Interesting changes to the Feral tree if they go through.

I'm flabbergasted that the two changes we proposed when the discussion about instant Scare Beast was going on have actually been implemented:

- Move Feral Charge so that it's harder for Resto builds to get it - much needed nerf to Resto PvP.
- Have a Fear immunity skill

Either they read these forums a lot closer than we think, or we just second-guessed them on the skills/changes needed for Feral.




On the above poster - theres little you can do about +hit for Butallus without compromising survivability in some way, you're already using the only 2 items that are easy to implement (Brooch/T6 legs).
Don't be so focussed on your threat though, and get your Hunters to use Misdirect on the tanks on every cooldown. You are far better to focus on tanking itself - only dps warriors have a possibility to get too high on threat with no means of dumping it - everyone else should be fine if they use their dumps correctly and have Salv. If you really want to, try picking up a spare set of T6 gloves and enchant for +threat, but thus far I've not felt that necessary personally.

It's all pretty much the same, when I tank Brutallus, but I'm the second to tank him (that may help).
A survival Hunter can help with resetting his misdirect timers (I assume he does that).
I also have some abysmal miss rates on him.

The group however consists of a Healshaman with imp GOA. 2 Hunters (SV and BM) the Warrior Tank and me.
GOA & FI - I think - do help threat wise (while GOA of course also serves survivability).

Edit:

First 30 seconds should be covered by misdirect. It could help for the following taunts to make sure a 5CP rip is still ticking after taunt.

Are you a Scryer? [Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve] might well be the answer. The proc for Scryers provides 100 expertise which will hugely cut down your dodges & parries over the first 30 seconds. It is also heavy on stamina & still provides some hit. I usually put out well over 1.5k tps over the first 30 seconds & this has been a big help for me.

Also, don't be too proud to ask for a misdirect or two, this is really one fight where great threat over the first 30 seconds gives you a nice headstart for the rest of the fight & should allow you to chain bloodlust your best caster dps late in the fight.

I totally missed the Feral Charge change as well, that combined with Infected Wounds are much needed changes as far as Feral PVP goes. Still though, we're going to end up being forced into bear and turtling. So meh.

Also, there is a talent calculator that I didn't see linked here: War Tools :: Talent tree WotLK Alpha: Druid 2.0

And a wiki setup: WotLK Information Wiki: WotLK Alpha Official Wiki

The feral tree is pretty bloated. It kind of looks like they are trying to make you make difficult choices about cat dps vs bear tank ability. I quite like that, especially since I'm sure as encounters go onto farm status you can spec more down the cat dps side.

This is exactly what i thought when i checked that. When i went for Master Powershifter, i was about 7-8 talents short to pick all relevant cat and bear talents in feral tree. And i like it, too.

Be careful with that war-tools site - it could be a false positive, but the webscan boxes I run at work just flagged it as a page containing a virus/malware.

I don't think so. I think it's more the case that they're going down the road of diversifying the PVE and PVP talents. You can put together a talent build that gives you everything you need for PVE; you just need to skip stuff like Brutal Impact, Infected Wounds, Primal Tenacity and Nurturing Instinct.

If they really are trying to draw a distinction between cat and bear, then that's pretty stupid I think. Druids already have three very different specialties - they don't need a fourth, and what makes us the ideal offtanks is the ability to instantly switch between DPS and Tanks off the same spec. Take that away to any significant extent and we might as well be warriors or (presumably) deathknights.

Thanks for the heads up; Avast hasn't flagged it as of yet but it's always good to be aware of these things.

---

Back to the discussion at hand, I like the direction that Blizzard is going with as far as the new tweaks & talents in pretty much all of the trees go; they'll almost certainly get touched up / modified before we even get to Beta but everything feels consistent and, well, 'right' (for lack of being able to come up with a better description) at the moment.

I dont know if this has been mentioned in this thread yet but pulling from the WOTLK thread in public discussion:

- Feral Druid's Tiger's Fury no longer costs energy but has a 30 second cooldown.

Think it might deserve a bar space now?:-P ( probably just macro space )

Don't forget that the most important changes still coming may be in core mechanic changes that we can't see through spells or talents. Remember when we dropped from 25agi per dodge% pre-BC to 14agi per dodge% post-BC? That's game-changing, and arguably has made more difference to how we tank than any of the BC talents did (The other major one being SotF making us not need def all over).


EDIT: And don't forget itemization. Ferals are currently balanced around using downright terrible itemization. Look at how ProtWarr and ProtPally gear is itemized, there's tons of it that is downright perfect, just the right stats, split in the right proportions, etc. Then look at ours. If everything we used was itemized with a bunch of armor, agi, sta, dodge rating, a bit of def, a bit of str, a tiny bit of hit/exp, no int, no ap, no crit, etc, we'd be downright overpowered. Even more-so with cats. Imagine if on all your cat gear, all the armor was traded for more str/agi, all the ap traded for str, most of the crit traded for agi, alot of the sta traded for more str/agi, etc, we'd be... well we'd be on par with the other dps classes I guess, heh. But it'd be quite a big difference, is my point. Ferals are the perfect example of class/spec balancing through itemization limitations.

From the blizzcon thread.


I am overall quite impressed, especially if the majority of these go live, at the effort they are making to bring us more in line (not only feral but even from a roots indoor standpoint).

You won't have enough energy to shift, TF, and shred twice unless they just stand there for 3-4 seconds after it wears off (114 energy > shift + 4 ticks > 9 seconds). You might get 2 shreds in if you don't TF and you can stay behind them for a GCD.

