DRUID in Cataclysm Classic: Was It Any Good Though?

the Druid as a class really started to come into its own drawing W of the Lich King long gone with the days of being forced into healing or having to deal with the hybrid tax of vanilla and with four specializations to choose from World of warcraft's Master shape shifters had really begun to adapt themselves to all areas of content and moving into cataclysm blizzard began to delve more into the various class fantasies that this class can bring whether that's tanking melee DPS range DPS yes or healing and just in case you are wondering no Druid doesn't get a fourth talentry in cataclysm just for Guardian that would be Mr Pandaria but the combined Talent Tre still made both specs work where they needed to on the other hand what is new for the Druid is a new race as trolls can now roll Druid in this expansion but with four specs to break down the videos covering Druids are always pretty sizable so let's make a start and talk about how the Druid changes in cataclysm and how they are expected to perform in this new expansion first up I want to cover the Baseline class changes for balance fairy fire now reduces armor by 4% stacking to three times and there are no longer major and minor armor debuff cyber and the maximum 12% armor reduction can be done by all the usual stuff you'd expect such as Thunder Expose and so on insect SW doesn't reduce the target's chance to hit anymore sooth animal is gone and is replaced by just soothe which removes all in Rage effects from an enemy Thorns is turned into a cooldown based ability and is more powerful instead of being a consistent or beit minor buff and innovate gets a Nerf well depending on how you look at it that is where it used to give about 7,800 Mana to any targe in Wrath now it will grant 5% Mana to an ally or 20% to the Druid this can be improved via talents and gphs but as a whole this ability is now more tailored to being used by the Druid themselves a new ability for cataclysm is wild mushroom and wild mushroom detonate wild mushroom allows you to place down three mushrooms that will become invisible after 6 seconds casting detonate well you guess it make them explode dealing AOE damage to nearby Targets this is a nice abiliy to set up damage for times when you know ads will come in for PVE as well as providing some burst in PvP shrooms can also be upgraded via talents to leave a slow Field behind that can be quite powerful too in the right circumstance that's balance next is feral so Tiger's Fury now increases physical damage by 15% for 6 seconds instead of a flat amount Savage raw has been reworked and it now increases Auto attack damage by 80% instead of all physical damage by 30% pretty much all cat for abilties such as ravage shred swipe and so on now have a much higher percentage base damage modifier most likely as a result of the Savage raw change and fairy fire feral has the same changes as the balance version does too where it now reduces armor by 4% stacking three times both cat and Bear have two abilities which are new and just have different resource costs depending on what form you're in those are skull bash which is a kick on a one minute cool down but it has a bit of a longer range and you can lower this cool down to 10 seconds via feral talents and stampeding raw which is 60% move speed for all players within 10 yards for 8 seconds a very powerful raid wide ability here but the 10 yard range is a bit of a killer in terms of actually getting use out of it very often and no unfortunately there is not a gly for something to improve it either B Bear's demoralizing raw now reduces physical damage of enemies by 10% instead of a flat amount frenzied Reed has been reworked to be much more of a powerful cooldown too it will now increase Max Health by 30% and it will still convert rage to health it's basically what survival instincts was from wrath on top of the heal which it's always had Savage defense has also been reworked and is so much stronger than it used to be instead of reducing damage from the next attack after you crit now it gives all non-periodic crits a 50% chance to Grant an absorb shield and bears basically crit nonstop so this is going to be a very effective orbe it passive mitigation tool Newar is a proper AOE threat generator in thrash this causes instant damage as well as applying a bleed to all nearby Targets and I know bears were not the most popular pick throughout wrath this will be changing in CER but we'll talk more about that soon when we get to talents over in the restoration tree Omen of clarity is now a baseline ability for all Druids and it can be further improved via talents otherwise it works the way it always has where casting or attacking has a chance to make your next ability free Nish has moved up from a 1.5 second cast to a 3C one and is now considered your slow but efficient heal and Mark of the wild now has the same buff as Blessing of Kings mean it grants 5% stats