nightcrowler

It's about time I write down a longer post with some info and some replies:

@ boss armor buff:

I've added extra armor (going from 10900 to 12000) to bosses in my simulation, the dps goes from 5020 to 4820, that's barelly a 5% dps nerf, I think we can live with it. What does it do? As for the rotation it stay about the same you will use 1 FB every 2 RIP on average. 25% of total damage will be bleed and rake will be "epic". Crit rating will be a bit lower budget wise and Armor Pen has it's value increased.
Conclusion: I don't think it's so bad as a nerf, APrating will be better and more in line with other abilities, our dps will still be competitive and our threat... well threat is not a problem.
On a note: Does they finally fix SR stacking?

@ Bear/Cat and no more hybrid:
I really don't see your problem, we had 2 main tanks (me and a warrior) before the patch and we still have 2 main tanks now. Yes, before the patch my dps were more competitive while not tanking but this is only because we are not at level 80 yet. I am our guild MT because I'm a good player, not because of buffs and so on.
At 80 we will be competitive tank and/or competitive DPS, as I wrote in a previous post you can come up with a build hybrid with basically all you need for tanking and with an 85-90% dps capability.
Also they will soon introduce dual spec and mantaining 2 sets for us will be far easier than for paladins, DK and warriors.

@ threat problem
With my gear (you can armory me - Nightcrowler - runetotem - EU) I'm able to push 1.1-1.3k dps while tanking and about 2.5-2.7k TPS (I didn't look at it intensivly). I've only done a BT and a MH run after the patch, I never had problem of Aggro. The only time I lose aggro was versus some locks or mages doing intensive AoE with 10+ mobs (BT multipulls or MH) but with Challenging Roar on a 150 sec CD and Growl at 20yard it wasn't a problem at all.

My rotation:
single target: mangle-lacerate-swipe-mangle-FFF-swipe-mangle-lacerate-FFF Repeat
multi-target: swipe-swipe-swipe... after 4-5 GCD if I have Berserk I'm mangle-tab with berserk and/or trying to put a lacerate on my first target to have more aggro mauling vs. single target dpser like rogues.

 

Yaelle

I agree, even though FFF is quite difficult to refresh at level 70 in a raid because of the "higher spell is already active bug (?)".

On a side note though, I was tanking the deadmines with a balance spec druid (yes, I love druids) and FFF alone was able to do the single target TPS needed, being the highest TPS-move. While this does actually seems very far off, I'm only telling this story to illustrate how strong FFF is on a very low scale.

 

cana

Concerning the FFF reapply bug

I told our Boomkin to leave Imp. FF out of his specc as he was also complaining about "Higher spell already active" errors and the Spell Hit Bonus could be provided by Shadow Priests as well.
IIRC I haven't seen any problems reapplying FFF since then, next raid night I will take an even closer look.

 

tlbj6142

No maul? Or is that sort of assumed?

The last couple nights I haven't bothered with swipe on single targets (old habit I guess) and have not had an issue with TPS. I would start each pull with Berserk (even if I didn't have the rage initially) that would put me far out front in terms of total threat. Then I focused on using Maul, Mangle and an occasional Lacerate (for Maul bonus). Not sure I managed to get a 5 stack of Lacerate up all that often. But I was only running Heroics (I have T4/Badge gear), so I didn't have excessive rage to spare on extra Lacerates.

Assuming RnT (I'm 0/60/1 right now), how important is the full Lacerate stack? Or do I just need to keep the bleed effect up and not worry about the stack size? Should the priority be Maul>Mangle>Swipe>Lacerate>FFF?

 

Rangifer

It's assumed. With unlimited rage, why wouldn't you maul? It's on a separate CD, so it doesn't have to be considered for the cycle of other abilities.

 

tlbj6142

That's what I thought.

So, in limited rage scenarios (5-man bosses??) with RnT what should our single-target threat rotation be? Should we leave Maul out all together and focus on FFF, mangle, lacerate and swipe? Should we favor Maul over Mangle, Swipe and Lacerate assuming we have at least one Lacerate on the target?

 

Isharm

Our warlocks were in the habit of putting up CoR for the majority of bosses in our raids, and I'm 95% certain this is atleast one of the reasons I keep seeing the FFF "more powerful spell" bug. I did a test real quick and could spam FFF (bear) several times with no error, and as soon as the warlock put up CoR, I got the "more powerful spell" error message. Seeing as warlocks certainly have a better use for their curse slot, CoR is now pretty much redundant and very annoying if a feral is in the raid.

This still doesn't explain the random errors I've seen other times with no CoR, but its a start.

 

• sadris

You should set up your Nostromo or AutoHotkey/etc to constantly spam maul such that you have zero white hits while tanking a boss.

 

tlbj6142

A raid boss maybe, but not a 5-man boss (normal or heroic) or trash. You'd be oor the whole fight. I think you can do this with a macro, but I haven't since you have plenty of time to hit maul after any other attack due to the long GCD in bear form.

In my T4/badge kit, I had rage issues when dealing with the HH the past two nights. There were plenty of times I did nothing on a GCD due to lack of rage (forgot about using FFF in those scenarios). I haven't done a raid yet since the patch as my guild is too fircken busy doing achievements (yuck!) and/or holiday stuff. I'm a bit bitter about the former...

