Patch 3.0.3 - Build 9095

The beta servers have gotten a new build.

Talent/Ability changes:
Balance
* Earth and Moon changed from 5 to 3 ranks and now increases spell damage taken by 4/9/13% for 12 seconds and increases your spell damage by 1/2/3%. (Old - Increased Arcane/Fire/Frost/Nature/Shadow damage by 3/5/8%)
* Eclipse now increases damage done by Wrath by 20% (up from 10%) and has a chance of increasing your critical strike chance with Starfire by 30%. (Up from 15%)
* Moonfury changed from 5 to 3 ranks. Now increases damage done by Starfire, Moonfire, and Wrath by 3/6/10%. (Old - 2/4/6/8/10%)

Feral
* Predatory Instincts doesn't work with Bear and Dire Bear form anymore.
* Growl cooldown has been changed to 8 seconds. (Down from 10 seconds)

Restoration
* Improved Tree of Life now increases your armor contribution from items by 33/66/100%. (Old - Increased your total armor)

As promised, balance got some bloat reduction, which makes creating a useful build much easier (e.g. 60/0/11)
Also, the changes to Eclipse make it even more interesting. Throwing in one or two Wraths every now and then to increase Starfire crit chance by 30% should make for an interesting rotation.
The change to bonus armor in ToL is a slight nerf, but brings it in line with the way it works for other forms.

The reduced Growl CD is something we wanted for a long time. It makes fights where you got to have several tanks taunting a bit easier to organize (although the last fight where the CD was a problem in that regard was in BWL). The Predatory Instincts change has been coming a long time. Actually I had the impression that this was already on live, and they only had to change the tooltip.

These changes have all been expected, no surprises there. But there are some changes to Glyphs.

* Glyph of Wrath - Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting your Wrath spell by 50%. (Old - Increases the chance you'll resist spell interruption when casting your Wrath spell by 50%.)
* Glyph of Innervate - Your Innervate spell now grants you full mana regeneration while casting for 20 sec, in addition to the effect on the primary target. Innervate's effect is instead increased by 20% if you are the primary target. (Old - Your innervate ability now has an additional 20% strength mana regeneration effect on you, in addition to the effect on your primary target.)
* Glyph of Starfire - Your Starfire ability increases the duration of your Moonfire effect on the target by 3 sec, up to a maximum of 9 additional seconds. (Old - Didn't have the 9 seconds limit)

The change to the Innervate Glyph is a nice buff which makes it a bit more advantageous to use it on others - although I am not sure whether that will happen often enough that it warrants using this Glyph. 90% of the time you use it on yourself, and an extra 20%... I don't know if that is good enough to pass on other, more important Glyphs.
The Glyph of Starfire got a pretty big nerf. Some have been excited about the old version of it, and now it got limited to 9 seconds extension. Still, together with Nature's Splendor it reduces your mana expenditure quite a bit.
The new Glyph of Wrath makes more sense - now you can only get pushed back by 0.25 seconds per hit (and only two times at that). Only half a second pushback no matter how often you get hit is pretty nice.


Not many changes, no big surprises.

From my side, there is a big theorycrafting post incoming. Should be done tomorrow or Monday.

All These Talents - So Few Points

Patch 3.0.2 is upon us. All talent points will be reset, so how to spend them, with all the new talents available to us?

So I took it upon myself to throw together some exemplary builds for level 70.


Restoration

14/0/47
As before I think it will be best to just skip the Healing Touch focused talents, in order to maximize our HoT potential. Also I went for the 11 point talent in the balance tree instead of going for Wild Growth. While being nice and something I'll definitely pick up when I am 80, right now it is not as strong as Nature's Splendor.

If you really want to have Wild Growth, try this build: 8/0/53


Balance

50/0/11
This build focuses on raid DPS. As you can see it doesn't take any of the new shiny tools - while they are nice, for most situations you just don't need them. It also includes Omen of Clarity, which now procs off spells as well.


Feral

0/50/11
This is a tanking build. Although Berserk would be nice, Omen of Clarity is more important for threat generation. The two points in Shredding Attacks and the three in Infected Wounds could be moved to other talents, if so preferred.

