Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 110

Schnigges · 09/06/08, 3:58 PM

Originally Posted by Falk

http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/4...anstaffrk6.jpg

An upgrade from SSC staff!

First perfect Feral itemized Staff ingame actually!

Falk · 09/06/08, 4:04 PM

Not really 'perfect' in the sense of the word, you could change the Strength to Armor Pen or Expertise for DPS or tank flavors respectively (And now Agi -> Crit or Dodge, I guess

). Still, a good omen!

Duilliath · 09/06/08, 6:11 PM

Originally Posted by Cuer

That is quite intentional, and will continue further once all the talents are rolled out. We've only seen the bear-specific talents so far (Mother Bear and Natural Reaction.) There will almost certainly be some cat-specific talents added to boost DPS there, as well.

Not quite what I meant. With a completely bear-centric build, I am *still* short points. That can't possibly be the idea.

Tappin · 09/06/08, 6:38 PM

Originally Posted by Duilliath

Not quite what I meant. With a completely bear-centric build, I am *still* short points. That can't possibly be the idea.

I have to wonder what you're considering necessary bear talents. Every spec has some talents people would like, but can't grab. They're not bad, they're just 'not as good'.

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Druid -> Talent Calculator

seems to cover most of the useful bear talents. I'm assuming the new IW is a typo and you'd need 3 points for 20%level attack reduction. I'm also assuming it will work against almost all bosses (not currently true).

Other talents that help tanking slightly:
FA offers a minor amount of mitigation at the cost of 5 talent points.
Improved shapeshifter would offer about 3% threat for 5 talent points?
Imp LotP isn't awful for a tanking build, but usually about 70%+ is overheal.
Rend a tear offers a very expensive bump in threat.
Intensity is a pretty insignificant amount of rage/threat IMO.
Tenacity offers a small chance to avoid the rare single target fear or stun?

I'm fairly certain you could skip all of the above and be a 25 man raid tank without being a mana drain or losing aggro.

Personally, I'm planning to go
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Druid -> Talent Calculator

for a mostly tanking, sometimes dps'ing build. I'm mainly wishing I could pick up iLotP. I'm not sure what 2 points I'd drop, though. I'd also like improved shapeshifter but 5 points is too expensive, especially for a tanking build.

Toranshalur · 09/06/08, 6:52 PM

Originally Posted by Tappin

I would only agree with this if there were other 2 point talents nearly as valuable for you to pick up. Take your planned WotLK build including precision. Now pretend you're expertise capped. How much benefit will those 2 talent points you didn't already have (obviously not very good points or you would already have them?) get you?

Now compare that to what you'd get if they'd spent our item budget on something that didn't make the talent obsolete. According to wowhead, 10 expertise takes about 93 expertise rating at 80. If they had, say, spent that 93 points of item budget on strength instead of expertise, what 2 talent points would you gain that would be as good at that much strength?

That said, I appreciate that they gave us expertise while they gave other tanks hit rating. They gave us a stat that offers less damage taken and more dps. I just hope it doesn't make this talent obsolete. From a value standpoint, these 2 points are pretty serious 'bang for your buck'.

But, in a pure cat dps build you can't get both primal precision and imp. lotp. If you can hit and expertise cap, primal precision is useless and so you can increase your raid utility in exchange.

incidentally, you'll need 183.6 expertise rating at 80 to be capped, assuming behind the target and a 5.6% base dodge rate for lvl 83 mobs.

Tappin · 09/06/08, 6:57 PM

Originally Posted by Toranshalur

But, in a pure cat dps build you can't get both primal precision and imp. lotp. If you can hit and expertise cap, primal precision is useless and so you can increase your raid utility in exchange.

incidentally, you'll need 183.6 expertise rating at 80 to be capped, assuming behind the target and a 5.6% base dodge rate for lvl 83 mobs.

I don't argue that if you end up dodge-capped, you should drop the talent. Based on our armor, it looks like it will be easy to drop at least one of those points once we get our first set of gear completed. Until then, it's a pretty solid talent?

Astrylian · 09/06/08, 7:13 PM

Are you guys forgetting the other effect of Primal Precision? Or are you assuming you're going to be hit-capped too? I'm not seeing much hit rating around. Zero on the Naxx10 set, and little on the other leather pieces I see so far. And I doubt it'll be worth gemming hit rating. It's not a huge bonus, but it means that at least you won't break your cycle by more than 1sec when you do fail to hit.

Mijae · 09/06/08, 8:28 PM

Originally Posted by Toranshalur

But, in a pure cat dps build you can't get both primal precision and imp. lotp. If you can hit and expertise cap, primal precision is useless and so you can increase your raid utility in exchange.

incidentally, you'll need 183.6 expertise rating at 80 to be capped, assuming behind the target and a 5.6% base dodge rate for lvl 83 mobs.

