Wrath of the Lich King Druid News from the Weekend – Nov. 3rd

A lot of Feral Druid and Balance Druid news hitting this post, we even have a few bones to throw the Resto Druids out there too!

Balance tree scaling
We don’t think Balance dps is far above Elemental at 80, if in fact it’s high at all. Posting numbers from a theorycrafting spreadsheet does not provide solid proof. The only way to detect a trend at all is to generate very large datasets of both specs in a raid setting. Nobody actually has access to those data yet. Until then, pretty much everything is speculation and informed guesses (even on our part).

We do think that there may be a problem where Elemental’s dps will eventually drop down because they don’t have as many scaling talents as Balance. But this won’t occur with gear currently available in the game — it’s more of an eventual risk and we have plenty of time to address it. It’s also possible that Balance scales too well. That’s why we haven’t taken any steps to adjust either spec so far. (src)

Developer Q&A (src)
1) Some feral tanking concerns regarding gear are valid. While there are pieces of tanking gear out there that have our needs tailored into them, the vast majority of tanking filler pieces cater to the other 3 tanking classes. Is there anything being done about this?
We are talking long and hard about Feral tank itemization right now. As I mentioned on the beta forums, we may end up pulling bonus armor altogether.

2) Nurturing Instinct is a talent that still increases healing done by agility. I am sure several druids out there agree that this is not in-sync with Blizzard’s shift to Spell Power. Is anything being done about this?
There are still talents that affect just healing and not damage. It is consistent with that philosophy.

3) Feral Survivability in PvP got hurt a lot. I have heard that there are things in the works to try and fix this. Can you confirm whether this is being looked at?
We have not come to the conclusion that Ferals have become significantly more squishy than anyone else. We believe ALL classes are a little squishy at 70 and the new talents might even continue the trend at 80 (which is one reason we buffed resilience).

4) Typhoon is a spell that is a main tool in PvP; but several druids feel that it is lacking. Is there any way to consider a 3 second daze or lengthening the distance of the knockback?
When I last researched this spell, it tossed players more slowly than mobs, which made it not actually get opponents as far away as we intended.

5) Typhoon and Force of Nature: Why two 41pt talents? Seems a little controversial to me. Poor protection paladins can’t get a single 11 pointer but here we stand with two 41 pointers? Can one of these become trained?
There are inconsistencies like this throughout the trees. It’s not a hard and fast rule that the 11, 21, 31, 41 and 51 talents are clickies. We bumped Typhoon up because it felt very PvP oriented to be the bottom talent, yet it filled a niche that we thought was lacking for Balance.

6) Base damage was increased on Starfire and Wrath, and numbers have changed in PvE DPS; but as we all know, increasing the base numbers doesn’t necessarily increase your DPS on the long run. At tier 7, Balance druids compete fairly well, but I am looking more into tier 8/9: Do they still compete?
From our tests, yes. They scale very well with better gear, in part because they receive extra benefits from Int and Spirit.

7) Restoration druids have had their HPS slightly nerfed from Lifebloom (their main arsenal). I understand that you want to give more diverse tools to handle different situation, but I am sure that everyone agrees that each healer has a “staple” role. The nerf, I understand, came mainly due to PvP implications, is there any way to bump this spell a bit though?
The assumption was that it came for PvP reasons, but we also knew that the “right” way to heal PvE as Resto was to keep rolling LBs on 2-3 players at the expense of almost anything else. As I’ve said before, it was the answer to any healing problem a druid got into. Resto has a huge repetoire of heals now, and we still think LB will be a big part of that.

8 ) Survival Instincts is a great spell that we needed. It (along with Barkskin and thank you for it) gave us much needed buttons to press in stressful situations, but I must be greedy: why did we get an exact copy of the warrior’s 11 point talent? Couldn’t there have been a strong regenerative talent or something that play’s to nature’s theme in this stead?
Honestly, it’s because many Ferals at the time felt like they couldn’t compete without that ability (and many are still asking for Shield Wall). It’s a delicate balance, and honestly our prediliction is usually to err on the side of making classes more different. Yet witness the uproar over Protector of the Pack just because it comes with a nuisance-level drawback that warriors don’t have (that latter point tends to be the sticky part).

The one different thing about Survival Instinct is it is also really useful for cat-focused Ferals, while Last Stand tends to be used by tanks only. We let Survivial Instinct be used by cats for that reason. ~end

Armor trinkets and bear armor mechanics
We are considering changing the trinkets or the way bear armor works so that finding armor on items doesn’t make them so superior for druids. If we make this change, I’ll announce it before LK ships so that you don’t make a heroic effort to get those items with lots of armor.

Bear armor would continue to increase as your armor from items went up, so that you’d still want heroic leather before going on to raiding. We would also make sure your overall armor levels didn’t drop. (src)

More Developers Q&A (src)
The amount of times you can shapeshift before running out of mana is considerably lower now.
The counter-argument is that when you shift to bear you are regenerating mana in a fashion that totally protects it from drains and the like. It’s not just as simple as giving you more mana or making the shifting cost cheaper. But it is something we’ll take a look at.

