foxglove

Latest build:
* Glyph of Swipe has been removed.
* Glyph of Maul has been added - Your Maul ability now hits 1 additional target.

I am sad to see the swipe glyph go. I find the Maul glyph troublesome. While it would certainly be useful for multi-mob situations, would we be able to Maul at all with CC out?

Now that Feral Faerie Fire does threat, it'd be worthwhile to test that Sting and Curse of Recklessness do not overwrite it.

 

Neddie

I'm glad they removed the multi-mob-mangle/maul from Berserk. That ability was too bloated and the various things on it didn't have good synergy. Putting adrenaline rush and last stand on the same one made sense since in any given fight you're only likely to need 1 of them. The "sweeping strikes" part of it, on the other hand, didn't seem like a good idea. Of course, it's now a very weak 51-point talent, so I hope they buff it in a more sensible way.

Only if there's a tank that's the jack of all trades, it's still the warrior. They don't have the anti-magic shell of the death knight, but they do have a silence pull, spell interrupt and spell reflect. They don't have the godly AoE abilities of the paladin, but they have thunderclap, cone-of-stun and damage shield. They don't have quite the same health or armor of a druid, but they have the most armor/health of the plate wearers.

Our niche used to be dealing with big amounts of physical damage. With huge armor and huge health, we could easily off-tank Patchwerk, Gruul, Supremus, etc. For a while we also used to have a threat lead over other tanks. I'd like to see us get one of those two back.

If they're trying to figure out what to give us now that they've taken so much away from berserk... i can has sheeld wall?

 

Selmarix

They made barkskin usable in forms this patch, so I doubt they will add anything similar to shield wall. If the 20% for 12s every minute are enough remains to be seen.

I assume that they will add something related to AoE tanking of bigger pulls, as that is a big weakness of bears currently.

 

Neddie

Speaking of niches, this blue post worries me:
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Feral Concerns: Release date announced.

Being the best tank early on is what got us in trouble in TBC. All the other tanks (mostly warriors really) complained so we got nerfed hard. I don't want to seem like an amazing tank early on in WotLK while they're still adjusting things. I want to be a decent main tank with a solid niche in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th raid instances.

 

coredumperror

With the change to Mangle/Trauma and Shred/Maul, I'm fairly concerned for our DPS cycles. You can't be certain that the arms warrior in your raid will be keeping Trauma up all the time, so you'd have to be constantly watching for Trauma to fall off so you can Mangle again in order to not lose 30% on your next Shred.

The glyph of Maul giving an extra target also has me concerned unless they prevent it from chaining to a CCed target. I think that's a totally viable thing for them to do, though, since they have already set the the precedent when they made Avenger's Shield never bounce to CCed targets.

 

Yaelle

Trauma is automatically applied after a critical strike, with a 15 second duration.
It's not like he has to press that "Trauma-Button" which has a bad rage to damage conversion (like Mangle(Cat) compared to Shred).
Therefore, I am expecting a higher up time compared to a Feral tank Mangle bot. (Roughly had like 90% up time from the Feral tank, while I was DPSing Brutallus yesterday).

 

Janraea

An arms warrior with any semblance of the correct gear will be past 30% crit in blues. He gets more than 8 hits per 15 seconds at the worst, so the probability that he doesn't get any crits in that period is... ~5%. In current raid gear, it's closer to 0.4% (~50% crit). And that's ignoring a few relevant talents - Improved Overpower + Taste for Blood virtually guarantees a crit every 5-7 seconds.

You can watch the debuff and get mangle on the rare event if you like, but you'll be better off just making sure your arms warrior is competent and has the talent.

 

Pharmacon

I'd be surprised if the FFF threat comes only if you get the debuff onto the mob. I would assume a lacerate mechanic where the threat is upfront and you get the threat even if the target blocks or is bleed immune. You'll still be getting the damage from FFF even if Sting or CoR are up so getting the threat too only makes sense.

 

Valerian

Does FFF only cause damage in bear form? Or is that qualifier only added to the threat component? The wording in the patch notes is not terribly clear on this.

5% AP in cat form is not insignificant. With my current ~5k AP thats 250 free damage every 6 seconds ~ 41 dps.

 

aldy

It almost sounds like some people think FFF will become part of the bear TPS cycle which is pretty doubtful. Blizzard wouldn't make it worth more than a lacerate or swipe GCD. Its been changed so that bears have a decent ranged aggro move for pulling your mob in a group pack and also a ranged CC break; two things that ferals have been asking for FFF to do for months. So honestly it shouldn't matter about sting/CoR since it would just be used as an initial move when the mob has no debuffs anyways...

