Unlike how the talent tree looks right now I actually feel like I have to make some decisions about my spec that will have some major impact, and it’s fun to try out different specs in these calculators and try to find that sweet spot. But I’m not really losing any sleep over this until they are final, since talents may appear, disappear or change “size” (how many points you can/must invest).

I’m just “happy” that Rend and Tear isn’t too appealing so I can skip it. But I suspect that may change it… Actually, as I type this up I just remembered that there’s a glyph that increases the duration of Rip with 4 seconds which should mean it should be no problem keeping Rip up at all times. That means Rend and Tear should give a pretty much constant 10% damage bonus for Shred. Dangit, now I’m torn about that one…

@Idahoe: I can see why some Ferals would feel relieved to no longer have to bother with powershifting. I know I never really got the hang of it on my baby Feral.

@Archmera: Haha … I’m glad you liked it.

@Runycat: Thanks for commenting with your insight. More button mashing is good though, right? You’re getting to use more abilities more frequently?

@Abagoo: Hopefully the split between Cat and Bear talents will still give the Druid the ability to switch between specs during raids (with the two template ability they’ve promised).

@Padwar: Great breakdown of the Restoration talents that augment Ferals. I agree that Naturalist is a bizarre combination of abilities, but I think the idea of pairing them up was so that Ferals who do have to heal have a 3.0 sec Healing Touch to use. In the past, the worse your gear was for healing, the more you would have to rely on your direct heal, Healing Touch, so I can appreciate it from that standpoint. I love the idea of moving Natural Shapeshifter/Master Shapehifter into Tier 1. that would be incredibly helpful for Balance Druids, too, although they’d still have to look at how to invest to acquire Intensity.

@Oni: Are you sure you can afford to cut out the 4% crit from Master Shapeshifter with the reduction to crit Cats are seeing because of the changes to Agility?

@Silent: In WotLK where players have 71 talent points to invest, specialization is ever more important. Blizzard is deliberately forcing Ferals to choose between Bear and Cat specs, so I hope you won’t mind if they opt to boost Cat DPS to a level closer to that of a Rogue’s. They’ve at least acknowledged that Cat DPS in live right now is abysmal. I’m hoping to see Cats reach 90% of a Rogue’s DPS when fully cat-specced while still retaining some decent ability to offtank if needed. And there are no Cats/Bears out there that “main heal” in the same raid. You seem to think that Druids are the only ones built this way, but don’t forget that Paladins have similar capabilities (melee DPS, healing, tanking), and the game isn’t extinct yet!

I do agree that “having” to invest all those points into the resto tree is a bit annoying. Personally I’ve currently 14 points in there: 5/5 Furor, 5/5 Naturalist, 3/3 Intensity (10 extra instant rage is useful when tanking) and 1/1 Omen of Clarity. But looking at the current beta talents I’m much more likely to reduce that to 11 points by sacrificing 3/3 Intensity. Natural Shapeshifter hardly seems worth it and 5 points just to get 4% crit as cat and 4% extra damage as bear does not seem worth it with so many new and improved talents in the feral tree, I can’t even find points for Rend and Tear, which I think would be more beneficial then Natural + Master Shapeshifter.

But every time I sit down and try to plan out a spec I seem to come up with something different. They sure seem to have succeeded in making it impossible to get all the good cat talents if you want all the good tank talents this time. Here’s the latest one I came up with, main focus is tanking, but with a few more dps centric talents taken as well

5/5 Furor: Previously a bread-and-butter feral talent; Furor will become less useful to ferals with the elimination of powershifting. Unfortunately we still have to purchase it to get past tier 1. Solution: Move it to tier 1 in the Balance tree as a 2 or 3 point talent, or scrap it entirely to make room for other changes.

5/5 Naturalist: 10% increased physical damage… in the resto tree? Why? Coupled with… a casting time reduction on Healing Touch? Why? What do these two things even have in common? This talent has never made sense. Solution: Scrap this talent altogether. Increase base damage of druid physical attacks by +10% across the board, or roll it into the much-more-appropriately-themed but little-used Feral Aggression. If anyone still cares about the casting time of HT, then further reduce it through the new glyph and put this confused talent to rest.

3/3 Natural Shapeshifter: This talent will also become less useful when ferals can no longer convert mana into energy to produce additional damage via powershifting. Depending on itemization it may still prove moderately useful, if only because future feral/rogue gear that will likely lack Int. Regardless, we must spend points here in order to get to…

2/2 Master Shapeshifter: Awesome talent, great idea… poor location. Something obviously intended to be useful to all specs should be made more accessable to feral and balance. Solution? Move both Natural and Master Shapeshifter to tier 1 and connect them with a horizontal prerequisite arrow.

1/1 Omen of Clarity: Cool implementation to create a mechanic that will make some stats more scaleable for ferals. I am curious to see how it works out. Again this talent is obviously intended to be highly useful for all three specs, yet it is all the way down in tier 3. Solution: Move OoC up to tier 2. Move Nature’s Focus (a more resto-oriented talent) from tier 1 to tier 2 to fill the gap left by deleting Naturalist and moving Natural Shapeshifter.

Now we’d be looking at 6 useful points for all specs available right at the top of the resto tree. That would free up 10 points to use for essential talents in the feral tree.

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