0/53/8
This is a PvP build. It doesn't take Omen of Clarity in favor of Berserk, as Omen of Clarity only procs of white damage and the burst factor Berserk gives you is more important in PvP. You could take three points out of the feral tree and put them in Nature's Focus, so that you get some interrupt protection on your heals and CCs.

0/50/11
This is a PvE DPS build. It goes for everything related to DPS as well as some utility. Should you have enough expertise and hit you could free two points from Primal Precision. Also you could take the 5 points from Feral Aggression and put them into Feral Instinct and/or Thick Hide.


These builds are no absolutes - I haven't done the theorycrafting on several abilities yet. Also, they are no builds for leveling to 80; they are for 70 endgame play.

Two Specs - Too Many Choices

At this weekend's Blizzcon it was once again announced that we will get a dual-spec feature.

We've heard about it before:
We most surely are working on some plans to allow players to switch between specs, but the details are sill being discussed internally.

Just wanted to add that it is most likely that we will see this added to the game in a patch after the release of WotLK :-)

Now we have gotten some extra details:
The dual-spec system will interface with the UI.
* Action bars will flip when you switch your spec so you don't have to re-do all your keys.
* It will likely also tie into Glyphs so you don't have to re-do Glyphs whenever you switch specs.

And:
The goal is to let you switch specs very easily in raid, even between fights ! However it won't be possible to switch specs in the middle of an arena match.

They have also stated that switching during combat will be prohibited as well. How they will deal with classes that can leave combat at will I do not know, but some sort of hidden debuff after leaving combat would come to mind - maybe something around one minute.


All this is pretty great, and definitely at the better end of what I was expecting. Judging from the "switch specs very easily in raid" I would assume that there will be no or only a short CD on the ability. If the CD were too long, one would be stuck with the wrong spec - which I would not fit the description IMO.


So with all this information at hand, we can start to think about which two specs we will be taking. Let's have a look at the options.

Balance
- PvE Raid
- PvE Solo/Farming
- PvP

Feral
- PvE Tank
- PvE DPS
- PvP

Resto
- PvE
- PvP

Hybrid
- PvP Feral/Resto (NS, or even Swiftmend)
- PvP Balance/Resto (fun things like Moonkin Form and Swiftmend at the same time)


And those are just what I came up from the top of my head. There are so many druid builds possible with 71 talents points, I couldn't list them all.


Basically I see two ways of using our new dual-spec goodness. First, taking two different trees, for example Feral and Resto. That way you can be Feral, but switch to Resto if your guild needs a healer. Or you can be Balance and switch to Feral in order to off-tank.
The second way would be to take two builds within the same tree. One for PvP, the other for PvE, or one for raids and the other for solo-play.


With Abies I will probably go for a combination of tanking and Feral PvP. A PvP build will still do decent cat DPS, and my role in raids will be the one of main tank anyways.
Nocturna will be some combination of full Resto and a Balance build - maybe a Balance/Resto hybrid. I don't PvP much with her (don't like caster PvP), which means I can focus on PvE builds.


What will you choose?

The Druids Grove

It just came to me that some of you might not know about it.

The Druids Grove is the best forum for druids out there. If you are a druid you should really check it out.

It has the most helpful and nice community I've ever seen, ranging from really experienced players to completely new guys who are not even 70 yet. If you need any help with playing your druid, you will find it there. It is also a nice place to hang out :)

Who needs other classes?

Some of my best in-game memories stem from all-druid runs. For example, a few weeks long I had a fixed group for running Slave Pens Heroic. One resto, one balance and three ferals, meeting up around 2300 every night for a quick stealth run. In Slave Pens you only have to kill 3-4 groups of mobs in order to get to all bosses.
Or, back in the days of patch 1.9, killing Onyxia. Well not actually killing her, but hell, did we try. Mainly we failed because we were only 25-30 people, but we came close a few times. And remember, this was in a time where ferals were a joke and boomkins were brand new.

Please feel free to share some of your anecdotes regarding druid-only runs in the comments.


So how will this fine tradition continue during WotLK?
My guess: Better than ever.

1) We are officially considered main tanks
During BC they only planned for druids to be OTs - yet we were able to tank almost anything pretty successfully. With the new system where no encounter will need a certain tanking class (e.g. a warrior), nothing should stand in the way of doing all bosses with druids only.
All our new emergency buttons will make it even easier.

