As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

[WoW]Druid Thread: Open

13»

Posts

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    I always wondered what exactly wrath is. What is that ball of hurty green (yellow) energy made of?

    Can I start bitching about the WG nerf now? Seriously... It kinda sucks.

    I always thought it was magiclly thorwing the power of weeds at targets

    I gave up on healing on my druid after the nightmare of death knight tanks {I still have flash backs and dread seeing death knights tank when I que as a healer on my paladin and priests}

  • BigityBigity Lubbock, TXRegistered User regular
    So, what's new for Druids these days - specifically tanking, cat dps, and heals. I have been away for over a year.

  • GrobianGrobian What's on sale? Pliers!Registered User regular
    Afaik cat dps is 2 buttons now. So if you last played in WotLK, you're in for quite a suprise.

    Bear tanking isn't changed much. You stack your Lacerates for Pulverize and you Mangle whenever it's possible. Maul is off the GCD, so just press it when you have rage. (keep up demo roar and FFF obviously, but FFF isn't worth pushing anymore for threat). If you have spare GCDs/rage, then Thrash is pretty good. For AoE tanking just use Thrash and Swipe as it has always been.

    They changed the tank CDs, but you can just read the tooltips to get that. Note that Enrage has no drawback anymore, so you can use it on every pull.

    I have no idea about Resto.

  • BigityBigity Lubbock, TXRegistered User regular
    Grobian wrote:
    Afaik cat dps is 2 buttons now. So if you last played in WotLK, you're in for quite a suprise.

    Bear tanking isn't changed much. You stack your Lacerates for Pulverize and you Mangle whenever it's possible. Maul is off the GCD, so just press it when you have rage. (keep up demo roar and FFF obviously, but FFF isn't worth pushing anymore for threat). If you have spare GCDs/rage, then Thrash is pretty good. For AoE tanking just use Thrash and Swipe as it has always been.

    They changed the tank CDs, but you can just read the tooltips to get that. Note that Enrage has no drawback anymore, so you can use it on every pull.

    I have no idea about Resto.

    Hm, glad and sad to hear about kitty dps, at least you knew who knew the class.

    Thanks for the info though!

  • NaphtaliNaphtali Hazy + Flow SeaRegistered User regular
    Rorus that op is unreadable on the default forum skin, for what its worth. White text on white background.

    Steam | Nintendo ID: Naphtali | Wish List
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    Yeah I made that prior to the forum switch.

    I should probably just replace it with MoP stuff.

    YL9WnCY.png
  • CloudBombCloudBomb The 0th of my kind Oklahoma/OregonRegistered User regular
    I quit shortly after the last expansion right after they started changing all the talents.

    How is bear threat these days? Easy? Hard? I have some free time and I always enjoyed playing before new expansions.

  • GrobianGrobian What's on sale? Pliers!Registered User regular
    Threat for all tanks is easy now. You can basically stop pushing buttons after ~10 seconds unless you're severely undergeared compared to your dps.

  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    Grobian wrote:
    Afaik cat dps is 2 buttons now. So if you last played in WotLK, you're in for quite a suprise.

    Bear tanking isn't changed much. You stack your Lacerates for Pulverize and you Mangle whenever it's possible. Maul is off the GCD, so just press it when you have rage. (keep up demo roar and FFF obviously, but FFF isn't worth pushing anymore for threat). If you have spare GCDs/rage, then Thrash is pretty good. For AoE tanking just use Thrash and Swipe as it has always been.

    They changed the tank CDs, but you can just read the tooltips to get that. Note that Enrage has no drawback anymore, so you can use it on every pull.

    I have no idea about Resto.
    I don't play cat anymore, but I'm trying to comperehend how it's 2 buttons now.

    Mangle, Rake, Shred, Rip, Ferocious Bite, Savage Roar, Ravage (after a feral charge proc)? How has that been reduced to two buttons?

  • BigityBigity Lubbock, TXRegistered User regular
    I was wondering this myself after a little reading. It seems pretty much the same as before, with maybe not having to time shreds to keep your energy at certain levels etc etc.

    Maybe he has massive macros?

