• Caniki

Use Rawr to model both the cat and bear gear sets, and then figure out what purchases will result in the large increases. As far as which to prioritize goes, I suppose that depends on the guild. Personally, I find that tanking stuff comes easy; we have very few other ferals, so there is almost no competition for feral tanking gear. Same goes for resto gear, that defaults to me when the resto druids already have it. DPS gear though, that's harder for me to get, as the rogues and enhancement shaman need it more, since DPS is their full-time job. Also, look for things that have no direct upgrade, or at least not one for awhile. I quickly upgraded my Stranglestaff to the new Badge staff, and it won't be replaced until Twins, which won't be for awhile.

 

• Astrylian

Crosshairs, have him check out Rawr, Rawr - Home

Emmerald's lists are static, which means that they don't scale with your gear, buffs, or situation.

The staff is a gigantic DPS upgrade for him, so that should be very important. The bear gear items are significant upgrades as well, but which will give the biggest upgrade per badge can be found using Rawr. When trading that S3 gear for badge gear, he'll need to pay attention to his chance to be crit, make sure not to become crittable.

Rawr - A theorycrafting tool for Bears, Cats, Moonkin, Trees, Healadins, DPSWarrs, Retadins, Mages, ProtWarrs, Tankadins, HealingPriests, ShadowPriests, Warlocks, Rogues, EnhShams, Hunters, Elementals, RestoShams, Tank DKs, and DPS DKs!
Download Rawr v2.2.27 <--NEW Nov9th!

Are you an active Rogue / Hunter / Warlock theorycrafter and an experienced C# dev, with some spare time and a desire to help build something great for the WoW community? Send me a PM!

 

Negoveio

Well, I'll go straight to the point

First: My Armory
Second: T5/T6 aren't available for me.

With that said, I wanted to get the best gear I could, but I'm still confused.
First of all I want to get rid of those S1 shoulders, I do have T4, but I will be crittable if I just use them.
Second, I want to get [Ring of the Stalwart Protector]
It seems like everyone does get the S3 chest(with +6 to all enchant) to stay crit immune, but after messing up with Rawr I found out that getting S3 Head and using [Embrace of Everlasting Prowess] would be my best option(I will need to enchant +15 resilience on chest for it).
So, am I right with this or am I missing something and S3 Head + Badges Chest isn't really worth?

 

Merple

Keep an eye on the 4T4 bonus if you're looking for "best in slot" gear. Fact is, it's very hard to beat, even with badge gear. I'd lean towards 4T4 in most situations. Personally, the badge pants are the best non-tier piece in my mind.

S3 Bracers are probably the answer to your crit problem, assuming you've already got the resilience head/chest enchants.

Stalwart Protector is hard to work into a gear set until you've got either the Shadomoon Insignia or a neck with defence + threat ([Frayed Tether of the Drowned] or [Pendant of Titans] ). Personally, I'd avoid it.

-In our country, any CBC reporter can dream of becoming head of state.

 

kalbear

The 4pT4 is definitely great for mitigation. They're a bit low in avoidance and they really start sucking for threat. I'd recommend keeping 4pT4 until you can replace at least two pieces of it, and preferably three, but you will break the set bonus.

I really recommend getting the S3 bracers; they're not that big a loss compared to the band of the swift paw (you basically lose some armor) and you gain threat stats. Plus the resilience is huge.


My list, taken from my blog, to get to crit immunity:
Glyph of the Gladiator (20 res)
Shoulder enchant (at least 10 def - preferably scryer for 15 def)
Cloak enchant (12 def)
Chest enchant (preferably 15 resilience)
Wrist enchant (12 def)
S3 bracers (19 res with socket bonus)
Violet Signet of the great protector (19 def)
Slikk's Cloak (16 def)

This gives 54 resilience and 69 defense (assuming aldor enchant), which leaves you just 5 def shy of needed. If you have the scryer exalted enchant, you have just enough. This leaves all trinkets, one ring (and the Violet signet is one of the best rings before sunwell anyway), amulets, weapons and most item slots save the cloak and bracers open. If you are Aldor you may have to put in one gem for resilience or defense, but that's not so bad. The violet signet and Slikk's cloak are both best in slot for bears, so they're already wanted to be gotten. The bracers are the only key item there that you must have for this to work. I personally feel this to be close to ideal given the ability to mix and match gear as you need for specific fights and gives the greatest upgrade possibilities. With this, you can wear full T6 save the bracers.

