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So what do i care most about, cataclysmwise? Well, druids ofc. So ive decided to blog about how theyre looking and how im going to play my druid in cataclysm. Also i am fully aware that i can expect things to change, but i dont care, it just gives me more fuel to theorycraft

Certainly the biggest change to 19 druids will be the arrival of kitty form. If you havent seen my chardevs for it then you wont know that if Beta went live right now that my feral druid would be rolling 76.5 white dps, 1.4k hp, 325ap, 21% haste and between 17 and 21% crit. Not bad huh? especially when you consider that when a kitty druid is on you the only way to get him off will be to kill him since they will be able to get 30% speed increase in cat form and a 25% movement speed debuff when ever they hit with mangle or maul. This means a kitty wont even have to shift out of snares to keep up with you. Ouch. The moves a cat druid will have will be Rake, Prowl, Claw and more importantly Mangle. This is a pretty decent arsenal, though it looks like druids wont really be able to use prowl to its full potential, they will still deal a pretty huge amount of damage. Like i said, bear form also gets mangle, and its got more love than that as well. Maul has had a revamp, its now an instant attack and a much more effective rage dump. In addition to this bear form will now gain attack power from agility, which is a pretty major buff to be sure. At this point you'd be forgiven for thinking "huh, wont they oom though? Bear and Cat Forms require a mortgage to use" however lo and behold, blizzard has even fixed that for us too, it will now cost 5% base mana, about 12 mana, which is negligible. Dont count on being able to oom a feral druid to kill him. Now, the buffs havent stopped there, there is still some good news to dish out. If you spec into feral not only do you get Mangle but you also get a passive buff which increases your attack power by 15%, a passive buff (probably 30%) to your stealth and another passive buff decreasing the cost of Maul, Claw, Rake and Mangle (and swipe) by a set amount of rage and energy, probably by 5. Last, but not least, feral druids get vengeance. This means that when FCing in bear form you could have upto 10% of your health as attack power. How does an extra 200-250 attack power sound boys? nice yeah? It might mean druids become beasts (lol) at static tank FCing if they can at last fight back.

Now, thats a lot of buffs to feral druids, however there are some moves we need a minute of silence to say good bye to. Faerie Fire (feral), Enrage, Swipe and Bash have gone the way of all things flesh, and will no longer be in the bracket. Still, every cloud and all that, we'll be a hell of a lot more use as feral in cata than we are now. We are also losing nature's grasp. This will hurt our FCing somewhat, however i think we'll survive, and tbh i cant say it wasnt a necessary change. Its also worth noting that feral druids will not be able to access Furor. This is potentially a problem, however a skilled kitty, using feral swiftness and infected wounds and resource dumping strategically shouldnt find this too limiting, especially since white attacks are so powerful.

Moving onto the next spec, lets have a look at resto. Now, the decrease of mana cost of bear and cat form will be very handy for resto druids too. Atm, having to switch to bear form due to being snared inside is a huge mana drain, at an excess of 100 mana a pop, though slightly less if you're specced into it. This change will benefit druids somewhat and help with mana issues. The next major buff to resto specced druids is meditation. 50% of our spirit will be converted into mp5 in combat (the 5 second rule is being changed to while in combat). Any mp5 you currently have on gear will be changed to spirit at a ratio of 1:2, so you wont be out of pocket there. This means that resto druids will be rolling in about 40 odd mp5, which is pretty nice i will admit, and it will make spirit finally a viable stat to look at, assuming you go resto instead of balance. Druids are also being given a new spell! We are being given Swiftmend if we spec fully into resto. This is a great spell, and a shock heal will be of great use to a healing druid.

