BEARS: New and updated talents

[Captain Midnight]

I'd like to point out that I'm painfully aware that all of these these could (and some probably will) change at any time, but here are a few interesting talent changes that I noticed, hopefully to provide some intelligent discussion on how the changes will affect us and which talents take precedent over others.

First of all is the new Feral Aggression. The tooltip on the talent calculator says that it will reduce the cooldown on FFF (Bear) by 1/2/3/4/5 seconds. Now, unless I'm missing something here -- reduction on the threat from FFF, for example -- this is huge. This means that we could (conceivably) have a cost-free, high-threat ranged attack on a one second cooldown. This is astounding, to me, and if it sticks, well, I'll certainly have to investigate further.

Secondly I noticed Predatory Instincts. Now, ranks 1 and 2 of this talent simply state that they "Increase the damage done by your melee critical strikes by 3/7%." However, the third rank modifies it by stating that it only affects your attacks in Cat form. Well, this is a little confusing, to say the least, but my thinking is that the way the talent is on live servers, it only affects Cat form, but for Cataclysm it will affect ALL melee attacks, and that the text on rank 3 on the talent calculator is wrong. Assuming that it is, and that this talent gives 10% melee crit damage, that's a nice talent for threat.

Third I'd like to point out Improved Feral Charge. Pretty straightforward; 15/30% haste after using Feral Charge (Bear). This is amazing, both to start out fights with, and to utilize during combat. I don't know about the rest of you but I Feral Charge like a madman when I'm tanking, and so this 30% haste buff is simply ludicrous. I'll definitely be getting this one.

Following this we are presented with Fury Swipes. This is the talent that provides a 4/8/12% chance on an auto-attack to proc another free, instant auto-attack hit, with a moderate 6 second cooldown. Now, this talent is certainly intersting, because Blizzard has said that they're removing all "next swing" attacks like Heroic Strike and Maul, which means that all of our attacks will be instant and this talent will provide a sort of fire-and-forget attack; that is, click on the boss to begin auto-attacking and this talent will take its course. This seems like a pretty decent bonus to threat via the extra damage from the proc and the extra rage it provides, but personally I'll treat this as a wait-and-see.

I guess Brutal Impact would come next, if we're working down the tree. Now, from reading the tooltip on this talent I'm assuming that they plan on reducing the cooldown of our Bash ability to 30 seconds from 1 minute, otherwise this talent quickly becomes obnoxiously bad. But even still, assuming Bash will have a 30 second base cooldown, this talent is mediocre at best. With the exception of Feral Charge (Bear), which requires a minimum 8 yard range to use, we don't have a real reliable interrupt. Of course, neither of these abilities are too useful when it comes to interrupting for the sake of repositioning a caster -- Bash has a stun component and Feral Charge a root effect. To me, this stinks of a PvP talent, though maybe it appeals to others more.

Endless Carnage is next up, and it's short and to the point. It simply increases the duration of Pulverize by 3/6 seconds.

Leading right off from Endless Carnage we have Pulverize, our new tanking ability, which requires Dire Bear Form and 15 Rage to activate, and hits the target (or targets? I think I read somewhere that this was to be our new AoE tanking ability but it doesn't seem that way now -- can anyone clarify this for me?) for 120% weapon damage plus 943 for each stack of Lacerate on the target, and consumes the Lacerate effect to provide us with 2% critical strike chance for each stack consumed. We're probably talking easily 7k non-critical hits with 5 stacks of lacerate on the target. Essential. If you don't get this talent you are not a Feral Bear, simple enough.

And unless I missed something major, I'd say that pretty much rounds out the Feral tree for new and updated tanking talents. But there's still a pleasant surprise for us in the Restoration tree, and that comes in the form of a 5 point talent called Perseverance.

Perseverance itself is pretty straightforward: for every point you spend, you take 2% less damage from spells. Now, I haven't seen any of the other tanking classes' talents because they're not out at this time, but this talent combined with Protector of the Pack this gives us a cumulative total of 22% spell damage reduction, which I'd say is more than substantial. However, I'm not sure if this talent is worth having all the time. Bosses do a lot of damage to tanks for sure, but most of the time the lion's share of damage we take is physical. On magic-heavy fights this talent is a definite boon, but if there's no magic damage coming in, these five points are completely wasted. I'll probably relegate this to my secondary spec for those fights that I need it.

