New Stuff for BearsFollow

They finally did it. New talents that make bear form sexy again. Cats seem a little neglected still but bears are getting the love. Mother Bear and Natural Reaction look good as heck for tanking.

Furor is still written so that it gives you 40 energy on shift into kitty as opposed to what JimmyTheNumbers has been saying. So everything is still in flux as far I as am concerned but this does give me hope.

Rawr

I did not know that.

I'm trying to crunch the numbers in my head.. 3% damage reduction (assuming fully talented) for each person in the party means a 12% reduction in a full group. If what I recall is true and there will be no more tanking leather with boosted armor in WotLK, I think Mother Bear might be an attempt to make up for some of them, coupled with the absence of crushing blows, but I'm still not convinced that enough is being done for feral tanks at this point. I know it's early and it's too soon to start the victim QQ. It's a start, but if Blizzard is talking about making us more viable as raid MTs through all end-game content in WotLK, more is needed.

The bonus AP with Mother Bear looks nifty, but it's on the AP boost from bear/dire bear, not overall AP, which is more of a tweak than a zomfg wow!

Natural Reaction with the other talent in the feral tree will give 10% dodge straight from talents...again, I'm not sure that will make up for the shift in dodge from stats that is currently on the test realm. A decent start.

I was looking over the revised feral tree with the two new talents added in. Before these two new talents, I had it worked out where I could still be a pretty decent hybrid, nab all of the good bear talents for tanking and still get a decent number of kitty talents, and still squeeze 15 points into resto for OoC and Master Shapeshifter. Now, the bloat is setting in and Blizzard is holding true to their word: if the layout remains similar, you will have to start sacrificing dps talents for tanking talents or vice-versa depending on the role you want your feral druid to focus on. It seems that a feral tank will still be more than capable of ripping through solo content in cat form, but when it comes to raids, there will be some decisions to be made.

Personally, I'm still waiting to see how it pans out. Lots of decent bits going into kitty dps, and tanking is starting to shape up a bit more, but I'm going to be enormously disappointed if either aspect still winds up sub-par come patch 3.1.

Looks like MMO-Champion has all the detailed changes up for this build now.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/


Balance
Skills

* Nature's Grasp is now a trainable spell and all ranks have been changed to 100% chance on getting struck.
* Hurricane now increases the time between enemy attacks by 20% (Previously 25%)


Talents

* Earth and Moon (Tier 10) now has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to increase Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, and Shadow damage
taken by 13% for 12 sec.
* Moonkin Form (Tier 7) now affects the whole raid and its range has been increased to 45 yards.
* Improved Moonkin Form (Tier 7) now grants 1/2/3% Haste.
* Improved Faerie Fire (Tier 7) now only affects spell hit chance.
* Nature's Grace moved from Tier 5 to Tier 3.
* Moonglow moved from Tier 5 to Tier 2.
* Celestial Focus (Tier 4) changed to: Gives your Starfire and Starfall spells a 5% chance to stun the target for 3 sec
and increases your total spell haste by 1%.
* Insect Swarm moved to Tier 5 and reduces hit chance by 5% (Previously Tier 3 and 2%)
* Focused Starlight renamed Nature's Majesty and now affects Nourish and Healing Touch as well.
* Control of Nature (Tier 2) removed.
* *New Talent* Improved Insect Swarm (Tier 5): Increases your damage done by your Wrath spell to targets afflicted by your
Insect Swarm by 1/2/3%, and increases the critical strike chance of your Starfire spell by 1/2/3% on targets afflicted by
your Moonfire spell.
* *New Talent* Nature's Splendor (Tier 3): Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth,
Lifebloom and Flourish spells by 10/20/30%.
* *New Talent* Genesis (Tier 1): Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.


Feral
Talents

* Infected Wounds (Now Tier 9) and King of the Jungle (Now Tier 8 ) have swapped places.
* *New Talent* Mother Bear[PH][NYI] (Tier 8 ): Increases the bonus attack power for Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by an
additional 20/40/60/80/100%, and for each friendly player in your party, damage you take is reduced while in Bear Form and
Dire Bear Form by 1/2/3/4/5%.
* *New Talent* Natural Reaction[PH] (Tier 6): Increases your dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form by 2/4/6%, and you
regenerate 1/2/3 rage eveyrtime you dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form.


Restoration
Talents

* Tree of Life (Tier 9) Increases healing by 3% to all party and raid member now.
* Improved Tree of Life (Tier 9) changed to: Increases your Armor while in Tree of Life Form by 33/66/100%, and reduces the
mana cost of your heal over time spells while in Tree of Life Form by an additional 5/10/15%.
* Nature's Focus (Tier 1) now affects Wrath, Entangling Roots, and Cyclone in addition to Healing Touch, Nourish, Regrowth
and Tranquility.
* Furor (Tier 1) changed to: Gives you 20/40/60/80/100% chance to gain 10 Rage when you shapeshift into Bear and Dire Bear
Form or 40 Energy when you shapeshift into Cat Form, and increases your total Intellect while in Moonkin form by
2/4/6/8/10%.



