dukes

Their plan for sorting out a cat/bear split doesn't look implemented properly to me yet. The only talents which only affect one form are:

Natural Reaction (Bear)
Nurturing Instinct (Cat)
Protector of the Pack (Bear)

This seems like a shockingly small list to me, which makes me conclude that the proper split/redesign hasn't been done yet, and Natural Reaction and Protector of the Pack were put in (but not implemented) to try and stop people whining about bear survivability in comparison to other tanks while they actually sorted out other things.

Toranshalur: I think the reason for the change is to stop the use of Tiger's Fury's additional energy during berserk, effectively doubling the effect from King of the Jungle.

 

Anaram

I'm not really sure what you are basing this "not come near DPS warrior" on. The whole point of separating cat and bear talents is that it will then be justified to be able to equal other classes for said roles.

You might not get optimized gear but neither does anyone else. Customized gear? perhaps. Optimized? hardly.

 

Duilliath

There's a list on the beta forums - pretty much every class has a DPS test thread on the practise dummies in Dalaran. However, what I'm seeing there things are largely out of whack, with numbers varying between 1700 and 4500 (! - might remember that from a Death Knight AoEing somewhere though). I don't think it's too useful at this point to compare things.

 

dukes

Armour on Live in Bear without buffs: 32208
Armour on Beta in Bear without buffs: 24080

Both values with full Thick Hide.

Additional armour items on Live that were changed for me:
T6: Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, Legs
Treads of the Den Mother.

Other items I have additional armour on and retain it on:
PvP bracers and belt, both rings, staff, cloak.

It looks like the existing high end PvP gear might be the best "head start" tanking gear, although I doubt it'll last for long considering the upgrade in stats on entry-level epics at 80.

 

Skytor

There has been a fair bit of activity on making AoE tanking more "fun" / easier for warriors in the last couple of pushes ... anyone seen mention of anything similar for us?

e.g. TC hits harder and can be glyphed to 8? targets, Shockwave, the damage reflect on blocking ability etc.

We have an extra (melee range) swipe target so far ... still puts tanking Heroic Shattered Halls just under a trip to the dentist in terms of things i'd do for fun.

(In flavour abilities might be improved thorns. AP scaling?, or some kind of frontal AoE roar based ability)

It seems to be a general issue with us - not just AoE - we are going to be using the same 3 buttons as all through TBC (well actually at a certain point its down to 2, when swipe becomes > lacerate)

Now I do agree with the general sentiment on the warrior thread that more buttons is not equal to more fun ... what is equal to more fun is having more meaningful choices to make - when to use cooldowns, when to use situational abilities etc.

Also - looking at some of the loot / badge rewards on mmo-champion i notice tanking necks with no +armour ... which of course are pretty unattractive to us - I wonder if they are thinking of dumping +armour in general as a stat?

 

Vaccine

T7 - 10 vs T7 - 25

Armour: +58
Agi: +47
Stamina: +54
Expertise: +15
Crit: +25
Ap: +84
Haste: +4
ArPen: (unknown as data I had did'nt have the new armour pen rating for T7-10. 10 has 175 armour penetration, 25 has 30 armour penetration rating).

Not that big a difference when you consider it. Socket bonus are identical (in requirements and bonus given).

 

• Falk

I think the changes to feral gear were only half-baked by they had to compile the patch for deployment to the beta realms. Taking off armor and using that budget to pump a stat that's already quite high on the item results in a net loss in gear effectiveness (Compare this to how some stats on warrior gear had the icing lopped off to put quite a bit of Strength on, which is the opposite)

For example, M'uru chest still retains 800 armor this push, among a few other items. They're obviously not done with it. Suffice to say I'll be putting in feedback to get our tier gears (at least T6 and Sunwell stuff) re-itemized "properly" and hopefully see some stuff like dodge*/crit*/expertise rating put in place of the armor, instead of 5-8 extra agility.

* Never thought I'd be saying that :P

 

Tappin

Well, let's include ones that are much better for one than the other for a pve raiding build.
*Feral instinct (* bear if you don't consider sneaking important to pve raiding)
Thick hide (bear)
** Prececision (** better for bear once dodge capped, which is easier than parry capped).
SotF (bear)
Shredding attacks (cat)
King of the jungle (cat)
Rend and tear (cat)
Nautral reactive (bear)
Protector of pack (bear)

That said, I've been saying you can get all of the important tanking talents and most of the sustained dps talents with a build like:

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

The tanking talents I'm missing are:
Improved Pack - Hurts.
Feral Aggression (-atk)
Tenacity (better not to depend on this for pve IMO)
Rend and Tear - Fairly minor tps per point.
Imporved Shapeshifter - Less than 4% threat for 5 points.

The cat pve dps talents I'm missing:
Improved Pack - Hurts
Feral Aggression - Either a loss or not significantly more damage than rip or rip/roar rotations.
Nurturing Instincts - Nice, but not a dps necessary.
Rend and tear - 10% loss to shreds hurts, but 5 talents is a lot. Ferocious bite is (currently) not that great for sustained dps.
Improved shapeshifter - somewhere less than 4% damage.

