Resto Class Feedback

The blues have requested some class feedback, and we are happy to oblige! I left some feedback for Resto, which you can see at this link here: Resto Class Feedback. Many 'Likes' are appreciated as it will hopefully help it get looked at by the blues! You can also find some good Bear feedback posts by Reesi and Arielle of The Inconspicuous Bear which I'm sure they'd appreciate you hitting 'Like' as well! Click for: Reesi's feedback and click for: Arielle's Feedback. As Reesi noted on her forums, If you agree with any of the ideas for notable posts, don't just say you agree and nothing else - Respond with the same answer. The only way we'll get attention to any feedback is if it's repeated again and again.


More (proper) posts are in the work so stay tuned! :D

ETA: Including my feedback:

Focus: 

PVE Heroic Progression Raiding Content; primarily Resto.

What are your biggest quality-of-life issues?

Target swapping for Lifebloomx3 stacks on quick-taunt Tank fights (Ragnaros heroic and normal a perfect example) can be frustrating - I can either maintain the 3stack on the non-tanking tank in anticipation of the upcoming tank swap, or I have to spend 3 globals simply reapplying my Lifebloom stack to the new tank. If there was some way to move the 3 stack as a whole between tanks, that would be great. Perhaps LB may need to be reevaluated some, perhaps making the 3stack amount (or even 2 stack) the set amount for just a single application, as it can now only be on one target (then in tree form it would be spreadable over many people as usual). Ideas!

As others suggested earlier, a cosmetic perma tree of life would be nice (affected also by treant glyph or no glyph), perhaps only usable out of combat or something to negate confusion in pvp but allow for some fun /dancing and such around town.

What makes playing your class more fun?

I love everything about druids and especially healing. I feel like we’re in a great spot right now - our throughput is competitive (all of the classes throughput is relatively even by this point in the xpac), our Tranq is now a nice raid cooldown (even if it not a damage reduction one), and we have to make good use of all our spells and it feels like all of our spells are valuable. 

Mana management is fun and, despite misconceptions, still a challenge (when not drastically overgearing content) to do well. I really love the importance of Int to our mana management and being able to make careful choices about secondary stats and managing cooldowns and mana throughout a fight to manage our mana well. 

The Tree of Life cooldown has ended up being a lot of fun and useful, even if I do still miss being able to hop around as a tree in my downtime. It's really fun being able to pop it as a healing cooldown or even as a DPS cooldown on certain fights (alysra burnout, sinestra eggs, etc) or as a sort of mana cd when covering the raid with LB to conserve mana instead of rejuvs.

What makes playing your class less fun?

I still wish we had some damage reduction component. While we’re strong both in tank and raid healing now, for tanks at least we’re very behind in not having any sort of damage reduction. We don’t have an Inspiration reduced damage type talent and no damage reduction type cooldown (such as Hand of Sacrifice or Pain Suppression). Our healing output is strong and the ToL cooldown is really excellent and fun, it just feels like our only option is always to just heal harder, rather than being able to ever mitigate damage in some way.

I also feel our talent tree is a little bloated still, and talents like Living Seed, Blessing of the Grove, and Nature’s Bounty are all a bit lackluster atm. They’re not hugely strong talents in themselves (tho the unlinking from Efflo was a good change) and taking points in any of them doesn’t feel hugely valuable. The reduced nourish cast of NB is alright, though if primarily spreading Rejuvs just to reduce the cast for nourish spam is wasteful of mana and GCDs. It seems more like a 'good, I'm raid healing, and as I'm doing that I can also go to do a quick top up and LB refresh on my tank with the quick Nourish'; which is useful, but if the goal was to help more direct Nourish use it seems a bit roundabout to try to achieve that.

The Nature’s Cure talent I think should be looked at as well - as healers are the only role who can dispel magic off of friendly targets, I think this ability should be granted by choosing the Resto tree (and same for resto/holy for sham/pally) like the priest’s holy and disc specs. It seems a bit of a waste of a talent point for druids pallies and shaman to have to spec to get the magic dispel. While it’s not always necessary, there are several crucial fights where it’s extremely important to pick it up, and even 5man heroics pretty much require dispels.

How do you feel about your “rotation”? 

I think the current healing model for druids is really excellent. We can and should use all our spells, and they’re all valuable. Good druids especially will use all their direct and hot heals and maintain their Harmony proc.

What’s on your wish list for your class?

(see above answers, but quick list below:

-Easier LBx3 swaps for quick tank swap situations.

-A damage reduction talent (a la Inspiration) or cooldown (a la hand of sac) would be great.

-Improvement/revamp of lackluster talents Living Seed, BotG, Nature's Bounty.

-Genesis swapped with Nature's Grace in the Balance tree would be a nice change to pick that up, as it's often dropped for mana saving talents.

-Magic dispel part of Resto specialisation (untalented).

-Cosmetic tree of life/treant, perhaps while out of combat only.

What spells do you use the least?

Think I use all my spells ^.^

Patch 4.0.6 - Updated Patch Notes for Druids

There was an update to the 4.0.6 patch notes along with a new build released on the PTR with some additional updates for Druids!

Most of the changes for all three specs were PvP-oriented, with most of our CCs getting a reduction to 8 seconds in a PvP environment. Entangling Roots (and Nature's Grasp) and Hibernate have a PvP duration of 8 seconds, Skull Bash's lockout has been brought down to 4 seconds (from 5). The only Feral-specific change mentioned in this update is another PvP change, Infected Wounds now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds. Moonfire has also had its mana cost reduced to 9% (from 18%) and, in a nice change, Soothe is once again an instant cast (down from 1.5 seconds).

Our Troll and Worgen brethren will also finally get their new flight forms which will be implemented in the next patch! This includes Troll's new bat form.

There are quite a few additional Restoration changes, though, so let's take a look!

Updated Resto Changes

Wild Growth
We've already seen a reduction in the mana cost for Rejuvenation (from 26% down to 16%) which is a very welcome change. Alongside this now is a big boost for our raid heals, Wild Growth healing has been increased by 30% and the cooldown has been reduced to 8 seconds (down from 10 seconds). Definitely a good change here, as our raid heals were really suffering (you can read the full rundown on some of the current healing imbalances in my last post here). I definitely can feel Blizz on wanting to avoid a return to the Rejuv/WG spam of Wrath, it's something I'd like to avoid as well. Whatever way you cut it, though, our HoTs are important and Rejuvs and WG are really crucial to raid healing. Hopefully this will put us back on the right track and get us back in line with Priests on raid heals (as opposed to behind, where we generally are now, even with equal gear/skill). 


Lifebloom on multiple targets
The last set of patch notes informed us that Regrowth will join Nourish and Healing Touch in the talent Empowered Touch, they will all refresh Lifebloom stacks on a target. The new change with this update is that now it will no longer be possible to maintain Lifebloom on multiple targets outside of Tree of Life form. This was a decent little trick with the Empowered Touch talent - simply, if you used Nourish or HT to refresh the Lifebloom on a target, you could do so indefinitely on multiple targets outside of ToL. Clearly this wasn't an intended ability, though, and it will no longer be possible to due so with this patch.