and some resistances Tranquility gets a huge buff in cataclysm and is now a very powerful healing tool that can affect both party and raid members the healing overtime portion of regrowth is more powerful but lasts 6 seconds down from 21 and the life Bloom's duration has increased from 7 to 10 seconds new for restoration is remove corruption which just combines cure poison and de curse into one button so those are our Baseline changes now we have the talents for this we'll be checking out some builds as well as the most impactful changes to your talent trees and as much as you've probably heard that cat talent trees made them smaller or simpler well you're going to see throughout these class videos there is a lot going on here and tons of interesting gameplay altering changes to look forwards to we'll start off with the boomkins again why not so the first thing you want to know about talents in CER is when you commit a point to a talent tree you'll instantly get certain bonuses straight away and when you're leveling a character these bonuses will be obtained at level 10 you will also have to spend 31 points in that tree before you can Branch out to the other two which yes does make their less Choice overall but if we look at Raph nearly every Speck in the game went down and got that end of talentry ability so it was kind of an illusion of choice thing in the end anyways when specking into Boomin you'll gain bonuses to Arcane and nature damage as well as star surge star surge is going to s pretty familiar if you've been playing season of Discovery at all but cataclysm was when it first came into the game however this version of star surge does have a cast time it does do heavy damage and it will also contribute towards your Eclipse State your Mastery as a moonin is Total Eclipse which further increases the damage bonuses received when under the effect of ior eclipse State your Mastery will be learned from your class trainer at level 80 not straight away upon picking your talentry though and masteron gear therefore is only found on cat content after level 80 so you're probably asking now what's Eclipse well it's very different from how it was in ra for the Lich King I can tell you that much but in cataclysm if you're playing boomkin you're now going to have the very famous Eclipse bar when casting wrath you'll gain lunar energy and Starfire solar energy depending on which one you cast your Eclipse bar will move in that direction when it hits 100 you enter Eclipse causing either nature or Arcane spells to do bonus damage until your bar has moved back down to zero again and then you cast until the bar hits the other Eclipse State and rinse and repeat so you're still doing the thing where you alternate between Raph and Starfire as filler spells but now you have more control over when your big burst damage happens as opposed to the Wrath version where you crit and it can happen at a bad time in our talents a lot of things from wrath have been combined together so I'm going to try and focus on the new stuff here balance of power now gives spell hit rating from any Spirit on gear this is a change that many casters are going to see in their talents as Spirit has now been redesigned to a Healer Mana regeneration stat otherwise moonin form now just Flatout reduces damage taken by 15% at all times making it into a very solid passive mitigation tool along with its existing effects Euphoria is a new talent that makes it so you can hit your Eclipse State faster and it grants you Mana when you're doing so and just below that is dream stat which is another tool to Aid the boomin's Mana situation shooting stars is one of the most fun talents in this tree making it so in your dots tick they have a chance to instantly reset the cooldown on Star Surge and make it instant cast solar beam is another new addition for C which gives boomkins an option for interrupting this ability can situationally be very powerful if enemies can be silenced because you can take them out of action for 10 seconds straight also amazing in PvP when combined with roots on casters it nearly always forces a trinket cataclysm is also when Sunfire comes into the game when entering solar eclipse your Moonfire will change into this spell it's not the AOE version though that came in a later expansion starall also changes to only hit things in combat 2 and doesn't do that extra bit of AOE damage to stank targets otherwise it's still a good cool down to fire off when in Luna Eclipse boomkins run Prime glyphs such as wrath Moonfire and insect swarm for bonus damage next is feral we'll start with cats so when you pick this talent tree you will instantly get mangle bear and Cat which work basically in the same way that they always have they're a good damage dealing instant attack and they apply a debuff you also gain 25% bonus attack power as this spec feral instincts reduces the chance to be detected whilst prowling and Fu Mastery your bleeds will do more damage Fury