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Forum Watch: Class Feedback for WotLK Solicited
Published on December 6, 2007 by Phaelia 
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Community Manager Eyonix (US) recently started a thread in the official Druid forums requesting feedback about potential changes to the Druid class with an eye toward the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Rather than a request for new ideas, Blizzard seems primarily interested in feedback for changes to be made to existing mechanics and perceived class shortcomings:
We’re currently gathering class feedback from players for Wrath of the Lich King concerning thoughts on the areas of each class that is perceived to be most in need of improvement. This thread is not intended for discussion purposes and we ask that you please review the below format before presenting your feedback. It’s very important for us to be able to review all provided feedback and as a result, not following the required format will very likely result in your post being removed.
- List your primary talent tree(s), i.e. Holy/Disc.
- List the content you’re primarily pursuing or most enjoy, i.e. Raiding, PvP, Solo, etc…
- Provide a brief description of the areas you feel are most in need of improvement (you may list a maximum of three issues and each issue should be described in one or two sentences).
- List up to five specific spells/abilities/talents you feel most need change, redesign or improvement in the order you feel each is most in need of attention. (MOST to LESS)
I took this very welcome opportunity to share what I perceive to be some of our most grievous class/spec shortcomings. Obviously, my post was written with an eye toward the Restoration spec, and none of these items are likely to surprise most readers:
Primary Talents: Restoration
Content Pursued: Raiding, Heroic PvE, Arena PvP
Areas Needing Improvement:
- Raid stacking: Presently Restoration Druids bring very little that is unique to the table that cannot better be contributed by a Feral or Balance Druid. It is sometimes more desirable to have Feral or Balance because of their superior auras and, in the case of Ferals, willingness and ability to give their Innervate to someone else. Paladins and Shamans are almost always a better addition to a raid given what they can bring to the table (Blessings and Totems).
- Viability as a group healer. Druids need a standard resurrection spell available to them to be viable 5-man healers. Being forced to look for a Shaman, Paladin, or Priest to bring along to instances is an unfair restriction imposed on no other healer.
- Itemization: If WotLK continues to emphasize Spell Haste as an item stat, Druids will continue to have points wasted on a stat which affords us little benefit. Either make HoTs benefit from spell haste in some way, provide alternative drops which do not include this stat, or do not itemize in this way.
- Aesthetic Customization: Unlike players of other classes, Druids do not progress aesthetically as their gear improves due to our frequent use of forms. This problem is especially pronounced for Feral and Balance Druids but does effect Druids who make frequent use of ToL. It would be more enjoyable if the appearance of our forms changed as certain stats considered “core” to those forms increased.
Spells and Abilities Needing Change:
- Tree of Life Aura: This aura is often discarded in favor of another aura benefitting the tank more. It is nowhere on par with the benefits afforded by a Feral or Balance Druid to her respective groups. Change the aura back to the way it was at inception (benefitting all healers within a group) and prevent it from stacking. As it is, Tree of Life is a very limiting form providing only its mana reduction benefit when it can actually be used.
- Mark of the Wild is widely regarded as a worthless buff that provides very little to a raid as a whole. A rework of this buff (and it’s corresponding Tier 1 5/5 talent, Improved Mark of the Wild) would help make Restoration more desired by raids. At the very least, the resistances provided by this buff should be made to stack with the other, more powerful auras.
- Innervate: A core ability of our class and essential in longer Arena matches, it is extremely vulnerable to dispel by other classes (Priest, Shaman, Warlock, Hunter) and almost invariably worth the mana it costs to take it from a Druid. This ability should be made more difficult or not possible to dispel.
- Lifebloom: As it is, there is no penalty for dispelling the first or second stack of Lifebloom if a Druid has 3 stacks running. Any stack that is dispelled should be changed to bloom in the same way as the last, ensuring that this HoT performs the function that seems to be intended (dispel protection for a class whose usefulness as a healer is tied to its ability to keep one or more HoTs running on groupmates).
U.S. players can submit their own responses here. European readers can respond to an identical thread from Community Manager Vaneras (EU) here. And for a Balance Druid’s perspective and response, check out the response from Graylo of Gray Matter!
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
Nice suggestions.
Good points and nicely put.