Honestly, I'm not too bothered by this change. Although it could theoretically be useful, especially if focussing on two tanks, it was a tremendous pain to maintain in most fights. It would eat up a lot of GCDs, time, and attention, so I'm really not too disappointed to see the back of it!

Tree of Life
Some small nerfs to the Tree of Life cooldown, though nothing too huge. For our PvPers, ToL no longer grants immunity to polymorph. ETA: Looks like the ToL polymorph change has been reverted, as a new change (shapeshifting no longer clears the druid of roots, but will clear movement impairing effects) has been implemented.

For everyone, the duration has been reduced to 25 seconds (down from 30). The Natural Shapeshifter bonus has been reduced to a 3/6 second increase to ToL (down from 5/10). So with two points in Natural Shapeshifter we'll see a 31 second ToL. Not too bad, they likely just thought it was a bit too long of a healing cooldown. We saw a similar nerf from the original cooldown, which used to last 45 seconds.

Mastery (Symbiosis) Buff
This is a decent change, the Symbiosis benefit has been increased by approximately 16%.

All in all, we're continuing to see some decent buffs to Resto, so hopefully that trend will continue! Similarly, hopefully they won't overdo it and actually achieve a roughly equal balance among the healing classes rather than having some just completely overpowered than the others. Pallies and Priests have some small reductions incoming so far and Shamans are getting a bit of a boost, so hopefully things will begin to even out.

Mana Tide Totem has also been revamped so that it now 'no longer multiplies the Spirit of those affected by it. It instead gives a flat amount of Spirit equal to 400% of the casting shaman's Spirit, exclusive of short-term Spirit buffs affecting the shaman when dropped.' This is a good change overall, really, and most likely from PvE imbalances (rather than PvP, which a number of the upcoming changes are adjusting). MTT combined with Spirit /use trinkets and additional factors was becoming extremely overpowered in raid settings (and poor shamans were basically being used only as mana batteries for priests/pallies), so hopefully this will again contribute to more equalising of the healing classes and encourage mixed comps rather than the need to stack specific classes.

I would still like to see some additional tools for our tank healing, mainly at least in some sort of cooldown (likely a damage reduction one if not another healing boost one) or perhaps a damage reduction incorporated into a talent. Druids can definitely be viable as tank healers and do a good job, but if Blizz really wants us competitive with Pallies (and, indeed, priests with PainSupp/GS) we could really do with something to help us measure up.

I am very pleased with the boost to our raid heals, though, with the upcoming Wild Growth and Rejuvenation changes. We should be a lot stronger on raid heals with the changes and help bring back some of our previous strengths in raid healing. The changes should also help us a lot in benefiting from our Mastery (which is also getting buffed) - with more Wild Growths going out (from the reduced cooldown) and more Rejuvenations going out (from the reduced mana cost), there should be a lot more potential overlap of our HoTs and heals, which should then trigger our Mastery a lot more. Hopefully this is what we'll see! As ever, though, we'll see how it plays out in practice.

Positive signs ahead, though!

ETA: There was also a very interesting post by Ghostcrawler on the difficulty of heroic dungeons, which is definitely worth a read. Check it out here: Wow, Dungeons are Hard!

Patch 4.0.6 PTR: Upcoming Changes for Druids

First off, a Happy New Year to everyone! I hope everyone's had a good start to the new year.

What better way to start than with the announcement of a new patch finally on the horizon! Patch 4.0.6 has been deployed on the PTR, along with a lot of updates and changes pretty much across the board. I think they were waiting on a patch until after the holidays, but this should update and fix a lot of things, as well as apply many client-side things that were hotfixed but not fully updated (mainly things like tooltips, quest texts, etc). There may also be several new things broken in the new patch, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

There are a lot of druid changes coming up which seem to comprise a mix of buffs and nerfs. Full patch notes can be seen here.

Let's start with Resto changes.

Restoration


Nourish / Healing Touch: Healing Touch is now trained at level 78 (up from level 3), Nourish is now trained at level 8 (down from level 78).
This is a nice little buff for levelling druids. Healing Touch seemed to be too expensive of a heal at low levels, so this swap should ease mana concerns some for levelling Resto druids.

Omen of Clarity: OoC can no longer trigger from helpful spells (aka heals) unless the Restoration talent Malfurion's Gift is chosen.
This is an interesting change which seems to be their solution to prevent OoC from accounting for too much mana savings. This basically means Malfurion's Gift will be a must-have for Resto druids. I'm not positive whether OoC will only have a chance to proc from Lifebloom (as MG right now causes Lifebloom to increase the proc chance) or whether it will change so that all healing spells have a chance to proc it when talented. I'll have to check that on the PTR or closer to/on live release date. If anyone has seen it on PTR already and knows with more certainty, do let me know.

Rejuvenation: Rejuvenation is now trained at level 3 (down from level 8) and its mana cost has been reduced from 26% to 16%.
This is a pretty big change and one I'm very glad to see. The high mana cost on Rejuvs at the moment is really mana intensive and can really limit druid heals, particularly on the raid. I realise they have been hoping to get away from the Wrath era of Rejuv spam, but such a high mana cost really took it a bit too far and was more limiting than anything. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction towards fixing that, and should also help druid raid heals more but also hopefully help make it easier for us to benefit from our mastery.

Regrowth: Empowered Touch now also affects Regrowth, and the Glyph of Regrowth now causes the HoT effect to refresh itself on targets below 50% health (up from 25% health).
This is a somewhat interesting change, clearly trying to push druids to resume using Regrowth, as many (including myself) have found it to be much less valuable, especially considering the high mana cost and low healing punch. Honestly, I'll likely continue using Regrowth primarily as I do now, which is largely on OoC procs during Tree of Life for the instant free Regrowths. This change will actually be quite nice for that - casting the Regrowth on a target with a LB during ToL will refresh it now, so you don't risk losing some of your LB stacks out on the raid during ToL.
While the buff to the glyph is nice, I still don't see that glyph as being particularly useful. The only fight I really see any potential value for it is Chimaeron, when the entire raid spends so much of the fight below 50% or less health. Even then, it's such an expensive heal in an already mana-intensive fight, that apart frm ToL OoC procs I again don't see it as more valuable than other glyph choices.
The Regrowth changes do make it at least a bit more interesting though and perhaps it will come into play a little more. This also leads us into our next change,

Nature's Bounty: Nature's Bounty no longer affects Swiftmend, but now has a new effect in addition to the increased Regrowth chance. When the druid has Rejuvenation out on 3 or more targets, the cast time of Nourish is reduced by 10/20/30%.
This is an interesting change to the talent Nature's Bounty and actually has me in a bit of a spec dilemma when this goes live. Currently I don't have any points in Nature's Bounty as I just don't feel it's useful enough, as Regrowth doesn't pack enough punch to make the increased crit chance worth it, especially with the high mana cost. The reduced cast time on Nourish is a very nice change, though, and should hopefully boost our raid healing a bit more. Assuming we have 3+ Rejuvs out on raid or party members, the reduced Nourish cast time allows for some quicker heals, which will likely be benefiting from those Rejuvs boosting both the Nourish and our Mastery. Combined with the reduced Rejuv mana cost, this should theoretically help our raid healing some. How this ends up in practice, though, is less certain. Certainly still our raid heals are in serious need of a boost, and though this might help, it's not a full fix. But more on that later.

