I've been looking over the talent trees a bit more, and frankly I got miffed somewhat.

We lose mitigation due to armour, but get a replacement. Fine, but it's 3 points out of 10 new ones down the drain.
Similarly, we get a dodge/agi nerf, but it takes 3 more of the new talent points to get 6% dodge back. This is 6 talent points just to get back to even. When talking about Feral 'Bloat' it's not even because the tree itself is so incredibly bloated (it is, somewhat, but that's not the biggest issue), but simply because we only get 4 'real' talent points from going to level 80.

I've been trying to do some thinking on how to clear up points -
1) Resto tree

a. Merge Natural Shapeshifter into Heart of the Wild instead of the Int bonus. As it stands, with no Int on our gear it's pretty pointless. Restos and Moonkins likely don't need the Shifting bonus as much - either because they shift less or simply because they have more mana.
b. Master Shapeshifter drops down to second tier.
(c. Less necessary - +10% dmg bonus on attacks folded base into Cat + Bear, possibly replaced with a useful bit for Restos / Owls)

Amusingly enough - most of the Feral bloat can be avoided by dropping some mandatory Resto talents.

2) Feral

a. Split Feral Aggression and Ferocity (as suggested earlier in this thread). Cat Mangle, Rake, Claw + FB Boost on one. Bear Mangle, Maul, Swipe + Demo roar on other.
All of a sudden you have a clear Cat/Bear split and either form gains 5 talent points they can use to fill out other stuff.
b. Nurturing Instincts - extra healing gained works for Bear too.
Slightly lower mitigation solved, scaling problem addressed in a different way, unique feel for the class. Does make for two more 'lost' talent points, but with enough trimming it should be available.
c. Impr. LotP either folded into LotP itself, or made a 1-pointer.
d. Infected Wounds, dropped down to 2 points.
e. R&T either needs to be dropped in points (which I doubt will happen - every talent on that tier is a 5pointer, including other classes), or made far more interesting.

I'm not pleased about where Natural Reaction is sitting either. It's hard to fold it into something else (without making that something else too good), but that one tier will currently cost 11 points with unavoidable Bear talents.

No. Atm blizzard is making (for many classes, not only for droods) mandatory some talents in trees different than your "main". This is to prevent a single build both for pve AND pvp. I know it sucks, but if i have to pay more for respecs BUT i'm a good tank/dps/pvper when i'm in the right spec, i'm happy.

I'll give you 1 example but there are many others: all the pvp pallys (both holy and retri) should spend 18 points in the prot tree to get improved HoJ. To get that AND the pvp talents in their respective tree they have to give up on pve talents.

Thus i think the "mandatory" talents in the resto tree will remain.


About the feral tree, what blizz should do is stop looking at our learned abilities ("Hey they have an ability called Ferocius Bite and another called Demo Roar: let's create a talent that buff both!") and look at the finalization of talents. There should be some mandatory talents for all the 3 specs (tank/dps/pvp), and then talents that are VERY STRONG for a spec and almost useless for the others.

Also the talents should be better placed up-down so (for example) if we wanna spec dps, we don't have to waste 6 points between tiers 2-3 in talents totally useless for that spec.



Anyway, devs prefer to fix first other classes and then they'll fix us role-changers.

This was mentioned tangentially before, but we're in an unusual situation that the trees we're required to delve into offer little or no synergy for us. The comparable synergy (i.e. between Prot and Arms or Prot and Fury) is contained in a somewhat haphazard form in the feral tree at the moment. It seems the Feral tree is currently halfway between having talents that benefit both cat and bear that were introduced at the beginning of TBC and the WotLK trend towards separating them again. I'm not sure if they want us to be taking Cat talents to supplement a Bear build (in effect, 4 trees) or talents from a tree with limited or artificial synergy, as we do now. It makes sense that a Balance Druid would want some Resto talents, but it seems like the early Resto talents are awkward and/or of limited use to them because they're constructed to force Feral specs to take non-Feral talents. It seems very kludgy at the moment, and I'm curious how they're going to address it.

Edit: Never mind; I found the options in the spreadsheet for the Rip and Mangle glyphs. (I am trying to decide which to get.)

