That's the problem - it means that non-feral druids will still have as much armour as feral druids (thick hide is pretty easy to get if they want it), which could break PvP. I know they won't get PotP, but it's still an issue in overall balance. Resto / Restokin druids are already amazingly good in PvP, although the changes in Wrath may fix that.

Why would you put 71 points in feral? I only see 49 points in feral that I'd consider basically "necessary" since FI is becoming a cat talent (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft has 2 in imp mangle as semi-filler). That means, even with naturalist and OOC, you still have 11 points to put between imp mangle, FI, shredding attacks, KotJ, FA, infected wounds, brutal impact, primal tenacity, nurturing instinct, and NS/MS. Most of those are either purely cat or have fight-specific utility, though of course if you need to be providing 5/5 demo and thunder clap, you're gonna be pretty tight on points. While some are all-purpose threat, I don't think any of them provides more threat per point than naturalist+OoC even counting those as 11 points (and you can still get the ones that apply to all fights).

For DPSing is it only the Rip glyph thats available at 70? The mangle one seems to require Northrend herbs to make.

Has anyone really looked at the DPS cycle at 70 much? Between lag and lack of mods trying to get meaningful testing done on the PTR wasn't doing terribly well. The general "cycle" would need to be something like:

1) If at 5 combo points Rip, unless Rip is up*
2) Mangle if Mangle is not up
3) Rake if Rake is not up
4) Shred if both Rake and Mangle are up and Combo points < 5

I don't know WHAT to do if I'm at 5 combo points and Rip hasn't run out. Waiting on energy seems to make sense, BUT this can lead to mangle and rake downtime (as well as some rip ticks not getting mangle, since Mangle and Rip are no longer in synch anymore due to the glyph). FB could be used but this will likely lead to Rip downtime since getting 10 combo points an enough energy to use Rip and FB in 16 seconds seems near impossible. Is losing Rake/Mangle uptime worse than "wasting" combo points?

I don't see why you would put 71 into feral unless you absolutely never cat dps'd. I don't know any raiding ferals who spend 100% of their time in bear form. You're giving up a lot of dps skipping omen and naturalist for some pretty questionable tanking talents.

a) You can get a pure dps build that skips all of the bear talents and is probably 100% dps, 70% survivable?
b) You can get a pure tank build that picks up all the marginal tanking talents like impact and FA and ends up maybe 100% survivable and 70% dps?
c) You can get a hybrid build that skips only the bad tanking and bad dps talents and ends up about 90% dps and 90% survivable? That seems like the ideal situation to me, something like:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
with plenty of reasonable debate about PI, ILotP, Feral Instincts and 5/5 furor vs 2/2 IMotW depending on how you play.

(Do we know for sure PI's crit doesn't apply to bear anymore?)

What are you giving up with that build?

Tank:
FA: attack debuff when someone without a similar talent isn't around.
Impact: More frequent stuns / interrupts (interrupts are generally more than covered on 10 and 25 mans, but stuns can decrease damage against non-bosses)
Tenacity: Less duration on stuns (rare in pve) and fears (you should have FW if it's important)
Imp Mangle - replaces 1 (lacerate or swipe) with 1 mangle every 18 seconds

Cat
FA: 15% more damage on a finisher that you might use every 2-3 rotations
Imp Mangle: In a group saves 6 energy per 12 or 18 seconds or sometimes never (bear or trauma bot). (Ignoring how useful it is for soloing/pvp though)
MSS: 4% more crit.

I'd invite a build like that to a raid for either a MT or dps role (assuming a 100% cat specced druid's dps stays competitive to other dps'rs).

@Valerian
That dps cycle looks about right at 70 to me. The only thing I can think of is adding a wait before you rip for nearly full energy, especially if you're mangling.

I'm thinking something like mangle, rake, shred to 5, wait for 70ish energy, rip, mangle, repeat using rake whenever it's not ticking. It also helps make sure you have bleeds for RnT for shreds (in case rake falls off in there). If rip's still ticking and you're near 100 energy, maybe an extra shred while you wait for rip to wear out?

Do we know that they're buffing rank 5 of rake? Or is it just the new ranks that get buffed?

If you have 2t6 (even moreso if you have 4t6) you might want to spec 3/3 imp mangle and only 3/5 RnT and do 29 energy mangles instead of shred. Use the additional CP for 3+ CP FBs.

I have released version 0.10.0 of my Cat DPS Simulator, available at: wowcatsim - Google Code

You can now customize and write your own strategy for the Simulator to run. Guide to writing strategies here: WritingStrategies - wowcatsim - Google Code - Guide to writing your own strategies

Do post here if you have problems writing your own strategy (or using the Simulator) I will try to help you as much as I can.

Good luck finding the optimal strategy for maximum DPS!

Who said that I'll go for a 0/71/0 build? I'll probably go for a 0/60/11 build basically taking all needed tanking talents and skipping only imp-mangle and MS as dps talent going for a good HYBRID build. But a 0/60/11 build is what I call an hybrid build not a full bear build. I can dps at 92% of the efficency and tank 98% of the efficiency, I don't call it a "Bear Build".

Buff, stones, equip, cycles, can do it. the first time I made the simulation I had 2400 dps...

Is there really any point in doing rake if RIP is up? Because from what I know Shred is still more DPE than rake.

Rake tops all other CP-generating abilities by a fairly good margin in terms of DPE, as proven some pages ago.

As others said not a bad thing really, bringing us in line hopefully and also giving us 3 more points to work with, although bloat is not such an issue anymore at 80.

Hopefully this does bring us in line and not under it!