Feral


Rake / Rip: Rake and Rip damage has been reduced by 10%.
Pretty straightforward reduction here on our bleed DoTs. I've heard some of these reductions have been for some additional PvP balance, which may be the case.

Shred / Mangle: Shred weapon damage percent (at level 80+) has been increased to 450% (up from 350%) and Mangle weapon damage percent (at level 80+) has been increased to 460% (up from 360%).
In contrast to the Rake/Rip nerfs, we have a decent buff to Shred and Mangle, so hopefully overall these changes will balance out.

Berserk: Berserk no longer breaks Fear or makes the druid immune to fear.
This was a pretty straight PvP adjustment, which is quite disappointing for PvE I feel. I can understand it for PvP balance, but there are definitely PvE encounters both when DPSing and tanking that the fear immunity/clearance is a great help. It would have been nice if it simply didn't work against player-cast fears, but that may have been more difficult to implement. Either way, we're stuck with it now!

Misc


-Barkskin is no longer dispellable.
-Mount Up guild perk now applies correctly to Flight Form and Swift Flight Form.
-Wild Mushroom is now instant cast and the radius of detonation has been increased by 6 yards and damage done increased by 15%.
-Night Elf racial trait Shadowmeld and the Tauren racial trait War Stomp can be used while shapeshifted.

There have also been some changes for our Bears (mostly decreased Mangle (Bear), Maul, and Lacerate damage) and Moonkins (Shooting Stars buff duration has been increased).

Overall, some decent changes so far. From what I've heard (hearsay from friends and guildies) this patch will likely go live around the 25th of January, but I haven't seen any official dates yet (if any have been posted, I've completely missed them). That also means that there's still time for some of these things to change. With that in mind, I won't be updating the guides until these changes go live. The feral nerfs and buffs will hopefully balance out so there's not an overall net loss to our PvE damage.

Resto Changes and PvE Healing Imbalance


The Resto changes are a step in the right direction, but I think there's still a ways to go in that area. While healers are seeming decently balanced in the 5 man dungeons and heroics, the four healing classes are definitely not balanced when it comes to raids, particularly 25 mans and 25 man heroics.

There was an excellent post by Xaar, a Resto druid from Paragon, on the EU WoW healing forums, which I really hope the Blizz devs have looked over. You can see the full post here: The state of 25-man raid healing.

In short, he discusses the imbalances that many of us are seeing and feeling in raids amongst the healing classes. Both druids and shamans are fairing poorly in raids, particularly when compared with paladin and priest (holy) healers. Shamans are a bit fortunate in that they provide Mana Tide totem, which can grab them a spot in raids, but many are finding they feel like mana-batteries for the priests and pallies. Druids unfortunately do not have such luck (and innervates are easily supplied by feral and balance druids) and, particularly in high progression guilds, are having a hard time being valuable to raids. While our tank healing tools were greatly improved, we lack the external cooldowns in damage reduction on tanks or increased healing that pallies have, so pallies will likely always be the preferential tank healers. The high mana cost to Rejuv and longer cooldown on Wild Growth is hitting our raid heals and holy priests are pulling ahead on raid heals. Although Disc priests are a bit below standard at the moment (they will be getting buffed in 4.0.6), Atonement discs have their place in certain fights and priests still provide external cooldowns in both specs (Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit).

What we'll likely see happening is raids will begin stacking priests and pallies, especially for heroic modes, and both druids and shaman will likely get the bench. Shaman may still get in to provide a Mana Tide, but, as Xaar also mentions, as players attain more gear and mana conservation becomes less difficult, they too may end up by the wayside. Overall it ends up as very low balance in PvE healing, and both druids and shaman are in dire need of buffs. There are several paladin and priest buffs also slated in this upcoming patch (the priest buffs seem to be in reaction to PvP imbalance, where they were lacking), so there will likely be even more catching up to do for shaman and druids.

I'm really also in favour of some additional changes to druid healing. While Tree of Life now gives us that boost to healing cooldown, we're still lacking in what special things we can really bring to the raid to validate that raid spot. In the very least, especially as our tank-healing tools have been boosted, we need some sort of damage reduction ability. This could be in a similar vein to Shaman's Ancestral Healing and Priest's Inspiration, damage on the target is reduced by 10% for 15 seconds after a critical heal lands. In the very least this would be helpful, as we currently have no ability that reduces damage taken, which really knocks our tank-healing strengths. Living Seed is arguably a similar ability, but a damage reduction would be much more valuable in terms of aiding tank survivability. In fact, Living Seed would be the perfect talent to adjust to either include or change to a damage reduction ability.

Another option would be, as many have mentioned, to provide a deep Restoration talent which would allow Barkskin to be cast on another target, ie to be used as an additional external cooldown for a tank in the same vein as Pain Suppression. I certainly see this as being a very valid option and, if there are concerns about balance with such an ability, it seems there's automatic balance in keeping Barkskin on the one cooldown - the resto druid would only be able to cast it on one target, so they couldn't throw it on a tank and also use it on themself, they'd have to choose one or the other.

So, there's definitely a ways to go on druid healing, though hopefully the Rejuv changes and potentially the Regrowth changes will be a step in the right direction for us. We'll have to see how it plays out and, as more data and feedback comes in, especially as more players and guilds are able to get in and experience the new raid content, hopefully there'll be more changes in store. Certainly at the moment it's feeling like Lich King Heroic all over again - stack priests and pallies, maybe a shaman for mana tide if you're lucky, but druids are by the wayside.

I survived the Shattering! Quick update post-4.0.3a

Thought I'd do a quick post with some updates from the 4.0.3a patch.

- I finally found out how to train Glyph of the Treant - it can be learned through a Minor Inscription Research discovery. Rather less convenient than learning it from a trainer, especially now when very few will know it (and with the long cooldown on the Research), so Auction House gouging will likely take place over this week. It only requires 3 Jadefire Ink and a Common Parchment, though, so cheapest would likely be to find someone who's learned it and see if they'll make it for mats+tip.

- Nitro Boosts are now a belt tinker (rather than a boot tinker), so be sure to update your items. As far as I know this is an intended change (I'd seen a post asking if it was or was not). They will overwrite the Frag Belt and other belt tinkers. The Nitro Boosts seem to be bugged, though, and are malfunctioning much more frequently than they used to, including in raids. A large portion of our raiders are engineers and all last night they were exploding in every fight. I had a rather nice one during HMLK, at least I had my parachute at the ready.

- Meta gem requirements for some gems were changed to 'require more blue gems than red gems', however, Blizzard has already said they will be reverting the gems to their original requirements. This cannot be hotfixed, though, so will be addressed in an upcoming patch. (source)

- There are some new quests which reward pets, one is the Plants vs Zombies quest which rewards a flower. Another is the Remembrance of Auberdine quest which rewards a withered treant named Withers. I'll be setting to work on that one, appears as though you need to do most of the zone to open up the quest though! There's some info on WoWhead on how to get to the quest - check out the comments for the quests you need to complete to open it. Here. Should be a nice way to see the new Darkshore though. The opening quest regarding the destroyed Auberdine is quite sad as you search for survivors. ETA: Been working on the quests in the zone, and am very glad I did! The new quests are brilliant, loving Darkshore. Think this will swing it for me in which race to level a mage, nelf! Looking forward to checking out all the new zones... may give a go at Loremaster.

