Talk:Pre-5.0.4 druid talent analysis

Reordering?
I'm considering reordering this list to be sorted by numbers of points needed instead of alphabetical. Does anyone object to this? --Powerlord 14:23, 3 May 2005 (EDT)


 * The alphebetical order is confusing to me. I vote for reordering. --Bres 17:10, 20 Jun 2005 (EDT)
 * In fact, I'm going to just change it in a day or two if you don't and nobody else objects. I'd also like to make a start on a real Druid Talents page. --Bres 13:54, 21 Jun 2005 (EDT)
 * Now would be a great time to create it, seeing as how all the talents are changing in 1.8. See WoW Druid Talent Calculator for 1.8 for more info.
 * --Powerlord 22:18, 5 Oct 2005 (EDT)
 * In fact, I did just that. Take a look at Druid Talents now. :D I stole the general layout from Shaman Talents.
 * --Powerlord 03:35, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)
 * The talents are still in alphabetical order, and since I've decided to update the page to better reflect the changes since 1.8, I'll reorder them to reflect their place in the talent tree while I'm at it. --Tyrwyn 11:03, 9 May 2006 (EDT)

Regarding section : "Nature's Swiftness"
[Nature's Swiftness affects the following spells:}
 * Healing Touch
 * Entangling Roots
 * Wrath
 * Regrowth
 * Rebirth (rez)
 * Hibernate (sleep)

''Can someone verify this list?

Editor: took out Thorns (instacast already), Nature's Grasp (an event-triggered effect), and Hurricane (a channeled spell))'' &mdash; Neogi

Added Regrowth &mdash; Roemer

Added Hibernate &mdash; kael

Should Rebirth be added to this list? --Powerlord 09:22, 4 May 2005 (EDT) ''added Rebirth, thanx Powerlord for the tip (confirmed by someone who has done it) Wintermute

Outdated?
It seems to me this whoe analysis is mostly outdated both in name and concept.

It looks it's taking mostly opinions from before 1.8

Now, I'm still new to wow, and I'm not sure how long 1.8 has been out, butI do believe all Realms are on 1.8 so I think it would be good if anyone could confirm this and agree with me into putting a warning right on the top to let people know it is before 1.8 while wow is currently on 1.8.4

--Cacumer 10:31, 13 Dec 2005 (EST)


 * The article is not outdated as it mentions talents that were added in 1.8, Moonkin form being one of them. 1.9.4 is the current version and since there have been no major changes in the Druid talent tree since 1.8 I can confirm that this article is accurate. I shall remove the notice. --Cidian 01:28, 16 Feb 2006 (EST)

The article lists the talents all as they were pre 1.8, and then has notes describing the changes made in 1.8. It's been long enough since 1.8 came out now that I think it makes sense to just remove the outdated material, so I'm going to do that now.

--Tyrwyn 11:00, 9 May 2006 (EDT)

I've updated the balance talents, but don't have time to do the feral or restoration talents right now. I should get back to them in a day or two unless someone else wants to take up the task.

--Tyrwyn 11:56, 9 May 2006 (EDT)

I updated the feral talents today, and had to do substantial rewriting to reflect the changes since patch 1.8. I think the analysis I entered is fairly good, but I have limited experience as a feral druid and it would be good if a real feral druid gave it a look over.

--Tyrwyn 13:21, 28 May 2006 (EDT)

Finally finished with all the talents so the page should be up to date for at least a week or so. Some of it will need to be fixed when patch 1.11 comes out. There are probably some typos and minor errors that need fixing still.

--Tyrwyn 16:19, 1 June 2006 (EDT)

Most of the feral talents still say "Requires: Cat Form," etc. Is this from a previous version where you could not take the talent until you had the correct form? Would it be all right to remove these notes from the talents to clear up the confusion? --Parprapa 12:07, 14 Aug 2006 (EDT)

Unless anyone objects, I'm in the process of rewriting the guide to be compatible with the recent 2.0.1 patch. I've just about finished Balance, and will go on to feral, and if somebody could do resto, I'd appreciate it, since resto isn't exactly my area of expertise. --Natura 23:15, 11 December 2006 (EST)


 * I just completely rewrote it to be 2.0.1 compatible. Let me know what you all think!
 * Chrazriit 22:02, 17 December 2006 (EST)

