Likas

I think this means I will have to create individual pot macros for each form; however, I'm currently out of macro room... Anyone have any good mod suggestions to handle this?

 

• Vykromond

Resilience is an elixir. It basically comes down to Ironshield for Bear and Haste for Cat, I'd think.

 

Phorage

Is it technically possible to get a hit in between a shift ? I saw some combat log msgs where it in 2.3 was down to the same millisecond from shifting out til shifting in (between different forms ofc since the bear2bear is bugged). Can you theoretically get a hit in caster form when you use the bear->caster->healthstone->bear macro?

 

Thordarsen

Our first Morogrim kill (anonymous for the protection of the innocent) but the Enh Shaman Quesse has no +skill gear and is tauren (no racial) Morogrim is pure attack from behind for melee so should be a good choice.

Over the course of the night he did 2046 melee swings (white only) and had 110 dodges for 5.38 percent dodge. (I'd need someone more in tune with stats to tell me how much confidence that sample size gives)

 

Mistaya

Forgive if it's been posted before, but I didn't see it:

Drums are now castable in animal forms! It says in the patch notes they are instant, but what it didn't say was that I can just pop it in cat or bear for a free mini-heroism at no mana or cast time cost. I'm so glad I leveled my last 10 points on Drums of Battle now, I've got a ton banked on an alt. I don't have CoT exalted so I can't test the Drums of Panic but if they work too... Bearform Int. Shout anyone?

 

◊ masanbol

This is good info, but we need a larger sample size. If you guys know people in your guilds who have no +weapon skill or racials, try to do some WWSing over the next few weeks.

[Melee/Hunters] 2.3 Patch Notes - Weapon skill to Expertise is probably the best place to report your findings.

 

seminarca

Hah! Some great news overnight. I'm thrilled that they're going to fix X to X instashifts.

As for choice of potion, obviously Ironshields are an option for tanking, but we can also consider Haste potions for burst threat. Need to look at some of the other timered potions to see if any are worth using, it's never been a consideration before so I haven't ever bothered seeing what options there are ><

I've been meaning to test this for the longest time (PTR shat itself on Saturday and I haven't been able to log on since then).

The way I'd do it is: find a bunch of low level mobs with super fast attack speed. Drop armor by enough so that there's a significant difference between the average hit you take in caster vs what you take in Bear Form. Start /combatlog and round up 10-15 of these mobs in Bear Form (face your back to them so you don't dodge most of their attacks). Hit the /cancelform healhstone/potion Bear Form macro. Run away and deaggro.

Examine log file. Things to look for:
See if there are any lines of you taking a hit in the combat log between "Dire Bear Form fades from you." and "You gain Dire Bear Form.". If there are, there's a chance it might happen while tanking a raid boss.

If there aren't, closely look at each and every hit around the time you hit the macro. Check to see if any of them are higher than what he should be hitting you for in Bear Form. This is to make sure combat logging imperfections due to latency or whathaveyou don't taint the results. If there are no higher than normal-for-Bear-Form hits in there, we're gold.

edit: Another question I had for anyone who's tested [Idol of Terror]. I wouldn't think it so, but can it proc on Mangles that miss or are dodged, parried?

 

Krag

It doesn't work yet on PTR. I'm guessing we have to wait for a patch to test this.

It never did for me, obviously not definite proof but it was a pretty high proc rate so I would expect it to have happened on one of the many mangles I had miss/dodged/parried.

 

panny

Something that you shouldn't disregard is that specials can be dodged too.

He actually had:
White swings: 153 dodges, 26 parries
Windfury: 62 dodges, 10 parries
Stormstrike: 13 dodges, 4 parries

Over the entire night (I assume some of this is from clearing to Morogrim).

 

Cuer

Reworked "Gladiator's Dragonhide" set, for season 3 and now with more feral goodness (the old one was the main hybrid set, with a bit of everything):








The new glove bonus is the most interesting part. It's kind of odd that they continue to itemize directly for crit strike on feral gear, but overall it seems decently designed. It also shows that armor penetration is for everybody, I suppose... certainly the hot new stat that is going everywhere, in 2.3.

