Friday (11 Jun) - Cataclysm Druid Talent tree

Friday (11 Jun) - Cataclysm Druid Talent tree

[warning - sad rant coming]

Blizzard has released the "still being worked" talent trees for the druid class in the Cataclysm expansion pack. The early reviews are WOW! for the feral tree for both cat (DPS) and bear (tank) forms. The moonkin tree has some very mixed reviews. The resto/healing tree - well, it's just awful.
Blizzard can never seem to make up their mind what they want druid healers to be. Every expansion or major talent shakeup our role gets totally redefined.

The new and changed talents seem to be focused heavily on pvp and even more so on raid healing in "rated" battlegrounds. In Cataclysm, each week a battleground will designated as the rated battleground, and raiders who win those matches will be awarded Arena points and given a rating. Those battles will almost assuredly be dominated by premade teams. Since this is also linked to the new guild levelling system (yes, guilds will have the ability to level as well as players) there could be considerable pressure to participate in guild pvp teams. I am not against that but I am digressing. The point is that most of the talent changes seem to be designed to improve pvp play to the detriment of pve play (ie, raid dungeons). And I don't like that. At all.

The druid tree form is gone. Although I don't like that, either, I can live with not having a "tree form" healer. However, many of the buffs provided to the rest of the raid while in that form are also gone, which reduces the druid healer's raid utility (raid utility are the things a class brings that help the raid - without them a raid leader might choose another class of healer over a druid because they bring more utility to the raid).

The replacement for tree of life is a cooldown spell that has been described as a glorified "use" trinket. And after taking away things like the 6% increase in healing across the raid and the 20% mana reduction in HoT spells (both valuable healing buffs), it provides things like reducing our movement speed by 50% and increasing our damage done. Increase our damage? We are healers, we aren't doing damage! And losing half our movement speed where "get out of the fire!" or something comparable is built into virtually every raid encounter is a great way to ensure that ability is never used. As mentioned above, it may be a great ability in pvp - but it sucks for pve raid dungeons.

Back to changing how druid's are supposed to heal, many of the healing "buffs" in the new tree are designed to be most effective when a raider's health is below 25%. Additionally, it appears they want those heals to be more dependant on critical hits (which make them less dependable since crits are randomly generated and can't be controlled). Druids are currently HoT healers, where it is important to keep your healing target topped off with high health. So now it appears we are going to be "oh my gosh!" emergency healers for when health gets low? The new buffs focus on our long cast spells, such as healing touch and nourish, on undependable crits, and panic healing.

I don't see myself using the new, broken tree of life ability; I have no interest in doing what would be pitiful damage in healing spec; and I really dislike the changes to healing style that are being forced on the class. This is still a first cut, but if this is where druid healing is headed it just may kill what I like best in this game, and that's raiding.

The changes do help in levelling, and of course I'll be levelling a toon or two to explore the world after the cataclysm, but beyond that . . . I just don't know. Ima sad drood right now.