Druid's future

[Magicorck]

Basically the title.uh, leave your words plz what about us in future, bear ,bird ,cat ,or still as a healer?we should do what as the formal master(like as the cat druid)

[Drubarrymooer]

Bear: I want to tank Maexxna. Having barkskin in form would be amazing!

Cat: Make the WHH enchant be put on an idol or make it baseline. Also, MCP is still BIS.... wtf?! Lol.

Tree: use healing touch in tree?

Owlkin: idk. Never really enjoyed playing druid as a caster. Maybe some more leather caster gear. A better mana efficiency talent?

[Zahnfee]

Bear: i want to tank the enemy Alterac Valley team with a rejuv up
Cat: i want to 1 shot t3 tanks with a single clawstrike
Tree: i want target jumping hots that reset duration with each jump
Owl: i want moonfire to bring down the actual moon on the face of my enemies hitting them for 99% of their hp
tyvm

[Majestik51]

hahaaha

[Unsinn]

i would like to see the default group ui and raidframe display hots and hot durations so we can properly use swiftmend. also please have hots from different sources stack.

[Elesion]

What do you mean "us in the future"? Just the same as always - a diverse style of gameplay that you can tailor to your preferences. Undisputed kings of soloing content. Strong in PvP if played right (not easy to get started, but an incredibly high skill ceiling). Doing well in raid groups, close to the top in specific circumstances but never in general which is made up by lots of utility.
Every spec has very real and annoying issues, some of them balance problems, others clear bugs. But zoomed-out, looking at the big picture - you can hate on me for that, but I think druid is in a pretty good place honestly.

If you ask me for my wish list:

Bear: Make instant cast abilities consume an Omen proc even if Maul is queued. Some kind of smaller/shorter defensive cooldown would be really helpful (Barkskin would be a start). Enrage making us more vulnerable has never sat right with me when compared to the warrior skill that just has a tiny one-time cost of HP.

Cat: Cats could use a second smaller cooldown so it's not just monster mode every 6min with nothing in between, ideally something that enables cleave so cat isn't 100% stuck on single-target damage. I wish powershifting weren't mandatory to do really well, but I understand why it is - I'm just lazy I guess. Not strictly important but it's kind of a shame how we have all those bleed skills that have no utility in raids, maybe something could be done with them.

Healer: The biggest issue is clearly HoTs not stacking, which means bringing a second resto to a raid will drag both of them down substantially, which just sucks. But I don't know a good solution to this problem, I doubt there exists one. Moonglow/HT build is in a good place, as it has always been - being slow and efficient is our class identity, we shine on different fights than 1.5s heal spammers and I wouldn't want to change that. Tree I have little experience with but it seems pretty limiting (which I guess is partly the idea). I think even with the 20% discount Regrowth is not good enough to make up for the loss of HT. I don't think giving trees HT is a good solution, but I would like to see Regrowth in Treeform made more viable somehow. Trees are excellent raid healers, especially on shorter fights, so maybe they shouldn't also be perfect MT sustain healers (like Moonglow/HT) at the same time?

Moonkin: Make them 20% larger and the shifting sound 50% louder. (I don't play Balance, but I think Moonkins are cute)

Bear: i want to tank the enemy Alterac Valley team with a rejuv up
Cat: i want to 1 shot t3 tanks with a single clawstrike
Tree: i want target jumping hots that reset duration with each jump
Owl: i want moonfire to bring down the actual moon on the face of my enemies hitting them for 99% of their hp
tyvm

That doesn't seem balanced. Unless you make Rejuvenation castable in bear form or extend its duration to at least 90 seconds!

[Grizb37]

Make windfury work in forms. I mean they have their own wf in sod which is kinda stupid. But even then it's not even that strong. Would just be nice to benefit from the shamans here.

It would help bear tanks out with aggro instead of having to use MCP and give cats a little dps increase but not much that it's busted.

[Kangaraxxus]

Biggest Bear problem right now is too limited amount of items with Defense stat. Hopefully coming itemization change will fix it. And they kinda lacking buttons to press, no Barkskin from bear form, no Lifegiving Gem, no Shield Wall or Last Stand or Shield Block. Frenzied Regenration is cool but mostly usable in PvP.

