More follow-up from Blizzard Poster Ghostcrawler on Feral itemization concerns:

Armor is one of the most important stats a tank can have. We aren’t trying to keep bears from getting it.

The change to itemization was done solely to avoid having so much diversity in the items we could drop. It’s lame when you’re leveling up to keep seeing quest rewards that are itemized for your spec (which TBH is still a problem we haven’t solved for Feral weapons and idols). It’s lame when your raid kills a boss and he drops say elemental mail, healing leather, and a spellpower mace, none of which your group can use. Having bears, cats and rogues all desire the same leather drops isn’t a panacea — it helps some problems, but it creates others. Having bears run around with as much armor as a rogue would be a big, big problem.

Fortunately there are plenty of ways to give bears the armor they need — through talents (like the crit resistance one) or through Dire Bear form itself for example. Even if another tanking class ends up having slightly more armor than a druid, the differences should be so minor that neither of you is at a significant disadvantage on a boss.

I am glad someone mentioned the hunter example. I am really hoping you guys have the same reaction when you see the next pass on druid talents.

Further confirmation that we won’t see any leather items with green armor on them in WotLK. Which is odd because Druids have been forced to pick up less than optimal pieces of what would have previously been considered Rogue armor in the past. Why shouldn’t Rogues conversely see a couple hundred extra armor in “wasted” stats on occasion? They seem to imply that Dire Bear Form may get an armor boost, which I imagine would likely be talented to avoid giving it to Restos, too (which means it would need to be deeper than Thick Hide is currently).

Finally, it sounds like we’ll see another iteration to our talents – possibly Restoration and Balance included. I’m guessing we’ll see those changes “soon” otherwise Ghostcrawler might not be so optimistic about how he thinks we’ll feel.

Developer Koraa responded to concerns that the downranking change would unfairly prevent Shamans from using a cheap, Rank 1 Earthshock:

We’re working on a rank-1 Earth Shock equivalent spell. Not sure when it will be in, though.

Okay, but where is my Rank 1 Moonfire equivalent? I use that in PvP to knock people off the flag, keep people in combat so they can’t drink in Arenas, and kill Shaman totems. Priests, Mages, and Warlocks can use a Wand; Druids cannot. Wands don’t put their users back into the 5SR; Moonfire does. What is the point of the downranking nerf if not to stop people from using Rank 1 spells – like Earthshock – to accomplish something significant without a significant mana investment? Was the whole point just to buff Shamans relative to everyone else? We should all have access to a cheap, Rank 1 version of our abilities.

Related Posts

• Armor Values on PvP Gear
• PTR Changes: 6-Second Cooldown on Wild Growth
• /cancelform to Work like /dismount in Patch 2.3

Beta tester Peppercorn is reporting a reduction to the +Healing coefficient of Lifebloom from Live to the Beta realms. Despite having Improved Tree of Life aura and Master Shapeshifter, his triple-stacked Lifebloom (Rank 1) is ticking for 80 fewer HPS than in Live. At the same time, he’s seeing noticeable improvements to Regrowth and Rejuvenation (due to the new talents). Beta tester Delphine goes on to comment that she’s observed a reduction from 0.52 to 0.44 or a 20% nerf to its coefficient. Developer Koraa responded to his inquiry with the following:

Yes, we have done some toning down of Lifebloom. Lifebloom was unintentionally buffed too much during Burning Crusade when we made the coefficient scaling work on the stack applications. This has caused a lot of problems with balance in the game. Druids are intended — as healers — to be able to dish out good throughput heals with very low efficiency, likewise Lifebloom is intended to be rather cheap and efficient, but not to the degree that it is today.

Compare how you healed in dungeons and raids pre-Burning Crusade to today. Before you used nearly every healing spell you had, today you just use Lifebloom and maybe your other HoTs just because they stack with Lifebloom. Not only is this boring to the player, but it pigeon holes the Druid to spamming Lifebloom on the tanks.

We hope to tone down Lifebloom and bring the Druids other healing spells up to speed in this expansion. Part of this is through changes to the Druid class, changes to other healing classes and through encounter design.

