Druid’s three trees changed in three different directions. Feral Combat gained seven talents and turned into a tree with an actual rotation. Restoration moved its two best-known buttons and stopped one of them from eating the heal it uses. Balance swapped five talents out and five in, and one of them arrived from another tree entirely.
51 talents against Era’s 47, 23 of them changed in tier, rank count or prerequisite. Game data from build 1.60.1.69913 against Era 1.15.9.69722. The trees are in the Druid calculator.
Feral Combat has a rotation now
Seven of Feral’s nineteen talents are not in the Era tree, and they line up into something the Classic version does not have.
Primal Bite is the 16-point talent: 100% normal damage plus 26 at rank 1.
Rend and Tear (5 ranks) adds 2% to 10% damage to melee abilities against a bleeding target.
Berserk is the 31-point talent: for 15 sec, Mangle hits up to three targets with no cooldown, your combo-point abilities gain 100% critical strike chance, and you are immune to Fear.
King of the Jungle (3 ranks) makes Tiger’s Fury grant 20 to 60 Energy on use.
Natural Reaction (5 ranks) gives 1% to 5% dodge and a 20% to 100% chance of 5 Rage on every dodge.
Predatory Instincts (2 ranks) adds 10% or 20% melee critical damage.
Feral Charge is the 11-point talent, and Feral Charge becomes an ability at level 20.
Two existing talents were rewritten to feed the same engine.
Blood Frenzy keeps the Bear Form rage on critical strikes and now also gives Cat Form combo-point abilities a chance at an extra point on a critical strike.
Furor used to give a flat 40 Energy on shifting into Cat Form; in Forever it returns the Energy you had when you last left Cat Form, plus 10 per second spent out of forms, up to 100.
Lacerate arrives as a new ability at 42 with ranks at 50 and 58, and
Shredding Attacks, renamed from Improved Shred, takes Rage off it as well as Energy off Shred.
Swiftmend does not eat the heal any more
In Era, Swiftmend is the 31-point Restoration talent and it consumes the Rejuvenation or Regrowth it heals from. In Forever it is the 16-point talent, and its text no longer mentions consuming anything: it heals for the full duration of the periodic effect and leaves it running.
The 31-point slot went to
Wild Growth, a new ability at 40 with ranks at 50 and 60 that heals the target and their party for 280 over 7 sec, front-loaded.
Gift of the Earthmother at the 11-point row takes 0.5 sec off the global cooldown of Rejuvenation, Swiftmend and Wild Growth, and
Living Spirit (3 ranks) adds 5% to 15% Spirit.
Naturalist, Era’s Improved Healing Touch, keeps the 0.5 sec cast reduction and now adds 5% to all the damage you deal, which is unusual for a healing-tree talent.
Balance traded five for five
Insect Swarm moved out of Restoration and into Balance, at the 16-point row, and its ability rows moved with it: in Era they sit in the Restoration line, in Forever the Balance line. Insect Swarm itself deals 48 Nature damage over 12 sec at rank 1 against Era’s 66.
Joining it:
Genesis (5 ranks, 1% to 5% on all your periodic damage and healing),
Nature's Majesty (2 ranks of critical strike chance for spells and melee alike),
Nature's Splendor at the 11-point row (3 sec on Moonfire and Rejuvenation, 6 on Regrowth, 2 on Insect Swarm) and
Eclipse (3 ranks: Wrath shortens your next two Starfires).
Moonkin Form was rebuilt: its aura reaches 45 yards rather than 30, it gives critical strike chance rather than spell critical chance, it makes Omen of Clarity trigger twice as often, and it is now explicitly exclusive with
Leader of the Pack.
Nature's Grace changed from taking 0.5 sec off your next spell to giving 10% casting speed and 10% off the global cooldown for 3 sec after any non-periodic critical.
