wait a second? OoC triggers off spells? Wow that's new.
New Imp mangle is awsome too.
As is new talent - primal precision up in the feral tree.. finally some free talented expertise comming our way.

Isn't Infected Wounds basically your own Thunderclap? Why would you skip it?

I can't see this working on bosses. Firstly almost no snares work on any bosses unless its a gimmick boss. Next, 50% reduced attack speed is an absurd debuff (isn't thunderclap like 10%?). Bosses damage output would either be trivialized by a feral druid, or they'd have to hit so fast as to be significantly harder (if not undoable) if a feral druid wasn't in the raid.

Multiple component spells apply the entire debuff even if they're immune to part of the effect of the debuff. Likewise, you can have more than 20% attack speed snare on a boss from debuffs, such as improved thunderclap and deathfrost, but the cap is 20% or whatever, so I'd imagine infected wounds would work similarly.

I skipped it for a couple of reasons

1.I cannot possibly see it working on bosses unless it has diminished returns. Right now, attack speed reduction caps at 20%.

2.Even if it works, thunderclap will always be available in a raid. It may suck for the DPS warrior to put it up in terms of his own output, but when it compares to what you, as the main tank (where it actually matters), will lose when you take it, the loss is trivial. I do not see any talent I will drop for infected wound without hurting my performance, survival or threatwise, significantly.

Edit: I can probably take out 1 points from Savage Fury and use the one point leftover i had, making it 2/3, and put it into infected wound. This will not hurt my personal tanking, and the loss on DPs is very marginal. However, again, this will be dependent on how IW performs on bosses.

No Shredding Attacks instead of Savage Fury ?

Any reports from beta yet on potions/enchants ?

This is true, but think of a Muru-type-encounter: depending on raid setup you are not guaranteed to have a tc on your adds you are tanking. And in 10 men raids it is much more likely to not even have any warrior in the raid as well. So I truely hope infected wounds does apply to bosses with that 20% cap. I can se an infected wounds pve tank spec being perfectly viable depending on raid composition and encounter type.

Edit slaps me for typing too slowly...

With roots working indoors, Nature's Grasp isn't a bad place to put a single leftover point. While it is not "dependable" CC, it would be nice on 5-man trash.

I'm really torn (ha ha) on Rend and Tear. Seems more like a kitty PvP talent with a touch of bear PvE. For "off-tank" type ferals, I would think Shredding Attacks and IW would be a better use of 5 points.

Right now I'm leaning toward this 0/52/19 build.

What does everyone think of "Rend and Tear" -talent? It doesn't seem that great to me(The reason for this maybe that I mostly tank, only sometimes doing DPS during trash), but most builds I've seen seem to 5/5 it. The bonus to shred damage seems to be the only important part of the talent.

I'm really hoping that they either blend it together with "Savage Fury" for DPS builds, or buff it to be more useful in tanking builds.

edit: tlbj6142 seems to be thinking the same as I am(I should really learn to refresh my window more often

10% increase to maul damage is a fair bit of extra threat too. The shred damage makes it nearly essential for PvE dps and the 50% crit to FB could actually make it worth using (once the numbers for level 80 come out more math will need to be done on this). Pretty solid talent IMO.

But what will your finisher rotation be? Don't forget about Savage Roar.

I guess what we really need to wait and see is if the new Arms Warrior talent Trauma stacks with Mangle. If so, Rip and Rake will be worth using.

Thunderclap isn't necessarily always available, though. On add fights, such as Illidan, there are definitely times where you might be the only one attacking your mob, and depending on your raid set up, it could be difficult to get a warrior to run around thunderclapping your mob for you. As well, at level 80 in 10 man raids there will be a much higher chance that your raid won't have a warrior.

