It will only be 142 at level 70. At level 80 you will need more hit rating to hit 9%, which probably explains why people have said the cap has changed. All rating stats function similarly.

How does that not remove powershifting?

When you're at zero energy and you cancel form, then shift to cat, you'll only have the energy you would have naturally regenerated in that amount of time. Therefore, you're not gaining any extra energy that you wouldn't normally have.

If you shift out of cat and then back at full energy, you retain 40 energy. With this change, you no longer gain any benefit to shifting at under 40 energy, and you get to keep 40 of your energy if you have over 40.

Relax guys, I'm sure he'll fix what he said or post a revision or something soon. As is,
...directly contradicts...
If the first line is true, it's a minuscule buff from on live (only difference is you wouldn't lose energy if you powershift when energy>40), and still allows powershifting, which contradicts the whole point of his post.
If the second line is true, it's a significant nerf, actually reducing the energy gain when powershifting (to 0, in most PvE), and goes in line with the point of his post.


Originally, I was hoping they'd remove powershifting in WotLK, because I didn't want to have to code it in Rawr cause it's nasty complex. But after playing with the powershifting mechanic in beta, I found it so fun, I would hate to play without it, and found it would be easier than I thought to code.

Okay, that makes sense. Although it brings up another question then, why don't we want lots of hit on our sets at 80? Or is 296 not considered 'a lot' of hit. I'd hate to see what the rogue cap is now.

We have our answer:

296 is not a lot of hit at lvl 80 on the leather gear that's so far come out. Each piece I've seen has somewhere between 30 and 50 hit. Here's the list of all usable gear by druids that has hit rating. Not all of that is going to be feral gear (quite a bit isn't) but it should give an idea of what the scale of hit is. And with things like +10hit/+10expertise gems, it shouldn't be hard to get to the cap.

They've clarified what furor/powershifting will do, so furor now does act like a retention of energy, not an addition. Ah well. I really liked powershifting and thought it was an interesting mechanic that separated druids from rogues.

That makes a lot more sense than maximum.

So basically furor and shapeshifter are no longer group/raid dps talents. The rage still helps for tank pulls (especially for root-CC pulls). But the amount of energy / mana you're likely to save on a group / raid is very minor now.

There is still some significant benefit in pvp, but not as much as we used to have.

This makes improved shapeshifter basically requiring 16 resto points even more frustrating.

Pretty significant changes. Thank god they haven't finished balancing feral dps or arenas.

Yeah, I would really like a change to the first tiers of resto for the feral synergy. Moving Natural Shapeshifter, Master Shapeshifter and Naturalist closer could be a good one. But also, changing the furor talent so that it brings something new to the table of feral synergy could be sweeter.

Can't say I'm a fan of the changes at all. I'm of the opinion that cap on furor should at least be raised from 40. We're still spending some 800 mana on a shift, and trying to stay on people AND killing them will be harder with less energy on shifts.

This is a huge nerf to the Furor talent. It's now nowhere near worth 5 points. They better either make additional buffs or reduce the number of points to max it. Tactical Mastery is only 3 points and increases threat generation of other spec abilities.

Regardless, it has never made sense to have Furor in the resto tree. A PvE cat won't need it and they definitely don't need Nature's Focus (IMotW is acceptable). They should at least reduce Furor to 3 points. Ideally they would move it to feral, push both of the shapeshifting talents up one tier, and reduce Naturalist to 3 points. We could then end up with 11-14 points in resto for OoC and possibly Intensity.

Give us the ability to choose if we want talents without having to take worthless alternatives to get something higher up. Picking talents should never be easy. It should be a choice between two equally powerful talents that tweak your character in different ways. I really think Blizzard fails in general with this type of design.

It needs significant rework considering enhancement shaman can do the same thing (assuming they are outdoors) without paying such a high opportunity cost for only two talents points and only 13% of their base mana.

Should be changed to keeping all your energy and moved to the side as an optional PVP talent since it is almost worthless for PVE.

So the energy regen in other forms is ONLY useful if you have furor and even then is significantly weaker than currently? As in Furor currently is strictly better in every situation than the "new" Furor?

