So what I am going to do, from now on, is basically write up zones as soon as I have finished them and/or topics of feedback and then every week, maybe a friday or something, go and fish around and put together the composition screenshots so the posts look prettier, the feedback overall is more crisp and actually some things make more sense for other viewers (LIKE THERE ARE ANY).
Ok, so tonight is going to be a very busy write up for me, Yesterday I finished the Northern Barrens (although 1 level short of 20, not sure why or if I missed some quests, but regardless). So I have around 6-7 posts incoming tonight with Northern Barrens and Northern Durotar Feedback.
Firstly though, some feedback on the Druid Specialisations you are presented with at level 10.
When dinging you are greeted with the UNLOCK FEATURE: TALENTS, on that little animation thing, quite cool I think, and like on live the talent button on the bar starts flickering when you ding to indicate you should click it.
When clicked you are prompted to choose your specialisation, you are presented with a summary of the specialisation spells and the signature spell in the middle, you can also view the talent trees by clicking the button saying "VIEW TALENT TREES"
Some comments on this generic feature.. GOOD :), overall, perhaps revolve a class quest around choosing your specialisation. (If a class quest has a place in wow I really think one based on choosing your specialisation would be great).
If we move onto the Druid specifics of the specialisations, we obviously have the 3 trees: Balance, Feral and Resto.
As Balance we get the ability Starsurge, a new ability in cataclysm, that does arcane/fire damage (can't remember the precise term used) and is going to be essential for generating eclipse procs by moving the eclipse bar by 10 each way.
We also get dreamstate to increase mana-regen for the spec and I think the last point is the eclipse bar, but it might be spell pushback for wrath,starfire etc. Whatever it is, its baked in stuff thats good for Balance Druids :).
Overall I think these are decent spells, can't argue with the smaller passive spells at all, definitly completely mandatory talents you would have to take anyway, so it's nice to have them baked into the specialisation.
As for the signature move, I'm a little half/half right now. Obviously I haven't played as a Moonkin on the Beta so I've no idea how crucial starsurge is to the rotation, Presumably it will work like you want to use it on cooldown, and inbetween you will want to proc eclipse with wrath and then move to spamming starfire as much as possible without triggering a solar eclipse early etc.
So I mean, there are arguments for and against it, It will be a signature ability of the balance druid, but I mean, when you think balance you think BOOMKIN, so I would really think moonkin form should be the specialised form, considering blizzard wants to appeal that resto is the spec without the dedicated form. I feel like boomkin should be given at level 10, and starsurge a talent in boomkins place.
However opposing this view is the fact that balance become very accustomed to the eclipse bar and starsurge mechanics from level 10 onwards, but I just feel that boomkin would be just so much more iconic as a specialisation ability.
Onto Feral Druids, we get some passive modifiers, (reducing rage/energy costs, 15% more damage and stuff), the vengeance mechanic for all tanks for bears. Pretty much most trees I think these passive stuff are good things, that you WOULD take and are rather boring talents.
The signature ability of Feral druids is mangle, definitely the right choice here in terms of both levelling progression and the fact that it has good crossover between tanking and dpsing. I mean the only other ability they could have used was like.. berserk, and a cooldown is something I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WANT as a signature move, I mean a cooldown is almost always attrocious for levelling, because using it on mobs that die in like 5 seconds always feels superfluous. Obviously an ability that has a cooldown is fine, if it does damage and is like less than 30 seconds, but beyond that I always feel that a cooldown is like something you feel like you want to save and things die to quickly for the cooldown to be useful.
Lastly we have Resto, again the minor passives are good for the tree. However, I disagree with Swiftmend being the signature ability. I disagree with it because it has no damage output, I mean it accomplishes nothing to help soloing for levelling. Whilst I do agree that this is probably the best thing that druids could get as a signature ability, I feel like that it could be so much more awesome like if say it could also consume a moonfire on the target to do instant damage. I don't know if this sort of change would have pvp balance issues, however in terms of making resto more level friendly, this change to swiftmend would be awesome imo.
So finally onto my choice: I picked Feral (if it wasn't obvious by the screens :)) because well I think its much easier to level as feral compared to say balance, I don't really like casters so much because they always feel so much more vulnerable if you multipull.
I also chose it for the 30% movement speed increase you get as feral constantly, however I might add that actually feral has felt extremely weak when playing through northern barrens, having to swap out of cat form multiple times to heal and basically dying to any sort of chain pulling, where you just take too much damage. I may switch to balance for the next 10 levels or so to see if it feels stronger and isn't too bad mana wise.
I also want to test out the new eclipse bar, which I obviously haven't tried out yet :).
Anyway, moving on to the Northern Durotar write-up
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