I really don't care about 10 mans; save for maybe at the beginning of lvl80 instances (basically TBC Karazhan), people in progression based raiding guild will outgear 10mans by at least one tier that it doesn't matter. If any 25 man environment dictates speccing of IF, i'll do that in a heartbeat. However, I don't target my spec towards smaller instances such as 10 or 5 man. By the same logic, you need to also spec 5/5 into Primal Aggression because you don't always have a warrior to do it for you, so why don't people take it?

I haven't updated my model with the newest information, but many of the talents have not changed. Rend and Tear has a higher TPS per talent point than Master Shapeshifter does when unlimited rage (considering Natural Shapeshifter is useless when tanking). It is weaker when limited threat though.

Depending on how they implement the dual spec option, I think we can see optimal bear vs cat specs. Depending on the details between Swipe vs Lacerate, Feral Instinct might not even be worth taking anymore. King of the Jungle is much more suited for cat dps. With unlimited rage Shredding Attacks is pretty worthless for bear, though it's probably worth keeping just in case you ever go cat. Depending on 5/10/25 mans, Feral Aggression might be worth taking.

I can actually think of quite a few viable PvE specs now. Unfortunately, I don't see any way to fit in everything for a PvP spec.

Meh. I'm having a hard time coming up with a PvE spec that isn't missing at least 2-3 important points that I'd love to keep. Nevermind the PvP spec, which is a headache in its own right.

Either that or remove the requirement of Natural Shapeshifter from Master Shapeshifter, there are certainly too many talents which most of us would label must haves. It reminds me of the old days before we got merged talents and the feral ones were split in all three trees and many were mutually exclusive, well not quite that bad.
If they were unlinked the individual players could spend points on how it suits our play styles best, I don't really enjoy PvP so I never take Natural Shapeshifter but I will be forced into it as missing Master Shapeshifter would appear to be a bad mistake.

To me it looks very like the way Predatory Strikes currently is, a pre-requisite we are forced to take but given the choice many of us would skip.
Speaking of Predatory Strikes, while the talent is better than it was all it is really doing is locking us into upgrading weapons to the next highest ilvl we get to pick up. If the item budget is poorly spent 20% more from the weapons feral attack power will most likely make the higher ilvl weapon better even if the stats are spent in a comical way.

Well, one can only hope that they've learned a lot about feral itemization over the course of BC. But it seems to me that with any itemization, good or bad, Predatory Strikes is a very worthwhile investment. It's 300+ attack power at level 70, which is nothing to sneeze at, and it will only scale up as ilvls soar. For reference, Heart of the Wild grants, what, 450 attack power (for 5 points) and is considered one of our best talents. Per point, Predatory Strikes is giving just as much AP in its current incarnation.

Unlinking Natural Shapeshifter and Master Shapeshifter seems like a good choice; I wonder if reducing Predatory Instincts to 3 points would be out of the question. If Naturalist were 3 points, that would also encourage Resto druids to pick it up (since it looks like they're trying to encourage trees to use HT again).

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I remembered seeing that Infected Wounds was, at one point, 10% snare and 10% casting speed reduction, but all the previews now say attack speed. Am I misremembering? Was that from an early alpha build? It seems like 20% melee speed reduction or 50% casting speed reduction would make a lot more sense than 50% melee speed.

As they took away the difference of Spellhaste and Haste it could be a result of that. There is only one Haste on all Equipment now that improves Spell and Melee speed.

True, but there are many, many talents and abilities that affect only one or the other. Windfury/Wrath of Air is the most obvious example of this.

Infected Wounds is down to 4% less attack speed per stack, though the tooltip doesn't yet reflect it. This brings it in line with Curse of Weakness/Thunderclap/Judgements of the Just when fully stacked.

It is a sign of it working on raid bosses. The 50% slow was obviously too much.

Infected Wounds - Spell - World of Warcraft
Note the "-4" effect on melee haste.

Hmm in some ways that's brilliant but the tree is bloated enough as it is, still 1 point should be enough to keep it up most of the time and we will probably get points freed up in later builds.


Fingers crossed for the beta I can't wait to try this out.