Beta Blues. Follow

Is there really any reason to nerf feral swiftness indoors?

The only explanation I've ever heard for this is it adds "flavor" to the class.

You wouldn't buff us for no other reason than "flavor", so why nerf us?

Since the latest patch I've noticed my lifebloom ticking for less. When I first got into beta I seem to remember a 3 stack of rank 1 ticking for ~900 with 1137 spell power, which seemed appropriate with the new healing talents. I just respeced resto to try out rank 2 and noticed it was only healing for ~844. So I did a little comparison of what my spells were healing for on live versus beta with the same gear:

My relevant stats:
1137 spell power, 538 spirit

@70, ToL Aura, Live:
lifebloom(x3)- 815 per tick
rejuv- 1013 per tick
regrowth- ~3400 crits

@70, imp. ToL Aura, Beta
lifebloom(x3)- 806 per tick
rejuv- 1094 per tick
regrowth- ~3600 crits

So why is my lifebloom healing for less than it does on live while my other spells both receive noticeable benefits from the new imp. tree of life and master shapeshifter talents? Was I just imagining my lifebloom healing for 900 per tick or did something change?

Edit: Is anyone else having a similar experience with the amount of healing done by lifebloom in live vs beta?

I found this link on the EU beta forum, where one of the EU CM's wanted to bring moonkin issues to the attention of the beta testers. I figured that I would first reassure the EU community that the US beta testers also keep an eye on their concerns. ;o)
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557372459&sid=2003

Wryxian also asked for more links, and I can't post on the EU forums, so here you go. Not only does that thread have the attention of the EU testers, but it has the attention of US testers, too!

In my longer moonkin feedback thread that is already here (on the Beta forums), I linked a different post that one of the EU moonkin testers posted on the Live druid forums for me. Here's the post that EU players put on the US live forums for me to see.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557067977&sid=1

Here's the discussion that followed in my US beta feedback thread (starting on page 3 after the link):
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8202381409&sid=2000&pageNo=3

We do care <3

Here's my reply to their questions, based on my testing & other players' feedback. I didn't want to just edit this back into the first post...

1) Thorns scales with spellpower now. That means thorns is actually doing a lot of damage for moonkin with high spell power.

2) I'm still concerned about imp moonkin aura. I have been hearing rumors that it may not stack with the shaman totem, which pretty much eliminates it's usefulness for high-end PvE, where there will always be a shaman in the raid.

2a)I'm concerned about the usefulness of Eclipse. I dropped it from my leveling/5-man build because the proc wasn't reliable, especially due to me having relatively low crit at level 76 (receiving less crit from intellect & +crit stats, while receiving almost no gear upgrades with more int or crit on them). When I'm fighting something in PvE, the crit that procs Eclipse is usually the crit that kills whatever I'm fighting, and then I have to run and aggro something else so I can get the effect before it fades...

2b) Owlkin frenzy rocks in situations where you are taking damage. With the amount of AOE we will be doing in PvE, it is likely going to be an important part of AOE moonkin's ******* to prevent hurricane interruption between barkskins.

3) I've talked about talent bloat before, but talent bloat is a problem with all class/spec combinations.

3a) Lunar guidance and dreamstate are not holding their weight after the changes to the talent trees and overall scaling with leveling & gear. We will need to invest in resto to pick up intensity & Omen of Clarity as our regen talents, meaning that spirit will be important for our regen.

3b) I don't max out Earth and moon in my builds. I think I'm 4/5 at the moment for leveling, since things die fast enough that for the talent to be useful for leveling at all, you need enough to get fast applications of the debuff.

4) I think we should still have pretty good synergy with other classes by the time the expansion actually comes out. ;o)

There's a few things bugging the feral druid community right now and it would be nice to get a response on the following issues:

First we have the age old scaling problem. Cat form has never scaled well, not at 60, not at 70, and right now there seems to be little to address these issues. Sure our talent trees have new talents that will help us output more damage, but every classes talent trees have had similar improvements and with the big nerf to agility I don't see feral druids realistically being competitive in a raid setting. Kalgan said we would be getting a “Dire Cat Form” at WWI and many of us thought this form would address our scaling issues, however we were recently told by Koraa that we would not be getting a Dire Cat form and said: “I think what Kalgan meant was that we intend to do different texture variances for Druid forms, including Cat form.” So without a Dire Cat Form to look forward to, we need something to address our scaling problems.

Second, we have no idea what is going on with our gear, but many of us are worried. With all this talk about condensing armor types are feral druids going to be stuck in rogue gear? What about bear form? So far in WotLK I haven't seen any leather with bonus armor on it, which would be a massive nerf to bear mitigation. I know the developers have some new plans for tanking in WotLK as far as tanks being able to deal more damage, but it would be nice to know if they intend mitigation to be less of a factor. Also with all this rogue gear on, will our tiny mana pool be able to cast any spells at all? I know in a raid setting it doesn't matter much, but for everything else I very much enjoy being able to use all of my abilities, not just the ones in the feral tree. (And on a side note, what is up with new ranks of spells costing way more than the ranks we have now?) Another concern I have had for a while is that being a hybrid means that we have to regear completely should we decide to respec and try something new, this is not so much an issue now for balance and restoration druids, but I feel like ferals got left out in the cold here. Seeing all deathknight abilities (whether they are spells or melee attacks) getting to scale off the same stats makes me a little jealous.

The last concern I have is about PvP as a feral druid. It's hard to judge right now what our issues will be at level 80, but it feels like we are going to be pretty dependent on our 5 min cooldown Berserk to get stuff killed. I am also very concerned with the amount of burst damage almost every class seems to be capable of now (ferals included). When BC came out it also carried a huge increase in HP as well as the new defensive stat “resilience”, are we going to be seeing similar HP increases or another defensive stat added to the game to offset the amount of burst damage many classes are capable of now?