I just wish they would consider them earlier.
Especially the raiding/instancing viability/desirability of the class.
Why do they ignore us? Why do they even gimp our existing mechanics (see trinketed lifebloom sustainance nerf)? Do they consider us so overpowered?
Resto is supposed to be our pure raiding spec. We give up our ability to solo and pvp to be effective in raids. Much like a prot warrior. We never needed a dps increase to come with healing stats. Only maybe in arena, but still, there is no chance that a resto druid can produce enough damage to be competent. Our main problem has always been our mutilated special abilities… Noone really wants them or prefers them to the ones other classes offer. We are usually only a last resort solution. We have to take other people’s left-overs…
And seriously what is the deal with thorns… I do not even use it on myself…
/whinemode off
My additions to your post would be to reconsider thorns and make it actually usefull and to either move the omen of clarity to the feral tree, or make it castable to others (Imaging a prot warrior or rogue with OoC).
PS Im going to write a similar post on the EU forum.
Solid suggestions Phae. Please fix my aura blizzard!
I was wondering on your mention of haste. I haven’t really looked into the BT and hyjal gear too closely but is it really that pronounced in the upper echelons of the game?
Well thought out suggestions. My only question is this–why do so many folks complain about restoration druid raid utility? I’m involved with high endgame raiding at this point in time–we’re just starting on the Illidari Council–and we generally bring three resto druids in for all of our attempts (and destroy meters). That’s three battle rezzes, three potential tree auras for tank or melee groups, and 12 lifeblooms on a main tank (if that’s how we stack it). Despite the movement restrictions of our Tree of Life form, we are an extremely mobile healing class. Under duress (an Airburst on Archimonde, for example, or fleeing from the raid on Mother), we can still stack HoTs that other classes (save Priests) cannot. The HoTs are potentially raid saving, especially during silence effects (Howl of Azgalor, for example).
In no case that I’ve experienced so far, has a feral druid or a balance druid (especially a balance druid) been taken to raid over a resto druid for utility (although feral druids have been extremely useful for a million things). As for MotW–I do agree that it could use a buff. It is, however, extremely useful in endgame when tanks need every edge they can get–the same applies to thorns. Any amount of extra damage that a tank can apply to a mob without trying is more TPS they don’t have to work for.
Other than that–I miss the way our aura used to work and I agree that it’d be put to better use as a healer buff rather than a (potential) tank buff. During some scenarios when Tree of Life isn’t even viable (Archimonde), we don’t even have the opportunity to apply it in any useful fashion. Additionally, a standard resurrection spell would be amazing. Five man heroics have been the only place where I’ve felt discriminated as a restoration druid (and desperately sought after when I was a feral druid)–there’s no wipe recovery and no way to quickly pick up and keep going if anyone dies. To that end, if we weren’t going to be awarded a standard rez spell, I’d at least like a form of CC that would also make us more five man viable–cyclone is a lot of fun in PVP, but remains almost entirely useless in PvE. If that’d make us too “overpowered” in PvP, then don’t allow that form of CC to be useable there. Honestly? Being able to use Entangling Roots indoors would solve a lot of problems.
And Spell Haste? Agreed. Useless for druids. Insert joke about actually using Healing Touch again here.
@Dimitris: Fortunately for us, speccing Restoration is no longer the sacrifice that it once was. It’s the top-performing spec for competitive PvP (which makes it no more fun in BGs other than AV, of course) and I’m able to solo just about anything that bothers me while fishing with the spell damage changes. So while I agree with you that it’s not a good idea to handicap healers, I don’t think we’re the wet blankets we once were.
You should only ever use Thorns on yourself when you’re soloing because the damage done with each hit is threat that’s directly attributed to you. But when soloing, it’s nice. Think of it as an extra DoT on the mob trying to smash your face in! I would like to see Thorns scale with spell damage; this would be a nice buff for both Balance and Restoration and might actually make Brambles a worthwhile talent to consider.
@Zackoria: From what I understand, yes. A quick search of WoWHead yields the following results for Healing Leather from BT: http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4.2&filter=cr=16:50;crs=3959:1;crv=0:10
That’s two items with spell haste, out of 6 pure healing items. Okay, so maybe not as bad as I had assumed.
