I wouldn't mind all that much really. Trinkets have always been powerful for any class. DST, DFT from BWL, Moroes have all been used for a really long time, too, so it's not just a bear issue. You can obviously argue if that is a bad mechanic or not but personally I don't mind it.
The major issue would be the placing of these oh-so-powerful trinkets. If they again place one of the best tanking trinkets or best DPS trinkets on entry-level raiding (Naxx 10), people wanting to raid 25 mans above all need to go back into 10-level content and farm those items. It's one thing if the best items are placed at the very hardest content; it makes more sense - as you progress you get better gear. It shouldn't be - as you progress you need to go back to the instances you could clear with your eyes closed to get the better gear.
I wouldn't mind keeping the same trinket for all of eternity if it is the best (as it is now with BoT), but I wouldn't want to go into a 10-man to get it when my guild will solely be focusing on 25-mans.
Although, where exactly do they drop? MMO just says "dropping in raids".
Originally Posted by Mijae
Too bad they had to pick the worst dps talent to fill the spot. Savage fury is a bear talent. Why didn't they push Shredding Attacks there instead? Why are the low tier talents in resto better than the low tier talents in feral?
Can't really see why it would matter as long as we don't need to pick up bad talents to go further up in the tree - which it doesn't really look like. Savage Fury is still okay for cats. I haven't looked at the numbers though: would you be not taking it in an "ultimate" dps build?
Can't really see why it would matter as long as we don't need to pick up bad talents to go further up in the tree - which it doesn't really look like. Savage Fury is still okay for cats. I haven't looked at the numbers though: would you be not taking it in an "ultimate" dps build?
Depending on how good FB turns out to be, Savage Fury may still end up getting skipped for DPS at least at first. The cat portion of the tree didn't really get anything fancy added to it, but its reasonable in size (including the 11 points in resto). Bear is still quite bloated though, even with the rather odd change to protector of the pack. The AP bonus there is SO tiny that it seems ridiculous to spend more than 1 point in that talent now.
Bear is still quite bloated though, even with the rather odd change to protector of the pack. The AP bonus there is SO tiny that it seems ridiculous to spend more than 1 point in that talent now.
The 3% damage reduction for all ranks has been confirmed as a tooltip bug. It does in fact still provide 1/2/3% DR per party member. Here's hoping that they change the AP bonus to something less crappy, though.
I'm really liking the changes mentioned in the last page. FFF as base has been a long time coming, and splitting Berserk up so it's an entirely offensive talent, while simultaneously giving us a real Last Stand is a very positive change. I'm starting to feel a lot better about sticking to Feral in Wrath.
Any encounter with a short and brutal enrage/berserk which the tank has to live through (or at least live as long as possible) will heavily favor any other tank class over us.
Well, possibly not; we're pulling ahead again in terms of armour and stamina, meaning less chance to be killed by an unlucky avoidance streak. Considering inspiration/LoH and berserk will increase our hp and armour then by proportionally more, it's very possible barkskin, berserk and frenzied regen (glyphed) will be equal to warriors last stand + SW.
I've been a bit critical of what they were doing with ferals a few times in this thread, but I might(MIGHT!!) have to change my mind. I've accepted not getting fur wall, specifically because of brez and innervate. Even while MTing, those are probably equal. And brez/innervate are infinitely more useful while not tanking.
There remains two things I'd like resolved:
-AoE threat. Swipe is trite and borderline useless. It should be treated like the Paladin's HoR, a cherry on the top of a sweet ability. I really like Liar's idea of Bearricane. This one doesn't seem like a tough one to solve, even if they do a hack job on swipe.
-Tanking rotation. Just something new to do, because it's looking like mangle, maul, swipe/lacerate all over again. Bearricane might change this up enough, though.
I've been a bit critical of what they were doing with ferals a few times in this thread, but I might(MIGHT!!) have to change my mind. I've accepted not getting fur wall, specifically because of brez and innervate. Even while MTing, those are probably equal. And brez/innervate are infinitely more useful while not tanking.
There remains two things I'd like resolved:
-AoE threat. Swipe is trite and borderline useless. It should be treated like the Paladin's HoR, a cherry on the top of a sweet ability. I really like Liar's idea of Bearricane. This one doesn't seem like a tough one to solve, even if they do a hack job on swipe.
-Tanking rotation. Just something new to do, because it's looking like mangle, maul, swipe/lacerate all over again. Bearricane might change this up enough, though.
