Or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Run and Hide”
by Vreenash of Dragonblight (US)

Shadowmeld has changed. Previous uses of this ability involved hiding from mobs while outside of combat or getting out of combat in Arena, sitting to drink, and using Shadowmeld to hide from your opponents. Now however, thanks to the powers that be, this Night Elf racial can remove you from combat and even temporarily from the hate list – permanently if you happen to be alone. We can all see the obvious advantages of Shadowmeld in a PvE dungeon setting, but you might be underestimating its full potential. Let’s consider a few additional uses:

While in a PvE dungeon setting (5-man only), use SM to take you out of combat mid-fight to:

• Drink or Eat: Even in a heroic dungeon where downtime is low, you can find yourself an 8-second quick drink (think of it as another mana pot).
• Revive: Yes, you can use our 10 second resurrection mid-battle (good luck finding those 10 seconds, though).
• Gear Change: If you have Itemrack or another gear-swapping mod installed, a Boomkin could switch over to healer if the healer goes down.

In PvP:

• If Shadowmeld is paired up with Nature’s Grasp via macro (neither is tied to the global cooldown and will therefore activate at the same time), the pursuer will drop you from their target list and will need to reacquire you. In such a situation, you will most likely be running and will break Shadowmeld immediately. The first attack after the pursuer reacquires you will most likely be an auto-attack and not a stun, thus entangling your opponent and giving you some breathing room.
• Outdoor PvP holds a cheeky benefit. If you’re being ganked, use Shadowmeld to take you out-of-combat, hit Swift Flight Form, and high tail it to the nearest bed and breakfast.
• There is currently a bug in Wintergrasp that will keep you in combat for long periods of time, even though there is no battle to be seen. Using Shadowmeld will break you out of combat so you can mount up.
• You can still use Shadowmeld to drink in Arenas, though it’s more challenging since your stealth will break once you’ve started drinking. Alternatively, you could use it in the same manner as before, running to get out combat long enough to sit and drink then activate Shadowmeld. However, given the now longer cooldown on the ability (3 minutes), you only get one shot at this in most matches.

Can you think of any other uses for this revised ability?

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I bet you thought this was going to be a silly post about how Alliance Druids are better than Horde Druids. Sadly, that is not the case. I’ve been up since 3 AM deploying a revamp to the design here so you’ll just have to settle for a summary of recent and upcoming changes.

Upcoming Changes to Shadowmeld

The Night Elf racial ability Shadowmeld is slated for a significant change in an upcoming build:

Shadowmelded Night Elf or proof I was too tired to make a new picture?

This new ability can be used in combat and will allow Night Elves to “vanish” to allow their tank re-establish aggro, canceling the effect as soon as they determine it’s safe to do so. Bears may also find it to be great fun to preemptively assassinate the person creeping too close behind them on threat, sort of like “Oh I know you jus’ didn’” but with a bear paw. There are many implications for this change, including:

1. If you aggro one or more mobs while ungrouped, you can use Shadowmeld to de-aggro them, wait for them to path away, and saunter (or sashay, if you prefer) away unharmed.
2. While still possible, the Shadowmeld + drink technique will only be usable once every three minutes in Arena.
3. Now Druids can wipe their raid recovery efforts just like stupid Hunters who are too good to die like everyone else.

And for those worried about the loss of the descriptor, “Night Elf Rogues and Druids with Shadowmeld are more difficult to detect while stealthed or prowling,” have no fear. This ability is being separated into a new, passive racial skill called Elusiveness.

8926 Build Changes

Restoration (and Restoration-related) changes that went live in last night’s build include:

Skills

• Abolish poison now lasts 8 sec on the target. (Previously lasted 1 min)

Talents

• Gift of the Earthmother (Tier 10) changed to – Reduces the base global cooldown of your Rejuvenation and Lifebloom spells by 2/4/6/8/10%, and causes your Healing Touch and Nourish spells to refund 1/2/3/4/5% of their base cost for each healing over time effect on the target.
• Replenish (Tier 9) changed to – Your Rejuvenation spell has a 5/10/15% chance to restore 8 Energy, 4 Rage, 1% Mana or 16 Runic Power per tick.
• Subtlety (Tier 2) now reduces the chance any of your spells will be dispelled. (Previously only affected HoTs)
• Nature’s Splendor (Tier 3) increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom and Flourish spells by 2/3 sec.