That's all! Everything else is the same, unless I overlooked something. Let me know if you have any thoughts or input on any of these.

[deadman80]

I'm rather excited about the seemingly boring talent, Perseverence. We are going to be entering an expansion with a rather large percentage of elemental damage based mobs, so I'm thinking this one falls more into the "almost always awesome" category instead of "occasionally useful."

Overall I'm quite happy with the way the new talent trees look atm, and was a bit surprised how easily it was for me to put together a build I'd be happy with without having to pass over any talents that look interesting in favor of those that look necessary. Guess Blizzard knows what they are doing when it comes to game design after all, huh? XD

[Bob002]

I saw the wowtal changes, and thought that FFF might have a reduced CD. Then I went and looked at the released Blizz notes that were posted on the front page and nothing was mentioned.

[Seraphk]

Feral Faerie Fire is being changed mechanic and duration wise. I cannot violate the Alpha NDA though, but let's just say you'll want to apply it as quickly as possible.

Imp Feral Charge was 30% damage before they nerfed it in alpha. The haste for 8 seconds is nice, but since we do not have "on next swing" Maul, it's not as valuable. Though, I'd still likely take it cause it's extra rage, keeps Savage Defense up early in the fight, and promotes OOC procs.

Brutal Impact is useless because it is going to 30 seconds base, and we're now getting an interrupt via a kick. Both do exactly the same thing whether you're Bear or Cat. Once again, this would be better suited as a PvP talent.

Pulverize hits harder than Mangle with two or three stacks of Lacerate depending on AP, at five stacks it's simply amazing & will be a core damage ability in our tanking rotation rather than Mangle. With Endless Carnage, we should be able to maintain 10% crit. They're giving Druids a glyph which will facilitate the usage of Pulverize.


You were rather insightful about most of the changes compared to most people.

[Bob002]

Feral Faerie Fire is being changed mechanic and duration wise. I cannot violate the Alpha NDA though, but let's just say you'll want to apply it as quickly as possible.

Imp Feral Charge was 30% damage before they nerfed it in alpha. The haste for 8 seconds is nice, but since we do not have "on next swing" Maul, it's not as valuable. Though, I'd still likely take it cause it's extra rage, keeps Savage Defense up early in the fight, and promotes OOC procs.

Brutal Impact is useless because it is going to 30 seconds base, and we're now getting an interrupt via a kick. Both do exactly the same thing whether you're Bear or Cat. Once again, this would be better suited as a PvP talent.

Pulverize hits harder than Mangle with two or three stacks of Lacerate depending on AP, at five stacks it's simply amazing & will be a core damage ability in our tanking rotation rather than Mangle. With Endless Carnage, we should be able to maintain 10% crit. They're giving Druids a glyph which will facilitate the usage of Pulverize.


You were rather insightful about most of the changes compared to most people.

Why would their own released notes not jive then? I've seen two different versions of Feral Aggression (one on wowtal and the other on wowhead).

As far as pulverize, i'd still use mangle to buff the lacerate dmg, though it all depends on the glyph. Assuming the glyph allows your lacerate stacks to stay on the target, I would want the bleed dmg buffed.

[Captain Midnight]

As far as pulverize, i'd still use mangle to buff the lacerate dmg, though it all depends on the glyph. Assuming the glyph allows your lacerate stacks to stay on the target, I would want the bleed dmg buffed.

You have to also realize that Pulverize will increase our critical strike chance by 2% per application of Lacerate -- 10% for 5 stacks. That's certainly nothing to shake a stick at. Also, while I don't have any hands-on experience with it yet, I would assume that Pulverize is going to have a long cooldown, so you'll probably want to use it over anything else when it's up, and preferably time it so that it hits in the last 3 seconds of your Lacerate stack.

Another thing that just occured to me is that if Mangle stays the way it is now, I don't think it's going to be useful for anything besides the debuff, because as it stands, Maul does more damage at the cost of less rage, and since they'll likely share a GCD now, it makes no sense to use Mangle instead of Maul (unless the debuff is about to fall, of course). So hopefully we'll see our 41-point feral Talent get buffed out of obsoleteness, though now I'm wondering if maybe these changes to FFF might have something to do with it.

