More forms?Follow

One thing that popped up in general Teldrassil chat today got me thinking: normal forms for a Druid of the Moonkin and Tree. OR, they wanted a new form that is Feral-specific.

The reasoning they used was that every tree gets to use the forms used in the Feral tree, the "shapeshifting" tree, when the other two get their own unique form feral cannot use.

The idea they proposed was to have a mini ToL and Boomkin form available at around level 50~, gained by a quest. It would around 75% AP boost, 150% Defense boost and it would have half the mana-regenerating power on strikes, as well as a 2% crit chance aura.

The ToL would have less mana-reduction, a slightly lower boost to healing effects and the same movement speed debuff.

Why? Because every Druid needs to be able to use all of their trees. There is nothing stopping a Feral Druid from MHing an instance, assuming it isn't a Heroic. But, this would be a nice addition to a Druids spellbook, considering that all Druids get the increased attack options. Otherwise, they felt that they should get a Dire Cat form gained from a talent, giving them better Feral DD power.

I am inclined to agree with them. I would love a mini-form of all of the others. And, you could just change the talented abilities to Dire X,Y, and have the normal form be trainable.

This way, if a Feral Druid gets stuck having to MH for an instance, he can make up for the loss of talents and practice using this form.

Any thoughts or opinions?

I didn't say make the Feral forms talents. I said make a Dire Cat talent.

And every Druid should be able to change their play style depending on the situation. Feral skills won't always help you win the battle. If your BG only has one healer, then you should be healing, despite being specced Feral. If you need to run X instance, but can only find a group as a healer, you should be healing. If you are fighting mobs that are weak to Nature damage or strong against physical attacks, you should be nuking.

Your tree is a specialization, you can still use other skills. A mini-form would just give you a little boost at higher levels when lacking talents in specific areas really starts to hurt when you have to use the skills. I think of it like Shaman totems or Druid Auras. They can switch those to make up for their shortcomings in the area they have to use for that instance, a Druid should have the same option.

But it is still a sacrifice. You don't gain any of the other talents, just the form (which aren't THAT good in the first place).

You won't heal even remotely as efficiently as a Resto Druid, or have DpS even in the ballpark as a Boomkin, but it won't be so bad.

When you specialize, you aren't sacrificing your other skills. You are focusing on some. You should still have all of your heals and nukes.

I mean, the forms I proposed aren't really OP at all. 2% increase to crit on spells and minor increases to armor/attack/mana regen. Slight boost to healing and slight boost to mana-regen.

I don't want buffed forms for the talents. I want gimped forms that are questable.

You will never come remotely close to another specification; but, you should still be able to fill their roles if you have to.

[EDIT]

I am not trying to Equilize it. Their should still be a huge gap there. I just don't want the other trees to be worthless. No other class faces this. They all get to use their skills (except, MAYBE rogues) with great precision. It just feels like Blizz is letting us choose to be gimped at one class with half level abilities in two others. We should be able to specialize to just under the effectiveness of one class, and be a decent margin under the others. We should be just under the effectiveness of SP 4-5 levels lower at healing. Or the same for a mage using a type they didn't spec into.

Right now, we are more like 8-12 levels behind, numberwise.

Edited, Dec 15th 2007 11:27am by idiggory

I did the math a while back, and fully talented a boomkin druid can do roughly 225-250% MORE DPS and DPM than a nuking druid of another spec (let's assume resto). Meaning if you could do 500 DPS as a moonkin, you'd end up pulling around 150 DPS if not specced balance. What you are suggesting with the moonkin form would be to raise that up from 150 to maybe 155...I'm sorry but if a cat is supposed to be pulling on average similar DPS (which it is) on mobs with 20% armor reduction (which I believe 30% is the usual assumption for "average" armor)...a mob would have to have 75% damage reduction to make the cat DPS EQUAL the untalented caster DPS. In other words, you're suggesting an increase in DPS so slight in comparison to other talents, and the reason to "nuke" is fairly null and void. Oh, and it's armor you're thinking of, defense is completely different.

As far as mini tree of life goes...that doesn't really fit with the way a feral healer would play anyway. A feral or balance healer is going to rely on HT more, because lower ranks of healing spells help HT more than the HoTs, and HoTs get buffed in higher tiers of resto. As such, a mini-version of ToL, which would boost HoTs (otherwise it would just make the dreamstate build uber if you could go mini ToL and still get the healing effects on HoTs). So even though a feral can heal if gearred right, getting a feral to heal with the resto style will be very cumbersome.

Next point on both forms - including the mini version of the form would decrease the effectiveness of the talent for the form. In general, moonkin is a 5% increase in DPS for all casters in the party. However, if you could get 2% already, the talent decreases in effectiveness down to 3%. People wonder why they need dire moonkin form, when the talent could be spent in other places. Same with mini ToL...druids may skip a point in dire ToL if it only slightly helps in comparison.

As far as other classes being able to use all their trees...shadow priests dont heal as well as holy/disc priests, and holy priests dont DPS as well. Healadins cannot tank to save their lives, retadins will have issues healing or tanking, and protadins are not going to be good damage dealers or healers. Granted they can heal, but they lose the efficiency of a holy healer.
While yes hunters can use traps in all 3 specs, a survival hunter is the only spec that can reliably keep a target CC'd permanently. But the hunter playstyle doesn't change much. Let's talk instead of mages - a frost mage is going to be playing entirely differently than a fire mage. Frost mages in solo do a lot of crazy things to kite groups of mobs around, but in groups have to rely on frostbolt spam. Fire mages will just nuke down targets in both solo and group play, but will have a nice shot rotation set up. No fire mage in his right mind would frostbolt spam unless the target was immune to fire - the mage should be specced for the encounter anyway.

I guess my point is, if you want moonkin, put 31 points in balance. If you want ToL, put 41 points in resto. Otherwise, don't ***** with it, and don't whine about it.

Well, cats DO get a speed increase (granted it's outdoors, but still...). The hunter idea sounds cool though, maybe with slightly less DPS than cat form - but allows you to DPS from range so you take less damage. Maybe also allow ferals to kite?

Problem there is you end up speccing for both melee and ranged, which could be considered OP.