Druid AA master wishlist

This article is not meant for discussing the AAs themselves but rather to present proposed AAs in an orderly fashion so that developers and community leaders can refer to it. I will do my best to merge other ideas into the main list.

Some guidelines by the big man himself:
 * If an ability has a recast time shorter than 5 minutes, it's likely better served as a spell. Of course there are exceptions, but that's pretty much a guideline.
 * No refresh time on a spell can get any faster than 50% of its original cast time, no matter how much you want it.
 * Crit Chance likely is never going to be upgraded again.
 * Slows just aren't happening. We're not going to make them better.
 * "It's about time", "It's only fair", and "We've asked for it for X years" are NOT valid reasons for getting something.
 * Just because you ask for it, doesn't mean it's going to happen.

Also, I tried to give each of my ideas (some of them pretty wild I admit) an appropriate name, a kind of in-game description, a more elaborate description of what the AA is supposed to do and finally a separate short explanation what I hope to achieve for the class with that AA. I would appreciate if other ideas follow the same general outline (not that I would reject any idea just because it does not. After all having a list like this is useful but I am not a moderator nor a class leader and I am not qualified to judge ideas).

Eri

Summon Grove
Activatable AA (requires a reagent)

Summons a stationary pet (preferably invulnerable) represented by a ghostly circle of trees surrounding the target location. This pet has a short range aura that either affects group members within range (i.e. within the graphics) permanently or that pulses out every tick for offensive effects. Which aura is active depends on which crafted reagent is held in hand at the time of casting. Possible auras are all variants (copies, upgrades or downgrades) of spell abilities that Druids already have: ATK debuff, Fire debuff, Cold debuff, Snare (only useful if it lasts more than 1 tick), Root, Regen, HP buff, ATK buff, Mezz (harmony) The craft needed for creating the reagents would most logically be archery (i.e. woodworking), with foraged ingredients as well as dropped items from level appropriate zones.

Rationale behind this AA is that it provides a novel and unique way to give specific abilities to the class rather than clutter the AA list with more copies of existing spells. Through the crafting mechanism and use of an aura to deliver the effect, the strength of this AA is under full control of the developers and can easily be extended into future expansions.

Spirit of the Black Bear
(to be followed in the future by Kodiak, Polar and Grizzly before ascending into the more mythical bears). Activatable AA

This would basically be an upgrade to Spirit of the Bear to match the new HP and AC values of recipients after the gear upgrades in the new expansion, as well as a change to the evade rating should that be necessary against monsters in the new expansion

Group spirit of the Bear
Activateable AA

Does for the entire group that Spirit of the Bear does for a single target. Due to the unpredictable (and frequent) nature of AoE and the fact that this AA can not be maintained permanently this is of limited value but it will help with those tense few seconds when a large number of adds show up in a raid that may go snack on a caster group before the tanks can scoop them up. Pretty much a once per event ability and requiring rather excellent reflexes on the part of the Druid.

Hand of Tunare
Activatable AA

Short duration, long recast AA that significantly reduces the damage from AoEs. It would operate on the same principle (and timescale) as Wildgrowth does, providing a big boosts initially that gradually fades away until it disappears.

Current AoEs are designed to be huge so as to threaten melees and forcing healers to focus attention on more than just the tank(s). For casters this either means a single hit kill or they need to have their hitpoints and avoidance boosted to such levels that they rival that of melee classes. Neither is a healthy game design and a mechanism like this will allow casters to be relatively fragile and still given survivability in events.

Shield of Karana
Activatable AA

Creates a cyclone around the druid that deflects a percentage of attacks (or of the damage of each attack) while shoving monsters back and to the side every tick.

