Couple changes in the alpha feral talents

[Fojos]

I have my doubts about it resembling the final talent tree.

Of course not. The talent trees are never finalized. Because they will change after release as well. But yes, there are probably very few changes right now compared to what we will get at release.

[Cantthink]

Oh, and someone found an improved Feral Charge listed in sigrie.

Possable no rage cost, but rage gain? would be nice = )

[Windspast]

So, to recap feral talent changes:


Nerfs:
Removed 6% stat boost from SotF

ah crap, didn't even realize that one... you are right they removed it. So we're losing 6% stat and then 2% more from imp motw not being there anymore.

I'm still hoping that all of these nerfs were unintentional bugs. Either blizzard forgot to leave them in there or mmo-champion is displaying the wrong things.

I don't understand the reason why they removed all of those extra things onto our talents...

I'm hoping mastery would make up for most of those nerfs.

Expensive shapeshifting forms is going to be hell again... I like having cat form costly around 200 mana... Now it will be 1000 or so again.

[Hinalover]

Possable no rage cost, but rage gain? would be nice = )

http://db.mmo-champion.com/s/78893/i...-feral-charge/

Increases the damage done by your next 3 attacks by 11% in Bear Form after you use Feral Charge (Bear), and Ravage will temporarly not require stealth for 7 sec after you use Feral Charge (Cat).

There is another version with 6% and 3 sec respectfully. For bears basically a burst damage after they charge. For kitties, I can see them macroing Ravage and Feral Charge together. I can kindof see the reasoning why they want us to use Ravage. We never use it now-a-days.

[Windspast]

http://db.mmo-champion.com/s/78893/i...-feral-charge/

Increases the damage done by your next 3 attacks by 11% in Bear Form after you use Feral Charge (Bear), and Ravage will temporarly not require stealth for 7 sec after you use Feral Charge (Cat).

There is another version with 6% and 3 sec respectfully. For bears basically a burst damage after they charge. For kitties, I can see them macroing Ravage and Feral Charge together. I can kindof see the reasoning why they want us to use Ravage. We never use it now-a-days.

hmm improved kitty charge seems very interesting. I'd have to find a spot to put my ravage :-\

But you are right though, I'm pretty sure cats stopped using ravage since like lvl 30.

7 seconds is probably 2 ravages assuming you start with 100 energy. Depending on how haste benefit energy regen, you may be able to get 3 ravages off that 7 seconds time. Possibly 4 if you squeeze in a tiger's fury.

That's potentially major damage burst.

[FOZZIEBEAR]

hmm improved kitty charge seems very interesting. I'd have to find a spot to put my ravage :-\

But you are right though, I'm pretty sure cats stopped using ravage since like lvl 30.

7 seconds is probably 2 ravages assuming you start with 100 energy. Depending on how haste benefit energy regen, you may be able to get 3 ravages off that 7 seconds time. Possibly 4 if you squeeze in a tiger's fury.

That's potentially major damage burst.

Lots of CP too. Isn't ravage 2 pts base (4 crit?)

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With the changes to rage, bears probably won't be able to skip OoC anymore



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With the -10% spell damage, in addition to our current 12% reduction in all damage, as well as our block mechanic working for spells, best spell dmg tanks anyone?

[Cardrels]

hmm improved kitty charge seems very interesting. I'd have to find a spot to put my ravage :-\

But you are right though, I'm pretty sure cats stopped using ravage since like lvl 30.

7 seconds is probably 2 ravages assuming you start with 100 energy. Depending on how haste benefit energy regen, you may be able to get 3 ravages off that 7 seconds time. Possibly 4 if you squeeze in a tiger's fury.

That's potentially major damage burst.

Yeah, it's a dmg burst but according to Blizz, pvp bursting is on the way out the door. They want longer matchs so even with 3 or 4 ravages, the odds of that even getting the target to 50% are going to be slim.

[Windspast]

Lots of CP too. Isn't ravage 2 pts base (4 crit?)

Nope, Ravage is 1 combo points 2 if crits. Only rogues get the pleasure of having 2 combo point openers :-/

With the changes to rage, bears probably won't be able to skip OoC anymore

what changes? I was not aware of reading about any changes.

With the -10% spell damage, in addition to our current 12% reduction in all damage, as well as our block mechanic working for spells, best spell dmg tanks anyone?

yeah the -spell damage would be nice for tanking AND pvp too

[arel00]

With the changes to rage, bears probably won't be able to skip OoC anymore

It's not about the rage itself, but...
..you just made me remind that they're changing Maul.