Boy I just cant get behind the idea of 'bearicane'. There needs to at least be *some* minimum level of game related/lore related plausibility imo otherwise why not just let me shoot aoe lasers out my arse. Honestly, the new Berzerk with its return to 3 target mangle plus removing the cooldown is a workable solution. No its not brainless, yes it requires you to actually press buttons and rotate your view (arent bears lamenting about not enough things to do/buttons to press??), yes the raid might need to give you a couple of GCDs to tag a half a dozen or so mobs but mangle is obviously HIGH threat, and you can hit a LOT of targets in 15-18 seconds....
Honestly, the new Berzerk with its return to 3 target mangle plus removing the cooldown is a workable solution. No its not brainless, yes it requires you to actually press buttons and rotate your view (arent bears lamenting about not enough things to do/buttons to press??),
I agree. As long as the cooldown is 1m (the typical "once per pull" cooldown length) we could use it as such. Though on a long boss fight we'd end up as kings of threat as 15s of mangle once per minute would be OP in a single target scenario. So, I'm not sure how Blizzard would balance things in a raid boss scenario.
For AoE trash, we'd pull one of the mobs with roots, shift to bear, enrage (lowers armor giving you more rage) and berserk. Tab (or mouseover) mash mangle for 15s. That would generate a huge amount of threat on a pack of mobs. More than enough to overcome healing. Once the berserk effect wears off, you could swipe once in a while, but I doubt you'd need to, which means you can tank the rest of the fight like a single target fight. We might even want to pop our dodge trinkets (if we have one) during enrage so get more rage from Natural Reaction.
What we don't know right now is the CD for the new berserk. Has it changed? Or is it still 3m? At 3m we could still use it every other pull.
Edit: Another nice side effect of the new Berserk is that combined with 3/3 IW you ought to be able to fully slow down those mobs you just mangled for 15s, further reducing their ability to run away from you.
As to Improved Mangle, of course we still want it, we want EVERY talent in our tree . However I'm thinking it will now be *much* easier to skip if there are other talents we would like as well. 10-12 consecutive mangles in 15-18 seconds on a single target is a pretty massive threat spike. Are you going to be hurting for the next 2m:45s with a 6s mangle vs a 4.5s mangle?
6s mangle gets you 10 mangles per minute. 4.5s mangle is 13.3 or 3.3 extra mangles a minute. Times 2.75 minutes is 9 mangles in the span of a berzerk cooldown. So in terms of threat, Popping zerk is more threat than improved mangle over the same timespan cooldown to cooldown (unless i've botched something).
Now of course Berzerk PLUS improved mangle is obviously more threat yet but would it be neccessary? I'm inclined to think no (unless bears are having threat problems @ 80 in naxx right now which I havent heard is the case)...
Boy I just cant get behind the idea of 'bearicane'. There needs to at least be *some* minimum level of game related/lore related plausibility imo otherwise why not just let me shoot aoe lasers out my arse. Honestly, the new Berzerk with its return to 3 target mangle plus removing the cooldown is a workable solution. No its not brainless, yes it requires you to actually press buttons and rotate your view (arent bears lamenting about not enough things to do/buttons to press??), yes the raid might need to give you a couple of GCDs to tag a half a dozen or so mobs but mangle is obviously HIGH threat, and you can hit a LOT of targets in 15-18 seconds....
Wrong type of "more buttons to press". I hear Paladins are looking for more buttons to press too, why don't you suggest to them that they only use HotR to hold AE agro. With a 6 second cooldown, it will be even more challenging. I mean fun. And warriors can only use cleave. Death Knights? Pestilence.
Tab-targeting is not fun, it never will be. Furthermore, it severely hampers our ability to keep agro on the main target. It just stinks of work-around because Blizzard couldn't design a true ability designed for AE. I'm frankly surprised at how many of you are suggesting using Berserk to hold AE agro.
As for lore...bears are already casting sparkly little...things on their target. You're going to have problems with them summoning a storm, which they can do in caster form?
As to Improved Mangle, of course we still want it, we want EVERY talent in our tree . However I'm thinking it will now be *much* easier to skip if there are other talents we would like as well. 10-12 consecutive mangles in 15-18 seconds on a single target is a pretty massive threat spike. Are you going to be hurting for the next 2m:45s with a 6s mangle vs a 4.5s mangle?
In addition to that, it remains to be seen how important 33% more mangles are relative to 33% less swipes/lacerates in terms of overall threat. It will be a boost, but from what I've seen so far the boost is not huge.
