3.1 patch druid changes

[Arcdelad]

[blizzard]As many of you know the next major content patch will include some very exciting things, such as Ulduar, a new epic raid dungeon, a wealth of new items, and much more. We thought players would especially enjoy reading just a few of the class changes we're currently planning. Please keep in mind, that this list is not at all comprehensive, and more importantly subject to change.

    * Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.

    * Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.

    * Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.

    * Thorns and Nature's Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.

    * Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.

    * Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed "Revitalize." It now also works with Wild Growth.

    * We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.[/blizzard]

Looks good so far! Savage defense is already OP'ed - i dont think thats going to make it out LOL....we crit in bear form like MAD, and then were sitting around 5-6k AP, so thats a 1+k damage shield going up all the time....

[fallingleafs]

Ok so for the balance druid:

These are fairly lame changes. The Survival Instincts "buff" for Moonkins is stupid: no Balance Druid in their right mind would ever make Feral their secondary tree! As of now all the really good talents you can get from the early tiers of the Resto tree.

These changes would forces us to lose the talents in resto which are more or less required for us to operate properly, or failing because we would drop tons of balance talents.

Either way we end up dropping dmg, and our mana replenishment talents (which aren't enough as it is) or pvp utility just to be able to survive.

Unless they are holding some changes back the changes are being made to the wrong tree! 

They already nerfed starfall and made it useless and as far as I can see they are doing nothing that helps a balance druid unless balancing your talents in every tree equally was what they were assuming balance meant! 

Essentially if I incorporated the changes to my toon I would go from fallingleafs to failingleafs overnight!

[Lynette]

Official information on the changes to mana regeneration in Patch 3.1:

As we have suggested, we have become concerned that mana regeneration is currently too powerful, especially for healers. We want players to have to keep an eye on mana. We don't want you to go out of mana every fight, but running out of mana should be a very real risk for sloppy playing or attempting content that you aren't yet ready for. When mana regeneration is trivial then certain parts of the game break down – classes that offer Replenishment are devalued, stats that offer mana regeneration are devalued, and spells that are efficient are neglected in preference to spells with high throughput.

Here are a list of changes you are likely to see in 3.1. They will be available to try out on the PTR. Mana regeneration is somewhat technical, so please bear with us.


Regeneration while not casting (outside of the "five second rule") will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.


To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.


The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these "mandatory" talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible.


Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don't want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.


In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.


We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won't shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.


We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.


These changes are ultimately being done to bring the different healing classes more in line with each other as well as to give the encounter team more leeway when designing encounters, who can balance with these new mana regeneration numbers in mind. In a world with infinite healer mana, the only way to challenge healers is with increasingly insane amount of raid damage, so that global cooldowns become the limiting factor since mana fails to be. An example is the Eredar Twins in late Sunwell. We weren't necessarily happy with that model, and this change hopefully allows us to move towards giving healing a more deliberate and thoughtful pace rather than frenetic spam.


Impressions found from the author over at http://www.resto4life.com/2009/02/06/blue-31-changes-mana-regen-and-more/

The mention of heals over time and clearcasting procs (Omen of Clarity) in the first point makes me feel like this nerf is being directly targeted at Druids, though it will likely impact our Spiritual Sisters, the Priest, as well. Despite the Paladin nerfs, it may end up as a relative buff to Paladins (and possibly Shamans) who don't rely upon Spirit.

So much for learning to dance the 5SR dance. An across the board nerf to mana regeneration outside the Five Second Rule makes trying to time your heals and rotations less valuable.

Intensity and Intensity-like effects are being buffed, but only to keep regeneration inside the Five Second Rule relatively equal to the current value. At the same time, mana regeneration across the board is being reduced. As a Druid, the value of Spirit was based largely upon its effect on Innervate. This represents a substantial nerf to Spirit and a corresponding buff to the value of Intellect since Replenishment is not being changed (to avoid devaluing the classes that provide it).
Expect to see more Balance Druids pursuing 3/3 Intensity to make up for the nerf to mana regen within the 5SR.

As Innervate multiplies out of combat regeneration, this may represent a substantial nerf. If they successfully handicap mana regeneration, we may see a lot more Druids using the [Glyph of Innervate] for the boost when used on themselves moreso than the benefit granted when conveyed to another. I hope that Innervate not being listed among the talents and abilities being boosted is simply an oversight.

/mourn [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] (Okay, okay. I know it's two expansions old. But we had such good times together! /sniff)

The nerf to clearcasting effects means Omen of Clarity will no longer help you get outside the 5SR, though the benefits for doing so are going to so greatly de-emphasized that I don't really see why such a change is needed.

