Cataclysm Class Preview: Druid

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.


Cataclysm Stat & System Changes: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23425636414&sid=1

Mastery System Preview: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23710210871&sid=1

Q u o t e:
No DoTs benefiting from haste and crit?

Most hots and dots, including druid ones, will benefit from haste and crit. The exceptions are things like Deep Wounds and Ignite, which are already tied to crit.

We knew changing Tree of Life to a cooldown was going to be controversial. There was just no way a change this big would be unanimously accepted. My apologies if being a tree was what really drew you to the class.

We didn't add new rotational spells to Restoration or Feral cat because, good lord, you have enough buttons already. We tried hard with Cataclysm to not add new spells just because. The specs that got new spells were ones we think had big holes in their rotation. You'll still get new talents and mechanics so I expect there will be a lot to learn when the big game-changing patch rolls around.

Q u o t e:
Are cats receiving a similar change for Savage Roar and their UI, or is this going to be completely rogue specific?

It will most likely apply to cats as well.

Q u o t e:
Has there been any consideration on giving druids cat form at an earlier level? Similar to how hunters will start with a pet at level 1, and shamans getting a melee attack at 3. Also hoping paladins get an extra button to push at earlier levels, as well.

It won't be super low level, but we might switch the levels at which you get cat and bear.

Q u o t e:

Does this mean that druids can no longer have a hybrid Cat / Bear spec and would need to spec specifically?

Or would said bonuses only apply depending on what form your in at the time?

It applies to the form you are in at the time.

Q u o t e:
In short, are we trading the current Tree bonuses for a throughput cooldown, or are we gaining a throughput cooldown? Gaining one is fine--for all that the preview listed "no new spells," you guys are clearly on top of that (regrowth crit to an AoE heal and a throughput cooldown, at least). Trading bonuses for a throughput cooldown, however, is simply at odds with HoT healing, which is all about consistency.

This is what we're trying to do. On live today, druids are balanced around healing in tree form, meaning they give up a lot of utility just to be as good as other healers. When Tree of Life is a cooldown, then you'll be balanced healing in night elf, troll, worgen or tauren form, and then you'll be more powerful when in tree form. The nice thing about cooldowns is the difference can be pretty significant while active.

Q u o t e:
There is a large difference between "controversial" and being close to unanimously hated.

You don't have any evidence of that though. Even within this thread, there are plenty of players who like the change. It's not like we design around public vote anyway, but if you look at the old "Is Tree form fun?" thread, there were a lot of players on both sides of the argument. It was a change we wanted to do anyway, but we tested the water to see if the change would be unanimously hated. We concluded there were plenty of players in favor of it. I don't know if the split was 50 / 50 or what, but it doesn't really matter because it wasn't a poll. It was just to take the community's temperature.

I'm not saying you don't have a right to feel passionately about any of this. It's fine, understandable even, if you do. I'm just asking you not to assume that everyone must naturally feel the same way you do.

We think there will be more reason to cast Healing Touch (perhaps with some number tweaks) for when you need to heal someone who has a real health deficit.

Druids don't have perfect analogs to the priest heals, but you can imagine Regrowth as the Flash Heal, Nourish as the heal, and Healing Touch as the greater heal. Lifebloom is something you'd put on a tank before healing with Nourish or Healing Touch (which might even refresh the stack). Rejuv will still be good for the reason hots are good. Wild Growth is still a group heal. Tranquility is an emergency heal, and we'll change it to act more like Divine Hymn.

Q u o t e:
How will the Eclipse Bar factor in how much it shifts?


Damage Done?
Cast Times?
Cast Completions?
Mana Costs?

We're going to try a few different things and see what feels the best. Spells cast is the simplest system, but we also get a little more dynamic system if it was damage done or even if just crits moved the meter more. We still don't want a rotation that is just 1111222211112222.

We might (*might*) consider a minor glyph that kept the visual of the old tree form in some fashion even when not using the Tree of Life cooldown.

Q u o t e:
GC, please just shoot us straight here. Many of us are adults, and we can accept it if the change is PVP-related as is being speculated on the boards... but your stated rationale in making this change currently counters everything you've previously posted about making gameplay about more interesting choices.

