Lifebloom Mechanic Change In 3.1 Could Affect PvE and PvP Differently

There's an outburst in the druid community now because the class is getting some nerfs in patch 3.1. One of them is the change to the feral talent Heart of the Wild where at max rank, the stamina bonus it gives will be reduced from a 20% increase to just a 10% increase. According to Ghostcrawler, this is part of their effort to make all tanks' HP pools closer together but of course a nerf is a nerf and this sucks for bear tanks.

The next change is the one to the resto spell lifebloom, the resto druid's best friend in tank healing in groups/raids. The change goes as follows:

Mana costs of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, It now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications.

Of course all resto druids are pretty mad that their bread and butter tank healing spell will become less efficient especially since the practice of rolling lifeblooms negates whatever bonus was given to it blooming given that that's what rolling lifeblooms is all about - keeping the 3 stack up at all times. Ghostcrawler's forum post on the matter gave you a sense that they felt the spell was too efficient a heal especially if kept rolling but instead of nerfing the heal itself they decided to just increase its cost. After being assigned to raid healing a few times in 10 man Naxx a few times, I found out that I cast lifeblooms and let them bloom quite often so this might be a nice change for people who do this since the bloom will refund mana and get a healing bonus.

While this change is quite a sad one for PvE resto druids, it's quite a buff for ones who do PvP a lot. People will think twice now before dispelling HoT's especially in the arena tournament. This is quite a welcome change to complement the fact that the PvP resto druid's worst enemy has been tamed because of the removal of the Death Knight's ability to remove HoT's through Plague Strike. These two changes just might catapult resto druids back to king status as arena healers.

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Some Specifics For Upcoming Mana Regen Nerf

Healers like myself have been cherishing the remaining time we have until the mana regen nerf is implemented since we are the ones most affected and targeted by the changes. The aim of the nerfs is to make mana conservation and management a big thing and not just rely on our regen to tide us over while we heal endlessly.

Ghostcrawler came up with more details about this nerf in a post in the official forums. Based on what he wrote, there's some cause for celebration since the nerfs don't seem to be as bad as we all thought. I won't go into detail with what he says but if you want to see the details then you can go ahead and read his post. The long and short of what he wrote is this:

Mana regen while not casting will be reduced by 40%



Mana regen while casting remains unchanged.



Talents that provide mana regen while casting (spirit tap, arcane meditation etc) will be increased by 67%



Paladins will have their Divine Plea healing penalty reduced to -50% and spiritual attunement mana gains decreased for non tanks.

It's still sad for us healers to see our regen get nerfed but as you can see from the details, it's not as bad as we thought. Sure we won't be able to take much advantage of those big regen ticks when we're not casting but at least the regen while casting still remains the same. In fights where we're constantly casting our heals, this nerf won't make a difference.

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Celestial Focus Change Nerfs Balance PvP A Bit

In the latest PTR patch notes for patch 3.08, balance druids got the news that their talent Celestial Focus will no longer work with Starfall. As always you can see the latest PTR patch notes here.

I play a balance druid right now but only to get to 80 faster then I'll be switching to Restoration. But I do know that that the stuns this talent brings can be pretty useful in PvP, especially with Starfall since you have so many stars amounting to potential stuns. I haven't done any PvP on my druid and I don't really intend to so I haven't tried it but looking around in the forums and asking friends confirmed that it is a technique that balance druids use. I'd use it myself if I did any PvP.

But with the change coming in the next patch, not only is this technique no longer possible with Starfall but some people have even questioned Starfall's viability as a 51 point talent. Starfall's alleged horrible damage output and the fact that it's on a 3 minute timer has it in the running in worst 51 talent point debates. Personally I still find it a bit useful especially when I'm trying to kill a lot of targets fast when I'm soloing.

What do you think about this change?

Certain Specs Could Get A DPS Buff

I'm not really familiar with the exact classes that sit at the top of the DPS meters right now but I guess that really varies from case to case and who you run with. I know Death Knights are up there and i guess Ret Pallies, Warlocks, and Mages are also frequent chart toppers. But it seems like certain specs of certain classes aren't doing so well in their dps output and Blizzard has taken notice. Blizzard is currently monitoring how the classes are doing so that they can potentially make some changes to help boost the output of those they feel need to be buffed.