Base dodge rate is 6.5% for a boss. That's 148 rating with primal precision or 214 without it.

The current items available have lots of expertise (and haste) and barely any hit rating.

Phorage · 09/06/08, 11:05 PM

Good news for nightelves:

Quickness: reduces the chance to be hit by melee or ranged attacks by 2%

The tauren one:

Endurance: now scales based on base health, to be tuned to approximately a 5% heath increase if the player were wearing green quality gear

Toranshalur · 09/07/08, 12:32 AM

Originally Posted by Mijae

Base dodge rate is 6.5% for a boss. That's 148 rating with primal precision or 214 without it.

The current items available have lots of expertise (and haste) and barely any hit rating.

oh thanks for those numbers. I dunno about the hit rating problem. Blizzard stated we're sharing rogue gear so hopefully there'll be some off-set pieces around. these, for example Plus you might even gem for hit if it gives you 2 talent points.

halmmar · 09/07/08, 12:34 AM

Originally Posted by Astrylian

Are you guys forgetting the other effect of Primal Precision? Or are you assuming you're going to be hit-capped too? I'm not seeing much hit rating around. Zero on the Naxx10 set, and little on the other leather pieces I see so far. And I doubt it'll be worth gemming hit rating. It's not a huge bonus, but it means that at least you won't break your cycle by more than 1sec when you do fail to hit.

I assumed we'd get a fair amount of hit rating on wrist,belt, boots and jewellery (and expertise on the other parts to keep either from getting capped too easily). But there just isn't enough epic pieces to base this assumption on. There's a few greens/blues with it, and the jewellery seems to be loaded with hit.

Korhaug · 09/07/08, 3:04 AM

Originally Posted by Phorage

Good news for nightelves:

Quickness: reduces the chance to be hit by melee or ranged attacks by 2%

The tauren one:

Endurance: now scales based on base health, to be tuned to approximately a 5% heath increase if the player were wearing green quality gear

Yes, it's good new for night elves, but bad ones for taurens.

5% in green gear means that the bonus quickly drops in relative value as you gear up (as the bonus is based on base health). I imagine it'll be around 3% in Naxx gear, and then quickly drop to insignificance.

Daboran · 09/07/08, 4:13 AM

Originally Posted by Itartass

I don't really follow what's meant by the part about keeping energy here:

Does it say that 5/5 points gives 100 energy from the start every time I shapshift into Cat (except powershifting)?

To me, it implies that Powershifting to gain 40 energy is now not possible - you will gain only the energy ticks that you would have got if you stayed in Catform (assuming 5/5) . Anyone care to confirm this?

gnoop · 09/07/08, 5:40 AM

Originally Posted by Bold

Yes I was referring to heal/mana. Certainly we don't know what Blizzard will end up doing with healing and downranking, so this is just hypothetical. In order to ensure an avoidance tank doesn't go down, a certain amount of constant healing must be applied. This has historically been down with downranked larger heals. If healers can no longer do this, they will be forced to a) spam mana-inefficient small heals or b) cast mana efficient large ones. Where the incoming dps of the tank (druid) is more predictable it should be possible to use larger/longer more mana efficient heals. Although again, who knows what will be done to address downranking.

I'm not sure that the downranking loss will fully push healers to use mana-efficient spells. I already watch Priests spam their max rank Flash Heal as their primary healing spell. Paladins will probably also look to FoL. Partly, it's an issue of the healers adjusting their style of healing to the tank rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Partly, it depends on what's done with mana regen. If things are such that a Priest can spam Flash Heal and Renew all day while only needing an innervate every so often thanks to consumables and regen capabilities within the raid, they're likely to continue doing so.

Honestly, in that case, it almost doesn't matter if the Druid tanks damage is a bit different than the Warriors. The healers will just heal through it unless there are other factors in raid encounters that make such a thing unappealing. I suspect that there will not be such factors but Naxx was only just released and there's more to be done there.

Tappin · 09/07/08, 9:56 AM

Originally Posted by Daboran

To me, it implies that Powershifting to gain 40 energy is now not possible - you will gain only the energy ticks that you would have got if you stayed in Catform (assuming 5/5) . Anyone care to confirm this?

Confirmed. With the new furor, powershifting is dead.

With furor, ignoring energy gained because of latency:
If you're in cat form with 0 energy and shift to cat form, you'll have 0 energy.
If you're in cat form with 80 energy and shift to cat form, you'll have 80 energy.
If you empty your energy bar and spend 8 seconds in any form and then shift to cat, you'll have 80 energy.

Without furor, any of these shifts will leave you with 0 energy.

Hope that makes more sense.