Is Improved Barkskin Going to be Mandatory?

Just glancing over the newly released Cataclysm talent trees for druids (you can find them at http://www.wow.com or http://www.mmo-champion.com or cata.wowhead.com) and this occurred to me:

Improved Barkskin: Grants 80/160% additional armor contribution from cloth and leather items while in Travel Form or while not shapeshifted, increases the damage reduction granted by your Barkskin spell by 5/10% and reduces the chance your Barkskin is dispelled by 35/70%.

Yeah ok that’s not a change from what it is now, right? Only… we’re not going to be trees in Cataclysm, which means the extra armor we get from tree form goes away. I know, Blizzard is going to make that up somehow – but what if that somehow is “Take two points in Improved Barkskin and call me in the morning”?

I like Improved Barkskin, I specced into it when I could afford to drop Celestial Focus. It gives me a margin of error for Bonestorms, Exhales, Decimates, what have you. Not every PVE resto druid takes it though; it’s more a PVP talent and if your haste is low, you can’t afford it. All the theorycrafting will change in Cataclysm of course and we won’t need CF any more but… just wondering.

Oh, and is the new version of Improved Tranquility useless, or totally useless? Changes the second part of the effect from “Reduces the cooldown by 30/60%” to “Reduces damage taken while casting by 25/50%”. Way to ensure nobody ever, ever takes those points, Blizzard.

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Revitalize!

So Analogue’s gear has gotten good enough recently, especially with the Vestments of Spruce and Fir, that I felt comfortable speccing out of Celestial Focus and back to an 11/0/58 spec. After some deliberation I decided to put the new points into Improved Barkskin, Revitalize, and Living Seed.

Imp. Barkskin is to keep me alive longer on “new” content, ie fights I haven’t yet outgeared. I am trying hard to use Barkskin on myself to keep me alive and it’s been working great. Bonestorm? Barkskin. Predictable damage? Barkskin.

Living Seed… I do mostly 10 man raids. Sometimes I have to help heal the tanks. Or I’m keeping a Mark alive. Either way, I’m thinking it’s worth a shot.

And Revitalize… I just ran a heroic over lunch with Reversion, then looked at my logs. I barely noticed my missing haste in 5 man content and in 10 mans I hope to have some buffs to help make that up. And I’m seeing the Revitalize payoff already. Over the course of a single AN run, it regenerated 225 rage for Reversion – that’s over two full bars. And it did 15% of my mana-regen-from-effects according to Recount; the hunter’s Replenishment did 30%. If those numbers translate to 10 mans it’ll be just great. Sometimes our raid comps are take what we can get, and if I don’t have to bring someone along just for Replenishment, that might give us flexibility…

Anyone else have any luck here? Man, it feels good to get my fun points back. That haste nerf really hurt, and I am still getting over it.

PS –Keeva’s Resto Guide that she recently published is what I used to help me make my decisions; it was great to have everything laid out for me in a nice friendly format. It practically says “Don’t Panic” on the cover, it’s that good.

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