Ja7us

I have no idea. I wonder if they plan to push Rake as a viable DPS spell? We haven't seen any new talent support yet (Trauma excluded, which kinda counts, I guess), which makes me think they plan to leave it useless; on the other hand, a lot of the "useless" abilities have been getting big buffs (Rend, Tiger's Fury, et al), so who knows.

Makes sense. I wonder, if Rend ends up being viable, if we can expect it to be applied right away at the start of a fight, meaning we get the Rend and Tear bonus without having to use energy on Rake (presumably we can expect Deep Wounds / Rupture for subsequent cycles, at least for raid DPS).

 

angi

Armor Amulett

This item is the first posted item of wotlk that i really like to have . Perhaps we don`t see any bear items in normal slots, but see amuletts/rings/trinkets/weapons with additional armor. I really have to think about what type of sunwell armor i try to get the next weeks which help me in wotlk. If there are no new Chests/Trouser/Hands/Head/Shoulder bear tank items perhaps the sunwell-tank-items hold much longer than we might think.

 

unitsinc

One thing to note from personal experience is that not having Intensity lowers my overall DPS. I powershift like a mad man(once a cycle minimum) and I've tried it without Intensity and I ran oom quite quickly. While it doesn't sound like too much, 30% mana regen(when fully raid buffed) is a good amount, especially when considering that going into cat form is like casting a spell for mana regen purposes.

So for heavy power shifters, this may hurt us slightly. I would still probably not pick up the talent just because I don't DPS enough to justify it, but perhaps if you're more of a DPS feral, then you might consider taking this talent.

 

unitsinc

Sorry for the back-to-back post.

I was playing around with specs again and since the change to Feral Instinct(no longer buffing bear threat) this seems like a good place to steal a single point.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

So as it stands now, I feel that covers almost everything PVE pretty well. And if you have a moonkin with Imp FF, and you feel you don't need that, then take that and put it wherever you like(Intensity for me)

All assuming Infected Wounds doesn't work on boss mobs. If that's the case then we've got a lot of choices to make real soon, but I feel that:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
once again covers most of the bases well, and again leaves 1 point free to either pick up FF(if no moonkin), put the second point into Primal Precision, or put a point into Master Shapeshifter.

And on one other note, is anyone else gonna miss having Imp LotP(assuming you're dropping it like many are considering) for grinding and always being at full health?

 

Melthar

Although the armour on an neckpiece is nice to see, the fact that it has strength is very disappointing. I know our agi:dodge/crit ratios are being changed, but I still can't see strength ever being more useful to bear than agi.

 

North101

I agree but the necklace was probably not designed with only druids in mind. The 3 other tanking classes have some way of getting a defensive stat from strength (Warrior/Paladin have shield block, Death Knights have parry) and strength is a nice stat for them to get both offensive and defensive stats.

Maybe for druids to get more out of strength would be have a talent to do something with attackpower. E.g.

 

TimWischmeier

It is true that they do gain defensive stats from strength, but as far as I know those gains are pretty, if not negletibly small.

 

Valerian

I suspect strength is going to be more important for tanking in terms of threat. Almost all the "tanking" pieces I've seen have strength on them (for all classes). Remember they are changing the threat dynamic somewhat as well so perhaps a larger damage->threat conversion instead of the fixed threat moves that are prevalent currently (Sunder, Lacerate etc).

 

angi

Even today str is better for threat then agi, but you gain dodge from agi which makes it better today for physical bosses. After the conversion rate changes str will be much better for threat than agi.

I played around with a modified version of rawr.cat to see what the whole package of talent changes, agi/crit nerf, dire cat and new finisher brings in terms of dps and can only say wow . The best sunwell-dps gear went up from 2100 dps to 2500dps so roughly a 20% increase. (Without WF, Trauma etc.)

I than tried to test the new gems and was really surprised by the results. Perhaps its because i tested with lvl70 stuff, but armor pen gems were the best gems to socket. With the epic 140 armor pen gems i boosted the dps from 2500 to 3k, just from gems alone. Perhaps the new trend in Wotlk is to go armor pen cap/hit cap/exp cap for maximising dps.

 

tlbj6142

Yes I will. I hate shifting out to self-heal while questing. Ugh!

 

tlbj6142

You may not be aware that in the beta mana regen while in Feral forms is now the same as if you are in caster form outside the 5SR. So, you may find that you have far more mana for powershifting than you did previously without Intensity.

 

Tappin

First, look at tankadins and prot. It seems that none of the tanks are getting significantly more survivability. They're all picking up mostly +threat / dps / utility talents.

If, as people speculate, they take away crushes on raid level mobs, that will be a pretty huge boon for druids. We are the only tank that cannot push crushes off the table.

The other big change is SotF. Spending 0 item budget on crit immunity is a pretty big change. Imagine converting a full 156 defense rating at level 70 into all sta or agi. My math could be off, but I think that would be 234 more sta or 156 more agi (over 10% more dodge and more threat?)

 

Valerian

Remember armor penetration has increasing returns as the mobs armor gets lower (i.e., as you get increased armor penetration). Were you testing the values against current boss armor? Remember those gems are meant to be used against mobs that are higher than level 70 (probably level 83 bosses). Their armor will be significantly higher than current raid boss armor to keep mitigation roughly constant I'd guess. So it will take significantly more ArP to get to the point where the mobs armor is so low that ArP becomes THE stat to have.

 

Yaelle

I'm confused every time I read this.
If increasing armor increases your time to live linear (from a Tankbear perspective), should not also the benefit of ArP increase time until death in a linear fashion? And thus more ArP have linear returns.