swipes is a new talent that gives you a chance to instantly attack for high high damage every 3 seconds whichever form you're in another new addition is Stampede which gives you a big bonus after you use feral charge for cats your next ravage will have no positional requirements will not need stealth and will be free to cast brutal impact also gets a bunch of updates and can reduce the cool down on your score bash down from 1 minute to 10 seconds survival instincts is now your Shield wall type effect on a three minute cool down and reduces all damage taken by 50% for 12 seconds towards the bottom we have blood in the water this is kind of your execute phase talent for cat making it so when you ferocious by to Target below 25% Health rip is refreshed this is great for when you can snapshot a powerful rip effect with procs or cooldowns running berserk at the bottom of the tree is the same Talent as it was in Wrath just giving you 50% less energy costs catch used glyphs such as berserk rip and maybe Tiger's Fury when you pick bear as a talentry you also gain mangle of course and 25% attack power you also get Vengeance which is a new addition across all tanks in cataclysm this makes it so when you take damage you gain attack power which caps out as a percentage of your total health well that's the simple version of it anyways just imagine it as being when I take damage I do more damage your Mastery is Savage Defender which increases the amount absorbed by your Savage defense on the talent side of things B makes some different choices two cats or gains different benefits from the same talents feral aggression makes fairy fire instantly apply three stacks meaning you get a one button press instant maximum power armor debuff thick hide now also reduces the chance to be crit by melee attacks by 6% the reason this is now in the game is that defense as a stat is gone and not something you're going to have to be worrying about anymore when tanking natural reaction is just a bunch of stats for free reducing damage taken in per form by 18% increasing Dodge Chance by 6% and giving three rage whenever you dodge pulverizes a new ability towards the bottom of the tree that consumes lacerate stacks and increases melee crit Chance by 3% per stack consumed for 18 seconds so that'll be 9% melee crit at Max Stacks remember crit is super good for feral due to Savage defense and their Mastery so this is very good and berserk works the same as it does in Wrath causing mango to cleave and have no cooldown but there's also a new and extremely powerful bit of text on this Talent which makes it so when lacerate tix it has a 50% chance to reset the cool down on mangle bear and make it free bears run glyphs such as berserk lerate and mangle and you should expect to see a lot more feral tanks in cata than you did in Wrath it'll be a Resurgence of them back like it was in TBC but again more on that soon and finally we have restoration a spec that I played back at the start of kada and I had so much fun with it then so let's check out their talents when you pick this talentry you get Swift mend which works pretty much the same as it always has done in that it consumes a heal overtime effect to heal a Target it can be glyph to not do this as well you get meditation for Mana regen gift of nature for more heals and a disentanglement allows Resto Druids to shift out of roots and slows and yes only Resto Druids can do this now whenever they want baral have to use some cooldowns or get dispelled to Escape Routes your Mastery is harmony which makes it so your direct heals gain a bonus and when you cast a direct heal your heal over time effects are also improved for 10 seconds you'll want this buff up at all times but it's very easy to do just through regular gameplay in the talent tree Nature's swiftness now improves the effect of the healing spell it's used on by 50% so a crit nature swiftness Healing Touch is going to be an enormous heal Revitalize gets redesigned and doesn't give other classes resources anymore instead it's a Mana regeneration tool for the Druid which also causes a life Bloom to give your raid a bit of Mana too malfurion's gift is a huge Talent giving life bloom a chance to proc CL casting and massively reducing the cool down on Tranquility empowered touch is another big Improvement for the Druid giving bonuses to your direct healing spells and making them refresh life Bloom on the target so just a really easy way to keep life Bloom roll in on your tank Nature's cure adds a magic dispel effect onto remove corruption giving the Druid much better dispel coverage and Druids also get e florescent which is a new and iconic restoration Talent making your Swift men put a Zone on the floor that heals nearby allies every second for 7 Seconds finally probably one of the more controversial changes for Druid and cat is that tree of life is now a cool down now when it's used it causes roots and regrowth to be instant cast Raph to do more damage