Sadirin

* Feral Attack Power: All weapons now have the potential to grant feral attack power based on their dps (as compared to the best superior-quality weapons available at level 60). Players will see their existing feral weapons grant roughly the same attack power as they did before (+/- 2 or so), but many new weapons will be options for the feral druid. Some feral weapons have had strength converted to attack power to be more appealing to other classes able to equip them. All druids will see the amount of feral attack power granted by an item in the item tooltip, if it grants any, but other players will not see that information.
* Genesis: Now works with Tranquility and Hurricane.
* King of the Jungle - The Bear effect is now physical, and thus cannot be dispelled.
* Nature's Grace - Now also effects Revive.
* Primal Tenacity: Now reduces the cost of Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear Form by 17/33/50% in addition to its previous effects.
* Protector of the Pack: No longer changes value based on party size.
* Savage Roar: The buff now persists outside of Cat Form but only provides its benefits while in Cat Form.
* Starfall will now be cancelled by any shapeshifting.
* Survival of the Fittest: This talent now grants 22/44/66% bonus armor in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form in addition to all of its previous effects.
* Swipe: Swipe (Cat) has now been added at level 71, dealing 260% weapon damage, costs 50 energy with no cooldown. All talents affecting the Bear Form version affect the Cat Form one as well.
* Wild Growth now has a 6 second cooldown.

Bonus Armor: The mechanics for items with bonus armor on them has changed (any cloth, leather, mail, or plate items with extra armor, or any other items with any armor). Bonus armor beyond the base armor of an item will no longer be multiplied by any talents or by the bonuses of Bear Form, Dire Bear Form, or Frost Presence.

=> mmo-champion.com

For me as a feral druid is of course the weapon change very interesting. Does anyone has an idea which 2h-maces /staffes from the paladin/dk/warrior/hunter corner will be an option for us?

 

Erdluf

Wowhead search for Druid-usable weapons with a DPS > 200 gives:

[Deadly Gladiator's Bonegrinder]
[Inevitable Defeat]
[The Jawbone]

Is the formula FAP = (DPS-55)*14, or should that "55" be something else?

 

Inaiwae

"Some feral weapons have had strength converted to attack power to be more appealing to other classes able to equip them."

This seems like a nerf, according to http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t36999-feral_druid_numbers/ 1 str equals roughly 2.56 atp. So if they change [Journey's End] this way,

114 str * 2.56 = cca 292 ATP for cat in raid
114 str = 228 ATP in itemization formula

So we'd lose cca 64 ATP.

Well, i was looking for this change for a long time (and i thought i'd never see it coming live). So bring it on anyway .

 

nau

I am still completely baffled by the WG nerf being as hard as CoH, but I really don't think any of us will notice. I use it around 10-15% of my healing on any of the decent bosses. Is anyone going to feel the change really or are we all shrugging our shoulders?

I guess at the highest of spellpowers (~3k+) a non-cooldown WG could become insanely powerful, ticking for almost 1k the first time around. I am sitting at 830 on the first tick full raid buffed and it still just doesn't seem that strong.

 

Vazu

The change will make Loatheb and Malygos very interesting. Loatheb in particular is going to require a little adjustment. I think with Malygos the strategy is just going to be throwing a Rejuv or LB on targets before everyone gets thrown into the air but with Loatheb the burden of AE healing will really shift to resto Shaman somewhat. Priests and Druids can help, but I don't think Shaman will be able to just spam Lightning Bolt anymore and let the Priests/Druids deal with healing the raid. Not that it matters. It's not like Loatheb is hard. But the first couple of attempts of each should be interesting.

 

Windchilla

I really hope this is just rank 1 and it somehow scales to not completely suck. Lets see, two Swipe (Cats) on a full energy bar, or swap to Bear form for unlimited 2 target Mangle + unlimited all target Swipe...

It also builds no combo points, so the cost of 50 energy is absolutely absurd.

 

Moof

One thing you've missed:

Druid: Savage Fury - Mangle (Bear) damage was being increased by a higher percentage than intended. This has been fixed, and in result Mangle (Bear) should see roughly a 16% damage reduction. Also fixed a bug with Savage Fury where the Rake bleed effect was not being increased.


I had no idea about this. Bad news for bears of course, but that means our rakes so far have been underpowered? I have already been giggling at the huge rake ticks I've been having so a straight 20% increase is going to be fantastic!

Also, I had been suspecting the change to feral staves for a while. If they want them to be appealing to hunters, they'd have to change the str to AP otherwise they'd be only still only be useful to druids (and warriors to a lesser extent). I imagine it will be only the staves without armor designed for cat dps that will be receiving the change. I still have my fingers crossed for Polearms for druids though.

 

Stigmata

I thought I read in one of the Druid change posts that they were removing the armor from all weapons, could have dreamt it?

 

Moof

The armour will remain, but will no longer be affected by the bear multiplier.

