Glyph of Savage Roar *new* -- Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 6% bonus damage done.
Glyph of Berserk *new* -- Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 sec.
Savage roar glyph is pretty much a no-brainer and i think i will stick with Rip as well. Wonder if those 5 seconds to berserk (in best case thats an extra 110 energy if you do 5 shreds every 3 minutes) outweigh Glyph of Mangle.
Savage roar glyph is pretty much a no-brainer and i think i will stick with Rip as well. Wonder if those 5 seconds to berserk (in best case thats an extra 110 energy if you do 5 shreds every 3 minutes) outweigh Glyph of Mangle.
Theoretically yes, maybe, but practically it makes your cycles quite a bit harder and you also shred less on regular cycles due to needing to mangle more often.
Theoretically yes, maybe, but practically it makes your cycles quite a bit harder and you also shred less on regular cycles due to needing to mangle more often.
Could be a decent tankglyph however.
Seems to be more of a situational thing.
If you have an Arms Warrior (yes they still exist) putting up Trauma, then you can skip the Mangle Glyph and use Berserk Glyph.
If you don't have another feral providing mangle or Arms providing Trauma, then Mangle glyph still sound a little better since it drastically decreases the number of Mangle you need to do.
Tanks aren't concerned about threat on single targets and berserk isn't up enough to be used on multiple targets reliably (and if you have more than 3, you'd use swipe anyway). It may be a tank glyph because there are literally no other useful options, but it's certainly not a strong one.
Theoretically yes, maybe, but practically it makes your cycles quite a bit harder and you also shred less on regular cycles due to needing to mangle more often.
I agree with this. On the raids I attend there is seldom an arms warrior or bear, and without the Glyph of Mangle the rotation is quite a bit more difficult. I'll go with Rip, Mangle and Savage Roar for kitty, and Maul, Berserk and.....Mangle? for bear.
I agree with this. On the raids I attend there is seldom an arms warrior or bear, and without the Glyph of Mangle the rotation is quite a bit more difficult. I'll go with Rip, Mangle and Savage Roar for kitty, and Maul, Berserk and.....Mangle? for bear.
Since your going to be using mangle every single time it is up as a bear, the mangle glyph is a waste for the most part. Your much better off getting Frenzied Regeneration as a glyph. That increases both the healing from frenzied regeneration and any heals your going to get while its up. Its a very powerful oh !@#$ button and really out weighs any benefit you would get from longer mangle times.
Since your going to be using mangle every single time it is up as a bear, the mangle glyph is a waste for the most part. Your much better off getting Frenzied Regeneration as a glyph. That increases both the healing from frenzied regeneration and any heals your going to get while its up. Its a very powerful oh !@#$ button and really out weighs any benefit you would get from longer mangle times.
Oh, I can't believe I forgot Frenzied Regeneration. I've been a kitty too long. You are absolutely right, the tanking glyphs should be Maul, Berserk and FR. That is a hugely beneficial panic button.
With the reduced armor, gearing up would be very very different.
We will need:
1. stam
2. strength(AP for shield scaling)
3. agil(crit for proccing shield and dodge)
4. haste(getting more hits = more crits)
5. expertise(hitting faster = more parried/dodge)
In other words, they don't want us to just stam stack all the way, making every kind of melee stats useful for tanking, which ultimately means it is harder to gear urself up with your desired stats.
We are being forced to go for stats we usually dont.
Another way to explain this is blizzard want to slow us down in gearing up. Since we now shares the same loot as rogues/hunter/warrior/pally, we will be wanting those "dps" pieces even more with this change.
Let's hope the bears wont be hated so much by the physical dps.
Given that Savage Defense supposedly only affects physical damage, does anyone have additional thoughts about the intent behind the changes? Both the bubble buff and the armor nerf are physical damage only. You might have thought their goal was to encourage STR gearing in bear form, but the simultaneous change to SR suggests they're pushing us (at least cats) away from STR.
I'm kind of looking forward to playing with this new mechanic, I'm just a little stumped as to the thought process behind it.
Given that Savage Defense supposedly only affects physical damage, does anyone have additional thoughts about the intent behind the changes? Both the bubble buff and the armor nerf are physical damage only. You might have thought their goal was to encourage STR gearing in bear form, but the simultaneous change to SR suggests they're pushing us (at least cats) away from STR.
