I am thinking they got really well in splitting cat and bear talents, but while cat I think I got a pretty solid talent distribution for maximum dps output (and really weak bear, sigh) Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The bear though feels a bit bloated, but I came up with this build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and I am really in doubt what utility I should get... I got infected wounds thinking it works in raid bosses since it is about 20% attack speed reduction as TC, can anyone confirm it does indeed work in raid bosses??

And feel free to tell me where I am putting the points in the wrong place in either build...

I can't confirm one way or the other (not it beta), but our raid is going leave the responsibility for that debuff on our Pallys, DKs (assuming one specs Frost) and Warriors. For the Warriors TC is now threat and mitigation ability all wrapped in one. Saves us some points that are rather high in the tree . . .

I'm a little late in replying and this is a little specific, but the M'uru ring sits as a sort of special case. The armor and expertise are "wasted" item budget for warriors (While armor is good, it could have gone into even more avoidance, for example) and there's so much expertise elsewhere you want to cut down on it where you can. On the other hand, block is a complete wash for druids.

What we surmised was basically Blizzard consolidating two tank rings into one to save space on the loot table. It still wins out as pretty much best in slot for both classes due to sheer item level and the multi-stat split formula.

Titanium Earthguard is the same ilvl as the 10-man neck and is as RNG-less, for what it's worth.

For your dps build, skipping fury is probably a mistake. Free combos is a huge part of dps and important for getting more value out of savage roar. It's definitely more dps than improved mangle. Imp mangle for a cat provides 6 energy every 12 seconds if you're doing mangles, 18 if you have the glyph, or never if you have another person doing mangle or trauma. Infected would also isn't a dps talent if you're going for absolute max damage, but it's not bad either.

They said IW should work on bosses. I'm not sure if they've fixed all of the bosses yet.

On the tanking build:
Instincts is threat, cat dps and 15% less damage from AEs.
Precision is a pretty huge bump to bear threat and makes you take less parries.
Shredding attacks isn't important for bear, but it's the second most important talent for cat dps if you're offtanking.
Imp iLotP isn't make or break, but it does increase your time to live as a tank, even if it's minor.
Master shapeshifter is pretty expensive for close to 3% threat.

If I was going 100% tank, I'd probably do something like:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

For mostly tanking, dps when I'm not needed, I'm looking at:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

If they want to consolidate tank rings/back/neck it's easy: str, armor, sta, defense and parry-dodge. Everyone's happy. I'm ok with them mixing things up. But the number of necks, backs and rings with 0 armor worry me. They all say "I'm for every tank except druids". (OK, a few say "I'm for paladins and warriors, less good for DKs, and bad for druids").

I apologize if this is the wrong thread for this question. I wasn't sure if I should put it in the Megathread, the 3.02 thread, or this one. My guild is currently 8/9 so raiding will not be out the window for me once 3.02 hits. I'm curious if I should plan on replacing all my current agility gems with stamina ones. I didn't see gemming mentioned anywhere previously in this thread.

I'm assuming with the agi to dodge nerf that gemming for agility wouldn't be worthwhile anymore. So is stamina going to be our only choice for gemming in Wrath or will we see benefit from Dodge Rating gems. Or is Agility still going to be the gem of choice?

There is a new diminishing returns formula for avoidance in the last build. So I doubt the value of dodge is fixed yet. But currently it looks like stamina is more valuable than avoidance.

For those who wanted some numbers feedback from beta. I've jsut come back from tanking 2 heroics. I did about 1100 dps in the first one, and 1200 dps in the second. Reason for the higher was I got an epic staff from last boss of the 1st once which bumped by AP up by about 300 in bear form, even without enchant.

The group I ran with was an unholy DK , ret pally, demonology warlock. The DK and Ret Pally were doing about 1750 dps each; warlock was doing about 1400 - but had roughly the same total damage done as me.

