Another beta build, another disappointment

From MMO Champion

At the start of BC, I was super excited to play a tree. We got tree form! We had a brand new spell to play with! Our old spells were getting buffs and we wouldn't just spam Healing Touch anymore! At the start of Wrath, I was similarly excited. Lifebloom got a nerf (it needed one), but tree form was losing its root effect! We were getting a flash heal, one that interacted with our other heals. I love heal interactions! But Cata's announcements and subsequent beta talents just haven't lit my fire this time around. I know the talent trees are still in flux, but right now they are really, really underwhelming.

I figure I'm probably jumping the gun in my negative reaction to the current resto druid beta talent tree, but it seems like nothing is changing and there really, really needs to be some changes made. The resto tree is generally lackluster, with very little in the way of talent choices. In fact, there's a tier or two where you don't really have a choice at all (and I'm not just talking about Furor). There aren't enough actual talents to make the choices meaningful, which Blizz has stated is their goal. Yes, there will be talents that every tree will pick up, but there will also be a few talents to add flavor to your build. Right now there's not much flavor.

The first and second tiers are the biggest offenders as far as talents you have no choice about. I think it's been said many times, but making Furor a resto talent, when it provides no bonus to a rest druid, is sorta silly. I can see that it's there to provide a hook for ferals and boomkin to get deeper into the tree, but I feel like it needs to offer something more than feral and balance options in order for it to stay in our protracted talent trees. Natural Shapeshifter is similarly offering us very little of interest in a world where our shapeshifting ability has a three-minute cooldown. It seems to me that Perseverence is more of a tanking talent, unless Blizz is looking to make healers more resilient. Which may be the case, but it doesn't excite me as much as a tree as it does as a bear. I think adding more ranks to Master Shapeshifter wouldn't be a bad way to make that tier feel less full of useless but mandatory talents. Likewise, Empowered Rejuv doesn't feel all that different from Improved Rejuv. I like talents that do things, rather than talents that push me toward using one spell over another (not that I don't like Rejuv; I'd still use it without talents that augment it).

This is part of what I'm talking about that the talent choices aren't meaningful. Yes, these spells increase HoT ticks and Rejuv ticks, respectively, but what about making Rejuv act differently in different situations? A cooldown that spreads Rejuv to everyone in an Efflorescence, for example, would be interesting and add something to our healing toolbox that's not just more healing. I recall that one of Blizz's stated goals for the new talent trees is to remove or enhance the talents that were just +damage or +healing. There are a lot of talents still in the resto tree that are just +healing and that's not exciting. If I'm only getting a talent point every other level, it should mean something. I'm willing to get behind the concept if Blizz is willing to make talents more fun.

Even the balance talents we can reach aren't all that great. Nature's Splendor doesn't seem to exist at all anymore. I am dearly in love with this talent, giving us a very solid purpose behind taking balance talents while still providing moonkin with some utility. Now the only reason to get into the balance tree is because nothing in the feral tree is useful. In the second tier of balance, we have to choose between increased healing or reduced mana cost. We can't get both because they're both three-point talents. Or we can spec into hit. Personally, I'm not loving those choices, either.

Now, this rant is pretty ranty, especially since what I hear coming out of beta is a LOT of unfinished content and talents and broken quests. It doesn't sound like a complete, or even near-complete, product. But we've gone three or so rounds of new talent trees and I'm not seeing big changes happening to resto. And I think big changes are needed, or at least enough small changes to seem big. Playing a tree is awesome, and I'm willing to give Blizz a shot at this new lack-of-treeform thing so long as they're willing to give me stuff that makes me excited to play again, the same as I've felt at the beginning of each new expansion.