  • GrobianGrobian What's on sale? Pliers!Registered User regular
    I think the hyperbole comparing cat dps to two buttons meant Shred to 5cp and Rip (or FB in the execute phase). Obviously this glosses over keeping up important debuffs if nobody else provides them (FFF, Mangle) and keeping up SR and Rake. It also doesn't touch on CD usage (FC, TF, Berserk).

    I was just restating complaints I heard, maybe I should have made that clearer. My druid is basically shelved, I only tank holiday events and stuff.

  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    So basically it's about the same as WotLK with a couple more forgiving durations for keeping things up.

  • OptyOpty Registered User regular
    I was thinking about MoP talents for druids and I figured out one thing I think is wrong with them: forcing you to shift. If all of the ones that force you to shift into cat/bear didn't then they'd be a lot more useful overall.

  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    They want druids shapeshifting more often. Otherwise there's little reason to have cat or bear for non-ferals.

    Shifting out doesn't even require a GCD, so I fail to see the problem.

    YL9WnCY.png
  • OptyOpty Registered User regular
    If they want to make Druids shapeshift more often shouldn't be done slapdash like this, where they just tag on "also you shapeshift" to the end of spells because then resto and balance will just macro it so they shift out instantly and then what was the point? Quite simply if you want druids to shift more then they need to be able to keep doing their job when shifted. So bears need to be able to shift out and tank in caster form for a little bit if they're going to do anything in caster, cats needs to shift out and be able to keep dpsing to some degree if they're doing anything in caster, boomkins will need to be able to shift into bear and/or cat and keep dpsing, and resto will need to be able to shift into bear and/or cat and keep healing and/or preventing damage.

  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited December 2011
    Uh, they're doing that. Heart of the Wild is learned by each spec, and converts your primary stat into that form's primary stat.

    Balance and Resto turn intellect into agility when in cat. Stam for bear.

    Guardian turns stam into intellect or agility.

    And so forth. There's also a talent at 90 that can give you even further boosts to secondary forms for a period.

    Sterica on
    YL9WnCY.png
  • OptyOpty Registered User regular
    No, they're not doing that.

    First, the skills that change Int into Agil and Agil into Int are Killer Instinct and Nuturing Instinct respectively. Heart of the Wild is the talent at 90 that gives you a boost to alternate forms but not anywhere close enough for it to matter: they ignore tanks needing to be uncrittable (something I assume only Guardian spec will be innately but if it's part of bear form that'd explain it), damage spells costing no mana as resto doesn't mean shit when you're shooting at a third power compared to Moonkin, a caster spec trying to DPS as cat would be hilarious with only Claw, Rake, and Ferocious Bite to use, a feral trying to heal when they only get back 2% mana every 5 seconds is laughable since they'll have to spam cast to get anywhere close to healing as well as a resto with only Healing Touch and Rejuv to use (right now HT uses 5.5k mana and that'll only increase in MoP. That means for 2% mana regen per 5 seconds--using today's number--to keep them from going OoM their mana pool will need to be 459k and even halving that to 229.5k is still a ridiculous amount of mana).

    My point from earlier was that with what they've presented so far, if you're in the middle of tanking and want to shift out to cast Rebirth or Innervate you'll still get smeared. If you're a cat and shift out to help heal then your raid is either fucked by then since if you're dps stopping doing dps to heal people are dying which means it's probably a wipe or it means that offspec healing for Druids is overpowered to the point that the lost DPS is made up with insane healing. If you're a tree or a boomy and shifting to cat to try to DPS for whatever reason then you're dumb because not only will Claw and Rake be nowhere as powerful as Wrath and Moonfire even with the Int to Agil buff, you'd have to move into melee range to do it. The insentives they're presenting as reasons to shift are laughable at best, especially on a 6 minute cooldown with the expectation of staying in a different form for 45 seconds. No one will want to change roles midfight for 45 seconds, maybe 10-15 seconds in case of an emergency but a full 45 is silly. Also Master Shapeshifter is really dumb since having a pure dps talent like that means it's a cookie cutter decision when someone's trying to max out dps (currently the answer is very obviously no).

  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    Your mistake is taking specifics of what has been shown instead of looking at what they are trying to do from a macro perspective. You missing the forest for the trees, and that is an obvious move towards getting more use out of secondary forms.

    Yeah, if it's beta and it's still like this, then obvious there's a problem. But the preview is supposed to show intent, and yes that IS their intent.