Druids had the first pushback snare, but its effect was never big enough to be useful. Its successor Wall of Wind is severely limited due to its implementation and often is more deadly to the group than helpful. What is needed is a spur of the moment ability to clear out camp and allow the group to get things under control again. The idea for this ability is to in a few ticks clear everything out of melee range and significantly reducing incoming damage while doing so. The time bought this way allows either the druid (wall of wind, vinelash, evac) or another group member to apply some form of crowd control. The duration of the cyclone should be very short but the pushback should be big enough that at the end of it just about every monster is out of melee range. There should be no z-coordinate effect worth mentioning and the range should be no more than just a little more than melee range.

Flurry of Leaves
Activatable AA

Throws up a cloud of leaves that swirl around the target making it hard for it to see its intended victim.

Reduces the monsters ATK significantly and decreases its chance to land a hit. Basically another way to make a monster less dangerous for a while. This is intended to prevent the need for bigger heals.

Leaf Armor
Permanent AA

The druid is blending even more into the lands, making him or her appear less than a threat. Reduces the chance of a target to resist attempts to mezz or charm. If at all possible within the restrictions of code it should add a two tick recourse effect to each mezz and charm wearing off that snare the target and reduces their dps.

For one of the three original mezzing and charming classes Druids have not kept up with the changes necessary to survive these activities in the post GoD environment. An AA like this will boost their ability in this direction a little and increase their survivability, hopefully long enough to either escape or recapture their target.

Hunter in the Dark
Permanent AA

Channeling the spirits of nature's greatest predators the druids is able to greatly increase his abilities while stalking his prey. Increases natural hp and mana regen (both current and maximum) and significantly increases (spell)damage done while out of combat.

Not really powerful, just a fun ability that goes well with the nature theme. The out of combat limitation guarantees that it can be used only once per fight so the initial strike effect can be substantial.

The ability itself is meant to help with solo play where druids need a tank merc to survive and either a healer or dps merc to fight since they can not do both at the same time. For groups this is not much use as they will generally open with a buff, debuff or heal and the first strike ability will be gone. And pening with a big first strike before the tank can gain aggro is not conductive to prolonged survival.

The form this first strike takes is open to debate, as long as it is substantially more than a single nuke. A DoT would make it safer to use in groups but must be limited to 4 or 5 ticks. If not a separate spell effect then it should double or triple the base damage of the dps spell if the druid meets the requirements of this AA at the time of casting.

Avatar of Storms
(* only one avatar can be active at any given time and they share a recast timer) Activatable AA

Calls on Karana to send one of his storm giants to protect a group. To remain manifest the giant needs to drain a percentage of mana from each group member each tick. The excess mana is then used to heal itself (slowly), boost its aggro ability (special call lightning spell) and to boost its HP and AC. The more group members there are the more mana the giant has to work with and the better able it is to do its job.

Druids are increasingly given a sort of caster ADPS role (e.g. through the fire aura and black wolf). In the game though caster heavy groups are less viable because of the lack of tank ability. This summon is intended to offer caster groups a measure of protection and make such groups more viable in the group game as well.

Avatar of Regrowth
(* only one avatar can be active at any given time and they share a recast timer) Activatable AA

Calls on Tunare to send one of her treant avatars to protect a group. To remain manifest the avatar needs to drain a percentage of mana from each group member every tick. The excess mana is used to fuel the spells that can be cast by it: a group heal, a big short duration single target regen, summon sapling (only summoned when time and mana permits and the druids target is hostile. The sapling will attack the target for low damage but will explode for significant damage if killed)

Group healing for Druids is still a bit on the weak side. Rather than have another renamed cleric spell with slightly adjusted numbers I rather have a more unique ability that supplements the Druid.

Daywolf
Activatable AA

Upgrade to Spirit of White Wolf with a greater chance to crit mana preservation and more mana regen. Also adds a delayed (1 or 2 seconds) heal to all heal spells for a base heal of 2000 or 3000.