life Bloom can be casted on any number of targets and wild growth will heal two extra targets the biggest problem with this change for me was always the absolute uncanny look of the new tree form I mean come on who saw this and thought Yep looks great let's ship it either way you can glyph back to the old form if you really want to other glyphs restoration uses will be life Bloom Rejuvenation and swiftmend so those are our class changes and talents but how are we expecting Druid to be represented in PVE in this post shattering World well as always with K the answer is going to somewhat Depend and that dependence is on the size of the raid and more importantly the difficulty that you're taking on whereas in Wrath players would gravitate much more towards 25 player raids and in that environment it's very easy to take off all the necessary Buffs and debuffs but Kata has both 10 and 25 player rating on heroic as both equally viable options when it comes to challenge and the reward offered now blizzard did give way more classes these same Buffs and debuffs in cata but it still tends to be the case that casters buff of a casters and physical damage dealers buff of a physical damage dealers this means when you're in a temp player raid and the content is actually kind of hard certain specs may be preferred just by the nature of your raid comp that being said I think the most in demand Dr specking C will be specifically for a feral off tank whilst ferals are just is capable of main tanking their big benefit which no other tank can do as well is the fact that in between actively tanking they can hop into cat form and still put out some respectable damage things such as talents itemization glyphs depending fight to fight will affect how much you can spec into damage or needing to tank but this is still a big selling point for feral also they are the only class in the game to get two masteries from one talent tree which is kind of probably hidden op they also bring bring decent Buffs and utility such as a combat res and stampeding raw and ferals are also pretty simple to play in terms of tanking and a ton of their mitigation just happens naturally thanks to your Mastery and Savage defense they bring good single Target threat much improved AOE threat thanks to a buff swipe as well as thrash and embody that Druid style of tanking of just being really good at taking hits so expect to see plenty of feral tanks in CER next one is kind of hard to pick it's going to depend on your R comp again but i' probably go for Boomin with an updated rotation with way less RNG than the raap of the Lich King version of eclipse boonin enjoyers are probably already looking forwards to the expansion boins also pack a lot of very unique utility such as typhoon to knock mobs back and the fungal growth Talent leaving behind a slow field after wild mushrooms explode can really come in there's more than just a few fights where this is very useful the single Target and burst AOE should also remain strong points honestly if you liked boomi and RAF for the Lich King I don't see why you wouldn't be up for giving it a going CER and particularly in Caster comps this spec should find a welcome place I think restoration also comes a long way from raap of the Lich King too it's just depending on your raid size the dis holy pal meta is still kind of hard to get away from but with the overall changes to how healing is approached where it's much more about getting the most out of your Mana rather than just topping any non- full HP bar heal overtime effects go up in value Big Time a problem which Resto Druids will noticeably start to run into though is RNG damage effects which they cannot prepare for in advance they also show weaknesses on fights more focused around spot healing large bursts of damage all the same I do really rate them as a strong pick for the expansion and hopefully I'll be playing one as my main alt but we'll see how things go there finally would be feral cats so first off the power of having a feral off tank doesn't really do too many favors to somebody who just wants to play cat as both specs are capable of bringing nearly the exact same Buffs and debuffs depending on your spec it's just one of them can tank and the other cannot still cats can perform and if you are a longtime feral enjoyer I don't see a reason to stopping C all that being said each Druid spec is viable and can perform well in PVE but as is typical in World of Warcraft there will be some specs which are more in demand than others let's move on though and talk PVP when it comes to PVP and CER no longer is it the case that arena is the only form of competition to be had as rated Battlegrounds are now in the game this new 10 V10 format of PVP brought life back into Old Battlegrounds by offering Guild experience Conquest points and the chance to get old PVP titles from vanilla once again and in this new world druid finds a place in many different comps balance will be seen for