Cats biggest issue imo is that MCP still better than top end polearm, and everyone is forced to farm it. So I agree that buffing bleeds to the point at least AQ40 polearm FAP will outweight AS buff from MCP - is a possible solution.

Trees are in a good shape, only problem is not stacking rejuvs but I don't think it is solvable. Ah and fix those bugs with tree form been kinda rooted after receiveng knockback from mobs like Lava Surger. Shifting in and out of Tree form does not remove slows and roots like any other form.

Moonkins got very good Itemization and talents changes recently. But they still falling back on long statick fights
compared to mages and warlocks. Thats because warlocks have three debuffs amlificating shadow damage, mages two debufs amlificating fire damage. Making Curse of Elements work on nature damage too would lessen the gap with mages but still not letting Owls to outperform them.

[Twinking]

Bear: I want to tank Maexxna. Having barkskin in form would be amazing!

Good boost for a bear tank!

[Jc473]

Healer: The biggest issue is clearly HoTs not stacking, which means bringing a second resto to a raid will drag both of them down substantially, which just sucks. But I don't know a good solution to this problem, I doubt there exists one.

Trees are in a good shape, only problem is not stacking rejuvs but I don't think it is solvable.

Not sure how they did it in TBC onwards, but having HoTs stacking (at no cost) can cause balance issues in various aspects of the game (e.g. PvP).

What about introducing some sort of punitive formula to allow HoT stacking but at the cost of efficiency?

For example (arbitrary numbers used),
1 druid (Max rank HoT) - 100 health / second
2 druids (Max rank HoT) - 70% reduction modifier on both HoTs. Output = 140 (70+70) health / second
3 druids (Max rank HoT) - 60% reduction modifier on all HoTs. Output = 180 (60+60+60) health / second
etc

So, as you stack more HoTs, the total throughput of healing increases but it becomes more and more mana inefficient.

Obviously, it would have to be more nuanced than this, but hopefully, you get the point.

[Elesion]

Biggest Bear problem right now is too limited amount of items with Defense stat. Hopefully coming itemization change will fix it. And they kinda lacking buttons to press, no Barkskin from bear form, no Lifegiving Gem, no Shield Wall or Last Stand or Shield Block. Frenzied Regenration is cool but mostly usable in PvP.

Do you mean tank-oriented items or the actual "Defense" stat? It's a nice stat to have on otherwise good items, but it's simply not worth stacking as a druid. It does considerably less for druids than it does for warriors/palas (since we can neither block nor parry), so budget-wise it's an annoyingly expensive way of adding some dodge and some crit reduction. Given the wasted cost I think we get more out of items that don't contain too much Def.

And they kinda lacking buttons to press, no Barkskin from bear form, no Lifegiving Gem, no Shield Wall or Last Stand or Shield Block. Frenzied Regenration is cool but mostly usable in PvP.

Bears do have Last Stand on Turtle or at least a comparable skill. Last Stand is 30% HP for 20s on 10min cd. Berserk is 20% HP for 20s on 6min cd. But yes, some more defensive active-skills or cooldowns would be nice.

[Spriggit]

Druids are in a pretty good spot right now, but there are some things I'd love to see here on Turtle:

Bear/cat form: Barkskin while staying in form.

Also, nerf MCP. Maybe make it a straight +atk buff instead of haste.

Tree form: Give them a non-combat rez at the end of the Healing tree; maybe having this talent would also make the CD for combat rez 90 minutes instead of 30. Would love Entangling Roots to work with tree form {Indoors} as a CC option.

Moonkin: Add a late-stage talent that allows hibernate to work on humanoids as a CC option. Would be high enough in the tree that you wouldn't be able to get both this talent and my other proposed Tree-form Indoor-Entangling roots one.

[Akos1896]

Tree: I'd allow all heals in tree form. I see no problem in tree being the 'base' healer form as f.ex. bear is the base tank form.
Moonkin: mana regen.
Cat: some itemization
Bear: some utility tanking. Warriors have disarm, can harmstring etc... And a way to see anything else then the bear's majestic rear at small places.

