The Enigma Order

Content:
Talents and changes for patch 3.0
- Balance stuff
- Feral stuff
- Resto stuff
- General stuff

Specs
- Lvling specs
- Feral raid specs
- Balance raid spec
- Resto raid spec

Feral Q&A

Upcomming changes
- Spirit for balance druids
- Current issues with Druid
- Feral Concerns
- Graphical changes to druid skins
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Builds
- 8970
- 8982

First lets see what new stuff we are getting
ive splitted up the notes, so they are devided into 4 groups; balance, feral, resto and general.
Mouseover the links for wowhead tooltips.

Balance stuff;

    * Brambles (Balance): Now increases the damage done by your Treants, and also damage caused from your Treants and Barkskin has a 5/10/15% chance
       to Daze the target for 3 sec.
    * Celestial Focus (Balance): The stun proc now works with Starfall. This talent no longer has Wrath pushback protection, but instead increases your total
       spell haste by 1/2/3%.
    * Vengeance (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.
    * Control of Nature (Balance) has been removed.
    * Focused Starlight (Balance)is now Nature's Majesty (Balance): Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish, and
       Healing Touch spells by 2/4/6%.
    * Force of Nature (Balance): Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3.
    * Furor (Restoration): Now increases your total Intellect while in Moonkin form by 2/4/6/8/10%.
    * Hurricane: No longer has a cooldown (was 1 minute).
    * Nature's Grace (Balance): Now also reduces the global cooldown of your Wrath spell by 50% while in effect.
    * Nature's Reach (Balance): Now also reduces threat generated by Balance spells by 15/30%.
    * New Talent - Genesis (Balance): Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
    * New Talent - Improved Insect Swarm (Balance): Increases your damage done by your Wrath spell to targets afflicted by your Insect Swarm by 1/2/3%,
       and increases the critical strike chance of your Starfire spell by 1/2/3% on targets afflicted by your Moonfire spell.
    * Moonglow (Balance): Now also works with Starfall. Moved to tier 2, up from tier 5.
    * Moonkin Form (Balance) no longer increases your attack power or causes you to regenerate mana off melee attacks, but now has a chance to cause you
       to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana every time you critically hit with a spell.
    * New Talent - Nature's Splendor (Balance): Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom and Flourish spells
       by 10/20/30%.

Feral stuff;

    * Challenging Roar now has a 3 minute cooldown, reduced from 10 minutes.
    * Faerie Fire (Feral): Now an 11-point talent, down from being a 21-point talent.
    * Feral Charge (Feral) is now a 21-point talent, up from being a 11-point talent.
    * Feral Charge (Feral): Can now be used in Cat form.
    * Feral Instinct (Feral) no longer increases threat generated in Bear form, but now increases damage done by your Swipe ability by 5/10/15%.
    * Feral Swiftness: The movement speed buff can now be used indoors
    * Survival of the Fittest (Feral): Increased to 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.
    * Mangle (Feral): Now increases the damage done by Maul in addition to Shred.
    * The mana regeneration penalty when in Bear Form, Dire Bear Form and Cat Form has been removed.
    * New Talent - Mother Bear (Feral): Increases the bonus attack power for Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by an additional 20/40/60%, and for each
       friendly player in your party, damage you take is reduced while in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 1/2/3%.
    * New Talent - Natural Reaction (Feral): Increases your dodge chance while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form by 2/4/6%, and you regenerate 1/2/3 rage
       everytime you dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form.
    * Primal Tenacity (Feral) now reduces damage while stunned by 5/10/15%, and reduces the duration of fear effects by 5/10/15%.
     
Resto stuff;

    * Improved Mark of the Wild (Restoration): Now a 2-point talent, down from a 5-point talent.
    * Improved Tranquility (Restoration): Now also reduces the cooldown of your Tranquility spell by 25/50%.
    * Nature's Focus (Restoration): Now a 3 point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Also moved to Tier 1, up from Tier 2. Now also includes Nourish,
       Entangling Roots, Wrath, and Cyclone.
    * Remove Curse can now be used in Tree of Life form.
    * Subtlety (Restoration): Now a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Also moved to Tier 2, up from Tier 3. Also now only reduced threat for
       Restoration spells, and reduces the chance that your healing over time spells (Lifebloom, Regrowth and Rejuvenation) will be dispelled, rather than all
       Druid spells. Threat management for Balance can now be found in the Balance tree, within Nature's Reach.
    * Tranquil Spirit (Restoration) now also includes Nourish.
    * Tree of Life (Restoration): 30% snare penalty has been removed.
    * Tree of Life (Restoration): Can now cast Dispel Curse.
    * Tree of Life (Restoration): You can now cast all Restoration spells (Healing Touch) in the form, but Tree of Life now only reduces the mana cost of your
       healing over time spells (Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Regrowth and Flourish) by 20%.

