Valerian

Gah you're absolutely right in that its 30 energy not 20. I forgot ticks are 20 energy not 40.

Im pretty certain you cannot shift into form when you're on global cooldown. Otherwise

/cancelform
/cast Lifebloom
/cast Dire Bear Form

WOULD work post patch, as would any other instant spell/ability.

When I shift out now and rejuv myself, Im pretty sure I cannot immediately go back into form without the GCD being over.

 

dukes

Should be pretty easy to test. On the PTR set up:

/cast Shred
/cancelform
/cast Dire Bear Form

If it works, then we know which one it is. If it doesn't, then it's a pain in the arse as it means having to watch the GCD for shifts. I wouldn't be surprised if it is the case - a few times I've tried to powershift and it hasn't worked for what seems like no good reason, probably just that I'm clipping the GCD so it shifts out fine but not back in.

Should be home in about 2+half hours so I can test it, but if someone can do it earlier that'd be good. Damned work :<

 

• Murwen

I tried this one;

/cast Faerie Fire (Feral)(Rank 5)
/cancelform
/cast Cat Form(Shapeshift)

All it did was cast faerie fire and deshifted me from bear form, so I guess this means that we'll have to watch out for the GCD for powershifts (On the bright side Furor appears to be instant now, maybe this has been mentioned already?)

 

mabl

How does Shear work really? Why is shield block the only way to avoid it? Would for instance pw:s work?
In p2 a druid works fine, tho i take about 15% more damage than a warrior but have 3-4k more hp. My avoidance is higher than a warrior and fr is capped for both, so its just cause of imp def stance.

 

dukes

I have no idea. If you have 24 other people willing to test it, go ahead and try it. I'm not entirely sure about the whole mechanic, but I assume it's avoidable by all main avoidance methods (miss/block/parry/dodge), and I'm pretty sure Shear shows up as being blocked, so I'm not sure the absorb from PW:S would work. It also requires the assigned priest to be good at what they're doing and make sure they stay in range at all times.

I'm glad about furor being instant too. Are you sure Cat Form(Shapeshift) is the correct name for the ability? I've always seen it as Cat Form or Cat Form().

Edit: Giving a quick scan of Shear on WoWhead and Thottbot, it seems everyone there believes that it's blockable only (although there is a comment saying it can be parried). If that is the case, then druid's definitely can't tank it. I've only ever heard about it being purely blockable.

 

Regen

Shear - cast time of 1s? maybe 1.5 ~ Reduces targets health by 60%, only avoidable if blocked. I guess you could think of it as an "100%-crush" type move and the debuff is applied if you recieve a crushing blow.

EDIT: pw:s the answer is simple --> Does absorbing damage stop a hit from being a crushing blow?

Tank p2 as well, faster instant threat is slightly better for dps as the raid can start on the druid's target right away.

 

• Murwen

100% sure, I shift-linked the spell name from the ingame spellbook. Plus it works with the normal /cancelform /cast form macro.

 

Regen

Easily testable by casting something like moonfire and trying to shift bear (you can't until GCD is up) Nothing new.

 

North101

This hasn't been pointed out but i'm sure people have realised that you are able to swap Idols without getting "extra" global cooldown. I use these macros on the PTR
/cancelform [nostance:1] [button:2]
/cast Dire Bear Form
/equip Idol of Terror

/cancelform [nostance:3] [button:2]
/cast Cat Form
/equip Everbloom Idol

Also, using the shift out -> healthstone -> health potion -> bear form macro is actually BETTER than being able to use them in forms, at least for tanking. Say you have 10,000 health in bear form and you shift out, that leaves you with about 6,600 health. You use a health potion and healthstone for a total of say 4,400 giving you 11,000 health, you then shift into bear form again and that increases your health to 16,500, or an extra 50% health from the health potion and healthstone.

 

Malazaar

Edit: Sorry, never mind, i need to learn to read.

Just be careful with those macros, if you hit them with gcd still active you end up in casterform switching idols and renewing your gcd - this can really mess things up.

 

Valerian

The thing about the tanking pot macro people really need to watch out for is the GCD. Very often you're spamming abilities. If all of a sudden you need an emergency pot you really gotta make sure you're not on GCD or you're going to get gibbed. I suspect its going to take some time to get used to this :P

 

xyruul

I'm a bit surprised no one has commented on this yet...
I've tanked Kael through a couple rounds of pyros before I even got any T6 loot. His pyro's are on a 1m cooldown, barkskin is on a 1m cooldown, you do the math. Warriors reduce 15.5% of magic damage, while barkskin reduces 20%. Add that to the fact that druids have way more HP and it's almost preferred that they tank Kael. If you lack the dps to interrupt the second pyro, it's certainly not difficult to get healed to full in 4s before the second one, which is what we did. It's really easy to land two big heals in a 4s window as a paladin.

 

dukes

I'd never really thought of it that way before. However, why take any damage when you can just avoid the whole lot with a single click?

Also, having a feral tank and a prot warrior DPS seems a bit of a strange way around in my mind (we only ever had one tank during p4/5 - a hunter kited the Phoenixes). Feral's just excel at fights where you can both DPS and tank at different stages, and Kael is one of those fights.