Edit 2: For the record, the spreadsheet is showing the Rip glyph to be significantly more valuable than the Mangle one, even when I forego FB entirely. I am not sure as to whether the model is trying to ensure 100% Rip uptime in that situation or not.

Unrelated question: A member of my guild is under the impression that the DST proc does not stack with haste buffs (e.g. Windfury) in 3.0. This seems wrong to me, but I don't have one so I can't test it. Can anyone confirm whether the haste proc stacks with buffs on the PTR or in Beta?

It seems they didn't touch the AC on current PVP sets...wouldn't this make them better than even most of the tank gear in Sunwell(if only by a bit), and definitely better than anything T6 or below? Especially if the AC didn't get changed out for Agi/Sta. Most of my AC got changed for Str....what's the point of that?

I leave open to view all of the calculations.

The Mangle glyph is implemented as altering the percent of Mangles-to-Shreds. I first calculate the Mangle duration and how much energy is generated during that time. I then guesstimate 1 finisher per 12 seconds and subtract the average finisher energy used in that time. I'm sure I can make this more accurate, but I need to account for circular dependencies. The percent of energy used on 1 mangle over that time is used to calculate an average damage (and energy) per special attack (non-finishers). So, increasing the duration of Mangle just reduces it's percentage of specials. Note - I did find an error in the spreadsheet related to this. On the "Cat" sheet, cell N2 should have it's end modifier changed from "*18/12" to "*M2/12". This affects the number of finishers per Mangle buff.

I never specifically aim for 100% Rip uptime. Based on the given desired Rip CP, the average number of required special attacks is estimated. This number is turned into required energy and then time. The uptime of Rip is noted (based on glyph). If a second finisher is specified, it does the same. If there is no 3rd finisher, it checks the total cycle time against the Rip uptime and extends the last finisher time to account for it. I do aim for 100% SR uptime based on required time for other finishers.

There is no direct interaction between Mangle uptime and finishers. It is basically assuming Mangle will be applied as needed to give 100% debuff uptime.

Hopefully this answers the question. If there are many more questions I can open another thread here or on another forum (or answer PMs).

Can you please tell me if these changes to the feral talents would be OP? Or even wrong for the feral tree as a whole?

Natural Reaction
Increases you dodge etc etc... (same as now; in addiction:) Whenever you are hit by 5 or more attacks in less than a second you gain Spiked Fur wich reflects 10/20/30% of the melee dmg income. Lasts 12 seconds. (ofc it works only in Bear/Dire Bear)

If 30% is too much or too poor i dunno; also it could reflect a % of dmg after armor mitigation or before it (scaling better with our gear). This change would enhance ONLY our aoe tanking, while leaving our boss tanking the same.



Rend and Tear
Increases dmg done by your Maul and Shread attacks on bleeding targets by 2/4/6/8/10% and gives 20/40/60/80/100% chance to your FB to refresh Rip duration and to your Swipe to refresh your Lacerate duration.

Dps and tank talent. Defo not for pvp.
Every class with a buff/debuff can refresh it with other spells.


Edit: "italic"/punctuation fixes.

NR: 5 hits in under a second is fairly rare, even if you choose to tank a full group of mobs with no CC in any instance. I would see this being so rare its almost useless, generally if you are "aoe" tanking mobs aren't going to be hitting you that hard individually. I do not see the need to implement something like this.

R&T: Why? Imo the potentially insanely high crit rate on FB is excellent for pvp burst viability. You are trying to turn this into solely a PvE talent. Besides that you would essentially be turning PvE dps into a "Ok Savage Roar, Max trinket + consumable ownage, super-rip, and try to keep it up the entire fight while alternating savage roar and FB instead of SR and Rip"

All this is, is a dps boost. I definitely agree adding swipe refreshing lacerate would be amazingly awesome but not at the cost of 50% FB crit. I think the cat re-apply version would be slightly too annoying/obnoxious such that it would force you to super rip and keep it up (Potentially making On Use: AP trinkets OP).

NR: i'd liked to add some passive tool (since i duuno how to make it active and not OP) for aoe tanking large groups of mobs. With "large" i'm thinking at murlocs at Tidewalker or anyway, any 10+ grp of mobs. The Thorns-on% dmg should be usable only while raiding and should be keeped up for an unlimited amount of time (as paladin's proc on block). Maybe we can get a passive instant counter-atk when dodging, but there's no way we can tank 10+ mobs with only swipe.