2) We can do "viable" DPS
Balance and feral druids will dish out as much damage as other classes can - and with the effect of raid stacking being reduced, we will not miss the other buffs as much. This might even be the biggest factor acting in our favor come WotLK.

3) We have good AoE damage
The new spells in the balance tree in combination with the removal of the Hurricane CD will enable us to deal with AoE pulls much better.
Also the new, unlimited Swipe and Berserk make ferals capable of dealing some AoE damage.

4) We finally have good indoors CC
With Entangling Roots being available indoors now, we can reliably CC any mob we encounter. Of course its use is limited against ranged enemies (casters, hunters, healers). Clever use of LoS and having a lot of OT-capable players (all ferals and maybe even some boomkins) should alleviate that. Not to forget Hibernate.
Also, we have many interrupts at our disposal: Bash, Maim, Feral Charge, Cyclone

5) We can heal. A lot.
Resto druids have always been one of the best healing classes out there, and that will hopefully continue with WotLK. Wild Growth gives us a nice new tool to fill a niche we traditionally had some troubles with, and Nourish should help in some situations also.
With the new spellpower system boomkins should be able to heal pretty well while in DPS gear as well, making them an excellent emergency healer. And of course having 5 Tranquilities per group is pretty useful in many situations.

6) We still have all the great utility/adaptability
Everyone has a battle rezz, a normal rezz, an Innervate, a Tranquility, can off-tank, can heal, can stealth, can CC, can interrupt and can DPS. 'Nuff said.


The only possible showstoppers are the following missing ablities:
- Ability to dispel magic and disease
- Offensive dispel
- Mind Control (might be an issue in Naxx)

Those may make some instances/raids harder, and might make some impossible to finish. But Blizzard has stated that they don't want anything to depend on certain classes any more; so my guess would be that we can do almost everything without other classes.
It will be harder in some cases, but that only makes it more fun ^_^


So, what do you think? Will we have an easier time mounting all-druid raids?

Nerftastic

Yeah, what we've been expecting has happened. We got a tanking nerf.

From the build 9038 changelog (off of MMO-Champion):
* Predatory instinct now reduces the damage taken from area of effect attacks by 10/20/30%. (Up from 5/10/15%)
* Dire Bear Form armor contribution from items has been lowered from 400% to 370%
* Moonkin Form - Armor Contribution from items has been lowered from 400% to 370%


Let's have a look at the bonus armor reduction first. We ignore base armor for the moment (doesn't scale anyways).
Given that, how much armor do we lose?

	old	new	change
w/o Thick Hide	5	4.7	94%
with Thick Hide	5.5	5.17	94%

This means it comes to around 6% less armor in bear/moonkin form. Could have been worse.


Next, Predatory Instincts. It looks like a buff, until you read the clarification made by Ghostcrawler:

"Predatory Instincts is a huge nerf. You just haven't seen it yet. It only works in cat form."

Damn. I hope she means the AoE damage reduction only, because losing the crit bonus would hurt our TPS and rage generation.

How much would DPS contribution from crits change?

Old: 0.67 + (0.33 * 2.2) = 1.4
New: 0.67 + (0.33 * 2) = 1.33

That comes to a DPS loss of 5% - which translates to a similar TPS loss (not exactly, but close enough).


But at least we get a few positive thing out of it:
* Growl range has been increased from 5 yards to 20 yards
* Wild Growth healing value has been greatly increased. (Up from 350 to 686 for Rank 1, 469 to 861 for Rank 2, 805 to 1239 for Rank 3, 1085 to 1442 for Rank 4)

Making Growl go farther is really useful. Think of encounters like Al'ar, and how difficult it was to catch the two adds. In such a circumstance ranged taunts come in handy. Warriors got the same, btw.

The change to Wild Growth seems to make it more useful again (some numbers). They also reduced the mana cost of Nourish.

The Great Indoors

Do you know that feeling? Limited. Slow. Somewhat incomplete. The feeling we have when we venture into the dark? Like you are missing an important part of yourself?
I always had that feeling when going someplace which is indoors. Somehow it just doesn't feel right. I am a druid. I love the outdoors.

Especially because I am faster and can root things :)


With the upcoming changes that 3.0 brings we will lose most limitations brought unto us from being inside. So what will we gain from that newfound freedom?


