Going Forward: Cataclysm Discussion - Page 20

Vaccine · 06/10/10, 6:11 AM

Yes Nom is just for Cats.

Improved Feral Charge is interesting but I couldn't really fit it in a serious build. Again it depends how tightly tuned threat is, 30% extra rage generation could be invaluable to open a fight. I can't remember if they said whether Haste would affect our GCD like it does for casters, but if so it also allows quick application of Lacerate to get your first Pulverise buff going.

To clarify that wasn't a build I posted, just all the Bear talents in the tree.

FFF: Yes I had completely forgot it now stacked like Sunder, so the talent may actually make it 1 sec CD and with it currently having a 1 sec GCD you could stack it faster than anyone, or equal to warrior if the devastate glyph remains as it is.

I'd be going something like http://www.wowtal.com/#k=-mDOX2kIn2X5LS.9dw.druid as baseline.
You get 5 points to spread where you like, IW being the best choice I think and maybe Lacerate depending on rage gain, or you can dump it all into Master Shapeshifter but 5 points for 4% damage seems a little under-budget. It may be IW is not required if Frost DK's are still dominant in which case its simple enough to pick up I.LotP, SA and 1 in Imp Charge.

Umah · 06/10/10, 8:38 AM

Cat Feral related Talents that push Damage/reduce Ability cost (about the same) ONLY:

2 Sharpened Claws
5 Ferocity
5 Feral Aggression (Bear part is okay now)
3 Shredding Attacks (The Bear part could be even useless)
3 Predatory Instincts
3 Fury Swipes (new talent that doesn't change game-play at all, just adds damage)
5 Heart of the Wild

2 Blessing of the Grove
2 Master Shapeshifter
5 Naturalist

All of these do almost nothing, one could argument about Ferocity. But besides that you will not see any difference if you do not look closely at your combat log.
You can see that the first 5 tiers of Feral Combat are full of MANDATORY damage talents that do NOT affect game-play. By official policy this is no fun - and it ain't. There should be a revision of the lower Feral Combat talent tree to make it more interesting merging some of the stupid but mandatory +damage talents and adding some game-play talents.

What's great:
2 Primary Fury => Adds damage through game-play change
2 Improved Feral Charge => Though its situational, its great for Cat Feral target switch of initial threat as a bear. I love it.
1 Leader of the Pack => Though just plain damage - its a raid buff
3 King of the Jungle => Adds damage through game-play change
2 Endless Carnage => Adds damage through game-play change
1 Mangle => Adds damage through game-play change
etc.
... lots of talents deep in the tree are just <3

Ratek · 06/10/10, 9:15 AM

Originally Posted by Vaccine

I'd be going something like http://www.wowtal.com/#k=-mDOX2kIn2X5LS.9dw.druid as baseline.
You get 5 points to spread where you like, IW being the best choice I think and maybe Lacerate depending on rage gain, or you can dump it all into Master Shapeshifter but 5 points for 4% damage seems a little under-budget. It may be IW is not required if Frost DK's are still dominant in which case its simple enough to pick up I.LotP, SA and 1 in Imp Charge.

I'm not a Bear, but looking at your build I assume you expect quite high rage generation?
In that case, why even grab OOC or Ferocity. Lose both and grab Feral Instinct leaves you 8 points to use as you see fit. Be they ragereducers again, or perhaps grabbing King of the Jungle for some added threat. Plenty opportunities, and I think this is exactly what Blizzard wants.
Now, I myself expect that rage will drop down a lot to match Warriors. It would spark an outcry from the Protection Warriors if they could get ragestarved and Bears could not (essentially letting Bears skip ragerduction talents while Prot Warriors would have to grab them). So I think that pretty much all the reduction talents will be at least quite attractive, if not exactly mandatory.

Keshigomu · 06/10/10, 9:25 AM

Originally Posted by Vaccine

FFF: Yes I had completely forgot it now stacked like Sunder, so the talent may actually make it 1 sec CD and with it currently having a 1 sec GCD you could stack it faster than anyone, or equal to warrior if the devastate glyph remains as it is.

If that goes into play, you'd need a hefty threat reduction to FFF, I'd say. A spammable, omni-directional, ranged ability with threat similar to mangle (according to my rawr, at least) would put druids heads and shoulders above every other class in any ranged tanking situation. That said, I'm not sure how to balance this in a way that doesn't damage the functionality of our only ranged threat ability, yet still allows prompt stacking of the sunder armor debuff. I suppose having only the first application cause threat/damage would help, but that's not an ideal fix.

In any case, it's still the alpha, so it's all far from final. I honestly expect the cooldown to stay as it is, and just have a slower buildup time for the -armor stacks.

Deathwing · 06/10/10, 9:36 AM

Can anyone explain the point of primal madness, for cats? Ideally, you're supposed to drain your energy leading up to Tiger's Fury coming off CD, so the extra energy there *might* allow you to use it a couple seconds earlier if you got a couple OOCs or something like that. For Berserk, you're supposed to save ~85 energy, since Berserk invokes GCD, the extra max energy lets you go to ~95 energy. Yay?

Seems really weak for a talent so deep in the tree.

• Melthu · 06/10/10, 9:42 AM

Infinite rage is unlikely, considering that they are normalizing rage precisely to prevent that situation. A spammable FFF would give us buttons to push while we're in low rage situations, which I think would fit in with the devs' plans nicely. I wouldn't be surprised to see it's threat lowered to compensate.

