As far as I can see, the changes do not bring us particularly closer to where "we should be" with regards to rogue dps - what it does is make existing itemization more convenient for us.

The net effect of the changes is that every FAP weapon has about 28.2% more FAP than before. That gain in FAP is of roughly the same scale as the loss in AP from HotW not affecting STR (STR*2.72-2.26), give or take a few dozen AP. With +10% AP applied to the sum of the changes (and thus regaining some of what was lost as well as working on FAP, buffs, agility..), you are going to, again broadly and it differs with gear level, in particular how much rogue gear you were already wearing, going to see something like a total 5-15% increase in AP when raidbuffed.

That may seem like a lot, but as has been demonstrated often enough, the feral druid's real scaling problem is not a lack of AP - it is being very poor at transforming raw AP into damage. Druids are not going to scale a lot better because of this change, merely a little better: those 80-95% of your new AP that was your old AP don't scale one whit better with gear, but at least there'll be more items of interest to us and you will have that bit of extra AP.

Not that you couldn't solve the scaling issue via AP by making high-end gear provide high amounts of AP (though it would be difficult to set up without letting low-end gear, where the current setup works quite well, get unbalanced), it is just that addressing it via a change to our talents/abilities seem more likely.

From a practical perspective, something like the FAP and HotW change are much more in line with sops thrown to the players, since this is what players complained the loudest about (lack on STR on gear, our "2Hs" scaling worse than others' "2Hs"), than really addressing scaling issues. Furthermore, you couldn't really make the HotW change without the FAP change (or another change increasing AP in general) or you would be reducing the AP of a lot of druids in the dungeon-blues, heroics, Karazhan range (where characters are most often not fully raidbuffed): Those changes come as a package deal.

As an example, if Blizzard really wanted the FAP weapons to provide druids with as much benefit, in terms of actual damage output, from their weapon as other dps classes, they would not have merely increased the scaling multiplier by 28.2% to match the white dps scaling on 2H weapons (which fits the words, but not the spirit of damage scaling), but by something in the range of 200%+.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong - I'm quite happy with the changes overall, especially as I had more or less given up on future itemization catering to the primary stats that we druids love and adore, it is just that I do not see them provide much more than that: convenience and a larger selection of items to be considered attractive.

Don't you lose the Agility Buff once you swap out the Idol ?

One button powershifting is not in. /cancelform does NOT work going from same form to same form and its possibly intended to be that way.

WoW Forums -> [BUG] /cancelform working incorrectly in 2.3

Note also the post 26 and 29 in that thread gives an explanation of WHY it doesn't work.

Slouken's been pretty daft in that thread so far. People keep posting macros with healthstone or potion usage in them and he gets distracted by that and goes off on "I'm absolutely sure that the designers don't want you to use items instantly while in forms." tangents.

So either instant X to Y is currently bugged, and they'll break it because that's not intended behavior. Or X to X is currently bugged.

I really hope it's the latter.

The theory about the aura mod looks pretty good. Basically what they are saying is that your own PC can now keep track of your form, but the aura doesn't change til it's confirmed by the server.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the Idol of Terror is yet another failure of druid dps relic itemization. There is simple no way of it being better than everbloom idol in a raiding situation. The nature of the proc makes a really good proc bad as it doesn't play good with the cycle. When it procs, it will proc of the mangle, meaning that rip and mangle won't get the benefit (and those two make up about 27% of our damage).

I'm going to use a 12s Cycle for this example - it's as good as it gets for the Idol of Terror, any other scenario will make it even worse.

Everbloom Idol effectively adds 39 Weapondamage to your shred attacks. 39 Weapondamage equals 546 attackpower, 496.4 if you count in the new HotW. Shred will do at least 30% of your damage (usually more like 35%). So that would be 148.9 attackpower overall.

Idol of Terror has a 85% procchance to give you 65 agility for 10s. You will only do autoattacks and shreds in that window. Shred damage was 30% and i assume 42% damage done via autoattack, however, only 10 of 12 autoattacks will benefit from a proc. So 65% of your damage effectively benefits from a proc and it's 85% procrate.

That leaves you with 0.65* 0.85* 65 = 35.9 agility.

And i don't need to show you that 148.9 ap is superior to 35.9 agility, do i ?

I know this is a simplified calculation but if i put both idols into my complex dps calculator, using endgame gear, i get 1657.64 dps for the Everbloom Idol and 1653.27 for the Idol of Terror (would have to be 42.7 agility or more to be better).

On the other hand, you don't lose the Idol of Terror Buff if you unequip it (i finally got on the test server), so swapping idols may not be off the table yet (i will do a seperate calc later on).

It's obviously not bad for solo farming and tanking either.

With tanking you will have a very high uptime and 65 agility is nothing to laugh at (~5% dodge and ~3% crit) so i'm looking forward to finally giving my Idol of Brutality a rest.

Edit: It didn't occur to me that in a 12s cycle you could actually mangle before the rip thus making the idol worthwhile. In a normal situation you have to live with 14-15s cycles though and it's as the above scenario describes.

[Band of the Swift Paw]
I think we might have found the best end-game tanking bracers, these are quite amazing.

Idol of Terror strikes me as a tanking idol, not a DPS one, as said above.

Everyone seems extremely excited over the Signet of Primal Wrath that the other feral ring seems to be ignored.

Signet of Eternal Life: 54 stam, 37 resil.

