Feral Druid Patch / WOTLK Thread

[Arcdelad]

Sept 26:

[blizzard]Feral Q&A
Please pass us some further details as to what other tanking talents/abilities we will be given to help cover the differences between feral tanking and humanoid tanking.
We have to be careful here. Our goal is to make sure all the tanks can do the job, so we want to make sure we don't give druids an ability that will push them over the edge. Druids were really good tanks in BC, especially near the end of the content. I don't feel that we are having to make up a huge deficit. I understand you want to have more buttons to push, but compared to BC you now have new cooldowns like Berserk and Barkskin, and some old groaners like Tiger's Fury and Frenzied Regeneration actually do something cool now.

Please point out how our dps will be tuned to match rogue dps.
We'll eventually figure out how much lower cat dps is than rogue dps, and then we will change some druid abilities to use bigger numbers. It's possible we will buff a couple of talents, especially ones that we suspect you're likely to already be getting. But mostly we do it through tweaking core abilities like Shred and Mangle.

Please explain how shifting cost and mana consumption will work with rogue gear (in pvp/pve/soloing).
Feral mana seems to have taken a big hit. We have some thoughts on how to adjust it.

Please explain what will occur with older content fights where druids could not tank due to a missing ability.
Maybe Illidan will forget how to Shear. Is that what you're talking about?

Please explain if our tanking and dps will scale as we go to harder 25 man content.
Yes, they will. By definition, percentages scale and flat numbers do not. You have a lot of percentages in your talents. There has been a lot of discussion about whether Mother Bear is a scaling talent or not, and I'm not sure I'm eager to enter into that debate again. But we have designed the talents to scale. One of the problems to your mitigation scaling was just hitting the upper limit of armor. Armor and avoidance will be much harder to cap out now.[/blizzard]

[blizzard]Tanking classes in WotLK
1) You should only face instagib problems when you can be crit since bosses no longer crush targets 3 levels lower than them. The fact that 3 of the tank classes are having trouble being uncrittable by Naxx is something we're look into. Druids can be uncrittable through talents.

2) DKs will probably have lower armor than warriors and possibly health as well. Their avoidance will almost certainly be higher to compensate for the lack of block. DK situational abilities are better than warrior ones. We want to keep these differences as much as possible without gimping anyone. Everyone realizes that a 95% avoidance tank with 10K health is not going to be an effective tank, nor is one that is so dependent on cooldowns that he dies when the cooldowns aren't up.

3) If you are having threat issues, that is concerning. We are trying to get away from +threat modifiers on abilities because they don't scale well with with gear. For those we're keeping (like Sunder Armor) the threat scales with AP. The ideal design is something closer to the paladin, where threat scales off of damage really well. If the DK dps is too low, that would certainly account for lower threat as well. We don't want to have a lot of variance in threat on tanks. It's hard to balance (and not really much fun) to have low threat tanking classes.

Bottom line: the design is that the 4 tank classes are roughly equal in their ability to survive and maintain threat, while preserving whatever differences among them that we can manage. (Source)

Tanking classes in WotLK
There is no reason to bring a druid over a warrior. Not if we do our jobs right. There is no reason to bring a warrior over a druid either. We want you to get a tank. We don't want you sidelining your X tank while you are trying hard to recruit a Y tank.

Bring the tank with the best gear or the most skill. Bring the guy that always shares consumables or can make every raid. Bring the dude who doesn't complain or researches boss strategies or finds great new people to join your group. Don't bring a player because his class has the magic button for a boss fight; if we do our jobs right, there won't be any. (Source)
[/blizzard]

[Kothnok]

[blizzard]
Bring the tank with the best gear or the most skill. Bring the guy that always shares consumables or can make every raid. Bring the dude who doesn't complain or researches boss strategies or finds great new people to join your group. Don't bring a player because his class has the magic button for a boss fight; if we do our jobs right, there won't be any.
[/blizzard]

So... I guess they haven't been doing their job right. 

[Arcdelad]

[blizzard]Current issues with Druid
The problem we were trying to solve with Feral was that they could only be 75% of a rogue and 75% of a Prot warrior (to be fair, the warrior part sometimes got to be 102%, but the rogue part never did). We wanted to let people who liked the melee hybrid playstyle keep doing that, while also having true dps and tanking Ferals.

The problem we were trying to solve with Balance was in some ways easier and harder. Balance just needed to get a spot in the group. Balance needed reasonable CC in 5-player instances and good dps, AE, buff capacity and mana-efficiency to be a credible caster. Making sure raids didn't need all 10 or 25 spots devoted to stacking buffs helps open up space as well.