Patch 3.08 saw some changes to the Elemental Shaman tree that gave them a pretty big dps boost. Ghostcrawler already mentioned in the official forums that they're going to take a look at Combat Rogues, Kitty Feral Druids and Beast Mastery Hunters as the specs that they feel might need a boost. I think the buffing of Elemental Shammies shows that Blizzard does listen to feedback and adjust accordingly if they feel that's what's needed. It might take some time but they get it done.

Class Changes For Patch 3.1 Part 2 Announced

We just talked about part 1 of the class changes coming in patch 3.1 and then suddenly part two is here! This time around, druids, warriors and warlocks are getting their changes announced.

WARLOCK

# Improved Shadow Bolt this talent now provides a 5% spell critical strike buff (similar to Improved Scorch).

# Improved Soul Leech this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests)

# Drain Soul now has a chance to produce Soul Shards even if the target doesnt die.

# Siphon Life no longer as an active ability but the talent grants the old Siphon Life effect to Corruption.

# Curse of Recklessness and Curse of Weakness have been combined into one spell

# Consume Shadows this Voidwalker ability is no longer channeled but has a cooldown.

# Several other warlock talents have had their ranks reduced, their effects changed or removed. This list includes but is not limited to Demonic Empathy, Shadow Embrace, Eradication, Suppression, and Pandemic.

# Additional new talents have been added.

DRUID

# Savage Defense this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.

# Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.

# Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.

# Thorns and Natures Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.

# Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.

# Replenish to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed Revitalize. It now also works with Wild Growth.

# We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

WARRIOR

# Changing stances now has a much reduced cost: you lose a maximum of 20 rage (10 with Tactical Mastery). For example, if you have 100 rage and change stances, you will have 80 rage remaining. If you have 10 rage and change stances, all of your rage is lost. In addition, we may change the penalties associated with some stances.

# You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed, such as through a Power Word: Shield.

# Blood Frenzy now causes 2/4% physical damage done.

# Sunder Armor (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 4% per application, and is now a single rank. Creature armor has been globally reduced so that debuffed targets should take about the same damage from physical attacks that they did before this change. The net effect should be that this debuff is slightly less mandatory in PvE and is not disproportionately more powerful against cloth targets in PvP.

# We are also adding increased damage to Arms, possibly through Overpower or Slam.

# We are also looking at granting rage when the warrior blocks, dodges or parries. source

Just like the changes for priests, rogues and shamans in the part one changes, it seems like the changes listed here are pretty much all buffs. There's a lot of interesting changes announced that will make the three classes here very happy. The change to Improved shadowbolt for locks has been a long time coming and it's actually really good now. Drain life having a chance to grant a shard even if the mob didn't die is quite an interesting change. I'm wondering how making destruction warlocks a replenishment spec just like survival hunters, shadow priests ad ret pallies will change things. I'm thinking that shadow priests don't have much of a niche going now that the other shadow damage class can be a mana battery.

Feral druids are looking stronger with the new savage defense passive ability for bears and the note that sustained kitty dps will be increased. For warriors, the most interesting change is that stance dancing is going to be easier to do now that you'll only lose a maximum of 20 rage (untalented) doing it. This will benefit warriors of all specs as they will be able tank and dps better with more rage at their disposal. Another cool change is the one about absorbed damage giving the warrior rage, making things like power word shield a more viable option when healing warriors. Strangely enough, there's no mention about this same mechanic for bear druids.

Now that part two is out so soon after part 1 came out, I think we can expect to see the final part out in a few hours or at least soon enough. I'm crossing my fingers that the last installment will see a lot of interesting changes as well.

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So You Just Hit 70

While are many people with level 70's out there especially since the TBC expansion has been out for more than a year already, I'm sure there are lots of people who don't or at least just did and don't exactly know what to do. I was sitting around in Shattrath City earlier when someone asked the exact thing in trade chat, hinting that there might be a lot of people out there like this guy who don't know what to do when you first hit 70. So what exactly do you do? After allocating your last remaining talent point an buying your level 70 skills, these are things you may want to do when you hit 70.

1. If you've got the gold to spend, it would be really helpful to buy your flying mount right away. This could help in your mining and herbalism while also giving you access to places like Skettis, Ogri'la, Elemental Plateau and the Tempest Keep dungeons.

2. If you don't have the gold to spend or just want more of it, then it's really helpful to do the Shattered Sun Offensive daily quests. Ogri'la and Skettis requires you to have a flying mount to reach while the SSO dailies don't except for the quest Intercepting the Mana Cells, which you do in Blade's Edge Mountains.

