I'd say that a pot/hs macro would be more valuable than a stoneshield compared to a warrior or paladin situation. YMMV, of course.

I have a quick question that I hadn't seen answered anywhere. With the new AP scaling of Lacerate, does it roll with the same mechanics as Lifebloom or can you get a more powerful dot message?

I was just curious how a changing AP value would be incorporated if say BShout fell off or something similar. It'd be pretty easy to test if the PTR was up but that's life I guess.

I am not sure if this has been posted before, but is it at all possible to have a healthstone or health potion in bear form and not take a non-mitigated hit using this Macro:

/use Super Health Potion
/cast !Dire Bear form

Monkens- ya. you need a /cancelform as the first line (i think?), but otherwise it works perfectly.

DO NOT press it while you're under a global cooldown though, or all that happens is you cancelform :P

I use:


/cancelform
/use item:22105
/use item:22104
/use item:22103
/use item:32905
/use item:32784
/use item:28100
/use item:22829
/cast !Dire Bear Form

Which is healthstone, and then one of: [nethergon, red ogre, volatile, super] in that order of priority


Scurn- no, lifebloom stacks don't work that way any more. if you use +heal trinkets and stack it up, it rolls at high values.
but once the +heal fades, then the next time you refresh the stack, it drops to the lower value.

I'd imagine new lacerate works the same way.

Shouldn't need the /cancelform as it will automatically shift you out when you use the potion. (unless you have turned that feature off)

Only reason to use /cancelform is for shifting out of flightform whilst still in the air.

Other thing to pay attention to is your remaining mana. If you do not have enough mana to shift back then you will be caught in caster form.

No I know that Lifebloom only takes the most recent heal value for the stack whenever it's reapplied. I was just curious if lacerate follows the same mechanics which would make sense being the only other rolling spell out there. I just hadn't heard anything one way or the other. I could also imagine it continuing to roll at whatever value the 5th stack was applied at since Blizzard is not always consistent.

if you didn't have the /cancelform, you could hit it while you were on the gcd because it wouldn't shift you out to use the pot until you can use the pot.


And in theory, you can't get hit while doing this, just like shred/backstab can't get parried, bears can't be sapped (being sapped in bear form, when shifting / furor used to put you in combat, meaning i was an in combat, sapped, non humanoid was sweet). Freak occurrences can happen, but I imagine it will save you far more often than kill you.

Would it not be very vulnerable to issues with high latency?

Both instructions (shift out and use the pot, and shift back to bear) are sent in the same packet. The only latency involved is the time it takes the server to process it. Your ping time has no effect on it.

EDIT: And personally, I've never seen a bear get hit for out-of-form damage while using a proper pot macro since 2.3. I wouldn't rule out the possibility, but I've never seen it.

Well slap me silly, that is some good news.

Now if only shifting INTO forms was registered client-side as well, that'd fix the latency-related delay with feral charge right after going into bear form. :P Every single other ability for cat/bear/what-have-you doesn't really matter due to GCD interaction, but charge is off the GCD.

I can see why from a technical standpoint it would only be impossible to make shifting in client-side though, so I guess it's just something to live with.

Edit: Took some digging, but I found the old screenshot when the client-side change went live. Notice my ping, then notice how the events were close enough that the typical combat log shuffle occured.
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1...7173320ft0.jpg

I have never been hit when using my bear pot/hs macro. Replace the "Super Healing Potion" with any potion type.

/dismount
/cast [mod:shift, stance:1] Dire Bear Form
/cancelform [mod:alt]
/cast [mod:alt] Master Healthstone
/cast [mod:alt] Super Healing Potion
/cast [nostance:1] Dire Bear Form

Hitting the macro just puts you in bear.
Holding shift just shifts you from bear to bear (near instant 10 rage for rage starved situations)
Holding alt does the bear pot/hs. Like others have said, make sure your GCD is refreshed before using this.

The Furor delay was server side, I thought? I'll do some high-ping tests. (My list of ISPs is impressive :V) Did you also mean 2x + 1.5sec? Or am I missing something stupid again?

It also never explicitly occured to me that Prowl is off the GCD... but now that I think about it, wow.

Yeah, Furor is server side. But as for 2x+1 vs 2x+1.5... It's almost exactly 1sec between gaining Dire Bear Form and gaining Furor for me, but it's quite possible that is actually Latency+SomeStaticTime. On slower connections it may be 1.5sec, I dunno. Assuming you get the Furor rage about 1sec after entering bear form, if you wait for furor rage in order to charge you need to:

0 - Hit Bear Form
[Latency] - Enter Bear Form
[Latency]+1sec - Receive Furor Rage
[Latency]+1sec - Hit Charge
2x[Latency]+1sec - Charge


If you use Enrage rage to cast charge, you need to:

0 - Hit Bear Form
[Latency] - Enter Bear Form
[Latency] - Hit Enrage
2x[Latency] - Receive Enrage Rage
2x[Latency] - Hit Charge
3x[Latency] - Charge

Yeah, I tried making a macro once to dismount / cancel flight form, shift to cat, and then prowl, but ran into the same issues. I ultimately gave up on that and just do it all manually, because cancelform'ing out of swift flight form and shifting into cat gave me some interesting situations, where I would essentially fling myself way past where I wanted to land, because I was still traveling at 280% speed in cat form until I hit the ground.