the most part in 3v3 or rated Battlegrounds compared to 2v2 as they're more susceptible to being focused down big Talent editions for PVP are the classic Roots into solar beam combo on healers this nearly always forces some kind of cooldown to be burned and wild mushroom with the fungal growth Talent can fulfill so many different uses from sniping A Healer trying to drink around a corner slowing enemies around a pillar or a CH being used for surprise burst damage and so on it's just a very versatile ability and talent combo another big addition for the boomies is lunar shower which basically opens up a no casting Boomin build it makes it so when you Moonfire its direct Damage Done is increased by 45% a Mana cost is reduced by 30% stacking three times lasting 3 seconds so now you can really just run around spamming Moonfire as every other instant cast spell it's it does good damage and it'll build you towards an eclipse I'd say compared to Raph boomies get noticeably better in PvP and C due to their overall utility survivability and damage output on the Move Resto Droid also is in a pretty good spot again in CER our health bars start getting pretty enormous so heal over time effects tend to get a lot more value when the game is about control and wearing people down and not just blasting them from 100 to zero in a few seconds also remember that Resto Druids are now the only Druids that can shift out of route or slows on demand making them very difficult to lock down for any period of time and when you finally do close the gap they have Hots running and they can just shift into bare form or pop bark skin to reduce a ton of damage taken another thing to know about C PVP which is worth a mention here is the Mortal strike effects have been reduced down from 50% Effectiveness to 25% this is above to all healers in PvP of course but I just thought I'd give it a mention here in case you didn't know I wouldn't say Resto Druid is an absolute s tier picking C for PVP however due to being a bit lacking on the cooldown side of things nevertheless they are strong which leaves us with Ferell and Ferell is the big winner out of the Druid specs for this expansion in PvP for sure you still have two ways to break out of roots by the way with Dash and stampeding raw thanks to the feral swi sness Talent you get an interrupt and a mini Gap closer in skull bash Shield war from survival instincts a Last Stand effect from frenzied regen and of course the thing that's been fal's big strength for a long time now an instant cast Cyclone every time you spend five combo points it's kind of like blizz took the raft version of feral and just added more damage and solved its survivability problems so if you PVP a lot expect to see a lot of ferals in all brackets in Arena and in rbgs let's move on to tier set starting with tier 11 from Bastion of Twilight thrown of the Four Winds and Blackwing descent this is one of those strange tier sets for me because the normal mode version of it with the electric blue looks way better than heroic to me which is just kind of brown but anyway for feral the two set increases the periodic damage of rikon lacerate giving both feral identities a rather small extra amount of damage remember all damage overtime effects can crit by defaulting C and your Mastery as a C improves bleeds further the force that makes it so when you mangle in cat you gain 1% attack power for 30 seconds stacking three times so a small addition to your total attack power but one you'll want to be tracking for tanks that increases the duration of Survival Instincts by 50% so with this tier set we're talking an 18c Shield wall effect for tanks or boomies the two set adds some crit chance to your insect swarm and Moonfire so not bad but not too exciting either the four set increases crit chance of spells by 15% for 8 seconds after your Eclipse activates decreasing by 5% with each crit this used to be 99% bonus crit decreasing by 33% with each crit but it was so good that blizzard had to Nerf it in fire lands so I wonder if we're going to get back the correct tier set for phase one for restoration the two set gives 5% crit on the Periodic portion of Life Bloom so just some extra healing there and when life Bloom is at Three Stacks you gain 540 bonus Spirit you'll always have life Bloom at three stacks on the tanking cat and you'll be refreshing it nonstop so this is just a bunch of extra manner regen really tier 12 from the Firelands looks like it could have been a monk set from the future teleported back to me and I'm not sure if I'm the biggest fan of it I guess having an entire rer centered around fire didn't fit too thematically well with the Druid class then again in Molton core they just gave tier one some antlers and leaves and cord it a day for feral the two set makes it so attacks with mangle M and Shred deal 10% extra fire damage over 4 seconds so just a nice extra damage over time portion to abilities you're already spamming the foret