With the "on next swing" part gone, we'll be using white hits again. Thus, OoC becomes extremely powerful, while today it's sometimes skipped because it can't trigger off Mauls.

[Thundercougr]

cause no ferals pvp, ever.

Cause PvP is the only thing to do do in this game, ever.

[Nithian]

Cause PvP is the only thing to do do in this game, ever.

Nobody said that. You, on the other hand, hinted that people who have finishers not land are somehow baddies. This is a rather stupid blanket statement due to PvP.....hence his reply.

Turn off your short-man syndrome.

[Cortano]

It looks like faerie fire might be rolled into "sunder armor" family of debuffs: stacks 3 times, -4% armor per stack, 5 min duration.

[exochaft]

Couple things looking through alpha spells:

-Glyph of Maul will hit the secondary target for 50% damage.
-Beserk will hit 4 targets in bear instead of 3.
-As someone has already mention, FF will stack 3 times to a value similar to Sunder Armor.
-Initial concept of Thrash will deal approx. 1200 instant damage and approx. 200 bleed damage ever 2 secs for 6 secs. 5 second cooldown, 25 rage.
-It's already been mentioned about Improved Feral Charge (just scroll up a few posts for it).

Haven't noticed anything else that standards out, but this is alpha, of course.

[Cortano]

Glyph of Maul will hit the secondary target for 50% damage.

I hope Maul actually has a place in the bear rotation.

Single Target:
Mangle, Lacerate*5, FF*3, D-Roar: by the time we have stacked lacerate to 5 and FF to 3 we are 30 seconds into a fight.

AE: Swipe, Thrash, D-Roar
again, I don't see where another attack has any point here...

....

maybe Maul is to Mangle-Bear what Claw is to Mangle-Cat. Low level bears need something.

Maybe Maul morphs into a revenge thing ... usable after a dodge, with a cooldown, maybe add a 15% chance for Lacerate to recycle Maul, and have it cost zero rage?

druid tanks need more things... but it needs to be a bit more dynamic than a very long castsequence macro.

[Koumaru]

I hope Maul actually has a place in the bear rotation.

Single Target:
Mangle, Lacerate*5, FF*3, D-Roar: by the time we have stacked lacerate to 5 and FF to 3 we are 30 seconds into a fight.

Which is where, before, you'd have spammed Swipe between Mangle cooldowns and Lacerate/Roar refreshes. Now you'll use Maul there, and it will scale with your rage situation, hitting harder (and generating more threat) for each point of rage you have available above 10 (up to 30 total).

We just have to hope the extra damage and threat from excess rage is worth the cost, and hopefully scales with AP rather than being a static +damage per rage point.

[Edit: Depending on how well the new Maul scales, and with Mangle's debuff lasting a base duration of 60 seconds as of a couple of patches ago, I wouldn't be surprised to see the new Maul's priority rise above that of Mangle in a non-rage-starved situation, Maul being for a bear like Shred is for a cat, with Mangle being refreshed only once a minute for the debuff.]

AE: Swipe, Thrash, D-Roar
again, I don't see where another attack has any point here...

Yeah, we pretty much lost Maul toggling for Swipe spam and picked up Thrash. Blizzard wants more differentiation between single-target and AoE tanking (and dps).

maybe Maul is to Mangle-Bear what Claw is to Mangle-Cat. Low level bears need something.

Nope, should still be very critical in single-target tanking.

[Cortano]

Nope, should still be very critical in single-target tanking.

How?

At best it is going to do is displace an ability you are already using... I wouldn't call "swipe" a critical part of my single target tanking at the moment, even though I do fill in global cooldowns with it when lacerate is fully stacked, FF applied, Roar is applied, and mangle is on cooldown.

I might have some macros, an opener:
going to jam this for 18 seconds

Button 1:
/castsequence reset=6 Mangle, Lacerate, Faerie Fire, Lacerate
-- /cast Maul

then I am going to jam this for another 10 seconds

Button 4:
/castsequence reset=180 Berserk, Mangle
-- /cast Maul

and finally 30 seconds into the fight, might switch over:

Button 2:
/castsequence reset=12 Mangle, Lacerate, Swipe, Swipe, Mangle, Swipe, Swipe, Lacerate
-- / cast Maul

Yeah, we pretty much lost Maul toggling for Swipe spam and picked up Thrash. Blizzard wants more differentiation between single-target and AoE tanking (and dps).

explain:

how is:

/castsequence reset=6 Thrash, Swipe

different from

/cast Swipe
/cast !Maul

I don't see ANY change there. AE = Jam button 3. (nothing wrong with that, AE tanking is intrinsically more interesting because you are watching aggro on a lot of mobs; it doesn't need to be as complex as single target tanking)


the main point... none of those changes actually -changes- anything. Maul isn't "critical", its just a filler that will allow you to do slightly more damage than your other fillers if lacerate is full stacked, and there is only one mob left. whee. if you just kept swiping or lacerating... would it actually make a difference?

now... imagine if Maul was usable only after a dodge, hit like a truck, and have a 25% chance of recycling mangle and reduced the cost of mangle to 0.... THAT changes your playstyle. Mixes things up. Your rotation isn't reduceable to a castsequence macro.

even if Maul cost 800 rage, and you had to use it in conjunction with Omen it'd be more interesting than what it seems like it is now.

Imagine if we also had a 'throatrip', 10 sec cooldown, interrupts a spell cast and silences for 4 sec if the target is bleeding. We know something like that is coming... THAT changes the playstyle as well. An interesting change.

I know it is early in Alpha... I HOPE things change a bit when the feral talents get unveiled.

[Koumaru]

How?

At best it is going to do is displace an ability you are already using... I wouldn't call "swipe" a critical part of my single target tanking at the moment, even though I do fill in global cooldowns with it when lacerate is fully stacked, FF applied, Roar is applied, and mangle is on cooldown.

Okay, then go ahead and just stand there and wait for Mangle to come back off cooldown or for Lacerate/Roar to need a refresh and see what that does for your threat.

Unless Lacerate's mechanics are adjusted again or Mangle(Bear) loses its cooldown, Maul WILL be a crucial threat move, dealing far, far greater threat than Swipe. Maul is by far our highest threat move right now, and we're losing the ability to toggle it, independent of the GCD. That's maybe half our threat ... gone. Isn't it safe to assume that whatever replaces Swipe in our single-target threat list is going to have to pull some serious weight? The only announced skill that looks like it may fit the bill is the revised Maul.

explain:

how is:

/castsequence reset=6 Thrash, Swipe

different from

/cast Swipe
/cast !Maul

I don't see ANY change there. AE = Jam button 3. (nothing wrong with that, AE tanking is intrinsically more interesting because you are watching aggro on a lot of mobs; it doesn't need to be as complex as single target tanking)

If you're macroing all of your tanking moves, should I be surprised that you don't see a change there? Your mashing the "3" button may not be changing, but that doesn't mean what's happening as a result is the same.

As for the difference, sure, I'll explain. The first is a macro that has you Thrash, then Swipe once, then stand there losing threat for 4.5 seconds while you're waiting for Thrash to come off cooldown. The second one is a standard 3.x tanking macro that, come Cataclysm, will just spam Swipe.

Was that so hard?

the main point... none of those changes actually -changes- anything. Maul isn't "critical", its just a filler that will allow you to do slightly more damage than your other fillers if lacerate is full stacked, and there is only one mob left. whee. if you just kept swiping or lacerating... would it actually make a difference?

Slightly more damage than Swipe on a single target? Heh. Would it make a difference if you just kept Lacerating? Yeah, your healer would probably pull off of you (okay, exaggeration). Swiping? I don't know; we have yet to see how they've adjusted the threat of our other bear skills to make up for Maul not being a spammed toggle in place of every autoattack, but I doubt they'd balance our main AoE threat move for single-target threat. I conjecture that Lacerate won't suddenly have a 10000% threat multiplier and Mangle won't lose its cooldown and hit for 20000 per use, so Maul is still going to have to pull its weight, and even more than it does now, becuase it will require a GCD. So I'm going to make what I consider to be a reasonable guess that the difference between spamming Lacerate or Swipe versus Maul will be like night and day.

now... imagine if Maul was usable only after a dodge, hit like a truck, and have a 25% chance of recycling mangle and reduced the cost of mangle to 0.... THAT changes your playstyle. Mixes things up. Your rotation isn't reduceable to a castsequence macro.

Great, then we still have Blizzard saying they want a different skill set for single-target and AoE tanking, so they'll still have to add a filler attack. They don't want us Swiping on a single-target fight, and spamming Lacerate is a TPS loss. Your idea sounds pretty cool, but they may as well create a new ability with that function, and not try to reinvent the wheel with the existing Maul skill.