Pack is the one that bothers me the most. I'm just not sure what I'd give up for it. KotJ is huge for cat dps. Wounds could go if you always have other tanks around, but I won't always have them. 2 points in tenacity could go, but AoE avoidance helps tanks a lot. Hm...

Judging from the love they just gave the tankadin tree, I'd guess they'll do 1 more pass for the feral talents. I built my tankadin and had points to spare. Granted, tankadins deserve more spare points. They really can't do as much when they're not tanking. But the difference in trees is pretty huge now.

 

Valerian

That gives
72.9% Live
vs
66.8% Beta

On beta you receive an extra -12% damage taken which brings its total mitigation up to: 70.8%

So a solid 2% less mitigation. Could you post what your dodge changed to (taking into account new talents and the agi->dodge changes?). My gut says that its not pretty looking, tanking wise at this point unless some new talents come up (at least at 70)

 

aldy

Blue posted and said they will be removing sunwell radiance with the patch due to changing all the tanking gear and scaling of stats.

 

Yaelle

Edit: I was wrong.

 

tlbj6142

What about Predatory Instincts? I wonder if 5/2 Master Shapeshifter is better than 5/5 PI? PI seems to be more of a boost to cat due to the random avoidance it provides bear.

 

Melthu

I'm not quite sure what you're saying. The Live armor gives 72.9% physical mitigation, while the Beta armor gives 66.8% mitigation, which means 33.2% damage taken. Reducing that by 12% gives 29.2% damage taken, for an equivalent of 70.8% armor.

Comparing damage taken, you get (29.2% - 27.1%) / 29.2% = 7.2% more damage taken from physical attacks.

Has it been confirmed that Mother Bear/Protector of the Pack is worth 12% mitigation rather than 15%? If it gives 15% mitigation when we move to 71.8% reduction, which comes out to 3.9% more damage taken compared to Live.

Also remember that we will benefit from Inspiration/AF now. On Live Inspiration would cap out armor and give 75% reduction. On Beta it would increase armor to 30100, worth 71.6% mitigation. Coupled with 12% reduction from PotP it would amount to 75.0% reduction, plus or minus any rounding errors.

 

kalbear

It has been confirmed that Mother Bear (PH) gives 12% mitigation.

I don't see why you couldn't just do a TF right before berserking.

 

Gingershnaps

That's a build that I've been looking at as well since it's well rounded. You lose a little dps over a pure cat spec but could still do great damage when you need to fill a dps role. It also allows for great tanking with very little loss in threat production vs. other specs.

The loss of Pack is a problem. I think the bloated feel of the tree could be reduced by freeing up 2 points from Improved Leader of the Pack with folding the functionality of it into the 1 point Leader of the Pack talent. That would allow a little more freedom with your points and let druids have more of a choice in what they do with their specs. Currently, I feel like there are so many "must have" talents for a particular role that I have little choice in what I take. I don't think that's the aim of the developers.

If simply folding ILotP into LotP seems too overpowered to the devs, they could use the mechanics of Mother Bear (now Protector of the Pack) to nerf it somewhat. It could read "While you are in a Feral Form, all party members within 45 yards have their ranged and melee critical chance increased by 5%. Additionally, each party member's critical hits will heal themselves for .8% of their total health per party member."

That would give us the 4% from ILotP when in a full party but nerf it significantly enough (.8% health when solo) that you don't see bears soloing group quests.

 

halmmar

That's what you'd do now. Earlier, you'd save up to 100 energy and then pop berserk, shred, shred, shred, TF, shred, shred for (I guess) an insane PvP damage burst.

 

loos

They could just modify the kitty coefficients on Rend & Tear, and Master Shapeshifter. If you don't take those, your kitty dps will be about the same as it is now. If you take them you will be at rogue level dps. That would definitely split the kitty/bear trees. Take R&T/MS and you can be a raid substitute for a rogue (although you probably won't be tanking much). Skip them and you'll be able to MT, but you will get swapped out for dps if needed.

 

◊ Regen

Dodge takes a hugeeeeeeee hit. I can't quite remember what it was at 70 upon transfer, but at 80 I'm at roughly 26% with 10% from talents (assuming they are working correctly).. down from over 60% unbuffed on live.

 

david0925

The agility to dodge nerf was intended to be a "fix" at druids only stacking agility and gaining both defensive and offensive stats, and gaining both at the fastest pace in relationship to other stats. I guess dodge rating should scale faster than agility just because it is a pure avoidance stat versus a stat that has multiple purposes.

However, they didn't get to the point of buffing other stats to be desirable for feral yet. While our agility scaled up our avoidance and threat at the same time, it also addressed the fact that we get extremely limited returns from defense, and no return from block and parry. Even with the way agility is scaling, we are still not beyond warrior avoidance on live in actual tanking gear focused on armor.

I think the suggestion offered before about scaling dodge gained from defense so that it matches the benefit other classes get is a very solid idea. Although even in it's current stage, I'll probably just gem dodge and hit in the yellow and red sockets in the tierd set., assuming we're not hit capped from other pieces of leather gear.

