Originally Posted by Miststorm
If the extra damage numbers are correct, it is awful news to feral druid viability in WotLK.
The main issue feral was facing in TBC was that its scaling was broken, we were excellent at low gear levels leading to nerfs because numbers correctly balanced for T6 were too good for T4 / Kara. This broken scaling goes back to a cat doing 60% of its damage from specials, all of which have huge static components. Since our specials need to carry roughly twice as big a share of our overall output compared to rogues, the weight given to static components in determining their output have to be smaller than for rogues to have enough scaling reserves to keep up with them in output (not advocating equality here, just that the ratio of rogue to druid output remains relatively constant).
And apart from Predatory Strikes getting long overdue improved scaling, there is nothing in the talents that improves the scaling of our specials. As things stand, we are set for a repeat of BC in WotLK, overpowered in blues, underpowered in top end epics, simply because the static components of our specials are too large. 500+ extra to Maul, when a 3.5K attack power bear would hit for around 700 damage on normal attacks is huge, and very difficult to fit into scaling ranges that will probably see a 100% power increase going from blues to end game epics.
It would be so much better to half the static modifiers, and give the lost damage back as extra scaling to give us more of a chance to keep up with other classes.
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While this is a concern at first glance, there is a lot we don't know about yet. One of the biggest "problems" in our scaling compared to other melee is the fact they get a HUGE bonus from WF compared to us. Another is haste. A mechanic that translate haste into a faster energy regen (or somesuch) would alter the balance considerably. There's also the fact that the synergy between our new abilities may be superior to the synergy between abilities other classes get to "make up the slack" so to speak.
For example, the energy restore on TF at 60 energy every 30 seconds is already a 2 energy per second increase in regen. Thats roughly double the effect of our current 2T4 bonus. People asked for that as a talent and got a better version of it instead, though an indirect way.