I leave open to view all of the calculations.

The Mangle glyph is implemented as altering the percent of Mangles-to-Shreds. I first calculate the Mangle duration and how much energy is generated during that time. I then guesstimate 1 finisher per 12 seconds and subtract the average finisher energy used in that time. I'm sure I can make this more accurate, but I need to account for circular dependencies. The percent of energy used on 1 mangle over that time is used to calculate an average damage (and energy) per special attack (non-finishers). So, increasing the duration of Mangle just reduces it's percentage of specials. Note - I did find an error in the spreadsheet related to this. On the "Cat" sheet, cell N2 should have it's end modifier changed from "*18/12" to "*M2/12". This affects the number of finishers per Mangle buff.

I never specifically aim for 100% Rip uptime. Based on the given desired Rip CP, the average number of required special attacks is estimated. This number is turned into required energy and then time. The uptime of Rip is noted (based on glyph). If a second finisher is specified, it does the same. If there is no 3rd finisher, it checks the total cycle time against the Rip uptime and extends the last finisher time to account for it. I do aim for 100% SR uptime based on required time for other finishers.

There is no direct interaction between Mangle uptime and finishers. It is basically assuming Mangle will be applied as needed to give 100% debuff uptime.

Hopefully this answers the question. If there are many more questions I can open another thread here or on another forum (or answer PMs).

Can you please tell me if these changes to the feral talents would be OP? Or even wrong for the feral tree as a whole?

Natural Reaction
Increases you dodge etc etc... (same as now; in addiction:) Whenever you are hit by 5 or more attacks in less than a second you gain Spiked Fur wich reflects 10/20/30% of the melee dmg income. Lasts 12 seconds. (ofc it works only in Bear/Dire Bear)

If 30% is too much or too poor i dunno; also it could reflect a % of dmg after armor mitigation or before it (scaling better with our gear). This change would enhance ONLY our aoe tanking, while leaving our boss tanking the same.



Rend and Tear
Increases dmg done by your Maul and Shread attacks on bleeding targets by 2/4/6/8/10% and gives 20/40/60/80/100% chance to your FB to refresh Rip duration and to your Swipe to refresh your Lacerate duration.

Dps and tank talent. Defo not for pvp.
Every class with a buff/debuff can refresh it with other spells.


Edit: "italic"/punctuation fixes.

NR: 5 hits in under a second is fairly rare, even if you choose to tank a full group of mobs with no CC in any instance. I would see this being so rare its almost useless, generally if you are "aoe" tanking mobs aren't going to be hitting you that hard individually. I do not see the need to implement something like this.

R&T: Why? Imo the potentially insanely high crit rate on FB is excellent for pvp burst viability. You are trying to turn this into solely a PvE talent. Besides that you would essentially be turning PvE dps into a "Ok Savage Roar, Max trinket + consumable ownage, super-rip, and try to keep it up the entire fight while alternating savage roar and FB instead of SR and Rip"

All this is, is a dps boost. I definitely agree adding swipe refreshing lacerate would be amazingly awesome but not at the cost of 50% FB crit. I think the cat re-apply version would be slightly too annoying/obnoxious such that it would force you to super rip and keep it up (Potentially making On Use: AP trinkets OP).

NR: i'd liked to add some passive tool (since i duuno how to make it active and not OP) for aoe tanking large groups of mobs. With "large" i'm thinking at murlocs at Tidewalker or anyway, any 10+ grp of mobs. The Thorns-on% dmg should be usable only while raiding and should be keeped up for an unlimited amount of time (as paladin's proc on block). Maybe we can get a passive instant counter-atk when dodging, but there's no way we can tank 10+ mobs with only swipe.

R&T: i'd like to NOT see R&T in a PvP build. Also in PvP i was used to FB only in BGs, while in arenas i almost always maimed. (i'm using the past cos in S4 i became a resto-noob :p). I really dislike all-around talents, and i'd prefer to see more talents focused on 1 or 2 specs, not always all 3. Otherwise how can we specialize (and thus be viable).


PS. While typing I checked the official site and I found devs have only some weeks to fix all our issues: WotLK on stores in less than 2 months...