3. Group quests in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley normally have great quest rewards that could add to your starting gear as a fresh 70.

4. If you're a clothie class and a tailor, investing time to farm the mats to make your Spellfire/Frozen Shadoweave/Primal Mooncloth sets.

5. As you're looking to gear up, PvP epics are generally a nice way to go to get yourself ready for higher content. BG and Arena gear are great at plugging those holes until you get a good PvE equivalent from Karazhan or Heroics.

6. I'm assuming that as you've leveled up to 70, you must have achieved honored rep with at least some of these factions: Thrallmar/Honored Hold, Cenarion Expedition, Keepers of Time, Sha'tar, and Lower City. These factions have a decent starter pvp set which could also be great for PvE.

Druid

Feral Dragonhide Battlegear

Resto Kodohide Battlegear

Balance Wyrmhide Battlegear

Hunter Stalker's Chain Battlegear

Mage Evoker's Silk Battlegear

Paladin

Holy Crusader's Ornamented Battlegear

Ret/Shockadin Crusader's Scaled Battlegear

Priest

Shadow Satin Battlegear

Holy Mooncloth Battlegear

Rogue Opportunist's Battlegear

Shaman

Enhancement Seer's Linked Battlegear

Restoration Seer's Ringmail Battlegear

Elemental Seer's Mail Battlegear

Warlock Dreadweave Battlegear

Warrior Savage Plate Battlegear

7. Of course you still have to do dungeons so that you can get nice blues to get you ready for Karazhan and heroics. Don't forget that while it's no longer required that every member of a Karazhan raid have the master's key, it's still nice to do the quests to get it. The quest chain brings you to some dungeons to get some gear and also the quest rewards afor the chain are pretty good too.

8. Rejoice and be glad that you have a level 70! To all of you guys who just got to 70, congratulations and have fun!

Ideas On Recycling Existing Talent Designs For Other Classes

The past few days, I've been thinking about how the design of certain talents of a certain class would look pretty good if it were used by another class in their own way. If you think about it, some talents are already like this - just modifications of talents that already existed. For example isn't it that the Druid's Swiftmend, a spell obtained through talents, just a healing twist on the Warlock's Conflagrate, also a spell obtained through talents? The Paladin's Holy Guidance talent from the Holy tree is also a twist on the Mage's Mind Mastery talent from the Arcane tree. I've been thinking that there could be more potential in simply taking an existing talent and applying it to another class to fit their class design. I've listed a few below. While some ideas could be out of this world, I'm sure some have potential to actually be used in the WoTLK expansion.

Warlock: DoT Form

I was thinking that since druids are the kings of HoT's and warlocks are the kings of DoTs, perhaps the two get be potential partners in talent recycling. One idea I find amusing is to translate the Tree of Life talent for the use of warlocks. I was thinking of it being in the affliction tree somewhere deep. I'm not really familiar with how exactly end game affliction warlocks work but perhaps there are times when you're better off just using your DoT's the whole time if only you could maximize their damage potential. In these situations, the warlock can shift to form that makes use of just DoT's but while in this form they cost less to cast and do a heck lot more damage!

Healing class (Shaman maybe?): The Healing Arcane Power

Ever been in a situation where you need stronger heals during an encounter and you don't really care if it's going to cost you more mana? Let's say you got the boss down to 5% and you just need some staying power on your heals or the group wipes. This might be the answer! I'm thinking shaman since it sounds consistent with the type of thing a shaman would do with the blood lusts and shamanistic rage and all. Pop the talented ability and the shaman goes off into a healing frenzy!

Paladin: The Healing Ignite

Paladins have always complained about their lack of a heal over time. maybe a talent that can work like the healing version of the mage fire tree talent Ignite could help while not really giving them a true HoT. Basically when the paladin crits on his/her heals the target also gets a HoT equivalent to a percentage of the heal. This won't make holy paladins the kings of HoT's but it definitely sounds like a cool idea.

Mage: Spirit of Redemption For More Pwnage!

I've always been quite intrigued by the priest Spirit of Redemption talent since it allows them to heal for a while longer even after they die. Imagine if a mage would be able to wreak some havoc even after he falls. You could say that since the mage left behind some arcane residue, he is able to remain active and do some damage for some time even after dying.

What do you think about these ideas? Do you have some ideas of your own? Please share them here.

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Dire Cat? What's That?