R&T: i'd like to NOT see R&T in a PvP build. Also in PvP i was used to FB only in BGs, while in arenas i almost always maimed. (i'm using the past cos in S4 i became a resto-noob :p). I really dislike all-around talents, and i'd prefer to see more talents focused on 1 or 2 specs, not always all 3. Otherwise how can we specialize (and thus be viable).


PS. While typing I checked the official site and I found devs have only some weeks to fix all our issues: WotLK on stores in less than 2 months...

Edit: Priests/Locks have ways to refresh SW:P/Corruption duration: will "on-use trinkets with +spell-p" be OP for em? (i thought that dots dmg was calculated on the AP/spell power you have at the moment of the tick, not when you cast it)

I'm apprehensive of GC's response here:

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Feral Concerns: Release date announced.

Specifically:

That can be interpreted as "you got all the utility you're going to get". At a first glance, I would say ferals come up short, utility-wise, compared to other classes, but maybe it's not that bad. For this comparison, I'm just using warriors because it's the class I know best(I've tanked as both extensively) and I consider warrior currently to have the best tank utility, maybe paladins second.
Obviously I tried lining up similar abilities so that they were easily compared. What that list is missing is a sort of rating. The utility of Shield Slam(dispell) isn't anywhere near the utility of Shield Wall. So, you have to look at those extras a feral doesn't have and grade them. I specifically left those grades off because I think they can be highly subjective. For example, some people might consider Heroic Throw superior to FFF(when it gets more threat), but I think the 1min CD on Heroic Throw really kills the ability.

Anyway, out of the utility a feral is missing, I think Shield Wall is probably the only important one. I'd personally like something to deal with casters, if only to make corralling them easier, but I don't see it as that important since paladins don't get one either.

Any utility I've left off either list?

EDIT: well, the formatting on that didn't come out well at all, let me see if I can fix it.

EDIT2: Wanted to added another link:

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - SnarfSnarf speaks! Help Save Feral Tanking!

It's a somewhat crude post, but it does a good job of reiterating what I'm worried about above(and states it better in a few cases). The more troublesome part is GC's response:

With the other GC post above, I see that very heavily hinting at that ferals aren't getting anymore utility.

Amusing how you chose to focus on the Talent changes, while ignoring the main point made.
We have to spend 6 talent points just to get back to where we started. No wonder the tree will feel bloated when out of all those new goodies you can only get four new talent points in.

Not to mention the ability to use things like healthstones, ironshield potions and benefit from ancestral fortitude/inspiration.
The huge array of cooldowns we can use to tank bosses during enrage phases / survive burst damage is greatly improved (especially since incoming damage will be more predictable).

The reason they can't just split bear and cat all the way is cause why would ever bring a pure bear druid then? Hell how could you even level a tanking druid?

A bear druid in kitty mode still has to do at least prot warrior level DPS.

Are you being facetious? Specifically about cooldowns? I don't think anyone's used the phrase huge array to refer to bears except to possibly the amount of the screen we take up.

We're getting a couple of cooldowns, which is an improvement over the current state of "Oh lord, Badge of Tenacity don't fail me now!". Looking at the giant lists of new toys that the other tanks are getting (on top of the cooldowns they already had), it's hard to get excited about being able to use Barkskin in forms as a giant step forward. Look at the post a couple back comparing the tools available to a bear vs. a warrior. The comparison to Paladins is a little different, since they didn't get a whole lot of love going into TBC, and their tanking now is even less interactive than ours. But even so, the direction the developers seem to be taking them is giving them new abilites, more options, more choices. We're getting old chestnuts with the dust blown off them.

As far as talent bloat, again, the problem is that the two roles they're intending us to perform (at par) are both contained entirely within the same tree. If they want us to make choices between tank and dps within the same tree, without us being "masters-of-none", they seem to have a long way to go. The problem is not specifically Mother Bear (which lost a lot of character in the name change, I think), but that we have some talents that are specific to Bear or Cat and some talents that benefit both in radically different ways, as well as being required to delve into a completely unrelated tree to be viable for either. The analogy to OoC would be back when Tactical Mastery was an 11 point talent in Arms. Every Prot warrior went 11 points into arms. This was eventually remedied, which allowed for a lot more choice in which non-Prot talents warriors took, depending on their particular role (MT, OT). It's a complicated problem, especially if they try to mix in pvp viability. Then we're looking at all three warrior trees jammed into one. Awkward, to say the least. Compound this with the concern that low level Feral talents might provide unwanted levels of survivability to Resto (specifically pvp) Druids, and you've got a giant mess.