    YL9WnCY.png
  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    edited December 2011
    I'll be pretty surprised if druids wind up wanting to change forms much in pve, especially between caster and melee forms.

    I don't think we can tell very much about their intent (to the extent that they even know themselves, in pre-alpha) from the talent calculator. Those talent trees need to have something useful for every spec in every application; it seems very likely that a lot of them would wind up being "pvp talents," the same way lots of talents are thought of that way now.

    ed: note also that heart of the wild lasts 45s per six minutes in the current talent calculator. That makes it seem like a panic button more than anything else.

    Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
    NREqxl5.jpg
    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    Well in PvP Heart of the Wild would be very useful as a panic button regardless of spec. Just due to all the defensive bear buffs.

    And there are several situations in raids where a healer has died, and you need someone in a pinch. The loss of dps is easily made up by the group's dpsing for much longer on account of not being dead.

    YL9WnCY.png
  • OptyOpty Registered User regular
    But what fight is there that you need a healer "in a pinch" outside of the immediate death of the boss? If there's a big boss cooldown such that you can't get past with a healer down such that a dps needs to shift out and pop a 6 minute cooldown to make up for them, what happens the next time that cooldown happens and that dps is no longer a valid healer? If you can complete the fight with two healers at that point then why not just start with 2 healers to begin with and kill the boss faster?

  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    There can be phases that can be made easier by having an extra healer. I mean, 45 seconds is a decently amount of time to put out some healing. Perhaps a healer had to move out of range due to positioning fuckups. Maybe there's an intense phase that is focused more on surviving the outgoing damage than doing any. Perhaps a healer burned through mana too fast, and you can take some of the stress off while they pop a regen cooldown. A druid popping Heart of the Wild and blowing Tranq will be a massive relief to the healers. And you don't lose that much dps time (and not every fight has tight berserk timers).

    That's just healing. If you're feral, how many bosses have melee unfriendly phases? You could pop Heart and do some ranged DPS. Maybe a tank goes down or fucked up positioning. You can hold the fort while the tank gets rezzed and healed/buffed back up. Shit, just being able to pop heart, go to bear and taunt off the current tank could be considered a pseudo tanking cooldown.

    While the situations are niche, there are a lot of them. It gives HotW a lot of versatility. Your alternatives are a dps compensation for whenever you have to cast spells (decent but not mindblowing), and the ability to remove roots and heal a generous chunk of HP (definitely a relief to healers, especially as tank with smart macros). All competitive skills, for the most part. It really depends on the context of the fight.

    YL9WnCY.png
  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    edited December 2011
    The place I see the "hybridization" being the least useful/realistic is for resto druids. The way encounters have been designed for a long time now, it's just not at all reasonable to have one of your healers just not be healing for 30+ seconds.

    forty on
  • The Dude With HerpesThe Dude With Herpes Lehi, UTRegistered User regular
    edited December 2011
    So kitty feral.

    Is there a way that I just don't know about to increase the speed at which energy regens?

    Because holy shit I spend an inordinate amount of time on long fights just staring at my screen waiting for enough energy to do anything when berzerk and that uh...one that gives me rage on a 25s cd are on cooldown. EDIT: I'm partially confused too because when I do swipe on AoE packs, even when I pop that rage thing I will just go out of energy after about 5-6 swipes and then I'm stuck staring at the screen again. What I'm confused about is that I see other druids when I'm on other characters seem to not have this issue.

    Maybe I'm just too used to rogue energy management, but kitty just feels like a lot of waiting for energy which isn't enjoyable at all. I'm considering either just dropping kitty entirely and going bear and seeing how I like that or finishing up my resto set and making it dual purpose (it's just dungeons) for resto and moonkin.

    The Dude With Herpes on
    Steam: Galedrid - XBL: Galedrid - PSN: Galedrid
    Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
    Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand

  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    edited December 2011
    What could you be missing? It's just the nature of energy that sometimes you're waiting for it or pooling up to 80+ to delay an SR refresh or Rip or something.

