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Why Deforestation isn't a nerf
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Post by
skribs
What the current incarnation means is that occassionally Resto druids will go into Super Healer Mode for brief stints. How will this measure up to other healers?
All healers (except druids) have longer CDs that offer short-to-medium buffs. For example,
t
h
e
s
e
. Okay, some may be usable on/with other people (priest ones) but you get the point. Druids only have Nature's Swiftness, which really is a slight mobility buff and not really a big throughput CD (shamans have NS + TF).
Does that mean while not in Super Healer Mode there healing is lower compared to other healers to balance it out over time? if so this makes them unreliable healers
Or does it mean that while in Super Healer Mode they out shine all other healers completly and at other times are equal? if so why bring any other healer.
Considering that the other healers also have healing cooldowns, what does this mean for balance now? You're looking at it as if all paladins have are holy light and beacon, or that all shamans have is CH. There are actually a LOT of utility abilities some healers have, which have large cooldowns (on my paladin, I have Divine Sacrifice, Hand of Protection, Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Shield (which I use with DS or HoSac), as well as those mentioned above, which gives me TONS of CDs to use).
Or do other healers get an equivilant Super Healer Mode?
By removing the Tree and turning it in a Super Healer Modebutton/proc a plethora of balancing issues arise. The removal of Tree as a form seems an arse over backwards way of resolving the issue.
For the most part, they already do. They all have throughput CDs
except for the druid
.
This, mostly, but without the "increased healing potential" part, just keep it on par with what it is now relative to other healers.
Does this make it a glorified seal form? No more so than Moonkin
So then what's the incentive to use caster form over tree form? In
all
other forms healing isn't much of an option unless you're in bear and Frenzied Regeneration is active. Bear gives tanking ability but reduced damage (no matter your spec) compared to your optimal DPS form in that spec. Caster form gives cat and bear ranged attacks. Cat form gives all other specs the ability to stealth, and adds damage over bear form in feral spec. Moonkin sacrifices your healing to deal more damage, which is okay because 91% of the other ranged DPS specs cannot heal in their optimal DPS state.
In this function, tree form would be a glorified version of Seal of Light or Earthliving Weapon. Except you get a whole form for it. There's no real decision to be made. They can't just have a ton of abilities because they seem cool, there has to be a purpose.
The problem with Tree Form is this: Set it too far apart from caster form, and you're going to have major balance issues. Set it too close to caster form, and then it seems superfluous to even have. This is the issue they had with Starfire and Wrath in the past - both were basically the same (no-CD DPS abilities) so you just ignored the weaker one. By adding the Eclipse talent, they managed to make both of them good. However, with tree form, it's harder. If you start from PvP and balance trees higher because of what they give up, then in PvE trees are OP. If you start in PvE and balance trees equal, then they're UP in PvP. If you make tree a slightly stronger caster form with no changes to spells to prevent this balance issue, then what's the point of caster form? Having tree form at this point is simply making thing's more complex.
Blizzard looked at this problem, and they decided that the tree was taking too much resources to try and balance around, while still making it worth having in game. They did the same thing with
downranking
, and everyone thought it would ruin the game. But the game survived. I think a lot of people are going to be upset (and most of them because they don't fully understand the change or because of the aesthetics - which, aesthetics is an opinion and those who want to see armor have just as valid a point as you), but there will still be many people playing resto druids.
Post by
579986
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Post by
skribs
Yeah aeurundel that's the point I was trying to make. It originally had so much against it that they had to bring it closer and closer to caster form. As they're looking through again and saying "Well, none of the other healers give up DPS and CC, so we could add that back in" they realized there wasn't really a point in it being a separate form anymore.
Post by
132589
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109094
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404185
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132589
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Post by
skribs
Druids in WoW are shape shifters, its as simple as that. Dont take the tree-hug-hippy stereotype from the outside world and apply it to a game sided class.
In WoW shifting IS the MAIN aspect of the druid. The fact that it isnt as "fluidic" as Blizz may want is irrational and unworkable, shape shift to cat form while tanking Festergut on 3 inhales as a mechanic? ... Pull the other one ...
Let me address this point by quoting the official site's druid page. These pages haven't been updated since Vanilla, IIRC, so this gives people the perspective on what druid's originally were.