It's not for PvP reasons. We just don't think healing forms are a good idea.

Now if you want to talk about PvP, I'd agree that going tree was an interesting decision back when it came with huge penalties (like movement). That wasn't very fun to actually play in though so we kept chipping away at the differences between being in tree form and not being in tree form until we were left to wonder what the point was. We asked players on these boards and elsewhere how attached they were to the form, and found some loved it, some hated it, and some were indifferent.

I don't fault you at all if you loved the form though and I'm sorry if this makes playing a druid less fun for you.

Q u o t e:
Q: What is it that makes them unique compared to all other classes?


Q u o t e:

Ghostcrawler: Forms is the big answer. The druid versions are more meaningful than other class equivalents in the game, such as Stances or Presences. One could argue they are too meaningful, because players sometimes don’t want to use any other form but “theirs." Perhaps the most unusual facet of the druid forms is that they use three different resource systems depending on the form, and these are not reset when they shift. A leveling druid can shift out of cat form to heal themselves, then shift into bear form while their mana regenerates.

I'm not sure why this keeps getting brought up as some kind of logical inconsistency that is supposed to mean we aren't allowed to change our minds.

Plus, if you really read the quote, I'm talking about two things:

1) Hey, maybe staying in a single form all the time isn't really that good for the class.

2) Druids use three different resources: mana, energy and rage depending on what form they're in.

Part of our logic here is that tree form doesn't actually do enough. It doesn't change your resource system. It doesn't give you new tree-only abilities. It can't let you be a better healer than the priests, paladins or shaman, and we keep adding things to the list of what druids can do as a tree because it's not fun to be so limited. We started asking ourselves what we were really gaining.

Q u o t e:
As it's you saying the same thing over and over again. This is a subject people (both for and against) feel very strongly about. This is a forum to discuss such things.

It's fine to debate things, but we do ask you please not to spam. If you make a post that isn't adding anything new to the conversation, then you're just increasing the page length of the thread, making it less likely players will read all the way to the end.

Q u o t e:
The same can be said about moonkins, yet this isn't happening, why? it appears a double standard.

I've said this before, but we don't think giving up everything (hyperbole, but you get the idea) to go into a dps form is that big a sacrifice, because you're being compared to and presumably want to fill the role of classes and specs that do nothing but dps. It's not a big deal for a druid to give up healing to dps like a mage, because the mage can't heal.

But giving up abilities to heal is tough when priests, paladins and shaman don't have to. If this was a single player game, we'd probably do something like say druids have to fully commit themselves to healing, but if they do, they'll be 10% better at healing than any other class. In an MMO, it doesn't feel fair to do that. So instead you make sacrifices just so you can heal as well as everyone else. But that ends up feeling unfair, so we give you most of the abilities you'd typically ever want to cast, and pretty soon the Tree of Life talent is just changing your visual. If it was super compelling gameplay, we'd probably be talking instead about ways to keep it.

Q u o t e:
so when a warrior puts 40 points in arms he gets 40 points worth of melee damage and armor pen and since its the most points in the three trees he gets the mastery. the remaining points in fury gets him 31 points worth of melee damage and melee haste but he doesnt get the mastery. even if its 51 and 20 you still get something. looks like you dont have to put all points in one tree b/c the other trees give you bonus's right?

so when a cat druid puts 52 points in feral tree he gets 52 points of melee damage and melee critical strike damage and since its the most he gets the mastery. The other in resto tree, b/c currently there is 19 points worth of useful feral stuff in the resto tree, he gets 19 points worth of improved healing and mana regen. Is that right? sounds good for pvp but crapy for pve.

Hibernicus, in your warrior example, he only gets the three bonuses for the points spent in Arms. The only thing he gets from Fury are those, presumably juicy or he wouldn't have gone there, talents.

In your druid example, that's a Feral druid (because he spent the most points in Feral) and he doesn't get any Resto bonuses. He may get OOC though, which aint bad.

Q u o t e:
Great, good to know what we care about doesnt matter.

