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Talents you hate


My main is a tanking feral druid who respecs to PvP resto pretty regularly (you know you're playing a hybrid class when your local trainer publicly thanks you for financing his boat payments), and every week I find myself staring at my talent calculator wanting to take a shillelagh to Nature's Focus. The Druid restoration tree has a lot of talents that leave you wondering what you're supposed to be using them for, and I nominate this one as winner, class, and show. Which says something, given the number of resto talents there are that either: a). make no sense if you take the 41-point talent Tree of Life, which virtually every raiding resto does, or b). also make no sense if you mostly PvP.

Rant after the cut.



For the uninitiated, Nature's Focus affects spell pushback or interruption (for 5 talent points!) on:

  • Healing Touch: Which you never cast in PvP, can't cast as a tree Druid in PvE, and for which you'd have to talent into to the exclusion of necessary HoT improvements for it to be really worth it

  • Regrowth: Which you desperately try to avoid casting no matter what because it gulps mana with the approximate fuel efficiency as a 1998 Chevy Suburban. As many wiser restos than myself have noted, no matter what the situation is, if you're using this spell a lot, things are going down the tubes

  • Tranquility: Which is a very powerful healing spell on a 10-minute cooldown

You have to hold your nose and take something to get further into the resto tree no matter what, so assuming you're 3/3 Natural Shapeshifter, it's either Nature's Focus (barf) or Naturalist (I would argue that Naturalist is an even worse talent for resto purposes, but it's a useful talent for ferals and I can live with that notion). 4 points has to go into one of the two, so assuming we leave Naturalist to the kitties and bears, we are now stuck with a talent that benefits a spell we never cast, a spell we shouldn't cast, and a spell on a 10-minute cooldown. I know there are situational benefits to be had, and possibly more to come in 2.4 (at least with respect to Regrowth, as Phaelia points out here), but I am nonetheless in agony every week having to take 4 points in something that could be much better spent elsewhere.

I'm currently leveling a Shaman, Hunter, and a Warrior and am not sure I want to plan their talents at 70 yet; I'm afraid I'll just scare myself.