I was reading through some of the material about the World Wide Invitational (WWI) in World of Raids when I came across the mention of the dire cat form of Druids for Wrath of the Lich King. It's still in the planning stages as well as another model for dire bear form but the mention makes one wonder exactly what dire cat form will be.

I haven't played a druid to high levels yet but based what some people tell me about the situation of the cat druid and the rogue is that they have almost the same dps potential but the rogue is more flexible with his abilities. Rogues can stun, sap and even vanish when he's in trouble while cat druids can't. I've read of other claims that rogues beat cat dps by a substantial amount. (Someone please tell me which it is).

This leaves a lot of room for speculation about what the dire cat form could be, aside from a model change. Can it mean more damage? Or will it mean more armor or some form of avoiding or mitigating damage? Or will it mean getting a trick or two rogues have for escaping death like a version of vanish or something? My guess is probably as good as good as any one else's.

At the end of this all, the most important question will have to be answered. Will the dire cat form finally make cat druids a respectable and accepted member of even the most hardcore raiding guilds? If not, then having this improvement won't really change anything much.

Revive Should Give Druids Big Smiles In WoTLK

My frustrations concerning the paladin holy tree for the WoTLK expansion got me planning ahead. I'm already leveling up my druid so that I can have it ready to be a healer just in case nothing changes for the better for my dear paladin. I figured that if things will go well with the paladin eventually, then my druid could be a Moonkin and blast some face.

This little project of mine got me planning ahead so I went browsing at the MMO Champion's list of spells for the expansion. While I found a lot of the spells quite interesting, one thing caught my eye. For a moment I thought I was seeing things and had to make a double take. It's this entry right here:

Revive (rank 7) level 80:

Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with 1800 health and 1365 mana. Cannot be cast when in combat.

10 sec cast, 72% of base mana, 30 yd range

It's an out of combat rez! It's something that druids have been asking for since a long time ago (maybe even since the game came out). The really neat thing is that druids will get their first rank of Revive at level 12, according to MMO Champion. The argument against an OOC rez was that druids already have the battle rez Rebirth. Of course we know that it's no substitute for a real rez spell.

Now that druids finally have an OOC rez and a nice crowd control spell now that Entangling Roots can be used both indoors and outdoors, this gives Moonkins and Resto druids (especially with the new talents for both Balance and Resto) so much more group utility that it almost makes it it so much harder to not bring them to a group. This would definitely cause a lot of whines from other classes but I see it as a nice move that will benefit everyone more than cause any harm. Imagine, no more running back just because your only healer was a druid and couldn't rez you.

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No Dire Cat Form!

After the new talent trees for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out, it's become quite the opinion that Feral is the "lamest" of the three druid trees in the sense that Balance and Restoration got awesome talent additions while Feral didn't impress that much. As if that wasn't bad enough, feral druids were hit with some bad news once again! Blizzard poster Koraa gives the latest word about the mysterious Dire Cat form that was announced in the World Wide Invitational (WWI) a while back.

We have no plans to implement a "Dire Cat" form at this time. "Dire Bear" exists for the sole purpose of upgrading the Feral Druid's armor value to match the Warrior/Paladin etc. (Druids get no shield)

We do, however, intend to allow Druids to be able to use items and enchants with procs in forms, which I believe will work in the next beta build (don't hold me to it though).

I think what Kalgan meant was that we intend to do different texture variances for Druid forms, including Cat form. Which is true, though not sure how soon we're going to get that. They may come from a repeatable quest, or through inscription.

Source

While this affects all druids, this obviously affects feral druids the most who were expecting it to an improvement over the current cat form mechanics. Of course since it was so mysterious, there really isn't much of a surprise that all cat form is getting is an aesthetic change.

Latest Furor Change Trumps Powershifting Nerf

Just when feral druids everywhere were getting pissed and disappointed with the powershifting nerf, Blizzard poster Jimmythenumbers sends news that will make their frowns turn upside down.

I just changed Furor to read as follows with 5 talent points:

Gives you 100% chance to gain 10 Rage when you shapeshift into Bear and Dire Bear Form, and you keep up to 100 of your Energy when you shapeshift into Cat Form, and increases your total Intellect while in Moonkin form by 10%.

So, fully-talented, you will no longer lose any energy from shapeshifting out and back into Cat Form. source

So while the practice of powershifting (shifting in and out of cat form to gain energy from the furor talent) is still out the window, at least you get to keep all your energy when you shift in and out of cat form. The buff it gives Moonkins is also a nice bonus, finally giving a reason for Moonkins to get the talent. What's strange about this change is that if they gave Moonkins something to cheer about with this Furor change, why didn't Tree druids get anything from it too? I mean, Furor is a restoration talent and it doesn't even help its own tree at all.

