In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm we’ll be making several changes to class talents and abilities. Here you will get a glimpse into some of the changes we have in store for the druid. The information you’re about to read is certainly not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview of some of the exciting new things to come. Let’s kick things off by checking out some of the new druid spells and abilities!
New Druid Abilities

Thrash (Level 81): Thrash deals damage and causes all targets within 10 yards to bleed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. The intent here is to give bears another button to hit while tanking. Talents will affect the bleed, such as causing Swipe to deal more damage to bleeding targets. 5-second cooldown. 25 Rage.

Stampeding Roar (Level 83): The druid roars, increasing the movement of all allies within 10 yards by 40% for 8 seconds. Stampeding Roar can be used in cat or bear form, but bears might have a talent to drop the cooldown. The goal of this ability is to give both bears and cats a little more situational group utility. 3-minute cooldown. No cost.

Wild Mushroom (Level 85): Grows a magical mushroom at the target location. After 4 seconds the mushroom becomes invisible. Enemies who cross the mushroom detonate it, causing it to deal area-of-effect damage, though its damage component will remain very effective against single targets. The druid can also choose to detonate the mushroom ahead of time. This is primarily a tool for the Balance druid, and there will be talents that play off of it. No cooldown. 40-yard range. Instant cast.


Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to the new abilities listed above, we intend to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics with which you’re already familiar. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of our goals for each spec.

All heal-over-time spells (HoTs) will benefit from crit and haste innately in Cataclysm. Hasted HoTs do not reduce their duration, but instead add additional HoT ticks. Haste will also benefit Energy generation while in cat form. Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation.

We want to add tools to cat form and depth to bear form. If a Feral cat is going to fill a very similar niche to that of a rogue, warrior or Enhancement shaman, it needs a few more tools -- primarily a reliable interrupt. Bears need to be pushing a few more buttons just so the contrast between tanking and damage-dealing is not so steep. Barkskin will be innately undispellable.

We will be buffing the damage of Mangle (cat) significantly so that when cat druids cannot Shred, they are not at such a damage-dealing loss. Druids will lose Abolish Poison with the dispel mechanics change, but Restoration druids will gain Dispel Magic (on friendly targets) as a talent. All druids can still remove poisons with Cure Poison and remove curses with Remove Curse.


New Talents and Talent Changes

Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade. We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well). Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time.

We want to make the Feral cat damage rotation slightly more forgiving. We do not want to remove what druids like about their gameplay, but we do want to make it less punishing to miss, say, a Savage Roar or Rake. The changes here will be on par with increasing the duration of Mangle like we did for patch 3.3.3.

Balance druids will have a new talent ability called Nature’s Torrent, which strikes for either Nature or Arcane damage depending on which will do the most damage (or possibly both), and moves the Eclipse meter more (details below). The improved version of Nature’s Torrent also reduces the target's movement speed. 10-second cooldown.

Restoration druids will have a new talent called Efflorescence, which causes a bed of healing flora to sprout beneath targets that are critically healed by Regrowth. We plan on giving Feral cats and bears a Kick/Pummel equivalent -- an interrupt that is off the global cooldown and does no damage. We feel like they need this utility to be able to fill the melee role in a dungeon or raid group, and to give them more PvP utility.

We want to make sure Feral and Balance druids feel like good options for an Arena team. They need the tools to where you might consider a Feral druid over an Arms warrior, or a Balance druid over a mage or warlock. Remember that the PvP landscape will probably look pretty different for Cataclysm with a focus on rated, competitive Battlegrounds.


Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Balance

• Spell Damage
• Spell Haste
• Eclipse

Eclipse: We are moving Eclipse from a talent into a core mechanic of the class and making it less random. Balance druids will have a new UI element that shows a sun and a moon. Whenever they cast an Arcane spell, it will move the UI closer to the sun, and buff their Nature damage. Whenever they cast a Nature spell, it will move the UI closer to the moon, and buff their Arcane damage. The gameplay intention is to alternate Arcane and Nature spells (largely Starfire and Wrath) to maintain the balance.