Resto druids are pretty amazing on Live and have a pretty good healer niche. What we wanted to do with them is expand on their healing a little so they had more group-heal capacity and more spells to cast besides rolling Lifebloom.

With regard to PvP, we want to try and get some of the under-represented classes and specs in there more, but that's a much, much harder problem. PvP balance is enormously sensitive to certain small changes and to the presence and absence of certain abilities. We try to avoid just handing out the mandatory abilities to everyone (hello Mortal Strike) for fear that we end up with 10 classes that are just art differences. It's a non-trivial problem to solve, complicated by the fact that testing it is hard and requires not only skilled participants, but also for the rest of the game to be in a really stable state. We've changed the game so much, that I can almost promise that PvP is going to be very different. How, exactly, I'm not sure anyone could say yet. I gaurantee that we've broken something for good or ill for at least a couple of classes, because that's the reality of the situation. Hopefully we can be more proactive about fixing problems when they arise. (Source)

Feral Concerns
I understand you want your gear designed to specifically support those stats that are most important to you. I'm telling you that you are dangerously close to being the best tank from a mitigation-standpoint even without it. I suppose it's possible your threat generation will be very low, but I kind of doubt it.

If your concern is you'll have to wear PvP gear or BC gear because it's better than LK gear, don't worry about that. In fact, that also answers the question of why we can't put strength on some leather without doing it to all leather -- because then those few sacred pieces become the only ones that can / will be used.

If your concern is that your gear won't scale, don't worry about that either. The only reason it became a problem in BC was because you hit the armor cap, which led to you not wanting more mitigation and us not making more tanking bear armor. It wasn't that we hit the max stat budgets in BC, if I am understanding that concern correctly, or you wouldn't see 200 ilevels now.

If you want armor on your leather because you like hitting the armor cap, sorry. This is one of the few times you'll hear me say no, but no. It does bad things to the game.

If your concern is that you just like having leather with strength, armor, stamina, dodge and agility on it, and don't want to see AP or defense because partialy-wasted stats just creep you out, *and* you would rather have druid talents and bear form nerfed to compensate for that, well I guess that is a different way to design the game. It would probably work okay, but it would mean going back to a model where bosses dropped rogue loot or feral loot. We just think the current design works better.

On an entirely different topic, I also understand that you want to have more interesting abilities to use on a regular basis. That's a fair request, and one that is made by several other classes as well. It's something we will keep talking about and keeping a close eye on. It wasn't our priority for the Feral this time around, but I can understand how you wish it was.

My hope is that this giant wall of text helps you understand our thought process, and helps you feel that yes we do listen to you, and yes we do understand how the class works. If it doesn't convince you, well there's always tomorrow. (Source)[/blizzard]

[Arcdelad]

[blizzard] Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8962))
Balance
Skills

Barkskin is now usable in all forms.

Talents

Earth and Moon (Tier 10) changed so your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 100% chance to apply the Earth and Moon effect. It now also increases your spell damage by 1/2/3/4/5%. (Previously had a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to apply the Earth and Moon Effect)
Eclipse (Tier 9) changed so when you critically hit with Starfire, you have a 33/66/100% chance of increasing damage done by Wrath by 10%. (Previously 20/40/60% chance)
Improved moonkin Aura (Tier 7) gives 3% spell haste for all ranks and now you gain 5/10/15% of your spirit as additional spell damage.
Improved Faerie Fire (Tier 7) increases your critical strike chance against targets afflicted with Faerie Fire by 1/2/3%.
Nature's Splendor (Tier 3) changed to - When you cast Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth or Lifebloom you have a 33/66/100% chance to increase it's duration by 3 sec.

Feral Combat
Skills

Shred - Effects which increase Bleed damage also increase Shred damage.
Maul - Effects which increase Bleed damage also increase Maul damage.
Bash now interrupts spell casts for 3 sec.

Talents

Berserk (Tier 11) no longer causes your Mangle (Bear) and Maul attacks to hit up to 3 targets
Predatory Instincts (Tier 8 ) reduces the damage taken by area of effect attacks by 3/6/9/12/15%. (Previously increased your chance to avoid them)
Protector of the Pack (Tier 8 ) damage reduction is now at 3% for each party member across all ranks.
Improved Leader of the Pack (Tier 7) - In addition, you gain 4% of your maximum mana when you benefit from Improved Leader of the Pack heal.
Feral Charge (Cat) (Tier 5) - Causes you to leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 sec. 30 second cooldown.
Faerie Fire (Feral) (Tier 3) now deals damage and causes extra threat while in bear form.
Brutal Impact (Tier 2) now reduces the cooldown of bash by 15/30 sec in addition to its previous effect.