The issue of itemization is still a large concern, and one that we'd hoped would be addressed through talents. The problems of the talent tree highlights an additional concern here, above and beyond the issue that we're using a fraction of the tank stats of the other classes. The same tier pieces for tanking Ferals need to work for dps Ferals. So even if we could benefit from the "universal" tank stats like Defense, they can't go on set pieces anyhow, since they'd be doubly useless to cat Druids. This is slightly more concerning to tank oriented Ferals, since dps ferals can, by and large, take advantage of Rogue itemization (though not their set pieces and the accompanying bonuses), whereas offset tank pieces, discarding plate, is generally very poorly itemized for Feral tanking. I'm still not sure what feral Tanks are going to be using in non-set, non-jewelry slots. Is there going to be special tanking leather? Is it going to be pvp gear? No one wants us to have special, feral tank only itemization. Not the players of Druids, not the players of other classes, not Blizzard. But it seems that is the corner we're being painted into.

To me, this is the most concerning thing in GC's response. They haven't really changed the feral design as far as tanking goes. The implication that it's just a numbers issue indicates that they don't really see itemization as an issue at all.

Because of LotP (unless you have a Fury Warrior), Rebirth and Innervate. The latter two are still class unique. You could arguably add MotW as well if you are the sole Druid in a 10 man. Let's just hope they introduce more tanking fights where one tank isn't tanking all the time like Illidan, Council or even Twins so you get to use the stuff even while MTing and you will bring great utility.

In the same vein, I think that is the reason Blizz might argue with if they do not add more utility. Druids gained 3 more abilities that you can use while tanking (Frenzied Regen, Berserk and Barkskin) and all the pots and weapon enchants on top while Warriors didn't gain any defensive cooldowns apart from their own version of Frenzied Regen. All the stuff listed in the post above is not new. Warriors always had a stun and always had a spell interrupt, so in terms of "gains" for boss tanking, there isn't much difference.
EDIT: Can also add Demo Roar to the list of new abilties you will get to press while tanking. It only took them 2 expansions to equalize the power of Demo Shout and Roar. :S

I realize a lot of the stuff in my post isn't new, but with Blizzard explicitly stating they want tanking parity for WoTLK instead of implying tanking niches for TBC, the comparison is much more valid.

Yes, they did say that. But they also said they do not want tanking parity on a skill by skill basis but overall. If Druids do not get a usable Spell Interrupt then this is more an indication of it not being mandatory than anything. It might save you some damage over time, up to 5000 every 12 seconds in live so it's definitely not bad but it isn't a game breaker either. Really, the biggest advantage of having Shield Bash I see currently is Lady Malande. If you have a Warrior tank there, it frees up a Rogue to go DPS the debuffed Paladin. But that's really the most extreme case I can think of. Keep in mind that Paladins also have no spell interrupt (not even an awkward to use one like FC) so they cannot design boss encounters around tanks spell interrupting on their own. Power Shift/Wrathbringer are nice on trash I assume but if you imagine mobs like the Houndmasters in BT then being able to shift beats Wrathbringer because it has no CD. Roots/Hibernate is comparable to Heroic Throw in a way because it makes trash/5 man tanking easier/more convenient. And I would rate them both equally powerful depending on situation with Roots having the higher potential of being better.

Again, unless they make Innervate and Rebirth unusable for every Druid with 51 points or more in the Feral tree, it will be your "stigma". They will balance around that accordingly. I really can't stress how powerful a Rebirth can be. If a player dies and you rez him inbetween tanking a mob, then you pretty much own that player's HPS/TPS/DPS over the fight. This is big, make no mistake.