Feral (Cat)

• Melee Damage
• Melee Critical Damage
• Bleed Damage

Feral (Bear)

• Damage Reduction
• Vengeance
• Savage Defense

Bleed Damage and Savage Defense: Feral druids will receive two sets of passive bonuses depending on whether the druid is in cat or bear form. Bleed Damage will be improved for cats. Savage Defense is the current bear mechanic for converting crits into damage absorption and will be improved for bears.

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s unbuffed health. For boss encounters we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Feral tree and the druid is in bear form -- these values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Feral tree and are in bear form, so you won’t see Balance, Restoration, or Feral druids in cat form running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today -- there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so the Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is that all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

Restoration

• Healing
• Meditation
• HoT Scale Healing

HoT Scale Healing: HoTs will do increased healing on more wounded targets. The mechanic is similar to that of the Restoration shaman, but with HoTs instead of direct heals. In Cataclysm, we anticipate druids using a greater variety of their spells so there is a distinction between healing and HoT healing.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and ask that you provide your initial thoughts and feedback on what was presented here. Please keep in mind, what you’ve just reviewed is a work in progress and as we move closer to the Cataclysm beta, you’ll see these changes as well as others continue to develop in response to testing and feedback.

Ok, so here's what I think:

This is a hidden charge system for Eclipse. The meter will slide based on which spell we cast (like planting a charge) and then casting the opposite spell will slide the bar back towards the balance point (like consuming a charge). What I don't understand is how they think this will force us to "alternate spells". I think what will happen is that we will pick a spell to buff and only use the other spell to fill the meter, possibly rarely if Nature's Torrents moves the meter a great deal.

You had to guess I was gonna bring this down to charges =]

I don't dislike the Wild Mushroom thing. I only hope that when it blows up, it causes psychedelic rainbow colors to confuse the victim =]. No, honestly, it seems like an odd mechanic. Are we gonna have to plan 4 seconds in advance to use this? I can see the use of this mushroom in PvP, but in PvE, it seems like it could get unwieldy. They did suggest that we would want to use it against single target so I can only assume they expect that to be in our rotation. Consequently, I am beginning to think we will have more spells that deal nature damage than deal arcane damage (include typhoon) so we might be looking to push to the solar side of Eclipse.

As far as Mastery goes, I'm a little disappointed that they chose haste, as we're not pushing any type of crit soft cap now that Eclipse (as a talent) is gone. What with the clipping of Wrath, and the obvious scaling of gear and rapid inflation, I think we are going to find ourselves with some serious problems. IF we get to the point where haste is just too high, it will inherently push us towards the Lunar portion of the Eclipse bar. I hate being forced into a certain spell by stats alone. I wish our arsenal would be variable enough to make the choice between pushing to Solar or pushing to Lunar a player based decision without a harsh damage difference. Some of us like Machine Guns. Others like Lazer Cannons. I like being able to choose between the two...

Also, let's truncate the qq about DoTs scaling with Haste and Crit.

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.

So there you have it. HoTs AND DoTs will scale with haste and crit.

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The last thing I'd like to do is post a list of my questions for Blizzard. I posted on the WoW forums but that got pushed back 13 pages in under an hours so I doubt it will get read.

Eclipse

• Is the slider going to be based on the damage dealt by the spells or by the number of spells that are cast?
• Will DoT spells contribute to the meter, and if so, will they contribute their full amount upon cast or upon damage dealt?
• Will AoE spells contribute to the meter (primarily those that still fit within the standard single-target rotation)?

Wild Shrooms

• Can they be detonated by proximity before 4 seconds?
• Do they suffer a damage penalty if detonated by the druid before the 4 second growth is over?
• Do they effect the Eclipse meter?
• Is there any type of lasting poison cloud? (I'd love to see this)
• Does it cause visual impairment to the detonator and all effected?
• Will it use the same placement as FoN or can we summon it on a target?

Nature's Torrent

• Is it instant cast?
• Will it always move the Eclipse bar to one side or will it push it further into the side it currently occupies?
• Will this nuke be significant in damage or more of an Eclipse filler