Just as a note — we did intend to change Lifebloom in the Burning Crusade (lower the coefficent), but we ended up delaying that so that we wouldn’t hurt the Druids viability in raiding. With Wrath, we’re introducing a new heal, a revamped Tree Form, and other mechanics to correctly balance things out.

The notion of dishing out “good throughput heals with very low efficiency” (high HPS, low HPM) seems completely counter to the paradigm of a HoT-based class. The current incarnation of Tree of Life actually denies us access to our highest HPS heal, Healing Touch. Druids have never had a high throughput, low efficiency spell; not even Healing Touch qualifies due to its long casting time. Simply stated, HoTs are never going to be high throughput, low efficiency. Clearly there is a Resto Druid identity crisis among the developers right now.

It is clear that Blizzard is trying to push Restoration in a new direction in the expansion. With the addition of such spells as Nourish, Flourish, and talents like Gift of the Earthmother and Living Seed, we cannot expect to play the same way that we did before (nor should we want to). It’s also possible that they’ve realized that with the Gift of the Earthmother talent and Glyph of Lifebloom, we could possibly roll Lifebloom on 7 targets simultaneously (and no doubt wish to avoid the negative PR associated with the mass suicide of Resto Druids that would likely result).

But while they’re trying to push us in this new direction, I’m alarmed that Koraa — and vicariously the rest of the Development team — seems to think this was the direction intended all along. I’m worried what will happen if they decide that these new abilities are too strong and scale them back — without reversing the nerf to Lifebloom. And while it’s expected to change playstyle with the addition of new abilities, Druids already endured through a complete overhaul in TBC; remember spamming downranked Healing Touch and not using HoTs?

Before the change that allowed multiple stacks of Lifebloom to benefit from the +Healing coefficient, Druids were clearly underpowered. They simply couldn’t generate enough HPS in Tree of Life to keep up with the throughput of other similarly geared healers. Similarly, a nerf to Nourish because Developers realize Druids are intended to be a HoT-based class would put us back to where we are right now but with a 20% nerf to what is generally regarded as our best heal and the primary reason to bring a Druid to raids.

Koraa asserts that the +Healing coefficient on Lifebloom is currently too high, making the use of our other spells less desirable. However, Druids have to cast Lifebloom three times before establishing a full stack, then have to refresh it once every 7 seconds for a 187% +Healing coefficient. On the other hand, Shamans can spam Chain Heal with no ramp up time, have less to worry about in terms of targets or “losing” their stack, and get 150% coefficient (approximate). I am curious whether Blizzard is pushing Shamans in some new esoteric direction in an attempt to wean them away from Chain Heal in the same way they want to reduce our reliance upon Lifebloom.

I can understand that rolling Lifebloom on multiple targets is tedious and mind-numbing. I can also understand that allowing the +Healing coefficient to apply to multiple stacks of Lifebloom may have made it more powerful than was originally foreseen or intended. That being said, it isn’t as though we will no longer have to maintain Lifebloom stacks on tanks; we will simply do so with less efficiency.

Related Posts

• Tharfor: Lifebloom Change a "Correction"
• 9014 Nerfs and Ghostcrawler Responds to Resto Concerns
• Ghostcrawler: Healers not to be Interchangeable

Beta tester Lisana recently posted a question regarding the scaling of Feral Druids in Wrath of the Lich King and whether they could expect to once again "fall behind" Rogues as in TBC. Blizzard Developer Jimmythenumbers responded at great length with some new information:

In the next data push, you will find Omen of Clarity has been changed a bit. The 10 second cooldown has been removed, the procs per minute has been raised from 2 to 3.5, and melee abilities no longer trigger it. Spell interaction with Omen of Clarity remains relatively unchanged, with its hidden chance to trigger off spells reduced by half (and rolling the dice about 2x as often).

What this means is that more auto-attacks landing on the target will increase the benefit from Omen of Clarity. Haste, increased hit chance, and expertise will all make Omen of Clarity better.

We are aware of the concerns with reaching the hit rating cap, and will make sure Druids can pick up Rogue items to wear without exceeding that cap. This means Rogues will likely socket for hit, while Druids socket for Strength or Agility.