- The change in Rejuvenation mana cost does seem noticeable following a night's raiding, my mana bar was actually moving all tonight! Cata has landed officially. Though I do wonder whether a little bit may be due to me opting for Purified Lunar Dust over my Solace of the Defeated, as I believe Solace still returns better mana (I switched for the spellpower gain), however it was too large a difference from last week to be solely a trinket swap. You have been warned!

- I was very happy healing Valithria Dreamwalker last night now that the revamped Empowered Touch was on live. Throw on a Rejuv, Swiftmend her for Efflorescence, 3 stacks of LB and Healing Touch away! No longer wasting GCDs refreshing the stack after each cast, it was great. Some nice throughput doing that throughout the fight, though I'm undecided just when and how to use Tree of Life best on that fight. It would seem saving ToL for the end with max stacks is best for the additional healing boost. The instant-Regrowths seem like they edge out Healing Touch at that point, as you're getting two Regrowths out in about the same time as one Healing Touch cast (assuming 2 GCD's ~ 2 seconds for 2 instant Regrowths, vs ~2-second cast time HT), which tends to end up about being the same amount of healing done in that time frame. Nature's Bounty may be what pushes it, as the increased critical effect, especially then with the bonus to heals from portal stacks + ToL increased healing really adds up. I'd be interested in hearing what some other's strategies are. Though I suppose it doesn't matter too much at this point! Still, interesting.

- I was disappointed to find that my Mimiron's Head mount seems to be bugged, he makes noise when he's sat on the ground idling, but when I try flying forwards or strafing he goes silent. The little chopper-y noises the mount makes is one of my favourite things about it so I'm hoping that gets fixed soon!

- For those who don't know, there is now an Auction House and Bank in the Dwarven District of Stormwind (so you can avoid the more congested area in the Trade District). There's also an Auction House by the Justice Point vendors in Dalaran.

That's all for now! Enjoy the new zones and do some exploring! There are lots of new flypoints and tons of new quests to do. The new class/race combos are up too, along with the new starting zones for gnomes and trolls.

The Shattering! 4.0.3a lands tomorrow

MMO-Champ is reporting that patch 4.0.3a is landing on live servers this week! We're only two weeks away from Cataclysm's launch (where did the time go??), and this patch will bring about all the landscape, zone and quest changes as well as new class/race combinations (though Worgen and Goblin characters are only available with Cataclysm). There will also no longer be portals in Dalaran or Shattrath, so I suggest resetting your hearthstones to places like Stormwind/Orgrimmar or else placing your toons at places with convenient transport to major cities (Valiance Keep and Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra are decent ideas, with transport direct to SW/Org).

For those in Stormwind, there will be a new auction house and bank in the Dwarven District (along with additional innkeepers), so you don't have to be stuck in the busy Trade District if you don't want to. I think there are similar changes in Orgrimmar, but I don't know the specific details.

There are a lot of Druid changes in this patch, which is basically just bringing us in line with Beta and ultimately Cataclysm.

• Bear Form now provides 10% bonus health, down from 20%.
• Nourish no longer consumes Omen of Clarity.
• Rejuvenation has had its mana cost increased by 30%.
• Soothe now has a 1.5-second cast time.
• Swipe (Cat Form) can now be used even if the druid does not have a primary target selected.
• Thorns: beginner tooltip revised to no longer imply the spell could be kept up at all times. In addition, Thorns damage has been reduced by 60%.

Feral

• Brutal Impact now increases the mana cost of spells on the victim by 5/10% for 10 seconds, down from 15/30%.
• Leader of the Pack now heals for 4%, down from 8%.
• Survival Instincts now provides 50% damage reduction, down from 60%, and its cooldown has been lowered from 5 minutes to 3 minutes.
• Swipe (Bear Form) damage has been reduced by 20%.
• Vengeance is no longer cleared on exiting Bear Form, and instead is cleared upon entering Cat Form.

Restoration

• Empowered Touch now procs from Healing Touch as well as Nourish.
• Heart of the Wild: the Bear Form Stamina bonus from this talent is now 2/4/6%, down from 3/7/10%.
• Malfurion's Gift no longer has Fury of Stormrage as a prerequisite talent.
• Natural Shapeshifter now also increases Tree of Life duration by 5/10 seconds.
• Revitalize is now a 2-point talent, down from 3. It provides a 20% chance to return 1/2% of the druid's total mana on periodic heals from Lifebloom or Rejuvenation. This effect cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds.
• Swift Rejuvenation is now a 1-point talent, down from 2. The global cooldown reduction this talent provides to Rejuvenation remains 0.5 seconds.
• Symbiosis: heal-over-time spells (Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom) can no longer benefit from this Mastery merely by refreshing themselves. A different heal-over-time spell must be present.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Healing Touch now reduces the cooldown on Nature's Swiftness by 10 seconds after using Healing Touch, up from 5 seconds.
• Glyph of the Treant (new) allows druids to keep the original treant Tree of Life look... if they must. Must they?

Bug Fixes

• Blood in the Water now refreshes Rip to the correct value.
• Flight Form now properly appears in the trainer window before Expert Riding is learned.

A lot of changes in there. Some nerfs in there, but overall it's nothing too massive. You'll likely feel a bit of a hit at level 80, but at 85 things balance back out again. Not mentioned in there is also the change to Efflorescence, where it now has a diminished effect when healing more than 6 players at once. There's been some debate over just how this is working now (if it's healing 6 for full and less for the additional people in, if it's healing only 6, if it's healing everyone stood in for less... etc) and, as far as I'm aware, no official confirmation/clarification yet on it (someone let me know please if you've seen something). I'd like to state, though, this is NOT restricted to Druids - ALL healing classes are having their AE spells reduced in exactly the same way. Shammy Healing Rain, Priest Holy Word: Sanctuary, and Holy Radiance all have the same changes. So don't panic!

There are some nice changes for the Resto talent tree with this patch which finally bring us in line with Beta. Empowered Touch now allows both Nourish and Healing Touch to refresh Lifebloom stacks, which is an excellent change. Revitalize is now a 2-point talent, which is nice as it frees up a talent point to put elsewhere and, in a similar vein, Swift Rejuvenation is now only a 1-point talent. Another very nice change is Malfurion's Gift no longer requires Fury of Stormrage, so if you either cannot afford the points or simply don't wish to spec it, you can still pick up Malfurion's Gift.

With those changes in mind, I suggest picking up the following spec at level 80, which should carry you nicely into levelling from 80-85 in Cata 2/0/34.