Tree of Life has been changed to healing recieved instead of healing done. This makes this talent much more suceptable to the way raid leaders construct groups within a raid. i.e. If the druid has been placed in a healing group to recieve mana totems, or thrown into a random caster group who rarely recieve much healing anyway. Putting a ToL druid in a DPS group makes little sense since totem and buff requirements are different, and is wasteful of a dps slot. --Aphoticphoenix 12:49, 23 January 2007 (EST)
 * Not entirely senseless; the 4 others in the group have their own dedicated healer who will have an easier time with watching the party bars, the heavy hitter healers don't have to work as hard to keep them up; and the druid can easily act as a backup tank if something happens to the main, even if just long enough to get someone else up there. I have around 10k armor in my mostly cloth healing set in bear form, so I can hold my own for a bit, especially if the main tank has been doing his job correctly and I haven't taken much direct damage. The totem thing doesn't really matter, it won't help the druid but it won't hurt, either. And if it is necessary to pick up slack, they will help. --Azaram 01:23, 6 March 2007 (EST)


 * Tree of Life druids should be in the group expected to need the most healing, which generally means the tank group. DPS (especially melee, in most raids) is expendable. You shouldn't be dropping enough healing on the DPS to justify taking the +healing buff off of your tanks. --Braindawg 14:22, 1 November 2007 (EST)

Disagreements
--Shaldra-- 22/11/06

First of all very good guide, but you make some comments about balance/resto builds that i strongly disagree with. I've studied bal/resto for a long time and i consider it the best PvE raid build for sustained(high concentration) healing. Druids in my guild outheal all other healers in Naxx with this build.

It relies on the extreme mana efficiency of healing touch, due to high +healing gear, and an abuse of nature's grace if you have high +crit.

You mention build's involving improved regrowth and nature's grace. These are awful builds, regrowth is the most mana in-effiecent heal in the game, and the talent doesn't improve it much(the HoT portion cant crit, and the main heal gets about 28% of your +healing). You would definetly not go that far into the resto tree then not take swiftmend, as it is the only good talent towards the end of the tree.

I've made some changes accordingly, i hope you don't mind. :)


 * I haven't been resto in quite some time, so I welcome the input. In this case, my section on restoration builds hasn't really been touched since they nerfed Tree of Life. In those days, the Balance/Resto Mana Efficiency build was challenged for best raider healing spec and regrowth was a viable replacement for HT. Now that they've nerfed Tree of Life, you're completely correct.


 * When I was doing naxx, I noticed that for many trash pulls Regrowth was being cast not for its long-term spam efficiency in boss fights, but for the high-damage trash pulls. In karazhan, at least so far, the trash is much more forgiving.


 * Anyway you sound like you know what you're talking about, probably in the recent healing changes much moreso than I. Go ahead and make changes, that's why I posted it. :)


 * Chrazriit 11:09, 1 March 2007 (EST)


 * First I have to say I'm talking from a still growing druid's point of view, so my experience is limited. However I'm sure saying regrowth is "the most mana inefficient heal in the game" is a huge exageration. If you use the calculator you'll see the health-per-mana ratio, although smaller, is quite similar to that of healing touch, and certainly better than most healing spells. The reduced efficiency is the price for a lower casting time, but the instant/HoT mix provides a bit of flexibility.


 * Healing crits heal 150%, and with improved regrowth you get +50% crit chance wich in turn acts like an about +13% long-term healing efficiency, making it comparable to healing touch with the corresponding talents. Also a regrowth-based druid will most likely go for Tree of Life, and that means an additional 20% reduction of mana cost. And that practically permanent HoT on your tank will allow you cast an instant emergency heal with Swiftmend when needed.


 * Nonetheless I believe balance/resto builds are an excellent choice (Tree of Life has some painful limitations). I'm just saying it's not an obvious one.


 * Ermengol 8:08, 13 June 2007 (CEST)


 * Without ToL, which there was none of at the time of the original post, regrowth is hugely mana-inefficient. It's a fact. —Pzychotix (talk &middot;)


 * As this comparison points out, when you have a decent healing gear Regrowth becomes more efficient than Healing Touch, even not considering Tree of Life. This is a fact. Then, depending on whether you improve one or another with talents, you can get different results. Unless you are a resto-balance druid (or for some reason you don't like HoT-related talents) you should not do your regular healing with Healing Touch, except on those situations where spam is needed (high healing per second, not per mana, required), in which case it's the right choice.
 * Probably the criticism towards Regrowth comes from those used to reactive healing, in which one waits for the target to get seriously hit to cast a powerful healing spell. If you do that with Regrowths, you'll find yourself casting the spell when the HoT of the previous one hasn't even started.
 * Even without ToL, the most (mana) efficient way of healing will be in most cases to keep three stacked Lifebloom on the tank, Rejuvenation in all hurt targets, Regrowth when the health bar goes down just as much as its direct healing portion, and Swiftmend against damage bursts.
 * Ermengol

contr) 06:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC) Natural Perfection is not useless for healboting in battle grounds.  That appears to be its primary function.  Simply putting "Nope" next to PvP utility is unacceptable.