Edit: Priests/Locks have ways to refresh SW:P/Corruption duration: will "on-use trinkets with +spell-p" be OP for em? (i thought that dots dmg was calculated on the AP/spell power you have at the moment of the tick, not when you cast it)

Amusing how you chose to focus on the Talent changes, while ignoring the main point made.
We have to spend 6 talent points just to get back to where we started. No wonder the tree will feel bloated when out of all those new goodies you can only get four new talent points in.

You do realize that Mother Bear (or Protector of the Pack like it's called now I believe) is also giving you magic mitigation which you did not have before, right? So it's not really fair to say you need to dump 3 points in there just to be even.

Not to mention the ability to use things like healthstones, ironshield potions and benefit from ancestral fortitude/inspiration.
The huge array of cooldowns we can use to tank bosses during enrage phases / survive burst damage is greatly improved (especially since incoming damage will be more predictable).

Are you being facetious? Specifically about cooldowns? I don't think anyone's used the phrase huge array to refer to bears except to possibly the amount of the screen we take up.

We're getting a couple of cooldowns, which is an improvement over the current state of "Oh lord, Badge of Tenacity don't fail me now!". Looking at the giant lists of new toys that the other tanks are getting (on top of the cooldowns they already had), it's hard to get excited about being able to use Barkskin in forms as a giant step forward. Look at the post a couple back comparing the tools available to a bear vs. a warrior. The comparison to Paladins is a little different, since they didn't get a whole lot of love going into TBC, and their tanking now is even less interactive than ours. But even so, the direction the developers seem to be taking them is giving them new abilites, more options, more choices. We're getting old chestnuts with the dust blown off them.

As far as talent bloat, again, the problem is that the two roles they're intending us to perform (at par) are both contained entirely within the same tree. If they want us to make choices between tank and dps within the same tree, without us being "masters-of-none", they seem to have a long way to go. The problem is not specifically Mother Bear (which lost a lot of character in the name change, I think), but that we have some talents that are specific to Bear or Cat and some talents that benefit both in radically different ways, as well as being required to delve into a completely unrelated tree to be viable for either. The analogy to OoC would be back when Tactical Mastery was an 11 point talent in Arms. Every Prot warrior went 11 points into arms. This was eventually remedied, which allowed for a lot more choice in which non-Prot talents warriors took, depending on their particular role (MT, OT). It's a complicated problem, especially if they try to mix in pvp viability. Then we're looking at all three warrior trees jammed into one. Awkward, to say the least. Compound this with the concern that low level Feral talents might provide unwanted levels of survivability to Resto (specifically pvp) Druids, and you've got a giant mess.

The issue of itemization is still a large concern, and one that we'd hoped would be addressed through talents. The problems of the talent tree highlights an additional concern here, above and beyond the issue that we're using a fraction of the tank stats of the other classes. The same tier pieces for tanking Ferals need to work for dps Ferals. So even if we could benefit from the "universal" tank stats like Defense, they can't go on set pieces anyhow, since they'd be doubly useless to cat Druids. This is slightly more concerning to tank oriented Ferals, since dps ferals can, by and large, take advantage of Rogue itemization (though not their set pieces and the accompanying bonuses), whereas offset tank pieces, discarding plate, is generally very poorly itemized for Feral tanking. I'm still not sure what feral Tanks are going to be using in non-set, non-jewelry slots. Is there going to be special tanking leather? Is it going to be pvp gear? No one wants us to have special, feral tank only itemization. Not the players of Druids, not the players of other classes, not Blizzard. But it seems that is the corner we're being painted into.

To me, this is the most concerning thing in GC's response. They haven't really changed the feral design as far as tanking goes. The implication that it's just a numbers issue indicates that they don't really see itemization as an issue at all.

Because of LotP (unless you have a Fury Warrior), Rebirth and Innervate. The latter two are still class unique. You could arguably add MotW as well if you are the sole Druid in a 10 man. Let's just hope they introduce more tanking fights where one tank isn't tanking all the time like Illidan, Council or even Twins so you get to use the stuff even while MTing and you will bring great utility.