That's not at all what I said though. Player opinions matter a lot. That doesn't mean that we let players vote on game changes. If we just made whatever changes players wanted, I'm not sure you or many other players would still be playing. :)

Q u o t e:
Hey GC can you expand on what Bashiok mentioned about changing the feral cat damage rotation to be slightly more forgiving?
He gave a few examples but I am still curious about it.

The recent Mangle change is a good example. Other candidates include letting Rake last longer, changing Mangle's damage such that it's not such a gigantic dps loss not to Shred, and / or changing the bonus of Savage Roar so that it's not such a crippling dps loss if it falls off. Using Savage Roar after a target with cps on it has died will help too.

We still want the John Madden crowd to be able to try and maximize their dps. We just want players not playing at that level to not be so far behind (though behind is fine).

Q u o t e:
So you're making ToL a CD but what are you going to do about the fact that ToL gives us buffs and gives us a SP bonus that brings our SP equal to other healing classes. Without that buff our spell power is below all other casters are you planning on either raising the amount of sp granted by gear or giving us a talent that gives us that buff

We can put those buffs anywhere in the tree or remove them and just balance around it. Virtually every number in Cataclysm has to change anyway to support new character levels, health pools, combat ratings, going to a single spell rank, etc. There's no reason to worry about how this would affect your relative power in today's live build. At this stage I would focus on mechanics or design intent, not actual numbers. The numbers will start to be more important as we get closer to ship.

Q u o t e:
To any blizz personal. It took Druids less than 5 hours to make the number of 70 pages of posts "MAJORITY" of which are on topic of the loss of ToL form. All of your other classes took 12 to 24 hours to reach this lvl of posting, and those posts were no where near so focused.

I know I looked at the numbers, I have been reading and responding for a section of it. The numbers and time are there its your choice to ignore them.

Ghostcrawler thank you for your time. Somethings you cant crawl away from.

I would not ever try to interpret volume of posts on any topic on the Internet as meaningful data.

While there have been some heartfelt posts in the past dozens of pages, there were also a lot of the same people posting over and over (and some using different characters on the same account).

Unless you have a way to make a scientific poll of a reasonable numbers of WoW players (and I'm not even sure we could do that, being honest), it's hard to come to any kind of conclusion except that some players feel one way and some feel another way. That's going to be outcome of almost any heated discussion though, which is why we tend to go with the logic and reason in individual posts and not try to infer anything from quantity.

Q u o t e:
thats give your audience what they want.

But tragically we can't do that because what you want and what some of these other folks want is diametrically at odds. If you have a reason for why we should listen to you but ignore them, I have yet to hear it. :(

Q u o t e:
As I've said not ten minutes ago, constant polymorph immunity, 200% armor bonus, 15% bonus SP from spirit and 10% extra healing is kind of a big deal. Putting that on a CD is going to make an impact on Druid healing.

None of those things need to be tied to the Tree of Life form though, and in fact they are all examples of the kind of passive bonuses we're trying to winnow out from talent trees.

Q u o t e:
Other from the universal healing changes Resto Druids have absolutely NOTHING to relearn or spend time to master unlike the other healing class notes released.

Let me know how that Rejuv spamming with WG on cooldown works out for you at 85.

Q u o t e:
I totally understand not building a game based on player votes that would be a horrible idea...but a few things I try to do as a designer is to clarify the changes a little better rather than say "hey this is what were doing like it or not".

I don't feel like I do that often though. I've made probably dozens of posts by now attempting to explain where we're coming from and even trying to get players to focus a little on what their concerns really are.

Best of luck with your game gig though. I mean that sincerely. :)

Q u o t e:
Are the Tree (on CD) and Moonkin forms being updated? I don't need details, I just would like to know if I can expect to see the same Owl form I have now in the next expac or if we finally will get more polygons at least.

We would like to. Those are on the list, but they're expensive tasks because they require so much art time. You might be willing to have one fewer new boss models in order to get the forms updated, but if we did that and we added a new demon for warlocks and a couple of new models for other class needs here and there and pretty soon all of those bosses are going to end up looking pretty recycled. :(

It will stay on the list though. If we don't get to it for 4.0, there's always 4.1.

