Druid notes in WoW PTR Patch 4.0.1

The pre-Cataclysm class balancing patch 4.0.1 hit the Public Test Server and with it many changes to the Druid class. Here are the notes via MMO-Champion:

Balance

Feral

Restoration

  • Rebirth no longer costs mana.
  • Rejuvenation now costs 20% of base mana, down from 25%.
  • Mastery: Symbiosis (Revamped) – Increases the potency of your healing spells by 10% on targets already affected by one of your heal over time spells. Each point of Mastery increases heal potency by an additional 1.25%.

Druid spell changes in Cataclysm Beta Build 13066

MMO-Champion has datamined a new Cataclysm beta patch (13066) that has yet to hit the server. For Druids, these are the spell differences found:

Balance

Feral

  • Thrash affects all targets within 8 yards. (Tooltip clarification)
  • Tiger's Fury now increases physical damage done by 88.8% for 6 sec. (This one is weird, might want to wait before theorycrafting)
  • Pulverize base additional damage increased by 66%.
  • Stampede now affects your next Ravage. (Tooltip clarification)
  • Fury Swipes – When you auto-attack while in Cat form or Bear form, you have a 5/10/15% chance to cause a Fury Swipe dealing 200% weapon damage. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3 sec. / 5 yd range, Instant

Restoration

  • Lifebloom can now be cast on an unlimited amount of targets while under the effect of Tree of Life.
  • Omen of Clarity (Passive) – If specialized as a Feral Druid, Omen of Clarity will also have a chance to occur from your auto-attacks. (Tooltip clarification)
  • Tree of Life now lasts 30 sec, down from 45 sec. Costs 6% of base mana, down from 13% of base mana.
  • Efflorescence no longer procs from Regrowth critical heals, now procs when you heal with your Swiftmend spell. Now heals all nearby friendly targets within 8 yards (up from 4 yards) for 10% of the amount healed by your Swiftmend over 7 sec.
  • Blessing of the Grove no longer increases the damage done by your Claw and Shred.

Cataclysm Druid Tier 11 Stormrider’s armor set images

A poster on the MMO-Champion forums from the Raven's Nest EU guild has found images of the druid T11 Cataclysm Stormrider armor set.

Set bonuses were discovered earlier by MMO-Champion:

  • Balance: Stormrider's Regalia

    • Druid T11 Balance 2P Bonus – Increases the critical strike chance of your Insect Swarm and Moonfire spells by 5%. / Instant
    • Druid T11 Balance 4P Bonus – Whenever Eclipse triggers, your critical strike chance with spells is increased by 99% for 8 sec. Each critical strike you achieve reduces that bonus by 33%. / Instant
  • Feral: Stormrider's Battlegarb
    • Druid T11 Feral 2P Bonus – Increases the periodic damage done by your Rake and Lacerate abilities by 10%. / Instant
    • Druid T11 Feral 4P Bonus – Each time you use Mangle (Cat) you gain a 1% increase to attack power for 30 sec stacking up to 3 times, and the duration of your Survival Instinct ability is increased by 50%. / Instant
  • Restoration: Stormrider's Vestments

WoW Druid T11 armor set bonuses revealed in Cataclysm beta build 12942

via MMO-Champion:

Cataclysm beta early leveling impressions for druids

Lissanna of the Restokin blog gives her impressions of leveling a druid from 1-20 in the Cataclysm 12857 beta build. A lot of abilities are granted earlier than before and both feral and balance leveling are much smoother than they were originally. Which is good since neither spec was considered an early leveling build when the game launched. Bear and Resto aren't generally considered leveling specs and aren't addressed in her article.

Druid buffs and nerfs in Cataclysm beta build 12857

via MMO-Champion:

Balance

  • Hurricane base damage increased by 33%.
  • Innervate now regenerate mana equal to 20% of the casting Druid's maximum mana pool, down from 33%.
  • Starsurge now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
  • Entangling Roots now has a 2 sec cast time, up from 1.5 sec.
  • Starfall now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards. Base damage increased by 33%.
  • Lunar Shower now increases damage done by your Moonfire by 15/30/45% (Up from 2/4/8%)
  • Force of Nature now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
  • Solar Beam now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
  • Lunar Guidance no longer increases the radius of your Solar Beam.
  • Moonglow now reduces the mana cost of all your damage and healing spells.
  • Nature's Majesty now increases the critical strike chance with all spells.