In the same vein, I think that is the reason Blizz might argue with if they do not add more utility. Druids gained 3 more abilities that you can use while tanking (Frenzied Regen, Berserk and Barkskin) and all the pots and weapon enchants on top while Warriors didn't gain any defensive cooldowns apart from their own version of Frenzied Regen. All the stuff listed in the post above is not new. Warriors always had a stun and always had a spell interrupt, so in terms of "gains" for boss tanking, there isn't much difference.
EDIT: Can also add Demo Roar to the list of new abilties you will get to press while tanking. It only took them 2 expansions to equalize the power of Demo Shout and Roar. :S

I realize a lot of the stuff in my post isn't new, but with Blizzard explicitly stating they want tanking parity for WoTLK instead of implying tanking niches for TBC, the comparison is much more valid.

Yes, they did say that. But they also said they do not want tanking parity on a skill by skill basis but overall. If Druids do not get a usable Spell Interrupt then this is more an indication of it not being mandatory than anything. It might save you some damage over time, up to 5000 every 12 seconds in live so it's definitely not bad but it isn't a game breaker either. Really, the biggest advantage of having Shield Bash I see currently is Lady Malande. If you have a Warrior tank there, it frees up a Rogue to go DPS the debuffed Paladin. But that's really the most extreme case I can think of. Keep in mind that Paladins also have no spell interrupt (not even an awkward to use one like FC) so they cannot design boss encounters around tanks spell interrupting on their own. Power Shift/Wrathbringer are nice on trash I assume but if you imagine mobs like the Houndmasters in BT then being able to shift beats Wrathbringer because it has no CD. Roots/Hibernate is comparable to Heroic Throw in a way because it makes trash/5 man tanking easier/more convenient. And I would rate them both equally powerful depending on situation with Roots having the higher potential of being better.

Again, unless they make Innervate and Rebirth unusable for every Druid with 51 points or more in the Feral tree, it will be your "stigma". They will balance around that accordingly. I really can't stress how powerful a Rebirth can be. If a player dies and you rez him inbetween tanking a mob, then you pretty much own that player's HPS/TPS/DPS over the fight. This is big, make no mistake.

I don't know about you, but when I was playing my Druid I was extremely envious of Mongoose. That was, what, 8-9% dodge per proc? How can you not want that? I know they are changing the agi-->dodge conversions but I assume there will be another good enchant at level 80 to take it's place. That said, you could use Pots and Healthstones, sure. But at the cost of losing your rage. Barkskin was only situationally useful because it was on the GCD so you'd either risk getting gibbed or you'd only use it on predictable tank swaps (think Brut). But the rage cost was still pretty hefty to say the least.

About your other point: I think Warriors got enough toys for now. There is a fine line between having too few toys and too many. The toys Druids got actively help them MT bosses. The toys Warriors got are pretty much for convenience tanking in heroics. Silencing Throw or breaking a Frost Nova is not going to be that significant when MTing a boss, trust me. Is it going to make trash tanking more fun? Hell yeah. But on the other hand, I already liked tanking heroics on my Druid where I could use stuff like Bash a Melee mob, FC to a caster, move out of melee range then cast cyclone/Rebirth/IV or whatever. Now you can add Roots on top of that and it opens up some nice combos. Or you could sprint away on an incoming wipe and laugh at those that cannot keep up with your sprint (and aquatic form - I am looking at you, Slave Pens ). Being able to stealth is also great fun and noone is taking these things from you. I will also admit I enjoy Spell Reflection. Alot. Maybe more than I should but hey, that's me.

That said, I really don't think it's all doom and gloom for Druid tanks. Trust me, with creativity, you can get alot of fun out of the class.
Bonus for old skoolers that did the trash after Twin Emps in AQ40: Remember the Qiraji Mindslayers? Guess which of our tanks would survive pretty much all pulls because they could shift out of their Mindflay and heal themselves during a cast? It was not the Warrior.
Or which tank was it that could go stealth and res your raid in front of Broodlord so you could save your whole raid time to clear it again? Again, not the Warrior tank. Druids have so much fun potential and isn't that ultimately what we all play for? They didn't take away any of these, they added some.