Before LK goes live, we will do extensive testing on how much damage classes do, and will increase or decrease their power as appropriate to meet our targets. Cat raid DPS suffered relative to other melee in BC for lack of an Combat Potency equivalent talent (OOC should now be roughly equal), for lack of a scaling finishing move (Savage Roar answers that), for lack of benefiting from Windfury Totem, and for lack of weapon procs (+35 agility != Mongoose). All of those lacks have been addressed. In addition, a change has been made to make the agility rebalance less severe (as I posted in another thread).

In PvP, we are adding many tools to the Feral Druid arsenal, including the redesigned Maim, Infected Wounds, King of the Jungle, and Berserk. We have also made some improvements to the "range bug". Attacks that require you to be behind a target will no longer be able to be parried, nor able to be dodged by a player. Our movement engine will now smoothly interpolate positions of moving units, preventing the "Out of range/You must be behind your target/Out of range/You must be behind your target/Out of range/You must be behind your target…" sequence from occurring any more. In addition, being able to apply a snare makes the Feral Druid able to slow down their target and lessen the severity of the "range bug". Yes, there are still issues with the model, especially when switching into and out of cat form, but many of the issues are being dealt with.

Druids are not being ignored; this forum is being read daily by developers.

Before you freak out at the statement "melee abilities no longer trigger it," understand that this means that melee special attacks (yellow damage) will no longer trigger it. It will only be able to trigger from auto-attack (white damage), but its proc frequency has been increased. The stated PPM of 3.5 is an average expected PPM and will increase with hit, haste, and expertise rating. Beta tester Werebeef explains in greater detail:

With no cooldown and 3.5 procs per minute, what this really means is that your melee attacks have a 5.83% (3.5/60) chance of proccing Omen of Clarity. Capping hit and having expertise makes sure you don’t fail to land attacks that might have been hits that proc Omen of Clarity, and haste means you land more attacks per minute.

The changes to Omen of Clarity were made with the intention to bring the ability more in line with Rogue’s Combat Potency, an ability that "gives your successful off-hand melee attacks a 20% chance to generate 15 Energy." Despite my earlier skepticism about Blizzard’s interest in addressing the Cat Form range bug, it does sound like they’ve made some large improvements, so I think we should stay hopeful.

In a separate thread, a player expressed his upset over the change to Agility whereby it converts to less crit rating than before:

As we’re aware, it seems most of us are losing 6-10% crit rating off the bat because of the Agility nerf.
We also don’t seem to be compensated in any way for the agility nerf. The agility nerf happened because Blizzard felt that Agility was too good and was leading to lopsided itemization.

Developer Jimmythenumbers comes to the rescue once again, responding with the following:

To help deal with this issue, in the next data push, Druids should find their melee critical strike chance is about 5% higher.

The conversion of Agility to critical strike chance remains the same 40:1 at level 70, but the base amount for 0 agility has been increased by 5%.

This is all very positive news for Feral Druids, and it seems as though Blizzard is paying close attention to all the constructive discussion on the Beta forums. Now if only I could get a beta key! (Although with Revive coming, I’m not altogether sure what I’d post about!)

Related Posts

• Dire Cat Form … Extinct?
• Furor and Powershifting in Wrath
• “Fake” Patch Notes Not So Fake after All

In response to a player inquiry about when we could expect to see Dire Cat Form added to the beta, Blizzard Poster Koraa responded with the following:

We have no plans to implement a “Dire Cat” form at this time. “Dire Bear” exists for the sole purpose of upgrading the Feral Druid’s armor value to match the Warrior/Paladin etc. (Druids get no shield)

We do, however, intend to allow Druids to be able to use items and enchants with procs in forms, which I believe will work in the next beta build (don’t hold me to it though).

One player immediately responds with claims about Dire Cat Form having been mentioned at the Worldwide Invitational, to which Koraa responds:

I think what Kalgan meant was that we intend to do different texture variances for Druid forms, including Cat form. Which is true, though not sure how soon we’re going to get that. They may come from a repeatable quest, or through inscription.