    Other than your finishers, pretty much everything you're doing takes 35-40 energy. You regen about 11-12 energy per second depending on your haste. Put those two things together with the 1 second GCD and yes, you'll have bits of downtime throughout a fight. Other than the cooldowns it's just OoC procs which are of course random as all get-out. Sometimes you'll get a few close together, and between that and Tiger's Fury you'll have like 15 seconds of nonstop abilities, and other times you'll have dry spells and end up waiting a couple seconds between presses.
    What I'm confused about is that I see other druids when I'm on other characters seem to not have this issue.
    I'm kind of curious how you can tell this or what makes you suspect it. Are you just watching everything the other cats do the whole time?

    forty on
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    forty wrote:
    The place I see the "hybridization" being the least useful/realistic is for resto druids. The way encounters have been designed for a long time now, it's just not at all reasonable to have one of your healers just not be healing for 30+ seconds.
    It's definitely more limited, but you have burn phases like Magmaw where you get a decent amount of time to lay on some DPS once everyone is patched up.

    YL9WnCY.png
  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    edited December 2011
    I don't think one encounter per expansion (or even tier, which I don't think there really has been in Cata) validates a talent/philosophy, though.

    I'm not just trying to be a smart ass here; I can't think of anything but Magmaw in this expansion that's had a relatively safe DPS burn phase (less so in heroic, but I think the other healers could probably handle it).

    Edit:

    Can't think of anything else in T11.

    T12, not really. There are periods of theoretically low healing requirements on Alysrazor, but those don't correspond with the burn phase. Maybe the first Domo cat phase? Eh. Maybe a Rag transition phase? Of course if you really need the extra damage help from a resto druid going HotW on the first one, your raid isn't going to get the fight anyway.

    T13, Hagara has a burn phase, but it's short and 2/3 of your HotW would go to waste. Maybe during the first minute of Ultraxion since the raid damage is pretty low yet? I'm not sure about the tendon burns on Spine. Depending on what's still up I think there could still be a lot of healing needed.

    forty on
  • thenshewaslikethenshewaslike Registered User regular
    So kitty feral.

    Is there a way that I just don't know about to increase the speed at which energy regens?

    Because holy shit I spend an inordinate amount of time on long fights just staring at my screen waiting for enough energy to do anything when berzerk and that uh...one that gives me rage on a 25s cd are on cooldown. EDIT: I'm partially confused too because when I do swipe on AoE packs, even when I pop that rage thing I will just go out of energy after about 5-6 swipes and then I'm stuck staring at the screen again. What I'm confused about is that I see other druids when I'm on other characters seem to not have this issue.

    Maybe I'm just too used to rogue energy management, but kitty just feels like a lot of waiting for energy which isn't enjoyable at all. I'm considering either just dropping kitty entirely and going bear and seeing how I like that or finishing up my resto set and making it dual purpose (it's just dungeons) for resto and moonkin.

    Waiting is part of the deal, yes. But you may not be playing quite right, since even after the rotation was simplified, there are still a lot of little things to watch out for.

    First, make sure you are never, ever using TF when you have more than 35 energy. Second, use your OOC procs on expensive shit like shred, not to refresh rip. Even if Rip is falling off. Third, refresh SR whenever you feel like it, which will almost never be at 5 points. If you have 4 CP, do not go for 5 to refresh SR because you may be wasting a double combo point proc, which is just so useless on SR. Fourth, on shitty target switching fights like Domo, just autoattack that stupid cat. Save your points for when you can go back to your main target. If you are watching your timers carefully and doing all of the above, the regen times you go through should be shorter and more spread out.

    Swipe is expensive, yes, and you aren't supposed to be able to spam it. What you can do is intentionally pool your energy for when you know an AOE fest is about to happen (like on Rag) and save TF for when it comes. Alternately, on a fight like H Anub, you keep up what you are doing on the boss and only swipe on OOC procs. With the first method, make certain you are actually autoattacking.

  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    edited December 2011
    Second, use your OOC procs on expensive shit like shred, not to refresh rip.
    What if you're at 5 CPs when OoC procs?

    Edit:

    Damn, the feral T13 set bonus that makes Blood in the Water work at 60% is nice.

    forty on
  • thenshewaslikethenshewaslike Registered User regular
    You shred.

  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    OK, that's what I've always done. It is a conflicting scenario though and I wasn't sure if EJ had decided that in some case the CPs would be worth more than the 10 energy.

  • The Dude With HerpesThe Dude With Herpes Lehi, UTRegistered User regular
    forty wrote:
    What could you be missing? It's just the nature of energy that sometimes you're waiting for it or pooling up to 80+ to delay an SR refresh or Rip or something.