Druids are the keepers of the world and masters of nature with a diverse array of abilities. They are powerful healers, capable of curing poisons and raising fallen comrades in the thick of battle. Druids also command nature's wrath, calling down ranged blasts of energy, summoning swarms of insects, or entangling their foes in the earth. But druids are also masters of the wild, able to shapeshift into a great bear, cat, or even sea lion, gaining their powers in combat or travel. Druids are a diverse class with a variety of playstyles, capable of filling any role.
The Druid gives players several play style options. A Druid in normal form is a caster that can fight with spells or weapons. In Bear form the Druid becomes a Warrior with Rage. While in Cat form the Druid becomes a Rogue with Energy and stealth. The Druid can also transform into two other special animal forms. With its ability to heal itself and fellow characters, the Druid can also take on the role of a Priest. A Druid is not as versatile in its abilities as a Priest is, lacking the spells Power Word: Shield, but is otherwise a very capable healer.
Shapeshifting isn't mentioned until they get to feral abilities or non-combat forms. Maybe YOU think druid = shapeshifter, while in fact blizzard equates them more to using the forces of nature.
to be able to use those dps abilities. The problem is that Tree is so good at healing that dropping out of it gimps you too much.
You only quoted part of the question. The full question was about the scale of balance between ToL form and caster form. On one end, you have something that's far apart (lots of healing benefits at a cost of everything else), which leaves you either balanced in PvP and OP in PvE, or balanced in PvP and UP in PvP (as a result of balancing all-around in PvP but only for straight throughput on your given role in PvE). On the other end, you have something which just becomes a button to shapeshift, as you gain virtually no benefit and lose nothing by changing, which is easy to balance. The problem Blizzard found is they were getting closer and closer to the later end. If you're at the point where all tree form gives is 6% healing aura, and you lose nothing by going out of caster form, then what is the point of the form in the first place?
Post by
109094
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Post by
404185
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Post by
skribs
Because DPS forms are there for a reason that we've already discussed for like three pages of this thread and you just keep ignoring.
Good point. So is he a troll or is he just thick? Because seriously, it's been explained in several different ways (by our explanation and by blizzard's) that DPS and healers follow different rules, and looked at from a broader sense, both mentalities fulfill a subset of "what does this role need?"
But it doesn't change the fact that trying to justify your feelings with Lore stuff and saying "We're supposed to be about shapeshifting and you're taking that away" is just flat-out wrong. Resto druids will still be shapeshifting, pure and simple.
Even if they weren't shapeshifting, it wouldn't break the druid by not having a form for that role. Druids only initially had shapeshifting for travel or for feral. The idea that all druids shapeshift is one brought on by the community.
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109094
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579986
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404185
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Post by
skribs
Im guess Warlocks are "shapeshifters" too huh? or hunters? or Shamans? Priests as well I guess. They all have spells that change there form (or pets form in hunters case). But I dont think for one second people will argue that they are a shapeshifting class.
I don't know what you're saying here. The point he was making is that you'll be using your shapeshift button more often, instead of shapeshifting being a mechanic you do before the raid starts and then only worry about it later if you need some small bit of utility (e.g. brez) or you died, which is what most druids do. Here it looks like you're arguing just to argue, which makes me lean toward troll.
Tree of Life's abilities are being baked into other talents so you still have your full healing potential and can dps. In short that you can use all of your class abilities (still not 100% true I know but its a step closer)
The next logical step is to normalise that ideal across the other classes/specs.
With the argument being: Why does the Resto Druid, Ele/Resto/Enh Shammy, Ret/holy Paladin, Holy/Disp Priest get to heal & dps while the Balance Druid and Shadow Priest dont get to do that?
It does leave those 2 specs at a disadvantage when compared to its peers does it not?
With the solution to give them the same treatment as the Resto druid. Good by Moonkin, good by Shadow Form. Hello Homogenisation
This is why I said the thing about you being a troll or thick. We have been saying for the past three pages that DPS =/= heals =/= tanks in terms of what is being applied to them. You're combining healing classes and hybrid DPS. Your logic fails to consider that enhance/ret will have very low heals, and that ele won't have very good heals either. The argument has nothing to do with boomkin (as it is balanced against 91% of the other ranged DPS in terms of what it's capable of doing), but everything to do with the fact that
all
of the other healers can do what trees can't.
You have been constantly saying "Boomkin gets a form," but without actually acknowledging the facts that have been presented which prove that Boomkin is different from tree in terms of the rules that apply to it. You have been constantly comparing the two despite this. Why don't you try to dispute what has been said about the difference in rule sets if you're going to keep looking at both of them together? Because until then, you look like you have ignored half the post (which is why I suggested thick) or you're just wanting to argue (which is why I said troll).
your thinking, and seemingly insinuated by Blizz is that there are 3 generic roles. Dps, healer, tank.
