Feral Druid Patch / WOTLK Thread

[un4]

WTB rogue love...

[Rocknlock]

nope, got both of those maxed I think. I'll have to check again once home from work.

[Arcdelad]

weird...i mean...they didnt change a damn thing with anything involving armor contribution...

Theoretically they WOULD make some bear specific leather gear since now druids are kind of forced to go cat or bear focused.....but who knows =) everyplace i am reading PLUS what blizz is saying themselves is indicating that right now druids are the tank class to beat...

[JohnnieRat]

I wouldn't say that they THE class to beat in tanking. As much as blizz tried, it seems that each class is still best suited for it's old niche it's just that every QQ'd so much about AoE tanking that druids and warrs were thrown a bone and made not incapable at it.

[Shadowwolf]

Having tanked as both a warr and a druid (a long time ago back in Molten Core), I have to say I enjoy a warr more. Theres more abilities at my disposal for mitigation and for holding aggro I think. Druid tanking to me, and I even tried it again recently was basically Swipe, Demo Roar, Lacerate Stack, Stun if possible. Kinda boring to me, perhaps I was doing it wrong, but for me, as a Warr, I feel more of an ability to unload on abilities to mitigate the mobs damage to me, Demo Shout, TC, Disarm, Spell Reflect. As a druid im basically stuck there and have no disarm, no spell reflect so I take the full brunt of spells, no Thunder Clap like ability, just the Demo Roar to decrease atk power.

I think in the end once all these changes are done it will come down to some unique abilities such as Thunder Clap, Spell Reflect, Holy Shield, Lacerate, etc that determines what kind of tank people play. I for one am glad that Pallys wont be preferred for specific heroics or encounters anymore because its honestly not fair to the 2 other tank classes (soon to be 3) with the whole AOE tanking. Multi-mob tanking is doable, albeit harder atm for Druids and Warriors, but it will finally be nice to have abilities that generate enough threat where in places like Magisters Terrace in the room with boss 2 and all those Mana Wyrmlings where I can feel more useful without having to use Challenging Shout to grab aggro for 8 seconds on all mobs then go back to being only useful for 4 mobs.

Armor mitigation druid will probably always be on top with that, but HP wise, its not that hard for a Warrior to get up there with a druid, my Warr's gear is so-so, basically beginner 25 raid level and I was at 20k buffed up while Arc was at 22k. Its all a matter of where you focus your stats. Druids have to have something to make up for the lack of block and parry which the other 2 classes will have which is where the high armor lvl comes in. It will be interesting to see how they make up for the lack of block on Death Knights.

[Grendeel]

Heh.  I saw a warrior from Arcanum outside za a couple days ago and he had 26.5k hp unbuffed.  He was pvp flagged and it took the npc a hell of a long time to kill him.  Its definately doable for a warrior


edit

Then again, i checked there warriors out and the highest i saw as 17k hp so i dunno.   I  know i saw it but maybe the mod i use was screwed up.

[kaylasb]

They are going to be good tanks indeed but in beta seems that the dodge rating now has diminishing returns, so the rogues tanking Illidian are becoming just a legend and maybe the bears are going to be less effective in high end tiers against fast melee bosses, so every tanking class is going to take a slice of the pie  

[Shadowwolf]

I remember that Arcanum warr Geos dueled outside BT that was taking groups of about 20 Scryer NPCs and killing them off to powerlevel that 58 Pally with him or whatever he was doing. Prob the same guy, had a ton of hp and was an Orc, not even a Tauren with the +sta racial.

[Trismus]

If a warrior hits last stand with a 1750 trinket up he can hit 26.5k easily. Hell, I have hit 25k on raids before, and I suck :p



-Tris

[Arcdelad]

[blizzard]Feral

Mangle - Cat damage increased from 160% normal damage to 200% normal damage. Additional damage increased as well. (507 to 634 for Rank 5)
Rake damage has been increased. (from [ 6% of AP + 387 ] to [ 18% of AP + 1161 ] for Rank 7)
Swipe now affects an unlimited amount of targets

Talents
Balance

Nature's Splendor now increases the duration of Lifebloom by 2 seconds. (Down from 3)

Feral

Protector of the Pack now reduces the damage you take by 1/2%. (Down from 3%)

Glyphs

Glyph of Regrowth - Increases the healing of your Regrowth spell by 20% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target. (Old - Increases the amount of your initial Regrowth heal by 50% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target.)
Glyph of Aquatic Form - Increases your swim speed by 50% (up from 20%) while in Aquatic Form.

[/blizzard]

[Arcdelad]

havent seen any verbage about dodge rating having diminishing returns kay...where did you see that? One of the cooler things they did for druid tanks now is put in a talent that gives us rage when we dodge - and since we dodge-dodge-dodge this is going to help out rage and threat generation a ton...

the knock on warriors playing druid tanks has been that we dont have as many tools as warriors do to make it intersting - defintiely a matter of personal taste, but the fact that we can shift to cat form and gain a whole different set of abilities, or try healing, or have things like innervate, barkskin, FF, etc etc to me easily bridge the gap...we are also getting a ton of new abilities - enrage is now useful (sorry fiere and tol...I always see you two use it before a pull and laugh my ass off lol), tiger's fury, our last stand thing, the "red rocket" as some peple call it - we have enough different tools from warriors to be pretty distinct...

[kaylasb]

I don't think that any feral can make the math for it  And usually the tankadins are the only that do some math and check the numbers about how badly the devs screw our mitigation and avoidance hehe   

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t29453-combat_ratings_level_80_a/

But as i said in my previous post, a lot of changes are in progress

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10043278278&postId=100420554346&sid=2000#0

[Arcdelad]

this isnt saying that DODGE is diminishing, just the effect on your TOTAL DODGE from stats like +DODGE, +DEF, and such...dodge itself is NOT getting nerfed....this just says as you get more and more +DEF and +DODGE it doesnt scale as well as +AGI and such...

....and I took calculus in college....even though my english degree only required college algebra...so there!

[Rocknlock]

Figured out why my armor rating was lower on PTR. Dunno if it was intentional or not, but theres no more extra armor rating on clefthoof items or belt of natural power 

[Arcdelad]

+ARMOR as a stat is getting removed....you might be in posession of the ONLY armor pieces that actually have that stat hehehehe

our armor is fine...we will still be hitting the cap with end game gear...