WOTLK Druid Changes Leak - Alpha testing

[Arcdelad]

...and you thought druids were OP'ed now? =)

How about giving us shadowstep, MORE ARMOR, a slowing poisen, and letting us tank better vs magic?

Oh...and since death knights wont have druid armor levels (and blizz doesnt want their new toy to fail at tanking), blizz is removing crushing blows from bosses (Widely seen as the big weakness of druid tanks)...

Restoration
Improved Mark of the Wild - Reduced to 2 points from 5. (Note: The new rank of MotW has a significant increase in power, 750 armor, 37 stats and 54 resists untalented)

Nature's Focus - Reduced to 3 points from 5, moved to 1st tier from second.

Subtlety - Reduced to 3 points from 5. Now only affects Restoration spells rather than all spells.

*NEW* Master Shapeshifter - (Tier 3, Natural Shapeshifter required) Increases physical damage done in Bear form by 2%/4%, increases critical strike chance in Cat form by 2%/4%.
The only change in the Resto tree interesting for ferals, this talent seems a good deal for only 2 points. However, not everyone picks up Nat. Shifter, making the cost alot higher.

Omen of Clarity - Now a passive ability rather than a 30 minute self-buff.

Feral
Faerie Fire (Feral) - Moved from tier 5 to tier 3.

*NEW* Primal Precision - (Tier 4, Sharpened Claws required) Increases expertise by 5/10. Refunds 30%/60% of the energy cost of finishers that didn't land.

Feral Charge - Moved from tier 3 to tier 5. Now also usable in Cat form.
Effectively swapped places with FFF, this change is most likely intended to block access to Feral Charge for Resto-PvP builds. For Ferals, it gives a long-wanted spell-interrupt in Cat form with the obvious minimum range limitation.

*NEW* Reinforced Hide - (Tier Reduces spell damage and increases armor contribution from items taken by 4%/7%/10%.
The extra armor-scaling might indicate that Rogue and Feral leather will be more unified into one group of items.

Survival of the Fittest - Crit reduction increased to 2%/4%/6%

*NEW* Primal Aggression - (Tier 9) Increases critical strike chance of Maul and Shred by 5%/10%/15%.

*NEW* Improved Mangle - (Tier 9, Mangle required) Reduces the cooldown of Mangle (Bear) by 7%/14%/20% and the energy cost of Mangle (Cat) by 2/4/6.

*NEW* Infected Wounds - (Tier 10) Shred, Maul and Mangle have a 20%/40%/60%/80%/100% chance to stack a disease (stacks to 5) on the target reducing movement and cast speed by 10% per stack. Lasts 12 seconds.

*NEW* Berserk - (Tier 11) 100% increased energy regeneration in Cat form. 20% increased total health in Bear form. Can't be stopped unless killed. 20 seconds.
Effectively a combination of 3 popular talents from other classes, 2 of which are active at the same time depending on form. This talent seems quite powerful.

A total of 18 points worth of new talents that interest Ferals has been added. With only 10 more levels, this will force people to make some choices. Some people will be displeased and call the tree bloated. Others will see it as a means to diversify. In any case, it will allow for spec-variations that cater towards different roles, PvE Cat, PvE Bear, PvP, etc...

Abilities

New abilities
No information so far on brand new trainer-learned abilities.

Changed abilities / new ranks
The non-scaling damage component on alot of the Feral abilities has increased significantly. To name two examples, the top rank of Ravage has 1771 bonus damage in WotLK, while the current top rank only has 514. The new top rank of Maul will add 578 damage to your attack versus 176 of the current top rank.

Mangle (Bear) now also increases the damage dealt by Maul by 30%, but no longer increases the damage dealt by Shred.

Tiger's Fury no longer costs energy, but has a 30 second cooldown.

Ferocious Bite: the energy-to-damage conversion now scales with AP.

The increase of the non-scaling components can be seen as a way for Blizzard to make gear-differences have less influence on a players power. At least, until level 80 gear-progression, where the higher item-levels will undoubtebly cause the scaling components of many abilities to dominate again.

All together there are a few interesting things to be found in these new talents. First of all, the lack of scaling doesn't seem to have been properly addressed. Cat crit chance will go up even more, but there is no feedback-mechanism to improve our scaling with stats like haste.

The end-tier Feral talents seem very well suited to improving Feral PvP. A slow is something alot of Ferals have asked for in PvP and Berserk provides the much sought-after DPS-cooldown as well as an anti-CC mechanism.

Please note that none of this is final.

[Tolwen]

In other words, we're getting our /God mode back

[fiere redfern]

I'd have to toy with the new feral tree, but it seems to me that:

A total of 18 points worth of new talents that interest Ferals has been added. With only 10 more levels, this will force people to make some choices. Some people will be displeased and call the tree bloated. Others will see it as a means to diversify. In any case, it will allow for spec-variations that cater towards different roles, PvE Cat, PvE Bear, PvP, etc...

means we will lose a bit of our versatility as far as swapping from one roll to another mid-raid goes. Though that kitty-form charge is going to be interesting XD

Ooh, found one! http://wotlk.wikidot.com/druid

[Arcdelad]

Could have sworn "Lock Jaw" was already called "Maim"...hrmm.....lol

Good info fiere!

[un4]

[blizzard]The extra armor-scaling might indicate that Rogue and Feral leather will be more unified into one group of items.[/blizzard]
You mean like my [item]Shoulderpads of Assassination[/item] that I had to run SH for sixty-some odd times because I lost them to feral and resto druids every time they dropped?

/rant

[fiere redfern]

Resto druids too?! O.o

Jerks 

[Arcdelad]

un4:

[un4]

Arc:

[Tolwen]

lol

[Arcdelad]

I think the change I want most is just simply cosmetic - we need to be able to differentiate ourselves from every other druid. Fur color, hair style, size....something....I dont want to look like fiere or dep or tol all the time!

[Nixphire]

I think the devs said something when the war bear came out about having some kind of armor showing when in forms. /shrug

[Tolwen]

I think the devs said something when the war bear came out about having some kind of armor showing when in forms. /shrug

That would be cool! , we would probably look like the bears in Golden Compass though.

[Air]

I think the change I want most is just simply cosmetic - we need to be able to differentiate ourselves from every other druid. Fur color, hair style, size....something....I dont want to look like fiere or dep or tol all the time!

I think a pink tutu would be great for when you switch into bear form. 

[Arcdelad]

that would be great air....then it would be even more embarassing when i beat you in a duel =)