Regarding the “Feral Range Bug,” that really is not a bug. Have a Warrior, Rogue or any melee class play without using a snare and you’ll encounter the same issue. The issue is that the server and client are not sync. When you try to do damage to the target, while your client shows him on your screen, the server disagree’s and gives you an error. Snares help alleviate the problem, which is what we’re giving Feral Druids in the form of “Infected Wounds” for the expansion.

If you encounter the same thing (not being able to hit your target) while playing a Rogue or a Warrior if you don’t use their snare, perhaps it would have made sense to give Cat Form a snare, too?

And what Kalgan meant was that Druids would be getting something called a Dire Cat Form that would be considered an “upgrade.” The direct quote can be heard by watching video footage from the Developer Q&A Session via WorldofWar.net. You can skip to the relevant portion by moving the video cursor to 29:00. (Note: WorldofWar.net is unresponsive this morning so I’m unable to confirm.) Here is a transcript of what was said:

Question: Will feral for example get male or female options for forms?

Answer: Frank Pierce: We’re thinking about swapping out flight form for male and female forms in the feral. No? (jokingly)

Answer: Tom Chilton: Hello, we do plan to do is actually put a new model for the Dire Bear Form, um, we also plan to release the Dire Cat. So um at the very least those should get some new upgrades.

Given the small pool of beta testers, this issue hasn’t generated the outrage that it would have otherwise, though there’s currently a 12-page thread in the official, non-beta forums. I am personally quite frustrated that they would pretend that this was never promised. This was not some tested whim on the Alpha or Beta servers. This was a change specifically mentioned at an official Blizzard event by the lead developer!

There was a considerable amount of frustration from beta testers at Koraa’s dismisal of the “Cat Form range bug” as something needing to put into quotes, despite the fact that the internal bug report at Blizzard dates back to 2004. In response to player outcry over the validity of this concern, she wrote:

Is this on a creature that is not moving? If so, please take a video of it occurring and post it on the bug forums.

When you reference the “cat form range bug” you could mean many different things:

• Fighting a creature for a set amount of time and your specials (i.e. Mangle) are not able to hit, but your white attacks (auto attacks) can: White attacks and specials have two different ranges, sometimes your combat range and spell combat range can be different. We’ve added AI for the creature to re-align itself when you shift into cat form, moving him within ideal range of your special/combat abilities. If the mob is rooted or stunned etc, you can still experience problems. (If you notice instances where you are within range to auto-attack, but not use Mangle for instance, try moving your character slightly. If the mob does not re-align, or it does not resolve the issue, please take a video and post it on the bug forums).
• You are chasing a player or creature at equal speeds. Your client (your WoW) shows you within range (even on top of) the target, yet it says you’re out of range: This is in result of latency/delay with the server and the client. The server says you are out of range, yet your client says you are on top of them. The server makes the decision whether you’re allowed to hit the target or not, and as far as it’s concerned you are out of range. You can test this yourself by having two WoW clients open or side by side and have one of them walk, and observe it on the other WoW client. You’ll notice a delay. We actually added some “slush” between the server and client, where the server will actually extend your range if you’re moving.
• Cat form’s “hitbox”: From what I can understand, this is setup correctly.

I just had a chat with our programmers and we do have some new tech for WOLK intended to help solve the melee range issue. The server will try to “predict” the range between you and your target, which we hope will make the issue less evident. This has not yet been implemented in beta, but I’ll let you know when we do finally put in the change.

Btw, there is no need to rant that we are “ignoring” or “don’t understand” the issue… we are actually quite aware of it, as I’m looking at our internal bug report on this exact issue dating back to 2004.

So apparently they are trying something else to correct the issue. Given the fact that the issue is four years old, I can’t say I’m particularly optimistic.

On a somewhat related note, it seems that shapeshifting out of a Feral Form after activating one of a couple of specific abilities — Berserk and Dash — does not cause you to lose those effects if you shift back into the form where they were activated. Though this does not appear to apply to the Enrage effect, it hasn’t been determined whether this applies to other abilities such as Frenzied Regeneration.