[Bayanni]

I'd argue druids in all forms are in mostly a good spot. Feral bear/cat does very well in their respective rolls and many players have outperformed the vast majority of other players competing in the same rolls across every raid and almost every boss fight. Normal resto is still just great and tree is honestly pretty solid, although could still use a little more mana assistance but part of that may be down to how people are gearing. Boomkin is still behind on damage but honestly is desirable to at least have on in raids currently since they can now realistically get max hit% without going deep into Naxx or killing C'Thun to get it. Their value as an FF spammer on trash should not be understated, even if the raw numbers they put up are noticeably lackluster.

If I had to change them at all:

Bear - As others have said, barkskin in form or a similar defensive CD. Although we already get two defensive CD's neither of them comes close to shield wall. Having one that reduces damage received in some way would be nice to have. If pvp is the issue, give it a high CD or make it lower the damage dealt as well.

Cat - Dps-wise they don't need a boost. Cat druids still hold top 10 dps on several Naxx bosses according to legacystats. They could really only use a bit more help on usability. The earlier suggestion of lowering cat's version of Adrenaline Rush's CD down some would be a very nice QoL change. Giving them more energy regen from other sources I would hold off on since they already get so much from powershifting I can't imagine a good way to balance it out. Only other fix I can imagine would be for stealth in general as it's pretty broken, especially in Gilneas City (why can I walk through a mob's model out of stealth but can't do it when I am stealthed?)

Resto - Moonglow is still great, and tree is very underrated as a raid healer. They can shift out if they need to HT, but maybe some tweaks to either the talent tree to give them a chance other regrowth mana reduction or just making the mana reduction in tree form a little bigger would be a big help. As it stands they usually seem to need to innervate themselves and that's not ideal at all. Also, can you give druids a regular OOC res already? Make it a set bonus from gear, a talent, whatever, but they do need this mainly for leveling dungeons as no one wants the druid to heal RFD.

Boomkin - I play them the most and have seen every scrap of high-level content multiple times over for years. I can say confidently that boomkins don't need help with mana as they stand. Wrath is just bad and needs better scaling or just more raw damage on the spell. It doesn't do as much damage as starfire, costs more mana than starfire, and has travel time. The only time you ever want to use wrath is if you're fighting a boss with high pushback, the mob is immune to arcane, or the mob takes a lot more from nature. That's it. It's incredibly niche and the new rank just adds ~50 damage a cast at an additional ~50 mana on the most mana-intensive dps spell we already have. It needs more damage.

Hurricane is crap, but I've resigned myself to never seeing it improved. It would be ideal if it's scaling were either increased by even just a little bit, say to 2% rather than just 1%, or the CD was dropped. Ideally, I'd want an idol that removed hurricane's attack speed debuff in exchange for no CD so it's not broken for raids.

Boomkins overall need more damage potential. Some have argued for higher crit percentage on their spells and I'd say that's solid in keeping with the niche of a crit-based caster. Others have asked for just flat better damage and scaling, which I would hold against on starfire, moonfire, and insect swarm. I'd personally prefer a new spell that is only castable when your target resists a spell you cast. Something that hits hard, casts fast, and is very resource-efficient, similar to a warrior's overpower or a rogue's riposte. Balancing this would be a pain since it can't be too good or hit% gear will actually not be desirable, but it needs to be good enough to justify casting over just another starfire or moonfire.

[Kangaraxxus]

Wrath is just bad and needs better scaling or just more raw damage on the spell. It doesn't do as much damage as starfire, costs more mana than starfire, and has travel time.

FYI:
Starfire DPS scaling = 1(basic cast scaling) * 1.1(moonfury talent) * 1.1(CoS) / 3(cast time) = 0.403
Wrath DPS scaling = 0.57(basic cast scaling) * 1.1(moonfury talent) / 1.5(cast time) = 0.418
Wrath is better ~ 3.7%

If you would factor in Nature's Grace talent with 20% crit chance, then it will reduce cast time on avarage by 0.1 sec
Starfire DPS scaling become 1.1 * 1.1 / 2.9 = 0.417
Wrath DPS scaling become 0.57 * 1.1 / 1.4 = 0.448
Wrath is better ~ 7.4%

[Bayanni]

Wrath isn't better based on extensive testing.

I checked my naxx numbers from when I tried wrath over starfire.