All armor sets from Naxxramas 10 and 25 players have been updated.
The expertise on Heroes helm and Valorous legs have both been changed to armor penetration rating. I would have much preferred something other than ArP. Only the value of the stats varies between Heroes and Valorous now. It would have been much more beneficial to let us mix and match different stats from the sets to increase our expertise if desired for bear.
The expertise on Heroes helm and Valorous legs have both been changed to armor penetration rating. I would have much preferred something other than ArP. Only the value of the stats varies between Heroes and Valorous now. It would have been much more beneficial to let us mix and match different stats from the sets to increase our expertise if desired for bear.
That's the whole point of Blizz doing that though. They don't want people wanting to use gear from 10 man raids in the 25 man equivalents. If your guild is raiding in 25 mans, they want you to be looking at the 25 man loot for upgrades not looking to the 10 mans. Even if it would be nice to have some expertise on there for threat by having gear that is equally desirable (due to different stats on same slot gear) that would almost force players to raid both. Blizz is of the mindset of guilds being either "25 man raids" or "10 man raids" guilds.
I'm frankly surprised at how many of you are suggesting using Berserk to hold AE agro.
Because it is significantly better than anything we have had to-date. I really just want to be able to hold 4-5 mobs. Not dozens. Berserk-Mangle-Tab-Mangle-Tab-Mangle-Tab-Mangle-Tab (I'd just put it in a macro) would probably be all it will take to accomplish this. So, if it takes extra skill to do so, I'm fine with that. It gives me something to differentiate myself from other bears.
There are two things you want to try to do with multi-mob tanking. One is to generate enough threat on all the mobs quick enough that none of them run past you and start attacking your healer. The second is to generate enough threat on all of them that AoEers can feel free to unload on them.
There are also two types of multi-mob tanking. The first is dealing with a small pack (3-6) of elites. In most cases holding threat against the healers is good enough here, you can just focus on generating threat on one mob and have the DPS focus on that one mob. The second type of multi-mob tanking is dealing with big packs (6-20) of non-elites: the elementals after Naj'entus, the groups in supremus' area, etc. For these you want to be able to hold threat against AoEers.
I can see how a multi-target mangle will help make sure that a small group (3-6) of elites doesn't run past us and eat our healers. I don't see how it will help us much with the big packs. Even if we're really lucky and hit a different 2 each time, hitting 8 non-elites at least once will take 4 gcds. Needing to have healers wait 6s before starting to heal you sounds like having a druid try to tank packs of non-elites will result in a lot of dead healers.
I have yet to see this scenario as being a big problem (illhoof??). But, then, I've only raided thru T4.
Same here - we've done perfectly fine in MH without a Paladin tank. The only time we really wanted (and had a Holy Paladin respec) was on Morogrim. Even that we've done with Ferals / Warriors. I wouldn't mind being able to hold 10+ mobs like they're glued to me, but in all honesty - holding 4-5 with ease works perfectly fine for me. So far, it looks like these changes will do that for us.
I'm not convinced we'll need AE threat. I've been fine with swipe without an AE, and now swipe is considerably better. More classes have AE abilities, but maybe they'll have to wait 2 seconds before they unload like that. We'll also have AE taunt available a lot more.
That said, I haven't played beta. Some say you absolutely need it. IF they're right, I think it makes a lot more sense to add AE threat to an ability bears already have than to have bears bringing lightning from above. An easy fix could be to add a sizeable threat bonus to demo roar. Warriors wouldn't like it because they sometimes demo shout while dps'ing. Bears pretty much only roar when we're tanking / offtanking.
(Side note: I have a friend who loves to whirlwind on my heroic pulls. I don't get off 1 swipe, let alone 2-3 before he does it. He won't listen to reason. I never taunt off him. He dies often and I make fun of him. The taunt stays for the healer who probably has aggro from healing him).
* Dash cooldown reduced from 5 to 3 minutes.
* Faerie Fire (Feral) isn't a talent anymore and is now a baseline skill
Feral
* Berserk doesn't heal you anymore in bear form but causes your Mangle (Bear) ability to hit up to 3 targets and have no cooldown instead.