--Lyam15-- 21/12/06


 * I appreciate your point, but while Natural Perfection may or may not be intended for battleground healing, its value is negligible. Against the melee opponents you're worried about, crits hit very hard-- hard enough that that discount isn't going to be noticeable. Now if this was a flat -10% damage in general, or a -10% reduced chance for enemies to crit, or even a 10% stun resistance, that would be very different. I've updated the article to be more explicit about that, but as always, the article is the property of the community now and anyone can edit it.


 * I'd like to see some analysis backing up the value of this talent.


 * Chrazriit 19:41, 24 December 2006 (EST)

My analysis of Natural Perfection is developed around the new resilience that is heavy on the new pvp sets. Resilience also takes damage off of criticals by something like x% per x resilience. Stack resilience on a feral/restor druid with Natural Perfection and that to me sounds like a tough healbot to kill. My number one way of losing a duel is by nasty crits when I am in caster form trying to heal myself or CC my opponent.

As far as the spell crit on Natural Perfection, I think it is attuned to the non-moonkin balance/restor druids. At lvl 70, you can get pretty high in balance with Natural Perfection. Balance/restor is a good spec for pvp and raids. Natural Perfection seems to try and substitute the moonkin's armor and crit for balance/restor specs.

So in conclusion, it is pretty much just a talent that gives druids a bonus to Resilience much like the Survival of the Fittest is a bonus to Defense. I went ahead and changed it some. I tried to make is short and sweet.

--Lyam15-- 30/12/06


 * OK I'll admit I haven't stacked up much Resilience in my gear yet, but the numbers as I've crunched them indicate that you'd need a gigantic amount before the effect was even noticable. Can you give me some data based on what X% and X resilience is vs a typical rogue, hunter, warrior or shaman?


 * Chrazriit 11:09, 1 March 2007 (EST)


 * Looking at arena statistics, practically all successful restoration builds in 2vs2 include this talent. As a PvP healer myself I'd choose it over other resto talents if I weren't doing PvE as well. Note that most of the damage you'll get will be ranged, and it's quite easy to get some several-k damage crits during a fight. Pure PvP healers should take it.


 * On the other hand, the +3% crit chance certainly makes a strange couple, but if patch 2.3 does with +heal bonus what they say it will do, restoration druids are gonna love this too.


 * Ermengol 13:12, 11 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Just calculated it out - you'd need 197 resilience rating to take -10% crit damage at level 70. That makes this a really solid PVP healing talent. I added that number to the description. --Braindawg 14:25, 1 November 1007 (EST)

One more thing
You say that nature's focus is not useful for a raiding druid. I don't really agree with that. The problem is that interruption slows your healing considerably. Some friends and I has experimented with builds that don't have this and came to the conclusion that it is essential. For example healing on Vael without this talent is almost impossible. Ill wait for your view before changing it tho.

Terrible Guide
It's one thing to list what a Druid's talents are, but after reading this guide, I find it highly inappropriate as a Wiki article. This page should be written from a less biased prespective on the talents, and if at all possible, remove the opinionated nature of the descriptions. Regardless of your experience using specific talents, there are undoubtedly other individuals who may feel the author's opinion on when and where a talent is useful to be incorrect.

If the author wishes to write a page regarding this opinion's on the talents individual effectiveness, they should create their own webpage. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by.


 * WoWWiki is not an encyclopedia. The NPOV rule does not apply here.  Talent guides are inherently biased and the reader walks in with that expectation.  It is appropriate to add content where opinions clash, or to clarify obvious errors, but POV is acceptable.  Kershner 02:53, 8 January 2007 (EST)


 * Though I don't have much experience as a Druid, I didn't enjoy reading this guide. It's not specific enough in many places, doesn't give enough information, and generally, is annoying, especially all that "Nothing special". Check out the Mage guide, which is a very well-written article and should be taken as exapmle. Zolikk 22:40 local time, 12 Jan 2009.

