... let me start by saying that IF Blizzard keeps the talent trees comparable to how they look now, WotLK might not be a complete disappointment. Rather, it looks like they actually listened to the concerns of the player-base and have attempted to implement them accordingly. No no... don't think me crazy, what I say is true (as of now).

I am going to list every complaint I have ever had about druids in WoW briefly:

1. Very weak survivability as a healer, no shields, no burst heals, ToL imposes a snare making the situation worse


2. Feral has no snare


3. Feral has no ability to kill a healer due to lack of cc/ms


4. Feral has no cooldowns to use in PvP/PvE scenarios


5. Feral is very susceptible to cc forcing them to break form and lose damage output


6. Boomkins are undesirable in raids due to lack of cc


7. Boomkins are undesirable in raids due to lack of AoE


8. Boomkins are undesirable in raids due to lack of raid buffs


9. Omen of Clarity is dispel-able

This is the WotLK alpha leaked talent tree for druids. I almost shat myself when I looked the talent overs. The first issue is taken care of by Improved ToL, which gives the druid a grand amount of armor for survivability, and now ToL can actually cast Barkskin. They added a snare as the 45 point talent in feral, which also takes care of the "cannot kill a healer" issue by adding a "mind-numbing poison" effect as well. A big ability with a cooldown was added as the 51-point talent for feral which either breaks all cc's a la the pvp trinket, or does that and leaves the druid in a rage a la "The Beast Within". Moonkins were given an AoE aside from TreeBrigade called Typhoon... which no one has any idea how it works except that it seems like a projectile that hits everything it comes into contact with (a la shadowfury) except it sustains... like hurricane... and it's instant cast... how confusing. Additionally, the moonkins have a talent that will improve their dps ability and cause them to land a debuff which increases arcane and nature damage received, and the improved moonkin aura improves the haste rating by 100% after a crit.

All these changes are amazing, and will likely be toned down before the actual release (or even announcement by Bliz) of the WotLK, but I must say that I am impressed by Blizzard's appeasement strategy. It has always seemed that Blizzard does not care about off specs and they would rather help the "traditional" specs of the game rather than the weaker offspecs. However, it definitely seems like they took the community's comments to heart when designing some of these talents. The snare is my favorite... though it will obviously be nerfed into oblivion before the release of the game. While it is true that a 50% snare is needed by ferals, and making it stacking to 50% so that they could not keep it applied indefinitely was needed, it can also be noted that 50% spell-slow is amazingly high. Also, the talent tree does not say precisely the type of debuff that infected wounds places, but my guess is that it is either a disease or a physical debuff. I really would have thought that this would be a 1-application effect that would have a 30% chance to get applied... but I like it better this way (as it is quite clearly overpowered).

There is probably more I would like to gush about... for instance, the fact that ToL gets armor, a bonus healing ability that gets applied to the target getting your heals, and can cast the very first flash heal resto gets (called Nourish)... but I have to go, for now...