I have to boggle at the nerf to Replenish and assume that people are seeing larger returns from it than I have been expecting (I admit I haven’t tried it, yet). That’s just going to make the decision to skip over that talent even easier.

I’m not entirely surprised by the change to Gift of the Earthmother whose benefits were likely conceived long before the design and addition of Nature’s Splendor. At 3 points, Nature’s Splendor extends the length of your Lifebloom by 3 full ticks, making the GCD reduction from GotEM less important. The previous bonus of having 0.5 seconds shaved off the GCD for Lifebloom and Rejuvenation also devalued spell haste rating, of which there seems to be an excess in Wrath. With the aforementioned nerf to Replenish continuing to make Rejuvenation the pink-haired stepchild of Druid HoTs, this talent is significantly less attractive than it was, though it still retains the 1/2/3/4/5% mana cost reduction for each heal over time on the target for both Healing Touch and Nourish.

Nature’s Splendor has been changed from a percentage-based bonus (10/20/30%) to a concrete increase of 1/2/3 sec. This is a nerf to the benefit it provided to spells lasting 10 seconds or more (Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Moonfire, Insect Swarm) and a buff to Lifebloom and Flourish. This will still be a must-have talent for Restoration Druids.

Sadly, the change to Abolish Poison was reverted. I guess stupid-OP-Shadowsteppin’-Hemo-Rogue-Say-“Nyah! Nyah!”

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No major news today, but there were a few tidbits I wanted to bring to your attention, particularly concerning the itemization for Restoration-based PvP in Wrath of the Lich King.

PvP Itemization

Some of you may remember that prior to Patch 2.4, Blizzard considered converting MP5 to Spirit on Kodohide gear. At the time, there was a tremendous outcry from players (myself included) that this was an intentional decision to handicap Druid mana regeneration in Arenas since MP5 was widely regarded as the superior regeneration stat in PvP. With the buff to Spirit-based mana regeneration in Patch 2.4, however, it suddenly became apparent that Spirit was no longer a stat to be discounted. In fact, the change in 2.4 single-handedly made Kodohide significantly less valuable in PvE.

According to reports from MMO Champion, this will no longer be an issue in Wrath of the Lich King. Druid PvP armor will come in three flavors:

• Feral with Agility, Stamina, Critical Strike, and Attack Power « link »
• Spell Power with Stamina, Intellect, and Spirit « link »
• Spell Power with Stamina, Intellect, and Critical Strike Rating (mmm … tastes like Laser Chicken) « link »

The Spirit-based set is obviously intended for use by Restoration, but the spell critical set could be used either by a Balance Druid, or a hybrid Restokin spec (assuming that spec continues to be viable). However, the complete absence of either Spirit or MP5 leads me to believe its itemization is as yet incomplete. After all, everyone needs some form of mana regeneration. It’s also worth noting that none of these sets include pieces with “green” armor, and the set bonuses appear to be unchanged (though the Balance set reads slightly differently, I suspect it’s a typo).

Druid Changes

Unfortunately, there was nothing particularly earth-shattering for Ferals anxious about their relevance as a tank. Here are the changes that have been discerned so far:

Feral Skills

• Ferocious Bite damage slightly increased.
• Swipe now hits 4 targets.
• Savage Roar now increases attack power 40% and lasts 14/19/24/29/34 sec depending on how many combo points you have up. (Previously 35% attack power and 9/12/15/18/21 sec)

Balance Talents

• Celestial Focus (Tier 4) reduces the casting time lost when damaged by 25/50/70% when casting wrath. (Previously reduced interrupt chance)
• Control of Nature (Tier 2) reduces casting time lost when damaged by 40/70/100% while casting Entangling Roots and Cyclone. (Previously reduced interrupt chance)

The change to Celestial Focus was likely made because of the previously mentioned spell pushback changes. We can probably expect a similar change to be made to Nature’s Focus which functions in the same way as Celestial Focus on live. The Swipe change when considered with the [Glyph of Swipe] will allow Druids to hit five targets at once which is certainly good news.

There have also been bug reports that Swiftmend is not functioning at all on the Beta servers. Unfortunately, this will make healing in the new instances more difficult for Restoration Druids. Thankfully, we have a functioning version of Revive handy!