 

zxanth

I have been a bear MT for our guild for quite some time and I have done quite well. However with all of the new changes I am still trying to get my head around the new tree/talents/abilities. I am trying to figure out what sort of attack rotations work well and saw this "mangle-lacerate-swipe-mangle-FFF-swipe-mangle-lacerate-FFF Repeat" along with adding Maul (witch I pretty much ignored before the patch.) My question on this is why the swipes were put in the rotation. I was always under the impression that swipe was pretty well reserved for multi-mobs (works very nice now with no limit) and that you wanted to stack the lacerates and keep them fully stacked all the time. I saw another post saying that Furor was no longer worth the points, however at least so far I disagree, except for bosses I do a lot of pulls with moonfire/hurricane and now I use roots as well so having that 10 rage to throw a swipe or mangle is pretty important.

Also does anyone have a new rotation or advice on cat attacks?

If anyone cares to look at my current talents/gear I am Hotaharn on the US-Stormrage realm.

Thanks!

 

halmmar

Not that important with 20-yard Growl and FFF (both cost no rage). FFF in itself seems to be enough of a threat snap to hold mobs against T6 mages and warlocks.
I ran with 0/5 Furor and never pulled using hurricane/moonfire.

The only time I got in trouble for not having 5/5 furor was when a hunter body-pulled a pack (no rage for swipe/challenging roar). I refuse to spec based on the assumption that people will screw up.

 

TheNameLessOne

nightcrowler - are you still assuming SR stacks with unleashed rage in your simulations?

 

Blazefire

I'm not really sure why you are having any rage problems even in regular 5 mans or HH event. I spam maul with my regular threat cycle in these scenarios and don't have any rage problems. Between rage from crits and doges, I have no rage issues. The only think I can think is that you are wearing full tanking gear and the nerfs to agi -> dodge has made it harder for you to dodge/crit more rage. Personally I've been tanking everything short of SW in my Full DPS set and have no survivability issues. In fact in our last Hyajl run, the MT died on Azgalor and I picked him up and tanked him from 80% to death in a DPS/FR set. Maybe that if you do the same and wear your DPS set to tank in, it will help your rage issues since you should get more crit in bear then.

 

tlbj6142

Correct, I was wearing my tanking kit. I did notice I require almost no heals. In fact, I think we could do the fight without a healer.

I'll try my DPS kit tonight.

 

Kazanir

I haven't regemmed anything, but that's mostly because in my old T6 stuff (I haven't replaced pants/gloves with Sunwell leather yet) I still have stam gems, as well as the stam patch on my pants. When I get Sunwell pants I'll probably still stick with a stam patch on those but use red gems.

Once I hit 80 (or along the way) I'll regem my Sunwell gear with green-quality WLK gems, sticking with pure stam or stam/agi and stam/hit for blue/red/yellow sockets, and picking up a stam meta.

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

Blazefire

I didn't regem anything either. My gemming convention before was agi heavy with every socket having agi in it in some shape. Reds were 10agi, blues were 5agi/7stam, yellows were 5agi/5hit, and this is still the case post patch. I've never ever used a pure stam gem. Despite being agi heavy, I still maintain a healthy stam pool with aid of items like the Pillar of Ferocity and Commendation of kael'thas. I've always been very agi-centric druid, that as soon as I got the Carapace and Immortal Dusk gloves, I incorprated them in to my tanking set.

If you are talking about HH, yes you can do it without a healer.

 

zxanth

Following from your answer there (notice no real arguments here) Does anyone feel there is any benifit to grab Naturalist and OOC when leveeling to 80? or would those points be better spent in Rend & Tear/king of the jungle/or other talents from the feral tree? Please give me the reasons as well if you would.

 

halmmar

I was planning on getting all the goodies for kitty grinding.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

tlbj6142

You have 1 too many points for lvl 70, but I assume you'd pickup Berserk at 71.

That said, for a solo kitty leveling spec (70-80), is RnT > PI > iMangle? Any ideas?

 

• Astrylian

Nothing beats iMangle for cat soloing.

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tlbj6142

Really? Even RnT?

Admittedly I currently have both as I'm 0/60/1 so RnT seems impressive as I use FB as my leveling finisher of choice now (Rake->Mangle*3-->FB usually does the job on the lvl 72 mobs above Shat [my testing zone]).

 

Rhaegal

Not to mention the fact that Rend and Tear is only useful for cat soloing if mobs generally aren't even close to dead by the time you hit 4-5 CPs. If you're entering Northrend in greens and dungeon blues, that may be the case, but otherwise it'll likely only be useful for soloing elites. There are definitely talents I'd rather have.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

tlbj6142

So, you are suggesting not using a finishing move, just mangle the mob down?

 

halmmar

That, or FB without rend and tear.

 

Rhaegal

My point was that if a 4-5 CP FB non-crit kills the mob (or close to it), you gain nothing from RnT for cat grinding. For me, most level 70-71 mobs tend to die either before I even hit 4-5 CPs or after hitting FB and way overkilling them, even without RnT, and my gear is just a little ZA + a little badge + a little Kara + a couple lingering high quality blues.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!