Restoration
Skills

Gift of the Wild now affects the whole raid.
Lifebloom healing reduced. Mana cost increased. (Check Skill list for details)

Talents

Flourish renamed Wild Growth.
Wild Growth (Tier 11) - Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 15 yards of the target for 350 over 7 sec. The amount healed is applied quickly at first, and slows down as the Wild Growth reaches its full duration.\
Gift of the Earthmother (Tier 10) changed to reduce the base global cooldown of your Rejuvenation and Lifebloom spells by 4/8/12/16/20%.
Tree of Life (Tier 9) increases healing received by 6%. (Previously 3%).
Improved Tree of Life (Tier 9) now increases your healing spell power by 5/10/15% of your spirit while in Tree of Life Form. (Previously reduced the mana cost by 5/10/15%)

Glyphs

Glyph of Swipe has been removed.
Glyph of Maul has been added - Your Maul ability now hits 1 additional target. [/blizzard]

LOTP now returns 4% mana?!? LOL....so...will the casters be fighting to have us in their group as well?

[Nasanna]

have you not been paying attention lately?

*cough* raid wide auras *cough*

Or do they not like druids and made their stuff party only?

[Air]

Sounds like it benefits the druid only, and no one else.  Blizz has been adding various self buffs to the group buff talents to make them useful when there's someone else in the group that has a similiar group buff.

[Arcdelad]

duh....sorry nas LOL....old habits die hard I guess

That doesnt make any sense though Air...on a good day I am using zero mana...its only when I am asked to pop out a lot to do cleanse duty or something do I really have mana as a need / concern...

[Tolwen]

did they just nerf berserk?

[JohnnieRat]

I dunno, but Ret pallies and Enh Shammies will love it

[Rocknlock]

man, with raid-wide buffs and bew druid/hunter mana batteries, I may not have to life tap much at all XD

[Tolwen]

[blizzard]Okay, I guess Koraa didn't get a chance to post it today.

1) Feral Faerie Fire becomes a core ability.
2) Brutal Impact increases duration and lowers cooldown of Bash. It swaps with Savage Fury, mostly to keep it out of the paws of anyone but Ferals.
3) Feral Faerie Fire replaced with the old Last Stand component of Berserk. But it's usable in both cat and bear forms.
4) Cat Berserk does not change. Bear Berserk goes back to Mangle hitting 3 targets, and since that isn't so useful on single targets, it also removes the 6 sec (untalented) cooldown of Mangle during the 15 sec duraton for some nice bear burst or threat generation. The Fear immunity is still intact.

Awesome big tweaks?
[ Post edited by Ghostcrawler ][/blizzard]

[Arcdelad]

I love that blizzard pays so much attention to us ferals LOL

I honestly feel like weve been getting uber-tweaked now for the last two years...woot for more!

[Tolwen]

lol, then check this out:D

[blizzard]Skills
Feral
Dash cooldown reduced from 5 to 3 minutes.
Faerie Fire (Feral) isn't a talent anymore and is now a baseline skill
Talents
Balance
Earth and Moon Rank 1 damage increase changed from "1 to 6%" to 3%.
Improved Moonkin Form now causes affected targets to gain 1/2% haste (down from 3/3%)
Improved Faerie Fire now only increases the critical strike chance of your damage spells on targets afflicted by Faerie Fire. (Old - Increased critical chance of all attacks)
Nature's Grace changed from 1 to 3 points and now has a 33/66/100% proc rate. (Old - 100%)
Nature's Splendor changed from 3 to 1 point. Now Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and Rejuvenation spells by 3 sec, your Regrowth spell by 6 sec, and your Lifebloom spell by 3 sec.
Feral
Berserk doesn't heal you anymore in bear form but causes your Mangle (Bear) ability to hit up to 3 targets and have no cooldown instead.
Rend and Tear now increases damage done by Maul and Shred on bleeding targets by 4/8/12/16/20%. (up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
Mangle doesn't increase the damage of Maul and Shred anymore
Protector of the Pack now increases your attack power in Bear and Dire Bear form by 2/4/6%. (Old - increased the bonus attack power by 20/40/60%)
Predatory Instincts changed from 5 to 3 points, now While in Cat Form, Bear Form, or Dire Bear Form, increases your damage from melee critical strikes by 3/7/10% (Old - 2/4/6/8/10%) and reduces the damage taken from area of effect attacks by 5/10/15%. (Old - 3/6/9/12/15%)
Savage Fury has been moved from Tier 5 to Tier 2
Brutal Impact moved from Tier 2 to Tier 5
*New Talent* Survival Instincts (Tier 3) - When activated, this ability temporarily grants you 30% of your maximum health for 20 sec while in Bear Form, Cat Form, or Dire Bear Form. After the effect expires, the health is lost. Instant, 5 min cooldown
Restoration
Gift of the Earthmother now also affects Wild Growth[/blizzard]

