I really see it as a buff to WG. Right now my WGs just get overwritten, whatever healing they do is done in the time it takes our CoH spammers to heal everyone to full. After this cooldown, my WGs will actually be able to tick.

It's obviously a nerf to WG when taken on it's own, but it's a buff in relation to CoH, it's direct "competitor", and I fully expect to be doing a larger percentage of the raid's healing after this patch.

did some testing on the PTR tonight... Few things

1. Druid armor multiplier loss from trinket/ring/cloak/weapon is made up by Survival of the Fittest, and then some. On live i'm sitting with 27k with my current tanking gear which includes 2 tanking ring with 700 armor combined and staff of plague beast. On PTR I hit 32.8k armor with the same gear and same spec.

2. Cat Swipe - A) it scales with AP. With no SR I have about 6200AP and hits for 750~ normal and 1.7k crit on heroic dummy. With SR I have around 8750AP and it hits for 1k~ normal and coud crit as much as 2.4k~. B) Ferocity lowers the energy cost of swipe by 5. C)The Range of Swipe covers somewhere around 10-12 yds from what I can tell. D)It does not give CP. E)It does not consume OOC, at least not on the current PTR, so no free swipe as cat. F) It is also not affected by Berserk... just when I thought berserk would finally be useful on trash. Bummer. G)There's only Rank 1 Swipe for Cat, purchasable from trainer.

3. Slight DPS loss? Not really sure. On a 3 minute test I can usually pull 2200+ dps on heroc dummy but only pulled 2130 on PTR. Will need more testing to confirm. Might just be RNG playing tricks or a mental thing.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.

The bolded part makes it sound like it's a bug, so maybe it should be reported while still being on PTR.

After all, berserk says "reduces the energy cost of all you Cat Form abilities by 50%".

Swipe (Cat) should benefit from OOC and Berserk. This is a bug. The more people report it, the better.

Well, many bears will have something around 32k to 35k ... can you test it with armor equip on every slot (neck, 2 rings, 2 trinkets, weapon, cloak). Because I fear for every user of armor trinkets that they will loose armor.

If you're gaining armor from the change then you're nowhere near optimal gear. With the best gear available you're going from 40.2k armor to 34.5k.

Nope, my gear is far from optimal. I've given up on armor trinkets and armor cloaks a month ago since Blizzard announced the change. And since then I've gone for mostly stam and avoidance for my tanking gear... sitting at 35.6k HP and 31% dodge. Again, far from optimal. I only posted to share my findings. And if what you're saying is true, then I'm glad Blizzard made the change. I'm now much closer to "Optimal armor" than I was before since you suffered from a 6k armor loss and I gained 5k+ armor.

It's not silly. Whereas some people have been spending DKP, or been awarded gear from Loot Council, or spending Badges, or what have you, on gear that is now significantly worse, Feorius has been using his resources wisely, anticipating the change so that now that the patch is here, he doesn't have to go and entirely re-gear himself. This is exactly why GC let us know this was happening early on. Now, if he happens to have tons of excess badges, or DKP, or something was going to get sharded and he didn't speak up and take it solely because of this change, then yeah that's a mistake. But as it is, he saves his guild a lot of grief by preparing early for a known nerf to the value of certain items by not intentionally taking them over someone else who might, now, get more use from them.

Assuming no buffs (not even MotW). I go from 39.0k armor to 35.4k (neck,rings,trinkets,weapons have +armor). It's also not the best gear available (I lack 25-man neck,back,head,legs,wrists,weapon).
This was tested on the PTR (took me 4 hours to log on to Dalaran - why oh why didn't I copy my character while in Thunder Bluff).

So the nerf isn't as big as I originally thought.

@Adoriele:
Not picking up the blue armor cloaks, necks and trinkets (buy on AH or do a quick heroic)... With the benefits they would have for your raid now, it's just silly.

Depends. If you're barely scraping enough gold together to have the consumables for your raid nights (though that's unlikely) and have no time for Heroics (also unlikely for most people here), it's very possible to be doing the best you can and still see this patch as an upgrade. Again, just pointing out that his is the more sensible course for someone with limited time and resources, especially when dealing with drops in a raid scenario that others might need more after the patch. Once you get into the surplus resources area, well, anything you don't spend to be better is a mistake. But take care of the necessary stuff first.

I don't think I am gimping myself by trading off 5k armor in exchange for 5k HP and 4-5% dodge, and yes I understand the importance of armor as a druid to mitigate damage. Your tanking ability is relative to the healers healing you. Yes gear certainly helps, but I deal with what I have. My current guild does not have enough to fill a 25 man raid at the moment. Therefore I really don't have the luxury for gear selection. I am also not the MT in my guild so my main focus is DPS first, tank second. With my current gear (mostly heroic blues/badge/10 man) and raid buffs I was able to tank Hateful strike on Patchwerk in a Naxx25 PuG just fine. I'd rather to put myself in a better position when the new patch comes out than to redo my tanking gear all over again.

Again, I posted the info to share some hard numbers on druid changes in the coming patch with my current gear, never to boast about my (crappy) gear.