 

seminarca

Is it just me or does that glove bonus suck (for PvP at least) ?.?

A 2cp Maim lasts 3 seconds, so unless you're regularly in the habit of using 1cp Maims, this really doesn't do much. Unless .. if you interrupt a Mage's Frost spell, then he won't be able to Iceblock for 3 seconds while Maimed? Can't think of anywhere else this might be useful.

Or could it have PvE implications, like we can't interrupt Aran, Julianne, Caribdis with normal Maim since they are immune to stuns and incapacitate .. would this glove bonus turn Maim into our "Kick"? If so, that makes it a lot more interesting.

Cuer I'm guessing the presence of crit rating on the set is just to get a better spread of stats to minimize "stat stacking penalties" from an item budget point of view. It sure is far better than S1 and S2 though, of course.

edit: To clarify, since they have removed +healing, utilizing the freed up item budget on stacking even more Str/Agi/Sta etc would result in a very slight increase in those stats, so instead they replaced it entirely with crit rating so it doesn't suffer from the stat stacking effect. Also a good amount of hit rating!

 

Allev

Time to number crunch, but on first glance a LOT of that gear looks close to best-in-slot for DPS gear, with significant stamina. (Or at the very least, an alternative to "rogue only" type gear...)

And it's not terribly odd to have crit strike rating on gear. If you look at Malazaar's calculations, crit rating is approximately equal to AP and now STR (just a little worse). And it can't be capped, so I look for it sooner than I look for hit rating on an item.

 

Umph

Eh, I don't think that's the case. They're well itemized for the most part, but none of them are that close to best in slot. There's also no need to avoid Rogue gear with the talent changes.

 

Nathariel

I would say that the PvE implications would also help in PvP. It would be a waste of time using more than 3pt Maims on targets, but you would also be able to keep DPSing them while they are locked out making it also useful on a focused target in 5v5.

 

Foofer

Look at it from more than just a 1v1 perspective, though (it is an arena bonus, afterall). Ferals typically find themselves teamed up with a second DPS in 2's and 3's and two or three DPS in 5's. If you have more than one person on a single target, the gouge effect doesn't do much because your partner(s) is still going to be hitting that target. Maim was good to use as an interupt when you're burning someone down, but now it'll be 3 seconds better.

Seems pretty good to me, especially since it's just a glove bonus.

 

Allev

T6 vs Vengeful:

Chest: -26 STR, -5 AGI, +12 hit, +19 crit, +84 armor penetration, RRY sockets instead of RYB, 4 crit instead of 4 STR socket bonus. That's "close".

Pants: -17 STR, -4 AGI, -15 hit rating, -Blue Gemslot, +13 crit rating, +84 armor penetration. Not that close.

Hands: -8 STR, -Blue Gemslot, +9 hit, +possible PVE interrupt. Worth it if the interrupt is at all interesting.

Helm: -11 STR, -8 AGI, +12 hit, +27 crit, +84 armor penetration. Worth it over T6, individually. Doesn't look very close over Cursed Vision.

Shoulders: -9 STR, -6 AGI, +17 crit rating, +21 hit rating, each w/ 2 sockets that don't matter for optimum DPS. BIG edge for Vengeful.

This doesn't count set bonuses, but I can see wearing 2t4/2t6 or 4t6 with Vengeful shoulders, helm, or chest, if you can't get a Cursed Vision of Sargeras.

 

Larisroth

Re: Idol of Terror, yes it may well be the best tanking idol in the game, but that's not saying much. As a tanking idol it seems poorly designed to me. Especially if it's based around a proc with an internal cooldown that is longer than the skill cooldown. While agility is good and all for tanking, I'd prefer it if gave us something that we can't easily get on our gear.

One of the biggest problems we have is that blizzard refuses to give us dedicated tanking and dps weapons and idols, which is a big loss as they can be swapped in combat.

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

 

Vaccine

I'm not a fan of these to be honest. Currently I use the [Veteran's Leather Bracers] for tanking with a 10 resilience gem. Switching out to the bands would cause me to lose a hefty amount of resilience that I'd be forced to pick up elsewhere.