Looking through the bear talents I don't really agree that it's overly bloated. When you narrow it down to the really must-have talents it's pretty close to the cat build. The difference is that bears (tanks, really) place a higher premium on situational talents, which makes the tree feel a lot more constraining. I'd say that cats have more talents to play with that improve things like survivability or raid utility, whereas bears have flexibility in improving their personal tanking ability in various situations.

As far as cat builds go, remember again that the numbers on all of our abilities will be changing. If you assume that Ravage will never be useful in PvE then there are quite a few free points, but if it turns out that Improved Feral Charge and Predatory Strikes are mandatory for maximum dps then cat is going to feel very tight on points.

Hoofhearted · 06/10/10, 9:43 AM

Originally Posted by Keshigomu

If that goes into play, you'd need a hefty threat reduction to FFF, I'd say. A spammable, omni-directional, ranged ability with threat similar to mangle (according to my rawr, at least) would put druids heads and shoulders above every other class in any ranged tanking situation. That said, I'm not sure how to balance this in a way that doesn't damage the functionality of our only ranged threat ability, yet still allows prompt stacking of the sunder armor debuff. I suppose having only the first application cause threat/damage would help, but that's not an ideal fix.

In any case, it's still the alpha, so it's all far from final. I honestly expect the cooldown to stay as it is, and just have a slower buildup time for the -armor stacks.

Or making it cost rage.

Calinette · 06/10/10, 9:55 AM

I was playing around with the MMO-Champion and Wowhead talent calculators and noticed something odd. MMO-Champion's new calculator lists Predatory Instincts as "While in Cat form increases your damage from melee critical strikes by 10%". I checked the description of each point, and it appears that the description of the first two levels of the talent doesn't use the "Cat form" caveat. Wowhead's calculator doesn't mention cat form at all, however if this talent really is only for cat form, it would help alleviate some of the bear talent bloat, and it would correspond more directly with the current version of Predatory Instincts.

Keshigomu · 06/10/10, 10:01 AM

Originally Posted by Deathwing

Can anyone explain the point of primal madness, for cats?

If you've already fully internalized those energy level guidelines for those abilities, then Primal Madness won't really do much for you aside from what you mentioned. It seems more like a quality of life thing. As Obligatory mentioned previously, the intent appears to be to "ease up on the John Madden" and make feral dps a little more forgiving to those new to the spec. The extra time on Savage Roar and Rake help with that as well.

It's possible that there's some pvp functionality with it as well, blending nicely with Improved Feral Charge.
That is, Cat Feral Charge --> Stealthed Ravage --> Tiger's Fury --> Unstealthed Ravage would be a decently sized burst and the 120 energy cap would allow you to not waste any energy gained from King Of The Jungle.

• Hamlet · 06/10/10, 10:02 AM

There are some issues with the tooltips given at higher ranks for NYI talents that have changed function (see Wrath of Cenarius, Eclipse, Efflorescence, Nature's Bounty).

Beanna · 06/10/10, 10:11 AM

Originally Posted by Umah

2 Improved Feral Charge => Though its situational, its great for Cat Feral target switch of initial threat as a bear. I love it.

Are you sure about that?
I mean, Ravage still has an energy cost of 60 which is quite huge, and, although Improved Feral Charge allows to use Ravage without stealth, it will be impossible to spam Ravage during those six seconds.
Moreover, at a switch, we are often low in energy if we refresh our dots before leaving the target and the time it goes up the Improved Feral Charge buff may have already disappeared.

I'm definitely not convinced by this talent that seems totally unworkable without a reduction in energy cost of Ravage or the use of Berserk in parallel.

Fallenangel · 06/10/10, 10:18 AM

The new revitalize is in serious need of some balancing. If it procs every 6 seconds it would amount to 700mp5 in today's gear levels, quite a lot of a 3 point talent. With even a single LB ticking getting a proc every 10s sounds reasonable, or 1.5 times as good as replenishment.

dukes · 06/10/10, 10:21 AM

When considering energy remember that they've said Haste will affect energy regeneration levels, which can have a big impact on how often you might be able to use abilities.

Talanik · 06/10/10, 10:49 AM

All the talents involving ravage seem interesting. It would appear they are making it useful primarily as an opener, as ferals have never really had a strong opening attack. Feral Charge in + Ravage then start on our rotation would appear to be the new rotation just from the talent trees. Our rotation seems to be getting much easier with the implementation of Endless Carnage.

It appears that with Nom Nom Nom, we'll be getting sort of an execute without allowing our bleeds to fall off - effectively allowing you to refresh rip indefinitely while spamming ferocious bites.

However, one thing I dislike is they removed the -30% AoE reduction off Predatory Instincts. I dislike that a LOT.

Although, with as open as our talent tree is, and depending on the fights in Cataclysm, I could see justifying putting points into preseverence to obtain some sort of passive damage reduction in cat form.

Krag · 06/10/10, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by Talanik

However, one thing I dislike is they removed the -30% AoE reduction off Predatory Instincts. I dislike that a LOT.

Although, with as open as our talent tree is, and depending on the fights in Cataclysm, I could see justifying putting points into preseverence to obtain some sort of passive damage reduction in cat form.

If we end up where Blizzard wants it to go and not having the risk of dps instantly keeling over from incidental damage hovering over us, you could put those points into Nurturing Instinct for the the extra healing taken to alleviate the loss some.