Feral

  • Thrash now has a 6 sec cooldown, up from 5 sec.
  • Swipe (Bear) base damage increased by 33%.
  • Swipe (Cat) now deals 215% weapon damage, up from 125%.
  • Furor now increases your maximum mana by 5/10/15% instead of increasing your intellect by 2/4/6%.

Restoration

  • Lifebloom now heals over 10 sec, up from 7 sec. Costs 7% of base mana, up from 5%.
  • Omen of Clarity is now properly flagged as Passive.
  • Regrowth HoT effect reduced by 60%, now heals over 6 sec instead of 21 sec. Cast time reduced from 2 sec to 1.5 sec.
  • Natural Perfection is now a Tier 5 talent, down from Tier 6.
  • Swift Rejuvenation is now a Tier 6 talent, up from Tier 5.
  • Revitalize revamped – When you periodically heal with your Rejuvenation or Lifebloom spells, you have a 8/16/24% chance to instantly regenerate 3% of your total mana. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 sec.
  • Heart of the Wild no longer increases maximum mana by 5/10/15%, now increases Intellect by 2/4/6%.

WoW Cataclysm closed beta druid spell, ability, mastery and talent list

The WoW Cataclysm closed beta has officially begun and the NDA has lifted. MMO-Champion is one of the first out of the gate to post a complete list of the current druid spells, abilities and talents, including masteries, new spells and recent dev comments about class changes.

Blizzard developer Twitter chat notes for Druids

On Friday, Blizzard held a Twitter dev chat about the upcoming Cataclysm expansion and the recently announced class changes. Here's the Druid parts followed by links to reaction by prominent Druid bloggers.

Q. Why are Restoration druids the only spec in the game not receiving a new spell?

A. Restoration druids are actually getting a fair bit. For one, Tree of Life is getting a whole new model (think Ancients of War) and will also "morph" some of your spells to do crazy things while in the form, such as cause Regrowth to be instant, or Lifebloom to apply two applications at once. Tranquility will be raid-wide. We're also touching nearly every Restoration druid spell to make sure each has a niche and feels good. In general, playing a Restoration druid should feel a lot different (better!) in Cataclysm than it does today.

Q: How will haste affect channeled spells. Will it be similar to DoTs and HoTs?

A: They will channel faster but their duration will remain unchanged. You will get more ticks on the same cast.

Q. Is every healer supposed to be able to tank-heal efficiently, or will we still see specs excel in it more than others?

A. Each healer is intended to have a different niche, and different strengths. Such as Restoration druids with HoTs, or paladins at direct healing, Discipline priests at absorption/prevention, etc. That said, each healer should be able to keep up a tank and have some deeper "tank healing gameplay" as they do now.


Q: Will relics and wands be getting any new attention in Cataclysm?

A: With relics, the plan is to make them class agnostic. In other words, there might be a +strength relic that a death knight or paladin might want to equip. We think that will let us add more of them to the game without them being so specialized. They will feel more like wands.

How to make wands and relics a bigger part of gameplay is something we've had many, many discussions on. Ultimately though we'd rather see warlocks, mages and priests casting their spells, not zapping someone with a wand. In Cataclysm we don't expect to see much wanding, even at lower level.

Q: With armor class bringing mastery bonuses, will players never want to "downrank" from, say, leather to cloth?

A: That's the idea, really. They still can wear the older armor, but they'll lose some stats from doing so.

Q: How will "active spell is more powerful" be handled with no more dot clipping?

A: How about we get rid of "a more powerful spell is active" altogether? If you have some bonehead overwriting your more powerful buff or debuff, we'd rather you handle that issue socially.

Q. What change are you most excited about?

A. Some of the new Balance talents for druids, like Solar Beam, which works like Freya's spell where it instantly silences a target and they have to move out of the beam to get rid of the debuff.

Full transcript can be found on WoW.com.

Blogger reaction:

Reaction to WoW Druid Cataclysm class change announcement

I usually don't link to opinion posts. I like to keep the links restricted to helpful guides and strats. But everyone wants to know what the recently announced Cataclysm class changes mean for Druids. So here's a round up of thoughts from prominent Druid bloggers:

Balance

Feral

Resto

Also the Dreambound blog covers all four specs in one post.

WoW Druid Cataclysm class changes announced

Yesterday Blizzard laid out the plan for massive changes to the Druid class scheduled to take effect with the launch of the WoW Cataclysm expansion. Details below:

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.