@Runycat: I think many complain about Restoration Druid utility because our special class abilities are available to any Druid, regardless of spec (Mark of the Wild, Thorns, Rebirth, Innervate). Our only special ability that isn’t Swiftmend or Nature’s Swiftness is the Tree of Life aura. We don’t get anything special that’s worthwhile for dipping so deep into our tree (har har). Fixing our Tree Aura to rock would, of course, be the ideal solution since you can’t pick it up without firmly committing yourself to Restoration.
You make an excellent point about mobility. Being able to HoT on the run is AWESOME. But a lot of times, I can’t be a Tree anyway because, while I may be able to run and HoT, I still need to move my butt (ex. Gruul’s Lair, Lurker Below, Prince Malchezar, Aran). I can’t even imagine how much MORE trouble I’d have jumping onto that stupid little wooden ring on Lurker if I were to try it in Tree Form. >.<
I agree with you 100% about the CC. If we aren’t allowed to perform the very important role of rezzing fallen groupmates and are instead forced to bring along another “healer” (who do not have CC), why not allow us to perform some CC, as well? It would certainly be extra taxing to heal your group AND crowd control, but it would also be a lot of fun and would help compensate for our lack of rez. Either of your ideas (Roots indoors or a longer duration Cyclone) would be great … as long as our CC doesn’t become any stronger in PvP. I think our forums would overflow with QQ if they were to buff Cyclone in Arenas.
Honestly, being able to root indoors wouldn’t be very overpowered, if you think about it. It’d only really work on a melee class anyway; as I’m sure we’re both very well aware, a rooted caster is still very much a threat. As for the rezzing, I was just discussing it with my boyfriend (who also happens to be my MT)–at level 80, why not make a resurrection ability a deep Resto talent? Hybrid druids still aren’t shorted their combat rez utility, and even if the proposed Resurrection “talent” added something like ten or fifteen minutes to a Combat Resurrection ability on a resto druid, the fact remains that that rezz would still be available.
I still think that what makes a resto druid special isn’t the aura or the buffs but rather our method of healing itself, and that alone is what makes us raid viable (and highly sought after, despite the fact that resto shamans are ridiculously overpowered with chain heal). What other class can keep a main tank topped off just by utilizing a HoT rotation?
And a quick note on Lurker–I actually do stay in tree form for that entire fight and do all right. Mobility issues that I originally had (when I was MTing, funny enough) disappeared when I got a new computer and my framerate improved. For some reason, SSC was always a ridiculous utility whore, and before I got my new PC, I used to get something like 10 FPS in there. I obviously don’t know if that’s part of the issue, but if it is, maybe you should ask Mr. P for a new vid card for Christmas instead of a figurine. >_>
I’m also a recent victim of the spell haste ridiculousness; I recently picked up the Botanist’s Gloves of Growth from BT, and even though they’re a larger raw +Heal upgrade (and add more STA for that matter, which becomes very very important) I may go back to my Tier 5 so that I get the two piece set bonus again, nevermind the mana regen and SPI. Very strange itemization.
If you’d ever like to discuss/chat about mechanics, please feel free to drop me a line. It’s very interesting being thrown into end game as a resto druid since, for a very long time, I actually raided feral.
Hi! Great points! Just wanted to say @yourreply@runycat – I’ve done Lurker several times in ToL form, and it’s pretty ok to jump in out of the water in that form, don’t worry too much about it! It’s getting stuck under the stupid wooden ring that becomes a problem, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re in forms of not then! =)
@Runycat: I think that the main issue with giving Druids indoor root would actually stem from PvE moreso than PvP. Unlike most other forms of crowd control, Root isn’t limited to just one or two mob types (Sap = humanoid, Sheep = humanoid or beast, Banish = Demon or Elemental, Hibernate = Beast or Dragonkin). It also wouldn’t require the finesse of Ice Trap since we wouldn’t be required to navigate it into a particular place to be rooted. And I would definitely support placing out of combat resurrection as a talent in the Restoration tree.
@Runycat and Ruminarthr: I’ll have to try ToL on our next Lurker attempt. I just know that I have enough trouble getting back onto that stupid wooden ring so if it’s any more difficult, it wouldn’t work for me. =D