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Why Deforestation isn't a nerf

Post by skribs

For all of those complaining about Tree of Life being removed, let me point to some of the arguments I see, and then point why they aren't very good arguments. Most of my quotes from GC are from the Druid Post.

1. Tree of Life gives me so many buffs, that without it we'll be no good.

With the exception I'll cover in #2, you will likely not see a change in balance as they go away from Tree of Life. While Cata numbers are being retuned anyway, I can give you a good analogy with WotLK examples. Imagine if they took out Tree Form in Patch 3.3, but changed the 41-point talent to "Tree Aura" which grants 20% mana cost reduction on HoTs, 6% healing recieved aura, and makes you immune to Polymorph. Then they change Imp ToL to Imp Tree Aura, and it gives you 200% armor in caster form, and 15% of your Spi as SP in caster form. This would be a buff. GC has hinted that this is their goal.
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Q u o t e:
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
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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.

Also:

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.

2. But how will I be immune to Polymorph if I can't go tree form?

This is the one exception to #1, and that is because even if you kept tree form you wouldn't have been immune anyway. Please see this post for upcoming dispel changes, in which Zarhym says this:
We also recognize the challenge for magic-based controllers in PvP, say mages, to handle teams with druid healers and we might have to reconsider the druid ability to avoid Polymorph. We think it’s important for PvE reasons for all healers to be able to dispel magic however.
And later when asked about undoing poly-immune druids:

We are considering a Feral talent to do just that. The concern is really against having a Polymorph-immune healer who can then dispel Polymorph on all his or her allies.

So it doesn't look to me like "No ToL = no poly immune!" is a valid argument. Due to the dispel changes, you were going to lose it one way or another. Even then, you could always have popped into cat form and back out if you wanted to remove Polymorph and it was still available.

3. But we use HoTs, which are already ticking when burst comes in. A cooldown would be useless.

In WotLK healing, its best to use Rejuv and then WG on cooldown. In tens or fives, you may use more abilities, but those two are the general go-to abilities. In Cata, you'll be using a lot more - even Healing Touch. If you're using a lot of RG/Nourish/HT, then a CD may be helpful.

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

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.

And if you want to argue druids do use other abilities:

I just pulled a couple of heroic Icecrown parses at random from among the best guilds out there. Their druids had like 60% Rejuv and 25% Wildgrowth. I'm sure some of that remainder was LB or Swiftmend or something (like a certain hammer or mace), and maybe they even saved someone's life with one of those spells. But you're going to have a hard time convincing me that druids aren't too effective with just those two spells. That will change in Cataclysm.

Also, the tree aura may affect HoTs already ticking. It may change our abilities. It may give us mana regen or an AoE heal for the duration. If you don't know what it will be, how can you complain about what it is?

4. But healers don't need those spells, if I wanted to use damage/CC I would have gone balance!

The problem with this is that most people are looking at PvE raiding, where you min/max for one thing. However, in PvP or solo, you're often doing multiple things. It's useful in PvP to cyclone targets and help DPS finish off a low target - stuff you can't do in tree form. Also, by the same logic in bold, Ferals and Boomkins shouldn't heal at all because they're specced for damage, not healing. But I'm always healing myself back up after a big AoE pull while questing.

The big thing here is that you would have to balance trees around being unable to cast other abilities. If tree healing was on par with other healers, it's a pain in PvP because your healing is on par, but you can't provide another role. If they then buffed tree healing for the sake of PvP (if you can't cast, we'll give you more) druids would do too much healing in raids, where you're min/maxed on healing output. It becomes much easier to balance on both ends if Blizzard removes the mechanic entirely. Some notes on PvP:

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.

5. But boomkins give up healing to go into form, why can't trees give up DPS too?

First off, if they're throwing us a bone and letting us do more, I don't know why you'd complain. In my scenario in problem #1, would you complain about getting all of the benefits of tree form without having to go into tree form? That's the question here. The problem is that when you look at a boomkin, they're balanced against other ranged - hunters, mages, warlocks, spriests, and ele shams. You're looking at 9 specs of pure DPS classes vs. 2 specs of heal/DPS classes, one of which goes into a DPS form. On the other hand, resto is balanced against disc/holy priests, holy paladins, and resto shamans - all of which have all their abilities without changing form. So it makes sense that boomkins go the way of 91% of the other ranged DPS specs, and resto druids will go the way of 100% of the other heal specs.

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.

