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.

WotLK Druid Restoration Changes

Some very nice changes for restoration druids coming our way in the next WotLK beta build.

Here are the changes we’re making next patch. See how they feel.

• Wild Growth: Coefficient and healing increased. Mana cost decreased. Cost should be about the same as Circle of Healing. It doesn’t heal instantly, but will heal for about double what CoH does over its duration.
• Nourish: Reduced mana cost by somewhere between 15 and 20%. This is supposed to be your Flash Heal, but we recognize that it doesn’t have the same versatility — you can’t just drop one on a wounded rogue or something since you need the hot up first. Hence the lower price.

Druids have quite an arsenal of healing spells now, and it can be tricky to find niches for all of them.

Normally I’m the last to call druid buffs anything but ridiculous. However, in this case think they are more than justified, particularly the wild growth changes. With as amazing as druids are in arena they are pretty much the worst of any PvE healer. Wild growth should dramatically improve druid’s healing output in PvE without creating additional PvP imbalances.

As far as nourish is concerned…well, I’m not really sure. I don’t agree with Ghostcrawler’s assertation that it doesn’t have the same utility. Let’s face it, druid’s are always going to have the target HoT’d. We won’t know how amazing or horrible the change is until we actually get to see it in action during the next beta build.