 

Goedel

Consider not just how much of an upgrade a particular item is (and even for that question, use Rawr rather than a static list) but what the other upcoming options are. Also, for tanking, points towards crit immunity count, though they are likely to be a side note on any general list or even a more accurate assessment tool like Rawr.

I would stick with the two s3 arena pieces, as the losses elsewhere from making up the lost crit reduction are likely to outweigh or at least trivialize the armor gains from the badge gear. The same goes for the s3 bracers, which are an excellent 2-way piece and needn't really be replaced until t6 bracers.

The tanking ring is worth purchasing; it's one of the best in game and will be part of most druid tanking setups all the way through Sunwell Plateau.

As Astrylian said, the staff is a huge upgrade; moreover, it's likely to be used for a long time, as the replacement for it, [Stanchion of Primal Instinct], drops off the Eredar Twins.

 

kalbear

This is, btw, one very good reason to go after the S3 head first. There are only a few options better than it for tanking, and all drop off of significantly difficult bosses. There are no badge replacements and not very many random drop replacements, especially as a bear.

 

Pyth

After looking at the WWS from our latest attempts as well as in-game parses(Recap) and playing with Rawr debuffs the adds do not seem to have the Sunwell Radiance buff, but they also do not seem to have the Dual Wield penalty even though they are dual wielding mobs.

in short:
- No Sunwell Raidance
- No Dual Wield Penalty

or so it seems...

 

seminarca

I believe this is kosher even under Gurg's announcement, please delete if inappropriate.

WotLK talent leaks, taken from:
http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/talentline.php?line=281

Notable changes

* Feral Faerie Fire and Feral Charge have had their positions swapped in the tree.

* Predatory Strikes still doesn't scale.

* New talent:
Primal Precision, requires 15 talent points invested, requires Sharpened Claws
Description: Increases your expertise by 10, and you are refunded -60% of the energy cost of a finishing move if it fails to land.
About time we got some Expertise love.

* Double the value!
Survival of the Fittest
Description: Increases all attributes by 6% and reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by -6%.
They are either going to fiddle around with boss crit chance, or make us crit immune for free. I'm guessing it's the former.

* New talent:
Reinforced Hide, requires 35 talent points invested
Description: Reduces all spell damage taken by 10%, and increases your Armor contribution from items by an additional 10%.
Makes us alright for spell damage bosses, more armor too! Hopefully we won't end up armor capping too soon as we did in TBC.

* New talent:
Primal Aggression, requires 40 talent points invested
Description: Increases the critical strike chance of your Maul and Shred abilities by 15%.

* New talent:
Improved Mangle, requires 40 talent points invested, requires Mangle
Description: Reduces the cooldown of your Mangle (Bear) ability by -20%, and reduces the energy cost of your Mangle (Cat) ability by -6.

* New talent:
Infected Wounds, requires 45 talent points invested
Description: Your Shred, Maul and Mangle attacks have a $h% chance to cause an Infected Wound in the target. The Infected Wound reduces the movement speed and casting speed of the target by $48482s1%. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts $48482d.
PvP talent, situational use in PvE.

* New talent:
Berserk, requires 50 talent points invested
Description: Increases your energy regeneration rate by $50334s1% while in Cat form, and increases your total health by $50321s1% while in Bear form. After the effect ends, the health is lost. While berserk, you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed.
Adrenaline Stand!!! Absolutely amazing, well worthy of a 51 pointer if it ends up going live.

edit: From the Resto tree:

* New talent:
Master Shapeshifter, requires 10 talent points invested, requires Natural Shapeshifter
Description: Grants an effect which lasts while the Druid is within the respected shapeshift form. Bear form - Increases physical damage by 4%. Cat form - Increases critical strike chance by 4% Moonkin form - Increases spell damage by 4%. Tree form - Increases healing by 4%.

Furor, Naturalist, Omen of Clarity and Natural Shapeshifter remain unchanged.

 

kalbear

Infected wounds has some nice synergy (in theory) with Death Knights and their diseases. If this worked on bosses it would be incredible. I doubt it will though; 50% movement and casting speed is pretty ridiculous.

