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Ekard12379
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re: Druid Cataclysm Changes

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Red-able "Blue" Post woot!
In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm we'll be making several changes to class talents and abilities. Here you will get a glimpse into some of the changes we have in store for the druid. The information you're about to read is certainly not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview of some of the exciting new things to come. Let's kick things off by checking out some of the new druid spells and abilities!

New Druid Abilities

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.

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.

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.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to the new abilities listed above, we intend to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics with which you're already familiar. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of our goals for each spec.


* 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.
* 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.
* 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.


New Talents and Talent Changes


* 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.
* 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.
* 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 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.


Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Balance
Spell Damage
Spell Haste
Eclipse

Feral (Cat)
Melee Damage
Melee Critical Damage
Bleed Damage

Feral (Bear)
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
Savage Defense

Restoration
Healing
Meditation
HoT Scale Healing

Eclipse: We are moving Eclipse from a talent into a core mechanic of the class and making it less random. Balance druids will have a new UI element that shows a sun and a moon. Whenever they cast an Arcane spell, it will move the UI closer to the sun, and buff their Nature damage. Whenever they cast a Nature spell, it will move the UI closer to the moon, and buff their Arcane damage. The gameplay intention is to alternate Arcane and Nature spells (largely Starfire and Wrath) to maintain the balance.

Bleed Damage and Savage Defense: Feral druids will receive two sets of passive bonuses depending on whether the druid is in cat or bear form. Bleed Damage will be improved for cats. Savage Defense is the current bear mechanic for converting crits into damage absorption and will be improved for bears.

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.

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's unbuffed health. For boss encounters we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Feral tree and the druid is in bear form -- these values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Feral tree and are in bear form, so you won't see Balance, Restoration, or Feral druids in cat form running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today -- there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so the Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is that all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and ask that you provide your initial thoughts and feedback on what was presented here. Please keep in mind, what you've just reviewed is a work in progress and as we move closer to the Cataclysm beta, you'll see these changes as well as others continue to develop in response to testing and feedback.


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re: Re: Druid Cataclysm Changes

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Tyluv (Ekard12379) wrote:
Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so the Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is that all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.
[/color]


Woot! So, does this mean that Ty is getting nerfed or I'm getting buffed? Sadly, sounds more like bears are getting nerfed as one of their niche features (nice dps) will have the gap lowered between the other tank classses.

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re: Druid Cataclysm Changes

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Quote:
Bears need to be pushing a few more buttons just so the contrast between tanking and damage-dealing is not so steep.


i haven't tanked a lot on a Ev, but a ranged silence would be awesome I think. Also, the savage defense mastery talent converting crits to damage absorbtion could be really cool - depending on how they itemize bear gear.

I'm not sure I like the idea of "dumbing down" the kitty rotation. I like being rewarded for better play. There is still plenty of room in there to screw it up even with a buffed mangle. They may just be making it less punishing if for whatever reason you cant go behind the target.
Ekard12379
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re: Druid Cataclysm Changes

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Quote:
Also, the savage defense mastery talent converting crits to damage absorbtion could be really cool - depending on how they itemize bear gear.


This is not something new. We already have that as an exisiting talent...now they're just making it a required point total in the feral tree to get it.....


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re: Re: Druid Cataclysm Changes

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Belgarion. wrote:
Woot! So, does this mean that Ty is getting nerfed or I'm getting buffed? Sadly, sounds more like bears are getting nerfed as one of their niche features (nice dps) will have the gap lowered between the other tank classses.


I hope you're getting buffed somehow as that's the only "advantage" bears have over another tanking class - Our higher dps makes us the best at single target aggro.... We can't parry and we don't have an official "shield block". We have Savage Defense, but that's based directly off our attack power and crit% - In other words, to be effective dmg mitigators with Savage Defense, we are required to have higher dps because we're required to have higher ap and crit% vs the other tanks. If they nerf my dps, then they nerf my "shield" damage mitigation. Add to that the fact that we have higher health because our dmg mitigation is crap compared to the other 3 options of DK, Pally and Warrior to begin with and then they're going to even out tank hps, then why would anyone want to take a bear or to a lesser extent a DK as a tank? We'll be harder to heal comparatively......

I'll be keeping an eye on how they implement the changes to shields and parry to see if they even out in terms of weights and how they equate the dmg absorption of Savage Defense, but so far this sounds like it could go way wrong really quick for bears and possibly for dk's as well since pallies and warriors have dodge, shield block and parry vs only 2 of 3 for bears and dk's. If it's similar weights to all 3 stats and bears and dk's can get twice as much of the relevant stat, then we may be ok....


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re: Druid Cataclysm Changes

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Yay Finally OP Trees are finally getting hit big grin this means that you will finally be able to crowd control them and snare them while effectively cutting off there heals big grin.

And what they are doing is buffing the other trees through Mastery in such a way called vengeance.

Vengeance can be thought of as this.

Warrior,Paladin, and DK take 5000 Damage and in turn get a small buff that gives them 500 AP.

They are saying that druids will be affected by vengeance also but

5000 Damage will equal to for a Bear 350 AP.

So your not getting nerfed and you will still have the Highest AP but you wont be Getting the same amount of AP from vengeance as the other Tanking classes.
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re: Tree of Life model changes

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Good grief!

The ToL looks like a mutant Fraggle-plant. A Muppet! When things get rough in a raid - we can go Muppet and cheer everyone up!

Hey - but at least we get to show off our weapon! I'm just glad i never look up from my raid frames .. hehe.
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