[WOTLK 4.0] Cats - Page 9

Ogbar · 08/05/10, 10:21 AM

All of the tanks are having their AoE threat model nerfed/changed to be more interactive. Paladins are being altered so that the duration of consecrate is less than it's cooldown (10s vs. 30s). I have not seen a change to DnD yet but I would expect that it will come.

After trying to make warriors more closely match the paladin AoE threat model they have instead decided to change it so that all tanks match the warrior AoE threat model.

In bears' case swipe is no longer spammable.

• Melthu · 08/05/10, 10:24 AM

The energy cost changes are just to make Ferocity/Shredding Attacks/Improved Mangle baseline so that they can be removed from the tree. This does make hybrid speccing easier, particularly making Shredding Attacks free.

Glandur · 08/10/10, 6:19 AM

Blue confirmed what we already took for granted: 3/3 Furor is 100% chance to proc rage, and you keep 100 energy in cat form.

There's also been a couple of blue posts about vengeance and avoidance.

minekomineko · 08/10/10, 5:48 PM

Will it still be a waste for cats to go for 3/3 Furor simply because shapeshifting is still on the global cooldown? We may get to keep 100 energy upon shifting, but what use is that third point if we're locked out of using abilities for a global cooldown? I thought this was be something that was sure to be redesigned for Cataclysm. Or maybe I'm just missing something.

Docrev · 08/10/10, 5:52 PM

With the changes in Furor, it might make sense to only put 1-2 points into it for a cat spec. Something along these lines, with the point in Fury Swipes free to move to any talent in the Feral tree other than Pulverize: WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie

This would leave you with three points left to place, which could either be placed in Furor to get it to 2/3 and allow you to recover more quickly after having shifted to caster form for things like Rebirth, Infected Wounds if you don't have anyone else providing that debuff in the raid, Fury Swipes for an increase in white damage, or Nurturing Instinct/Survival Instincts for additional survivability.

kalbear · 08/10/10, 6:23 PM

It's not exactly a waste, but it's not optimal.

If you took 2/3 furor, you'd get 66 energy (or 67) on shifting, then regenerate 15 energy while waiting for your first attack opportunity. The net result is getting 81/82 energy after shifting with 2/3 furor (assuming you were at max energy before).

3/3 furor gives you 19 extra energy whenever you're at full. That's probably not worth one talent point in the few situations where it would matter.

Hopefully it will be a moot point and they'll make a talent that will make ferals want to take it in the first tier instead of NS.

RareBeast · 08/10/10, 7:46 PM

Not forgetting of course that haste will effect energy regeneration, so it will be more than 15 energy regenerated. Of course we still don't know how strong the energy regen haste scaling will be.

Gurrshael · 08/14/10, 4:23 PM

I just got into beta and noticed that Savage Roar was changed and this change is not mentioned here:
According to its tooltip it now increases autoattack damage by 50% instead of all damage by 30%. The duration seems to be the same.

Jone · 08/14/10, 7:25 PM

Originally Posted by Gurrshael

I just got into beta and noticed that Savage Roar was changed and this change is not mentioned here:
According to its tooltip it now increases autoattack damage by 50% instead of all damage by 30%. The duration seems to be the same.

Well, that's interesting. I suppose increasing white damage moves it closer to the effect of the haste from rogues' SnD, if you discount their energy gain and poison procs. Between this and Fury Swipes, we might be shifting to emphasize white over yellow damage, or it may just counterbalance the effects of cats' mastery emphasizing yellow attacks.

If I recall correctly from the original 3.0 discussions, SR helped each additional point of AP increase DPS in about the same way it would for a dual-wielding class whose stats applied to both the main- and off-hand swings -- this was the old Savage Roar that increased AP by 40%, of course. Since they're already modeling classes in final-tier raid gear, I'm sure they'll know if this causes a scaling issue at high gear levels.

Gurrshael · 08/15/10, 5:23 AM

Assuming that we do about 35% damage from our white attacks (on live servers) this change alone would change the damage distribution into:
White damage = 0.35 * 1.5 / (0.35 * 1.5 + 0.65) = 44.68%
Yellow damage = 55.32%

Using the same numbers: (0.35 * 1.5 + 0.65) = 1.175. The new Savage Roar is about 17.5% overall damage increase as opposed to the current one, which is 30%. I am curious how would it affect our priority list.