Imagine if we also had a 'throatrip', 10 sec cooldown, interrupts a spell cast and silences for 4 sec if the target is bleeding. We know something like that is coming... THAT changes the playstyle as well. An interesting change.

I am psyched about having a real interrupt. Thanks for reminding me. I like the silence if the target's bleeding, too. You post that on the official suggestion forums (not that they listen, but hey, why not try)?

[qotI know it is early in Alpha... I HOPE things change a bit when the feral talents get unveiled.
[/quote]

Me, too. Me, too. But from what I've seen so far, Blizzard isn't really trying to overhaul the simple (and boring) bear tanking technique. They just wanted to convert all of the "on-next-melee" abilities into instant strikes that deal more damage and threat when we have more rage free.

(I would like to see your "Feral Rune Strike" and "Throat Rip" though.)

[Cortano]

Isn't it safe to assume that whatever replaces Swipe in our single-target threat list is going to have to pull some serious weight?

Why assume this? I'd think the more likely situation is that a threat/DPS increase will be added passively via masteries (for example, vengeance) and affect all abilities.

As for the difference, sure, I'll explain. The first is a macro that has you Thrash, then Swipe once, then stand there losing threat for 4.5 seconds while you're waiting for Thrash to come off cooldown.

In a castsequence, the final ability is active until the sequence resets. Has nothing to do with the topic, just as an aside that you might find useful.

So I'm going to make what I consider to be a reasonable guess that the difference between spamming Lacerate or Swipe versus Maul will be like night and day.

Maul will have to be balanced such that it is still attractive to 5-stack lacerate. (Otherwise you just replace one ability with another.) That means it will do slightly less damage/threat when you factor in the DoT, but slightly more when you have the DoT fully stacked. Furthermore, it will not be so much more upfront threat than lacerate that it becomes attractive to postpone stacking lacerate. It is a pretty limited range in which to work. It can't be night and day, because that would effectively mean losing lacerate as an ability. Continuing to spam lacerate instead of maul will probably be a minor DPS loss and about the same threat.

For this reason, the new Maul -can't- pick up the entire threat/damage difference from the current Maul, or even a particularly big chunk of the loss. I have great faith they will get bears balanced, but it won't be through the addition of a single overpowered ability.

[arel00]

If I have the slightest intuition about skills after 5 years of this game and over 10 years of out-of-WoW game-designing, Maul will be FAR from becoming useless.

Personally, I guess it will be very rewarding on threat, but extremely taxing on rage. If they pull it right, you will want to use it every single GCD when you have enough rage, and if you don't, you'll stick with the normal priority list.

There are loads of small fixes that can be done to polish a similar skill. Especially on the rage-tax side. As for Maul being *that* used as it is now, well, that ain't gonna happen, I agree with Cortano there. It's simply way too high on our damage done to maintain the same weight. Personally I think an overall increase in damage factors, as well as Vengeance, will do the trick.
Remember we'll get AP from agility with 4.0 too, as it will be gone from leather. That alone could possibly shift around our stat weights and make our TPS dance quite a lot.

[Koumaru]

In a castsequence, the final ability is active until the sequence resets. Has nothing to do with the topic, just as an aside that you might find useful.

Don't want to derail the thread, but you're posting misinformation. A /castsequence will reset as soon as the final ability is used. You'll be sitting on a still-on-cooldown Thrash for 4.5 seconds. Go test it out with another pair of abilities.

I agree with both of you that I don't think the decision to use Maul should be as simple as, "is everything else refreshed or on cooldown?" But Blizzard hasn't yet introduced any new single-target filler beyond the current Swipe spam, and the new Maul has to surpass Swipe on single-target threat to be anything more than a joke.

I want this new "scales with extra rage" mechanic to make me think about when Maul should/shouldn't be used, but right now there's no reason to believe it won't be spammed.

There just aren't enough other mechanics that can be tweaked. Unless Lacerate -- or, God forbid, our bear-form threat mod itself (yay autoattack as #1 threat move!) -- is in for one hell of a buff...? We just don't have a very big tanking skill set for Blizzard to manipulate.

Vengeance is just a mechanic to scale overall threat as an encounter drags on, and does nothing at the start. It has no bearing on our tanking rotation.

[Edit: The more I think about it now, the more I wonder if Lacerate will be the skill that gets tweaked. It could be changed to a Deadly Poison / Seal of Vengeance mechanic and begin hitting for serious damage and threat after it's stacked to 5. That would make Lacerate spam past a 5-stack viable, while Maul could still surpass the threat of Lacerate spam when rage is plentiful?]