Now, it isnt all plain sailing for resto, we're losing hibernate, nature's grasp and faerie fire (and FF feral). This is sad, though i think we can live with it. Also many of our spells are changing. Not majorly, but enough to make a difference. The mana cost of rejuv and healing touch has gone up by about 50% and the mana cost of regrowth has gone up by 20%. This is not a healthy change for sure, though the changes to mp5 should mean we're still in the green, and will have more effective mana in cata. As far as i can tell since Nourish is changing to a 3 second cast (still a lvl 80 ability though) but having its mana cost drastically reduced this means that healing touch will fill the same niche as Flash Heal or Flash of Light will fill. This means that in situations where alot of healing through put is required druids will not be too badly off, since although it is a 3second cast they have hots active on the target, and some interupts in the bracket are being taken away, so i dont anticipate this being too much of a problem. Also the current MMO tooltip is saying that Regrowth has a base case time of 1.5 seconds(the MMO write up disagrees though), and i have a feeling that its healing is being increased slightly, however im not sure. This is good news, since it will mean we can still get a direct heal off fast, and chain healing can be done with healing touch, and if we need it we have the shock heal of Swiftmend to patch up any holes. Rejuv will be pretty much the same as before, and it should still be your first heal to be used. Also, the restoration talents that we would have to spec into if we wanted to get Swiftmend and Meditation seem pretty lackluster. We could get a 9% buff to rejuv but we'd have to waste half our points in almost pointless filler talents. Still, a resto druid resouce dumping in cat using furor could be semi decent damage.

Now I'm going to move onto some really fun stuff. Balance is looking really interestng and inticing at the moment. First off we will have access to starfire. Along with prowl this could be some pretty powerful burst. Balance can also spec into Nature's Grace, so a babyboomkin with enough crit could, in theory, produce some pretty big numbers. Druids that spec into balance also get a new spell. Starsurge (there is some confusion in MMO about this, however i am confident that they intend to give this to us. I also found a quote on cata.wowhead saying that balance druids get it at lvl 10 on beta) is a 2 second cast that causes damage roughly about 30-40% more than a starfire and knocks the target to the ground, for how long, i dont know. It has a 15 second cooldown though. Still 15 seconds isnt too long, and the potential for it is pretty big. Depending on how long the stun is it could be pretty useful in messing up enemy healers or just in nuking any enemy. Wrath has had its cast time increased to 2.5 seconds, which will hurt us pretty bad, though it does mean that it will scale better with sp, and with starlight wrath and nature's grace some cast time problems will be lifted. Also a lot more crit and secondary stats will be about in cata, meaning we can reforge them into haste, so hopefully that will helpsomewhat too. Its also worth mentioning that moonfire spam is being buffed in deep balance which might mean that its base direct damage might be buffed aswell. Keep your fingers crossed.

Now, that was all nice info, most of it, however the really nice stuff is just to come. Some of you may have seen the proposed ret paladin mastery of Divine Purpose where they gained 1% max mana per second, and thought "OMG, thats fecking OP!". Well you would have been right, but now druid lovers prepare to cream, since balance druids get Dreamstate built in where we get 3% maximum mana per 2 seconds. This means that balance druids will have near limitless mana. A balance druid with 1500 mana would have 112 mp5. That is an obscene amount, its a huge amount more than a cata resto druid would have and its about 7 times the amount of mp5 my resto druid has atm in patch 3.3.5, and my druid has as much mp5 as he can get with out being gimped. To put this into perspective, one point of int for a balance druid will produce nearly the same amount of mp5 as a point of spirit for a resto druid, but it will also produce spell power, so a balance druid can be more liberal with his stats and mess about with haste and crit while a resto has to find a balance of both int for sp and spirit for mp5 before he can take a look at other stats. A balance druid would be free to gear for as much crit and haste as he liked with that kind of mana return. This means that im gonna screw resto and swiftmend! Im going balance to heal, gearing crit and haste and making the best of having crit and haste innately affecting HoTs and making the best of Nature's Grace. As well as being a great healer, a balance druid would have great offensive capabilites with starsurge and nature's grace spam. If you dont cream to that theres something wrong with you

All in all cataclysm is looking incredibly strong for druids. R.I.P. my warrior, however my druid will get more love than ever before in cataclysm. My shaman will be parked for good (even more than it is atm) and my lock thrown back on hold. The only downside with druids being so strong in cata is imbalance, which does worry me abit, but i guess we'll have to see how it turns out. So far the only class that will worry me as a druid is an elemental shaman, though with this kind of either mana return or damage output they shouldnt be a huge problem.