is interesting so finishing moves have a 20% chance per Point spent to extend the duration of Berserk by 2 seconds now I haven't played a feral of 10 game drawing ra of the Lich King but with heroism or berserking and all these other haste procs running you must already be able to pack a pretty good number of five combo Point Spenders into that window at hope for around six extra seconds on berserk from this which would mean a 40% extra duration total the for set for be makes it so when bar skin Fades you gain 10% extra Dodge chance for 12 seconds for moonkins the two set has a chance to summon a burning treent to AG you in combat for 15 seconds according to wad this has a 20% proc chance and a 45 second internal cool down so about a 33% o time on your fiery friend and while stop they'll be spamming fire seed for some minor damage your foret basically just gets you into your next eclipse State faster and it should go nicely with the Euphoria Talent as well and the two set for Resto gives each tick of Life bloom a 40% chance to restore 1% of your base Mana each time it heals a Target so that'll be about 186 Mana in case you are wondering and considering life Bloom will be on the tank and pretty much always ticking this seems like a pretty good Mana restoring tool the foret makes Swift men here like second injured Target within 15 yards for the same amount and no apparently it does not cause a second efflorescence to bloom on the second target still this seems like a very powerful tier set for the Resto droids out there and finally tier 13 from dragon soul not world of warcraft's most popular raid ever but I kind of like how the tier is presented though but either way as we will see throughout these videos the tier set bonuses in dragon soul tend to be kind of crazy good the two set for feral makes it so whilst pulverize is active your mangle bear crits have a 100% chance to trigger Savage defense so this is just a great extra bit of damage and mitigation for ferals the cat the two set makes it so ferocious by refreshes the duration of rip on a target with 60% or less Health pretty amazing tier set bonus here the four pieces are just crazy op for all tanks and this set is no exception it makes your frenzied regen affect all raid members so that's basically last stand on your entire raid yeah pretty good the four piece for cats makes it so Tiger's Fury also triggers stampede cat or in other words you get to press ravage for free every 30 seconds for boomies the two set increases the damage of all your direct spells by 3% and the foret reduces the cool down on Star surge by 5 Seconds and increases its damage by 10% not the most exciting for moonkins actually but it is increasing your damage all the same and for resta the two set makes it so after innovating the cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for 15 seconds this is great for those moments when you know there's a lot of damage incoming and you can really make the most of it and for rest toids the four set makes it so your Rejuvenation and regrowth spells have a 10% chance to time slip and have double their normal duration kind of goes without saying this is just an amazing bonus as well orbe it's kind of RNG and that is the Druid in cataclysm I think each spec remains fairly familiar to how things play in RAF of the Lich King there's just a little something extra that you can now do I do think Druid remains a pick with tons of potential and is still a great choice for someone who wants a main with a bit of flexibility in terms of what roles they can fulfill I'm definitely considering having a Resto Druid as an Al myself to see how it stands up compared to what I remember from back in the day but we are going to be playing on the final patches balance as we always have with classic so maybe things will be quite different either way this is the first of the class vids for cataclysm and I'll be covering every class in the months to come running up to launch so keep an eye out for the one that you want to know a little bit more on and if you made it to the end of the video do drop a like a comment all that good stuff I don't usually ask too often but it helps get the videos out there especially on the larger projects such as these and finally thank you all so much for watching and listening in and I'll see you on the next one very soon [Music]

Channel: WillE

Views: 95,257

Keywords: cataclysm classic, cataclysm, cata classic, wille, tier 11, tier 11 guide, tier 11 heroic, cata dps, cata heal, wotlk best dps, cata pve, cata leveling guide, cata leveling, cata pvp, dk, death knight, paladin, warrior, warlock, mage, priest, rogue, druid, hunter, shaman, dragonflight, wow, warcraft, mmorpg, mmo, best mmo, free mmo 2024, best mmorpg, best free mmorpg, best mmo 2024, mmo 2024, osrs, ashes of creation, riot mmo, role playing game, rpg, dungeons and dragons, tabletop, gaming, pc

Id: 0LOQt9iKT80

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024