 

Mijae

I'm guessing it would be implemented the same way Mangle and Trauma overwrite each other. For debuffs that have the same affect it doesn't matter if their buff overwrites ours as long as we can overwrite theirs.

This is an interesting point. We already use FFF in cat form while waiting for energy. This could be a great boost. My only concern then would be how it interacts with a moonkin's improved FF. Right now it just won't let us use it.

Feral DruidStats spreadsheet
v3.2.0.0.xls - updated 8/4/2009

 

◊ Regen

Just a few comments

This damage component the way I see it is just a much needed minimal damage to make sure your mob is tagged that's been missing from the feral druid forever. The additional threat in bear is nice but it is mostly (again) designed for pulling and nothing more (besides keeping the debuff up, assuming it doesn't have a stronger sister skill/talent or there's no moonkin in the raid).

In regards to the "threat niche": I am fairly confident this will never become a problem with the way they intend to design tanks (currently pre-last night's build the death knight was the only one hurting a little bit).

Just read the additional mana return is self-only, strikes me as a little wierd, I would like to see this altered to a mana/rage/energy/runic power restore to justify including this in pretty much all deep feral specs. Just trying to wrap my head around this one especially considering Powershifting has gone poof, any insight would be appreciated (PvP maybe?).

Ending on a good note I was able to easily maintain 2k+ dps in a 80 heroic with more or less sunwell gear (up'd hit to ~220 and caped expertise) using most likely incorrect cycles (Have no idea what the break point is of using savage roar... assuming its even a relevant AP number), all I have to say is Savage Roar --> Tiger's fury + Berzerking is beyond godlike. I'm not sure words could explain the destruction Berzerking will allow in PvP if you can stick to a target.

 

Vaccine

Why wouldn't they?

 

ironwolfw

From the description on: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid

"Deals [5% of AP + 1] damage and additional threat when used in Bear Form or Dire Bear form" So it's unlikely that you'll get the damage in cat.

 

loos

I think he's wondering if there are 2 comments in that phrase, like

• Deals [5% of AP + 1] damage (in any form)
• Additional threat when used in Bear form or Dire Bear form

Someone in beta should be able to tell us though.

 

Druidiful

It does not do any damage or extra threat in any form other than bear. Also at 71 with mainly t4/za/badge gear it does between 120-140 damage.

edit: Are there any working threat meters to use on beta? Or is there a way to get the default UI to show your actual threat in numbers?

 

Maeltne

Depends if it is:

(Deals damage) and (additional threat when used in Bear form or Dire Bear form) or

(Deals damage and additional threat) (when used in Bear form or Dire Bear form)

Sometimes I hate English...

For mindless grinding I hope it is the former... Bah slow refresh = already answered as the latter

 

tlbj6142

I wonder how much "and additional threat" it adds on top of the 120-140 from damage?

 

Cynrh

Re: the mana return in iLotP, it is to address PVP mana issues: See:

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Pvp not tanking for once G-crawler

 

Janraea

True enough. But combined with the wotlk Furor, it opens up some nice support capability for the kitties, especially if oom-healing is the typical situation in raids on the edge of a guild's content (which seems likely).

 

taleden

Ranged pull with higher threat -- wonderful.

Ranged CC break -- okay, useful, but honestly one of the things I loved about FFF was precisely that it *didn't* break CC. If I was tanking something that wasn't the first target (so I had plenty of threat leeway), I loved being able to cycle through the sheeps and FFF them for the free threat without breaking them. Then if one popped early, instead of gibbing the mage it'd run to me from the FFF threat, giving the mage more time to get it sheeped again.

So I'm a little ambivalent on this change. It'd be nice to have both options -- i.e. a ranged non-CC-breaking threat move, and a ranged CC-breaking move.

 

Janraea

Also, a lot of the CC doesn't break on low damage anymore (does any of it?), so calling it a CC-breaker is kind of misleading.

 

kalbear

You can do this by shifting out of bear and FFing the mob. I personally really like the option to do one or the other, even if muscle memory will occasionally break a sheep or two after this.

 

coredumperror

I noticed that a hunter's freeze trap in the Nexus run I did didn't break on my first first swipe, and that was quite surprising. Does this apply to all other CC as well?

 

Peekaboo

No just traps. Its so you can trap a dotted target when pugging.