Cataclysm talent buildsFollow

As posted in the main forums, there's a talent calculator for a few classes here. The feral tree looks pretty awesome. The resto tree..



With talents you can reduce the cooldown to three and a half minutes. So.. roughly 20% of the time you'll be in Tree form. Frankly, this sounds horrible. I'm very attached to healing in Tree form, and turning it into a healer cooldown does not appeal to me at all. Oh wait, it's not a cooler healdown - Improved Tree of Life increases damage by 15%. Plus I move at half speed, so if a void zone spawns under me I'm going to take a few hits, or else shift out and completely waste the cooldown. Gee, thanks.

I realize that this is still alpha, of course, but some of these talents are ridiculous. 15% chance to get a free, insta-cast Wrath after casting Nourish or Healing Touch. Sounds great, except for the fact that we're healers, and it's pointless. Plus it almost certainly still triggers the GCD, which is a loss of healing power.

I do like some of the talents, though. Gift of the Earthmother now makes Rejuvenation hit for 15% of its total power when first applied, in addition to the HoT, which is a nice change since waiting for that first tick can last an eternity. But these talents put a lot of emphasis on Regrowth and Lifebloom.

That's just for the Resto side, though. In Balance, I clearly have missed some notes about what's coming up for us in Cataclysm, because half the talents talk about Lunar/Solar energy, and I hadn't heard a thing about that concept. A lot of the talents seem pretty neat, although - switching back to my healer side for a second - Nature's Splendor is in a horrible place, requiring 2 talents that won't boost our healing at all.

Feral seems pretty nice. There's a lot of room to specialize in it, and we'll still be in the situation where you have to pick either cat or bear, you can't optimize both in one spec. It looks like they've expanded laterally a bit since they didn't want to extend the trees further downward.

All in all, I like a lot of the concepts here (except ToL, clearly). The numbers aren't even remotely finalized, nor are the talent placements, etc etc. Still, it gives me hope that we'll see a pretty drastic revamp to all of our specs in Cataclysm, and a few of our lesser-used abilities might see the light of day again.

Resto does keep getting more interesting.

A lot of spell A affecting spell B in some way. I'm hopeful it'll make things more interesting if they balance it right; if not then it seems you'll be faced with situations where you are only casting Nourish to refresh lifebloom; or only casting Regrowth when the target is at low health, etc.

ToL doesn't really bother me so much. Something like: when the boss goes into a soft enrage so do I. But ya there's a lot of PvPish stuff scattered in there. Nature's splendor is going to be a bit of a pain to get to. Well, I probably won't mind it at first, since it's an awesome excuse to get Solarbeam, but ya, it'll get old fast. But if HoTs are just as effective in the next expansion, I'm guessing we'll all be rocking some variety of 16/0/60. That being said I don't see myself doing nearly as much pre-Hotting in Cata... In the end this is all assuming, of course, everything doesn't change again many more times.

It is kinda cool that they are wrapping a couple of the nice 4pc tier set bonuses (instant heal RJ & Crit. Hots) into our normal set of healing mechanics now.

I hope they increase the armor on Improved Barkskin, or I'm gonna have to get used to being squishy again...

Of course. A lot of them are lacking in any really clear purpose, however. Speaking of PvP, I can only assume that part of why ToL is limited duration now is because they were tired of healers constantly having the huge armor boost. I imagine Improved Barkskin had its armor bonus massively scaled down for the same reason.

Even in terms of PvP, I feel like the Resto tree is lacking in any really clear direction or idea of what they want you to be doing.


I'm always confident in Blizzard's ability to balance talent trees so that all classes are roughly on par (for PvE, at least). So I'm not really concerned that in the end we're going to become worse healers. But the idea of spending any length of time in my caster form just isn't appealing to me. Caster form is the one I use when I've died and haven't had the chance to shift back yet. I like the aesthetic aspect of it, and I like that if I get aggro in a heroic I can actually tank one or two mobs until the real tank figures out what's going on.