[Arcdelad]

[blizzard]New druid form arts
It's not going to be in for Lich King. Sorry. Doing an entire animal texture takes a lot more art than a hair change. But we all agree it's high time for new druid form art. It's a high priority after Lich King. You absolutely deserve new skins and we want to do it right, and we want to do it soon. I don't want to promise any more specifics than that until we see what problems arise when LK ships and what we need to fix. In our opinions, Raven Lord and epic flight form set the bar. (Source)

Mangle (Cat)
Are you going to use cat Mangle a little less now? Probably. But it's hardly the only talent with situational use. I'm not sure that warrants a redesign of the talent. I'm not even sure you can assume someone with Trauma will be around all the time. I do think changing Mutilate has opened a door that is difficult to close on positional requirements. But I'm not sure we have enough evidence yet that cat PvP damage is low at all, or is low because of Shred's requirements. Mutilate was a slightly different situation since it was competing against other rogue builds. Mangle and Shred are abilities every cat is going to have. Now if it makes you much worse than rogues in PvE or PvP, that is something we'll look at. (Source)

Balance Tree
While I'm sure every class would say this, it's probably no surprise to you that Balance damage was low. Way too low.

We are addressing most of it through base spell damage changes to Wrath, Insect Swarm and especially Starfire. Hopefully that will give you some more talent choices because some of the damage talents will feel more optional (or as optional as more damage ever feels), instead of the bare minimum you need to be close to other casters.

We also fixed a few bugs with Star Fall and Typhoon. Not sure those changes will boost dps much, but playing your class should be less annoying. (Source)

Swipe target limit
We are still working on Thunder Clap and Swipe. We think paladins can AE tank fine and DKs are probably close. Warriors and druids are still limited by the target limit of their abilities. Removing the target limit may be the answer, but we want to explore the issue first. (Source)

Restoration Tree
We don't want to hurt Regrowth, because it is nice to finally see it being used a lot. My fear is that the glyph is making it a lot better than Nourish.

Ideally, and I don't know if we can get them all to this stage, glyphs should be an option that changes the way you play your character, not just free talent points. In some cases, they are going to feel like buffs. It would be cool, for example, if the Regrowth glyphs let some Resto druids focus more on Regrowth while others used different spells. The Regrowth glyph is just so good, on top of the Regrowth talent, that it may be a non-decision to use which also ends up making Nourish useless.

Ideally you should want to use Regrowth and Nourish on some occasions. Flourish, Rejuv, Swiftmen and Lifebloom already have pretty decent niches. If glyphing for Regrowth makes you lean towards that spell, awesome. I just think the case at the moment is every druid will have that glyph and use Regrowth as a generic heal-all spell.

We're not going to touch the Regrowth talent or other synergistic talents, at least not to solve this problem.

Will a Resto Druid be able to handle all aspects of healing like a Holy Priest such as Prot Warrior is going to be able to handle all aspects of tanking like a Prot Pallie?
No, that isn't the goal. The reason is largely because encounters are designed such that you already want to take more healers on a raid than you have available specs. What I mean is that almost every 25 player will have Holy paladins, Holy priests, Resto shamans and Resto druids. And maybe a Disc priest too. Even a 10 man will have 2-3 healers, and most likely they will be different classes. That's a different situation than the tank is in. There are very many raid encounters that require one tank while almost none that require one healer. By and large, I think we've done a decent job in giving healers niches, but that strategy hasn't worked for tanks (and won't really work for dps either).

Now, where we have needed to give healers more tools is in the 5-player case, and possibly PvP. The same tools are useful in unusual encounters, say a Loatheb where you can't heal often, or a Void Reaver, where the paladin has to run around. A Holy paladin who is great at flashing heals on a MT can't do that in heroic Nexus and expect to keep everyone alive. A druid can't just keep rolling Lifeblooms up and keep everyone alive. Wild Growth is great in those situations. It's probably not going to compete with Chain Heal, but it doesn't really have to. It just gives you another tool in your box. (Source)
[/blizzard]

It is about GD time I didnt look exactly like the level 20 feral druid with 200 AP total................

[Tolwen]

[blizzard]We are going to remove the target limit on Swipe.[/blizzard]