This probably hurts Druids more than other healers because our go-to heal, Regrowth, is so much more mana intensive than that of other classes. Expect to take HPM (and therefore Nourish) into consideration in the future.

The reduction in value of Spirit will cause Restoration Druids to purposefully seek out more cloth armor, possibly those items whose regeneration comes in the form of MP5. Here is the current breakdown of 0-Resilience, 0-hit rating epics with spell power:
12 leather epics without Spirit
45 leather epics with Spirit
27 cloth epics without Spirit
66 cloth epics with Spirit

I'm sure non-Spirit cloth casters won't be big fans of this aspect of the change.

Overall, these changes are terrible for Druids. Both Spirit and Innervate are taking a big hit in usefulness, Omen of Clarity is being nerfed for mana users, a popular (if outdated) trinket is being made obsolete, and no other stat is being made more attractive to us to compensate (hello, crit and haste, I still hate you).

[fiere redfern]

So with this change we trees will basically start fighting for boomkin gear and dps caster gear, since straight mp5 will be worth more to us than spirit will be. Great. Wonder if it'll also make Living Spirit obsolete, since Intensity is being boosted with the change.

[fallingleafs]

They should just change the name nerf stick to "Druid Stick"

whaaaaa....   

[Nasanna]

Wow now you guys might actually run out of mana while healing! Notice they are nerfing mana regen for all healers except for shamans. When I was getting low on mana (maybe 40%) on a fight like 25 man Patchwerk, I noticed every other healer class was above 75% mana, even though we'd have similar healing done for the fight. Personally, I think this will bring you guys more in line with that.

I wish they went the other way and buffed mana regen instead, but I do realize that there isn't much content out there that is challenging for healers besides something like Patchwerk which requires good reaction time, and Loatheb, which is similar. Instead of spamming heals the way we do now, I think we will have to look more at overhealing and maybe not topping people off as much. I often see in a raid that I'll take 5000 points of damage and get healed for about 20,000 because all of the healers in the raid tossed me a heal. I really enjoy doing a heroic and finding that I have only 10% overhealing because I used my spells carefully, but it's much harder to coordinate like that in raids.

/end rambling thoughts

[JohnnieRat]

Ret pally says "you don't know the meaning of nerf bat"

[fallingleafs]

lol your right going from "God Like" to OP mortal must of been tough... 

[JohnnieRat]

Don't forget about what came before god mode. Progression of the ret starting from Vanilla:

pre 1.9: laughed out of all groups --> Vanilla Nax: 1 in raid is good for 3% crit --> BC: Barely Passable if played very well but still very boring to only have 3 buttons --> 3.0: Whoops!! --> 3.0.1: Knee jerk over nerfing --> 3.0.8: Good but too many crappy pallies are respeccing for ZOMG OP!!! --> 3.1: Prot will take over as PvP spec vs Holy and Ret anyways

[Arcdelad]

wait....druids heal?

[Oilslick]

All i gotta say is WOOT!

These changes mean my cobbled together resto set based on MP5 instead of spirit (for certain healtanking fights while remaining feral spec) ROXXORZ!!!

[Lynette]

Itemization for resto druid gear is gonna be messed up.

Compare...

T7.5 Legs from Naxx 25 ... [item]40462[/item]

vs.

Cloth drop from Heroic Ahn'Kahet ... [item]37622[/item]

For resto druids, the cloth looks better to me.  This can't be right - what am I missing???.


Here's another ...

T7.5 Chest from Naxx 25 ... [item]40463[/item]

vs.

Cloth drop from Naxx 10 (Noth) ... [item]39242[/item]

Besides having something special to wear when hanging out w/Arc, the cloth robe seems superior to me.


Unless Blizz re-itemizes tier gear after 3.10 comes out, resto druids should be looking at cloth mp5 gear now and banking their leather. 

[fiere redfern]

The thing to keep in mind is that we also get a good part of our Spellpower from Spirit, so I wouldn't go looking for DPS caster replacement gear just yet. My biggest concern is the extent to which Spirit regen will be nerfed. If it means I regem for mp5 and spellpower instead of what I use now, that's fine, but if I end up having to redo my entire resto set to maximize mp5, I am going to be a very angry tree.

[Nasanna]

The point of the whole nerf is to make you think more wisely about using your mana, rather than having me chain heal over all your HOTS or having all 6 healers spam heal the one dpser who takes a 2k hit with 20k worth of heals. It is to make it so everyone runs out of mana more quickly when they aren't using their spells wisely, not to make you stack mp5 instead of spirit or collect a whole new set of gear.