I found a link out to the new Druid Talent Tree for v1.80. Playing around with it, I have determined that I will no longer be a priest battery in groups.

I don't know what this means for raids, but I'm considering going with a 31/0/20 build using the following skills:

Balance Talents - 31 points
- Improved Wrath - rank 5/5
- Improved Moonfire - rank 5/5
- Natural Weapons - rank 5/5
- Omen of Clarity - rank 1/1
- Vengeance - rank 5/5
- Improved Starfire - rank 5/5
- Nature's Grace - rank 1/1
- Moonglow - rank 3/3
- Moonkin Form - rank 1/1

Restoration Talents - 20 points
- Improved Mark of the Wild - rank 5/5
- Improved Healing Touch - rank 2/5
- Nature's Focus - rank 5/5
- Reflection - rank 3/3
- Subtlety - rank 5/5

Notice two lacking items in there - Nature's Swiftness (iow - Insta-heal) and Innervate. It would gimp my abilities to serve as a primary healer, but it would make me a hell of a contributer in the casting world. I do like the addition of the moonkin form (Transforms the druid into Moonkin Form. While in this form armor is increased by 360% and all party members within 30 yards have their spell critical chance increased by 3%. The Moonkin can only cast Balance spells while shapeshifted), by the way.

Any thoughts on the change, and it's impact on our groups?

For those interested, my proposed build.

Sounds like it could be interesting.  You should certainly try out different specs.  I've sure spent lots of gold doing that.

The moonkin form adding 3% critical chance would be interesting for me.  I set up my priest talent template to be heavy on critical heals, when i get a critical heal it activates a talent called Inspiration that boosts the target's armor from items by 20% (4/5 points in the talent).

I have Holy Specialization talents 5/5 = +5% critical
Over 300 intelligence = +3% critical
Some gear that gives critical bonuses = +5% or so i think
Eye of the Beast Trinket = +2% critical
Base Critical?  I can't remember exactly, lets say 3%

So right there about 1 in 5 flash heals will cause the armor boost, which is HUGE for the main tank in a raid.  +20% armor can easily be around 1,200 to 1,500 additional armor.

I have another talent on a 5 min cooldown that gives me a mana-free cast plus it adds +25% to critical.  I usually save that for a group healing spell that almost gurantees that 3 or 4 people get the armor boost at a critical moment.

Moonkin form adding another 3% is just extra gravy for the chances :-)

As a placeholder - I found the following information on Druid stats on the WoW Blog:

PvE - Bear form
(In this order... there is no easy way to calculate)
Armor (multiply by 5.06 for the real bear values)
Stamina (stamina is worth 12 hit pointsm, not 10, thanks to HotW)
Defense (Its so rare... get it from a non green when you can)
Strength (need to do damage to hold aggro)
Crit


Cat Form (both PvP you want to focus more on crit... double the value of crit's AP)
Measure "gear" in AP equivilent
1 Str = 2.4 AP (Thanks to HotW)
1%crit = 20AP (in real world testing, thanks to abilities and the 10% dmg bonus and other talents)
1 AGI = 2AP (this is based on 1 AGI = 1 AP and 20 AGI = 1% crit... the 1 armor it adds is not calculated)
1% dodge = 11AP (this was from measurements in real battle)
1% to hit = 4AP (bonus to his is more important to dual weilding)
1 Sta = 0.4 AP (4 hit points is about equal to one more AP in a long fight)
1 Armor = 0.1 AP (with the 10% armor bonus... armor equals about 1 tenth of a AP)