    Other than your finishers, pretty much everything you're doing takes 35-40 energy. You regen about 11-12 energy per second depending on your haste. Put those two things together with the 1 second GCD and yes, you'll have bits of downtime throughout a fight. Other than the cooldowns it's just OoC procs which are of course random as all get-out. Sometimes you'll get a few close together, and between that and Tiger's Fury you'll have like 15 seconds of nonstop abilities, and other times you'll have dry spells and end up waiting a couple seconds between presses.
    What I'm confused about is that I see other druids when I'm on other characters seem to not have this issue.
    I'm kind of curious how you can tell this or what makes you suspect it. Are you just watching everything the other cats do the whole time?

    I don't know what I could be missing, that's why I was asking. I'm just cycling through my alts capping my VP and I just happen to have not played my alliance characters in ages so I'm really out of the loop; plus I had only played my druid up to 85 last year and then pretty much shelved him so while I thought I was playing right, I just wanted to be sure.

    Plus I was comparing it to rogue combat where via various means it's pretty rare that I'm at a lack of energy to do something. Of course there's some waiting it just seemed like substantially more on my druid.

    And yeah, I usually do pay attention to other classes I don't know very well when I know I'll be playing them soon. It just seemed like a lot of druids in the dungeons I've ran have been able to maintain their high swipe dps for the duration of trash fights and multi-target bosses like Mannaroth or Ashzara. At least their dps logs indicate a high % of their damage coming from swipe. I'm not really lacking in dps honestly. For my gear I'm doing perfectly fine so I'm not concerned about that. I was just curious about the energy regen situation. Like I said, I don't know the class very well at all so I figured it was entirely possible that I was missing out on an ability entirely or something.

    I just won't worry about it then I suppose. If it keeps bugging me I'll try out bear and/or moonkin. Though once i get the gear for it I'll probably be straight resto since that's what I really enjoyed while leveling.

    Steam: Galedrid - XBL: Galedrid - PSN: Galedrid
    Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
    Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand

  • thenshewaslikethenshewaslike Registered User regular
    If what you were seeing was before this patch, they nerfed swipe. Again. Because it's been absurdly broken in an "lol, 100k DPS on the spiderlings leading to Beth, even though I'm really a bear" kind of way.

  • OptyOpty Registered User regular
    As it is right now no druid with half a brain will pick anything but Disentanglement. A scaling self heal every 30s is useful for all specs at all times, coupled with being able to break roots again seals the deal. The only people who would ever think of taking Master Shapeshifter would be cats specifically for use in those melee unfriendly fights and Heart is so niche and has such a long cooldown if your strategy relies on you having it up to offtank or dps or offheal or whatever your raid is dumb.

    Speaking of Heart, its cooldown and duration are both too long which is one of the reasons I'm untrustworthy of Blizzard when it comes to "making druids shift more". 45 seconds of doing a different role is worthless, it'll always be capped off in some way. Burn phases generally don't last that long so you'll have to go back to tanking or healing sooner than later. If you're scrambling to make up for a tank or healer dying while they get battle rezzed then as soon as they're up and stable your job goes back to dps. And in all cases if you're relying on the cooldown for a crucial part of the fight then you've either got too many druids in your raid or you've lost before you've begun. If the duration and cooldown were both halved then it'd be way more useful.

  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited December 2011
    Master Shapeshifter needs to be tossed out entirely. It's just...kinda meh and if you make it real strong then druids will have to do a weird shapeshifting rotation. Hey, that might actually be interesting, but if it provides a DPS boost then it'll be a no-brainer choice.

    Disentanglement will probably get some kind of nerf. It's very a obvious choice for tanks and good enough for anyone else.

    Heart of the Wild just needs tweaking, and you can only get that from actual testing. The cooldown needs to come down, and the stat boosts might not be sufficient. It also needs to do a threat dump once it wears off, or else your dps is going to be in a weird spot once it wears off. The only exception being Guardian, which is easy to enough to do.

    In PvP, Disentanglement seems obvious, but Heart of the Wild can be a very potent button for Feral and Balance. If your healer is shut down, then you can step in for what is a VERY long time in PvP.

    Sterica on
    YL9WnCY.png
This discussion has been closed.