Tag: ptr

Patch 7.1.5 PTR Changes

Phaelia in Druid 8 Comments

A few changes were released as Patch 7.1.5 on the PTR on Tuesday. Among those affecting Restoration Druids:

Posted by MMO Champion on Nov 17, 2016
Talents
  • Displacer Beast Teleports you up to 20 yards forward, activating Cat Form and increasing your movement speed by 50% for 4 2 sec.
  • Guardian Affinity You gain: Thick Hide Reduces all damage taken by 10% 6%.
  • Mass Entanglement Roots the target in place for 20 30 sec and spreads to additional nearby enemies. Damage may interrupt the effect. Usable in all shapeshift forms.
  • Moment of Clarity Omen of Clarity now affects the next 3 Regrowths and increases their healing by 15%
Full List of Changes: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2113481-Patch-7-1-5-PTR-Build-23038-Spell-Changes?p=43306382#post43306382

This will be an annoying change to Displacer Beast whose trailing speed increase has never struck me as particularly overpowered and is likely intended as a reduction to PvP performance. The decreased damage reduction associated with Guardian Affinity will be painful for Restoration Druids who choose that affinity for raiding (and is also likely PvP-driven). The change to Moment of Clarity is very nice and may prompt me to forgo Flourish and Stonebark to finally give this talent a try.

And in a surprising change to one of the non-spec-specific Druid-only artifacts, our Legendary chestpiece Ekowraith, Creator of Worlds is getting a buff to the percent bonus of its effect from 50% to 75%. This will affect wearers’ primary ability and the secondary ability derived from their chosen off-spec affinity:

Ability
Spec
Current
Patch 7.1.5+
Astral Influence
Balance
5 to 7.5 yards
5 to 8.75 yards
Feline Swiftness
Feral
15% to 22.5%
15% to 26.25%
Thick Hide
Guardian
6% to 9%
6% to 10.5%
Ysera's Gift
Restoration
3% to 4.5%
3% to 5.25%

May the Legendary Gods smile upon you and grant you good fortune (or may you benefit from what seems like a server glitch and pick up a couple of Legendaries within the same 24-hour period like I did)!

There are many other changes affecting Guardian, Feral, and Balance specs as well as a long list of PvP-specific changes, so be sure to check out the full patch notes over at MMO Champion.

8 Comments

7.1 PTR Changes to Cultivation and Prosperity

Phaelia in Druid 4 Comments

MMO Champion is reporting that two changes affecting the Restoration talents Cultivation and Prosperity were applied to the PTR this week:

Druid Talents
  • Cultivation: When Rejuvenation heals a target below 60% health, it applies Cultivation to the target, healing them for [*60% 72% of Spell Power*] over 6 sec. Restoration Druid – Level 75 Talent.*(please see note below)
  • Prosperity: Swiftmend now has 2 charges, and its cooldown is reduced by 5 3 sec. Restoration Druid – Level 15 Talent.
Source: MMO Champion

This is actually a sizable nerf to Prosperity, one of my favorite talents to use in conjunction with Soul of the Forest. We still benefit from being able to have two charges queued up, but it’s a Swiftmend cooldown reduction decrease of only 10% rather than the current 17%. Interestingly, both the buff to Cultivation and nerf to Prosperity will steer more Restoration Druids away from Soul of the Forest.

PTR Talent Calculator
PTR Talent Calculator

As of today, WoWPopular is listing builds with Prosperity/Soul of the Forest as the most popular of the Restoration Druid specs, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. No doubt this is seen as a problem by developers who want players to have interesting choices and tradeoffs.

Part of the problem is undoubtedly that Cenarion Ward is more useful in 5-man content than raids. Likewise, Cultivation is much more useful in 5-man content where it can actually do some good since your heals aren’t as likely to be sniped by another healer. Unless something is done to make these two options more attractive outside of Heroics/Mythics, I’m afraid this is just a nerf to Restoration Druids, at least for raiding content.

*Note that the percentages for Cultivation listed in the summary on MMO Champion are different than the ones listed in their PTR-datamined tooltip and would actually represent a huge nerf. I think the correct value is probably the 144% in the tooltip (which is an increase over the current value of 120% listed on WoWHead). Someone please correct me if I’m misunderstanding this, however.

4 Comments