They made mother bear group only because they felt that bears were powerful enough already. I won't make assumptions because I'm not in the beta, but with all of the damage bonuses bear form is also receiving, they didn't want Bear Form to be unkillable or absurdly powerful like it was in the beginning of BC.

The AP adjustment on the talent seems kinda odd though. Its ~120 AP increase. Now while thats not terrible for 3 talent points that also provide something else, it seems kinda...well pointless. 120 AP is not going to dramatically change your bear damage nor your bear threat AND it doesn't scale. So unless they're tying AP into some defensive stat it really seems odd.

So how exactly is this supposed to make you want rogue gear and the DK tanking rings, trinkets and cloaks?

Also how exactly is this supposed to address the terrible scaling mechanics that bear currently has with avoidance?

Or do they just intend to keep going back in every new raid instance and increasing all the static numbers?

Also if I remember correctly Savage Roar affects also Bear form, so we can 1cp Savage Roar, then go Bear + enrage, I should try to run a simulation.

Actually the best cycle of dps for cat druid is 2-3 SR / 5 RIP.

If we consider a 3 SR / 5 RIP cycle, with hit capped, 8500 ap, 40% crit and all the cat dps talent active we will have an average cycle time of 22.5 seconds with an average savage roar uptime of 95% (21.5 seconds).

The original cycle is:

shred till 3 cp, wait till about 80-85 energy, SR, mangle, shred till 5 cp, RIP.

If we want to include Bear into rotation the best place i can see without increasing cycle time is into the waiting time, the waiting time is usually about 7-8 seconds. Consider that you waste 2 powershifting instead of 1 (cat-bear, bear-cat) it will more mana intensive than the usual powershift but also you'll do it about every 22 seconds instead of 7-8 seconds like the old powershifting making the mana expendure about the same.

Also you will use mangle-bear so you will not use mangle cat in your rotation extending the waiting time to include 1 more shred, basically you'll prolly want to wait till 100 energy now. Savage roar will probably be up till the last 2 seconds of bear form, and enrage will be usable each 3 cycles.

So we will have about 8 seconds of bear form. The best way will probably be:

energy 0-10, time 0: cat -> bear
energy 15-25, time 1.5: mangle bear
energy 30-40, time 3: lacerate/swipe
time 4: maul?
energy 45-55, time 4.5: lacerate/swipe
energy 60-70 time 6: mangle bear
time 6.5: maul?
energy 75-85, time 7.5: powershift bear > cat
energy 85-95, time 8.5: you are now in cat form and gcd is finished, shred...

So we will gain a total of (if we will have enough rage...) 2x mangle, 2x maul, 2x swipe + 3 autoattack.

We will also consider that you will have no less than 1000 ap in bear form than in cat form, all other stats staying the same (-4% crit). You will also have (probably) at least a +20% on swipe, +20% on mangle +20% on maul, another +10% on maul due to R&T, and +4% to all damage due to Master ShapeShifter.
Also savage roar will be up for the biggest part of the rotation.

Nature's Grasp are now trainable (Nature's Grasp is now a 100% chance and was already removed from the balance tree, Typhoon is still there as a place holder but something let me think it will became trainable).
I see them as good news for feral PvP.

Some of my thoughts from numbers (not playing beta, plus raid isn't open in beta yet iirc)

DPS:
It is actually really interesting to include bear cycles into cat. Another thing worth mentioning is that whether it will be worth it or not to lose 5-10 energy due to energy capping and do a third bear mangle in the rotation (need improved mangle). Time frame for this will be 9 second > 10.5 second, so at least 5 energy will be lost in this case. In addition, that also extend the cycle by another 1.5 seconds, which means there's additional time lost on Savage Roar uptime, in terms of percentage. I'll do a little number crunching. although many others are probably much better at it.

Tanking:
The new talents are definitely welcomed. A slight concern of mine is that it seems like it takes a lot more talent points to make you "bear-capped" in a raid setting than "cat-capped" in a raid setting, and I have two issues with that (not necessarily problems, just thoughts)
Either
A.Bears needing to separate into MT-Bears and OT-Bears (focusing on different areas such as mitigation, threat,and utiltiy) since talent trees are so bloated right now
or
B.Cats do not provide enough raid synergy even with up-to-par DPS, as we still only have LoTP and Mangle (which now Fury Warriors provide both of, in addition to Battle Shout affecting the entire Raid).