Thats fine and dry cut in pve, as you only ever need to do one of these jobs at a time.
You look at pvp and you can generalise any class into just those 3 catagories.
Tanking in pvp everyone does to some degree, so its mostly moot in a pvp discusion. 30/30 specs do it
Dps everyone needs to do, thats how you win obviously 29/30 specs can do it; 1 cant. To varying degrees of sucess ofc
Healing: 4 classes of which 9/12 of their specs can do it.
Actually, no. My thinking is that there are 3 roles in PvE (tank, DPS, heal) and 2 roles in PvP (DPS+tank, heal+tank), because taunts don't work in PvP. Even then, PvP is more of a scale (you may be more CC, more burst, more dots, more heals, or have hybridity and be able to do both roles to some extent), while in PvE you're min/maxing for one role. THIS is the problem I keep bringing up when I list why it's so hard to balance tree form in PvP and in PvE. In PvP it's all your tools - your survivability, damage, and group utility, that make up what you do. Healing heavily favors group utility and helps your own survivability a lot as well. Being in tree form sacrifices any damage, and in order to stay competitive you have to have the extra utility.
The problem then is that when you swap over from PvP to PvE, if you take that druid who is balanced around having one strong trait (healing) over a mix of traits (healing and damage+cc), you end up with one who is significantly stronger in PvE. Let's say you have a "hybrid tax" of 20% applied to the other healers in PvP, so if the druid can do 10k HPS, the others do 8k. Well now you can bring 4 druids to meet 40k HPS, whereas it would take 5 of the other healers. The obvious problem in reverse - druids would never be on arena teams if they had significantly less in areas besides healing, but equal healing.
So don't say I overlooked that issue, when
that is the issue I have been stating from the start
.
Post by
curlymon
Moreover, they emulate mage/warlock, not hybrids. If a moonkin or shadow priest wants to heal, they can, and it'll be as unoptimized as any of the builds you mentioned. Likewise, hybrids can heal, but they won't be dpsing or tanking as well. It's not logical to believe moonkin/shadowform will disappear when Blizzard flat-out said they believe the need to sacrifice should be weighted differently. That's all on you.
He is talking PvP usefulness not PvE.
P.S. - Everyone take like 2 hours of a break from this thread. 2 hours NOT thinking about it. Come back reread through it start to finish and don't jump around. You might enlighten yourself.
Post by
404185
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Post by
curlymon
In the PvP sense, as I stated, boomkins take a significant loss to effectiveness to stop and heal. Spriests do as well.
Other classes have zero loss to effectiveness in their primary role while doing a separate role.
^ This is the core of his argument. Why do we have this loss? What significant gains to we have that offset this loss?
Resto is in the exact same boat, even though it has a different main role it still falls under the "can't do a secondary role with out a significan't loss to their primary role's effectiveness"
Nothing straw man about that....
A person who can do DPS and Heal has a distinct advantage over a person who can just DPS unless there's a notable difference in how much they can DPS.
Compare the Ele sham and the Boomkin for me then and tell me that Boomkins are equal to them in that respect.
Post by
404185
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Post by
curlymon
And, again (again again), the far more logical conclusion than the removal of Shadowform and Moonkin form would be the addition of some sort of Elemental Shaman DPS Form.
I'm not saying it would not be. I'm just outlining Para's core argument. Resto is getting the change for PvP
and
PvE effectiveness.
It gains a CD with useful abilities
and
gains the ability to effectively assist in a burst situation.
Honestly it would be easier to keep Treeform and allow casting dps based spells in form but having a reduction to dmg output much like Defensive Stance(if such a reduction is even needed). Add in a CD of a different name without the pretty graphics of a shapeshift and
VOILA!
No more form based QQ and happy arena/BGers in a vastly simpler approach.
Edit: Straw man is a misplaced argument if you actually read what you quoted of mine. Tanks can even fall into that category, you just don't see them as a 'tank' in PvP. It even applies to Mages and Locks who have no heals of their own. Think about it.
Edit2: Blizz is making the changes because they want form changing to be integral to the class itself within PvE. It just does not apply to PvP. The differences between PvP and PVE are honestly one of the most horrid balancing considerations that Blizz has to do and I do not for one second envy them.
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