I'm kind of looking forward to playing with this new mechanic, I'm just a little stumped as to the thought process behind it.
Before LK threat changes, there is actually one use for STR, to increase threat via dmg output, but ever since LK, it has been useless since threat isn't a problem at all, so STR has become totally useless.
They are now implementing this STR scaling shield with a proc chance for us to ultilize the strength we have in our gears, just like DK's parry scaling.
And this SD shield is pretty much a shield block in disguise. A rather inconsistent and unreliable shield.
It's interesting to note that with the glyph and imp. disciplines, warrior shield wall is effectively 40% mitigation on a 1 minute timer. Compared to Barkskin and IBF (20%), but have varying levels of utility.
Not sure how I feel about Savage Defense -- introducing a somewhat random mitigation mechanism and trading that off for armor as well as stamina most likely (due to gearing choices) doesn't seem that appealing. We'll have to see.
It's interesting to note that with the glyph and imp. disciplines, warrior shield wall is effectively 40% mitigation on a 1 minute timer. Compared to Barkskin and IBF (20%), but have varying levels of utility.
Not sure how I feel about Savage Defense -- introducing a somewhat random mitigation mechanism and trading that off for armor as well as stamina most likely (due to gearing choices) doesn't seem that appealing. We'll have to see.
I really don't think there is a strong push towards strength for bear tanks. Really, they are homogenizing the gear between cats and bears even further with all these changes. As of live, I have quite a different set of gear for tanking and dps. With these changes, I'm looking at gearing almost the same, and even gemming the same for both (Agility). There will still be some item swaps, but according to the latest version of Rawr, even Journey's End beats Origin of Nightmare's as a tanking weapon at top gear levels. Granted, that beta doesn't include all the changes in the patch, but the intention still seems to be moving that direction.
Glyph of Shield Wall *new* -- Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.
However, let's keep this discussion focused on Druid specific changes -- the warrior change is interesting simply as a comparison of where we stand among the tanking classes.
but according to the latest version of Rawr, even Journey's End beats Origin of Nightmare's as a tanking weapon at top gear levels. Granted, that beta doesn't include all the changes in the patch, but the intention still seems to be moving that direction.
You've got some very odd raid buffs if Journey's end beats Origin of Nightmares in Rawr. It has less avoidance and less armor; are you maximizing for threat?
The total score for Journey's End is always the highest for me thanks to it's ridiculous threat component. If you ignore threat and only go by mitigation + survivability I'm sure Origin of Nightmares will come out on top.
WowInsider also pointed out some undocumented changes here
The Druid relevant ones are:
Druid
Balance
Skills
* Faerie Fire now decreases armor by 5%. (Previously decreased armor by a set amount)
Talents
* Owlkin Frenzy (Tier 8 ) now procs off physical melee and ranged attacks. (Previously was triggered by all attacks)
Feral
Skills
* Faerie Fire now decreases armor by 5%. (Previously decreased armor by a set amount)
* Savage Roar changed to increase physical damage done by 30%. (Previously increased attack power by 40%)
* Maim now stuns the target instead of incapacitate.
* *New Spell* Savage Defense, 1 rank, level 40 - Each time you deal a melee critical strike, you gain Savage Defense, reducing the damage taken from the next physical attack that strikes you by 25% of your attack power.
Talents
* Survival of the Fittest (Tier 6) now increases your armor contribution from cloth and leather items in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 11/22/33%. (Previously 22/44/66%)
* Predatory Strikes (Tier 4) now increases now includes Moonkin Form in its effect.
* *New Talent* Primal Gore, Tier 10, 1 point talent - Grants the periodic damage from your Rake, Lacerate and Rip abilities the ability to critically hit.
Restoration
Skills
* Abolish Poison now ticks every 3 secs for 12 secs. (Previously ticked every 2 secs for 8 secs)
Talents
* Replenish (Tier 9) renamed Revitalize.
* Improved Regrowth (Tier 6) renamed Nature's Bounty. Increases the critical effect chance of your Regrowth and Nourish spells by 5/10/15/20/25%. (Previously increased just regrowth crit by 10/20/30/40/50%)
* Intensity (Tier 3) now allows 17/33/50% of mana regeneration to continue while casting. (Previously 10/20/30%)
* Improved Mark of the Wild (Tier 1) now also increases all of your total attributes by 1/2%.