As an example, my best patchwork using wrath and full consumes was 502.8dps, and I swapped to starfire. The other attempt where I didn't swap was below 500dps. Meanwhile, I got 761.7dps using starfire without full consumes. I have multiple starfire kills above 700, many without every single consume like I tried with wrath. Like I said, on paper it should be better but in practice it's definitively and demonstrably not. Why? I don't know, but feel free to test it out yourself.

[Zulnam]

Being able to use Barkskin in bear form would be a pretty big boost to druid tanking, imo.

Also I would love if they added more glyphs, be it in-game or in the store. And maybe some without horns for Tauren (bro i'm changing my entire physiognomy what is up with the damn horns?)

a crow glyph for travel form would also be baller (doesn't have to fly, just hover a bit above the ground). I would buy that bad boy in a second.

Other than that i don't think druid needs much tbh.

The lvl 50 quest item rewards are also pretty mediocre. Many classes get iconic items here that are either a big boost at that level or even beyond. Compared, the druid rewards are meh.
Maybe have all 3 rewards be weapons and the feral one be a weapon with feral AP to better highlight the recent changes made in this regard.
But whatevs. Druids are too chill to worry about loot.

[Elesion]

Starfire DPS scaling = 1(basic cast scaling) * 1.1(moonfury talent) * 1.1(CoS) / 3(cast time) = 0.403
Wrath DPS scaling = 0.57(basic cast scaling) * 1.1(moonfury talent) / 1.5(cast time) = 0.418
Wrath is better ~ 3.7%

Is Moonfury one of those rare talents that apply after spell power? Most of the similarly worded talents only apply to the base spell damage. Like I said above - I don't play Balance, but I know from resto talents that you absolutely have to test these things on TWoW. Identically worded talents sometimes apply only to the base spell and sometimes to the final result after spell/healing power.

If you would factor in Nature's Grace talent with 20% crit chance, then it will reduce cast time on avarage by 0.1 sec
Starfire DPS scaling become 1.1 * 1.1 / 2.9 = 0.417
Wrath DPS scaling become 0.57 * 1.1 / 1.4 = 0.448
Wrath is better ~ 7.4%

Doesn't work like that. Global Cooldown is 1.5s. Nature's Grace reduces the cast time of talented Wrath to 1.0, but it doesn't increase dps since you still have to wait until the Global Cooldown is finished. At most you can use Wrath to fish for NG procs, then switch to Starfire once you have it.

[Kangaraxxus]

Is Moonfury one of those rare talents that apply after spell power?

It was changed to work like this on TWoW

Global Cooldown is 1.5s

Again, changed on TWoW. The wording is that NG proc will reduce cast time and GCD by 0.5 sec. And it didn't really work like that first year after new talents patch. But in patch 17 they just changed GCD of Wrath specificly. You can test it by spamming rank1 which should be 1s cast if you have Improved Wrath talents.

[Elesion]

Is Moonfury one of those rare talents that apply after spell power?

It was changed to work like this on TWoW

Global Cooldown is 1.5s

Again, changed on TWoW. The wording is that NG proc will reduce cast time and GCD by 0.5 sec. And it didn't really work like that first year after new talents patch. But in patch 17 they just changed GCD of Wrath specificly. You can test it by spamming rank1 which should be 1s cast if you have Improved Wrath talents.

Awesome, thanks for letting me know! Those are great changes for Moonkins, I'll really have to check it out one day :)

[Elesion]

Global Cooldown is 1.5s

Again, changed on TWoW. The wording is that NG proc will reduce cast time and GCD by 0.5 sec. And it didn't really work like that first year after new talents patch. But in patch 17 they just changed GCD of Wrath specificly. You can test it by spamming rank1 which should be 1s cast if you have Improved Wrath talents.

I'm confused. You say the GCD reduction works. People in the Balance Druid Spell Ideas thread say the same. And yet 2 hours ago a developer has posted on the official TWoW Discord in the Druid channel:

Just a heads up, balance druids, we've 100% confirmed that the attempted GCD reduction we tried to do with Improved Wrath with patch 1.16.1 just does not work.

The client will make it look like the GCD is smaller with the radial timer ticking faster, but the fact of the matter is that client also still refuses to send another spell until the 1.5s has completed.

