Keep in mind that weapons no longer carry Feral AP and that gear no longer has AP as a standalone stat, so our overall AP is much lower in Cata than it is now. My AP in bear form on Live is 7344, in the exact same gear in the Beta I have 3720 AP.

After some very quick testing I can confirm that Savage Defense procs on some but not all crits, so I have no reason to distrust the stated 50% proc rate. I haven't had a chance to really test the shield size, but I can say that it's at least more than the current 25% of AP, that the buff tooltip still states 25% of AP, that the spellbook tooltip states 75% of AP, and that neither tooltip changes if your Mastery level changes.

Can you give us any indication of how things hold up now? Obviously, scaling has been increased a lot (just look at the ravage numbers), but I've the sneaking suspicion that once we take into account losing half our AP, it might well mean we actually wound up just where we started.

I'm not sure regarding taurens, but the night elf racials are unchanged at this point in the beta. The only issue of note is that the worgen sprint racial shares a cooldown with dash.

Edit: Just tested tauren - stomp still breaks form.

Edit edit: Also, Draenei hit aura is gone, so that might be something to consider.

I assume this holds for us, too:
MMO-Champion BlueTracker | WotLK > Cata = Loss in Spellpower?
I'd be a little interested to hear about how the damage scales as people level up in the beta.

At the moment even troll berserking breaks forms which I'm pretty sure has to get fixed, so it's not time to look at racials yet.

edit: actually berserking doesn't break forms anymore so if you want to be pesimistic I guess warstomp still will

As an example, my mangle did about 4500 on crits pre-SR at level 80 with mostly 264 level gear. When I dinged 81 I was doing 6k regularly. This was in cat form. Some basic testing seemed to follow with rake.

Currently Endless Rage is bugged and does not give an increase to Savage Roar's duration. Improved Feral Charge doesn't work in any way, shape or form with ravage. Swipe may be nerfed, but it appears to be doing significantly less damage than currently. Faerie fire doesn't work.

Also interesting to note - I gained about 5k health going from 80 to 81. In cat form.

Maul glyph hits a second target for 50% of the maul damage.

Any other questions on specific functionality? I'm not bothering with bear form for the most part given that swipe's threat is so miniscule currently (even with thrash), maul is broken and there's no FF, and the experience currently as a tank is simply not that enjoyable.

I don't see that happening actually. Looking at Rupture, the closest equivalent we have to Rip, you'll see pretty much the same thing. It doesn't scale with weapon damage at all, purely with stats. Adjusting the multipliers will let us function much the same as our stealthy sneaky counterparts. I'd much sooner see them take that route.

Does the worgen sprint racial break Bear Form? If it doesn't that would lessen the sting of being on the same cooldown as Dash. Oh, that would make for a very mobile Bear. <.<;

Any word on whether our /cast !<druid form> snarebreak macros still work either? Probably ill-advised to use as a Bear in the future, once rage is normalized, but it certainly still has Cat PvE and PvP implications. Although now that I think about it, it *does* become slightly more appealing as a burst of emergency rage when grounded out... trading mana for rage... especially if Hybrids move away from the traditional 3/5 Furor to 5/5 Furor. (Straight bears, it's a foregone conclusion that they'll go 5/5 anyways, right?)

What, not going to mention the new values of mangle in hopes that it doesn't get nerfed? Mangle sims(with shred on OOC) sims come pretty close to shred in live today. Even with 30% more weapon damage on mangle, shred still holds a slightly higher DPE. But more combo points and just plain easier to use should make mangle the obvious choice.

That's not even taking into account the new execute-like talent for ferocious bite making the shred glyph useless for 25% of the fight. I can't wait until simcraft is updated for cataclysm beta.

I didn't do Mangle because there's more testing I want to do with a 0/0/0 spec (you'll notice I got almost no numbers on bear abilities yet) and respeccing is a bit of a pain with no druid trainer near target dummies. That said, despite the buffs to Mangle I fully expect a Shred rotation to end up being indisputably superior in PvE, else there would be no reason to have Shred.

Edit: Something I wanted to add in my last post but forgot is how weapons work now. With a 0/0/0 spec and no gear at level 82 as a Night Elf, you have 158 AP from 89 Strength (10 Strength doesn't seem to contribute AP), 160 AP from 90 Agility (again, 10 of it doesn't seem to contribute AP), and 164 AP from Cat Form or 120 AP from Bear Form for a total of 482/438, and a damage range of 35-36 / 79-80. Your damage range stays at just 1 until you add a weapon. It works exactly like you'd expect - divide both the minimum and maximum values by the speed and add that damage directly to your current damage range. For bears you have to multiply by 2.5 and add that value.

Dark Flight does NOT break form. Snare-break macros still work.