The three trees in numbers
| Tree | Talents | Ranks | Era talents | Not in the Era tree | In Era, not here | 16-point talent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balance | 16 | 46 | 16 | 5 | 5 | |
| Feral Combat | 19 | 51 | 16 | 7 | 4 | |
| Restoration | 16 | 51 | 15 | 4 | 3 |
Four talents wear a new name
| Era | Forever | Tree |
|---|---|---|
| Improved Nature’s Grasp | Balance | |
| Feline Swiftness | Feral Combat | |
| Improved Shred | Feral Combat | |
| Improved Healing Touch | Restoration |
Same name, different effect
| Talent | Tree | Era | Forever |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feral Combat | +1 sec on Bash and Pounce stuns | The same, and 30 sec off the Bash cooldown | |
| Feral Combat | +20% Intellect, Stamina and Strength | +10% Intellect, +20% Stamina in bear, +10% Strength in cat | |
| Feral Combat | +15% bear threat and Prowl detection, 5 ranks | +30% Swipe damage and Prowl detection worth 3 levels, 3 ranks | |
| Feral Combat | +20% to Claw, Rake, Maul and Swipe | +10%, with Shred added to the list | |
| Feral Combat | +10% armour from items, 5 ranks | Base armour per level and per point of defence skill in any form including Moonkin, 3 ranks | |
| Balance | Range on a named list of six spells | Range on all offensive Balance spells, and up to +4% chance to hit | |
| Balance | +10% Moonfire damage and crit over 5 ranks | The same +10% over 2 ranks | |
| Balance | +65% chance for Nature’s Grasp to entangle, 4 ranks | +1 or +2 simultaneous Entangling Roots targets, 2 ranks, no Nature’s Grasp prerequisite | |
| Balance | 100% chance to avoid interruption while casting Entangling Roots | +75% Entangling Roots damage, and its victims absorb up to 75% more damage before it breaks | |
| Restoration | −20% threat from healing spells, 5 ranks | −30% threat from Nature and Arcane spells, 3 ranks | |
| Restoration | Tranquility threat | The same, plus 60% off its cooldown |
The spellbook
22 Druid abilities read differently. The behaviour changes:
| Ability | Era | Forever |
|---|---|---|
| 35% chance per hit, outdoors only, 1 charge | The next melee attack that strikes you, castable while shapeshifted, no outdoor restriction | |
| 15% of health and mana | A flat 70 health and 135 mana at rank 1, and it now has five ranks up to level 60 | |
| 27 flat damage at rank 1 | 110% normal damage plus 27 | |
| 225% damage plus 54 | 155% damage plus 54 | |
| +40 attack power plus Agility | +12 attack power plus Agility | |
| +20 health | +180 health | |
| +25 armour for 30 min at rank 1 | +34 armour for 60 min |
The Balance and healing tables came down in the same pass:
Starfire rank 1 deals 73 to 89 against Era’s 89 to 109,
Healing Touch rank 3 heals 179 to 223 against 195 to 243.
What left the trees
Balance lost the Nature’s Grasp talent (the ability stays, with its six ranks from level 10) plus Natural Weapons, Natural Shapeshifter (which moved to Restoration), Improved Thorns and Omen of Clarity. Feral lost Feral Aggression, Feral Charge (Bear), Blood Frenzy and Faerie Fire (Feral). Restoration lost Improved Mark of the Wild, Improved Enrage and Insect Swarm, which moved to Balance.
Two of those are worth pausing on.
Omen of Clarity and Faerie Fire (Feral) are both still in the beta build and still attached to their skill lines, but they have no talent any more and the class list gives them no level. Moonkin Form’s own text still refers to Omen of Clarity.
Beta state
The beta cap is 20, rising to 30 later (Blizzard: Beta Now Live). Feral Charge at 20 is the only one of the new abilities a beta character can reach; Mangle, Berserk, Wild Growth and Lacerate are all above the cap, and 11 talent points do not reach the 16-point row.
Nothing Druid-specific appears in Blizzard’s Known Issues thread for September 17. Skyborne can be Druids in both factions, with “new Skyborne druid forms” (Blizzard: Deep Dive Panel Recap); the forms themselves are covered in the Skyborne guide.
Not settled yet
Coming soon How a Forever Druid gets
Omen of Clarity and Faerie Fire (Feral). Both spells are in the beta build with no talent and no learning level, so we cannot say whether they are trained, baseline, or simply left over.
Coming soon The exact wording of Feral Charge and Berserk. Both talents’ texts in this build carry unresolved form requirements, and Berserk’s also contains a typo in the game’s own text, so we are quoting only the parts that resolve.
That these trees are the ones a Forever character spends points in is our reading of the beta build, not something we have confirmed in game. The reasoning is in Forever talent trees.
Changelog
1- First version, from the game data of build 1.60.1.69913 compared with Era 1.15.9.69722.