General stuff;

    * Omen of Clarity (Restoration): Now a passive spell. Now also works for spells (healing and damage). Proc rate is roughly 6% with a 10 second internal
       cooldown.
    * Soothe Animal can now be used on Dragonkin as well as Beasts.
    * Soothe Animal is now instant cast.
    * Nature's Grasp (Balance): Can now be used and can proc indoors. This is now a base ability at level 11 and has a 100% chance to proc.
    * Entangling Roots: Can now be used indoors.
    * New Spell: Revive - Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat.
      (Ranks 1-7 added)
    * Druids and Shamans can now use items while shapeshifted.

something is messed up with this one;
    * Improved Faerie Fire (Feral): Now also works with spell hit, in addition to ranged and melee hit %.
There is no such thing as improved FF in the feral tree, so i guess it belongs to the balance tree
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Balance got alot of loving, Ferals have to choose between tanking and dps, and restos are more viable since they now have a ress, no movement snares, and access to all their healing spells!
We can finally use stuff in forms. as far as i have tested, this is eating, drinking, pots, first aid and various quest items.
As for us beeing on a pvp server i can inform, that it is possible to eat / drink in catform, while beeing stealthed, just like rogues.

Since ive only tried out feral, i can only tell about that spec, but im trying to gather some spell gear from quests etc, so i can try out the other specs as well. Moonkin seems like a very strong spec. I havent seen any resto druids in action, so i cant really give my thoughts about them.

For ferals, cat charge is really imba. Its not so much a charge, but more of a jump that places you behind your target. you can use it both in and out of combat, and it wont put you into combat when you use it. You can also use it stealthed without it breaking stealth.
Bezerk isnt really that desireable for cat dps, as it is for bears. I wont suggest taking it over Omen. With impoved mangle, you can almost spam mangle anyways, and with King of the jungle you can do some pretty nasty burst dmg.
Maim now have a chance to break on additional dmg, instead of breaking on additional dmg. this means that its like a gouge combined with a kidney shot. This makes it stronger than it was before.

"Green armor" have also been removed. What this meens is, that stuff like This will get changed to this

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specs:
For lvling in the expansion, this will be the spec i would suggest for ferals.
Rend and tear isnt worth it. its to expensive for the dmg output.
2/3 improved mangle are with the energy change all you need for spamming mangle, and 2/3 king of the jungle gives you 40 energy when using tigers fury, and is more than enough for lvling.

Namino suggests 48/0/13 For leveling purposes.
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For patch 3.0 > Wotlk launch, these will be the specs i would suggest for ferals:

Tank build (probably the one ill choose)
Spec focuses on dodge and survival in bearform.

cat raid spec
for this spec, i wanted to have the following stuff;
Best dmg output possible
focus entirely on mangle, shred and rip rotation.
The new change to furor and the energy change makes powershifting less desireable.
you can take 2 points from savage fury and put into Nurturing instinct, to ease up healing on you.

Feral hybrid spec (focus mostly on cat)


For balance, Namino suggest 56/0/5 for raiding.

I had to choose between Balance of Power and Improved Faerie Fire, a hard choice if i may add. But for you guys, i'll go Imp FF.

Another hard choice of 3 talent points is Owlkin Frenzy, Eclipse and Celestial Focus. Since i'm a haste addict i went for Celestial Focus for now.

For a pvp spec, tanduli suggest something like this one

Tanduli is thinking something like this For a resto spec

Flourish, Replenish and Omen of Clarity seem like a major boost 

Also a lot of new small neat changes like Imp Tranquil, Master Shapeshifter, Gift of the Earthmother and Living Seed.

And 100% extra armor. 2 shotted instead of 1 shotted anyone .

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Feral Q&A
Please pass us some further details as to what other tanking talents/abilities we will be given to help cover the differences between feral tanking and humanoid tanking.
We have to be careful here. Our goal is to make sure all the tanks can do the job, so we want to make sure we don't give druids an ability that will push them over the edge. Druids were really good tanks in BC, especially near the end of the content. I don't feel that we are having to make up a huge deficit. I understand you want to have more buttons to push, but compared to BC you now have new cooldowns like Berserk and Barkskin, and some old groaners like Tiger's Fury and Frenzied Regeneration actually do something cool now.

Please point out how our dps will be tuned to match rogue dps.
We'll eventually figure out how much lower cat dps is than rogue dps, and then we will change some druid abilities to use bigger numbers. It's possible we will buff a couple of talents, especially ones that we suspect you're likely to already be getting. But mostly we do it through tweaking core abilities like Shred and Mangle.

