Oh thanks, that's awesome, can't believe I missed that.

Just out of curiosity, what is the rationale is for demo roar being -408 AP the while warrior and hunter pet versions being -410 (-571 vs. -574 with talents)? Not that 2-3 AP is going to make any difference, it just seems odd - is it to avoid a situation where both classes are wasting GCDs because they can't see (without addons) when the other class' debuff is fading?

Unless you're dodged capped, precision is a dps talent. While we'll be able to cap the dodge portion of expertise, I believe it will be well into naxx (or even after) before we do. And the energy savings isn't wasted until you have a lot of hit and expertise.

For the tanking build: Precision is worth more to tanks than master shifter. Unless you're dodge capped, it will be 5% more hits for only 2 talent points. It also means you take less damage. Master shapeshifter is closer to 3% threat for 5 talent points (since it doesn't scale the static threat from lacerate or maul, demo roar, FFF and doesn't increase threat from rage gains).

Skipping a point in HotW seems very odd too.

Maul gets crazy multipliers with talents now: Base x 1.3 (Mangle) x 1.2 (SF) x 1.2 (RnT) x 1.1 (naturalist) x 1.04 (shifter). If you have two targets and the glyph, even without spreading around another mangles or bleeds, you could expect up to Base x 1.2 (SF) x 1.1 (Naturalist) x 1.04 (shifter). Take the build I planned to get below. On two targets I'd get: Base x 1.2 x 1.1 x 1.3 x 1.12 + Base x 1.2 x 1.1 = 3.24 x Base maul damage before crits, every 2.5 seconds? If I can fit the last 2 points in rend in, it would be 3.38 x Base maul damage. It gets higher with mouseover lacerates and/or mangles.

If we get good at popping beserk / kotj at the right times, I have to wonder if we'll face another "Why does the tank out dps the rogue in shattered halls?' nerf.
I think rend is going to be more value than improved mangle now, especially if you spend any time at all in cat form (+20% to shred is way better than 6 energy every 12 or 18 (glyph) seconds or even never (someone else covering mangle/trauma).

For mostly tanking, sometimes dps I'm looking at:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000

My main delimna is the last 2 points in Rend and tear versus some of the other talents.

It covers all of the tanking talents except FA.

For threat it skips imp mangle, 2 points in rend and master shifter, but it has so many threat talents that I doubt that's an issue. If threat's going to be a problem pull with hurricane, beserk mangle spam and if it's still an issue, KotJ after.

For dps, it covers everything except FA, 2 points in RnT, and master shifter.


Regarding FA's usefulness:
If they want to make FA worth taking for bears, I had a different suggestion. People are complaining about AE tanking. Make FA do what it does and add in a threat boost to demo for each point of FA. 2 birds and all... That said, I hope they don't do it. I don't want to spend 5 more points in tier 1.

To be honest, the insane multiplier on maul, combined with the new berserk and the maul glyph scare the hell out of me.

Especially in heroics where 3-5 mob pulls are pretty much standard we will be dealing a LOT of damage, possible more than non-aoe dds (kinda like it was in the early days of BC).

Pop enrage and berserk right at the pull and then maul+mangle for 15 seconds (rage shouldn't be an issue) if you can afford you could even pop a dps trinket to amplify the effect even further. I'd say that would be 4-5k dps as long as the berserk lasts.

I think for 25 man raiding at 80 I am going to try this build.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000

Ferocity - Building Rage does not appear to be an issue, especially with Natural Reaction. Pretty much useless for Cat DPS.

Improved Leader of the Pack - With so many abilities going raid wide I am not sure this is a "must have" talent.

Improved Mangle - I just can't justify a lower CD Mangle being better than picking up other talents that boost *both* Cat and Bear damage. Filling out RnT for example.

Infected Wounds - I picked that up for OT/trash where I am the only debuffer, but if your raid comp permits you could swap points out of this and pick up some of the other skipped items.

I thought if I shared some of my experiences on beta it might help people either choose specs, or have an idea on the direction ferals are heading.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is the build I currently am on beta, basically went for a most of the time tank sometimes dps build. I have 254 hit and 16 (incl talents) expertise (-4% dodge/parry) about 35% dodge about 21k armor, 33.5k hp raid buffed. No consumables.