Improved Leader of the Pack
This talent is definitely intended for raiding and ferals who concentrate more on Kitty form than Bear. My raid leader always bunches me up with the rogues and hunters.


 * Personally, I didn't expect the talent to help as much as it has. I'm both DPSing and tanking in Karazhan at the moment and the healers love it for thanks also. The tanks aren't critting quite as much, but their huge health pools means that imp lotp hits pretty hard.


 * Chrazriit 10:56, 1 March 2007 (EST)


 * Update: I'm now tanking Gruul, Magtheridon and Void Reaver. My LotP healing is clocking in at 10% of my overall healing. Definitely good in both tanking and DPS modes.


 * Chrazriit 05:10, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Shredding Attacks
moved these comments from the article to talk Chem 13:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I have to disagree firstly on the Solo Utility, I suggest attacking Pounce > Mangle for extra damage for Pounce Bleed and Shred > Shred, because even if Omen of Clarity doesn't give free energy cost for any of those moves pounce bleed does more damage and I have had situations where mob is dead before it is even out of the stun thanks to Clearcasting from Omen of Clarity. This applys only if you have Omen of Clarity, but many put 11 tallent points to restoration for it, 5 in Furor > 5 In Naturalist and lastly 1 point for Omen of Clarity.

Secondly on the PvP Utility, yes mangle is great for spamming because its cheaper and u can do it where ever you want, but the fact is, even if you are a warrior, paladin or a shaman, you want to be behind the target, because who ever you are (expect for dotters) you have to be facing the enemy to make damage, this means more time to live, and shred can do damage over Mangle, yes you want to have mangle on all the time because it gives more bleed and shred damage, but you want to use shred any time you can, trust me on this one, I am not a raider, but I do know PvP. Yes they will be trying to avoid it but this isn't a computor that has dead lock on you, you can get behind him or her. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by.

Naturalist
Completely disagree on the PvP Utility, if you crit and/or hit with any ability 1000 damage or more, its 100 damage or more to that, as everyone knows burst damage is good and Ravage it does the cloth bad. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by.

Omen of Clarity
Again, I must poke you on the PvP Utility, you will mostly be hopping around in cat and as everyone is very aware energy users (cat and rogue) are great pains in the arse. There is only 1 move that increases Energy regeneration, Rogues Adrenaline Rush it is very powerful, you can't control this move like Adrenaline Rush, but it makes up for that because it doesn't have even a 2 second cooldown, much less a 5 minute cooldown. Back to the point: In PvP this can be a life saver because u got energy for more abilities, saving your life more often than rogue Vanishes in case of wipes in raids.

The greates glory for this comes, if you want to have a extremely high damage to show off to other people: If your fight is going good, target has relatively low HP and your HP is still good, when u have 5 points, auto attack till you get Clearcasting and wait for 100 Energy then use Ferocious Bite, Clearcasting means it takes no energy, meaning it converts all 100 Energy into 4.1 additional damage, if it crits you will most likely have something to brag about =) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by.

Regarding Section: Nature's Grace or Improved Wrath
Is it worth mentioning that once you have 5/5 Improved Wrath, any nature's grace procs will not help you cast wrath spells faster (while spamming) since it will make your cast time faster than the Global Cooldown?

(note: this is my first discussion piece on wowwiki, so if this is an inappropriate addition, feel free to delete)


 * GenXCub 9:40, 31 May 2007 (PST)

Improved Tranquility. Useless!?
Even though Tranquility has a high cooldown (ten minutes), you'll get the chance to use it quite a few times in any dungeon. This talent gives you the opportunity to cast this spell without getting beaten up to death, but not just that. I think most people ignore the utility of the talent because it's about a spell they hardly ever use, overlooking the usefulness of a zero threat spell.

In 5-man instances we've all had this kind of situation where one or more mobs suddenly attack you (maybe unexpected adds), having to heal yourself for a moment and making it a bit harder for the tank to pull them away from you (because you get more aggro), while obviously not healing him/her.

This talent allows you to save the day by keeping the tank and yourself (or everybody else, because of AoE attacks etc) alive, and more efficiently than by using two or more non threat-free healing touches or, as the current text suggests, rejuvenation. Just in terms of mana efficiency, feel free to use it whenever the situation requires a direct-heal spam. In a critical situation where you're sure you won't have mana problems you can even use it because of only one target, just to keep your aggro under control.

