Wildstalker
Wildstalker Season 3 Tier Set Bonuses- Druid Wildstalker 11.2 Class Set 2pc - The rate at which Bloodseeker Vines grow is increased by 40%. Tiger's Fury causes Bloodseeker Vines to grow on up to 3 valid nearby enemies.
- Druid Wildstalker 11.2 Class Set 4pc - Bloodseeker Vines have a 20% chance to trigger Bursting Growth every 2 seconds at 100% effectiveness. Each stack of Bloodseeker Vines on an enemy increases Bursting Growth damage taken by 30%.
Implementation & GameplayThis tier set has no gameplay impact, much like our baseline hero talents. Unfortunately, there aren't many ways to add gameplay to something so passive.
As far as implementation goes it's got some peculiarities. Currently, it will only proc vines on targets with rip or rake; this is a bit weird for AOE. Typically, on AOE, you want to cast Tiger's Fury BEFORE your Primal Wrath, to snapshot it. With the way this set works, you'll have to swap that ordering around, which will be awkward. It's also a little odd that the Tiger's Fury proc off the 2pc will exclusively proc on multiple targets, I think it might be slightly more compelling if it procs all three vines regardless of target count.
The 4pc works pretty much exactly as you'd expect, the Bursting Growth damage increase is target-specific, like the 2pc its also entirely passive.
Strength & ContentI think it's clear that this set bonus is intended to shore up Wildstalker in AOE, the area in which it struggles the most at the moment. It is clearly much stronger in AOE than single target, in fact on single target I think it may be slightly undertuned, it's hard to evaluate how strong set bonuses are intended to be with the wildly variable tuning we're seeing at the moment but I don't think it's current iteration would have fairly mediocre tuning for a normal tier set season.
FeedbackI think it's a shame that the set bonus is entirely passive. I understand why it is because there's just not a lot of space in Wildstalker as a hero talent to have interesting active choices or decision making. The hero talent is, unfortunately, just completely passive. This is very much a tier set that I hope gets carried forward, it's essentially fixing a core problem with the hero talent itself, I've talked before about how Wildstalker's main problem is that various nodes don't really fulfil the fantasy or the intention of the tree, this tier set fixes a lot of those problems.
Druid of the Claw
Druid of the Claw Season 3 Tier Set BonusesImplementation & GameplayThis tier set has no gameplay impact, again, much like the baseline hero talent. Druid of the Claw has some minimal gameplay (largely around trying to force Ravage procs), that gameplay doesn't go away, and it's encouraged further, but the tier set itself has no real gameplay impact.
Implementation-wise, this is much more interesting; there are so many peculiarities of how it might work, and many of them aren't how I would intuitively expect it to function. I would expect it to function as a clone of the Ravage you cast, so if you cast a 2 combo point Ravage with Bloodtalons, you'll echo a 2 combo point Ravage with Bloodtalons, so essentially "snapshotting" your buff status, your combo points, your energy status, even your stats. Currently, it snapshots some status effects and acts dynamically with others.
Combo points and energy are snapshotted, but things like Stats, whether or not you were in Berserk, or Tiger's Fury are dynamic. It also acts dynamically with Bloodtalons and consumes additional stacks. It's also doing something peculiar with Saber Jaws that we haven't worked out. Being Talented in Saber Jaws is causing it to do much less damage than we'd expect it to do. Coiled to the Spring also appears to be applying to the Echo always, regardless of whether it was present for the initial hit.
It also can't store or chain echoes, I.e. if you Ravage, it Echoes, you Shred in Berserk and proc another Ravage, Ravage again, that second Ravage will be unable to proc the Echo.
Strength & ContentThis set bonus looks pretty equitable between M+ and Raid, it's got a lot of theoretical ST strength, particularly in CDs and a lot of AOE strength. It's impossible to evaluate how strong it's supposed to be because of the contrasts between how we'd expect it to work and how it currently works, is it supposed to be able to store echoes? How is it supposed to interact with our various talents and buffs.
FeedbackIt's a shame that the set bonus has such minimal gameplay impact, again there's not a lot of space in the hero tree for meaningful gameplay, though I think that there's a bit more than Wildstalker, it once again feels like a tier set that builds on the core of the tier set and feels like something that should be built in rather than a tierset that enhances it.
Wildstalker vs. Druid of the Claw
Both of the tier sets are entirely passive with minimal to no gameplay impact. Usually, this is fine; they're at least fun and sound powerful. I do wish at least one of them had meaningful gameplay impact, but Feral's hero talents, in general, are so passive and non-interactive that this is hard to design for. It's currently hard to judge the strength of either of them. Wildstalker looks to be on the weaker end, while Druid of the Claw could be very strong, or it could also be on the weaker end, depending on how the various interactions play out.
Druid of the Claw looks remarkably content agnostic, while Wildstalker looks very heavily skewed towards M+, I'm very hopeful that we'll get to play Wildstalker in M+ as that's not really been optimal once yet this expansion and as they say variety is the spice of Life!
I think that both of these tiers could be improved a lot with visuals; currently, both Bursting Vines and the Echo effect have minimal to no visual payoff, simply giving Bursting Growth a more visiblly stand out effect would make it much more compelling, much like the Echo effect, maybe have a ghost cat pop in and bite the target.