Please explain how shifting cost and mana consumption will work with rogue gear (in pvp/pve/soloing).
Feral mana seems to have taken a big hit. We have some thoughts on how to adjust it.

Please explain what will occur with older content fights where druids could not tank due to a missing ability.
Maybe Illidan will forget how to Shear. Is that what you're talking about?

Please explain if our tanking and dps will scale as we go to harder 25 man content.
Yes, they will. By definition, percentages scale and flat numbers do not. You have a lot of percentages in your talents. There has been a lot of discussion about whether Mother Bear is a scaling talent or not, and I'm not sure I'm eager to enter into that debate again. But we have designed the talents to scale. One of the problems to your mitigation scaling was just hitting the upper limit of armor. Armor and avoidance will be much harder to cap out now.
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Upcomming changes;

from this post
Lots of Druid news, good news even:

    * Feral mana issues are being looked into.
    * Barkskin will get some changes.
    * The Leader of the Pack aura might give mana (unsure if it is for the group or Druid itself). This change will come soon.
    * Chances are Balance Druids will get a Spirit-converts-into-something ability.
    * The Eclipse icon will change depending on the type of buff you have.
    * The threat of Faerie Fire might be increased.
    * Nourish or Flourish might get a name change.
    * Improved Tree-form will get some changes.

Sources: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/99563279 … unced.html
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/99565590 … awler.html
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/99570094 … koraa.html
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/96797445 … stion.html
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/96794041 … rwall.html
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/99570065 … -tree.html

Spirit for balance druids
Spirit to crit might be too good. The way moonkins stack crit, things might get out of control fast. Spirit to damage is more likely. If your damage is low, and I agree it might be, we want to buff that through base spell damage and coefficients. We aren't likely to do it by making talents do more and more per talent point.

Current issues with Druid
The problem we were trying to solve with Feral was that they could only be 75% of a rogue and 75% of a Prot warrior (to be fair, the warrior part sometimes got to be 102%, but the rogue part never did). We wanted to let people who liked the melee hybrid playstyle keep doing that, while also having true dps and tanking Ferals.

The problem we were trying to solve with Balance was in some ways easier and harder. Balance just needed to get a spot in the group. Balance needed reasonable CC in 5-player instances and good dps, AE, buff capacity and mana-efficiency to be a credible caster. Making sure raids didn't need all 10 or 25 spots devoted to stacking buffs helps open up space as well.

Resto druids are pretty amazing on Live and have a pretty good healer niche. What we wanted to do with them is expand on their healing a little so they had more group-heal capacity and more spells to cast besides rolling Lifebloom.

With regard to PvP, we want to try and get some of the under-represented classes and specs in there more, but that's a much, much harder problem. PvP balance is enormously sensitive to certain small changes and to the presence and absence of certain abilities. We try to avoid just handing out the mandatory abilities to everyone (hello Mortal Strike) for fear that we end up with 10 classes that are just art differences. It's a non-trivial problem to solve, complicated by the fact that testing it is hard and requires not only skilled participants, but also for the rest of the game to be in a really stable state. We've changed the game so much, that I can almost promise that PvP is going to be very different. How, exactly, I'm not sure anyone could say yet. I gaurantee that we've broken something for good or ill for at least a couple of classes, because that's the reality of the situation. Hopefully we can be more proactive about fixing problems when they arise.

Feral Concerns
I understand you want your gear designed to specifically support those stats that are most important to you. I'm telling you that you are dangerously close to being the best tank from a mitigation-standpoint even without it. I suppose it's possible your threat generation will be very low, but I kind of doubt it.

If your concern is you'll have to wear PvP gear or BC gear because it's better than LK gear, don't worry about that. In fact, that also answers the question of why we can't put strength on some leather without doing it to all leather -- because then those few sacred pieces become the only ones that can / will be used.

If your concern is that your gear won't scale, don't worry about that either. The only reason it became a problem in BC was because you hit the armor cap, which led to you not wanting more mitigation and us not making more tanking bear armor. It wasn't that we hit the max stat budgets in BC, if I am understanding that concern correctly, or you wouldn't see 200 ilevels now.

If you want armor on your leather because you like hitting the armor cap, sorry. This is one of the few times you'll hear me say no, but no. It does bad things to the game.

If your concern is that you just like having leather with strength, armor, stamina, dodge and agility on it, and don't want to see AP or defense because partialy-wasted stats just creep you out, *and* you would rather have druid talents and bear form nerfed to compensate for that, well I guess that is a different way to design the game. It would probably work okay, but it would mean going back to a model where bosses dropped rogue loot or feral loot. We just think the current design works better.

