Burning Crusade Classic Feral Druid Energy Change Coming With Regional Restarts

TBC Posted 2021/06/28 at 8:17 PM by perculia

Blizzard

Feral Druids now receive 20 Energy every 2 seconds, and their Energy should never get a partial tick outside of that 2-second loop.

Developers' note: With careful timing, Cat Druids should be able to receive their full 20 Energy regeneration tick immediately after shifting.

Team ratings should now more closely follow personal rating changes on Arena teams.

TLDR: We’re bringing back WoW Classic Feral Druid powershifting by moving Druid Energy regeneration to the constant 2-second slow tick loop. Cat Druids will receive 20 Energy every 2 seconds, their Energy will never get a partial tick outside of that 2-second loop, and with careful timing, they can receive their full 20 energy regeneration tick immediately after shifting. We’ve been discussing Druid Energy regeneration a lot the last few weeks. There has been a great deal of community discussion about it on every channel and platform that we read and listen to, and that discussion started almost immediately after we implemented the Burning Crusade Classic power regeneration change first introduced in patch 2.2.0. At that point in the original Burning Crusade, the game would grant a partial tick of regeneration whenever any regeneration rates changed, and it would reset their regeneration clock, so the next tick would happen about 2 seconds later. While this improves some abilities like Evocation, it has the side effect of removing a Druid’s ability to time their shapeshift into Cat form immediately before a regeneration tick to order to quickly receive 20 Energy.That playstyle, often called “powershifting”, was greatly missed by some players.As we’ve worked on this, one of the people we spoke with was the original systems designer who requested the change to energy regeneration. Those conversations have made it clear that the patch 2.2.0 regeneration change in late 2007 was not intended as a nerf to Druids. It’s therefore a pretty solid case of change results not matching up with design intent. In a #somechanges world, we think it’s important to consider both the original intent and the original execution of changes, and this looks like an example where version 2.4.3 (the patch that Burning Crusade Classic 2.5.1 is based on) exhibits a behavior that was unintended at the time. We can see that both Druids and the energy regeneration system were changed again in patch 3.0.2.Our implementation of the authentic regeneration behavior, combined with the removal of spell batching, has caused a persistent timing issue for Druids and we’d like to try a straightforward solution. With a hotfix that we’ve now deployed to our PTR environment, we’re testing moving Druid Energy regeneration back to a 2-second cycle that is unaffected by regeneration rate changes.This should result in Cat Druids receiving Energy at a more constant rate, and additionally, Druids can once again powershift by timing their shapeshifts to optimize their Energy use. After this change, Druids should (almost) never receive less than 20 Energy in a single regen tick.Thanks for reading, and thank you for all of your feedback on this.

Comment by TristanyEvery single feral tank cares, since they play cat on fights there is no need for two tanks.Comment by ShadowBerryHere's hoping this also makes it so that rogues gain 20 energy instead of 19 to 21 every tick.Comment by Boatermilkwho even cares about these cats?
Just focus on more important classes, there is like only 1% of the playerbase that plays themI careComment by InternDHAll the salty warriors that got used to being top dog in Classic now crying at the size of their shrinking... Capabilities. Keep trash talking, doesn't change the fact nobody wants you in their raid anymore :DComment by monsieurp2t
Prot Warriors are absolutely useless in TBC. Worse survivability, worse threat, impossible to offtank as.Comment by casonatorHurray! I never knew I missed it so much until I played my kitty today.Comment by BearknucklesFeral cat is the worst dps spec right now, this change means like a 5% dps boost but the rotation will be fun again and you are mad about it.

Loving the tears.Comment by xoeeA min-max Guild will probably drop the warrior MT in favour of a bear T5 onwards, they just get so good as the content progresses.Comment by Time4PizzaNow correct me if I’m wrong…

While this is an improvement over the current system, Blizzard is still removing the “partial tick” that ferals had in the original TBC. The partial tick, that extra 4 energy, is what allowed shred to flow seamlessly.

The change as stated will certainly speed up feral DPS, which is great, but I’m not so sure there will be smooth flow to the feral rotation without the partial tick.

Just two cents from someone who didn’t play a feral back in ‘08.Comment by BearknucklesNow correct me if I’m wrong…

While this is an improvement over the current system, Blizzard is still removing the “partial tick” that ferals had in the original TBC. The partial tick, that extra 4 energy, is what allowed shred to flow seamlessly.

The change as stated will certainly speed up feral DPS, which is great, but I’m not so sure there will be smooth flow to the feral rotation without the partial tick.

Just two cents from someone who didn’t play a feral back in ‘08.Comment by SilverSapphireA min-max Guild will probably drop the warrior MT in favour of a bear T5 onwards, they just get so good as the content progresses.Comment by dartworthEvery single feral tank cares, since they play cat on fights there is no need for two tanks.Comment by KingMurlocDevelopers' note: With careful timing, Cat Druids should be able to receive their full 20 Energy regeneration tick immediately after shifting.
Alright, huge change here.
1) Install energy timer addon.
2) Bind your catform to mouse wheeling.
3) Get Furor
4) Wheel your mouse just before the energy tick to set your energy to 60, w/o loosing energy tick time.
What does it give?
You can spend 1 GCD and mana to get 40 additional energy for your bar, presuming it was 0, w/o sacrificing anything else. (maybe reseting attack swing timer, bit it is is 1second, so...)Comment by NerdEggheadDevelopers' note: With careful timing, Cat Druids should be able to receive their full 20 Energy regeneration tick immediately after shifting.
Alright, huge change here.
1) Install energy timer addon.
2) Bind your catform to mouse wheeling.
3) Get Furor
4) Wheel your mouse just before the energy tick to set your energy to 60, w/o loosing energy tick time.
What does it give?
You can spend 1 GCD and mana to get 40 additional energy for your bar, presuming it was 0, w/o sacrificing anything else. (maybe reseting attack swing timer, bit it is is 1second, so...)