The mangle(bear) thing is a slight dps nerf if ya have a bear tanking but everything else is practically pure gold.

TF not being on GCD AND being free is pretty sweet. Might change the way you perform your cycles to get the max out of it (ie every 30 seconds you'd want to get a rip->mangle and then wait on energy until you could get the most out of the 6 seconds of tiger's fury with shreds).

Frenzied regen still seems kinda weak though I guess if you're generating a ton of rage its not too bad. Its still no shield wall (though the new Last stand talent rocks).

Rake being increased in base damage could be interesting. If its sufficient it may find its way into a cycle though it would need a MAJOR buff to do so.

I am somewhat concerned about the massive amount of talent points required in the feral tree and how the second to last tier is of very minor use in PvE (though godly in PvP). Then again it is very early and I suspect a lot of this will likely change. Still the direction its going looks nice.

Ok guys, so I'm kinda lost at what to choose for gear/gems, I'll put possible combinations of stats, tell me what you think it's better.
They're all raid buffed. No trinket/idol procs.

Gear 1 (stam)-> 26685 hp, 34200 armor, 48% Dodge
Gear 2 (avoidance) -> 22800 hp, 34596 armor, 61,30% Dodge
Gear 3 (mixed/towards avoidance) -> 23388 hp, 34460 armor, 58,69% Dodge
Gear 4 (mixed/towards stam) -> 24175 hp, 34336 armor, 54,63% Dodge

I was thinking about staying with Gear 2 because of the less heals I would need. On the other hand, a lot of hp would help me if I'm unlucky with crushs. Gear 4 seems to be the worst one.
When I go for Gear 2 vs Gear 3, I'm trading 3% Dodge for 500 HP. I guess at this point 3% Dodge is far better than 500 hp right?
Geez, I'm truly lost.

Any reason you aren't armour capped? Thats usually the first milestone I touch on when designing a new set of gear.

Love to know what that first set of gear entails though. With 6/8 t6, sunwell and BT loot all gemmed for 15 stam and raid buffed I'm still about 7-800 behind that. Is it including Commanding Shout?

Negoveio, I'd recommend checking it out via Rawr and seeing what your effective health comes out to be best in. My suspicion is that gear 2 will end up being easier for your healers but will end up killing you more, and some mix of 3 and 4 (likely 4) will be best. Having another 2k health buffer would probably be ideal while maintaining 55% avoidance.

Ultimately I think it comes down to what fight you're going to be dealing with. Some fights will favor avoidance, others mitigation. Having both sets around is likely ideal.

My suspicion is that most of the items that a feral will wear are going to be either tier items or shared loot with a rogue. The tank/dps distinction will be made via the weapon, idol, rings, trinkets, amulets and cloaks.

3% dodge is infinitely better than 500 hp. Is this including imp too? These values seem pretty damn high for your gear level (Got to love that badge vendor ), you could pretty much tank brutallus no problem in Gear set 2. Personally if I were going to tank a boss I would try to get to armor all the way up to cap, but I guess that last % is not game-breaking.

EDIT: Alot of it is situational. There are times where you will need more stam, more hit/expertise for threat, and more avoidance.

I don't believe that is exactly true. If they continue down the road of token turn-in type items, there will probably be 2 flavors of leather gear. One targeted towards rogues and one targeted towards feral druids.

Oh yes, sorry, let me put the setup
This char is new. Gear is prolly(not sure tho) the best I can get before BT/Hyjal(where I'm right now).
[Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm] with [Arcanum of the Gladiator]
[Necklace of the Deep]
[Nordrassil Feral-Mantle] with +13 Def (I'm not exalted yet)
[Cloak of Blade Turning] with +12 Agi
[Embrace of Everlasting Prowess] with +15 Resi
[Band of the Swift Paw] with +12 Stam
[Handwraps of the Aggressor] with +15 Agi
[Tameless Breeches] with +40 Stam and +12 Agi
[Belt of Natural Power]
[Boots of Natural Grace] with +12 Agi
[Ring of the Stalwart Protector]
[Violet Signet of the Great Protector]
[Badge of Tenacity]
[Commendation of Kael'thas] for Gear 1 and 4
[Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch] for Gear 2 and 3
[Wildfury Greatstaff] with +35 agi
[Idol of Terror]

Gems are:
Gear 1 -> All +15 Sta, Meta is +18 Sta
Gear 2 -> All +10 Agi, No Meta here since nothing works with all red.
Gear 3 and 4 I did put 6 gems of each type, focusing on getting socket bonuses. Meta is +18 Sta

Buffs are:
Improved Fortitude
Improved MotW
Improved Blood Pact
Improved Commanding Shout
Improved Grace of Air Totem
Blessing of Kings

Comsumables:
Flask of Fortification + 30 Stam Food for Gear 1 and 4
Elixir of major Fortitude + Elixir of Major Agility + 20 Agi Food for Gear 2 and 3

It's not going to surprise me if they revert or amend that agility change looking at this early stage.

The biggest change I can see at present is that buffing of SotF yet further. Presumably this makes +def items largely redundant, but we would lose the (admittedly small) buff to dodge that +def gives us, making the extra dodge through agility from level 70+ items not quite so overpowered? Alternatively will those extra talent points be better elsewhere and will be worth keeping the requirement for some +def/resilience from gear? Will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Negoveio, I think you are missing pants from that setup. You cannot apply the nethercleft leg armor enchant to your belt, so I am assuming you just missed something =P