control of nature is nice, and very helpful in some situations, but ive never had a huge problem utilizing root/cyclone without it. its nice when pets are on you (so vs hunter/lock) and if youre under focus fire (which happens a lot in 5's, but can be worked around) but i could probably do without it.
having said that, i havent really had the chance to arena with the recent changes. all i can say for sure is that you can definetely drop empowered touch, so snag at least 2 points in natures grasp. i dont feel personally that its a necessary talent, but even when im playing at top form there are times when i wish i had it, and it effectively gives you easy mode anti-melee, which depending on how the battle goes (how many times your mace stunned, crits, etc.) it can make the difference between getting away by the skin of your teeth or dying horribly. so, despite the fact that i dont use it very often, i get it anyway.
as for living spirit....i dont know if its worthwhile really. youll be in mostly pvp gear, which means youll likely have an unbuffed spirit of 300 unless you choose to stack more pve gear. thats a risky gamble, because youre trading survivability for more mana regen, which is something druids dont really have a problem with in 2's and 3's thanks to arena water. at 300 spr youre looking at a benefit of 45 spr from the talent. compared to what you get from control of nature, id call it in favor of CoN instead of living spirit.
personally, id stick with the 8/11/42 build. it works, and it works well. i dont think an extra 15% spr in a hybrid pvp/pve gear setup would work out very well in the smaller arenas. it might work nicely in 5's with support, but youre banking a lot on being able to get use out of tree (unlikely) and not having to deal with focus fire, which even when supported can be an issue for a druid with a pvp/pve gear split.
now, for raiding, what you have is just fine. if you dont mind the lack of CoN then you can keep living spirit and just have 2 points in natures grasp, and still probably do well in arena. you might cap out around the 1700's depending on how you and your teammates work, but with the right setup you can probably work around most of the problems. the big questions are how much pvp gear youre willing to sacrifice in lieu of pve gear, and whether or not raiding is more important than pvp. answer those two to figure out whether or not to get control of nature or stay with living spirit.
drop empowered touch regardless of what you do tho; if youre healing as tree youll only get use out of it once every 3 mins with NS, and the 2 points would be just as good not spent if thats the case. for the math on this, at 1200 +heal the talent is giving you an additional 240 healing on HT. at 1600 +heal youre getting 320 more healing on HT. i dont know what youre current +healing is, but even if its 1600 i cant justify two talent points for a once-every-three-minute increase of 320 healing to one spell. even if gift of nature modifies the value after emp touch is applied youre still looking at 352 extra healing for essentially two talent points.
oh, and you dont need imp tranq. rarely will a situation arise in a raid where a single druid using tranq can pull aggro. if it DOES end up pulling aggro, then youre tank is doing something wrong or youre on an aoe pull and the main seeding warlock just died.
Edited, Apr 4th 2008 8:09pm by Quor