* *New Talent* Improved Barkskin, Tier 10, 2 point talent - Increases the damage reduction granted by your Barkskin spell by 5/10%, and increases resistance to Dispel mechanics by 30/60% while under the effect of Barkskin.
Emphasis mine. The change made to SotF makes me think that we will have to compete even more with rogues for +crit and +AP gear for tanking in order to compensate the lost armor.
Nothing new that we didn't know about. And currently tanking jewelry will still win out; crit isn't going to significantly increase the uptime on attacks relative to agility (or really, to the number of mobs), stamina is still going to be valued, and strength will still give as much AP as most DPS items will.
If people are willing, I'd like to figure out some baseline things to test for feral druids in the PTR. We already know that savage roar does increase bleed damage. Here are some more.
Is the glyph for savage roar 6% more overall damage, or 6% more of a bonus to the 30% (in other words, 1.06* .3).
Does predatory instincts improve crit damage from bleeds? Does the relentless meta?
Does savage defense proc from crits on bleeds?
Does savage defense have a 'window' of opportunity (like reflective shield) or does it just absorb one attack?
Where does SD's shield go in the order of absorption? Is it before power word shield? Is it before essence of gossamer? Is is before fel blossom?
Is there any cooldown for SD?
Does Savage Roar's bonus apply when you start the bleed, or when the SR buff is active?
Is SD's shield removed by DoTs?
Those are the ones I'm interested in; more would likely be a useful thing.
Anyone noticed Mangle (Cat) not awarding any combo points on PTR? If I'm not specced into Primal Fury, I get no cp from it at all, whereas whilst specced into Primal Fury I get no cp on a non-crit but 1 cp on a crit (from Primal Fury). I played around with dual specs a bit before I went to test so I don't know if that's what caused it. If anyone's got a "clean slate" character copied onto PTR, some testing would be appreciated.
Anyone noticed Mangle (Cat) not awarding any combo points on PTR? If I'm not specced into Primal Fury, I get no cp from it at all, whereas whilst specced into Primal Fury I get no cp on a non-crit but 1 cp on a crit (from Primal Fury). I played around with dual specs a bit before I went to test so I don't know if that's what caused it. If anyone's got a "clean slate" character copied onto PTR, some testing would be appreciated.
I also find Mangle awarding 0 CP on a non-crit and 1 CP on a crit, immediately after speccing on the PTR for the first time. Makes it kind of hard to test my DPS!
Savage Defense doesn't seem to exist yet on the PTR, unfortunately, so I can't test that either.
Originally Posted by dreadmoon
WowInsider also pointed out some undocumented changes here
The Druid relevant ones are:
Emphasis mine. The change made to SotF makes me think that we will have to compete even more with rogues for +crit and +AP gear for tanking in order to compensate the lost armor.
Any thoughts?
Well, our tier sets are already covered in these stats, so I think it will not have a significant impact on how much loot we get. We are already wearing what is basically stamina-heavy rogue leather for tanking; this just makes it scale more effectively in the long term.
Well I was hoping to have some decent PTR information, but Mangle is bugged and Savage Defense is not trainable yet. Here's a quick tank stat comparison to illustrate the SotF change.
This is just a 60/11 "tank" type build. -6k armor, ouch.
Oh, I can't believe I forgot Frenzied Regeneration. I've been a kitty too long. You are absolutely right, the tanking glyphs should be Maul, Berserk and FR. That is a hugely beneficial panic button.
For tanking [Item not found!] over Berserk for me. No changes for tanking glyphs for me.
Why? I don't value Berserk for tanking at all. If I am missing 1 combo point I will not take berserk and invest the combo point in something worth more.
The reason is that berserk indeed does more damage and more threat but it will only do so once every 3 minutes. The relatively small boost you get form 5 seconds more mangle spam is not much.
The best time to use berserk is when you start a fight. Unless you find a lot of rats around you will start that fight with max 30 rage. You can not really mangle spam then. Also a hunters MD will help you. So berserk for tanking has no value.
Growl on the other hand can wipe a raid. When you miss a taunt you will have a healer tanking, an other tank with a too huge debuff getting too hard hits. I will take growl as a must.
02/24/09, 9:52 AM
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