/treads off into yet another tangent - I set up Ctrl-F1 to F5 to sticky-forms that also do other things:

F1 - shift to bear, feral charge
F2 - travel form or aquatic form, sticky
F3 - shift to cat, prowl, sticky
F4 - mount (cancels form - I jump and hit this while in the air if I want to get to caster form for whatever reason)
F5 - flight form, sticky

By 'sticky', I mean my macros are rigged so that I don't get out of form if already in it, or prowl if I'm already prowled. This makes for easy button spamming. Mounted, and need to interrupt something? sure, just target and spam Ctrl-F1 till charge goess off. In flight form, and need to prowl ASAP? Spam Ctrl-F3 till prowled.

Edit: You could... let go of the forward key before dropping from flight to cat. :P

I just account for and enjoy the high speed cat form glide through the air. It's a good thing, for me. Heck, half the time when I'm flying somewhere I'll fly way high so that when I get there I can glide down from way high up in cat form (then shift back to flight for a split second before cratering).

It's exhilarating to descend towards unsuspecting prey in cat form at 380% speed with the energy already ticking, provided the flying cat aims well.

Also under the umbrella of non-theorycrafting shapechanging fun, is it a universally discovered thrill to fly high above the ground, shift into free fall, and see how close to the ground one can shift back to flight form before going splat? Playing chicken this way with a fellow druid is one way to amuse oneself while waiting at raid summoning stones. Sadly, connection lag places limits; I've on occasion shifted but still died.

For some reason, if you hit a ground polygon that happens to be at some specific angle (like 60degrees or something), that if you hit while flying, you'll slide down it. I was just autorun flying off toward Skettis one day, hit one of those polys in the mountains there, slid down it, and died of fall damage, all without ever leaving flight form (well, lost flight form when I died).

I know that dodge+armor=our mitigation especially under the old druid tank paradigm. However, now that we see Sunwell is more about stacking stam, wouldn't [Pillar of Ferocity] be better than [Wildfury Greatstaff]? It would also allow you to meet the armour cap as an added bonus.

For those looking to upgrade to [Ring of the Stalwart Protector], how have u itemized your other enchants (eg: helm, meta, chest and cloak) to remain uncrittable? I ask because i have heard several people mention they wont even bother with it unless they just happen to have 60 spare badges laying around.

Lastly, has Sunwell changed our prefference from the [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] to the [Powerful Earthstorm Diamond] because of the increased need for additional stam?

The problem with trading [Wildfury Greatstaff] for [Pillar of Ferocity] is that the tradeoff rate, gaining 50 armor + 21 stamina at the cost of 54 dodge, is relatively poor. In gemming, say, in replacing [Delicate Crimson Spinel]s with [Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst], it only costs 15 agility to gain that 21 stamina. And 10 armor is generally 1 itemization point. So, yes, [Pillar of Ferocity] would be worth using for stamina-heavy fights, but if balancing stamina with avoidance is a concern at all (i.e., in anything but the most extreme stamina-stacking build), there are other, better ways to add stamina first, and the weapon is only worth using in an ideal, static setup once those other tradeoffs have been made and even more stamina at the expense of dodge is desired.

On the other hand, one may want to use some of that tanking armor for multiple purposes, including for DPS or for tanking situations with smoother damage distributions, where overall long-term damage reduction, through both mitigation and avoidance, gains its full value rather than being dominated by spike-insurance stamina (i.e. situations with faster, lighter hits rather than slow, but potentially strung together unluckily, big hits). Of course it costs nothing more than one bag slot to keep both weapons around, while one doesn't generally get to carry two full sets of endgame tanking armor or regem one's armor between fights, so those other tradeoffs sometimes aren't feasible.

By swapping Pillar for Wildfury and the new helm enchant (18 stam/20 resil) for the dodge (17 def/16 dodge) or hit ones you gain some 700 health in bear, some armour, and some crit immunity, although at the expense of quite a significant amount of avoidance. It sounds like for some of the fights avoidance is nice but the stam is definitely nicer as an overall buffer for the situations where you simply can't use avoidance (stun/etc).

Oh and hi Andy! Surprised you started playing again, especially as a druid.