Was hoping that there would be some hints at some new moves or abilities in the tree. It still looks like it's maul, shred, mangle and rip. Given what the warrior tree looks like, that may well be a nerf.

 

Meddler

Thanks for those Seminarca.

Must admit gut reaction is that there's a lot of bloat added to the feral tree there, though whether that's intended or just the old throw a lot of stuff in for testing purposes is pretty debateable of course. No sign of reductions in points needed for existing talents I take it?

Edit: Regarding the crit reduction increase on SotF I'm inclined to agree they'll fiddle with mob crit chance. There have been plenty of hints in the past that crushing blows might be phased out or changed and removing them entirely and instead increasing boss crit rates across the board would seem a reasonable means of approaching that, ensuring that defensive gearing to prevent burst is still an issue for all classes while not having some with a huge disadvantage (Crushing blows versus those unable to block).

Edit2: For anyone curious talent points for the new talents:

Primal Precision: 2
Primal Aggression: 3
Improved Mangle: 3
Reinforced Hide: 3
Infected Wounds: 5
Beserk: 1

Haven't seen any changes to number of points needed for existing talents or any changes to them beyond the already mentioned Feral Faerie Fire/Feral Charge swap.

 

kalbear

What I'm curious about is the balance that will exist if they do remove crushing blows. If crushing blows are entirely off the table and armor capping is close to what it is now (or even if the cap can only be reached by tier 9, but it scales) having a 60-70% reduction on all physical damage is going to be stellar compared to what a warrior or paladin can reach. They could balance this by making armor better for those classes or making higher-end armor worse for druids, but then you'd likely get into the situation where something like the badge of tenacity remains the best bear trinket in the game.

 

seminarca

If you follow the link, you can see how many "spells" there are under a particular talent, e.g. 5 "spells" under Ferocity means it has 5 ranks. Inasfar as I can tell, existing Feral talents haven't changed in terms of number of points required. There does seem to be some danger of bloat, but we can now start dropping questionably useless stuff like Primal Tenacity.

edit: You've found it =p

I think what they're likely to do is lessen the difference between pure armor mitigation between all tanking classes, but also keep us all further from the cap. We will have two talents that increase armor by 10%. Chances are, they might even stop with the bonus armor on leather so there's more shareability with DPS/Rogue leather.

Imagine now in TBC, without considering WotLK at all, if they increased the Thick Hide bonus to 20% and dropped the bonus armor from all our tanking items. Suddenly, our armor drops to ~25k to 30k-ish absolute max. Now consider a crushless boss, Archimonde perhaps, and you'll find that Warrior/Paladin mitigation after their talents + block will be far more equivalent to ours as opposed to the current situations where we take 6k hits and they take 9k hits.

edit2: Clarifying the example.

 

kalbear

Honestly we could drop infected wounds and be okay;we'd need 51 points anyway, and most standard builds have at least 47. The new talents without infected wounds would be 12. So missing two more points from the resto tree, basically.

I'm a bit bothered that they really haven't gone with the idea of a hybrid tree at all, but oh well. Berserk is exceptional.

 

urotas

I'm thinking they're making the tree bloated on purpose. You can get most of the new pve-talents in a single build, but you'll have to skip pretty much all of the pvp-talents. Since infected wounds and the others seem a must for pvp, you can't effectively pvp with your pve build. Here's to hoping that having to respec would silence the cries of people not wanting feral to be pvp viable. I'm not counting on it, though.

Remember that the new master shapeshifter seems a must for pve (4% damage for bear, 4% crit for cat), so that's another 2 points to spend, or 5 if you didn't have natural shapeshifter before.

I'm looking at a 0/54/16 build for pve with 1 point to spare. Following abilities skipped, that you might have had before:
0/2 Brutal Impact
0/2 Nurturing Instinct
0/2 Savege Fury
0/3 Primal Tenacity
0/5 Infected Wounds
0/3 Intensity

For a pve-build you have everything you absolutely need, the last point is probably good for nurturing instinct. Now the question is, what pve-talents can you afford to skip in a pvp build?

 

Deninkle

It seems that the itemising loot could be made much easier

With the extra +10% armour, you no longer need the bonus armour on items. (Maybe)


If druids are automatically crit immune (doubtful), there is no reason to give pve leather +def rating.


