Not specced for Berserk at the moment, but when I first tried it out I don't think I saw any special animation :/ (I'll recheck this later if I remember).

Tried it just now and the daze was applied midair. I've got around 450 latency to the server so my guess is that it's applied as the server recognizes that you've cast the spell.

From what I am told, Warriors will not be speccing arms in WLK as Fury provides higher total RDPS.

It doesn't matter w/ something increasing your DPS by such ridiculous amounts, you have to balance around that fact just in case it happens. This is why trauma is such a horrendously bad talent that should not exist in the game at all given current druid DPS mechanics which are not changing (in regards to bleeds anyways).

What are you talking about? A 7-10% dmg buff to *1* raid member, and a 1-3% dmg buff to 2 more is a 'ridiculous amount'? Uhhh, no. Seriously, it's way too early in the beta for all this QQing.

When you use the new finisher Rip uptime will be much lower as today, perhaps Rip overall dmg is then 10%, so Trauma adds perhaps 3% overall dmg to us, which is not that huge. Hearing about great numbers of Ferious Bite and the fact that we can socket armor pen perhaps we won`t use Rip anymore, who knows?

@tenshirou

I know I'm late to the party here, but you forgot to factor in our 20% additional weapon AP to our specials.

As for the lack of gear in Beta that's suitable for us, it's way too early to complain. Beta has a long way to go, we'll get our gear. Let's wait until we have more than a single feral weapon to use for comparison.

On Trauma, this has been asked on Emmerald's site and I haven't seen it answered here: Does Trauma's bleed buff stack with Mangle's? There's been a lot of talk about how huge it is for us and how it will hurt us if warriors don't take it, but I've yet to see confirmation that it stacks with Mangle.

As far as our finishers I haven't seen any numbers that prove Savage Roar is worth keeping up. Consider that for every second that we lose on Rip uptime (5 combo points with a Mangle buff but not an SR buff) we lose 347.1 + 0.0325*AP damage. Let's estimate rather conservatively and say that a fresh level 80 feral druid with mostly T6/Sunwell badge level epics and a couple dungeon/quest blue upgrades has 7000 AP. That translates to a loss of 574.6 damage every single second that we don't have Rip running (unaffected by armor), which is simply massive. I really want to find a way to fit SR into our rotation, but it just may not be feasible, particularly if our combo point generation is slower due to fewer crits.

Granted old WF would have been "better" but not "far better". The only real difference being the extra AP added to the hits. Haste is a weak stat for us so yes, this needs to be looked at. Maybe grant some sort of energy regen based on haste/white hits (like 2T4) and it starts looking better.

We need the same amount of expertise as a rogue does when DPSing so presumably it'll be on the gear in the appropriate amount.

Hit is less needed but still a good stat (only inferior to Agi, Str and possibly ArP depending on how much you have). Remember we will have our set pieces that are NOT itemized the same as Rogue pieces so that should make up for having "too much" hit. Assuming the same 5 piece sets it allows us, Belt, Boots, Bracers, Neck, Cloak, Rings and Trinkets to get hit with. Thats 9 slots for 142 rating. Take 2 slots away and its ~20 hit per piece which isnt terrible. Considering the Neck/Cloak/Ring/trinket slots don't have to be shared only with rogues (can share with hunters for example) I'm sure finding pieces without too much hit on it will be fine. This of course assumes blizzard itemizes things properly which is always a risk though.

ArP is going to be a strong stat due to the fact we can stack it more with gems now. It is the only stat that has increasing returns on it so the more we can stack it the better. Yes our rip damage won't be affected by it, but I suspect our Rip uptime will actually decrease with the new finisher, which means ArP is in fact that much better.

SoF I agree. I don't see why or how they're going to Focus on Str if we're sharing gear with Rogues. Unless they gives Rogues 2 AP per Str and just replace all the AP gear with Str gear (or a mix of Str/AP though thats hoping for a bit much).

Last point again I agree. A talent for increased Savage Roar duration will likely pop up at some point, or at least it should.

Well SR would give 1750 AP in that situation. Max duration I believe was 25 seconds which is 2 cycles worth of Rip. So that alone gives: 0.0325*1750*24 = 1365 damage back bringing the total loss of 12 seconds of rip down to 5530.2. Now over 25 seconds we also get 25 auto attacks (neglecting haste for the moment). 1750/14 = 125. So we'd get an extra 125*25*(1-crit) + 125*25*2.2*(crit). This number will be a bit high due to neglecting glancing blows and miss chance though. Assuming a crit rate of 30%. This results in 2187.5 + 2062.5 = 4250 reducing the loss to 1280.2. We also have 25 seconds of specials going on here. Each shred done with SR up gains 2.25*1.3*125 = 365.6 damage (402 if Rend and Tear is active). Meaning we only need 4 shreds during 25 seconds before we make up a complete loss of 12 seconds of Rip time.

If a cycle can be optimized in some way so that we're not losing a full 12 second (one cycle) worth of Rip it becomes even better. I did this math relatively quickly so if there are any errors do let me know so I can recheck it, but it does look to me like SR is worth keeping up.

Forgive my ignorance, but is it confirmed that haste rating conversion is unchanged?

I do recall an old thread in the wotlkwiki forums where all rating conversions at level 70 were listed. Apart from the agility changes, haste rating supposedly changed to give 1% haste with only 10.something rating (for Druids only). The source was not reliable, though, and I have not seen an independent confirmation (or any further mention anywhere). I'd appreciate clarification from somebody in the beta.

Edit: removed Trauma/Mangle stacking question, thanks NameLessOne

Sorry, but where are you getting a 25 second duration for Savage Roar? The tooltip says it's 21 seconds when used with 5 combo points and I don't see any talents that extend it. Could the fact that SR stays up for less than 2 cycles cause problems, or will we just finish with SR, rip, SR, rip, etc.

Thanks for the clarification.

As I said I thought it was 25 sec but couldn't recall. 21 does change things in the math I put above somewhat though its still likely to be worth putting up even if you lose a full cycle of rips (since the above showed only needing 4 shreds in 25 seconds for it to break even). After throw up a SR you'd likely want to save up as much energy (and probably use TF) so you could get the next Rip up ASAP so that SR at least works on 2 rips. TF adding energy along with Berserk is going to dramatically change how we need to optimize our cycles. I'd start looking into the math behind it, but its still early and I'd hate to waste a lot of time on something that could easily still change.

Rogues scale beautifully with all sorts of stats, but we shouldn't wish to be like them: when 70% of your damage is white, the key to good DPS can end up as simple as "keep up SnD, stay in melee range of the boss". I like the higher interactivity of good druid DPS cycles, and I know a rogue who envies us the dramatic impact attention to detail can have on our DPS. I want to scale well, of course, but wouldn't it make more fun gameplay to wish for rogues to shift to a higher % of yellow attacks?