In summary:

• Despite what was stated by Tom Chilton at the 2008 Worldwide Invitational, a Blizzard Poster has said that there are no plans to implement Dire Cat Form.
• There are official, confirmed plans to allow Druids to use potions and weapon procs in forms, and this change should be live in the next beta build.
• Druids will have the opportunity to customize their forms to their liking, either through a repeatable quest or through the Inscription tradeskill.
• Efforts are once again being made to address what is perceived as a “range bug” by players using Cat Form.
• Activating Dash or Berserk and shapeshifting out of the form and then shapeshifting back will see the effect still active.

Related Posts

• Endgame Scaling of Cat Form
• Druid News from the Worldwide Invitational
• PTR Changes: 6-Second Cooldown on Wild Growth

Thanks as always to news sources MMO Champion and WoWInsider, we have some wonderful new Druid-specific information from the Worldwide Invitational!

• The attacker/target range mechanics are being re-evaluated it might be changed for Wrath of the Lich King to fix most of the existing bugs, including the ones affecting the attack range of Feral Druids.
• There is a plan to give player access to two talent specs to switch between them without having to respec all the time.
• There will be a new model for the Druid’s Dire Bear Form and the Dire Cat Form will be introduced.
• Entangling Roots will be useable indoors.
• Nourish will be a new healing spell, healing for more hit points for each HoT effect on the target.
• There isn’t any plan to change Cyclone.
• You will be able to use your flying mount again at level 77, and might be able to take passengers at level 80.

Congratulations, Feral Druids! I couldn’t be happier to see you getting the attention you have long deserved with regard to the range bug and skin updates and additions. Dire Cat Form sounds incredibly cool (Dire Tree Form … not so much). I’m also very excited about the news of a second talent spec that you could switch between. Mayhaps it will be implemented similar to the system I described in Purchasable Talent Specs! It should make deciding on my leveling spec a lot easier if I can also keep an auxiliary Balance/Restoration spec!

Concept for “Dire Cat Form” by Magnus Lindstrom NOT AN OFFICIAL MODEL (but we can dream)

We’ve been expecting the news about Nourish and Entangling Roots, and I’m not sure what to think of the announcement that Cyclone isn’t planned to change (there were previously rumors that its Diminishing Returns would be removed for PvE).  Michael Gary from WoWInsider paraphrases Chilton’s explanation thus:

Blizzard had entertained thoughts of removing the diminishing returns from Cyclone, to help provide Druids a little more utility in instances. But the large cast time of Cyclone compared to its duration meant a Druid would spend at least half its time in instances casting that spell, and only that spell.

I’m guessing the restriction on flying until level 77 is likely to apply to Druids, as well. It seems kind of LogicLOL that we should “forget” how to fly, especially considering Druids forfeited a standard skill at level 68 to get the ability, but I can understand the desire to ensure players are “forced” to see the new content.

And from the Developer Panel Summary and Developer Q&A Panel Summary over on World of Raids:

Potions, on-hit effects and items will work in forms.

Will we be able to use flying mounts in Northrend?
Yes, but they will require some sort of attunement, “defrosting.” New mounts will be introduced too, possibly ones that can carry other players.

Will feral druids get new skins in WotLK?
They talked about it, but while some players would like it, other wouldn’t, like when the Rogue stealth animation was changed.

Will druids get male or female optional forms to choose from?
There is plan for a new dire bear form model and the introduction of the dire cat

Will druids have an epic ground form?
No plans.

Naturally, I’m disappointed that there are no plans for gender-specific modifications for our forms, but I’m even more sad that there are no plans for an epic ground form. I earlier suspected that changes to Entangling Roots being able to be used indoors might indicate plans to make all Arenas indoors only (thus preventing the use of Cheetah form). This seemed all the more likely with the possible bonus armor in Tree of Life and the removal of its movement restriction. It would have also meant that Druids could be considered for an epic-level ground speed form. Alas!

I’ll try to keep this post up-to-date with any new information being distilled. Please be sure to visit MMO Champion and WoWInsider for all the new and exciting news!

Related Posts

• Dire Cat Form … Extinct?
• Indoor Roots Possible in WotLK
• Nourish to Benefit from Moonglow and Wild Growth HoT (and Blues)