Duilliath · 08/15/10, 5:52 AM

Tank cooldowns have been overthrown as well, with Survival Instincts now mimicking Shield Wall and Frenzied Rejuv becoming a 'holy cow, it does WHAT?!" move. Resembles Warrior cooldowns a bit more, but FR seems very loaded. If I didn't completely misread its numbers, the healing on it is massive. We lost the second interrupt in Bearform, which isn't coming as huge surprise I suppose.

Reading the above makes me wonder how big of a deal SnD is for Rogues. Dropping SR will definitely be less hazardous now and having Rip and SR come together will now likely be less disastrous. It just seems a bit odd when they say they want to move Rogues -away- from White/Poison damage and more towards specials when they are taking us the other route with the Fur(r)y Swipes talents and this change.

//edit: For now, I'll just take the FR change as a typo. I don't believe "Each point of rage is converted into 0.3% of max health" gets turned into "Each point of rage is converted into 3% of max health".

Docrev · 08/15/10, 6:34 AM

Slice and Dice is a very large deal for rogues, but the reason it is isn't present in the current implementation of Savage Roar. SnD increasing melee attack speed means that it increases the chance for procs such as poisons (which are on a PPM model), Focused Attack procs for mutilate rogues (additional attacks meaning additional chances to have a crit), and Combat Potency procs for combat (additional attacks meaning additional chances for an offhand attack), though Focused Attacks is being removed in Cataclysm. Still, Savage Roar just increasing the damage of each hit rather than increasing the rate of those hits makes it a weaker ability due to it lacking any effect on procs such as Fury Swipes.

zimira · 08/15/10, 6:39 AM

This is probably one thing they are trying out to make the feral rotation a bit more forgiving. As you noticed a failure to notice SR will drop a second before rip is a huge dps loss on live. But with this change you can just (pool 3-4s and) apply our rip and then apply a 1-2 SR only loosing out on 50% boost on a few autoattacks.

Depending what glyphs are cut and how good FB is compared to rip the above situation, might have other better solutions.

I agree that it is a bit strange they are trying to move rogues away from passive damage but us towards it, but on the other hand perhaps our yellow damage part still has enough room to make the difference between a good and bad cat noticeable.

Edit:
This change would put us on 82%-ish of our current damage. However we are changing to use the equipped weapons damage, perhaps that change alone changes our dps all across back to 100%. But it might also impact yellow attacks more (or white for that matter) changing the ratio of yellow/white there too.

Gurrshael · 08/15/10, 7:25 AM

Few other changes (some are just number tweaks):
Enrage: Generates 32 rage, then additional 10 over 10s, but increases physical damage taken by 10%.
Demo roar: Reduces physical damage caused by all enemies within 30 yards by 10% for 30s.
Bash no longer interrpupts.
Feral charge (Bear) no longer interrupts.
Frenzied Regen: Increases maximum health by 30%, increases health to 30% (if below) and converts up to 10 rage per second into health for 20 s. Each point of rage is converted into 3% of maximal health. (10 rage per second = 30% maximum health per second for 20s as long as you have rage for it ...)
Survival Instincts: Reduces all damage taken by 60% for 12s.
Savage Defense: Each time you deal a critical strike in Bear Form, you have 50% chance to gain Savage Defense, reducing the damage taken from the next physical attack that strikes you by 75% of your attak power.

Cower lowers threat by 10%.

So far, I really like the changes.

Thendariel · 08/15/10, 8:24 AM

Originally Posted by Gurrshael

Frenzied Regen: Increases maximum health by 30%, increases health to 30% (if below) and converts up to 10 rage per second into health for 20 s. Each point of rage is converted into 3% of maximal health. (10 rage per second = 30% maximum health per second for 20s as long as you have rage for it ...)

This 30% per 10rage is bug probably. I think 3% per 10rage is correct value (like old FR).
30%/s * 20s = 600% of your HP.
In ICC with buff +30% and +30% from new FR you will have a round 100k hp.
Its mean you can easy heal for 600k. This number is to high to be correct.

SR change is probably buff for us. In AoE situation to do good dps you need waste 60e to have SR up (and its only for short time, on next pack you need do it again) now you can simply start with Swipe.
This change will increase too our burst on begging of fight or on short ones (Adds or PvP). Additional we will can start fight with Berserk (and dont use TF before it or SR, only mangle to lower energy) to have bigger burst. This probably wont be optimal for boss, but when you have limited time when you can dps it will be dps increase.