Group Daywolf
Activatable AA

Group version of Daywolf AA

Nightwolf
Activatable AA

Upgrade to Spirit of Black Wolf with a greater chance to crit mana perservation and more mana regen. Also adds a manastorm like proc to all (direct) damage spells. Alternatively add a short duration DoT proc or a Sunray like debuff DoT.

This AA would boost the caster ADPS ability that Druids have been given the last several expansions.

Group Nightwolf
Activatable AA

Group version of Nightwolf AA

Water Pod of Karana
(I do not think that Milk of Tunare would get past the censors) Activated ability

Refills the mana pool completely (or at least significantly, recast depending on strength of this restore obviously)

For those situations where you need to push a little longer and harder than you are normally able to. Kind of a casters version of second wind.

Karana's Healing Rain
Increase chance to crit on Heal Over Time abilities 18 ranks 1 AA per rank.

Keen Senses
Permanent ability

Track sorting ability.

Nature's Escape
Activated ability

Fades from aggro. Can be combined with an illusion. Alternatively combine this with a targeted AoE (or with Wall of Wind, or the little faeries so they do something useful). Alternatively call it False Egress and combine a Fade with Camouflage. Alternatively make it a passive AA that makes Sneak add a invis counter(s) to Camouflage.

This is more than a convenience AA that saves us from having to zone to drop aggro. Usually it is easier to die and be rezzed to travel deeper into zones, and that is unfortunate game design.

Mnemonic Retention 5/6
Permanent ability

Grants 2 more spell slots. Our class really needs more given the variety of tasks even within a single fight

Natural Swiftness
Permanent ability

Causes all spell gems to load simultaneously instead of one after the other when memorize a spell set.

Tertiary Forte
Permanent Ability

A 3rd specialization

Druids rely heavily on more than two schools of magic and right now have no way to specialize in e.g. conjuration without giving up on the specializations that are essential for group and raid play.

Blessing of Ro II
Activated AA

Upgrade to Blessing of Ro. Increases ATK/AC values and REDISTRIBUTE THEM in different slots.

If the ATK and AC values are upgraded next expansion then this needs an increase as well, same if Grasp of Ro line is upgraded. There are some stacking issues that make Blessing of Ro less useful than it should be.

Entrap IV
Activated AA

Upgrade to the AA.

To improve usefulness it could use an instant cast + more resistance checks

Protection of the Direwood III
Activated AA

Significant upgrade to the previous version (due to significant increase in damage output by the monsters)

Removing the proc on it would make it more useful. Due to how quickly a monster can now chew through druid hitpoints it needs to be an instant cast.

Twinheal/Twinproc
Activated ability

3 more ranks of each

Fortified Survival IV
Permanent ability

Reduce recast of the survival line by another 30 seconds

Survival is our main instant heal as well as our best group heal. The amount of heavy AoE damage in many events requires us to use it more frequently.

Superior Spirit of the Wood / Convergence of Spirits
Activated Ability

Slight increase in heal/AC/DS values and add an innate crit chance the same as granted by maximized healing boon

Druids are the only priest class with these triggerable HoTs but do not have a critical HoT AA. This significantly reduced the effectiveness of these two frequently used AAs

Hastened Spirit of the Wood / Convergence of Spirits
Permanent ability

Further reduce the recharge time of Spirit of the wood and convergence of spirits by 1min per rank, get it down to around 6~ min

Same as with fortified survival these instant heals are needed more often in current high DPS environments than the recharge allows.

