Druid Updates in 10.0.5

Blue Tracker

Hi, Druids.

We’ve got a number of upcoming changes to the core and spec trees coming in 10.0.5. Our hope is that they fix some underlying issues with the trees while still giving you the same options and overall builds you’ve gotten used to.

Talent Dependencies

One of our goals for the talent tree was to make it impossible or unlikely to pick talents that would do nothing for a character. Druid breaks that guideline in a couple places – Feral can take talents that modify Berserk without taking Berserk, Guardian and Feral can skip Swipe, etc. Most players don’t do these, but we still want to tighten this up.

Druid Core Tree

In the core tree, we’ve moved Wild Growth and Sunfire up so they’re among the first points Resto and Balance druids take. Feral druids now start with Rake and Rip, instead of Rake and Thrash. All druids now learn Swipe at level 10, at half its current damage. The previous talent to learn Swipe is now Improved Swipe, restoring Swipe’s (and Brutal Slash’s) current damage.

We’ve rearranged other talents and added connectors and a couple new talents to give you some different options. Lastly, we changed Killer Instinct and Nurturing Instinct to grant 3/6% value for just 2 talent points.

Tuning Changes

All Druids learn Swipe at level 10.
Swipe and Brutal slash damage reduced by 50%.

Talents

Killer Instinct changed to 2 points, granting 3/6% physical damage and armor.
Nurturing Instinct changed to 2 points, granting 3/6% magical damage and healing.
New talent: Improved Swipe increases Swipe and Brutal Slash damage by 100% (restoring 10.0.2 values).
New talent, row 8: Forestwalk. 2 points. Casting Regrowth increases your movement speed and healing received by 5% for 3/6 seconds.
New talent: Gale Winds. Increases Typhoon’s radius by 20% and range by 5 yards.
New talent: Incessent Tempest: Reduces the cooldown of Typhoon by 5 seconds.
Feline Swiftness icon changed.
Matted Fur icon changed.
New connections throughout the tree.
Wild Growth moved up and Remove Curse moved to the side.
Sunfire moved up and Starsurge moved to the side.
Feral druids now start with Rip instead of Thrash.

Feral

To correct Feral’s dependency issues, we’ve moved the talents that modify Berserk into a triangle under the core Berserk talent. We’ve repositioned Tear Open Wounds, putting it behind Double-Clawed Rake because in mass AOE situations where you’ll want Tear Open Wounds you’ll generally also want Double-Clawed Rake.

Survival Instincts

While we want you to make choices in your talent tree, the option to skip your major survivability cooldown in exchange for more DPS isn’t really one of them. Feral and other specs that include major survivability cooldowns in their spec tree are generally tuned with the assumption you’re taking those talents. To reinforce the importance of Survival Instincts, we’re moving it above Berserk.

AOE Build Options

We like the power of Feral’s bleeds and are happy that there’s an AOE build that allows you to just cast Primal Wrath, but we don’t want it to be the only option, as it locks in a lot of choices. To make builds that don’t reapply DoTs so frequently more viable, we’re boosting the power of Ferocious Bite in single target and AoE and pulling back the power of Rip and Rake a bit, especially in AOE. This also somewhat increase Feral’s power to funnel damage into a priority target.

Lunar Inspiration

It’s been a challenge to find an appropriate place for Lunar Inspiration. It adds a button to the rotation and another DoT to track. Because of that increased complexity, we don’t want it to feel required for all players. However, the current reduced-power version also isn’t meeting the needs of players who do want to play it.

To address this, we’ve moved it to a choice node with Feral Frenzy at the bottom of the talent tree and restored its former power. This makes it possible to pick it up also with the talents that synergize well with it but gives players that don’t want to play it plenty of other powerful options in the same area of the tree.