We're faster (well, at least us ferals)
Feral Swiftness gives us 30% more speed. This allows us to move through instances faster than anyone else. Especially when you combine it with a speed enchant on your boots.

So what good is it, you ask? In combination with our brand-new Revive, after a wipe in an instance a Night Elf druid will now be able to recover from a wipe faster than anyone else. Yes, that means you will most likely be the only one running, while the others go for a quick smoke. But I don't mind, if it saves a few minutes - for example if you wipe in Karazhan on Shade of Aran.

In PvP it is moderately useful, as BGs (mostly) and all arenas are outdoors anyway. Only in WSG it really shines; being faster inside a base can make a big difference, especially when carrying a flag - or chasing the flag carrier. Suddenly that tunnel doesn't seem so long anymore. Well, at least when that devious pally hasn't thrown a Judgment of Justice on you.


We can root stuff
I almost afraid to mention it, because someone at Blizzard could read it and realize what they have done. Druids are now the only class with two true CCs in PvE. We can Hibernate and Root.
Yes, rooting is only useful against melee mobs, but most pulls in instances have at least one of those. Also you can pull a caster mob behind a corner and root him out of sight of the group, if you are a crafty one. I can already see the mages QQing when they find out about that one.

This should help especially Boomkins, as many see them as the "lesser" caster DPS. Together with the plethora of new and improved AoEs they have now, this should end the doubts people have about bringing one.


We can use Nature's Grasp
For me, that is the biggest change. Nature's Grasp now is not only usable indoors, but also a baseline spell with 100% proc chance. A great escape mechanism, if a druid pulls aggro from a melee mob by accident (or a stealthed one pops out suddenly - Shadowlabs anyone?). He is rooted and you can move away, while the tank has an easier time regaining aggro, with the mob being stuck in place and all.

Another great application for it is as a tank. You're getting punched in your face by three or four mobs, and your healer tells you that he has trouble keeping you alive? Pop NG and after a mob has been immobilized, just take a few steps back. Voilà, you have just reduced incoming damage considerably, making your healer's life easier. Especially as Entangling Roots now are much more reliable (they do not break randomly any more, but after a certain amount of damage has been done).



The only things left that can only be used outdoors are flight form and travel form - and as their counterparts (mounts and flying mounts) have the same limitation, I can live with that quite well.

To Bear the Burden - The Future of Tanking Part 2

Update: changed the tanking build suggestion at the end of the post.

It's been some time since I wrote part 1. Many things have changed, but now I feel they have stabilized enough to give an outlook on how we will tank come WotLK.

Blizzards says, that druids are the best tanks by far in the current beta build - generating the most threat, having the biggest health pools and taking the least damage. Ghostcrawler has stated that we should expect some nerfs in the near future, but they will take care not to overshoot their goal this time :)


Basic Mechanics
The first change is: No more crushing blows.
Yes, you read right. The thing any plate-wearing tank is focusing on most of the time will be gone.
The second change: all tanking specs will do more damage.

If you combine the two you have tanks that do more damage, can equip more damage-enhancing equipment and for the first time actually have threat that scales well with gear. Of course this necessitates other changes. No more threat reduction buffs or auras: Blessing of Salvation and Tranquil Air Totem are gone.


Mitigation
With crushing blows gone, Blizzard feels we have no need for items with exceptional armor. That means no more items with green armor values (this even works retroactively; meaning that existing gear will be changed as well). But there will still be rings, trinkets, etc with armor on them.
We will be in the same ballpark as the other tanks from now on, armor-wise.

But we get two other ways of reducing received hurting. Predatory Instincts gets changed to reduce AoE damage by 15% (instead of 15% chance to completely avoid). This change does not really reduce overall damage taken, but makes incoming damage less spikey and is simply more reliable.
The other is a new talent: Protector of the Pack. This will reduce incoming damage by 3% per party member (12% in a full party, you yourself are not counted). Finally a way to reduce magical damage - Yay!

In addition we now have an active way of reducing incoming damage: Infected Wounds. With this talent our Mangles and Mauls will apply a debuff that reduces the target's attack speed by 20% (stacks two times, 10% per stack). It is no Thunderclap, but still very nice, as it also reduces movement speed by 50%.