Why is the druid the only class with a talent based on the number of players in a party? If this is supposed to be a pvp balance thing for arena or to prevent druids from solo tanking then why are we the only class given this special treatment?
I said it’s something we might change. Mostly I wanted to understand if it was an actual balance issue in cases other than niche situations or if it was just something that was just a thorn in your paw. I am pretty sure it’s the latter, but that still doesn’t mean it’s set in stone.

Improved Leader of the Pack is total mana. This means I regenerate more mana at 70 than I do at 80. At 80 I spend ~35% more on EVERYTHING.
We could change that to base mana I imagine.

It makes no sense why a resto or balance druid are allowed to shift more than us when WE are supposed to be the masters of shapeshifting because we are the ones who specced to improve our animalistic side. All we want is to be pvp viable and not be so restricted on mana, I would be lucky if I could even manage an arena fight at this stage with the mana I have now, I wouldnt beable to do anything really.
I’m not sure I would use that line of reasoning. The casters could just as easily say that they are the most fragile so they need the means to escape or deal with melee more than a Feral. It doesn’t invalidate your whole argument, but I don’t think this particular point makes it stronger.

I think you need to spend more time on the EJ forums. If there was a trinket with -100 Stamina and +1000 armor, Druids would wear it. White +Armor items are that overpowered. Regarding PVP gear for tanking, we’re not giving up “a lot of stats to get marginally better Stamina.” We’re giving up stats which are irrelevant for tanking (AP, strength, expertise past the cap) for Stamina. Tanks generate 7000tps; threat generation is an invalid concern. Therefore, unless the PVE gear provides superior mitigation (like the +armor T6 did) or increased Stamina, then bears will be forced to wear PVP gear in order to have the best survivability while tanking.
We do follow those forums. They have very smart people posting there, but of course they are not right about everything either. You can find many excellent as well as a few mediocre suggestions there. Their best aspect is the signal to noise ratio is very strong. Since you point it out though, one thing I wish our posters could learn from those forums is how to communicate with each other. Our forums have far too many threads where dissenting opinions are ignored instead of addressed.

On the armor thing, I still feel like you are trying to turn this into “GC doesn’t understand Feral itemization.” I realize that line of thinking might make it easier to dismiss our point of view when you disagree with it, but it’s not true and not really the issue. Xaamau’s original concern was “Not enough “Armor” trinkets in game making them invaluable to druids, basically once you have these trinkets you will not grab anything else unless you reach armor cap.” I just don’t think the second part is an issue. Depending on your existing armor and other stats and what other pieces you can upgrade, you are not going to only look at armor on trinkets and ignore everything else they can do. The first part is of more concern if bears have trouble getting the trinkets they need.

Personally, I’d be much happier if armor was removed from trinkets/necks/rings/staves altogether, and druids were given a talent to convert DPS stats to tanking stats (maybe bump the armor conversion from agi, or turn AP into a bit of dodge). That way we wouldn’t have to “steal” necks/rings from plate tanks, and we could use similar accessories for both cat and bear. And if someone in the itemization team slips and lets a 1k armor blue staff through, it isn’t immediately heralded as a better tanking staff than any epic in the game. It also gives a smoother progression though the tiers of raiding, since you won’t need a separate DPS and tanking staff and only have access to 1 staff per tier.
We have discussed this before, and I do think removing armor completely as a stat has a lot of merit. I do think it would cause a lot of complaints from druids who didn’t understand why we were doing it.

I have already expressed my distaste for feral-specific weapons (though I own plenty of them). They are some of the last vestiges of the antiquated system where certain characters are very dependent on relatively uncommon items that cause frustration among other players when they drop. That situation in turn makes the items even rarer, and therefore even more of a big deal when they drop.

Potential changes to itemization …
Changing armor would be work, but possible to do within the confines of Lich King (though probably not before it shipped). If we decide to do it, we will make sure you know ASAP so that nobody is struggling to get Defender’s Code. Changing feral attack power is more work, but in that case the weapon would still be just as good for you as it is now, so it affects what items you collect less. ~end

Druid mana issues
We’re not trying to punish Feral with a lack of mana or anything. We’re just evaluating how they perform and what they do, especially in PvP with regards to this issue. The bottom line is we’re not sure yet if it’s really a problem or if the Feral players are just having trouble adjusting to the change. (I understand many of them *say* it’s a problem.)

We also aren’t trying to make Balance and Resto the shifting specs. However, as mana-using classes they are going to be able to do more with that mana, such as healing. We want druids to be able to shift — that is a major part of the class. The only thing in contention is how often is too often and how much can they do in night elf or tauren form. (src)

Lifebloom
There are plenty of good threads on Lifebloom post-nerf. It is less powerful than it was before, but it is still a very good spell and we fully expect druids to still use it in PvE and PvP. (src)