On an entirely different topic, I also understand that you want to have more interesting abilities to use on a regular basis. That's a fair request, and one that is made by several other classes as well. It's something we will keep talking about and keeping a close eye on. It wasn't our priority for the Feral this time around, but I can understand how you wish it was.

My hope is that this giant wall of text helps you understand our thought process, and helps you feel that yes we do listen to you, and yes we do understand how the class works. If it doesn't convince you, well there's always tomorrow.

Some new info from a blue poster, that will change the feral talent tree;

1) Feral Faerie Fire becomes a core ability.
2) Brutal Impact also lowers the cooldown of Bash by 1 sec. It swaps with Savage Fury, mostly to keep it out of the paws of anyone but Ferals.
3) Feral Faerie Fire replaced with the old Last Stand component of Berserk. But it's usable in both cat and bear forms.
4) Cat Berserk does not change. Bear Berserk goes back to Mangle hitting 3 targets, and since that isn't so useful on single targets, it also removes the 6 sec (untalented) cooldown of Mangle during the 15 sec duraton for some nice bear burst or threat generation. The Fear immunity is still intact. (source)

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Graphical changes to druid skins

Question:
Dear GC/K,

Many of us in the community know, and appreciate how busy you are on behalf of druids so I'll keep my question to a minimum.
Can you please tell us whether the barbershop will be used to change the skin of druid forms?

Thank you!

Answer:
It's not going to be in for Lich King. Sorry. Doing an entire animal texture takes a lot more art than a hair change.

But we all agree it's high time for new druid form art. It's a high priority after Lich King.
source

Build 8970

Talents
Balance

    * Earth and Moon Rank 1 damage increase changed from "1 to 6%" to 3%.
    * Improved Moonkin Form now causes affected targets to gain 1/2% haste (down from 3/3%)
    * Improved Faerie Fire now only increases the critical strike chance of your damage spells on targets afflicted by Faerie Fire. (Old - Increased critical
       chance of all attacks)
    * Nature's Grace changed from 1 to 3 points and now has a 33/66/100% proc rate. (Old - 100%)
    * Nature's Splendor changed from 3 to 1 point. Now Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and Rejuvenation spells by 3 sec, your
       Regrowth spell by 6 sec, and your Lifebloom spell by 3 sec.

Feral

    * Dash cooldown reduced from 5 to 3 minutes.
    * Faerie Fire (Feral) isn't a talent anymore and is now a baseline skill
    * Berserk doesn't heal you anymore in bear form but causes your Mangle (Bear) ability to hit up to 3 targets and have no cooldown instead.
    * Rend and Tear now increases damage done by Maul and Shred on bleeding targets by 4/8/12/16/20%. (up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
    * Mangle doesn't increase the damage of Maul and Shred anymore
    * Protector of the Pack now increases your attack power in Bear and Dire Bear form by 2/4/6%. (Old - increased the bonus attack power by 20/40/60%)
    * Predatory Instincts changed from 5 to 3 points, now While in Cat Form, Bear Form, or Dire Bear Form, increases your damage from melee critical strikes
       by 3/7/10% (Old - 2/4/6/8/10%) and reduces the damage taken from area of effect attacks by 5/10/15%. (Old - 3/6/9/12/15%)
    * Savage Fury has been moved from Tier 5 to Tier 2
    * Brutal Impact moved from Tier 2 to Tier 5
    * *New Talent* Survival Instincts (Tier 3) - When activated, this ability temporarily grants you 30% of your maximum health for 20 sec while in Bear Form,
       Cat Form, or Dire Bear Form. After the effect expires, the health is lost. Instant, 5 min cooldown

Restoration

    * Gift of the Earthmother now also affects Wild Growth

Glyphs

    * Glyph of the Challenging Roar - Reduces the cooldown of your Challenging Roar ability by 30 sec. (Old - 57.86 sec)

Build 8970
Skills
Balance

    * Typhoon range has been extended from 20 to 30 yards.
    * Insect Swarm hit chance reduction lowered from 5% to 3%. Damage increased. (1050 to 1290 for Rank 7, 792 to 1032 for Rank 6, etc ...)
    * Wrath damage has been increased. (489-551 to 553-623 for Rank 12, 414-466 to 504-568 for Rank 11, etc ...)
    * Stafire damage has been increased. (670-790 to 1028-1212 for Rank 10, 562-662 to 854-1006 for Rank 9, etc ...)


Talents
Balance

    * Eclipse now increase your critical strike chance with Starfire by 15%. (up from 10%)


Restoration

    * You can now cast Innervate while in Tree of Life form
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