Grotholl

Would it be possible to keep both rip, savage roar and rake up(considering it lasts 9 secs iirc) for the FB finisher though?

I guess it would be something like Mangle/Shred/Rake to 5cp>Savage Roar, Repeat(with rip instead), Repeat, then FB(It sounds like a pretty tight rotation to me)

 

Valerian

Even now with a bad streak of non-crits or avoided attacks I can end up with rip falling off (though it is rare). And this is with a whole hell of a lot more crit than I'm likely to have until a fair bit into WotLK raiding. I can't see keeping up a 3 finisher cycle except in the case where you pop berserk and half all your energy costs. I suspect it'll be similar to a rogue cycle of Xpoint SR/5 point damaging finisher (Rip or FB depending on what turns out to be better).

 

• Cluey

Well that is good and bad news all at once.
Good in that we won't need a warrior for Thunder Clap but bad as we need three points and five unavoided attacks to guarantee the 20% melee slow. Yes we can do it with less than the maximum talents and I am sure someone will do some maths on how many points is best or enough.

If you have a look at the new paladin talent tree you can see they have a talent called Judgements of the Just which is a two point talent giving a 10/20% slow from all Judgements made on the target.
This means that all three current tanking classes can reduce our targets attack speed by up to 20%.
For a warrior it requires three talent points and a GCD on a four second cool down but it affects four targets.
For a paladin it is two talent points but a ten second cool down with talents to make it an eight second cool down.
For druids it is three talent points and five attacks which hit, one attack is on a six second cool down and the other is based on our auto attack speed of two and a half seconds.

I find it quite amusing that the class recognised as the best choice, by many, for tanking single mobs has a four target slow effect and the class best at AoE targets can only slow single targets every eight seconds.

It is interesting that it is applied by Shred as well, this means that after we have a stack built a warrior tank won't need to use a GCD to maintain Thunder Clap which helps them increase their threat. I would expect them to get Thunder Clap up while we build our slowing stack though, assuming that tank death is a concern.

 

Vidandric

Is it just me or is Improved Mangle a Joke for Bear? Having any points in it will just cause clipping right? If anything, 2/3 for 1 second off and that clips .5 seconds -lag. They need to change it to where it doesn't clip. Something like 1,2,3 seconds :P Oh man if we could mangle every three seconds lol.

 

Duilliath

Why ? This places it on a 4.5s timer, which fits perfectly with the 1.5s GCD.

 

Longhorn

I see a lot of people picking up primal precision in their planned talent builds. I'm wondering how important that will actually be. 10 expertise, while nice may not necessarily be worth 2 talent points at level 80, considering how bloated the feral tree is right now. The other bonus primal precision grants is energy return cost on failed finishing moves, which with the re-importance of hit may also not be a significant factor.

 

Mu

Great in PVP, rogues drive me nuts. Maybe now I can actually get a Maim off. Also feral druid dps cycles are random enough without having to worry about finishers being dodged, so expertise is always welcome. It's pretty tough to get a decent amount of expertise in tanking gear right now, although it'll be easier when we don't need to worry about defense and god only knows what kind of gear we'll have access to at 80. Hopefully a lot of stuff like that armor + stam + expertise ring from nonheroic magister's terrace.

It's going to be a great leveling talent either way, can't argue that.

 

Melthar

10 Expertise (barring any other changes) is going to be worth the same at L80 as at L70. Expertise rating is what will be worth less.

 

• Falk

Really depends, I guess. It's going to boil down to how many gem slots each talent point saves you. For example, 3 points for never having to worry about defense? (not to mention 6% stats) Yes please.

2 points for the equivalent of a few expertise gems? We'll see.

 

Carlos

I don't think that FB will get into the rotation since still leaves you with Energy for the next style, while FB doesn't. Even with Tigers Furor giving you less Energy consumption on styles, I guess we will see 5CP SR 4/5CP Rip, like Rogues do with Rupture and SnD...

Edit: wether or not Rake comes back I don't know, but it could be worth it.

 

Valerian

10 Expertise is equivalent to 39.2 expertise Rating at 70 (and clearly more at 80). In addition there's the extra energy return on avoided finishers. For 2 talent points that seems like a bargain to me.

 

tlbj6142

That is quite a bit of expertise which is great for bear tanks, but the energy refund seems sort of weak. Today I have crappy kitty gear (with little or no enchants) and I have 138 hit. Unless Blizzard starts making +hit hard to find, I don't see the kitty benefit as all that great.

