Ghostcrawler Q&A

I was perusing around MMO-champion.com and I saw that there was a community spotlight on Druids which is basically a question and answer between some dude and Ghostcrawler from the Blizzard staff. Some of the things that were said I found rather interesting.

We are at a little bit of a crossroads with the Tree of Life however. We are currently wondering if druids sacrifice too much just to be as good as a healer as everyone else.

followed by

I’m not saying we would just cut Tree of Life from the game. It’s been around awhile and for better or worse, it’s part of World of Warcraft now. However, we could see taking the druid in a direction where shifting was much more common and easy to do. Maybe you only go into tree form for certain spells but leave for other spells -- this didn’t work previously because of the high cost of shifting, but in the absence of power shifting, we’d love to get rid of the costs completely. Another way to go would be to make Tree of Life form a cooldown, more like Metamorphosis.

I had no idea Blizzard hated ToL so much. The only downside to the form is that it isn't aesthetically pleasing and I can't cast starfire while in Tree form. Besides that I personally don't see any problem with having a specific form to heal in. The ToL hating also seems weird to me since at the very beginning of the Q&A Ghostcrawler mentioned that the most unique thing about druids is our forms. While things aren't going to magically change overnight with Tree of Life it looks like Blizzard is cooking something up in the long haul. Estimated big ass change: 12-15 months.

Here is the most disappointing thing I saw from the Q&A

Tranquility is a fine spell. You can use it in situations where high amounts of damage are coming in on one group. Ultimately, we’d like to get away from the concept of groups within raids, but that’s not super high priority.

False. Just false. Tranquility is NOT a fine spell and it is NOT used in situations where high amounts of damage are coming in on one group. First, the high amounts of damage needs to be the group the druid is in. Second, Rejuv and Wild Growth and Swiftmend allow the druid to gauge who in their group to focus their heals on. Third, Tranquility can ONLY be used in conjunction with Barkskin, otherwise the channel will be reduced and spell will be wasted. Tranquility has so much potential to be good but in its current state it just sucks soooooooooo bad it makes my little tree branches quiver just thinking about it. The changes don't have to be mind blowing either, reduce the cooldown and make it party selectable. End of rant.

What didn't they talk about in their Q&A?
1. Blizzard's inability to make Lifebloom a balanced spell.
2. Nourish is the up and coming star of the Resto tree and with enough buffs (which appear to be 1-2 per major content patch) Druids will become the 4th and final direct healing healer.
3. Regrowth is back to the position of HoT placer on tanks to buff Nourish
4. No mention of Critting HoT's
5. No acknowledgment that we're extremely effective raid healers, perhaps too effective?

I'm sure there are other questions for Ghostcrawler that I'd like answered but morning brain isn't working right now. So a little surprise about ToL and yet another affirmation of disappointment for Tranquility is what i got out of this Q&A with Ghostcrawler about druids.

Here's the link if you want to take a look for yourself:
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/18600870072-class-qa-series-druid.html