Largely this is picking up Malfurion's Gift, though if you don't feel you need the extra Omen of Clarity proc chance at 80, you can opt to put one or no points into this talent. I opted for Malfurion's Gift over Blessing of the Grove for both 80 and eventual 85 spec. OoC with Regrowths (especially when in ToL form using instant-regrowths and being able to cast Lifeblooms on multiple targets) will be extremely helpful for mana management both now and especially at 85. Though, you can move points into there if you like, especially at 80 where Rejuv-spamming is still doable with little mana consequence. If you're having mana problems or simply want a larger mana pool you can still move some points over into Furor as well.

ETA: I've updated my Resto guide to include the above 4.0.3a changes: Resto Guide.

The Feral tree is largely unchanged. For kitty I suggest sticking with the 0/33/3 spec, as this picks up the max DPS talents as well as some nice survivability talents.

This can be a nice spec to begin the levelling process at 80 as well, as picking up Thick Hide will make you uncrittable. Brutal Impact is a very useful talent but will likely be less useful while levelling, and you can easily pop two points in there as you hit 81 and 82. The point in Survival Instincts could be moved around as well, I personally like it for emergencies, especially if I ended up pulling too many mobs.

It also looks like the new Tree of Life model will be coming with 4.0.3a (much to my dismay), but the Glyph of the Treant should be available if you want to keep your old Tree-form. I'll be hunting down an Inscriptionist to get that made! I'm hoping it's just trainable at the Inscriptionist trainers.

Otherwise, enjoy the last moments of the old world! Grab any last screenshots, head through any last ZG runs (no raptor for me!), take a stroll through the Park in Stormwind one last time, and so forth!

Druid Healing and Kitty DPS 4.0.1, updates! and new tree form models!

UPDATE: I've completed the Restoration Druid Healing Guide for level 80 in 4.0.1, which you can find here: Full Guide: How to be a Tree! Resto Guide for 4.0.1 and Beyond!

The guide will again be updated when Cata hits to reflect changes for level 85, a full 85 spec, new gems and enchants, etc!

The old 3.3.5 Guide was removed, as was the placeholder in progress guide for 4.0.1, so be sure to update any bookmarks or links you may have.

The dust is starting to settle following the Patch. Lots of little (and big) bugs and issues which will hopefully be either hotfixed or, in the very least, will be addressed in upcoming patches.

The WoW Forums are often helpful both for reporting bugs and finding out more information about anything you may be experiencing. The Bug forum can be seen here (along with this helpful post on How to Write a Good Bug Report). Technical Support and Mac Tech Support are also very helpful (and there are some known crash issues with Macs with this patch). If you have a crash, ALWAYS send your error logs in to Blizz (a form should pop up automatically to do so), and you can also post your crashlogs on the forums as well (that's also much more helpful than just posting 'I crashed!!111').

Kitties should be feeling a lot better today! We had a blue post acknowledging the pretty major class imbalances at level 80, and we got a hotfix (along with other melee classes) boosting our damage!

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler (Source)

We made many changes yesterday. A lot of these were bug fixes, and many bug fixes will affect damage one way or the other. So just because you don't see a specific change referenced below, doesn't mean it didn't change.

With that said, here are the specific changes we made in reference to my previous post:

1) We buffed the base points and coefficients of many  warrior dps abilities. We didn't do as much to tanking abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many  Ret abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many  Feral cat abilities.

Kitty DPS should be looking a lot better than it was a couple of days ago. A quick test on the dummy saw mine had jumped pretty substantially and was looking a lot more comparable to what it was before the patch, so good news there.

I wanted to do a couple of quick updates on Healing and Kitty DPS. I've been a bit slow in getting my fully updating my guides namely for things like the above - things are buggy and subject to change, and my own playing with specs and discussions with others will lead to some alterations in my suggestions in the guide. I will be getting the full guides up, ideally over the weekend, but wanted to clue everyone in to the delay!

Healing updates:


Reforging is your best friend! Given how high mana regen is for many at level 80, especially with ICC gear and the now very large mana pools, you will find that Reforging the Spirit on your gear will be incredibly helpful. The two stats you will likely want to Reforge your spirit to is Haste and Crit.

Haste: To get an extra tick on our Rejuvs (see this post on Type H for Heals for some good background on this), we need to hit a haste cap of 1015 haste now. Reforging will help you get there without forcing you to regem.

Crit: On pieces which already have Haste on, you can Reforge Spirit into Crit. As all of our HoTs can now Crit, it's great to pick up some extra Crit to help pack some more punch into our HoTs (especially now that they have reduced durations).

Gear: You may find yourself wanting to pick up some new pieces of gear as well (or swap out with ones in your bank). Thinking along the same lines as the reforging of Spirit above, gear that has Int/Haste/Crit on it (as opposed to Int/Spirit and Haste or Crit) may be a lot more valuable in boosting both your Haste and your Crit. An easy one to pick up (especially if you have a Boomkin offspec) is swapping out the Idol of the Black Willow with the Idol of the Lunar Eclipse. On similar lines, Blood Queen's Crimson Choker over Bone Sentinel's Amulet, etc.

Ultimately, swapping out pieces of gear like that and Reforging Spirit will depend some on just what you're doing in game, i.e. your gear levels, if you're doing 25 man raids or only 5 mans, etc. While the Reforging can be a bit expensive (my pieces seem to have usually run about 10g a pop to Reforge), you can return them to their original stats at no charge. Play around with your gear and stats and see what works for you, and keep an eye on your mana (and on your healing style - if all you're doing is spamming Regrowth nonstop (now a mana-expensive spell), you will likely drive yourself OoM quickly regardless of gear or mana pool).

If you are finding you are still having some mana issues, I recommend keeping the gear changes and changing your spec to maximize your mana pool. Heart of the Wild should definitely be picked up in any spec, as it is a straight boost to your Intellect, which will increase your spellpower as well as your mana pool. Revitalize is another excellent talent providing both more mana regen for us but also grants Replenishment for the party or raid.

The optional talent you can pick up is Furor in the Feral tree to help with your mana pool. Furor will give you 5%/10%/15% increase to your maximum mana. A note on Furor: This talent will increase your mana pool but NOT your Intellect - this means it will NOT increase your spellpower. It can provide a pretty massive increase to your Mana pool, though, which can be very helpful. Even just one point in here can be useful, and there is room to move 1-3 points out of the Resto tree into Furor.

With all that in mind: This is the following spec I'm currently testing out. I'll discuss after which points can be potentially moved around in both the Resto tree and into Furor.

The two in the Balance tree are in Nature's Majesty for the straight Crit increase. Again, with Crit affecting all of our HoTs now, these are a valuable two points to pick up.

This spec does not pick up Furor (I wanted to maximize my points in the Resto tree and test out my mana regen with the gear and Reforging changes before picking up that talent). The following points I think can potentially be moved around to go into Furor if you find you need it:

Nature's Cure: This talent is a very nice utility talent, but a potentially optional one. If your primary raiding is in 25 mans (and possibly 10 mans with a good group makeup), you may find you don't need this talent as the cleanse is provided by another class in the group. If it is, you can likely skip this talent (check with your Raid Leader if you're unsure). You may want to pick it up again once Cata launches, though, as I imagine it may be useful in 5 man dungeons while leveling or in Heroics.