Tuning Changes

Circle of Life and Death damage over time duration compression reduced to 20% (was 25%).
Taste for Blood bonus to Ferocious Bite damage increased to 4/8% per bleed on the target (was 2/4%).
Rampant Ferocity damage increased to 35% of Ferocious Bite damage (was 25%).
Dreadful Bleeding bonus to Rip damage reduced to 15% (was 20%).
Infected Wounds bonus to Rake damage reduced to 25% (was 30%).
Veinripper increase to bleed durations increased to 33% (was 25%).
Lunar Inspiration damage increased 66%.

Talents

Background pattern
Description automatically generated
Tear Open Wounds moved to row 4
Survival Instincts moved to row 5.
Infected Wounds moved to row 5.
Berserk moved to row 6.
Moment of Clarity moved to row 7.
Berserk: Heart of the Lion and Berserk: Frenzy moved within row 7 and connections changed.
Position of Wild Slashes and utal Strike swapped in their choice node.
Lunar Inspiration now a choice node with Feral Frenzy.

Balance

We’ve reorganized the Balance Druid tree to address Solar Beam’s placement to avoid forcing Balance Druids to make a choice between utility or throughput. While addressing this, we wanted to make some changes to the overall flow of the tree and distribute more power to the later parts of the tree.

Cosmic Rapidity
Circle of Life and Death offered an interesting playstyle choice for Balance, however, with Balance’s new Mastery the juggling felt much more intense and punishing. Cosmic Rapidity increases the rate Moonfire, Sunfire, and Stellar Flare deal damage without reducing their duration to reduce how often Balance needs to refresh their DoTs in order to benefit from their Mastery.

Multiple Rank Adjustments
Talents such as Aetherial Kindling and Solstice didn’t feel impactful enough to warrant multiple talent points to achieve their maximum value. The ranks that were removed from these talents were redistributed to other talents that felt appropriate to have multiple ranks.

Tuning Changes

Lunar Eclipse no longer increases the critical strike chance of Starfire.
Lunar Eclipse now increases the damage Starfire deals to nearby enemies by 50%.
Umbral Intensity now further increases the damage Starfire deals to nearby enemies by 10/20%.
Circle of Life and Death has been removed.
New Talent: Cosmic Rapidity – Your Moonfire, Sunfire, and Stellar Flare deal damage 25% faster.

Talents

Solstice’s max rank is now 1.
Aetherial Kindling’s max rank is now 1.
Power of Goldrinn’s max rank is now 2.
Cosmic Rapidity’s (replaced Circle of Life and Death) max rank is now 2.

Guardian

Ursine Adept

Ursine Adept concentrated too much rotational functionality and defensive power into a single node. We didn’t feel taking it or not offered enough choice to players, so we changed it to a Guardian baseline ability and adjusted the initial section of the tree to account for its absence. Additionally, in recognition of how prohibitively dangerous it often is to cast Innervate in combat, we’ve added it to the list of abilities which may be cast in Bear Form.

Final Gate

In this most recent look at the Guardian tree, our primary objective was to open up the final section of the tree. In the previous iteration, there were several bottlenecks restricting access to each final segment. We’ve added new connections and shuffled talent locations around to allow more points of entry into this section of the tree and offer more freedom of choice.

Reinvigoration felt like an outlier both in terms of interest and power level in the final gate, so it has switched positions with Flashing Claws.

To preserve point balance and to maintain decision-making tension, we’ve also added a few more abilities in this section:

Thorns of Iron: When you cast Ironfur, also deal Physical damage equal to 30% of your armor, split among enemies within 12 yards.
Raze: Strike with the might of Ursoc, dealing 70% of AP Physical damage to all enemies in front of you. Deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets. (Replaces Maul)
Moonless Night: When you cast a single-target ability on an enemy afflicted by Moonfire, you cause them to burn for an additional 10% Arcane damage.
Lunar Beam: Summons a beam of lunar light at your location, dealing 10% of AP Arcane damage and healing you for 35% of AP over 8.5 seconds.

Some talents have changed icons to avoid duplication.

Talents

Blizzard Forum Source: Druid Updates in 10.0.5, Author: Kaivax, Posted: Friday, December 16th 2022, 12:33 am