There was a Developer Chat on Twitter the other day with some interesting responses for druids! See the full posting here at MMO Champ, druid highlights below!
Q. Will druids finally get shapeshifting on a separate global cooldown like hunter aspects & warrior stances?
A. We have no plans to remove shapeshifting from the global cooldown. Shapeshifting can be used to escape Root and Polymorph mechanics, and so cannot have no global cooldown.
Q. Is Moonfire designed to be a damage-over-time spell with an instant cast nuke, or the other way around?
A. Both. We want the instant nuke to be more meaningful in Cataclysm, especially on the move.
Q: Cat and Bear builds are only off by about 3 talent points. Why not just consolidate fully at that point?
A. This is definitely one of our concerns. We don’t want a player to be able to have an optimal DPS specialization in Cat Form and be able to tank. We will definitely engineer the Feral tree such that being a viable tank, or even off-tank, will have some cost in terms of lost DPS while in Cat Form. The druid talent trees currently in beta are very rough and need more polish.
Q: Will Arcane spells do more damage with higher Lunar power on the scale? And will more Mastery increase that bonus damage?
A. Currently, the plan is for Mastery to increase the damage bonus of Eclipse (both Lunar and Solar).
Q. Last time I checked the Feral druid tree, there were only 5 points in the first tier which means NO choices. Is that getting fixed?
A. Still working on early Feral.
Q: Last time I checked feral druid tree, there were only 5 points in the first tier which means NO choices. Is that getting fixed?
A. Yes.
Q. What's the deal with Typhoon? Is it going back into talents or will it be a standard druid spell?
A. Typhoon is now back in the tree. Sorry about that.
Q. Druids now get Swiftmend at level 10 for being Restoration, but it is a talent in the tree. What is the plan there?
A. This was a data error and has been corrected.
Q: Any word on that cosmetic Tree of Life Form glyph? Some players are sad to lose Tree of Life Form completely.
A. The only new glyph we are ready to announce right now is the Glyph of Divine Shield, which reduces the cast time of your Hearthstone whenever Divine Shield is active. :D
Q. Druids were always a "jack of all trades, but master of none" and usually mocked when specializing. Will new talents change this?
A. In my own raids, I find druids of all 3 specializations that excel at their chosen specialization. So, I don’t understand your question.
Q. Why was the Feral druid's mana reduction cost removed from King of the Jungle? And what happened to two combo points on critical strikes?
A. These are data errors that will be corrected. Neither is intended to be cut.
Q: Moonkin: What are your plans for Eclipse, and why does it infect so many of our talents? What are your plans to make Moonkin fun?
A. The model we are trying now lets Solar and Lunar Eclipse procs last for about 45 seconds, and each spell of the appropriate type that you cast moves the bar back closer to the middle again. The buff is canceled by reaching the middle. This should let Moonkin "hold" the buff for short periods of time when they need to move or get out of the fire.
Q: Moonkin: What are your plans for Eclipse, and why does it infect so many of our talents? What are your plans to make Moonkin fun?
A. The model we are trying now lets Solar and Lunar Eclipse procs last for about 45 seconds, and each spell of the appropriate type that you cast moves the bar back closer to the middle again. The buff is canceled by reaching the middle. This should let Moonkin "hold" the buff for short periods of time when they need to move or get out of the fire.
Q. Skull Bash has a 1-minute cooldown. Is it supposed to be that way, or can we expect it to be lowered to the likes of Shield Bash?
A. The base cooldown is 60 seconds to keep the ability from being used by Balance and Restoration druids to layer too much crowd control. A Feral tree talent reduces the cooldown to 10 seconds, putting it in line with Kick and other similar interrupt abilities.
A fair bit of news there, most key of which is the overall theme that our talent trees are still very much works in progress.
An interesting note for tanks as well;
Q: Any plan to make "Crit Immunity" passive from choosing a tank tree instead of spending talents on it?
A. No, and you can blame the druids. We want a tanking specialization in Bear Form to feel different from a DPS specialization in Cat Form, otherwise it doesn’t feel fair to other classes when the Feral druid can do everything with the same talent specialization. We try to put crit immunity in talents you would normally take.
I suppose that's still not taking into account our different gear sets for tanking vs dps but yes. It would be nice (well, convenient) if we could have a viable bear/cat spec rather than having to differentiate. I would hope though that specialisation for either bear or cat would come down to more than just a few different points - at present, there are enough different talents that to really maximize your tanking or dps spec, your specs will be significantly different. If it's only a matter of 3 or so points in the new talent trees, I imagine many will feel frustrated at needing two specs to maximize their tanking and dpsing for the sake of only a few crucial points.
I'm hoping the Tree of Life cosmetic glyph does ultimately come through - I'll miss my little tree.
The Divine Shield glyph is pretty hilarious!
More to come
1 comment:
Glyph of Divine Shield.... the only glyph able to be applied to paladins by OTHER classes! Funny stuff. Although I wouldn't be surprised if they did make the cast longer to compensate.
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