Blessing of the Grove: The general consensus on this talent so far seems to be that it feels quite weak. I've kept it for the time being as I'd like to maximize my heals as much as I can, and also as I'm still feeling out just how Druid healing will be (namely, whether our focus will keep up with Raid healing as our primary role, or whether it will indeed shift to tank healing, as our tank healing tools have been improved immensely). Given Rejuv is both strong as an additional HoT on our Tanks (especially with our mastery) as well as on the raid, this may still be good to keep, but again, may be a point or two you can shift out.

Empowered Touch: I would only suggest taking points out of this talent if you are doing absolutely NO tank healing at all. Nourish got a bit of a nerf, really, so you may end up using Healing Touch more on tanks than Nourish (at least if you're healing larger hits), so the Lifebloom refresh may not be as useful. The straight boost to both Nourish and Healing Touch will be very helpful. Again, some of this will depend on healing dynamics at 80 - whether we're healing more on the raid, the tanks, and also the speed of hits and health pool sizes at 80. ETA: Starting to get some proper raids in (that aren't lagged or otherwise completely horrendous due to patch bugs), you WILL be using both Nourish and HT, especially while tank healing. Nourish was indeed nerfed a little (though largely too due to the Glyph of Nourish now removed from the game) but it is still a good heal and, with this talent, it will refresh the Lifebloom stack, which is great. I prefer to keep this talent.

Naturalist: Again, I would only suggest taking points out of this talent if you are doing absolutely NO tank healing at all / if you're not using Healing Touch or Nourish at all. I prefer to keep this talent.

Nature's Majesty: You could also move a point or two out of this talent in the Balance tree, especially if you have a significant amount of Crit from gear already, but it is a pretty easy straight 4% Crit boost to pick up, so I'd spec into it if possible.

For more information you can again see my post Healing at 80 in 4.0.1, and I'll have the guides properly updated soon. I'll go ahead and add some of this new info there as well in the meantime.


Kitty Updates:


I mostly wanted to do a quick update on Kitty DPS and I'll get into more of the nitty-gritty later. Again, Reforging will be your friend - with armour pen on gear changing to either haste or crit, you may find yourself having too much of one stat or another. As mentioned earlier, we've had our damage boosted in a recent hotfix, so you should see your overall output go up a lot too. Don't forget, hit buffs are gone, so if you haven't already, make sure you're hit capped. You may also need some more expertise, as we no longer have Primal Precision (which increased our expertise).

The following spec is the max dps spec, including some utility talents which there is room for which I'll cover.

Thick Hide: I personally like this talent for its utility - it's the bear tanking talent which will make us uncrittable. Useful, I think, for emergency tanking situations and to avoid getting completely demolished by stray adds you may pick up.

Survival Instincts: Similar to Thick Hide, this is a useful survivability talent. For the mere damage reduction, I'd suggest picking it up even if you don't get Thick Hide. It's still particularly useful for fights, especially like Pungent Blight on Festergut and similar moments. Both these talents can be picked up without sacrificing DPS.

Brutal Impact: This is a nice talent which puts our interrupt onto the same cooldown as Rogue/DK/Shaman interrupts. Even with the spec above, you will be able to pick up this talent by level 85. If you want to pick it up at 80, you can drop some points in Thick Hide or Survival Instincts to get it.

Nurturing Instinct: I tend to prefer this talent for PVP (to increase your healing spells on yourself and others and to increase heals done to you, making you a bit more useful and durable), but it can also be a nice utility talent, particularly with concern for preserving healer's mana in Cata. Certainly a talent you can take.

Infected Wounds: This talent will generally be picked up by Bears, or covered by similar talents for other tanks. Can be a useful utility talent to pick up, though, particularly if in groups or raids where another class isn't providing the debuff, or for questing/leveling to reduce some damage taken (though for questing/leveling, taking Thick Hide to become uncrittable may serve you better).

The Prime glyphs (Rip/Savage Roar/Shred) are still your three key glyphs to maximize DPS. There's a bit more flexibility for your Major glyphs. Feral Charge will be useful to work in more Charges and, consequently, more Ravages. Rebirth can be useful for utility, and Faerie Fire will just give you a bit of extra range. In my Minors, Dash is still helpful and Unburdened Rebirth crucial. I picked up Challenging Roar ONLY because I specced into Thick Hide for emergency tanking situations. You can swap that out.

ETA: I forgot to include this earlier, I made up a nice macro for our new Skull Bash ability which will allow you to have both abilities on the same binding/same spot on your action bar, and which one is available will be dependant on which stance (form) you're in.

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1, nomod]Skull Bash;

/cast [stance:3, nomod]Skull Bash(Cat Form)

Again, you can see more information in my post on Kitty DPS at 80 in 4.0.1, and I'll be fully updating the kitty guide as well (it's in progress). The post also includes links to the new stat/gear analyzer Mew and an excellent post about kitty dps on the WoW Druid Forums.


I'll leave it there for now, plenty more updates and changes to come I'm sure!

I'll end with a glimpse at the new Tree form models, originally posted on MMO-Champion. These were data mined out of the latest beta update.

The forms are... interesting, at first glance. I'm undecided so far on my opinion of them, really - I've been way too distracted by both the talent/gear/etc issues following the patch as well as the technical issues, so I haven't really looked too thoroughly at them and formed a full opinion yet. I'll have to get a look at them in beta too. For those who are really concerned about them though (and it's possible the models will shift - I do not know if those are final models or not), there was the following blue post about ToL posted on MMO-Champ:

New Tree of Life
Art is very subjective. We're very used to the phenomenon of half of a class loving say their tier set art and the other half thinking they are the worst thing ever.

Messing with player models is always risky and we know the current Tree of Life model is one of those things that is either loved or hated. That is why, as promised, we are offering a minor glyph if you just prefer the older, treant-based, version of ToL. 

So it seems that the Tree of Life glyph is indeed in the works as a future glyph (not sure if it's also in that beta build or not), though rather than giving us a long lasting appearance (as opposed to the 30 second cooldown), it should just give us our Treant version of tree form back. Regardless, it's great to have that option, which I just may pick up, as I love our treant-version of Tree form.

That's all for now!

Patch 4.0.1 lands this week!

For Winter Veil I want a pony, and a new cloak, and...

Update: Patch 4.0.1 hits live servers this week! MMO-Champ has just updated with a new post here confirming the Patch launching this week and includes a full blue post with patch notes, all of the class changes, glyphs, etc! It looks like it's being updated as well so you can likely expect more updates as well.  In all likelihood, Patch 4.0.1 will be dropping tomorrow! There is always the possibility it will be moved back a week (or more), but likely better to play on the safe side and plan as though it will land tomorrow! There is also an extended maintenance scheduled for tomorrow.

I thought I'd make a quick post with some pre-patch day advice, links, and some brief refresher notes for trees and ferals with the 4.0.1 patch.

Let's start with pre-patch day preparations!