Edited, Aug 30th 2008 4:05pm by GryphonStalker

yes, 3 ranks maz, but each rank gives you 1% of damage reduction while in bear form. therefore, at 3/3, you get 3% damage reduction while in bear for each party member you have. hence, 3% DR in bear * 4 party members = 12% DR in bear (from all sources), making it better than untalented defensive stance while in a full party.

I think I'm reading this differently than you all.

Is it 3% reduction for the bear per person in the party; or is it 3% reduction for everyone in the party, like an aura?


Edit: From the WotLK wiki site: "For each friendly player in the party, damage you take is reduced while in Bear or Dire Bear form by 1/2/3%."
That is worded so much better.

Edited, Aug 31st 2008 2:54pm by Ehcks

thats part of what mother bear is for. in a full party you get 2% more magical and physical DR than a warrior does with def stance, and 4% less magical DR than a warrior does with talented def stance. at the upper end of things at 70, 12% flat damage reduction from all sources equates, in terms of physical damage, to about 12kish armor, give or take a k.

at 80, when it takes comparatively more armor to get the same amount of DR, the value of mother bears defense modifier will increase in relative power. for instance, i dont know the exact numbers, but if 12% DR is about 12k armor at 70 (for a geared bear tank) then at 80 it might be 20k+ armor. in short, mother bear is quite possibly the best tanking talent in the feral tree in terms of mitigation.

Okay, so it seems that mother bear offsets the lower armor, but I can't help but wonder if this was implemented (mother bear and lower armor) to reduce feral soloing capability whilst maintaining their tanking viability. Currently, I love being able to solo things that really shouldn't be soloable (elites that are immune to cc like stun, fear, and snares), but it seems that I might be getting screwed over in that regard.

Of course, I also can't help but wonder how much of this is paranoia and how much is reasonable concern.

Okay, but why was the lower armor implemented in the first place? And don't give me the crap about having smaller loot tables, there are no feral tanking drops as it is.

I killed Durn the Hungerer by myself the other night. Well, mostly by myself...some "helpful" BE Rogue showed up and took a few swings at him before he backed off, and an Alliance priest tossed a renew and a heal on me before she realized what was going on...neither of them prevented me from dying...I just finished a few seconds sooner and had to pop out of bear one fewer time for a Regrowth (gogo 2pc T5). That's...kinda crazy. Fun as hell, but crazy.

Keep in mind that a feral tank in "dps" leather is still going to have armor while solo on par with or greater than an equally geared prot paladin or warrior...we just won't have the added mitigation tricks like shield block etc. What we will have is significantly more single-target dps in bear form than a prot warrior or a paladin...similar to what we have now. We may take more damage but we'll kill faster solo and in those scenarios where incoming damage isn't such an issue, we can still go cat and shred mobs with joyous speed.

I looked around half-heartedly for the adjustments to dodge from agility...couldn't find much but we're getting increased dodge from talents...hopefully they balance out. Without having done any real number crunching, Mother Bear + dodge talents will put us on par with what we are in TBC with the added bonus of 12% magic damage mitigation, but this par level will only exist in a full group. When the bridge patch goes live, my guess is that I'll be able to tank raid bosses in my current dps set...after having redone all of my Defense gems and enchants. and replacing them with Agility. Going forward into WotLK, I'm curious to see how many of my current raid epics are going to find use in Naxx...10 levels worth of itemization or not, I don't expect too many leather pieces are going to be sporting 500-750 armor.

That's the glass half full perspective. Right now, every prot warrior I know is drooling over the buffs they're getting. Paladins are leaping for joy. Nobody quite seems to know what to make of DKs yet...and probably won't know until WotLK has been live for months. Every tanking feral druid I know, however, is dubious at best about the changes. Good stuff coming that would bring us a big step forward in terms of desirability as end-game tanks relative to warriors and paladins as they exist right now, but remember that those classes are also being buffed. I'd like to see WotLK feral tanking adjustments bring us on par with WotLK warriors/paladins/DKs, not just on par with TBC warriors/paladins.

Edited, Sep 1st 2008 11:52am by AureliusSir

I wonder if mother bear has a range limitation. Or a level limitation. What I mean is, will the party members need to be close by? Or can I invite some low-level guildies who are questing in the barrens, and then proceed to solo the ogri'la pre-requisite chain? I don't really expect an answer, just putting that out there.

But if it is like a reverse-aura, then they would have to make mother bear have a buff icon, so you could tell if everyone was in range. Well, they wouldn't have to, but it would be a great idea. I know I would want one.

Edit: Grammar

Edited, Sep 1st 2008 6:03pm by anonymosity

to expand on what jac said, part of why the "Sunwell Radiance" buff was put into place was to combat the crazy avoidance tanks (especially feral druids) had. by eliminating the prospect of that happening again, blizzard is free to add talents and abilities that will keep feral tanks strong without going overboard on one thing (avoidance) while stagnating another (mitigation).

in short, ferals will actually be able to improve their gear past a certain level. youll know that the next tier of items *will* give you more tanking stats than what you have, as opposed to being a sidegrade at best.