Backtracking a little to my observations, it seems we have a blue confirmation that their internal tests and conclusion from feedback matches my own anecdotal stuff. It's good to also have confirmation that higher tier testing has been done.

Also, and on account of PvP here's something we may end up seeing :
On a side note, can anyone that has tanked normal and heroic instances on a DPS spec give any feedback ?

I've tried in my soloing spec (Basically has Thick Hide, but no Protector of the Pack or Natural Reaction). I'd say it has more to do with what your healer can/cannot handle. There aren't really many situations aside from the occasional kite boss and/or lots of healer movement where the additional mitigation makes or breaks a fight.

It's definitely advisable to spec for tanking for heroics at lower gear levels, of course. If you don't have decent armor necks and trinkets, definitely pick Protector of the Pack.

One issue that people should keep reporting on beta is that Savage roar isn't stacking with UR/Abom's might (it overwrites these buffs) With one being a personal buff, and the other a raid buff, there is no reason this should be the case.

On the gear subject has anyone found a non-set piece in the raid loot lists and said "Wow, I'd definately drop my tier piece for that!"? Seems pointless with the whole drive to make us want mixed leather more when none of it is itemised the way we want, its still all just DPS leather. I scanned the 25 and 10 man loot lists and found one headpiece that I thought I might use instead of the 25 T7 piece simply because the 25 head one seems badly itemised.

Also those gloves are better than T7.10 for tanking, they have lots of stamina, agility and expertise.

Those are hilariously overbudget. I've found a few such items while levelling in beta and that's the latest offender. Before this there was also a bracer that was giving 60+ agility and stam coming from a Drak'tharon Keep questline reward. It's been since nerfed to slightly below T6 bracer level.

I'm actually refraining from using those while testing content. :P

There is the polar set if you have no problem with threat, but that is crafted.
Apart from that the PvP items are better in some slots (especially those slots in which the tier item does not have expertise).

Offset pieces have the benefit of allowing you to chuck different enchants for tanking and DPS, I guess. For example, you have 5/5, a head offpiece, and a shoulder offpiece. You can enchant T7 head and offpiece shoulder with tanking enchant, and T7 shoulder and offpiece head with DPS enchants, for example.

With Naxxramas dropping 2 tokens per reset (Well, 3 if you count the 10-mans) and Death Knights being added to the token, we're not going to have the same situation as live where everyone has full offspec tier gears. Not any time soon, at least, and probably not during a significant period of pushing Ulduar progression and beyond.

Ha, I didn't realize the bonus was 3 seconds to barkskin now. I swore I saw it as 3 sec to Survival Instincts a while back ago on wowhead (although I could have misread it). I think Blizzard is trying not to put in great bonuses on our "low tiered sets" this expansion so we don't run into the same problem as in TBC. Of course, a better 4 piece bonus would be nice, it's nothing worth getting too excited over.

On a better note, it appears our idols have been implemented (removed the placeholder 120 maul damage, 24 swipe damage).

Idol of Worship - Item - World of Warcraft
Idol of the Ravenous Beast - Item - World of Warcraft

I'm reserving my opinions until smarter ferals like nightcrowler and astrylian comment on them.

The Rip +3 sec bonus, while "broken" is a big part of what sustains a SR, RIP, FB rotation.

If you calculate, you will see that 34 sec SR, 18 sec mangle, and 19 sec rips is what makes RIP and FB get SR benefit and FB get rip benefit. (at least for dps purposes it feels good). And of course, the very precise use of TF on this rotation to make it work. ^^

Last time I checked on live the lacerate debuff dropped after the last tick despite that it was displaying up to 2 seconds remaining (when you refresh it so last tick and debuff end do not align any more). Has that been fixed in the meantime (the check was quite some time ago)?

Full Naxx 25 gear with full buffs we will be around 8k unbuffed AP. With full raid buffs this will put us over 10k before Savage Roar. It will be close, but we very well could see it unbuffed before the end of LK.


The one piece I've identified as a clear DPS upgrade for chest, [Blade-Scarred Tunic] (even more so if expertise capped). I'm not sure if the double AP is a bug, but if they put more in like that our numbers can grow fast. [Tunic of Indulgence] and [Frosted Adroit Handguards] are also DPS upgrades over T7. Hood of the Exodus is the only one I've seen for tanking. Although, I'd agree those blue gloves are much better itemized.

Edit: I just noticed Leggings of the Honored as a pretty decent DPS upgrade as well. Note they are ilvl 226 though.

They probably didn't want the bonuses too large to make non-set items worth upgrading to. T4 was great, but making it good enough to last all the way to the end of BC was a bad. Using T6 will be comparable to 80 blues, but the stats on the epics will pass the bonuses by.

I wonder what GC means by "but if things start to fall apart"? Hitting the armor cap too early?

All in all I think Bear tanking is in a pretty damn good spot. There might be an incomming AC adjustment, but hopefully it will be well thought out and not too severe.