6. But druids are shape-shifters, that's why I rolled the class!

Druids did not get Tree of Life until The Burning Crusade. Therefore, Resto went without it before, it can go without it again. This problem is really the aesthetics of it. My perspective is that it doesn't matter what you look like when you're scrolled out 80 yards and crowded up under a bosses butt. If you're watching your toon thinking "that's a cool tree" instead of watching health bars, buffs/debuffs, cooldowns, etc, then you're not doing your job right.

Even then, some people want to be able to see their armor. This is an aesthetics buff for us. Even so, let me point to a few more posts by GC:

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.

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.

7. Why couldn't they have kept it the same and given us another ability instead of the cooldown?

If they kept it the same, we wouldn't have gotten another ability. This wasn't a new ability - it is a change, and a buff to caster form will come as a result of the change. If you're wondering why they didn't give us another ability - we didn't need it. Frankly I was offended when they put Wild Growth in during WotLK, because blanket HoTs dealt with AoE just fine if you were competent.

You'd just be here in a few months posting "What's the point of Mega Moss? It's too similar to Regrowth and doesn't heal as much as Nourish." By which I mean there's not point giving a new heal to Resto just so your bar looks a little different if you're not going to actually use the spell. Seeing as how many druids don't use much beyond Rejuv and WG today, I'd say we have plenty of heals to find homes for before we worry about adding new ones.

There will be several new talents to consider. The Resto tree still has a lot of passive bonuses in it to be replaced.

My fear is the universal answer to a new druid healing spell will be "the reason we didn't like X is because we already had Y."

Conclusion

The only conclusion I can draw is that QQ about the ToL change boils down to three things:

Fear that Blizzard is not going to buff caster form, which I believe is unjustified at this point.
A desire for them to balance in your favor (e.g. put druids above other healers because we can't cast in tree form), which is just petty.
Worry about the aesthetics. See #6.

The way I see it, it will work out to be a buff in the end, which makes me incredulous that everyone is QQing. If you don't think so, look at #1 and #5, or go back and reread what GC is saying they'll do. We don't know what the numbers are going to look like in Cata, so all the QQ about "the sky is falling" is premature. You can't even compare it to WotLK healing, because ALL healers are undergoing an overhaul.

The way I see it, in addition to those, here's what we get:

Hots benefit from crit
HoTs double-dip into haste
Boomkins get hit from Spirit, giving us a valid off-spec in resto gear

Post by oberondreaming

6. But druids are shape-shifters, that's why I rolled the class!

There's another issue I have with this complaint, which is that it's inaccurate to suggest that Resto Druids won't be Shapeshifting in cataclysm. We just won't be sitting in one non-human(ish) form the whole time. In fact, this means that we'll be actually shapeshifting (in the literal sense of changing shape) more often than anyone else (in PvE).

Post by Nawkaga

First off, if they're throwing us a bone and letting us do more, I don't know why you'd complain. In my scenario in problem #1, would you complain about getting all of the benefits of tree form without having to go into tree form? That's the question here. The problem is that when you look at a boomkin, they're balanced against other ranged - hunters, mages, warlocks, spriests, and ele shams. You're looking at 9 specs of pure DPS classes vs. 2 specs of heal/DPS classes, one of which goes into a DPS form. On the other hand, resto is balanced against disc/holy priests, holy paladins, and resto shamans - all of which have all their abilities without changing form. So it makes sense that boomkins go the way of 91% of the other ranged DPS specs, and resto druids will go the way of 100% of the other heal specs.
But all of those other classes, including the hybrids mind you, do not sacrifice the ability to heal when they are DPSing.

Post by oberondreaming

Post by Nawkaga

But all of those other classes, including the hybrids mind you, do not sacrifice the ability to heal when they are DPSing.

Shadow Priests do, via shadowform.

Pallies and Enhancement shammies do, via not having the gear to do decent healing.

Elemental Shammies are the only class that can DPS and retain their pretty decent healing ability at the same time. (Though, they're going to be missing deep-resto talents that are pretty important for anything that could be considered 'good' healing.)
Did you read my post? I said the ability to heal. SPriests lose it, but still have PW:S, which, although weak, is still a heal through preventative damage. I offheal any time there is a healer down + brez is on cd, and I expect Elemental Shammies to do the same. The difference is that I have to spend mana to return to doing full DPS.

EDIT: And maybe I want to see my gear as well? I was Balance before it was viable at all and enjoyed it.

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Post by oberondreaming

The difference is that I have to spend mana to return to doing full DPS.

My point was that the only person who has this advantage over you is Elemental Shamans.