This has confused both staff and players for such a long time, but yes, we've confirmed it now and so we've taken this entry down from the website's list of Druid changes.

Perhaps with class changes 2 we'll look at another angle to help make Wrath keep up or have a niche versus Starfire.

What gives?

[Wafflecrusher]

Bear: Make instant cast abilities consume an Omen proc even if Maul is queued.

This please god. This has got to be a bug. It's frustrating as hell when tanking a boss who has some slow ability, getting a proc, then being unable to use my instant attack because maul is queued.

[Drubarrymooer]

Bear: Make instant cast abilities consume an Omen proc even if Maul is queued.

This please god. This has got to be a bug. It's frustrating as hell when tanking a boss who has some slow ability, getting a proc, then being unable to use my instant attack because maul is queued.

Its because the maul was queued up and its on next attack, so the maul will be free instead of say savage bite. A good work around is to have an alert or pay attention to your CC/OOC proc, press escape, then press savage bite, or whatever move you want to use it on. Pressing escape clears the maul queue and activating any other attack ability should instantly retarget and cast savage bite.

[Kangaraxxus]

I'm confused. You say the GCD reduction works. People in the Balance Druid Spell Ideas thread say the same. And yet 2 hours ago a developer has posted on the official TWoW Discord in the Druid channel:

Just a heads up, balance druids, we've 100% confirmed that the attempted GCD reduction we tried to do with Improved Wrath with patch 1.16.1 just does not work.

The client will make it look like the GCD is smaller with the radial timer ticking faster, but the fact of the matter is that client also still refuses to send another spell until the 1.5s has completed.

This has confused both staff and players for such a long time, but yes, we've confirmed it now and so we've taken this entry down from the website's list of Druid changes.

Perhaps with class changes 2 we'll look at another angle to help make Wrath keep up or have a niche versus Starfire.

What gives?

I don't know really.
Here a test by me First I'm spamming rank1 1 sec wraths and it goes pretty smooth unles i do NG procced 0.5 sec cast, next cast comes with a delay. Then i switch to rank9 1.5 sec casts and it goes as smooth even after NG procced 1 sec cast.
I thought maybe it has something to do with me using nampower.dll which is intended to fix exactly that behaviour of client. But disabling that dll and doing tests i didn't notice any difference

[Jc473]

I just tested it myself (I'm in Europe with next to no ping) and it is working exactly as intended. I messaged Turt Reynolds on discord and they suggest that the root of the cause appears to be Nampower.

[Tomberry]

Barkskin in bear form would be nice.

And remove the MCP from the game.
It is stupid, annoying and was never intended to be abused as a feral endgame weapon.

[Bigsmerf]

Barkskin in bear form would be nice.

And remove the MCP from the game.
It is stupid, annoying and was never intended to be abused as a feral endgame weapon.

It'd be cool to have it re-implemented into the feral toolkit somehow. Maybe nerf the attack speed buff to 30% or so, slap it onto tiger's fury, maybe make it cost a little more, and boom, it pretty much balances itself out... Unless my idea is dumb, then maybe yeah. Barkskin in ANY form would be good but PvE players are really only going to want it as bear, unless you're doing open world/solo content then I suppose having it in cat is also great.

[Drubarrymooer]

Barkskin in bear form would be nice.

And remove the MCP from the game.
It is stupid, annoying and was never intended to be abused as a feral endgame weapon.

I don't agree with the term "abusing" MCP. I mean the devs felt it to be an important part of feral gameplay so much they put in a custom engineering version. I farmed the dungeons for the recipes and crafting mats, crafted it, enchanted it, farmed the battery recipe and craft several hundred a month for raids. It's not something I "abuse". It was put in the game by the twow devs as part of my toolkit. I've spent hours decking out my feral main, swimming gear and buffs, getting macros to work, etc. Using words like "abusing" implies I have or am doing something bad or wrong. I've spent a lot of hours getting decent at playing feral, even through gear and stat nerfs. I don't necessarily think you meant it with ill intent btw. Just saying its part of the feral meta, the devs here added a custom version and blizz didn't nerf it when it was being used.