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Shortage Of Healers?

Just when Blizzard added the Death Knight hero class to address the tank shortage, it seems like a healer shortage is another problem that might have to be addressed. I say might because these are all observations from some people as the Wrath of the Lich King expansion approaches.

Dizeh of the Northrend-US server tells of having a healer shortage within their guild since they want to be something else. Cipher from the same server says that he has a hard time finding healers for instances. It seems that the culprit is a combination of different things.

One reason I can think of is the one mentioned above, players wanting to be something else. With the introduction of the Death Knight class and the cool stuff that many of the dps classes are getting, it seems like a lot of players want to try them out. Right now in fact, some of my very own friends who play tanks as doing some last minute leveling before the expansion comes out and the popular choices are mage and warlock but there are some rogues and hunters as well. Only a few of my friends who have dps or tanks as their mains are leveling healers.

Another reason I can think of the removal of downranking and its effect on healer efficiency. A lot of healers have relied on downranking to be more efficient and stay effective in longer fights. With its removal, the fear of going OOM and possibly causing wipes because of it has scared away a lot of players. Not being able to heal properly makes a job that some already find boring annoying as well.

Personally, I liked my relatively short stint healing as a holy paladin so much that I've decided to level a druid and try healing as a Tree in the expansion. It was part of my backup plan to have another healing class in case holy paladins weren't going to be great in the expansion. Of course, there's nothing wrong with having two healer toons if both turn out to be great. So if there will indeed be a healer shortage, my friends can count on me if they need one.

What do you think? Do you see a healer shortage looming in your server?

Devs Might Slap A Cooldown On Circle Of Healing

Holy priests and Restoration druids just received some potentially sad news earlier about their spells Circle of Healing and Wild growth, respectively. Both spells have been known to be quite similar because of their AoE healing capability. Ghostcrawler posted in the forums that they are thinking of adding a 6 second cooldown for both spells

If implemented, this change would affect Circle of Healing more than Wild Growth since the it makes sense to spam the former because it heals it's full amount right away while the latter does it over time. This would make healing AoE encounters harder to do in the future. Would this decrease the value of both the Holy Priest and the Resto Druid to the raid in the future? Only time will tell I guess. While it might increase the value of the Chain Heal spamming Restoration Shaman to the raid, it might not necessarily lower that of the other two based on what Ghostcrawler said. He mentioned in the same post that if this change pushes through, they will have to tweak encounters keeping in mind that Circle of Healing will no longer be spammable.

Of course, a nerf is a nerf so if this pushes through it's still going to suck. I just hope that it's not going to suck too much.

Druid Tanking Buff Hotfixed Into WoW

I'm not really familiar with the actual state of druid tanking these days but I've heard some complains in the past. Whether these are just wild allegations or real concerns, they will be pleased to find out that they have been buffed.

The kind of surprising thing to this buff is that it isn't something announced to be included in the next patch. It was actually hotfixed into the game and hence is now actually live. As Ghostcrawler announced, the druid AoE tanking ability Swipe has been buffed to generate 50% more threat than before. In these days when it seems like the use of AoE is the way to go (in my experience, tanks usually prefer to use little or no crowd control and just burning them down with AoE), this should make bear druids more competent in dealing with the situation.

I found it funny that Ghostcrawler mentioned that this change might lead to bear tanks being able to tank so easily with one ability that they can macro Swipe to every keyboard button and faceroll. Of course that's always an exaggeration and I doubt that any kind of facerolling whether it be with chain heal, flash of light or the like would actually really work. But as I said, this would make bear tanking easier and they should be quite happy right now.

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Polearm Skill Trainable For Druids In Patch 3.08

I was just reading through some of the "blue posts" and one of them caught my eye. According to Ghostcrawler, druids will be able to train for and use Polearms in patch 3.08. This was quite surprising for me since I knew that druids never could use them.

While this probably isn't a very big thing especially since there really don't seem to be many polearms around in the first place, this gives them another weapon type to use, most especially for the kitty druids out there. Whenever I think of polearms, for some reason I always think of the Ice Barbed Spear which you get from doing a quest in Alterac Valley at level 51. For those druids who will be around that level range when the patch comes out, it's nice to know it will be another option.