Storm Strike
Activated ability

Adds another rank for a significant boost in damage This ability seems to have lost ground relative to monster hitpoints lately

Quickened XXX
To reduce the cast time of various spells and AAs

Quickened Storm Strike Quickened Nature's XXXX Wrath --- Drop the cast time on Nature's line to 0.5 seconds to be in line with our other DoTs

Hastened XXX
AAs proposed to get various spells and abilities recast down further

Hastened Storm Strike Hastened Lycan Soul 5 Hastened Remote XXXX --- Drop recast by 1-2 seconds per rank, 3 ranks Hastened Rejuvilation --- Drop recast by 1 second per rank, 3 ranks Hastened Nature's Fury --- Drop recast by 5min per rank, 3 ranks, get it so that its recast time lines up with Improved Twincast Hastened Curing --- Drop recast 10% per rank, maybe 1-2 more ranks Hastened Purify --- Drop recast on Purified Spirit 20-30 seconds per rank, 3 ranks Hastened Growth --- Drop recast on Growth by 10 seconds per rank, 3 ranks Hastened Forage --- Cut down forage recharge to around 30 seconds or so ---

Extended XXX
To extend the duration of spells or AAs with a timer

Extended Fungal Growth --- 3 ranks that add 6 seconds per rank to the life time of our mushroom pet line Extended Ursine Spirit --- 3 ranks that add 1 tic each to our Spirit of Bear AA line

Wrath of Nature
Permanent Ability

Giving the nuke based portion of Nature's Wrath line the ability to critical blast

The lack of being able to crit is a large draw back to this spell line. Making it a very unlikely spell to use in a burn setup when First Spire and Nature's Fury won't help the entire spell...

Maintained Growth
Permanent Ability

Makes the Nature's Growth spell maintain a permanent HP buff instead of one that slowly decays.

A single AA rank that is relatively expensive at say 15 AAs.

Season's Fury
Activated ability

For a short amount of time (e.g. 30 seconds) all direct damage spells are increased by a certain percentage.

Another way for Druids to contribute better in burn situations

Natures Step (Forest walk)
Activated ability

On activating the druid fades into the forest and appears some distance away without seeming to have passed the intermediate terrain.

A leap ability/shadowstep forward X units unless obstructed --- I may be alone in this but playing other classes I love this AA line, I'd love for druids to get it.

Nature's Purification
Activated ability

For a short time adds a recast of a cure component to all of our single heals

Lasts approx. 1 minute with a recast of 10-15min. Adds maybe a 20 Poison/Disease/Curse/Corruption cure to every heal we cast while under the effect, to reduce the amount of spell switching needed against monsters that rely heavily on secondary effects for their damage.

Spore Spiral
Activated ability

AA version of the spell, with an upgrade to the pushback (give it the same distance as other similar spells)

We have been the premier rooting class forever. Most AE, low resist, pushback roots. Spore spiral never was upgraded sufficiently to be useful and as a result never gets used.

Shared Gift of Mana
Permanent ability

Extends a shared GoM proc to the entire group (within a 150 to 200 range) when it triggers for the druid. Because of the power this is not the 100pct reduction that the single target is but a smaller amount (e.g. 25pct reduction)

This makes caster groups a bit more viable

Nature's Benevolence
Activated ability

Group buff that procs a group heal on the cast of a direct damage spell. (Like Reluctant Benevolence). Or on a flip side, same concept but procs a group heal on the cast of a direct heal to play more to our priest side.

Can also be split into two abilities one of which triggers on a heal and one of which triggers on a direct damage spell (and that share a recast timer)

Explosion of Bark
(Armor of Pine ?) Activated ability

Covers the target in a thick layer of pine needles, cones, bark that blocks 5 attacks (5 more for each additional rank). When the magic that binds the armor in place breaks it explodes outward doing a huge amount of damage.

A long recast (1-1.5 hours?) buff that has 5-10-15 'Block' counters like the pet block lines do. When it ends it reflects a LARGE damage shield on the tank, something to the tune of 50k~ for a single hit

Blood of the Pack
(Pack Cleansing?)

Activated ability

When activated removes from the whole group the same amount of counters as Purged Blood. Additional ranks lower the recast time by 30 seconds per rank from 180 seconds to 60 seconds/

This ability would make curing a group easier. It would take 2 clicks to cure a group using the AA+PB, but that's 4 clicks less than curing individually. And this would compliment RC nicely, sorta like Survival compliments our group heal.