When I reported this morning that the Restoration Druid arena sets were having their four-piece bonus changed from +15% outdoor movement speed to -0.25 sec to Healing Touch casting time, many druids were, reasonably, upset. Perhaps you will be pleased to learn that in the next PTR build, the bonus is being changed again, this time to -0.2 sec to Regrowth casting time. Furthermore, the Feral four-piece bonus (movement speed increase) will now apply to Cheetah again (source). Are you druids mollified now?This is another good example of the progressive testing nature of patch 2.4. Sure, the blues always say "don't panic, it's testing, it might change" when people complain about things on the PTRs, but more often than not the initial PTR changes survive largely intact into the live patch. Not so in this patch so far, which is good if you ask me. I like to see Blizz take player feedback more seriously, since sometimes we do indeed know what we're talking about.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-15-2008 @ 3:52PM
Buuty said...
So I guess since no one plays Shaman anymore BLizzard won't be making any desperately needed buffs t the shaman class. What a dumb proposal.....class that test gets changes.....
Don't they realize that their gimping of the Shaman has caused many many peole not to play theirs...so why would BLizz see and complaints in the PTR is no one is playing Shaman?
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2-15-2008 @ 3:59PM
Roboticus said...
I heard of a bot program once called Shaman-Instinct that auto-replies to any blog post with a randomly generated "Why Haven't They Fixed Shamans Yet?" post. The program even works when the original blog post doesn't have anything to do with Shamans!
2-15-2008 @ 6:11PM
Arturis said...
As #postreply.username# was saying, why don't they fix the Shaman class yet? It's not like they ar-
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2-15-2008 @ 7:36PM
my2cents said...
I think the reason he's bringing up the Shaman class is that Blizzard yet again appears to be ignoring Shaman while quickly fixing any other class "boo boos" that might frustrate players who play classes such as Druids.
I would imagine the class discussions at Blizz go about like this:
"Oh no! The overreprestented (in arena), wonderfully balanced Druids are slightly upset. Fix it! Oh yeah and what about that 3 year running Shaman Problem?
"Meh who cares. Just give them a new icon or something."
It's almost comical at this point.
2-15-2008 @ 4:11PM
Snarl said...
Well, it has been an interesting day on the Druid forums, I will say that. Massive amounts of trolling, crying, and a petition that actually got a response made for an interesting read at work. Heck, once the dust clears the results may be viewed as not half bad: abandonned nerf to ferals, buff to moonkins, and 2v2 nerf but small 5v5 buff to restos.
BTW, I think we could have done without the "Are you druids mollified now?" comment Mr. Hecht.
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2-15-2008 @ 4:11PM
Ruby said...
I want my fast travel form back.
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2-15-2008 @ 4:13PM
blitzkrieg999 said...
Blizzard is starting to act like Dynamix did back in the day. You keep listening to every whiner that posts on the forums, you will disenfranchise a lot of people with constant changes and unfocused balancing.
Pick a f#$(&*ing change and stick to it. You'll never please everyone, so stop trying!
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2-15-2008 @ 4:17PM
Blackfish said...
I think it's important to remember that they're making these changes on the PTR. So that when whatever they decide on makes it into the public realms, they can stick with it. Hopefully.
2-15-2008 @ 4:19PM
Pzychotix said...
The problem with the previous change was that it helped NO ONE.
-0.25 seconds off Healing Touch is a horrible bonus that no druid wanted to see. Every druid was horrified that we got that bonus. If you knew anything about druid healing, we will never cast HT outside of a Nature's Swiftness macro, which gives us instant cast speed. There's also the fact that no one specs for faster HTs, so this bonus would still be, by and large, useless.
2-15-2008 @ 4:34PM
Naix said...
Please fix Priests crappy 4 set bonus. We wish we had +healing or +stam. Just not the crappy 2 sec reduced lolbubble.
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2-15-2008 @ 4:38PM
Fenom said...
if i was still playing my druid i'd be so pissed about this change, -0.2s on regrowth is still stupid, when you use regrowth, it's because you know you have plenty of time anyway, so much time that you don't need to reduce the cast time, if you were so pressed on time you'd just be lifeblooming, rejuvenating, swiftmending, and running away with your speed bonus
and now resto druids can't run flags either
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2-15-2008 @ 4:40PM
Gyondas said...
This new change is even worse.
Bloodlusted Healing Touches might have a place in 5s. A good resto druid does not use Regrowth very often at all. He gets lifebloom and rejuvenation up on the target and cyclones or roots the DPS.
Not to mention Regrowth costs 845 mana for a 2k heal, 3k if it crits; and if you spam it, you overwrite the HoT portion.
Make the 4-piece bonus that Rejuvenation now blooms as well, so we don't get destroyed as easily in 5s by dispel trains.
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2-15-2008 @ 4:49PM
Fizzed said...
They replaced a useless bonus with a mostly useless bonus. Nope, not mollified.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy they listened to the druid community...but they still didn't get it right.
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2-15-2008 @ 7:40PM
callenn said...
I do not want to lose the speed bonus, it helps with escapability and flag running. If I have to loose it then give some plus stats. Faster regrowth is utterly worthless unless they make it instant.
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2-15-2008 @ 11:19PM
censorman said...
I got banned for making a post which used profanity in the title, on the shaman forums. Sure, sure, no reason to QQ with bad words, BUT the point was to show how long it took for CMs to ban me.
It took 3.5 hours. The post got to 5 pages and over 1500 views. Atleast a few people now know just how little Blizz reads the shaman thread.
oh wait....they have the 'how can we fix your class' thread, right. Ok. Whew. Cause they surely read all that, we aren't wasting our time at all.....
thank god Death Knights are our out.
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