WotLK Druid Changes - Feral Tanking and Bugs

I think it’s fair to say there is a lot of work to be done before the druid class is ready to go live. Clearly the issue with feral tanking druids is still up the air. The nerf to predatory instincts is not surprising, and certainly justifiable. Allowing a tank a percentage based mitigation ability of that magnitude was bound to be imbalanced.

The message I got from these blue posts was one more of uncertainty than anything else. They clearly have some underlying tanking issues that will need to be resolved in order for the class to fit into the current model for tanks in WotLK.

Most of these changes and bug fixed will be included in the build 9038 druid changes.

Feral Tanking
With regard to abilities, we have been torn between giving bears (and cats) more unique abilities versus giving them tanking abilities that many players considered “core.” We could have certainly come up with something more original than Last Stand for bears, but at the time, a lot of bears were comparing laundry lists of buttons and said bears wouln’t be invited to raids because they didn’t have an oh snap button like Last Stand. We put that functionality in Berserk, then later backed off of that so that we could make Berserk a more fun button to push as bear. (Source)

Typhoon
I’m not aware of any changes to Typhoon’s damage. If you’re just talking about Rank 5, we had to just temporarily yank it to make sure it was becoming untrained — despite the last hotfix, druids were still ending up with it when we added the rank back in. We should be able to add it back next patch.

Also understand that if it hadn’t been abused so much that we wouldn’t have had to yank it. It’s not terribly fair or helpful to complain about not having access to the ability when it was being used to overpower bosses and other players to such extremes. While the bug was ours (mine in all likelihood), we’re not going to be able to get back all of those busted battles, yanno?

Predatory Instincts
Reducing AoE Damage by 30% instead of 15%
Predatory Instincts is a huge nerf. You just haven’t seen it yet. It only works in cat form.

I hinted that this might happen before, but as it was, a druid was going to be the only tank people took for dragons like Malygos. That would have been particularly true for any encounter that was supposed to be a resist fight, because the druid could skip a lot of the resist gear. Your health pool should still make sure you handle those fights sufficiently.

Treants
The Treant health appears to be too low. They aren’t updating correctly from your Stamina or level or something. We’ll get it fixed.

WotLK Druid Changes - Build 9038

The big discussion regarding druids the past few weeks has been heavily centered around the tanking situation. Quite frankly, druids are the most dominating tank in WotLK. They are on par as far as avoidance and threat generation go, but the overall damage mitigation is simply too high. The 30% decrease should bring feral druids back in line with other tanks.

The restoration changes are quite good, particularly wild growth which will likely become a staple for druid PvE healing, an area that druids have been anything but stellar in for the Burning Crusade.

Druid

Balance

• Typhoon - Max rank damage reduced to 735 Nature damage. 3 ranks added for a total of 4.
• Insect Swarm - Wording changed to “decreasing their chance to hit with melee and ranged attacks” from “decreasing their chance to hit”.
• Moonkin Form - Now increases armor contribution from items by 370%. Down from 400%.

Feral

• Predatory Instincts - Now reduces the damage taken from area of effect attacks by 10/20/30%. Up from 5/10/15%.
• Dire Bear Form - Now increases armor contribution from items by 370%. Down from 400%.
• Growl - Now has a 20 yard range. Up from 5.

Restoration

• Nourish - Mana cost reduced to 18% of base mana, down from 22%.
• Wild Growth - All ranks saw healing increase and mana cost reduction. Now 23% of base mana, down from 35%. Max Rank: Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 15 yards of the target for 1442 over 7 sec. The amount healed is applied quickly at first, and slows down as the Wild Growth reaches its full duration.