic shell paying homage to its former (messy, unbalanced, clunky) glory.


OK, that’s it, I guess. I really hope that cooldown is awesome, and I really hope they consider the toggle. *crosses fingers and waits*

Possibly Related Posts:

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

The Druid class preview has been announced! Click here for the full announcement.

Here’s a rundown of what’s been announced so far – remember this is just a taste of what is to come, not a full rundown of all druid changes. My (very preliminary) thoughts are at the end.





There are no new Restoration abilities.



• Feral: Thrash (Level 81): Thrash deals damage and causes all targets within 10 yards to bleed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. The intent here is to give bears another button to hit while tanking. Talents will affect the bleed, such as causing Swipe to deal more damage to bleeding targets. 5-second cooldown. 25 Rage.

• Feral: Stampeding Roar (Level 83): The druid roars, increasing the movement of all allies within 10 yards by 40% for 8 seconds. Stampeding Roar can be used in cat or bear form, but bears might have a talent to drop the cooldown. The goal of this ability is to give both bears and cats a little more situational group utility. 3-minute cooldown. No cost.
• Balance: Wild Mushroom (Level 85): Grows a magical mushroom at the target location. After 4 seconds the mushroom becomes invisible. Enemies who cross the mushroom detonate it, causing it to deal area-of-effect damage, though its damage component will remain very effective against single targets. The druid can also choose to detonate the mushroom ahead of time. This is primarily a tool for the Balance druid, and there will be talents that play off of it. No cooldown. 40-yard range. Instant cast.

• 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.

• 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.
• We want to make the Feral cat damage rotation slightly more forgiving. We do not want to remove what druids like about their gameplay, but we do want to make it less punishing to miss, say, a Savage Roar or Rake. The changes here will be on par with increasing the duration of Mangle like we did for patch 3.3.3.
• Balance druids will have a new talent ability called Nature’s Torrent, which strikes for either Nature or Arcane damage depending on which will do the most damage (or possibly both), and moves the Eclipse meter more (details below). The improved version of Nature’s Torrent also reduces the target’s movement speed. 10-second cooldown.
• We plan on giving Feral cats and bears a Kick/Pummel equivalent — an interrupt that is off the global cooldown and does no damage. We feel like they need this utility to be able to fill the melee role in a dungeon or raid group, and to give them more PvP utility.
• We want to make sure Feral and Balance druids feel like good options for an Arena team. They need the tools to where you might consider a Feral druid over an Arms warrior, or a Balance druid over a mage or warlock. Remember that the PvP landscape will probably look pretty different for Cataclysm with a focus on rated, competitive Battlegrounds.

• 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.

• 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.
• 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.
• We want to add tools to cat form and depth to bear form. If a Feral cat is going to fill a very similar niche to that of a rogue, warrior or Enhancement shaman, it needs a few more tools — primarily a reliable interrupt. Bears need to be pushing a few more buttons just so the contrast between tanking and damage-dealing is not so steep.
• Barkskin will be innately undispellable.
• We will be buffing the damage of Mangle (cat) significantly so that when cat druids cannot Shred, they are not at such a damage-dealing loss.

• Restoration – Healing
  Meditation
  HoT Scale Healing
• Balance – Spell Damage
  Spell Haste
  Eclipse

• Feral (cat) – Melee Damage
  Melee Critical Damage
  Bleed Damage

• Feral (bear) – Damage Reduction
  Vengeance
  Savage Defense


HoT Scale Healing: HoTs will do increased healing on more wounded targets. The mechanic is similar to that of the Restoration shaman, but with HoTs instead of direct heals. In Cataclysm, we anticipate druids using a greater variety of their spells so there is a distinction between healing and HoT healing.


My preliminary thoughts

My first thoughts: Extremely underwhelming. No new ability? That’s pretty unfair. We should get a new toy, too. A whole new expansion and no new ability? Yeah, we get a new talent – which is nice – but where’s our cooldown mitigation type ability? Where’s my cast-on-others Barkskin, or some other “save the day” ability?

I agree that we don’t need another healing spell, but you guys could have given us something else for our toolbox. Giving other classes something new to play with and not us is kinda crappy.

HoT scaling is nice – like a built-in glyph of Rejuv kinda deal. A little extra free healing on Regrowth crits is nice too, but without seeing the numbers it’s hard to say whether it will sway people towards using Regrowth more in raid healing (I always did, though) or whether it will just be a small freebie. Innate haste and crit benefits to HoTs – well, we saw that one coming. It’s tasty, definitely.

As for ToL going to a cooldown – well, at the moment I’m pretty upset. Things may change, maybe I’ll enjoy healing as a cow, seeing my gear more. But I like ToL, it’s hard to have something core to your class made into a cooldown. Imagine if bears were only bears every few minutes? Call me sentimental, but I want the choice to look like a tree or not – if I want to look like a tree all the time, I should be able to do that. No other forms are forced to be on a cooldown. But, unfortunately, there are many people who disagree, and want to heal in “caster form”. The masses have spoken. I just wish we had the choice – let us look like trees if we want to, but only use the cooldown “buff” every few minutes. PLEASE! Let us choose!

Update from Blizzard:

We knew changing Tree of Life to a cooldown was going to be controversial. There was just no way a change this big would be unanimously accepted. My apologies if being a tree was what really drew you to the class.

We didn’t add new rotational spells to Restoration or Feral cat because, good lord, you have enough buttons already. We tried hard with Cataclysm to not add new spells just because. The specs that got new spells were ones we think had big holes in their rotation. You’ll still get new talents and mechanics so I expect there will be a lot to learn when the big game-changing patch rolls around.


Overall, the small changes are nice, but the lack of a new resto ability and making our ToL a cooldown is extremely disappointing.

My vote: nice minor tweaks, but ruined by the disappointing lack of new abilities; very, very sad about ToL being the only iconic druid form that will be on a cooldown.

Possibly Related Posts:

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