I MT'd Sartharian today (screenshot http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/m...108_011059.jpg), and have also tanked Spider wing of Naxx. On Maexxna I got relegated to dps duty despite wanting to give tanking it a go - "because you don't have a shieldwall". I felt a little bit clumsy dpsing to be honest, probably just because im used to the rotation on live. It 'seemed' like pretty decent dps, but I dont have any working mods on my beta account to see.

The rotation I liked to use was enrage/berserk at pull. This did 2 things 1) Gave me a nice threatlead from spamming mangle, and 2) allowed me to white hit instead of maul to get a nice rage build up. From then onwards, the rotation was exactly as now: Mangle every cooldown (i have imp talent tho), lacerate inbetween. The main thing that was very very noticable when tanking was that I was permanently full of rage, even using maul every single swing. It wasnt from primal fury - I have about the same crit in bearform as on live. Not sure if that's because I undergear it and i was getting hit harder, or because of the natural reaction talent or both. I assume as gear improves, natural reaction talent will give more rage as would primal fury. I might try swapping out my Ferocity talent for Feral Agression, don't really need the rage discount and didnt have a warrior with me to demo shout.

Now that R & T has gone up to 20% , can someone please run the numbers on it for cat builds? It seemed like previously it was being skipped for both bear and cat builds. I'd also like to know what ya drop to pick it up :P

The question isn't just whether or not FB will be better dps than rip rotations. It's 'is the increase in dps I see going speccing for FB worth more than spending those talents elsewhere?' For most, maxing FB means takeing at least 5 points you didn't intend to take. For some it means more than that (weren't planning to take RnT?)

What else can you get for your talent points? You're going to give something up for that extra damage. Is 5% (or 10, or 15 or ?) worth:

Giving up your ability to main tank bosses (mother bear, reaction)?
Giving up free heals for the raid (iltop)?
15% more damage from AEs (instincts)?
Getting parried less as a bear (precision)?
Etc.

If you mostly solo and pvp, maybe it is. If you don't even have a bear button, sure it is. But if it ends up being a minor dps increase, there's a good chance it's still not worth it to max FB talents over just doing rip rotations for most of us.

In my decision is was easy to simply swap Ferocity for FA.

Yeah obviously it will take more testing, but the Natural Reaction talent seems like a really good Rage "battery".

Since WWS doesn't want to parse my LK Beta combat logs I am going to try out WoWCardioRaid and try to get some parses on trash and maybe a LK 5 man boss if the lag ever settles down.

Even in a SR/Rip/FB cycle, FA is worth quite little. Without RnT, FB is not worth using except during berserk. So, we just need to realize that optimal cycles are more dependent on talent selection now.

Given a full epic set and a SR/Rip/FB cycle with full cat spec, my estimates show dps talents in the order (per point):

OoC: 957.16
Shredding Attacks: 358.31
Berserk: 352.43
Leader of the Pack: 232.08
King of the Jungle: 195.8
Primal Fury: 167.27
Predatory Instincts: 113.92
Naturalist: 103.03
Predatory Strikes: 98.12
Rend and Tear: 97.06
Sharpened Claws: 92.8
Hearth of the Wild: 80.94
Primal Precision: 58.84
Survival of the Fittest: 39.7
Shapeshifter (5): 37.12
Improved Mangle: 34.9
Ferocity: 17.06
Savage Fury: 16.23
Feral Aggression: 11.67
Genesis: 5.55

While those number might not be exact, their relative differences should remain true.

The biggest difference between a SR/Rip/FB cycle and a simpler SR/Rip cycle is the value of Primal Fury goes way down (below SotF). RnT goes down the list some as well (below HotW). OoC is worth slightly less, but still far ahead in first. FA, of course, goes down to nearly nothing.

Honestly, I've not been giving a damm about compromise builds on the beta - Been going full bear by dropping everything into the feral tree except for the five points for furor or full cat builds, and no, you cant drop ferocity - in a maximal mitigation build, rage is limited. The nice thing about going "I dont really care about anything but bear" when speccing is that you can be wholly self sufficient for tanking debuffs, which really does matter a lot for heroics/10 mans

TLDR: 5/5 feral aggression is better than 5/5 naturalist for bear - tough they really ought to put the bear discounts on the same talent as the improved roar and the cat discounts on the same talent as the improved bite

I've been wondering if there's is a reason why in the world our Naxx Tier sets have AP instead of strength? I mean honestly it just isn't making any since to me. Am I just missing something and being completely clueless?