Im not sure how to convert dps to tps, but I never lost aggro once. Was swimming in rage while things were hitting me due to Natural Reaction talent. On a couple of pulls tho I had no rage and enrage CD wasnt available so that got a little bit hairy. Used crowd control on one occassion - they werent really instances that required it though. I wish I could find a threat meter that works over there - alas the dps should be somehow convertible.

As for gear, I have 3 pve dps-oriented epics (pants/boots from naxx10 & aforementioned staff), rest is the premade blue pvp set they put you in for premade toons on beta (full blue pvp set plus epic offset pvp neck/ring/bracer/belt/feet/battlemaster trinkets). With just my own unimproved mark of the wild, im at 26907 hp, 20.5k armor, 4500 ap/35.6 crit, 31.3dodge 1.56% haste, and a pretty good amount of both hit/expertise.

In my honest opinion, I think the heroics may be undertuned. Shouldnt really be able to zerg them in pvp gear.


Edit: Added talent spec on request Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

WoWInterface Downloads : WotLK Beta - All WotLK-compatible addons that I know about. With beta being so much in flux, these don't all work all the time. Update often!
ZThreatMeter : WoWInterface Downloads : WotLK Beta - This threat meter works great for me. It takes the output from the new built-in threat API and formats it into a window that's similar to Omen's threat bars.

As for my own experience with these, I've found that ZThreatMeter is pretty much a total Omen replacement. I ran normal Utgarde Keep at lvl 73 yesterday, and ZThreat rocked. I also noticed that, much like the new "Snared" text that pops up for everyone to show that the mob is snared, you also get a "Changed Target" text over mobs that de-aggro you for someone else. This is excellent for those ranged mobs that you couldn't pull to yourself for the Berserked Mangle-spam (which is AWESOME).

I noticed something rather disturbing while I was tanking, though. It may have just been that my party members were terrible, but I did 50% of the entire groups damage for the whole run, doubling the next best player's DPS. I can only hope that feral tanking DPS doesn't get us nerfed into the ground again like early TBC.

I imagine many raid boss encounters will allow for an early heroism and of course things like drums, Tricks of the Trade and Hysteria could also add even more dimensions to our initial cooldown stacking and just produce some silly TPS and DPS results.

The downside is of course the Enrage armour penalty but if you're stacking cooldowns near the very start of fights in most situations you'll be able to pull with AF/ Inspiration already up.

It would probably be fairer if things like Enrage, Hysteria and Berserk didn't stack.

As we've seen mage tank and even warlock tank have been done but thats not why I'm replying to this specifically.

They can not balance druid tanks vs other tanks by assuming innervate and battlerez will be available unless they give us the ability to use it while tanking. Yes in BC about half the fights have some opportunity for a MT druid to sneak in an innervate safely, a few less for BR as they have small windows of opportunity. most of these fights are multi tank fights where you can be reasonably sure you wont take a hit for a short period of time. Unless every fight is like this or they give some ability to cast BR or innervate from bear form it is no more fair to druids to balance things assuming these tools are on the table than it is for other tanks to ignore them altogether.

From the OT role brez and innervate must potentially be balanced around as an OT has more opportunity to use them. I like OT but I like MT as well and they are trying to move away from the niche roles and OT was our niche. if we are going to be MT's they cant deny us MT tools others have because we have these powerful tools when we can not use them in most MT situations.

Honestly I'd like to see a talent deep in feral. Partial transformation. When activated allows the druid to cast 1 spell without drooping their shapeshift. 1 minute CD. This would allow a bit more of our hybrid nature to show as we are the most specalized of the hybrids. Pallies do not give up their spellcasting while tanking, they drop some of their defenses if they try to cast but not all of them, we drop all of them currently. enh shamies do not give up their ability to cast healing or ranged spells, they may not be as effective but even they gain more spell power from their talents than we do from NI. Ferals are forced to give up a great deal of their class to specialize and that is being furthered in the expansion with cat and bear splitting to an extent. if they want to force specialized roles that is fine but they need to balance us as specialists not hybrids in that case.

Hyjal you can definitely Brez during Rage's DnD and Anetheron's inferno cast, the other three bosses you can't do it.