Merging some bear talent as well as reducing points in some resto talents (Naturalist especially comes to mind) so that Bear Druids can pick up most of the essential things might be good. However, if their direction is towards more variety in talent specs, then I guess that's fine.

I don't agree with that, obviosly I'd like to see some talent merging but you can actually make a "perfect" bear spec and a cat spec:

cat:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000

bear:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000

Fury warriors do not bring mangle, arms warriors do that plus blood frenzy. Fury brings Lotp and only that (well shouts too if you want to count those).

It doesn't look like a perfect bear spec to me. With just one point in Infected Wounds, the chance of it dropping is
0,67^7=0.05853 (this does assume all hits, and the maximal number of Infected Wounds-procable attacks in 12 sec (4/3 Maul/Mangle or 5/2 Maul/Mangle).

Bear is further lacking:
- Intensify (it is less useful than all alternatives, but if you could take it you would)
- no Rend&Tear (much worse not to have it than with Intensify)
- Feral Aggression (if you expect to keep your melee slow up, you should also be able to drop mob AP to 0)
- King of the Jungle for Burst Aggro
- Primal Tenacity (probably in the same league as Intensify)

Cat could use Feral Charge for Mobility and Nurturing Instinct to ease healing.

So those skill sets are hardly perfect, just because the tree is too bloated.
In an optimal case, we would be able to take all cat/bear improving talents and still have 6 spare talent points to take Mother Bear/Natural Reaction or an equivalent cat talent path.

I agree with the previous poster but you can agree with me that those not taken talents are far from being "mandatory".

With the nerf of Powershifting I don't see Master Shapeshifter as a mandatory talent. 4% damage in bear for 5 points ? Come on. King of the Jungle is a 2.5% average damage increase if Enrage is used on cooldown, with the benefit of the potential burst aggro.

4% for five talent points is 0.8% damage increase as opposed to 0.83% per point for King of the Jungle. Together with a temporary armor decrease during enrage and the added benefit of cheaper mana cost for shifting due to Natural Shapeshifter both seem pretty much equal in terms of usefulness ... for bear form at least, cat could possibly do without Master Shapeshifter, especially with the removal of powershifting.

A hunter change I noticed that really annoyed me is:

Hunting Party (Tier 10) changed to: Your Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot and Steady Shot critical strikes have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to grant up to 10 party or raid memebers mana regeration equal to 0.5% of the maximum mana per second.

No more free energy from Hunters makes for a sad kitty - with the old hunting party we'd probably gain ~700-1500Energy during the course of a standard length encount (6-10 mins)


They also bring imp Demo shout (if UW remains unchanged), and as I can't see any Warrior/Druid having enough talent points available to spec into iDS/FA coupled with the fact that applying demo shout every 30 seconds hurts your TPS quite a bit, it will still be of huge benefit bringing a dps warrior along.

Why does it matter? 5 mans are not the place where taking 3% more damage is going to matter a whole lot anyway.

I can't believe some of you guys complaining about the AP bonus of Mother Bear. In my eyes, that is just a bonus - the real deal settler is the -12% damage Defensive Stance style part of it without having the drawbacks of actually being Defensive stance (10% less damage done). It isn't permanently active like Defensive stance because it does not matter for soloing. You want your best mitigation in raids and to a lesser extent in parties.
Seriously, if Mother Bear would read "Increases the bonus attack power of Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by an additional 60%, and for each friendly player in your party, damage you take is reduced while in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 3%. Also, you gain +5 Intellect." I am sure we would find someone that would actually complain about how ridiculous the +5 Intellect part is because it doesn't scale while ignoring the other benefits of the talent.

Are trees the only spec left with the "gain 10 energy/5 rage/2% mana/10 runic power" mechanic? Everyone else seems to be streamlined into the new "give mana to 10 people" mechanic.

