European CM Ommra just announced that Tree of Life will finally gain access to the Barkskin spell with the release of patch 2.1:

Druids will be able to cast Barkskin in Tree of Life form in 2.1.

Severely limited in defensive ability, Tree of Life will gain a small amount of usability in arena with this change. This will also allow trees to pair of Tranquility + Barkskin in 5-man instances and raids.

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Accessdenied of Blackrock recently posted a short tutorial on shifting directly to Bird Form while swimming. Although the technique is difficult to perfect, she does offer proof of her success, as demonstrated by the video below:

Instructions:

1. Swim in a straight line (use the autorun key).

   Stay as close as possible to the water surface.

   It’s not necessary to get your head above water.

2. While on autorun, press the “pitch-up” button and hold it.

   Your toon will stop swimming and look-up/thread water.

   Her head will be below water, but that’s okay.

3. Now press the jump key once and let go (while still pressing pitch-up and on auto-run).

   At the peak of the jump, shift to flight form.

   You will shoot up straight like a rocket.

Pretty cool.

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A topic on the official druid forums entitled “Cant decurse or buff in tree form…..!” was started today by Galladriel of Illidan. While the spell limitations of Tree of Life may be a dead horse to some, this topic included some interesting and — aside from the usual gear/spec/reputation posturing — constructive discussion about this form and the necessity (or lack thereof) of its inherent limitations. The posting of this topic comes in the wake of PTR 2.1.0 notes stating that while changes have been made to both the spells available in Tree of Life and that the ability tooltip has been updated for accuracy, community concerns about the form’s stringent limitations seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

Of primary concern to many druids (including the original poster) is the form’s inability to cast Abolish Poison, Remove Curse, Mark of the Wild, Thorns, or Barkskin. (Healing Touch is also mentioned but mostly perfunctorily; I don’t think many druids still argue for the ability to cast this spell in Treeform.) Not being able to cast Mark/Gift or Thorns can be frustrating, especially given the ten-minute duration on Thorns. Not that you would expect to stay a Tree for stretches of ten minutes at a time, but it’s frustrating to see Thorns drop on your main tank just as you’ve shifted into Treeform. Even just allowing Thorns to be cast without also giving access to Mark/Gift would be tremendously helpful. And really, what could make more sense than a Tree bestowing you with a thorny damage shield (which, outside the realm of Azeroth, makes very little sense)? You generally don’t buff during combat, so this limitation seems annoying and unnecessary.

The real frustration for a Tree is not being able to cast Abolish Poison or Remove Curse, both of which are classified as Restoration spells. These aren’t the only Restoration spells to which we lose access, of course, and — unlike priest Shadowform — Tree of Life isn’t billed as a school-limited or school-exclusionary form. However, the two decursing spells’ Restoration classification firmly places them within the realm of healing.

Notouch of Bonechewer argues that:

“…the limitations to it were built in for a reason. It’s up to you to figure out what those reasons are and learn to incorporate them into your play style.”

She believes that it’s partly laziness that makes druids want to decurse in Treeform and that “artistic” shifting is a demonstration of druid skill. While I agree that it does take some skill to be able to manage the use of Treeform in instances where decursing is required (all of them at one point or another), I prefer to let my skill show by capitalizing on my class’s strengths, not by overcoming my class’s inherent and unnecessary deficiencies. If there isn’t a good reason for the limitation, simply having it for the sake of separating men from mice — or elf from tree — is silly.

Calenbraga from Feathermoon points out that feral-specced druids have to deal with similar limitations while in form:

If a feral druid dies in cat form when a battle rez, innervate or emergency heal could have improved the situation they make it clear they’re a crappy druid. Same deal for a moonkin.

Same deal for a tree druid.

Sounds logical. Each of our forms do have limitations. Except that Tree of Life is the only one of our forms to have limitations which are directly counter to the role it is intended to perform. When a druid turns into a cat, she doesn’t suddenly go from being able to stealth to not. And when a druid turns into a bear, she doesn’t suddenly lose the ability to bash. You don’t lose abilities which are core to performing the role of your new form but instead only gain abilities which lend toward performing that role. The downside is the loss of spell access (healing, damage, buffing, debuffing), but all of these spells are outside the the bounds of melee dps and tanking. When a druid turns into a tree, however, she finds her retinue of healing abilities greatly diminished, one of the most important and necessary among them being decursing.

The last spell under discussion was Barkskin which I view as icing on the cake. While I agree that — if only for Lore reasons — a Tree should have access to something called Barkskin even if they don’t have an inherent armor bonus for being made out of wood, if we were given the ability to decurse, I would ask for nothing else.

A 41-point Healing form should not be something that you can’t use to heal a group in Heroic instances. As it is, Treeform makes easy instances even easier and the hardest instances all but impossible. This seems to me a fundamental flaw in its design and one I’m surprised that the development team persists in ignoring.

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Boubouille over at MMO-Champion recently posted an in depth preview of patch 2.1.0 (registration required to view) which — among tons of other content — includes pictures of Tier 6 armor for all of the classes. Every time the graphics for a new tier of armor is released, it gives me hope that the previous tiers will somehow become more accessible, but I suppose that’s the original EverQuest player in me. I don’t like the look of the druid Tier 6 armor, but I suppose we look like totems in treeform so we may as well look like totems out of treeform, too. As always, the priest equivalent looks amazing, and I admit to feeling armor envy. I wish someone would tell the basement programmers at Blizzard that nature includes more colors than green and brown. There are purple mountains, blue skies, and every other color in flowers. I’d like to see more colors incorporated into some of our armor sets.