It'd be cool to have it re-implemented into the feral toolkit somehow. Maybe nerf the attack speed buff to 30% or so, slap it onto tiger's fury, maybe make it cost a little more, and boom, it pretty much balances itself out... Unless my idea is dumb, then maybe yeah. Barkskin in ANY form would be good but PvE players are really only going to want it as bear, unless you're doing open world/solo content then I suppose having it in cat is also great.

That's not bad but TF would have to last while shifting in order for it to work power shifting. If we're talking taking power shifting out of the game, we either need a new weapon or it needs to be balanced out in abilities and talents. I didn't SS it but Eye of Nerub + full buffs and consumes while wearing full BIS puts me firmly in the middle of the pack of DPS. Patchwerk with MCP instead of Eye of Nerub puts me in the top 5. I've been number 1 on DPS twice on patch.


I think barkskin castable in bear and better AP scaling with swipe and....maybe swipe in cat form, would ask be welcome positive feral changes that wouldn't break pvp.

[Bigsmerf]

Barkskin in bear form would be nice.

It'd be cool to have it re-implemented into the feral toolkit somehow. Maybe nerf the attack speed buff to 30% or so, slap it onto tiger's fury, maybe make it cost a little more, and boom, it pretty much balances itself out... Unless my idea is dumb, then maybe yeah. Barkskin in ANY form would be good but PvE players are really only going to want it as bear, unless you're doing open world/solo content then I suppose having it in cat is also great.

That's not bad but TF would have to last while shifting in order for it to work power shifting. If we're talking taking power shifting out of the game, we either need a new weapon or it needs to be balanced out in abilities and talents. I didn't SS it but Eye of Nerub + full buffs and consumes while wearing full BIS puts me firmly in the middle of the pack of DPS. Patchwerk with MCP instead of Eye of Nerub puts me in the top 5. I've been number 1 on DPS twice on patch.


I think barkskin castable in bear and better AP scaling with swipe and....maybe swipe in cat form, would ask be welcome positive feral changes that wouldn't break pvp.

Yeah, overall gonna just sum most of this up with "I agree".

I only just adopted powershifting and MCP usage here on turtle, as when I'd previously played (classic 2019), it was MUCH more casual and there was zero concern for any sort of meta or gear requirements. Of course, I played a warrior, almost exclusively fury if I remember correctly, so hit cap was important, but I had no idea what that even was, just that having hit gear was good gear.

Anywhosie, 'nuff about the life story. Yeah, ever since I started powershifting and using tiger's fury (I tend to mostly only pop it at the start of pulls because energy is regenerated before combat starts and I don't have wolfshead enchant yet) the atk power buff dropping whenever I shifted out was kinda annoying. Of course, the attack SPEED remains, and that's cool, but I'd save a LOT of energy reapplying less often. That is if I even have enough energy to reapply what with shredding or clawing most of the time.

[Inovatu]

you dont need MCP for Cat in the Lategame, if you can get Eye of Nerub use it, stack Crit, keep your Attackspeed Buff up and powershift and you do fine Dmg, if you dont believe me, just look me up on Legacyplayer

[Templar85]

I posted my ideas here. I keep updating my first post with improvements viewtopic.php?p=83965#p83965 Many of the ideas mentioned here and in my version are similar but some of them nobody mentioned here, but a serious tanking druid issue. Dodge chance. Tank druid can get 25%-30% dodge chance and being hit less means less rage. I suggested a new ability which can be used after a dodge and causing high threat.

[Drubarrymooer]

you dont need MCP for Cat in the Lategame, if you can get Eye of Nerub use it, stack Crit, keep your Attackspeed Buff up and powershift and you do fine Dmg, if you dont believe me, just look me up on Legacyplayer

I know who you are. . Funny enough...I never actually looked at your armory. Idk why. You run kiss and slayers? I haven't actually gotten swift execution. I just know in my current build I'm far behind you and verwin most fights. Thank you for mentioning it.

[Inovatu]

Dont have Kiss, wouldnt use it as Cat anyway, only for Bear
I play longer Fights with ES-Trinket and Slayers (when i can use it twice)
or with ES-Trinket and BhB for short fights
In Naxx i go with ES-Trinket + Kel Trinket