Balance Revamp Coming

Responding to a detailed and eloquent post by beta tester Ashthra, in which she details several key areas of unnecessary bloat in Balance, Developer Koraa promises that further polishing to the Balance tree is currently in the works. Hopefully she was kidding when she promised Boomkin more bloat:

Currently working on a polish pass of the Balance tree. Get ready for more bloat!

Clearly, the Developers haven’t taken a good look at Moonkin recently. They’re already quite bloated!

More Comments on Feral Tanking

Following up on the now legendary tanking thread with many blue responses, Developer Ghostcrawler made several additional statements concerning Bears in WotLK. Once again, due to the length of these responses and the fact that this is a Restoration blog, I’ll try to summarize the key points:

• Of the four tanks, two have shields and two do not. All four are intended to be equally viable through talents like Survival of the Fittest.
• Ideally, they’d like to see raids filled based on how well players are liked rather than a must-have utility or buff.
• Efforts are being made to improve the ability for Tanks and Healers to fill other roles when not needed to tank or heal. This should hopefully lead to less raid member swapping due to changing encounters.
• Blizzard agrees that it’s a problem when a tank outgears content and cannot generate enough rage to maintain threat.

Here’s hoping the aforementioned polishing pass to Balance will simultaneously include some of these promised improvements to Ferals.

Hairstyle Names

Shamelessly procured from WotLKWiki, here are a few of the new names for hairstyles (replacing the placeholder names like “Female Human Hairstyle 1”): Bald, Peasant, Solider, Monk, Barbarian, Dashing, Loose, Scholar, Rogue, Fabulous, Samson, Bearded, Colonel, Duellist, Goatee, Wizard, Chops, Van Dyke, Mustacioed, Clean, Prince, Wild, Swept, Foxtail, Slicked

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This post was inspired by Megan from Out of Mana, whose unique sense of style and humor makes me smile every time I see that she’s posted something new. Have you visited, subscribed to, and stalked her lately?

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One of the long-standing complaints about the Druid class (okay, Restoration Druids) has been the use of Travel Form in Arenas. With it — and Cyclone and Entangling Roots and Feral Charge — a Restoration Druid can keep out of the reach of players who would kill us if they could get their hands on us. Over the last few months, we’ve seen more and more changes that I believe may indicate that we’re going to see all Arenas made indoors, invalidating the use of Travel Form:

• Entangling Roots will be usable indoors, so Druids won’t lose out on this essential method of crowd control against Warriors, Rogues, and pets.
• The new Arena has said to not allow mounts. This could indicate that it will be flagged “indoors.”
• Feral Swiftness will be usable indoors, according to a recent post from Developer Koraa. This ability is considered essential by many Ferals since it helps to counteract the Cat Form range bug.

What exactly would this mean? Well, for one Druids would obviously lose the ability to use Travel Form for a quick getaway. It would force Restoration Druids to use either Bear Form or Cat Form to break snares, a much more expensive option (Feral and Balance probably wouldn’t shift to Cheetah unless they thought they were going to be immediately resnared since they probably want to return to their Feral Form or Moonkin as soon as they can). While the above-listed changes do help mitigate the difficulty presented by indoor-only Arenas, the mana cost to break snares in and of itself would be a huge nerf.

This may be one reason that Blizzard has opted to remove the movement penalty of Tree of Life, a restriction long seen as the reason that the form could never be considered viable in PvP. Additionally, Tree of Life will gain a 100% armor increase, making it a desirable form against melee. Remember, however, that using it completely cuts you off from any form of crowd control (Cyclone, Entangling Roots, and Hibernate) and makes you susceptible to Warlock Banish, a form of CC on separate Diminishing Returns from Fear.

Why this May Not be Happening

Fortunately, there is reason to believe that we won’t be seeing indoor-only Arenas in Wrath of the Lich King. Enhancement Shaman have a new talent deep in their tree that effectively turns Shaman Ghost Wolf into a slightly slower version of Travel Form (Improved Ghost Wolf makes the ability insta-cast):

After all, it doesn’t really seem to make sense to make a change like this with the expectation of invalidating the use of the newly-improved Ghost Wolf form in competitive PvP.

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