Ferals will still probably need their own weapons. But that should reduce reliance on pvp gear at least!




It's possible to (with this talent tree) to get in all the shiny DPS talents if you leave out either Feral Charge/Faerie Fire, Primal Tenacity, Nurturing Instinct, Feral Aggression, Brutal Impact and Infected Wounds. You can still pick up Furor, Naturalist, Natural Shapeshifter and Master Shapeshifter.

Perfect off-tank?

 

Meddler

Swapping points in Thick Hide (if you have them) to Reinforced Hide seems like a no brainer, so that potentially covers that. Of the 10 new points 1 in Beserk, 5 in Infected Wounds, 1 in Master Shapeshifter and 2 in Primal Precision seem like obvious chocies to me, the last particularly given the frustration of repeatedly missing a Rip against a dodging or parrying target and losing substantial energy.

That leaves you with 1 point spare (of the new points) and a range of possible options to shift old points around. Gut reaction is that it's not necessarily going to be viable to fully improve both Mangle and Shred in a PVP build, that sort of detail really depends on the numbers though of course. Plus as always it's very early days yet so this sort of speculation's fun but pretty rough - I'm happy with the general direction though in terms of added PVP options and/or PVE output.




Edit: In response to the above unless running with Balance druid consistently I can't see skipping Feral Faerie Fire as worthwhile in a PVE/dps focused build. Feral charge also just offers so much flexibility even in PVE that I personally feel it's essential for a build with any tanking intent, OT especially actually. Otherwise agree though, it's an interesting PVE vrs PVP split assuming that's the intent not just us reading too much into an early ish draft.

 

Maax

You missed something on Feral Charge:

http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/views...?spellid=49377

Spell 49377
Name: Feral Charge
Description: Causes you to charge an enemy, immobilizing and interrupting any spell being cast for $19675d. This ability can be used in Cat Form, Bear Form and Dire Bear Form.

Devs: Our nerfs will block out the sun!
Druids: Then we will tank in the shade.

 

Oaken

I think you've hit the nail on the head but it isn't to reduce reliance on pvp gear. Remember, they've talked a lot about consolidating tokens/gear so there is less gear rot. It only makes sense that druids and rogues would now share gear (just as presumably plate-wearing tanks will share the same gear) and these changes would help bridge the tanking gaps that would otherwise exist. The talents to give extra crit, etc. in cat form are probably to bridge the dps gap that would exist in the sense that rogue gear typically favours ap and crit chance over druid gear which favours strength and agility.

 

seminarca

Whoa, I did completely miss that. I love it =D

Will make locking casters down in PvP that much easier, running in and out of PBAoE fights in PvE and I'm sure we'll come up with more fun stuff (meow bomb instead of rawr bomb?).

 

Pars

One thing I particularly did not care for was the addition of more feral talents (well, all around talents really) in the resto tree.

Master Shapeshifter (requires 3 in Natural Shapeshifter)
Description: Grants an effect which lasts while the Druid is within the respected shapeshift form. Bear form - Increases physical damage by 4%. Cat form - Increases critical strike chance by 4% Moonkin form - Increases spell damage by 4%. Tree form - Increases healing by 4%.

This is 2/2.

Which brings the talents in resto which are almost compulsory up to 16. This allows us 55 in the feral tree, while adding 17 new talents, all if which are situationally useful. It seems to me like ferals will need to think hard on talent selection in WotLK, as it seems more possible to specialize towards one of PvP, tanking, or DPSing, but not all of them at once (to their maximum potential).

Overall I'm very happy with this version of the talents, having too many talents to choose from is better than not enough.

 

• Cluey

While the unexpected preview is interesting to look at I would rather it gets contained in its own thread so it is easier to find and doesn't interrupt the current game as we know it.
Being an early leak I expect a lot to change before we get to play it live, currently there is a lot of bloat in the trees but I assume this is for testing it to see what is worth keeping and what isn't.

I don't plan on spending much time trying to keep track of WotLK info yet because I expect a lot of changes, I don't want to get all excited about things which get removed. How many remember Windfury working in feral from TBC beta and were disappointed by it getting removed?
Wait until things get confirmed and please don't turn into gibbering idiots every time an early beta or alpha change is made which you don't like.