• Glyphs! Stock up! All glyphs will now be learned permanently and kept in your glyph book. Today's post on MMO-Champion has a great list of all the glyphs for every class here. MMO's Cata talent calculator WoWTal.com has also been updated to include all of the glyphs and a cleaner interface.
• Gems! I suggest stocking up on these as well if you haven't already, especially as prices will likely go up after the patch drops. 
• Addons! Be ready to update your addons as needed. Also, don't forget to tick 'enable out of date addons' on the Character Selection screen before loading in if you want all your addons on (regardless of updates). If there's load-in lag, it's always a pain to suddenly realize that 'Yes! I've gotten in!' but 'No!! I forgot to turn my addons on!'
• Bank toon items! You may want to send items from your bank toon to your main or alts if you have any glyphs or other items stored to free up bag space. 
• Downloading the patch! You may want to open up the game launcher during the day before maintenance is completed. Previous patches have been available for download a bit before maintenance has finished, so you may be able to get a little bit of a headstart on getting it downloaded.
• Avoid Dalaran! Dalaran will likely be a bit of a mess, to say the least, on patch day. Not only will everyone be struggling to get in after downloading the patch and trying to sort out their new talent trees and get ready for raids, there will likely be a larger bunch of people than normal. You can probably expect most of the people who have been taking it easy the past few weeks (whether on break, bored, playing other games, whatever) to all be interested in coming on and seeing their new talent trees and abilities. This patch is a pretty massive changeover prepping for Cataclysm, so interest will be high. I suggest moving toons out of Dal and finding quiet places to log them out in this evening. I might even suggest logging out in Azeroth (as opposed to Northrend) to try to avoid Northrend 'World Server is Down' messages. You may also want to set hearths to different locations (mine are all currently in Frosthold in Storm Peaks) so you don't accidentally hearth into lag-city when trying to get back to Northrend.
• Class changes! Have a look over all the class changes! Especially during the already-extended maintenance time (which may well be extended even further if the patch does drop), there'll be plenty of time for doing a mini crash-course in the classes of all your alts. Every talent tree is getting some serious overhauls as well as some entire classes (holy power?! only blood DKs can tank now?!). 

It's definitely one of the most exciting patches of late! There's a ton of new stuff all around. WoW Insider has two updates with blue posts, Class Mechanic Changes and Glyph Changes. We will also be getting the new Streaming Launcher which will allow you to enter the game if you wish to before everything has finished downloading.

As for Tree and Kitty preparations for 4.0.1, I'll point you to the full posts from this past week on Druid Healing at Level 80 in 4.0.1 and Kitty DPS at Level 80 in 4.0.1. I'll be updating the Tree and Cat guides fully and begin organising them for Cataclysm and the new 85 level cap. I'll leave the old 3.3.5 guides up for a little bit longer (for both my own references in ensuring the new guides are fully informative and for those interested or looking for a bit more information), but I will be removing them completely soon (assuming the patch drops tomorrow, I'll be aiming to have the old guides taken down within a week or two).

Trees shouldn't see too many gem changes with the patch, as all our Spellpower gems will be converting to Intellect. These gems will also be remaining red, so you shouldn't lose any socket bonuses you may have taken. Kitties, on the other hand, will be seeing some big gem changes. All of our armour penetration gems will be converting to Crit gems (and turning yellow). Also, our hit gems will be turning blue. Agility is looking like the gem of choice to replace all your arpen/crit gems. If you have been relying on Dranei hit buffs to get you to hit cap, you may find you also need some more hit gems, as all +hit buffs will be disappearing with this patch.

Don't forget, Tree of Life will be turning into a cooldown with this patch, so grab any tree screenshots or videos you may want to keep now! For the moment, ToL does still look like the Wrath version of tree form, but I expect that may change in future patches (probably most likely sometime after Cataclysm launches) to a revamped tree form model.

Also, there is a successor to Tossk's DPS Gear Method called Mew. There's a nice write-up of the programme over at the Fluid Druid, which includes some screenshots as well as how it works. There's an online version of Mew here (requires java), a downloadable binary here, and a code developers can download here. Yawning of No Chicks Allowed developed it and also wrote up a very detailed guide to kitty dps which is up on the WoW forums here, definitely worth a look!

I'll leave it at that for now! I expect the patch notes will be released sometime tomorrow if the patch drops, and places like WoW Insider and MMO-Champion will I'm sure be updated with breaking news and coverage of all of the changes coming with the patch (as in, not limited to just druids).

Have fun!

Druid Tier 11, 4.0.1

MMO-Champ recently released additional images and also some video of the new tier11 armour pieces, including the druid set! You can see MMO's full post here, along with a preview of the rogue and warlock models which also look pretty nice.

The tier 11 set looks pretty good I think! I love the the new spaulders and helm with the wings and lightning. It looks like there's now a sort of lightning-crackle animation as well as slowly falling feathers.

You can see the animation in this video created by MMO-Champion.



MMO is also reporting that Patch 4.0.1 is likely to arrive either 5 Oct or 12 Oct (so in the next week or two), based on comments by Ghostcrawler suggesting the patch will arrive shortly before or around the end of the current arena season and a change on the WoW trial page, which is stating the streaming version of the new download/game client will be available on the 5th.

There hasn't been any official announcement for a Cataclysm release date, with speculation ranging from early November to mid-December times. We'll be getting patch 4.0.1 with all of the class and system changes and later 4.0.3 will be landing with Cataclysm events (the actual environment changes and things like that).

Pretty exciting times ahead! I'd recommend moving your toons out of Dalaran, at least before each Tuesday, as I'm sure lag and everyone attempting to log on will make getting on a nightmare. Based on my experience with the streaming downloader on the Beta, I may have to wait for the game to fully download, as I've had FPS issues when attempting to stream it. Everyone trying to get on at once to see all the new changes won't help!

I've also been stocking up on gems and enchant mats. I'm hoping professions won't be broken on the patch (they're a little bit dodgy on PTR and possibly on Beta; my toon had his profession levels go over but had to retrain to access - he still had 450 but lost all his recipes) as that will make things difficult, so I may pre-cut some things. In the very least, all my armour pen gems will be turning to crit gems in the patch, which I'll likely be replacing with agililty. Slightly annoyingly, hit gems will now be turning blue, so I'll lose a few of the socket bonuses I've managed to pick up.

If you can, though, now will likely be a good time to pick up some of these things before patch! Emblems will be converting to the new Justice Points, at a slightly higher conversion rate than previously planned (11.58 points per emblem). There's a cap (more info on this post) with spare points converting to gold, though that conversion has been reduced. I decided to spend at least my Triumph badges on gems, though I'm undecided on just what I'd prefer to do with my frost badges as yet. I've also stocked up on some additional Druid glyphs in the hope that many will just change in effect (rather than disappear entirely with some of the new changes) so I don't get gouged on the auction house as everyone scrambles for new glyphs.

Interesting changes ahead!

Beta builds 13066 and 13033

There's been a lot of beta updates this past week, along with lots of changes for druids!
Summary:


Balance

• Wild Mushroom now affects targets within 3 yards, down from 10 yards.
• Entangling Roots now lasts 30 sec, up from 27 sec.
• Nature's Torment is now named Nature's Grace and now resets the cooldown of Nature's Grace instead of Nature's Torment.