As for Natural Shapeshifter: I acknowledge that shapeshifting is hardly something you need every fight, but as you said, the power of King of the Jungle comes from using Enrage every cooldown.
0.033% difference in damage per talent point is not much to begin with (4%) and if you are 2 GCD late with using Enrage you already lost this advantage (using it every 63 seconds equates only to 0.794% damage per point).
If I HAD to choose between them (I plan to take both) I don't think the choice would be that clear.

@nightcrowler: No they are not mandatory, though some of the other talents aren't either. I personally don't know which talents are really *needed* (except for Mangle and Survival of the Fittest). I simply allocate points according to decreasing usefulness and must stop two third down the list (even if I only took bear OR cat talents) and I don't know if this is Blizzard's intention.


At the moment I see the following issues:
1. Lack of a good tier 2 cat PvE talent.
We have to take Brutal Impact/Thick Hide to advance tiers, I think having to choose between Thick Hide and a nice cat talent is in line with Blizzard plans for ferals.

2. Too much bloat. Suggestions:
Make Infected Wounds depend on Mother Bear and only cost one talent point (it would be a nerf for PvP because it increases the effective cost from 2-3 talent points to 4, but at least it would prevent PvE cats from taking it).
Split Rend&Tear into two 2 point talents, one for cat and one for bear (it would more than double its value for a specific form probably make some of us actually take at least one of it )
That's all I can think of at the moment, merging talents might be an option but would probably make us too powerful.

3. Furor.
Either a 100% chance to retain 20/40/60/80/100 energy or as suggested moving Natural Shapeshifting up one tier. I would prefer the latter, but the former would at least allow us to take IMotW.

EDIT: Typo

Increases the attack power bonus of Bear form by 20/40/60% and for each friendly player in your party, reduces damage taken by 1/2/3%.

Are you sure that means it increases for each member of the party rather than just affecting each member of the party?

Where's the 12% coming from?

4x3%. Mother Bear doesn't count yourself in the party and there are 4 party members.

Do you know the reason for not giving us -12% received damage in bear permanently ?

- In battlegrounds I always have 4 people in my group.
- In dungeons / raids I always have 4 people in my group.
- When I level and quest it is no problem at all to invite 4 people.
(It is just annoying and hopefully I will not even have to quest in bear ..)

- When farming solo on a PvP server I do not have 4 people in my group
- When playing 2:2 and 3:3 arena I do not have 4 people in my group.

So.. does Blizzard think that ferals are overpowered when being ganked while soloing? (I can always get into a group if I, myself, want to gank somebody.)
Does Blizzard think that bearform is overpowered in 2:2 and 3:3 arena, but not in 5:5 arena and only if the feral chose the most important MT talent in the feral tree??

I do not understand this.

Secondly:
What is the reason behind the +60% AP? Clearly this is not the total AP. So is it this tiny number that is added to your AP when you switch to bear form? 210 at lvl 70 ?
In this case the 60% are almost meaningless. I'd suspect Blizzards tries to manipulate us with a big number (60%!) that does not really change anything, let alone scale with gear.

Finally:
- Do they need to be online?
- Do they need to be alive?
- Do they need to be in the same zone?
- Do they need to be nearby?

If you pretty much always have four people in your group where it'll matter, why get upset over how they chose to implement it? It's actually kind of nice to see them do something a little bit different from warriors, as opposed to giving us a flat -10% damage done modifier.

I agree that it is nice that we do not get a flat (boring) -10% damage. But mother bear is not that much different and I still don't understand it.
I might find it annoying, if I lose a duell against a warrior in AV just because my group wasn't full.

I don't see how this adds any fun to the game. It just adds -12% damage and will annoy me every now and then.

It's not really designed with PvP in mind as its main focus. Druids have been complaining that we wouldn't scale as well as other tanking classes for being a main tank. This is part of the solution and a pretty good one at that.

Yes, but the penalty for not beeing in a full group is most definately PvP balance related, more specifically to tone down our mitigation in 2v2 and 3v3 arena.

Which is exactly what I do not understand. It's not like ferals were OP in 2:2 or 3:3 arena. Especially bear form is not OP.
Actually most PvP players probably won't even choose this talent which is targeted at PvE maintanking.
Having it deep in the feral tree eliminates the danger that restos could take it.