* Rend and Tear now increases damage done by Maul and Shred on bleeding targets by 4/8/12/16/20%. (up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
* Mangle doesn't increase the damage of Maul and Shred anymore
* Protector of the Pack now increases your attack power in Bear and Dire Bear form by 2/4/6%. (Old - increased the bonus attack power by 20/40/60%)
* Predatory Instincts changed from 5 to 3 points, now While in Cat Form, Bear Form, or Dire Bear Form, increases your damage from melee critical strikes by 3/7/10% (Old - 2/4/6/8/10%) and reduces the damage taken from area of effect attacks by 5/10/15%. (Old - 3/6/9/12/15%)
* Savage Fury has been moved from Tier 5 to Tier 2
* Brutal Impact moved from Tier 2 to Tier 5
* *New Talent* Survival Instincts (Tier 3) - When activated, this ability temporarily grants you 30% of your maximum health for 20 sec while in Bear Form, Cat Form, or Dire Bear Form. After the effect expires, the health is lost. Instant, 5 min cooldown
Sadris does have a Lacerate thread going, but unfortunately we haven't seen any attention in it.
Rend and Tear does seem nice now, it makes a much stronger case for itself for both threat and DPS now. The Protector of the Pack change from just Bear Form's bonus AP to total Bear Form AP is great as well. At least it will scale with gear instead of being just a trivial amount of static AP.
There is a trinket in wowhead database (cannot link for some reason) like this:
Defender's Code
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
850 Armor
Requires Level 80
Use: Increases parry dodge by 455 for 20 sec. (2 Min Cooldown)
Looks like a really awesome upgrade from BoT. Also it has the parry dodge thing mentioned earlier.
Originally Posted by Pzychotix
Wow, the armor on that thing is ridiculous.
Ridiculously sexy.
Probably going to be using both BoT and this new trinket, unless there's another hot trinket out there.
Originally Posted by Vaccine
Does this concern anyone else? They get into the Badge of Tenacity situation once more where they either completely shackle us to one trinket for the entire expansion (least its epic this time!)
Seems to me they're having clear itemization upgrade paths for armor rings, armor cloaks, armor necks and armor trinkets this time around. The only problem I can foresee is that armor is 'so good' a stat that you'd probably stack both trinket slots with armor. If there was a way to limit trinket slots to 1 armor-type and 'free up' the other for a wider variety of choices, it'd both preserve some decision making as well as toning down bear armor vs plate classes (which, post-body slot nerfs, still comes out pretty much significantly higher). I don't see how it would be technically possible, though.
Edit: (May be horribly mistaken from missing some prior discussion) Seems to me the Defender's Code clicky is a typo more than anything. Probably it was a cut and paste from some other trinket by some intern before a hypothetical senior dude of some flavor caught the fact that druids can't parry, resulting in the hasty/sloppy change?
Edit edit: Yeah, read back a few pages. Disregard edit.
Sadris does have a Lacerate thread going, but unfortunately we haven't seen any attention in it.
Rend and Tear does seem nice now, it makes a much stronger case for itself for both threat and DPS now. The Protector of the Pack change from just Bear Form's bonus AP to total Bear Form AP is great as well. At least it will scale with gear instead of being just a trivial amount of static AP.
Blizzard said they didn't want to buff Swipe because would be "all we use." I told them that we don't use Lacerate because Swipe is more TPS.
Does Deep Wounds count as a bleed for the purposes of Rend and Tear providing a bonus?
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* Mangle doesn't increase the damage of Maul and Shred anymore
- I think this is incorrect? It looks like they just moved the effect to mangle and shred so it works with mangle OR trauma.
Rend and Tear - The new one seems good. 20% more to maul is probably worth skipping improved mangle? Maul's looking sick. Unless I'm missing something it would be pretty easy to get maul to do:
Base Maul x 1.2 (Savage Fury) x 1.2 (RnT) x 1.3 (Mangle) x 1.1 (Naturalist) = 2.06 x Base Maul damage?
The struggle for me is currently between rend and tear, instincts, iLotP and improved mangle.
RnT - pretty nice bump in cat dps, a large amount of threat, especially for infinite mana fights.
Improved mangle - a nice bump in threat, but RnT is probably more threat and definitely more cat dps
Instincts - 15% more AE damage tanking might be an issue.
ILotP - nice to bring to the raid, but the 60-70% overheal still bothers me.
Really having a tough time with the last two. More dps and I take less AE damage, or free heals for the raid?
09/19/08, 8:55 AM
. However I'm thinking it will now be *much* easier to skip if there are other talents we would like as well. 10-12 consecutive mangles in 15-18 seconds on a single target is a pretty massive threat spike. Are you going to be hurting for the next 2m:45s with a 6s mangle vs a 4.5s mangle?