I don't know about you, but when I was playing my Druid I was extremely envious of Mongoose. That was, what, 8-9% dodge per proc? How can you not want that? I know they are changing the agi-->dodge conversions but I assume there will be another good enchant at level 80 to take it's place. That said, you could use Pots and Healthstones, sure. But at the cost of losing your rage. Barkskin was only situationally useful because it was on the GCD so you'd either risk getting gibbed or you'd only use it on predictable tank swaps (think Brut). But the rage cost was still pretty hefty to say the least.

About your other point: I think Warriors got enough toys for now. There is a fine line between having too few toys and too many. The toys Druids got actively help them MT bosses. The toys Warriors got are pretty much for convenience tanking in heroics. Silencing Throw or breaking a Frost Nova is not going to be that significant when MTing a boss, trust me. Is it going to make trash tanking more fun? Hell yeah. But on the other hand, I already liked tanking heroics on my Druid where I could use stuff like Bash a Melee mob, FC to a caster, move out of melee range then cast cyclone/Rebirth/IV or whatever. Now you can add Roots on top of that and it opens up some nice combos. Or you could sprint away on an incoming wipe and laugh at those that cannot keep up with your sprint (and aquatic form - I am looking at you, Slave Pens ). Being able to stealth is also great fun and noone is taking these things from you. I will also admit I enjoy Spell Reflection. Alot. Maybe more than I should but hey, that's me.

That said, I really don't think it's all doom and gloom for Druid tanks. Trust me, with creativity, you can get alot of fun out of the class.
Bonus for old skoolers that did the trash after Twin Emps in AQ40: Remember the Qiraji Mindslayers? Guess which of our tanks would survive pretty much all pulls because they could shift out of their Mindflay and heal themselves during a cast? It was not the Warrior.
Or which tank was it that could go stealth and res your raid in front of Broodlord so you could save your whole raid time to clear it again? Again, not the Warrior tank. Druids have so much fun potential and isn't that ultimately what we all play for? They didn't take away any of these, they added some.

Liar, I'm not disagreeing with your assessment, that's particularly why I left off "grading" from my comparison. Druids can powershift to break snares, warriors can charge. The pluses and minuses flesh out from there extensively, and I would say that powershifting is overall better, it does have its own downsides(like possibility of being in caster form from GCD clipping).

Anyway, my point was to show ferals are lacking in least one very important category, maybe two. Without shield wall, I don't see them being main tanks for raids. I still consider some sort of active spell mitigation important too(doesn't have to be an interrupt). I know paladins don't have it either, but I think they've been asking for one as well.

Overall, not ability specific, they don't seem to stack up to the other classes.

They also said that fear was not going to play a large part in TBC.

It's my guess that they will find it very easy to forget that not all tanks have parry, not all tanks have block, not all tanks have spell interrupt or spell reflect or intervene, &c. It seems reasonable to remind Blizzard of these facts from time to time, especially as they are designing the latest and greatest raid instances to come down the pipe, and refining the itemization for tank gear that will drop from these instances.

Homogenization seems like the best way to do it, really. I'd say:

* defense and parry should convert to a usable stat for bears
* shield block rating and value should convert to usable stats for bears and death knights
* bear armor increase should increase but apply only to armor pieces and weapons (providing equivalence of plate/shield)
* spell reflect needs to be addressed either as an other-castable buff from a different class or given to all tank classes

This removes a lot of itemization headaches and encounter headaches. They already removed crushing blows as a tank differentiation mechanic, so these are things I think would not be unreasonable for them to do.

Spell interrupt I'm willing to concede is available to enough classes - even to druids in catform.

This is a significant "if". There are definitely places where it's possible to throw these abilities around, but this has largely been a product of our role as Secondary tanks, something they've wanted to get away from. The analogy would be giving warriors an ability they can use if they take off all their armor and give up all their mitigation for 3 seconds. Not a whole lot of MTing situations where that happens.

Mongoose with static ranged item stats compared to static agility enchant with proc based item stats was pretty much a wash, even if they had the numbers wrong. Using pots was like stance dancing, there's a cost to do it. They talked about giving us Barkskin in forms early in TBC, but it didn't make it off the PTR.