As for the 6% raidwide aura, though - even if they roll this into our spells, that just feels like we're losing one of the unique things that made resto druids an excellent addition to raids. It's like if they took Divine Spirit away from priests and said "don't worry, we're rolling that into everyone's base stats". All well and good, but you're taking away from one of the unique aspects of the class at that point. Statistically I'm sure it works out exactly the same; but I don't like the idea of it.

The bear stuff looks pretty good. Has a decent amount of wiggle room it seems. I like this so far the best.

Pulverize must had a CD on it but it doesn't show one. Either way has good synergy with existing abilities. The shorter CD on FFF from FA will be sweet for ranged mobs.

I don't know if Pulverize necessarily needs a cooldown. If you use it every 10 seconds to keep the buff up, then half of that time will be spent using just Lacerate - no Maul, FFF, or anything else. That might be enough of a limiter that you're forced to weave Lacerate between other abilities. That's assuming that it consumes the Lacerate stacks like it currently says in the tooltip.

ETA: Actually more than half the time, with a 1.5 sec GCD. It'll take 7.5 sec to apply 5 lacerates, then 1.5 sec after using Pulverize before you actually can Lacerate. If they keep the duration at 10 seconds, then keeping the buff up full-time would require literally nothing but Lacerate and Pulverize in your rotation, and I don't see that working very well. I fully expect a Glyph of Pulverize which increases the duration, though.

Edited, Jun 10th 2010 6:06pm by Majivo

Not happy at all about the resto changes to tree form. In fact, it kinda makes me angry. Since they removed the snare, there was no reason NOT to be in tree form if you wanted to heal, so I don't understand all the talk and whining about supposedly being at a disadvantage by "having to shift to catch up with other healers". I'm gonna quit druid healing if they're really making me look at that ugly Nelf model for any length of time.

Not getting any major new spells despite this being an expansion rather than a patch is one thing. Essentially removing something that truly sets druid healers apart from others is another. Kinda like putting a 2 minute cooldown on Chain Heal.

Balance and Feral look better, although I don't understand why SotF is still in there as it is now. Wasn't there talk about removing crits altogether? If that was the case, the talent would still be mandatory for PvE bears because of the armor gain, so I don't see how that fits into this whole homogenization scheme they've been running for a while.

Overall I'm just not too excited and I'm rather curious about what the other tank classes will look like. Just glad I have both Shaman and Priest too, so I don't depend on my druid for healing.

Some of both, I think, they wanted to give another button to press in general and to make it so that Lacerate doesn't magically become bad TPS when you get good gear.

Hey look they're giving resto druids wings....

But its *********

I've already got an anorexic belf female pally :(

So, talent trees getting totally reworked, will only be 31 points deep and won't get a point every level.

Also have to commit to a tree to its fullest, only once you spend 31 points in your first tree will it allow you to 'subspec' to other trees.

I worry about the fate of the ferals...

Edited, Jul 7th 2010 2:21pm by Norellicus

I worry about feral because it's two specs in one tree. Which means odds are good that either both specs will get mutilated or end up in such a way that you can be an excellent tank and dps with the same set of talents like we did in BC...which they said they don't want at the start of wrath. And that'll lead to repeating cycles of nerfs/buffs, and then we'll end up in a 'rubber band' scenario like DK did for the first 1/2-2/3 of wrath.

I don't like the prospect of having to get tweaks and adjust playing habits every other week.

Hopefully, if they force you to pick between Bear and Cat in the Feral tree, they won't break the one you don't pick for you. While I understand that having Druids tank and DPS with the same spec is bad (not so much since dual-spec was introduced, but still), I still want Bear Form to be somewhat useful to me, even if I focus on Cat Form.

And here's hoping they'll roll Rake into another ability.

I'm a feral tank with a feral dps off spec - since we now get just a flat bonus for the tree, I wonder what the focus of it will be towards - tank or dps?

I'm gonna miss Omen and Natural Shapeshifter though (unless it takes less then 5 points to climb a level).