GC on Trees in Cataclysm

By
Wildchild
– April 12, 2010Posted in: Blue post, Druid

These are just some of the Ghostcrawler’s posts on the Druid class preview forum topic, about Druid changes in Cataclysm. The post turned out in to a big QQ fest about resto changes (209 pages at the time I’m writing this). GC did however replied to some questions that didn’t have anything to do with ToL or Resto, so the reading might be a bit confusing. If you want to read the whole discussion (209!) and see all replies by GC, hop over to the Blizzard Forums.

  • In the text below i marked quotes GC replied to with Q, and GC’s answers with A.
Quote from: Ghostcrawler
  • Most hots and dots, including druid ones, will benefit from haste and crit. The exceptions are things like Deep Wounds and Ignite, which are already tied to crit.
  • We knew changing Tree of Life to a cooldown was going to be controversial. There was just no way a change this big would be unanimously accepted. My apologies if being a tree was what really drew you to the class.

Q: There is a large difference between “controversial” and being close to unanimously hated.

A: You don’t have any evidence of that though. Even within this thread, there are plenty of players who like the change. It’s not like we design around public vote anyway, but if you look at the old “Is Tree form fun?” thread, there were a lot of players on both sides of the argument. It was a change we wanted to do anyway, but we tested the water to see if the change would be unanimously hated. We concluded there were plenty of players in favor of it. I don’t know if the split was 50 / 50 or what, but it doesn’t really matter because it wasn’t a poll. It was just to take the community’s temperature.

I’m not saying you don’t have a right to feel passionately about any of this. It’s fine, understandable even, if you do. I’m just asking you not to assume that everyone must naturally feel the same way you do.

  • We didn’t add new rotational spells to Restoration or Feral cat because, good lord, you have enough buttons already. We tried hard with Cataclysm to not add new spells just because. The specs that got new spells were ones we think had big holes in their rotation. You’ll still get new talents and mechanics so I expect there will be a lot to learn when the big game-changing patch rolls around.

Q: In short, are we trading the current Tree bonuses for a throughput cooldown, or are we gaining a throughput cooldown? Gaining one is fine–for all that the preview listed “no new spells,” you guys are clearly on top of that (regrowth crit to an AoE heal and a throughput cooldown, at least). Trading bonuses for a throughput cooldown, however, is simply at odds with HoT healing, which is all about consistency.

A: This is what we’re trying to do. On live today, druids are balanced around healing in tree form, meaning they give up a lot of utility just to be as good as other healers. When Tree of Life is a cooldown, then you’ll be balanced healing in night elf, troll, worgen or tauren form, and then you’ll be more powerful when in tree form. The nice thing about cooldowns is the difference can be pretty significant while active.

  • We think there will be more reason to cast Healing Touch (perhaps with some number tweaks) for when you need to heal someone who has a real health deficit.
  • Druids don’t have perfect analogues to the priest heals, but you can imagine Regrowth as the Flash Heal, Nourish as the heal, and Healing Touch as the greater heal. Lifebloom is something you’d put on a tank before healing with Nourish or Healing Touch (which might even refresh the stack). Rejuv will still be good for the reason hots are good. Wild Growth is still a group heal. Tranquility is an emergency heal, and we’ll change it to act more like Diving Hymn.
  • We might (*might*) consider a minor glyph that kept the visual of the old tree form in some fashion even when not using the Tree of Life cooldown.

Q: GC, please just shoot us straight here. Many of us are adults, and we can accept it if the change is PVP-related as is being speculated on the boards… but your stated rationale in making this change currently counters everything you’ve previously posted about making gameplay about more interesting choices.

A: It’s not for PvP reasons. We just don’t think healing forms are a good idea.

Now if you want to talk about PvP, I’d agree that going tree was an interesting decision back when it came with huge penalties (like movement). That wasn’t very fun to actually play in though so we kept chipping away at the differences between being in tree form and not being in tree form until we were left to wonder what the point was. We asked players on these boards and elsewhere how attached they were to the form, and found some loved it, some hated it, and some were indifferent.