I agree Bear tanking is looking pretty fine, though I still would like 'one more button' to push, instead of still spamming the same ones we did before.

I'm starting to wonder about Cat DPS and (especially) PVP. Did anyone focus on that in the Beta and feels like sharing some info ?

Well another ability might be interesting, but after tanking a couple of 5 mans in Beta it seems like I am pressing several more buttons than before

Berserk, Bark Skin, Survival Instincts, and consumables in forms get used a lot and definitely changed the "feel" of tanking, at least to me. I really need to sit down and think out some good macros for abilities and trinkets and pair up some of the synergies as well.

Also I meant to add if you pop Berserk while Mangle is on it's cool down (not GCD the 6 second CD) you'll have to wait for that CD before it goes instant. Not sure if that is intended or a bug.

It's not at all difficult to fix. Adding a 'clear the CD on mangle when this skill is used' is a simple and clean fix for the problem. What you're talking about is a spell-school lockout, which is not as easy, but still not difficult.

I'm pretty happy with where we are tanking wise on paper, mechanics and everything seem good and on par with other tanks.

In practice though I still have quite a few tanking issues:
1) Seems like we're back on our 3 button rotation for this expansion too. As you say I was hoping for a couple more abilities, maybe a silence, a medium cd (15-30 second) aoe snap attack and another medium cd attack, possibly reactionary like overpower/revenge.
2) Forms. Been done to death but I'm fed up of not being able to customise or progress it as a feral. GC said no dice on this for WotLK release though.
3) Tanking Gear (my previous post was talking only about tanking) seems pretty bad and minor upgrades that look to have little overall effect, except for the armour pieces which are too good and must have irreplaceables (unless you find something with even more armour). Then you get the wasted stats from join jewelery too.

Warriors look to be on par with us tanking wise, possibly slightly below in terms of damage and threat. But they do address these issues. They have lots of abilities and options to use, including some fun looking stuff like shockwave. They have full gear representation on character which addresses the forms issue. They have lots of options when picking upgrades and the gear is tailored for them specifically rather than being forced onto below par dps gear to tank with.

Has anyone paid attention to hunter/dps war/enh shaman gear so far? Are they all still going to be wanting leather > mail/plate?

Below par here is intended though, not an oversight. If we're tanking fine in this "below par" gear then we're fine. Being able to consolidate gear for tanking and DPS is actually very welcome. It does take a bit of a paradigm shift to realize see the dps gear as tank gear also, but I don't believe there will be specifically tailored gear to bear tanking, if they can instead make us viable using the dps leather that is out there.

I think this is mostly in line with the 'will bears scale past T7'. GC is well aware of the perception that bears didn't scale well in T6 content and that they had problems finding spots. Personally I think this is really incorrect, as there were plenty of fights that advantaged bears throughout T6, and scaling really wasn't the reason that they weren't brought as tanks. They weren't brought as tanks because so many fights required only one tank or had oodles of magical damage. However, the perception exists that scaling issues caused bears to be not wanted, and that is something they want to watch.

In any case, I think they can fix problems post-T7, but I also think that the pattern of itemization they're using for bears is inherently flawed. It's much easier to balance a class when they have multiple stats that give incremental boosts instead of a few stats that give large boosts. As pointed out, it makes certain items must-have and makes replacing those items with something better a difficult proposition for balance. It's possible to balance this out, but with the armor cap being close to reached at the end of T7 via inspiration procs, I can't help but wonder whether at the end of T8 if druids will be armor capped again and completely lacking any upgrades simply because those upgrades would make them too good. It also means incidentally that PvP gear, with its emphasis on high stats instead of AP/crit/haste/hit/arpen will end up being better for tanking on a per-ilvl basis.

At least the forms bit got noted and GC stated it'd be in some future release as they wanted to do it properly rather than a rush job (which I am sure we can all agree is a good idea, seeing the botched up job they did on the Tauren cat model). One can only hope 'future' doesn't mean an expansion somewhere in the next decade but rather one of the more imminent content patches that adds the next Raid Instance.

I was wondering the same thing, but the shamans at least seem to be convinced somewhat. I'm not sure yet (having an Enhancement shaman myself) as I didn't keep complete track of the discussion after, say, page 10 or so. That'll probably be in part due Elemental being so much more interesting now, which warrants the Int (as well as it being turned into AP).

No clue about Warriors. I didn't pay attention and even deleted the one Warrior I had to make space for a Death Knight. Pretty much all I've seen is talk about Prot.
//edit: Checked with a warrior in my guild and he says that from what he's seen, Plate looks more appealing for DPS.

I think they tried to fix warriors issues with the Armoured to the Teeth talent which gives 2 ap per ~350 armour. But it doesn't seem that great, you're still talking single figures difference for DPS warriors between the leather and plate versions.

iLvl 213 plate dps chest has 2298 armour on it, the DPS leather one has 578 armour so the difference is 10 ap with the talent? Doesn't seem great but maybe its enough to tip the balance.