I cut the front portion of your response, because I think it leads to the same place. I'm not saying that Druids don't have any toys, that we don't have interesting abilities. I think a distinction needs to be drawn between Main tanking and Secondary tanking. Druids were and are, throughout TBC, the best secondary tanks. We were point on trash, providing high threat for the initial dps and the ability to swap to dps afterwards. Our cooldowns and abilities are largely geared toward this type of tanking, but not towards Main tanking. All of the tools you mention are tools we can use on trash, or in small groups like Heroics. This is why Ghostcrawler's recent posts are confusing to me:

and

On the one hand he's saying we were designed to only be secondary tanks, on the other he's saying that despite that design, despite having no abilities specifically geared toward MTing, we managed to become the premier tanks except in situations where some gimmick prevented it. While I think his second point is actually specious, the change to design seems to be largely an alteration in mechanics to keep our tanking stats where they are without adding any abilities. I haven't really seen any design changes that place an emphasis on us as MTs, or substantially alter our ability to be MTs. By way of comparison, Paladins get a range of abilities to produce better threat, abilities that allow them to take advantage of a huge range of itemization, while retaining their gimmick abilities. The Warrior changes, as you point out, seem largely in the direction of making small groups more interesting, along the lines of the tool set a Druid or Paladin has for those situations, e.g. mobility, range, and AoE threat.

I like tanking heroics on my Warrior where I could Conc blow a melee mob, Intercept a caster, and then cast...ummm. So the parallel breaks down at the same point you highlighted above - we are burdened with caster abilities. Where it becomes more of a problem is the homogenization of gear has the side effect of further separating the caster and melee sides of our hybridity (is that a word?). Stealth is a big one, I loved doing stealth Setthek Halls for Assassination shoulders at the beginning of TBC (no, itemization problems are not new). I always got eaten by fishes in SP, though.

I love my Druid, and I don't intend to stop playing it. I was Resto for the Mindslayers, and the burden for the Mind Flays should have been squarely on the healers. Like the Houndmasters: no one should waste a GCD 'cause it should be dispelled. I am worried about the contradictory ideas the devs seem to have about our roles in TBC. I am concerned about our itemization in the face of homogenized gear, especially given our dual-role as Ferals situated within the larger triumvirate of Balance/Feral Resto.

I think the most fun I've had so far this expansion was tanking side by side with my warrior buddy who I'd healed through vanilla. Sunwell especially, where we're able to literally tank side by side on Brutallus and Twins, each having our own advantages and disadvantages, but there being no question for our guild which two tanks would be the ones to do it. I am heartened that Blizzard wants all tanks to be equally viable, because that's really what made TBC shine for me. I am concerned that their efforts to do this are directed at making other tanks like Druids were in TBC.

Sure, they did and they pretty much lied. Then again, if you are just going to be really cynic about it, nothing they or I can say would change your mind, would it?

I don't know about that. Just think about SWP. I have only seen the bosses up to M'uru but you can Innervate and Rebirth on every single fight where you tank.
Kalec: 3 tank fight
Brut: 2 tank fight
Felmyst: Has a flight phase where you are free to do whatever
Twins: 2 tank fight
M'uru: You can res someone inbetween waves

Even if you think about BT, there really are more fights where you can use that than not:
Naj: Not possible
Supremus: In P2
Akama: During waves
Bloodboil: 2 tank fight
RoS: Only possible as OT
Teron: Not possible
Mother: Only possible as OT
Council: Possible if you don't tank the Paladin
Illidan: Possible inbetween phases

And for the Mind Flay example: Yes, ideally the healers fix that. Just like how a Warrior ideally never has to use Shield Wall or Last Stand except for timed enrages. But we both know that is far from the actual raiding experience.

I try not to be cynical, but I also think it's something that's going to be very easy for them to slip up on. They'll think 'Oh, hey, we should spotlight class ability X' - but without giving several classes that ability, they'll accidentally lock raids into having that class.

So, shield wall is an example of those abilities. Three of four tanking classes have it - unless they have it in a poster on the wall, some designer is going to go 'Hey, wouldn't it be cool if the boss enraged in the last 5% and the tank had to pop shield wall, or divine protection, or icebound fortitude and the raid had to kill the boss in time?'

We're getting barkskin added to feral form, so that's clearly an upcoming change aimed at homogenization of tanks. What we don't know is what else, if anything, is going to be coming down the pipeline. That makes us nervous.