 

Larisroth

Yep being able to tank and dps in one fight is our biggest boon to any raid, but there aren't that many fights where it's truely that useful. With 2.3 our dps gear will be worse for tanking, and the reverse, which I think is good to some extent. I'd far prefer for our dps to be competitive with other hybrids when we're in dps gear, and then drop 20% or so when we're in full tanking gear instead.

I took another look over that 100% avoidance thread and did some gear searches myself. It looks like rogues can reach the mark with a few % to spare, and druids can either get very close or just make it, of course you need some pretty crazy raid buffs to do that. 2.3 will change that a bit but I can only think of a few pieces with more agilty on them. Warriors and paladins can only really get to 85-90%.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but damage taken is max(K * (1-R) * (1-M) - B, 0) where K is the unmitigated damage, R is the damage reduction factor, M is the mitigation factor, B is the block style reduction. K depends on the damage roll and attack table result, as does B (if you can block). As we all know you can't reach 100% mitigation, but it's capped at .75 anyway, and you can't change R with gear and it is usually <= 0.1. (Warrior in def stance has R=0.1, paladin has R=.06, we have R=0).

The unmitigated damage can be up to twice the base damage (crit) or can be 0 (dodge, miss etc), so if we look at the average damage over time we get Kav=(1-A)*Dav where A is an avoidance factor, which isn't capped in anyway, and D is average damage
Let's assume the boss can't crit, crush or be blocked. Then A is pretty much the avoidance we were talking about before. A=100% and you take no damage, ever, which is cool, but a design problem :P

The solution is probably to cap avoidance in some way. To do so is probably a good thing, because like resistance, the more avoidance you get the more value additional avoidance has. Going from 98% to 99% is just as costly as going from 1% to 2%, but has much more practical value. If they do cap avoidance, then they should remove the physical mitigation cap, because it doesn't suffer from the same scaling issue.

One way to cap avoidance against boss mobs at least, would be to move crushing blows to the top of the attack table. It would also nerf shield block for stopping crushes. Alternatively you could give mobs a new attack, called penetrating blows that hit normally and penetrate through any avoidance (ie have the highest priority).

I might be incorrect about the block modifier, does anyone know if it applies before damage reduction? A stance switching warrior should be able to determine that.

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

 

seminarca

Pretty sure Block Value is applied after mitigation and defensive stance. It goes something like:
dmg = ((basedmg * (1 - mitigation)) * 0.9 [defstance]) - BV

So a 10k base hit at 60% mitigation with 400 Block value is:
((10000 * 0.4) * 0.9) - 400 = 3200 dmg

as opposed to 3456 dmg if the Block Value was taken off pre-mitigation.

 

Cuer

Further changes to /cancelform style usability, per Slouken:

 

seminarca

Well this is a little ambiguous, and slightly distressing depending on what exactly he means.

Do they intend to remove the /cancelform command outright and replace it with autoUnshift? Or leave it in there and just make it not mandatory to use if you decide to enable autoUnshift?

Because, by the sounds of it, I don't think I'd like to use autoUnshift (imagine hitting your HT key by mistake while tanking) in the blanket applies-to-everything sense, I like the control of having macros to /cancelform specifically for the functions that I choose to use it for. So it would really suck if they are removing the command itself.

 

stayclean

The autoUnshift, to me, seems like a variable that is used to check whether you want to shift out of a form when you want to cast something.

The /cancelform command should still be there.

 

Allev

I think they decided that you shouldn't have such a noticeable advantage through macros that you can do things that other people can't-- i.e., instantaneously unshift and cyclone at the same time. Obviously that reaches a limitation with potting (which is why I bet they'll put in a "use potion, drains mana" option at some future patch) but, suffice it to say, Joe Casual doesn't even know what the word "macro" means.

 

Nathariel

From my perspective it seems that this way will allow changing back into the same form, where /cancelform does not.

/cancelform will still be there with its current capabilities

As with you, I would prefer to be able to control when I shift out, but if I cannot shift from bear to bear without using the autounshift, then I may just have to be more careful with what buttons I press.

 

Malazaar

Couldn't you just use the following macro for say Powershifting ?

/console autoUnshift 1
/cast Cat Form
/console autoUnshift 0

For safety issued i'm going to use autoUnshift 0 OR integrate it into my bear shift macro.

Happened to me once or twice to shift out during tanking while accidently hitting my unshift-cyclone pvp macro - very embarassing

 

seminarca

Ooo that looks interesting and should alleviate my qualms if they end up removing /cancelform since I don't want to leave autoUnshift on permanently. We'll have to test and see when they implement it.

 

hebius

So it's 87% to dodge and Moroes trinket adds 14% dodge on use so You'll have 100% dodge, right?
With idol of terror alone You wont get that needed 13%, You need trinket on use ability so You'll be hit immune every 2min for 10s?

dodge+miss doesnt stack as far as I know.

 

Boevis

It does, it always has for both players and npcs.

 

hebius

Is there any difference with dodge or miss against boss and lvl 70 mob?