If that is the case it needs SOMETHING added to it for PvE or have naturalist moved up in the tree or something because otherwise you literally have to waste points in the resto tree to get to Naturalist and OOC which isn't generally what they intend.

Yes. Basically.

Don't quite like that, though I can understand the desire to get rid of Power Shifting - even if it makes for a very interesting mechanic from a Druid's point of view. Far as I'm concerned they can just go balance around it (as that appears to be the other option).

But as it stands, I think they should just make it 3 points rather than 5, or even 2 with OoC moved to first tier.
To be honest - I think a talent which is a *must have* in every single spec simply should not exist. It should be trainable or even a basic skill. Especially not if it requires you to waste at least 5 talent points to even get there. Moonkins want it, Bears want it, Cats want it and even Trees will want OoC. I just don't think that's good design.

The Resto subspec is now a concern without having Furor as the obvious tier 1 choice. I'd agree with the people posting about moving Natural/Master Shapeshifter up a level. So you'd go Imp MotW (2), Natural Shapeshifter (3), then Naturalist (5) and Master Shapeshifter (2) and Omen (1 .. which makes 13 total in Resto as opposed to the 16 we need to spend now). Then I'd remove the Furor talent, and put it on trainers as a base skill. This does a number of things. It gives us 3 more talent points to spend in the Feral tree. It gives us the neutered Furor functionality for free, since it's not quite worth 5 talent points anymore, it's now more a convenience-at-the-start-of-pulls/PvP thing. Least of all, it allows us to pick up Imp MotW.

It's sad that they're killing an aspect of our DPS cycle which was fairly interesting, but without it in the equation, hopefully they can balance other aspects better. Toskk's calculations showing ~2400 DPS at level 80 are very discouraging at this stage =/

I totally forgot about Enh Shamans.

Do they get their WF haste while in ghost wolf form now? What prevents them from completely staying in that form for PVP?

Our prospects look grim.

Hmm the new buff stacking/not stacking looks pretty weak for druids too.

Compare feral and fury:

Raid crit: both
Demo: both, but very impractical for druids
Armor reduction: sunder > FF unless there's another warrior in raid.
Bleed debuff: druid (i dont think fury can get trauma).

In the case where there is a tank other than a warrior or druid, the fury warrior seems to have a better slot, debuff wise, than ferals.

I know that I mean despite them stacking, FF is obtainable from any druid (with Imp FF from an oomkin just being better). The feral buffs are weak and replaceable because the class that has the same one as us (fury warrs) have better OTHER buffs. This is what they were trying to avoid.

Clearly there will be situations where a feral will be better (no other druids for example allows mark to be provided by the feral) but in a 25 man raid it certainly doesn't look equitable at the moment. Oomkin looks nearly strictly better than Feral (especially with the note improved oomkin aura provides 3% haste).

Now I'll grant maybe there's some other group type buff things going to be provided by feral but at the moment it seems like you wouldn't want a feral in your 25 man raids since you get the same buffs via other classses. Now I suppose if they overbuff feral so they're better (buffs notwithstanding) then I guess it works, but I cannot imagine thats the goal.

I'm guessing that "Horn of Winter" buff listed for Str+Agi is a feral buff.

You missed Battle Shout, which really is the money buff Warriors bring. But that only strengthens your point (which I fully agree with).

Sounds more like a DK Frost skill to me.

If I remember correctly there was a blue mentioning that DK´s would get that a cupple of weeks ago.

Well I recall a dev mentioning ferals getting a str/agi buff too, a while ago. That's why I thought that might be ours.

Well I discounted BS since I figured Melee would get BoM and Kings. But yeah you are right if there's no second pally BS is a good one too.

This was my thought too. Horn of Winter just seems odd because winter isn't usually associated with Strength/Agi so I'd guess they added it to the name because its a "cold" skill for DKs.

Now one thing I did miss in my analysis was that feral DOES bring a Bres and Innervate. Then again though so does an oomkin which still leaves that as almost strictly better. The only saving grace, perhaps, will be a buff to Imp LotP so that its a decent raid buff that isn't overshadowed by a directly competing class.