 

Rhaegal

They're just removing the armor multiplier for bear form working on armor that's on feral staves. The actual armor itself isn't going away, it's just that, for example, [Enraged Feral Staff] will only get you 700 armor in bear form, instead of several times that amount.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

• sadris

Correct. Also note that in bear form, you can double-maul every ~2.3 seconds. People should bring up this point when the PTR forums go up. If it was Blizzard's intent to get us out of bear form while dpsing on trash, they failed miserably.

'[The main argument against gay-marriage] always revolves around ... "the gay agenda"... Apparently all these gays only want to get married so they can adopt children, turn the children gay (probably using their mystic gay voodoo, passed gayly down from one gay generation to the next), and perpetuate their gayness.'
-- rantingkitten

 

• Polynices

[I'm a moron -- getting my swipes and primal furies mixed up]

 

bejean

Primal fury doesn't give energy on crits, it gives extra combo points for crits that would generate points. Since swipe won't generate CPs, we won't get anything when it crits (except possibly extra OOC procs? I forget how this works).

 

ithecho84

I think the cooldown change to WG is utterly disgusting. It makes no sense to lump it together with CoH-level of efficiency. I think a 3 second cooldown for WG while leaving CoH at 6 seconds is more in line. Now we'll be forced to spend more mana hot'ing everyone prior to an aoe.

 

Cuer

More from Ghostcrawler on converting Strength to AP, on feral weapons:

 

effekt125

I'm incredibly disappointed by cat swipe, at this point it is most likely still inferior to bear

 

• Diameter

I was calculating this out, and if you are attacking 5 or more enemies at once, you should see an increase in your damage using cat swipe (note: you need to have savage roar up). Of course, you need to spec into Feral Instinct to do the most damage (but both cat and bear swipes would be affected by this talent)

Also note that Ferocity should affect this skill and reduce the energy cost down to 45. Not that it's great, but it's something. It would also free up a major glyph for you, as Glyph of Maul would no longer be needed (at the moment, there really isn't a 3rd useful glyph for cats though).

I would also find it difficult to find many packs which have 5 or more enemies up for an extended period of time (skitterer packs die so quickly).

 

Duilliath

I remain disappointed with the armor change. Still no effort to make the oodles of *offensive* stats on our gear of any use with regards to the *survival* stats bears like. Not to mention gearing is 'dumbed' down even further. Make us care about more stats. Not less. Maybe with some big content patch when they've had more time to work out the remaining kinks, but I'm a bit dubious as I don't see them overhaul the system twice in a short time.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

Krag

A couple more bullets were added on mmo-champion:

I'm guessing the Survival Instincts is 30% of current health (current maximum health is a little confusing). Maybe it was too good with the higher bear health pools. I'm just hoping they remember it if we do get the health modifier adjusted at some point.

 

Mijae

Don't forget about HotW and Predatory Strikes (20% of any attack power on your equipped weapon).

114 str * 1.06 * 1.1 * 2 * 1.1 = 292 AP
228 AP * 1.1 * 1.2 = 301 AP

Unless they change Predatory Strikes, this will actually be a buff to us. For weapons only, attack power is better than strength (and we don't even need BoK for it).

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

 

Brute

The way I interpret the Survival Instincts change is that currently it doesnt take into account any health trinkets or other temporary health effects whereas it sounds like now it should?

Also, with regards to the Mangle (Bear) correction/nerf... is mangles threat primarily a static threat value or is it damage based? Actually kind of bothered by this one because currently WITH the bug I feel our single target threat and dmg is where it should be in relation to the other tanks in a similar encounter. 16% dmg reduction on an ability being used every 4.5 seconds (to speak nothing of bear berserk) isnt trivial....

 

• Diameter

The Bear Mangle nerf will still have us doing more damage than other tanks. In Patchwerk with unlimited rage, I'm seeing about 100 dps decrease from this. The only time I do less damage than another tank is when our prot pally offtanks 3 or more mobs.

 

Deathwing

Why do people keep saying this? This change does exactly what you're complaining about. Now, instead of only caring about armor on your accessories and weapons, it's just a relevant stat on approximately equal footing as the other mitigation/survival stats. Download the most recent rawr and play around with the 3.0.4 armor option. You'll see that in a lot of slots, items with no bonus armor are competitive with the old bonus armor items.

 

Micka

Current Maximum health includes buffs, whereas current health would be the health that you have at the time of popping the skill.
Sounds like a solid buff.

 

Deliverance

One more for the list, Sadirin - probably added to mmo-champion after your original post:
I sure hope it is an error in the patch notes - I would regret the loss of such a useful AOE tanking tool. We can do without it, of course, but it is so great fun currently.

On Cat(Swipe) - it will be interesting to see just how it is implemented, especially to see if it builds a combo point or not. As an energy based spec, they cannot allow Cat(Swipe) to do so much damage that one would use it to the exclusion of combo point building and the use of finishers when facing a small number of mobs to AOE (say 1-4 mobs) without seriously hurting the base design.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...veranceWOW.png