The stats on all Tier 5 armor are also getting an overhaul, and the MMO-Champion article includes links to the updated Nordrassil Harness (Feral), Raiment (Restoration), and Regalia (Balance) sets. In addition to the armor preview, the Gift of the Wild spell icon is getting a facelift. Before my dual-purpose macro for casting Mark/Gift, I created a macro that used a different icon for my Gift spell, so it’s nice to see them recognize and correct this annoyance.

There is a ton of additional information applicable to all classes — including all new jewelcrafting recipes, Darkmoon Faire upgrades, new mounts and weapon graphics, and reputation guides for Skyguards and Netherdrakes — so be sure to check out the article for yourself!

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Patch notes for the Public Test Realms were released on Friday and include several changes to the druid class along with the addition of the druid epic flight form quest.

The Class Eliminator™ in its most recent incarnation

Druid Epic Flight Form:

The Druid Epic flight form will be available through a series of quests, similar to the Warlock and Paladin Epic mount quests before it. This quest series will also open up a new boss in Sethekk Halls, and ultimately lead to the epic flight form.

Druid-Specific Changes:

• The Druid Epic Flight Form is now available through a series of quests.
• Barkskin now reduces all damage taken, with its duration reduced to 12
  seconds and cooldown reduced to 1 minute. The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate this ability can be used while frozen, incapacitated, or cowering in fear. That functionality was already present, but not listed in the tooltip.
• Bear Form and Dire Bear Form: The bonus health from shapeshifting into these forms will again be removed correctly when shifting out of these forms.
• Cyclone: This ability will no longer work on hunters with The Beast Within active or hunter pets with Bestial Wrath active.
• Feral Charge now suppresses all Slowing effects while charging the target.
• Fixed a data error that caused Swiftmend to generate more threat than intended.
• Force of Nature: These pets will now come into the game with full health, including that gained from a percentage of their master’s stamina.
• Gift of the Wild, ranks 1 and 2, are now available on trainers.
• Gift of the Wild: Rank 3 of this ability now has the same range as ranks 1 and 2.
• Improved Leader of the Pack: This ability will no longer generate threat.
• Lacerate: The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate it does initial bleed damage when the ability first lands.
• Lifebloom: Each additional application of this spell will now include the full bonus from effects which increase healing. The final heal, however, is still unaffected by stacking multiple applications of this spell.
• Mangle(Bear): Damage increased by 15%, but bonus threat reduced so that overall threat generation will be unchanged.
• Nature’s Grace: This talent is now triggered by Swiftmend and Lifebloom, and is triggered by and affects Cyclone.
• Nature’s Grasp: The mana cost has been removed from all ranks as intended.
• Omen of Clarity: This spell is no longer castable in Tree of Life Form or Moonkin Form.
• Prowl will now be broken correctly by damage shields such as Oil of Immolation.
• Rake: The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate the initial damage done is bleed damage. In addition, Rake can now always be re-applied, even when Mangle is active.
• Shapeshifting will no longer remove the Rotting Putrescence creature debuff.
• Subtlety (Restoration Talent) now applies to all spells, not just healing spells.
• Swiftmend: This ability will now be correctly penalized for casting low rank Rejuvenations and Regrowths just as other healing spells are penalized.
• Teleport: Moonglade: This spell is no longer castable in Tree of Life Form.
• Tree of Life Form: The tooltip has been corrected to indicate Nature’s Swiftness and Rebirth are castable in this form.

My Impressions:

I think that the epic flight form looks amazing. I was afraid that we’d have to spend vast sums of money on material quest components the same way that paladins and warlocks do for their epic mount quests,
but judging from an epic flightform quest walkthrough, that doesn’t look to be the case. One of the rewards in the quest chain is a 10% to flight speed trinket which compensates for the leatherworked riding crop not affecting flight form (and saving me 110 gold), and the form looks amazing so I’m quite pleased.

They keep fiddling with Barkskin and Tranquility, I suspect because they’re so often used together for the interruption prevention. The additional reduction for spell and ranged damage is great, even with the duration reduction. I’m ashamed to admit I wasn’t aware that I could use Barkskin while incapacitated but look forward to utilizing the ability more often in PvP.

The range increase on Rank 3 of Gift of the Wild will help a lot during wipe recoveries in Karazhan, and I’m glad that I wasn’t just imagining that the range was larger on Rank 1 and 2 pre-BC.

Lifebloom stacking is finally a viable strategy, and I’m surprised they didn’t have the spell function this way from the outset. As for the changes to the spells castable while in Tree of Life, I’m disappointed to see the form remain unable to perform one of the primary roles of a healer: decursing and removing poisons. It’s frustrating enough to have to shift in an out to cast Mark of the Wild and Thorns, but the decursing is one factor preventing the form’s use in large portions of several 5-man instances.

The change to Subtlety is nice for Restoration druids (and particularly Balance druids who suffer from threat problems across the board), but I know that some ferals pull groups using direct damage spells. This change discourages them from bolstering their healing ability with a talent I consider essential for any main healer, further widening the gap between Restos and Feral/Resto hybrids. Of course, overall it’s a very positive change for the class, especially for our Boomkin brethren.

Overall there are a couple of nice changes for Restoration druids on the immediate horizon (Lifebloom stacking and a versatility increase for Barkskin), though nothing so exciting that I’d want to try it out on the Public Test Realm. The epic flightform looks really promising, but I have a whole lot of farming and fishing to do before I even consider beginning the questline.

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