Cata questionsFollow

Completely forgot that you were a Druid!

What I've been anxious to find out, being a Feral and all, is how Pulverize works (if it's any good), if they changed the new Faerie Fire to stack (talents support this) and if the AOE bleed thing (Thrash, was it?) is any good at all for holding aggro.

Fingers are crossed that the days of Swipe spam will be over. I'm starting to get arthritis from that crap.

What LB+Nourish mechanic? Are they making Lifebloom useful again?

Hey guys thought I would drop by and say hi!

I was one of the beta key winners and thought I'd try to contribute back to hte site, plus I'm always game for a good discussion. Xsarus figured I could tag along on the Q&A if that's alright.

Figure an introduction is in order, I play Weecher a lvl 80 druid on kilrogg I'm primarly a feral tank MS with catdps/boomkin as OS depending on what my guild is lackin in.

So first thing I did was try questing with the new feral spec. Tanks hit like a women until something hits them hard back to start the new vengeance buff. Most of my mangle hits were 2.5k 3k crits and swipes were about 500-600. When I ran Blackrock decent my vengeance buff got pretty high up resulting in 10k maul crits, 6k mangle crits, and so on. So vengeance is very random and feels like it is going to define tanking.

Pulverize - I tried it out and I think it's still missing that ummmfff needed to balance eating your lacerate stacks. Having to reapply lacerate is kind of a pain, like having to restack sunder over and over. I'll need to check how hard it hits for and Threat but I generally didnt use it in dugeons. Mostly due to dugeons being really wonky with threat at the moment, apparently it's still not fixed. If threat stays like this it will make tanking very interesting haha.

Faerie Fire - It now stacks to three, if you spec for it it apply all three the first time. I tought it cost rage, but on the beta it doesnt cost anything so it's pretty much the same as it is on live.

Thrash - can't wait to get it haha still have to level up. WTB time off work and quests that aren't breaking on me.

As far as HP I was about 55k unbuffed on live and I'm sitting at 58.5k on beta, my stats did take a hit i'll post differences later. One thing is the removal of AP from weapons, I think it's the reason why swipe doesn't hit very hard. I have about 5k AP and the new savage defense does absorb more and scales with vengeance.

If anyone wants to ask about boomkin or any other feral questions feel free to ask! Hope I can contribute!

Edited, Aug 3rd 2010 5:18pm by weecher

So I was looking around to understand the status of bear tanking in general. People currently think swipe is bugged having it hit for only 300 is pretty wek.

I'll do more testing on vengeance to see how it all works. From what I've seen vengeance act's like a timeless buff like Trueshot aura. I think it changes by incoming damage per second, since the value of the buff ie.... "increases Attack power by XXXX" changes quite often. Like one mob was giving me 10-20 AP then when more mobs attacked me it increased. I'll go check the aviodance by massively pulling SM Cath.I'll look into it more tonight and give some more insight.

Yeah pulverize has potential but it needs to hit very hard or provide nice TPS to outway the drop lacerate stack < 10% crit you get. Overall tanking is wonky, needs some hotfixes so alot of changes will be made I'm sure. Thought the 3 sec Cd instant cast maul is interesting, trying to train my finger not to hit it every time haha.

Also fyi on healing apparently the talent that makes lifebloom refreshed after a nourish isnt working ATM

Edited, Aug 3rd 2010 7:54pm by weecher

Maul is now a 3 sec CD instant cast, like heroic strike. They are trying to make it for rage dump move rather than bind it to every move.

Faerie Fire is the druid form of Sunder Armor, and like Sunder it stacks to 3. Don't ask me to remember where I read that, but the ability descriptions on MMO-champ support it.

Feral Faerie Fire

Sunder Armor

Also, Mark/GotW is changing to be the same as BoK.

Mark of the Wild

Blessing of Kings

No, I'm not in the beta. Wish I was though.

Edit:

And as for Maul, I assume it's getting the same treatment as Heroic Strike. It will do a LOT of damage, but it eats your rage bar. Sorta kinda like FB, but capped at eating an extra 20 rage (total cost 30). Of course, it would have to scale really well with additional rage to make it less desirable than other abilities at the minimum cost and better than Mangle at max cost. Damage/rage is a little less important because the intent is for us to use this when our rage bar is filling faster than we can use it.

Edited, Aug 3rd 2010 8:52pm by AstarintheDruid

Yeah, I took a break for a while when work got hectic in the spring. Been reading a lot about Cata in the last month or two to catch up on all the changes. One more "interesting" thing that I found.

I can't find the track back to the blue post, but you will only need to buy any glyph once, then you know it permanently and can swap your glyphs around as needed. There goes making money with Inscription.

I'm in the beta as well, just copied over my resto/balance drood, and since I haven't seen any beta boomkins post yet, I wanted to offer up my services to try and answer any boomkin questions that come up! Haven't gotten a chance to do much yet, but hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to post a bit about the new eclipse mechanic.

good luck with that citrus the eclispe mechanic isnt working. You will get the buff from the slider but the buff just says 0%. thought the new starsurge move is overpowered. If anyone wants cat information I am happy to load my druid and spec him cat. It is one of my expertise. Maul is just used as a rage dump, also on the note of rage, they did refine it to try and normalize rage. So i did find myself having to plan out what moves I wanted to use rather than spamming away a rotation.

So now I have to decide whether I want to apply Lacerate or Mangle first, and whether there's enough rage for a Maul in between? Great, sounds fun. Not.



Please, that would be awesome. I'd like to know if the "rotation" has gotten somewhat easier with Nom Nom Nom and that other talent that increases Rake duration.

Sorry I haven't had more comments on my druid, currently when I try to pick a spec, it crashes wow and kills my ethernet adapter until I restart the whole computer.

I've had fun playing the worgen, but now I'm waiting for the new client to download. They're making us completely re download the entire thing.

Edit v2: BM looks sweet, like really interesting play wise. May have to deal with my pet class hate and check them out come Cata.