Like I said: Retribution Paladins and Enhancement Shamans can't really heal, even if they wanted to.

And a Shadow priest also has to drop out of shadowform (just like you drop out of moonkin form) in order to do any serious healing.

To be honest, it does seem a little odd that elemental shamans don't have a 'form' of some sort that locked them out of healing, and I wouldn't be at all shocked if they added something like that.

Post by Nawkaga

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Post by airanp

Bottom line, the mage community cried long enough that they couldn't polymorph druid's in arena's and dps cried enough that they couldn't burst down resto druids so they are taking away many of the qualities that made that aspect of druids unique and viable.

To be perfectly honest I would love to see Polymorph take a nurf, make it usable only once and place a temporary immunity on the target of the polymorph so that you can't be chain polymorphed, and add diminishing returns to rogues stuns so that you don't spend an entire fight locked up unable to do anything.

All classes are effected by those two instances yet only the resto druid is losing defenses against them. Seems that if you do cry long enough you do get what you want with blizzard.

Post by oberondreaming

Bottom line, the mage community cried long enough that they couldn't polymorph druid's in arena's and dps cried enough that they couldn't burst down resto druids so they are taking away many of the qualities that made that aspect of druids unique and viable.

No.

We're losing polymorph immunity because we're gaining the ability to dispel polymorph. And having a polymorph immune class that dispel polymorph is problematic. In fact, since every single healer is gaining the ability to remove polymorph in Cataclysm, it is taking a pretty big nerf.

According to what Blizzard's said about PvP changes, nobody's going to be bursting anyone down in Cataclysm any more. So it's not really that either.

So basically, their reasons (we want druid healers to retain their utility and versatility without giving up any healing potential) makes a lot more sense than your made up reasons.

(You do realize that polymorph and stuns currently have diminishing returns, right?)

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Post by Snaddre

Druids are healers, all druids are. I am thinking about the warcraft series now, if there was a druid, it would heal. But bears deal damage, and birds cause literally some nasty storms across the skies capable of taking down even the most plated frostwyrms. Now we got cat form, bear form, bird form and tree of life form. But that's wrong my fellow druids, a pure druid is a healer, I have always hated my tree.

When you rolled druid you might had shapeshifting in your thoughts, but when you specc'd restoration you should have thought twice. A druid is a healer, and there is no form in wich the druid enters in order to healer better. Those are my thoughts around the tree of life.

Also, I happen to like the metamorphosis like idea.

Post by fuhrerschein

To be honest I just recently started a druid as an alt a few weeks ago (before changes were announced), and I'm only lvl 54 but one of the reasons I wanted to be one was because I love how they look in raids just waddling around in tree form throwing up hots being all badass.

Granted, they'll still be throwing up hots being all badass, but the waddling is fun :(

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Post by Fiximol

I don't care (as much) anymore.

I will even get over the fact that 'locks get exactly the flavour spell that they asked for (green fire) when we had to lose one of ours.

Personally, looking forward to being an ANCIENT OF WAR.

However I anticipate seeing some complaints that it takes up too much screen space and they can't move out of fire cos their ass (sorry, trunk) is too fat :P

Post by MegaVolt

6. But druids are shape-shifters, that's why I rolled the class!

Druids did not get Tree of Life until The Burning Crusade. Therefore, Resto went without it before, it can go without it again. This problem is really the aesthetics of it.

That's exactly the point. I didn't play WoW pre-BC, I rolled my Druid in WotLK and I rolled it knowing that I will have a nice shapeshifted form. I hated the not matching armor when leveling other classes so I mainly played my Druid with the pretty cat form (for leveling) and later the pretty tree form (for raiding).
It is pure aesthetics, I specifically chose this class for its forms because I place value in those aesthetics and now Blizzard is taking that away. That's why I'm &*!@ed.
No, it's not a nerf. Yes, it will be balanced around the new form. But I still want that special look.

If that minor glyph which keeps us in tree form all the time is introduced I'm happy. But without it I'd be very disappointed. I just don't want to look at my armor, especially with all those extremely ugly tier sets out there.

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Post by oberondreaming

And the only problem I have with your argument, MegaVolt, is that it's really no more valid than my desire to actually be able to see my gear. Or at least the hair I picked out for myself (if I turn my helmet off).

Honestly, I really hope they do add in that minor glyph, because it seems to me that giving people the option of whether they're going to look like trees all the time or not is really the best of both worlds.

Why Deforestation isn't a nerf

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