I don’t fault you at all if you loved the form though and I’m sorry if this makes playing a druid less fun for you.

Q: The same can be said about moonkins, yet this isn’t happening, why? it appears a double standard.

A: I’ve said this before, but we don’t think giving up everything (hyperbole, but you get the idea) to go into a dps form is that big a sacrifice, because you’re being compared to and presumably want to fill the role of classes and specs that do nothing but dps. It’s not a big deal for a druid to give up healing to dps like a mage, because the mage can’t heal.

But giving up abilities to heal is tough when priests, paladins and shaman don’t have to. If this was a single player game, we’d probably do something like say druids have to fully commit themselves to healing, but if they do, they’ll be 10% better at healing than any other class. In an MMO, it doesn’t feel fair to do that. So instead you make sacrifices just so you can heal as well as everyone else. But that ends up feeling unfair, so we give you most of the abilities you’d typically ever want to cast, and pretty soon the Tree of Life talent is just changing your visual. If it was super compelling gameplay, we’d probably be talking instead about ways to keep it.

Q: Hey GC can you expand on what Bashiok mentioned about changing the feral cat damage rotation to be slightly more forgiving?
He gave a few examples but I am still curious about it.

A: The recent Mangle change is a good example. Other candidates include letting Rake last longer, changing Mangle’s damage such that it’s not such a gigantic dps loss not to Shred, and / or changing the bonus of Savage Roar so that it’s not such a crippling dps loss if it falls off. Using Savage Roar after a target with cps on it has died will help too.

We still want the John Madden crowd to be able to try and maximize their dps. We just want players not playing at that level to not be so far behind (though behind is fine).

Q: So you’re making ToL a CD but what are you going to do about the fact that ToL gives us buffs and gives us a SP bonus that brings our SP equal to other healing classes. Without that buff our spell power is below all other casters are you planning on either raising the amount of sp granted by gear or giving us a talent that gives us that buff

A: We can put those buffs anywhere in the tree or remove them and just balance around it. Virtually every number in Cataclysm has to change anyway to support new character levels, health pools, combat ratings, going to a single spell rank, etc. There’s no reason to worry about how this would affect your relative power in today’s live build. At this stage I would focus on mechanics or design intent, not actual numbers. The numbers will start to be more important as we get closer to ship.

Q: What about constant polymorph immunity, 200% armor bonus, 15% bonus SP from spirit and 10% extra healing is kind of a big deal. Putting that on a CD is going to make an impact on Druid healing.

A: None of those things need to be tied to the Tree of Life form though, and in fact they are all examples of the kind of passive bonuses we’re trying to winnow out from talent trees.

Q: Other from the universal healing changes Resto Druids have absolutely NOTHING to relearn or spend time to master unlike the other healing class notes released.

A: Let me know how that Rejuv spamming with WG on cooldown works out for you at 85.

Q: Are the Tree (on CD) and Moonkin forms being updated? I don’t need details, I just would like to know if I can expect to see the same Owl form I have now in the next expac or if we finally will get more polygons at least.

A: We would like to. Those are on the list, but they’re expensive tasks because they require so much art time. You might be willing to have one fewer new boss models in order to get the forms updated, but if we did that and we added a new demon for warlocks and a couple of new models for other class needs here and there and pretty soon all of those bosses are going to end up looking pretty recycled. :(

Q: My post also addresses your counterpoint. Remove the poly immunity, shift the these-effects-are-only-to-bring-you-up-to-par-with-other-healers off the talent, and reduce the offensive restriction (to, for example, no offensive arcane spells). All of the mechanics reasons are thus addressed. A healing aura (which wouldn’t stack, and therefore isn’t 100% required) and additional armor (not always useful in PvE, and a tradeoff in PvP) remain, as well as the flavor of each druid role having its own form. The only remaining reason to remove it? Showing off gear.

A: But under your argument, the only reason to keep it is flavor. You have a talent that essentially says “gives the druid flavor” because all of the actual bonuses are baked in elsewhere. That’s our actual concern about the talent: increasingly it doesn’t do anything except change your art.

(Source)

Tags: , , , , , , ,