But compare them to the new [Vindicator's Dragonhide Bracers] (at time of writing they aren't in the item linking database so stats below).

236 Armour
+22 Strength
+22 Agility
+29 Stamina
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +2 Resilience Rating
Classes: Rogue, Druid
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 21.
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 17.

No wasted heal on these this time (from a tanking perspective) which makes them much more intersting. But they have +1 str, same agility, -2 stamina and -81 armour. In addition it has the critical strike rating (meh) and the Resilience rating. The 10 intellect isn't worth mentioning on an tanking item, not like you'll be powershifting. I think after that there are very few situations where you'd use the heroic badge over the S3 honour epic. The only situation I can think of is if you desperately needed more armour but I've already got way too much armour, certainly don't need more.

Interestingly enough its turning out that the "Vindicator's" honour epic 3 piece set seems perfectly itemised for tanking, much better than any of the new items for those slots.

Comparing the boots ([Vindicator's Dragonhide Boots] to [Treads of the Den Mother]

Den Mother has:
+159 armour
+8 Strength
+3 Agility
+5 Stamina
-6 Intellect
-21 Crit rating
-26 Reslience

The only stat I'd really be worried about losing would possibly the armour. The 8 strength is eclipsed by the pvp boots crit. The dodge is so tiny not worth mentioning, same with the 5 stamina. In return you get a lot of resilience and, more importanly, the possibility to drop an item elsewhere with defense on it in place of an alternative. So questionably an upgrade to BT trash drops and much much easier to get for most people. Trounces Zierhut's and Boots of Natural Grace in my opinion (though some may prefer the hit on the latter).


The belt is probably the worst piece ([Vindicator's Dragonhide Belt]), I think unless you need resilience the 2 gems on [Belt of Natural Power] leave that as the superior piece.


As for the arena gloves discussion I agree it is quite odd and very situational. I suppose its mainly to give us some utility in locking out pallys from shielding but the timing has to be good and if hes that low I'd be wondering why he wouldn't shield straight off instead of risking a heal. I guess they wanted it on a combo point ability to prevent spam and maim has a longish cooldown.


I think overall I'm not greatly impressed. As has been mentioned a few times in this thread it seems the itemisation team did these items months ago (reasonable I think) way before they knew of the HotW change coming. Its ironic that we finally get many items with +strength on just as it becomes even less useful than agility for us.

 

hebius

+Healing on pvp gear is very nice for druids. I'm feral with pvp gear and with swapping my weapon I have +1000 healing. Thats very usefull for pvp. Ferals shouldnt ignore their ability to heal.

 

mabl

correct me if i'm wrong.

s3 gives total of 2,91 hit, 12,29 crit, 592 ap and -252 armor.
t6 gives total of 1,71 hit, 10,4 crit, 807 ap.

Migth be a bit off, took som shortcuts, and gemmed +8 agi in all sockets.

using The Druid Wiki » ToskksDPSGearMethod with my current stats i get the score
1376,32 on tier 6 and 1354,11 on s3. With the set bonuses t6 comes out ahead.

 

spartakos

Can someone else confirm the ability to use drums in feral forms? Still cant copy my char on the ptr.

 

dukes

They're both instant and useable in forms, however I've only tested the Drums of War. I assume it's the same for all of the types (although I remember drums of panic having a different note in the patch notes, I can't find the complete unedited patch notes to find the note now ;/)

Edit: Found it.

 

stayclean

I just used my drums of panic on the PTR. It had about a half a second cast time.

Edit: This was in cat form btw. They still haven't changed the delay for switching into the same form too.

 

dukes

As Slouken stated in that thread (linked @ news and in previous posts), the switching forms issue has been resolved for the next build (or possibly just the Live version). It's likely there'll be a second revision of the PTR for testing guild banks which will have the change in, although that's just speculation on my part.

 

Umph

Does anyone have a range on the new drums? I haven't managed to get anyone on the test realm with me yet to test out the range. I am hoping it is around 40 yards so that when I am in Hunter groups they get benefit.