Sure, it’s not Swiftmend or Nature’s Swiftness we’re talking about here, but this is still pretty damn useful to have. If you have a hybrid resto-feral build you won’t like this (you won’t be healing much anyway), but if you are pure restoration (specially now that resto-balance healers are less common) you’ll hardly find a better investment, not even in the other two talent trees. Consider it a moderately effective wipe prevention insurance. And without this talent we have exactly the opposite: Tranquility is simply useless.

I find the analysis on Improved Tranquility extremely unfair (maybe it wasn’t before, but now it’s outdated) and I’m not the only one, so if more people agree, I think it should be changed. As in any wiki, I’m open to suggestions :)

Ermengol 15:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Predatory Instinct and Primal Tenacity
It came to my attention that these two talents where classified as stacking on this page. My testings from TBC beta shows otherwise. Me and Holy Priest, no spellhit gear, no shadow focus talent, no shadow resistance on the druid. The druid has specced both predatory instinct and primal tenacity. Total amount of psychic screams: 282 Total amount of resists: 56 Base resistance to spells is 4%. Expected resist rate assuming the talents stack: 34% Expected resist rate assuming the talents doesn't stack: 19% Resist rate in my tests: 19.86% In other words they don't stack. I corrected this info on this page. Athinira, Ravencrest (EU)


 * I hadn't noticed that, nice catch. (Note, I'm relying on your testing as I haven't tried it myself.) One thing, you editted the Primal Tenacity description to say that the bonus to crits from other talents was only 10%, not 11%. Sharpened Claws is +6% and LotP is +5%, for a total of 11%.
 * Chrazriit 23:49, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Why is this the only talent analysis?
Other classes would benefit from having an article like this too. Especially mages and shaman classes. You guys did an awesome job on this one, so why not spread it around?Darin Wagner 03:38, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Feel free to create similar pages for other classes. I'm sure others will start contributing as well. --bfx 07:09, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Naturalist vs. Predatory instints
I'm not much familiarized with the mecanics so I hope any of you can help me, the question is, PI gives you 10% more damage to crits, but naturalist gives you 10% more damage to any hit (crit or not IIUC). So can we say that naturalist improves your DPS much more than PI? --Nesukun 11:34, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

empowered rejuvenation mechanics
From reading the tooltip I suspect that Empowered Rejuvenation only improves the spell power you get from equipment and effects, not the base values of the spell. If I am correct a druid wearing no equipment and with no buffs would gain nothing from the talent. If anyone can confirm or disprove this, please place a note in that talent's section. Thoth (talk) 19:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You are correct. This is the case for all spell power increasing talents. --Bfx (talk) 19:22, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Ratings
For TBC, Hanau's sticky in the US Blizz forums ( https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11982826&sid=1 ) was very good. It included a 5-star rating system

***** Talent worth designing a build around **** Strong talent key to its own spec and/or worth considering going cross-spec to get *** Decent talent worth taking in its own tree ** Very situational talent, or of marginal use in its own tree * Talent of no use or only of use in a very specific build

I'd like to see that here (stars either on the talent "title" line, or in the "bottom-line" discussion), but I wonder if that is a bit too subjective for the wiki environment. Thoughts?

I also think it makes sense to show the talent-tree "levels" in the outline. -- Erdluf (talk) 15:28, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

A comment on Balance talents
I have been running Naxx relatively regularly with Replenishment, and I've come to the conclusion that Moonglow and Dreamstate are virtually useless for 25 man raiding. Mana is so plentiful that I can do whatever I want aside from Wrath spam. I'm not the only one, it seems to be the consensus of a lot of more serious raiders. Without replenishment, mana regen is a nightmare and Moonglow/Dreamstate are essential. With replenishment, you are better off taking additional DPS talents (Improved Insect Swarm, Typhoon (for dps while moving) and Gale Winds).

--Jormundgard

Overdue update
I feel this is a useful page, a common-sense outline of which talents are good for what without getting into the nitty-gritty theorycrafting; if nothing like it exists for other classes, the answer to that is to add it for those classes, not delete it for this one. For most talents it's possible to be definitive and accurate, and for those where it isn't possible, people can add "second opinion"s or just keep it general.

That said, it wasn't updated between 3.0.3 and 4.0.1. I'm working on that now. I've completed the update to the Balance talents (a first draft, at least) and plan to start on the other trees, but help is welcome. --Cybishop