Once the doors open, either have your partner dodge behind a pillar and wait, or sit and wait in your starting area so that they don't see LotP on them.

No, just rightclick to remove the buff or have it in a macro for arena like I do..(Stealth + Natures grasp + remove lotp)..the first time you shift it will be reapplied

I suspect it depends a lot on what composition you plan to use. I 2v2 with a resto druid partner, which means that except in the first few seconds of a double DPS game, my resilience and stamina matter a lot less than they would on a 2DPS team. If you plan to run with feral + healer, you should do absolutely fine with all PvE gear starting out.

On double DPS, missing resilience will hurt a lot more. Personally, I would still use the high ilvl PvE gear over the blue PvP stuff; you just lose too much DPS punch by wearing it, although 2 pieces for the set bonus might not be a bad idea. It'll be a good idea to work toward S4 offset pieces, too, as soon as you can - wherever you can fit them in without breaking your set bonuses, they'll be a big help.

It's worth noting that the arena/honor weapons are pretty bad for their Ilvl. If you have badges enough for the Staff of the Forest Lord, it's far, FAR better than the merciless mace, which would let you put those honor points toward S4 offset stuff.

I've been doing quite alot of arena lately and must say I think this macro has proved extremely helpful. In the very few games we've come across another feral, the LotP aura is a dead give away and our usual tactic is to just nuke the feral hard. Against another feral, the winner is often the one that manages to get the opener on the other, so hiding our biggest give away could give you the win.


On a different note, we've had a lot of discussion about 2v2, but are there many out there doing 3v3 with much success? I'm currently on the look out for a rogue to play in 3s with my mage. I'm not entirely sure how effective a feral/mage/rogue team could be though. Other combinations I've seen mentioned are:

feral/rogue/disc priest
feral/war/resto druid
feral/rogue/rogue - not too sure on this one

Hunter / Disc / Feral is another viable (if difficult) combo.
Pala / War / Feral works, possibly better than the resto.

How does one remove the LotP buff you all mention? I tried several ways and I couldn't remove it (as selfbuff or buff from another feral). Just curious, since the posts about removing it are month old and I don't remember any hotfix/patch note that mentioned anything alike.

Was it possible to this at that time? (August 18)
Currently on live, you can't right click to remove LotP.

O.o
You can most definitely right-click off the LotP buff - just tested it to make sure it wasn't my memory playing tricks on me.

[e] The *druid* has to click it off. Your partner can't.
[e2] That came out a bit too harsh - edited to appear less of a bastard.

I could have been facing a UI issue then. Thanks for confirming it.

Anyone know if the damage buff to mangle and rake made it to the PTR patch (which is scheduled to go live this Tuesday)?

EDIT- Answered my own question: yes they did!

Has anyone noticed that currently there is no 2h designed for Feral PVP in WOTLK? It's quite disconcerting.

Also, I'm thinking of running a 2s team next season with a ret pally. With the changes to maim now having a chance to break on damage, rather than just breaking on any damage, and the new kitty charge, and infected wounds. I don't think pallies will have a problem staying on the target (their biggest problem right now is how kiteable they are).

Furthermore, when did Nuturing Instincts get a buff? I used to remember it being 50%, but now it's 70%? That's nice actually. Here's my gear plan as it stands [obviously my goal will to get as much Deadly Glad gear as possible, so let's focus on the stats of the gear]:

Each item basically has 5 things:
Stam
Agi
Crit Rating
AP
Res
Hit Rating

Now at first I was like, where's my INT, but I've been playing in BG's the last few days with zero int on my gear and have done quite well, thanks to improved LOTP.

So here's my take on this:

My goal here is going to be stack as much crit rating and AGI as I can after getting enough res/stam to have a good survival time. With the Nurturing Instincts now giving 70%, that should help quite a bit. Crit rating however, may be more important than AGI after a certain point. My goal is to use to Healing Touch glyph for arenas. This will reduce the cast time to 1sec, but at about the mana cost of regrowth, and only half the actual heal. So, the higher that can crit, and the more healing I have, the more healing that's going to come out of it. However, in the end, the one second cast is by far the reason I'm using it.

I realize it's not "mana effecient", but for a double DPS team, it shouldn't have to be.

For this particular team, I'm thinking this will be my opener:
Pounce, Rake, Savage Roar, Tiger's Fury, Berserk, Burn with whatever it takes
If by chance my target is still standing, I'll probably come out to cycle/heal/whatever if I can. However, that opener plus a ret pallies 10 seconds of burst, it would be hard for me to think our target would still be standing.

What I love about the druid changes is Furor now allows me to gain energy while casting, so coming back to 100 energy instead of 40 is fantastic.

Disadvantages I see:
No MS - Not really concerned because bliz has said they plan to take another look at healing debuffs.
Prone to casters? - This is debatable, with pure melee DPS, pally has bubble and can BoP me. However, casters are much easier to burst down in most cases.
Resto Druids - Should be able to stay close to these now with loss of feral charge and pally JoJ.

Advantages I see:
Huge Burst Potential
Not easily kiteable
With power shifting and BoF, not easy to root
Not easy to fear - <3 berserk
Dual Hybrid leaves options for healing if needed

Anyone else have any thoughts about the upcoming season?

[Deadly Gladiator's Staff] - My guess is this is the feral staff (due to tag: druid, speed vs damage and rest of stats. It's just not showing the FAP).

NI was nerfed, it used to be 50/100, now it's 35/70.

My thoughts on Retadins are rather biased, due to the last weeks. They've been nerfed quite severely and I'm not entirely sure where they stand.

My line of thinking was going towards a combo with a Death Knight more, possibly with a Priest. I'm not sure how this'll pan out. Either one will need massive burst, or the lack of a Mortal Strike debuff will likely rear its ugly head again.

I'm not overly worried about the costs on shifting, iLotP will help some and Blizzard promised a deep feral talent to make Bear/Cat form shifting cheaper. I am more worried about the lack of being able to do anything else, due to the scaling of spell cost.

They are talking about having feral dps base off weapon damage instead of giving raw AP. I wonder if they'lll implement that before next season.

We'll see how they are spec'ing. I could see frost mages giving us some trouble, but I also see a lot of mages in arcane at the moment. Guess we'll have to see what happens.