Another idea for homogenizing gear is allowing death knights and druids to convert block value into armor. There can be some modifier from infinity to 1/infinity for balance issues, but it'll help. Parry is something more iffy for druids i guess. Converting it to dodge pretty much "gives druid parry", but in terms of globalizing items, that really isn't necessarily a terrible idea.

Maniq is my hero

 

TimWischmeier

I know this post is not going to be very helpful, but does anyone feel so disappointed by the latest changes, like I do? I mean, All other classes are getting some cool new spells, which really do alter their gameplay. I am mostly following the mage preview thread, but lastly I checked def warriors alone got charge in def stance, vigilance, silencing throw, showckwave together with shieldwall and last stance already being available as cooldown abilities.

What do ferals get? Berserk, on a 3 min CD, shared with cat. Wow. Oh and they a nerfing ooc. It really feels like there are alot of changes which alter gameplay and make LK a whole new game for everyone. And ferals are getting... some numbers changed. I know this may sound a lot like whining, but this is sort of the quintessence I feel after reading this thread. And I seriuosly doubt we will get remotely close to rogues' dps. Reading a lot of "yeah but ferals are so flexible" blue lines, this reminds me strongly of the situation pre BC...

 

Valerian

Well in BC we got Lacerate, Mangle and Maim as new abilities. Seems all feral gets this time is Savage Roar and Berserk. So in that regard yes it does seem a bit less flashy than before. Then again TF change is a large one, especially along with King of the Jungle. The one "disappointment" I have is that our tanking rotation/strategy is not going to change AT ALL. Mangle, Maul, Lacerate/Swipe. No new bear moves except Berserk as an emergency button. DPSing gets a bit of a change due to Savage Roar needing to be added to our rotation (and possibly using FB instead of Rip if it gets buffed enough).

 

Cuer

If the timers stay as they currently are (3 minutes for both), Berserk and Challenging Roar will get a bit more use in general; there's no reason to not blow them on nearly every set of trash, when useful. They won't be part of the "standard rotation" as such, but at least this does mix it up a bit as far as what buttons we'll be mashing more often, while tanking.

 

◊ Regen

Easy on the whine there bud, this isn't the mage thread =P. Berserk down to 3 minutes is very welcomed, as far as sharing it with cat honestly there aren't a ton of situations where you will be "Damn I had to blow zerk with frenzied regen to avoid dying/give healers breathing room, hmm I sure wish I could shift to cat and use berzerk for mad deeps." It's a pretty core cooldown and you won't exactly be blowing the bear version unless you are tanking, same works vice-versa.

Savage Roar I think is key for cat, hopefully its balanced properly to the equiv. of Slice and Dice in terms of overall dps gain, Attack power is getting an even larger boost from HotW so we shall see.

Blizzard has stated multiple times on the boards that if cat dps isn't where its at on live it will be adjusted to appropriate values (To me this means equal gear equal skill if a rogue does ~2300 we should do ~2100, perhaps even more). I hate the negativity and lack of confidence. Yes we got screwed hard in the DPS department in TBC but were exceptional tanks (something that was much sought after in Vanilla). Now we lust for good dps, and Im pretty confident that it will come. Skill wise we may not even be done yet, who knows still a few months to go.

I'm curious about this "ooc nerf" maybe I missed some notes but I was under the impression ppm was remaining fairly the same and scaling upwards with haste which is a "buff".

They are still tweaking beta hardcore and aren't really close to being done with balancing classes or threat or mitigation etc etc. Stay tuned, I doubt you will be disapointed in WotLK because it certainly looks amazing and has me more excited than TBC.

 

tlbj6142

Don't forget we picked up CC (roots) both on-demand and random (everyone gets Nature's Grasp now) and revive. Those aren't exactly 25-man raid level tanking or DPS abilities, but they are great for 5-mans. And maybe 10-mans.

Frankly, I'm not sure how I'm going to remember to use all of the new stuff we now have.

Edit: As mentioned above the 3m CD on CR and Berserk gives us some nice new abilities every trash pull. I figure you could alternate between CR on one pull and Berserk (Mangle*3) on the next. And if you have to wait for mana, etc. You'd have both available.

 

TimWischmeier

I am really sorry for that. I tried to give that post some constructiveness by comparing upcoming changes in gameplay between different classes/specs, but I guess you cannote read blue posts well with tears in your eyes .

To steer back onto more serious posting:

Did anyone notice this feral level 60 skill?

Enraged Defense - Spell - World of Warcraft

Enraged Defencse (5 min CD): You gain 0.1 rage whenever a party member within 40 yards takes damage. Lasts 30 sec.

I found it while browsing through the skill list on mmo-champion: Wrath of the Lich King - Druid - Feral Combat Skills


I wonder if our rage generation will be more critical compared to now. I can hardly remember any situation where I had no sufficient rage to generate enough aggro. So do you see any use for this additional rage generated through that cooldown and Natural Reaction (1 rage per dodge)?