Now if it was a rage refund for missed bear attacks I'd be all over that.

 

Astral

So, effectively, it'll be -2.5% less chance to be dodged and -2.5% less chance to be parried? No matter what the level.

I think that's correct, .25% per Expertise, right?

 

• moz

Speaking of expertise -- pulled from MMO-champion

Bloodwood Greatstaff

88.7 DPS
700 Armor
Equip: Increases your expertise rating by 77.
Equip: Increases attack power by 1090 in Cat, Bear, Dire Bear, and Moonkin forms only.

Requires: Level 76


Interesting item, very good obviously though the lack of stamina is a bit odd.

 

angi

For me this item is crap . No Stamina on a tanking staff is not that great and it has no avoidance. With the talent and gems reaching expertise cap should be no problem.

 

TimWischmeier

This actually makes me a bit concerned. The lack of stamina and avoidance for tanking and the "wasted" stat points in armor and expertise for dps clearly make this item "better than nothing", but worse than nearly anything else. I am afraid of another bunch of mis-designed feral items...

 

tlbj6142

FWIW, it is a lvl 76 item. All too often leveling items (rewards, mid-level instance drops, etc.) are of the type "better than nothing". Now if this were a lvl 80 world drop blue (a la Braxxis), I would be worried.

 

• moz

Exactly, though the point of my post was that the very introduction of an item like this is a bit puzzling. You aren't going to be replacing your pillar, wildfury or even stanchion with this -- however considering the addition of armor on top of the expertise makes this an odd item. It's still situationally good for someone without access to that level of gear, though still the absence of stamina is downright weird.

I did overlook the existence of the new gems and even enchants, coupled with the expertise talent should mean getting capped should be infinitely easier -- given how poorly feral tanking items are itemized right now (especially in regard to expertise).

 

Sozar

Not every druid has been through SSC/Hyjal/SWP. Its a decent hybrid DPS/Tanking weapon for leveling. Sure there be better items, but that doesn't mean you can get your hands on them while leveling.

 

• moz

I said as much in my post -- the itemization is still weird though.

 

coredumperror

Unless bosses have a higher parry and/or dodge change in Wrath, you're probably right. But we have no idea what the expertise cap is going to be at lvl 80, so I wouldn't make any sweeping assumptions just yet.

As for Savage Roar... wow. I can't wait to put that to use.... damn!

 

kalbear

It's still odd to have a lvl 76 item that is only situationally better than Earthwarden. It reminds me a lot of pillar. Okay, so some druids haven't been through SSC and don't have wildfury. But then they get this and get a weapon with no stam, no avoidance, but armor? How is that helpful to their tanking?

I suspect that this is a bad herald of things to come; druids will be getting their armor from their weapons and getting their stam/avoidance from their other gear.

 

halmmar

[Braxxis' Staff of Slumber] was an awesome level 64 staff. Not the level 70 rare you'd think it would be, given its stats.

Bloodwood Greatstaff seems pretty good though. Since you'll share armor with rogues, you'll have a hard time getting enough armor for any hard-hitting end-boss (though it's obviously worse for any boss using spells). The staff seems to be a replacement the [Pillar of Ferocity], trading stamina for threat.

Most level 75-76 blues seem to be a bit worse than the current raid drops anyway, so don't give it too much thought.

 

wuffles

Well for a cycle more similar to a rogue, you would need to be able to maintain 1cp SR and 4/5 rip (to match 1SnD/5rupture), and I'm not sure we'll be able to pull that off without something like combat potency, ruthlessness, imp. SnD(in our case it would be imp. SR), or relentless strikes. At first glance, it seems like we will need atleast a 2cp Savage Roar to keep it up without having to hit everything perfectly and refresh it before it expires. Currently, that doesn't seem too difficult to fit in, but that's counting 2pc t4 procs and a higher crit rate than what I expect we'll see in WotLK. I'm just not sure OoC and Primal Fury will be consistant enough to keep both SR and Rip up for maximum duration.

It will be interesting to see if rake becomes worth it or not - it doesn't look like arms warriors will be taking trauma.

 

Valerian

Remember there's a massive energy boost in the form of KoJ and Tiger's Fury usable every 30 seconds. 60 energy every 30 seconds is nearly double the energy value of the 2T4 procs (neglecting haste effects).