For tier6 tanks (people most likely to be completing the timed quest in ZA), this might actually replace our old armour rings. Keep in mind nearly every end game tank will be losing 19 resil and 8 defense from replacing our cloak and bracers with heroic items. If you don't need the armour, this seems to be an extremely attractive option for getting back that uncrittable status without socketing or enchanting for defense.

They are very good but making up the 19 Resiliance is going to suck by switching out the PvP ones.

This is one way to make up that resiliance loss and allow for stam/stat enchants instead of resiliance. Have people figured out where these rings are from though?

[Signet of Primal Wrath] is from the timed loot, it is quite possible that this is also the case for [Signet of Eternal Life]

1. I read here about 10 posts of changing new idol of terror while in fight.
but... isnt it rediculous? after you change it with a macros next 10 s buff wouldnt stay with you (why should it)?
I have not tested it myself (not on ptr atm) but on live servers pretty all temporary buffs granted with items will be lost as soon as you change it.

2. As for my guild current progress (wiping on kael) i see 2 items upgrade for tanking (cloak, idol) and 1-2 for dps (boots and my be rogue-style chest)
Any idea if we can try to stack armor penetration for good? or will it be lost of dps compared to agi/ap/hit/crit itimization style?

3. Instashifting...is it a time to blow dust from BWL trink for shiftrush ?
even if cat-cat shifting will be restricted.... any1 tried cat-bear-cat instashift?
it will be awesome if it works even with double shift cost.
its also possible to use old LW helm, that gives furror/2 effect... doing about 10 shifts + shreds can do pretty good dps burst
if that all can be real: shadowpriests can be awesome for manaregen

New blue post in the thread I linked above saying they're looking into why form->same form shifting is not working. Its NOT because the developers feel its overpowered so it may just be a technical issue.

Also cat-bear-cat instashift wont work since shifting into form activates the GCD.

The buff stays on after changing the idol.

No I think Slouken's statement is saying that ANY shifting is acceptable, that the designers have said that you pay for the shift in mana and loss of Rage/Energy. I believe that once they fix this you will be able to instantly shift from Cat to Bear, etc, with any non-GCD abilities or items used before/after/between the shift.

[e] And in fact if you look at Sloukens post above that one, the guy he is quoting said that on test he can use this macro to insta shift from bear to cat, cat to travel, etc. The only limitation right now is from bear to bear and cat to cat, which is likely a bug as slouken said.

It behaves very strange, a macro with cancelform-bear form-cancelform-cat form will always instant shift into the other form, so either cat-bear or bear-cat.

Regarding Idol of Terror and tanking: Assuming you Mangle once every 6.5 seconds (due to lag) and you've got a 82% hit rate with Mangle (parry, miss, dodge) you've got an uptime of about 70% (factoring in 10s cd). That's an average of 51.6 agility, factoring in BoK and SotF.

This is our first and only Idol that actually benefits our survivability in bearform. It's an average of 3.51% dodge 2.06% crit. It may be a slight loss of TPS in a rage-cap situation but it's well worth it imo.

Hmm I think people mistook what I said. I was commenting on Dyvozvir's post that mentioned shifting from cat->bear->cat instantly which cannot occur due to the GCD when you shift INTO bear form (or any form besides caster for that matter).

Hmm you mean a macro that looks like

/cancelform
/cast Dire Bear Form
/cancelform
/cast Cat Form

If this is the case, then figuring out whats being tripped is easier.

If you use the above macro in dire bear form you get the following to happen:

1. Your stance is set to [nostance]
2. /cast Dire Bear Form checks your stance and sees [nostance], then checks your aura and sees Dire Bear Aura so it attempts to switch you Caster stance.
3. Your stance is set to [nostance] (redundant)
4. /cast Cat Form checks your stance and sees [nostance], then checks your aura and sees Dire Bear Aura (!=Cat Form Aura) so it switches you to Cat Form.

Seems kinda uselessly complicated but thats the only reason why same form shifting wouldnt work, different form shifting DOES work and direct form shifting doesnt work.

edit: actually if my logic is correct the macro:

/cancelform
/cast Dire Bear Form
/cast Cat Form

should work just as well as the one mentioned above. Can anyone check this?

I've heard reports both ways, but can anyone confirm/deny if 2t4 is a PPM or % chance on hit?

WoW Forums -> [BUG] /cancelform working incorrectly in 2.3

Ha victory!

"Okay, starting in bear form, and then casting this macro:
/cancelform
/use Super healing Potion
/use Master Healthstone
/cast Dire Bear Form()

Will work for 2.3 release. Thanks for the bug reports!

Edit: Note that you are casting the bear form spell, and it's possible to be out of mana at that point."

Those are very nice obviosuly, but we have yet to see the S3 honor bracers/belts/boots. Once those are out it'll be interesting to compare.

Especially since they promised not to waste stat points on healing this time.

Incredible. So, is anyone planning on stacking avoidance and then using either armor potions, or the resilience potion and running non-crit immune?

I think the resilience would be more risky since there would be a slight gap, but the chances of taking a crit at that time would be low, and it isn't certain death (although it could be likely death). I'd probably go with a +armor potion of the two, though.

And of course most people will use it for exactly that which has already been mentioned; health stones/pots.

EDIT: I'm referring to a boss tanking situation here.

The resilience consumable is an elixir isnt it? I think its probably worth using the elixir for 35 Resilience since the only defensive elixir thats worth it is the 250 HP one. 35 Resilience vs. 25 Sta (worse cause it doesnt scale with HotW or Bear Form) isnt too hard to decide. 35 Resilience gives a whole bunch of crit immunity too so trading out some Defense/Resilience gear might be worth it.