Jiryn of Gorefiend (US) posted to the Wrath of the Lich King forums, requesting once again that Druids be considered for the addition of an out of combat resurrection spell:

In Wrath of the Lich King please give Druids something they’ve needed for quite a while. A Non-cooldown res, much like a Priest, Shaman or Paladin resurrection. This would be a second rez of theirs to use at the end of fights or after wipes when they have been Soulstoned. We’ve waited long enough; give us the FULL healing potential we were supposed to [have]!

  The post was blue-tagged with this (disheartening) response from Bornakk:

Then after this it would probably be Mortal Strike that’s needed, right? We understand there are many spells and abilities that other classes have that would make things easier for players, but we also need to be careful in morphing all classes into one big green blob that all have the same skills. Right now having an awesome ability like Battle Resurrection sets Druids apart from the regular ressing classes.

And before anybody asks, we are working on the new talents and spells for each class but we don’t have any details to provide on them at this time.

Because clearly, Mortal Strike is an ability commonly associated with the healing role. That’s just silly. Shamans have wipe recovery in the form of Reincarnate, Paladins have wipe recovery in the form of Divine Intervention (well, assuming they’re grouped with someone that can also rez). Both of these abilities are in addition to having access to a standard resurrection spell. Bornakk goes on to follow up on his original comment with the following:

I was just pointing out that instead of the normal out-of-combat res that other classes have, Druids have a much more unique and special ability. I understand that having more out-of-combat res abilities on more classes would make wipe recovery easier, but we want to be careful in not having abilities given out to every class and make them less unique.

If you are in a 5-person dungeon and the Druid is the only healer, while you don’t have wipe recovery (cables and Soulstones aside), you can organize your group and approach each of the pulls with this in mind and be more cautious to avoid the wipes. It make take a wipe or two to straighten things out, but adapting to the situation can make things run a lot smoother.

So essentially, Druids (and the people who decide to group with them) just have to be better at the game than other healers and their groupmates. I’m glad someone is telling me this now! Rather than go off on a another gigormous rant on this subject, I’d like to share one of my favorite responses:

Where are people getting off on the idea that an OOC rez is unique and giving one to druids would remove the ability’s/class’s uniqueness? Re: the ability–three classes have it. Unique = three identical abilities across three classes but no more? Re: the class–we are unique in that we are the only class that can main heal yet cannot rez the party after a messy pull/boss fight. That is, we are uniquely disadvantaged.

…

I would like to remind Blizzard that not everyone gets to run in guild groups where mistakes never happen and everyone is a machine. Things crop up in real groups. Kids get chased off their computers by mom. Connections are subject to hiccups, lag spikes, and bottoming out entirely. Sometimes you just have to put out that grease fire on the stove. We get punished for not only being in groups with horribad players, but for little unpredictable occurrences that any other healer can make up for once the damage is done. At one point, a long time ago that is now a hazy druid memory, I could understand this; few instances had stealth-spotting mobs, and druids were rarely main healers. This is not the case anymore. Please, let the game change with the times. We are not asking for an ability that makes any other healer unique; we are asking for an ability that every other healer has.

— Alice of Kirin Tor

Related Posts

• Rebirth Bugged (or Nerfed)
• Vaneras: Standard Rez Unlikely
• Ghostcrawler Defends Druids’ Out of Combat Rez

From the Patch Notes for 2.4.2, a “Bug Fix” will be applied to the Restoration PvP talent, Natural Perfection:

Druid Talent (Restoration) – Natural Perfection will no longer proc by normal melee attacks.

What this may mean is that the 3-point talent will no longer proc from those melee attacks that would have otherwise been critical hits if not for the Druid’s Resilience rating. Interestingly, no such change is being made to the similar Priest talents, Blessed Resilience or Focused Will. Obviously, what’s good for one should be good for the other, and if they really are nerfing this ability (and it is a nerf, regardless of being classified as a bug fix), the same should apply to both classes.

Related Posts

• Natural Imperfection vs. Blessed Resilience
• Natural Perfection Revamped
• Natural Perfection No Longer Triggers from Crits while Sitting

I’ve covered a couple of uses for the /focus command in the past in such articles as Hibernating via Focus Target and Healing via Focus Target. However, there is so much more that can be done with this highly versatile command, and I wanted to demonstrate just one more fun and interesting adaptation I discovered over the weekend: debuffing your focus’s target.

The basic idea behind this technique is to set up one or more macros that cast debuff spells on your current focus’s target. In my case, I created a macro that would ordinarily cast Insect Swarm on my focus’s target and Faerie Fire if I hold down CTRL. If a focus target cannot be found (as it cannot when I am soloing), the target defaults to my own target instead. My macro looks like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:ctrl, exists, target=focustarget, nodead] [modifier:ctrl] Faerie Fire;[exists, target=focustarget, nodead] [] Insect Swarm

When in a 5-man group, I set my focus to my group’s tank and am able to debuff his current target’s hit chance by 2% (decreasing damage taken and needing to be healed) while also decreasing its armor by 610. This means the mob dies quicker and does less damage on the way out. It’s also a great use of the time in between stacking up 3 x Lifebloom when it’s not necessary to get your stack rolling as quickly as possible. This technique is also a great compliment to mouseover-based healing since those who use mouseover aren’t generally as comfortable clicking to select targets, and it’s more convenient than having to set a separate assist key.