[yadomaru]

I guess Brutal Impact would come next, if we're working down the tree. Now, from reading the tooltip on this talent I'm assuming that they plan on reducing the cooldown of our Bash ability to 30 seconds from 1 minute, otherwise this talent quickly becomes obnoxiously bad. But even still, assuming Bash will have a 30 second base cooldown, this talent is mediocre at best. With the exception of Feral Charge (Bear), which requires a minimum 8 yard range to use, we don't have a real reliable interrupt. Of course, neither of these abilities are too useful when it comes to interrupting for the sake of repositioning a caster -- Bash has a stun component and Feral Charge a root effect. To me, this stinks of a PvP talent, though maybe it appeals to others more.

Just want to confirm that feral druids going to get interrupt dont know if it is plan to be a baseline spell or you have to spec for it in feral tree.

[Elunedra]

Leading right off from Endless Carnage we have Pulverize, our new tanking ability, which requires Dire Bear Form and 15 Rage to activate, and hits the target (or targets? I think I read somewhere that this was to be our new AoE tanking ability but it doesn't seem that way now -- can anyone clarify this for me?) for 120% weapon damage plus 943 for each stack of Lacerate on the target, and consumes the Lacerate effect to provide us with 2% critical strike chance for each stack consumed. We're probably talking easily 7k non-critical hits with 5 stacks of lacerate on the target. Essential. If you don't get this talent you are not a Feral Bear, simple enough.

As far i know "trash" is our new aoe tanking ability

[deadman80]

As far i know "trash" is our new aoe tanking ability

I think you mean "Thrash" ^^;;
"Trash" is what we kill for fun :3

[Syph]

After doing some deeper research regarding the Faerie Fire changes, I'm officially moving the new Feral Aggression somewhere at the top of my interests-list... Wow, it really seems that both feral roles are heading in a 'new' direction

Atleast, I'm getting the feeling that both roles will undergo a much bigger rotation-overhaul in the WotLK>Cata transition when comparing it to the TBC>WotLK transition ^^

[Elunedra]

that both roles will undergo a much bigger rotation-overhaul in the WotLK>Cata transition when comparing it to the TBC>WotLK transition ^^

if the overhaul gets to big we end up whit a simpel rotation like all other classes lol, i prefer tobe skilled kitteh

[Hottie4Hire]

I think you mean "Thrash" ^^;;
"Trash" is what we kill for fun :3

Nobody kills trash for fun.

[Syph]

I beg to differ!

[Whydrood]

Just an assumption, but much like any other ability that "uses" stacks from another ability (Immolate, Swiftmend) I assume there will also be a glyph for Pulverize so it doesn't eat every stack of lacerate.

I will also assume that this glyph is going to be a mandatory glyph. Otherwise you are going to take a huge chunk of the druids threat away (the lacerate dot at 5 stacks) and make tanking as a feral druid a boring 2-3 button rotation (like it is now!). FFF, Laceratex5, Pulverize, repeat.

[Bob002]

Just an assumption, but much like any other ability that "uses" stacks from another ability (Immolate, Swiftmend) I assume there will also be a glyph for Pulverize so it doesn't eat every stack of lacerate.

I will also assume that this glyph is going to be a mandatory glyph. Otherwise you are going to take a huge chunk of the druids threat away (the lacerate dot at 5 stacks) and make tanking as a feral druid a boring 2-3 button rotation (like it is now!). FFF, Laceratex5, Pulverize, repeat.

I don't think our rotation right now is that boring. Now, it does simplify once you get going, but it's not that boring to start. You're probably still going to want to mangle in there, especially if Pulverize turns out to have a bleed component (as it seems it will).

[Cheezee]

Pulverize will probably have an 8-10 second CD associated with it which means that you will want to use it every time it's up. During the downtime you'll want to refresh your lacerate and Fairy fire stacks, make sure mangle is refreshed and maybe even maul a time or two. So ideally you will do more than just lacerate and pulverize.