I will add this though, I heard, sorry no link as it was mentioned on vent, that resilience won't work in instances which is a significant change and will change just about all of our tanking sets, this might be why SotF is 6% in the leaked information.

 

Vaccine

Bear with me for this post and entertain the notion that they may intend to drastically change Feral Itemisation.

SotF: -6% chance to be crit. This leaves us crit immune under the current system vs the standard max level +3 PvE bosses.

Reinforced Hide: Another 10% armour contribution from armour items.

So what does that immediately change from current itemisation?
- No defence or resilience required.
- Each individual armour piece now has an even higher contribution to our total armour.

Now lets look at current itemisation for our Jewelery, Cloaks and Weapons.

These 3 items when itemised towards a Feral currently all have a high additional armour component which works with our Bearform Multiplier. Quick examples being , [Slikk's Cloak of Placation] and [Wildfury Greatstaff].

Now what if Blizzard is intending to phase out the use of these very offspec items? We already know that they have said they are going to try to streamline what gear each spec requires so they can have fewer items that are more sought after and less itemisation to do as a whole. A move towards Ferals requiring no resilience/defence and having armour sufficently supplied purely by actual armour pieces rather than what amount to non-armour pieces for other classes could look like this. If we don't need defence or armour, what use is [Ring of Unyielding Force]? It becomes a pure stam ring. [Ring of Arathi Warlords] suddenely becomes a much better option sacrificing a tiny bit of stamina for lots of threat.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not comparing these items to what may come in WotLK, they were just an off the top of my head example. But the point I was trying to make is that if we didn't need armour or defence on our rings, necks and cloaks then what do we want on these pieces? Stamina, naturally. Agility, of course. Maybe a bit of hit? A little expertise? Suddenely we're looking at Ferals wanting existing DPS rings for their tanking set. Oh wait, thats the exact stats we want for our DPS sets too! It is possible that not only are they trying to streamline it by having us use high agi/stam rings for tanking, but allow us to use these same items for DPS.

The weapon is a toss up. I feel we'll still get armour tanking weapons simply because it mimics warriors and paladin's use of a shield. If not though then you remove the need for feral itemisation. Again if you don't need armour, and comparing it to the current system, [Stanchion of Primal Instinct] becomes the best tanking staff as well as DPS staff.

Maybe it is a crazy idea, time will tell, but I get the feeling that is where they are going with these changes.

 

Deliverance

I'm guessing it is the latter.

Blizzard has stated that they intend to simplify itemization so more classes use the same loot and they've in TBC pushed the feral spec (and we've mostly gladly supported it) as the happy offtank/dps, shapeshifting in combat to fit the occasion, that main tanks when needed (or if nobody else is available). The main issue remains that despite Blizzard's earnest intentions to provide armour used for both purposes, we generally go for dedicated sets for each purpose, and we end up using a very, very, narrow range of items for our non-set slots to gain the 2.6% anti-crit we feel we lack. Damagedealing while in our bear gear isn't great, but it works, but tanking while in our cat gear is a very risky proposition due to being crittable on top of an already lower damage mitigation through wearing less high armour items.

If I were designing WotLK, it would be very tempting to just say "fuck this, make them crit immune by default, and they will stop crying for defense leather that nobody else uses, they will stop PvPing for PvE gear, and we'll have fewer complaints about the miscellaneous slots, since they do not desperately need those slots to have some sort of anti-crit. If that means they end up using high-agility dps-items for some slots while tanking rather than defense rating items, then that's just great - it strengthens the way we perceive the feral druid's role: performing two tasks interchangably while wearing the same armour".

It could just be my wishful thinking, but it sort of makes sense if they want to cut even further down on items that few use while killing off a couple of returning complaints at the same time.

 

Inaiwae

Guys, i had some threat problems yesterday at brutallus. I am tanking with stamina-focused gear, 6/8 T6. I have t6 pants + brooch of deftness, so 22 expertise and 48? hit. The problem was that it happened too often that my mangles didnt land. There was one try where i was at 1100 tps during the 1st 30 seconds, which is crap. When mangles land, i was at 1500-1600 i'd say but the parries / dodges / misses occured way too often.

So the question is, what do you use for threat, and what threat values do you usually see at Brutallus?

I intend to try tanking with Staff of the forest lord when not stomped. I also consider using Shard of Contempt but i have hard time giving up Commendation or Badge ...