In addition to the macro described above, you will want to set up a focus target window so that you can monitor what your tank is actually targeting. (But be careful not to cast Insect Swarm on a target that’s crowd controlled or needs to be!) Most of the better unitframes addons such as Pitbull and Ag Unitframes include the ability to display these frames. For my UI, I set up a panel beneath the place where my Focus Target frame appears when I do have a focus set. That way I can tell at a glance whether I’ve remembered to focus my tank and if both of my debuffs are currently running on the target. You can see a preview of this setup at left, using Andrige’s lovely Heart of the Wild UI as a backdrop.

So far, I’ve employed this technique in both normal and Heroic Magister’s Terrace. I’ve been told that it seems to make fights easier (though admittedly it doesn’t get much easier than grouping with a Paladin tank on AOE pulls). If nothing else, I feel more proactive than simply pressing my heal buttons, and it’s nice to see my name actually show up on the damage meters, even if it’s only for the paltry amount from Insect Swarm. Just remember not to use Faerie Fire if your tank happens to be a Druid, as I know most like using the Feral version for extra threat.

Related Posts

• Leveraging Insect Swarm as a Healer
• Healing via Focus Target
• Hibernating via Focus Target

I don’t respec very often, mostly because I’m cheap. In fact, since they applied the patch that caused the price of talent respecs to fall 5 gold a month to a minimum of 15g, I don’t think I’ve ever paid more than 15g to change my build. I’ve put up with some really … not very good talents in the past because I didn’t want to shell out another 20g to fix myself (a practice which I can’t in good conscience advocate — be a responsible respeccer!). Llanion of Mooonfire recently wrote a post entitled, "Fourteen Points about my New Talent Build" which helped inspire me to cast Teleport: Moonglade and select the build that I’ll want to have in 2.4 (which, by all accounts, is coming "soon"). At the risk of being a Copy-Conifer, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about some of the highlights from my new build:

Restoration

• Improved Mark of the Wild 5/5: A waste of 5 points in my opinion, but I have no need for Furor right now. WTB Subtlety at Tier 1 of the Restoration tree!
• Improved Regrowth 5/5: This talent is pretty much the reason for my whole respec. Since I have the strong suspicion that the reduced-cost Regrowth will be a new bread-and-butter spell in my healing retinue, I needed its additional 50% crit chance.
• Empowered Rejuvenation 3/3: This talent being changed to affect the final bloom of Lifebloom helps to offset — but not completely compensate for — the nerf to Lifebloom’s bloom coefficient in 2.4.
• Because Regrowth is becoming so much more viable, I dropped all the talents related to Healing Touch and picked up all those related to HoTs instead. This freed up a number of points I could sink into the Balance tree for killing things that attack me while fishing.
• Living Spirit 3/3: My Spirit is pretty abysmal, but I would hate to think of how much worse it would be without this talent!
• Tree of Life: ZA gear is UGLY. Tree Form helps compensate for that. Oh, and the mana reduction is nice, too.
• Improved Tranquility: I included this 2-point talent in my previous build. I think I used Tranquility once in that time period. Depending on how much time I spend in the new 5-man instance, I may consider picking this up again, though.

Balance

• Brambles 3/3: I needed more points in Balance to get down to Vengeance. As I consider Brambles to be a raiding talent, this was an obvious choice. I hate having it, though, as it makes me feel extra guilty when I don’t maintain the 10-minute buff on tanks (more about the value of Thorns). Paladins got their base blessings bumped up to 30 minutes, why is Thorns still only 10?
• Insect Swarm: Probably my favorite damage spell. It’s so cheap and when combined with Lifebloom’s super-low mana cost, I feel very eco-friendly and "green."

Thoughts? Questions? Suggestions? Keep in mind that any changes will have to wait a month for the price of a respec to drop back to 15g.

Related Posts

• Moonfire Spamming Your Way to 80 in Wrath
• Forum Watch: Talent Survey
• It’s ARBOR DAY in Azeroth!

Hurricane by Triggerman

As previously predicted, the range on Cyclone has been reduced from 30 yards to 20 on both the TTR (Tournament Testing Realm) and PTR (source). With Nature’s Reach, the range drops from 36 to 24, so it’s an additional nerf to the benefit afforded by this talent. As of today, Patch 2.4 will include the following nerfs to Restoration-based PvP:

1. Drinking nerf
2. Nerf to end bloom of Lifebloom (the same heal that occasionally occurs when our HoTs are purged); this forces Restoration Druids to spec down to 5/5 Empowered Rejuvenation if they want to compensate for the reduction, locking them out of other talents from Balance and Feral considered to be synergistic and essential
3. Reduction of Natural Perfection from 15% damage reduction to only 12% (it is worth noting, however, that NP was buffed so that it benefits from the dispel resistance provided by Subtlety)
4. Removal of 4-piece set bonus from the Restoration set (+15% speed bonus in forms)
5. Cyclone reduced from 30 yards to 20; Nature’s Reach reduced from 36 yards to 24

Sadly, this change is pretty much the nail in the coffin for Restoration-based PvP and will severely handicap already struggling Balance Druids in Arenas. I guess Blizzard is still working toward their goal of having no more than 60 Druids at 2200+ rating. So much for making incremental changes to see how they affect things.

Related Posts

• PTR Report: 4-Piece Set Bonus Changes
• 15% Speed Bonus (Not) Restored
• 2v2 and 3v3 Points Increased, Cyclone Buffed (Sorta)