 

• Arawethion

It just has to do with sloppy language regarding the math.

Changes in DPS and changes in "effective HP" of the target in any combat situation are not related linearly; they're inverses. We generally speak of things in terms of DPS. The effect of armor (and hence armor penetration) on DPS does in fact decay with higher armor.* The same is true of tanks--each additional unit of armor provides a smaller reduction of incoming DPS than the last. But it provides an equal increase of "effective HP."


*Incoming damage d = D(1 - M), where M = A(A + C). A is armor, C is constant, M is mitigation, D is pre-mitigation damage.

d = D(1 - A/(A + C)) = DC/(A + C). Taking the partial derivative:

dd/dA = -DC/(A + C)^2

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

angi

Yes but i tested it with lvl 70 buffs like sunder armor and cor and even with 15 or 17% armor mitigation the armor pen gem was ahead of the other gems (compared to 20exp,20hit,20agi and 20str). (Near the armor pen cap the value was 2x-3x, at 15% mitigation around x1.2).
We don`t know about lvl80 boss armors now, but we can assume that cor/sunder armor etc. will scale with the new ranks to counter this.

 

Valerian

Yeah I made the same argument at one point. However, the same metrics are not being used to determine tank life span compared to DPS. We generally look at time to live for tanks and in this case armor has linear returns. We do not generally look at time to live for bosses in terms of our output dps. Also note, even if we did, ArP would be non-increasing returns but every OTHER DPS stat would have diminishing returns. Currently we see our DPS stats as non-increasing returns and thus ArP has increasing returns.

But the gems themselves have MORE ArP than a level 70 ArP gem would. Since ArP has increasing returns this is more noticeable. Even now its possible, with enough ArP to get to a point where it is more valuable than Agi. It just requires too much at the moment for it to be feasible. If ArP gems are available they may in fact be the best gems to have for that slot, I won't deny that, but its also possible the armor formula changes drastically again making bosses have significantly MORE armor to get rid of, even after new Sunder/CoR are applied.

 

Snarley

Has anyone in beta had the pleasure of experiencing the resto talent Replenish while in cat / bear form?...

Replenish (3/3):
Your Rejuvenation and Flourish spells has a 15% chance to restore 10 Energy, 4 Rage, 2% Mana or 10 Runic Power per tick.

I know at one point i saw something similar on a hunter ability. I believe it had to do with the hunter giving the same rage, energy, mana and runic power back to the group after a crit.

Sounds like an amazing thing to have on top of all the new energy regen / reduction we are getting in wrath.

 

wuffles

The hunter talent you're thinking of is Hunting Party, and yes at 5/5 (100% chance) its the same bonus for the entire group (10 energy/runic power, 4 rage, or 2% mana every 8sec on crit). Its a deep survival talent, giving one more reason to bring a hunter of that spec to the raid.

 

Zhoreilh

10% bonus to shred for 5 points is not that good. It may even be very weak, if our white damage ratio increases. And with 20% haste from WF, more AP, and maybe off-hand attack in dire cats, It will probably increase.

 

Malazaar

It's not that good (~ 0.6-0.7% dps increase per point) but it only has to compete with things like savage fury (~ 0.5-0.6% dps increase per point and no benefit in bear form) or utility talents like nurturing instincts or brutal impact.

 

Promethius

Does anyone else think that Savage Fury should just be removed and rolled into the base abilities? No self respecting feral uses Claw, the scaling for Rake is lackluster even considering 30% armor mitigation, Trauma and needing a bleed for Rend and Tear, and Mangle (Cat) is used once every 12 sec in pve with maybe double the frequency at best in pvp.

I remember there being a superior version of Thick Hide higher up in the feral tree back in the alpha that reduced spell damage taken. If Savage Fury were to be removed, it might make sense to drop Sharpened Claws and Primal Fury one tier down, move Thick Hide to Savage Fury's old talent location and alter it to the Reinforced Hide talent. This prevents easy access of resto and balance specs to free spell mitigation, lessens the margin ferals have at being the worst at tanking against magical damage and frees two talent points in a bloated tree.

Outside of an implied strongest offtank role, it's a bit difficult to discern developer intent when it comes to druid tanking. We're still in the dark about bear form threat modifier being 130% or 145%. Considering the strength of current druid threat, 30% extra damage on Maul from Mangle may be what devs think suffices opposed to reworking threat modifiers. The 15% swipe damage on Feral Instinct would then just be maintaining our old aoe threat but increased damage.

On that tangent, with warriors gaining Shockwave and Thunderclap scaling, druids appear to be at the tail end of aoe tanking. Unless it's intended that druids specialize at tanking three mobs very well, and drop significantly in effectiveness as that number is increased, it might be prudent to increase Swipe targets through an existing talent. Having Shredding Attacks or Imp LotP increase targets affected by Swipe by 1/2 could lessen the gap in aoe tanking viability among the tanks.

 

kalbear

According to the beta forums, it's 145%. Just wasn't reported.

 

Snarley

If the Death Knight starting area is any precursor to what is to come in terms of PvE content (talking about the part where there is a massive amount of scourge on the screen). With every class getting at least some form of AoE it seems like it plays right into the lore that we will see vast hordes of scrouge in multiple PvE encounters deeper into the content.

Swipe still only affecting three targets seems pretty dismal for us to handle large scale multiple mob encounters.

 

kalbear

From blue posts in the druid wotlk forum:
And
That's a real shame.