Q u o t e:
You really want us to be excited that we get to cast something we already have? While we watch everyone else get new and shiny toys? Really? Do you just rewrap your children's xmas presents year after year and expect them to be excited they go the same thing as last year?

You'd just be here in a few months posting "What's the point of Mega Moss? It's too similar to Regrowth and doesn't heal as much as Nourish." By which I mean there's not point giving a new heal to Resto just so your bar looks a little different if you're not going to actually use the spell. Seeing as how many druids don't use much beyond Rejuv and WG today, I'd say we have plenty of heals to find homes for before we worry about adding new ones.

There will be several new talents to consider. The Resto tree still has a lot of passive bonuses in it to be replaced.

Q u o t e:
Our deep Mastery bonus for Balance is Eclipse. What exactly will the bonus be?

What if we shape-shift or stop casting for awhile- does the Eclipse bonus decay or disappear?

The bonus will be increased damage to Nature spells or to Arcane spells. We're not sure of the magnitude yet, but it will need to be hefty enough for you to actually want to switch.

It will need some kind of decay -- we don't want you farming naga or whatever before you step into the raid with a full meter -- but it shouldn't decay fast enough that you find normal encounter movement very troubling (for that reason anyway).

Q u o t e:
My post also addresses your counterpoint. Remove the poly immunity, shift the these-effects-are-only-to-bring-you-up-to-par-with-other-healers off the talent, and reduce the offensive restriction (to, for example, no offensive arcane spells). All of the mechanics reasons are thus addressed. A healing aura (which wouldn't stack, and therefore isn't 100% required) and additional armor (not always useful in PvE, and a tradeoff in PvP) remain, as well as the flavor of each druid role having its own form. The only remaining reason to remove it? Showing off gear.

But under your argument, the only reason to keep it is flavor. You have a talent that essentially says "gives the druid flavor" because all of the actual bonuses are baked in elsewhere. That's our actual concern about the talent: increasingly it doesn't do anything except change your art.

Q u o t e:
Sounds grim, I didn't know Blizzard-Activision was putting you guys in such tight resource-starved situation that you couldn't allocate time/money/people to such extra task.

Oh, please. :) Cataclysm has an enormous amount of content and we have to prioritize everything we want to get done. If we never stack ranked tasks then you wouldn't be getting Cataclysm until 2014. Heck, you'd be lucky to have LK by now. :)

We still operate under "When it's ready," but sometimes it's nice to, you know, actually ship a product.

Q u o t e:
If Mega Moss wasn't a watered down version of a current spell - we wouldn't complain about it.

The reason we didn't like Nourish is because we already had 2 direct healing spells.

Why is it hard to do away with something we don't use that much and give us something new to look forward to?

My fear is the universal answer to a new druid healing spell will be "the reason we didn't like X is because we already had Y."

Q u o t e:
I'm sorry but have you ever healed as a druid in high-end raids? I regularly use 6 spells: Regrowth, Rejuv, Nourish, Wild Growth, Lifebloom, and Swiftmend; very few fights go by where I don't use all 6. People who do what you described are pretty universally considered bad druids who just try and pad the meters. Changing the way druids and healers in general play based around bad healers is bad design; those bad players will always attempt to do exactly that.

That's not to mention Nature's Swiftness, Nature's Grasp, Barkskin, War Stomp (if adds are out of control), and Faerie Fire if no other druids are available.

I just pulled a couple of heroic Icecrown parses at random from among the best guilds out there. Their druids had like 60% Rejuv and 25% Wildgrowth. I'm sure some of that remainder was LB or Swiftmend or something (like a certain hammer or mace), and maybe they even saved someone's life with one of those spells. But you're going to have a hard time convincing me that druids aren't too effective with just those two spells. That will change in Cataclysm.

Q u o t e:
So I applaud you Ghostcrawler for sticking around on here and continuing to post.

Well, the bartender's saying something about last call, so I'm going to have to duck out. My intent was not to ignore the Ferals or Balance druids out there, or all the other classes with previews who probably resent my spending so much time on the Tree of Life issue, but we knew it would be controversial and I wanted players to know we were listening to them. Perhaps we should have announced it earlier like we did with the DK tanking post, though to be fair, we've hinted at this change coming since Blizzcon.