Feral

• According to the tooltips, Swift Flight Form, Flight Form, Aquatic Form, Travel Form, Bear Form, Cat Form no longer make you immune to Polymorph.
• Swift Flight Form now costs 8% of base mana, down from 13% of base mana.
• Skull Bash now has a 13 yards range, up from 8 yards.
• Pulverize now increases your melee critical strike chance by 3%, up from 2%.
• Endless Carnage now increases the duration of Savage Roar and Pulverize by 4/8 sec, up from 3/6 sec.
• Stampede now makes Ravage not require stealth for 10 sec (up from 3 sec), it will also cost 50/100% less energy.
• Predatory Strikes now affects targets at or above 80% health, down from 90%.

Thrash affects all targets within 8 yards. (Tooltip clarification)

Tiger's Fury now increases physical damage done by 88.8% for 6 sec. (This one is weird, might want to wait before theorycrafting)

Pulverize base additional damage increased by 66%.

Stampede now affects your next Ravage. (Tooltip clarification)

Fury Swipes - When you auto-attack while in Cat form or Bear form, you have a 5/10/15% chance to cause a Fury Swipe dealing 200% weapon damage. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3 sec. / 5 yd range, Instant

Restoration

• Rebirth no longer costs mana.
• Rejuvenation now costs 20% of base mana, down from 25%.
• Mastery: Symbiosis (Revamped) - Increases the potency of your healing spells by 10% on targets already affected by one of your heal over time spells. Each point of Mastery increases heal potency by an additional 1.25%.
• Lifebloom can now be cast on an unlimited amount of targets while under the effect of Tree of Life.
• Omen of Clarity (Passive) - If specialized as a Feral Druid, Omen of Clarity will also have a chance to occur from your auto-attacks. (Tooltip clarification)
• Tree of Life now lasts 30 sec, down from 45 sec. Costs 6% of base mana, down from 13% of base mana.
• Efflorescence no longer procs from Regrowth critical heals, now procs when you heal with your Swiftmend spell. Now heals all nearby friendly targets within 8 yards (up from 4 yards) for 10% of the amount healed by your Swiftmend over 7 sec.
• Blessing of the Grove no longer increases the damage done by your Claw and Shred.

Some interesting changes there. Predatory Strikes and Stampede changes are a bit of a boost for cats, giving us more opportunities to work Ravage in. Hopefully damage itself is still being tuned up, as feral dps on the PTR recently has been pretty horrible. Blessing of the Grove in the Restoration tree had some changes for ferals as well, as it no longer increases Shred damage. The feral spec has some interesting options at the moment with that change, as you now only really need to spend six points in the Restoration tree. The points that frees up means you can pick up Thick Hide as a cat, which will give you crit immunity. There are also a couple of other points you can shift around - Brutal Impact may be a nice option for making interrupts reliable (and more on par with rogue kicks etc), or Natural Reaction if emergency off-tanking is needed. To really maximize dps or tanking though it is still looking like you will need two separate specs like you do in live at the moment.

Lots of changes for the Restoration tree, all looking pretty positive still. The mana cost of Rejuvenation was decreased, which is a nice little boost. The duration of the Tree of Life was decreased to 30 seconds, though that doesn't seem like a massive problem, as the duration was really quite long to begin with. Reports are that it seems the cooldown on the ability has decreased as well, so it will be nice to be able to use it more often. The Lifebloom changes in ToL form should have some good utility as well.

The biggest change in this build is to the Efflorescence ability, which now procs off of Swiftmend. It looks like this is a 100% proc from using Swiftmend. This is a very nice change actually, as it should encourage druids to use Swiftmend more and discourage Regrowth-spamming, which seemed like a potential problem (particularly with instant-cast Regrowths in ToL). It should also discourage any crit-stacking (as opposed to getting in a balance of crit, haste and mastery) as it doesn't seem it will proc off of crits. The crit proc could also be quite unreliable for the old Regrowth proc, so the guaranteed proc from Swiftmend should be a lot more reliable and helpful. The range was also increased which is a nice little buff.

The new mastery is slightly old news (mostly due to changes being so quick!), you can see some more information on it in my old post here. The new mastery sounds excellent, though, both right on par with our healing style, a nice incentive to use all of our spells. The concept is very much in line with our Nourish spell and seems to be a logical direction for us to go. 

My only disappointment is still Nature's Grace in the Balance tree, which I wish would be swapped with Genesis or Moonglow, as it really does not seem to be useful for Resto druids (at least from a strictly high-end raiding perspective). Even if we're able to cast a few Moonfires during a fight, which in itself will likely not be the difference between a win and a wipe (unless it's a Princes-type fight and we can Moonfire a Kinetic Bomb), the haste increase has a one minute cooldown. This cooldown can be instantly reset - but ONLY by achieving a Lunar or Solar eclipse. Which we will never have as Resto druids. So, it's 15% haste for 15 seconds every minute for a GCD throwing out a Moonfire. Arguably - this might end up useful in fights if we know there'll be some fast incoming damage coming up, and we can fire off a MF and have the haste boost for, say, 10-15 seconds of having to spam-Nourish a tank, perhaps. Assuming the GCD use of the MF is not costly in terms of a tank death (which Blizz seems to suggest they are trying to avoid in Cata, but that CAN happen in Wrath), that could potentially be useful. It does appear to be 'after you cast Moonfire', and not upon MF actually hitting the target, so if we miss it shouldn't be costly as we will not need to recast it to gain the buff. 

Ultimately this will likely come down to actually seeing this ability in fights to see just how useful it actually is. I can already see needing an internal cd timer watching the cooldown on this ability though so as not to waste GCD and mana spamming out moonfires too early in an attempt to gain the haste buff. If the ability remains where it is, it will most likely have very situational usage. In heroics fights it likely will only be ever used once, in a raid boss fight though it could likely be used a few times. It will be far from our most useful stat, though, and I still find it to be a waste of talent points.

I have been itching to post some talent trees, though with how rapidly they keep changing still in the beta it seems a bit futile to do so. I have decided, though, at least for end-game raiding, to take all three points in the new Revitalise to provide replenishment and three points in Genesis (for the HoTs and Swiftmend boost) and forego completely Moonglow. Given gear levels, raidwide replenishment, etc, the reduced mana cost from Moonglow will not be critical and so I think that can be discarded safely. It may be for leveling and dungeon running that Moonglow may be preferred to Revitalize, particularly with lower gear levels. I do hope that either Moonglow or Genesis will be swapped to Tier 1 in Balance, though, as that should allow us to pick up both talents!

All in all though, interesting changes. Resto changes look to be positive. The feral tree and abilities have always looked pretty positive in my opinion, just hopefully their actual damage done will be boosted up as they suffered quite a big loss on the PTR (most likely from the loss of armour pen on stats coming with 4.0 and Cata; Warriors are facing similar issues).

WoW.com also posted today that Amazon has sent emails out about the Cataclysm Release Date, putting its release on 23 Nov - HOWEVER, they were keen to stress that Amazon has gotten release dates wrong before and that this has NOT yet been confirmed by Blizzard. I think you can take from this announcement though that Cataclysm is likely going to be released in November.




Edit: o.O I just saw in my email that I just got a beta invite! I didn't even think these were still going out. Off to install, updates to come!