One nice thing about lacerate is that it will make excellent tick-aggro on aggro-resetting/blinking mobs (think Noth). Not that they didn't significantly bring druids and warrior mechanics together, but there are still some differences.

Does Slam trigger GCD? If it does activate GCD but doesn't suffer from pushback, Imp. Slam seems kind of pointless.

Sorry for continuing on the feral track.

While I think that going static on threat isn't the best of ideas. Warriors have had static threat for as long as we've existed pretty much, and some people make it seem too much gloom and doom that it really is. There's still lacerate, mangle and swipe for instants. Swipe still does plenty threat and is better than pretty much anything for multitargeting, so druids are still prefered for that, people just can't go all out on a mob that a druid isn't even focusing on. This nerf to static threat is overshadowing a huge buff to avoidance for druids. Druids got tons of armor, no contesting that, their hp is huge, now with the buff to avoidance, they got it all in one bag. So to me, it still seems that they're in the better boat, just have to wait for the actual numbers on their static threat to come in. But grass is always greener.

Honestly, they should have made heroic strike the same as maul, and nerfed swipe the way they did. To go the other way just hurts to someone who's been promoting bear tanking since before guild 1 would even consider letting a druid tank maruadon. This threat scaling was our one big selling point. The argument used to go - well, sure we take more damage, but we'll hold that mob like no other. Its now, oh we can avoid like warriors, we don't get crit anymore, but warriors have better threat and more tools. Many of us were already upset that blizzard decided to go with MegaDodgeTM, but this is just a backbreaker. The patch note itself even rubs this fact in. It may remain to be seen what kind of lasting effect this has on bear tank viability, but this scaling was the one thing that we were all sure that blizzard got right. Maybe the scaling was off, but we can all agree that for a lasting mechanic, scaling > not scaling. Even blizzard has show us time and time again that the trend is towards scaling - eviscerate, garrote, all magic spells, shield slam*, ferocious bite, swipe, rip, rake...the list goes on and on. For them to kill the granddaddy of all scaling skills in the manner in which they did is just baffling, even divorced from obvious druid bias, as a game design decision.

Ah. A return of the old Multi-shot mana cost, and Blessing of Might being implemented to work on Rap. Joyous days, joyous days!

lag related double post

It is pretty funny that they'd bother to nerf icy enchant. Never knew it could actually proc.

I imagine it's to encourage use of the new recipes without having to make them super-powered.

It was probably a blanket change to the mechanics. Or, perhaps, they just ddn't want to deal with a perceived bias towards certain enchants. Either way, I think it makes more sense to make them all scale than to cherry pick the "powerful" ones.

To keep people from needing to run back and farm WPL for Crusader for the endgame weapon enchant of choice?

Heroic strike is pretty decent threat, it just isn't very rage efficient. The difference between a tank that uses HS on Vael and one that doesn't is enormous.

The rest of the crafting profs are getting specialization in BC. This gives us a reason to pay our enchanters for the hot, new stuff. Besides, there will be something MUCH sweeter for your 62 green to be enchanted with anyway.

Of course. Just heading off the inevitable "what if I get an early copy from my best friend's girlfriend's brother who works at Best Buy?" question. A line or two in the patch notes can be incorrectly taken as suggesting BC content is accessible as of this patch.

Looks like nobody mentioned this yet: the new camp at the dark portal offers a quest to kill some invading mobs for a tabard that looks exactly like the AD tabard. Oh, and 5g.

On the subject of Lacerate:

Most undead *aren't* bleed-immune; only skeletons are bleed-immune.

Not all elementals are bleed-immune, although many are; fire/air/water/earth tend to be, while life elementals (i.e. Zangarmarsh) definitely aren't.

Basically, if it's bleed-immune, it's probably (skeletal undead are the only exception I can think of here) also poison immune. And speaking as a rogue: *most* raid content has not been poison-immune. About half of MC was. A few things in Naxx are. That's *it*.

I'll refrain from going all Chicken Little, but I would like to point out that avoidance, while a nominally "good" thing to have, isn't necessarily good in practice when coupled with reduced/removed threat scaling. More avoidance means less rage, which in turn means Mr. Bear won't be able to use his tanking abilities as early or as often. The significance of that will, of course, vary situationally.

I sat on my sheckles for Riding (150) in hopes that the rumored cost reduction would come through. I sure am glad that appears to be the case.

And yet, no mention of Fiery Weapon...?

If avoidance + mitigation = same incoming dps (for warriors and bears) there is no difference in how you don't take damage.

Edit: Server shit on itself and pulled the ol' delayed double-post move.

I've noticed some undocumented changes besides this... or, it could be just me.


Feign Death: You used to be able to click FD and when take a step forward to get up so you could drop aggro and be back to fighting instantly... now, it seems like there is some kind of delay to where you have to stay down just a hair longer before you aggro is completely wiped. This might be just me, but it's caught me by surprise more than once while farming.


Revive Pet: There's a new animation... looks like a normal player-character rez.


And it might be just me... but it seems like auto-shot might have been tweaked eeeever so slightly. Seems just a little bit more 'in tempo'.

Feral druid threat seems to be the single most important long-term change in this patch (aside from non-scaling bonuses etc, which we all knew were coming). Surely defense nerf/weapon normalisation/rage normalisation similarly derailed threads?

By far, the most awesome change that this patch brings:

Almost makes me forget the affliction nerf T_T
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540g @ honored.

This is a pretty weak world event compared to the Naxxramas one.

There's a Kazzak roaming around with the same exact loot table, that nobody has much interest in.

In addition to that there's a cluster-fuck of alliance(on most servers) @ the Dark Portal AEing stuff before it even gets to the Argents down below heh.