Health
In this area we will still have more than other tanks. Not much, and it will not be to compensate for less damage absorption. So don't be afraid we will be the nightmare of all healers ^^


Avoidance
Avoidance has a long history of troubles. In the entry level raids we were way behind other tanks, and in T6 content we were so high, that we came close to not being hit at all (bears were the main reason they introduced Sunwell Radiance).
With the new 6% crit reduction via talents, we no longer need to stack any defense (or resilience) at all, so we will only want to go for higher dodge. Currently in beta we need around 42 agility for 1% dodge (level 80). This is quite a jump from the 15 agility we were used to, but much higher stats on items compensate for that. Also we get an additional 6% dodge via the new talent Natural Reaction.
All in all, we should be able to reach decent dodge percentages.


Threat Generation/Damage
As we now do more damage, we also generate more threat. Especially we druids, who always have been scaling well with damage.
This was achieved in part by increasing the base damage and damage multipliers on abilities. Talents play another important role.
Savage Fury now once again increases damage from Maul and Mangle(Bear) as well. Mangle's cooldown can be reduced to 4.5 seconds via talent. The new talent Primal Precision will give us 10 expertise - not only increasing our threat, but also reducing the amount of parries, which reduces incoming damage a bit. Maul will now benefit from any debuff that increases bleed damage (e.g. the Mangle debuff). In addition it will also do 20% more damage on bleeding targets. Thanks to Lacerate all our targets should be bleeding.
This means, Maul will hit like a truck - as it should, considering the real rage cost is somewhere around 25 (because it replaces a white attack, which would have generated rage). Also, there is a glyph which will change Maul to hit two targets instead of one. Very nice.

Concerning AoE threat there are good news as well. Swipe no longer has a target limit (but still only hits stuff in front of you). Also the talent Feral Instinct now increases Swipe damage by 10/20/30%. Combine that with Maul hitting two targets and Maul+Swipe becomes a really nice AoE tanking combination. If you are afraid that we will not have enough rage for that: The talent Natural Reaction also generates 3 rage for each dodged attack. Rage should not be a problem any more in this situation, even with very high dodge values.

Oh, if you are wondering: the 15% threat increase that was on the talent Feral Instinct is now integrated into bear form form itself.


Panic Buttons
"Panic Buttons? Is that something I can eat?" - this is what druids have to say on this topic on live. We have none. Yes, we can use trinkets, and in some situations can use a cumbersome macro to shift out, chug a potion/healthstone, and shift back (which has a high chance of not really working). Crutches, nothing more. I won't even mention Enrage or Frenzied Regeneration.

But fear not, brothers. Things will change.
Let's start with Frenzied Regeneration. Instead of restoring measly 250 health per second, it will restore 3% of total health - 30% of your health over the whole duration. It still eats up your rage (1 rage per 0.3% restored), but finally scales. Also you can improve it via glyph to also increase healing received by 20% for the duration.

Next on the list: Enrage. "But this is no panic button" you will say. Well, there are two types. One saves your butt when you really get hit hard, the other type makes you hit really hard to prevent you from losing aggro. This is of the second type. Using it really improves rage generation (less armor = more damage = more rage). Now you can also take the talent King of the Jungle, which increases your damage by 15% while Enrage is active. When your healers can take it, using it on every cooldown should improve your threat generation considerably.

Another small change worth mentioning: We can now use stuff in forms. We will no longer have to beceome one-hit-wonders to use a potion or healthstone. But thanks to potion sickness (only one potion per encounter), it is not really that great.

This brings us to the third existing ability that gets changed: Barkskin. Well, it stays the same, but is now usable in all forms. Basically a small Shield Wall on shorter cooldown. 20% less damage for 12 seconds once every minute? Sign me up.

Now on to the new stuff: Survival Instincts. Basically a Last Stand for bears. Grants 30% of max health for 20 seconds; on a 5 minute cooldown. That is nice, and well worth the talent point.

The other new ability: Berserk. Breaks fear, makes you immune for the duration and, most importantly, makes Mangle (Bear) hit three targets instead of one. To make it even better, it also removes the Mangle cooldown for the duration. Very very nice for burst threat. With the three minute CD, I'd not consider it useful for fear breaking in PvE, but you can use it every other pull to establish good threat right away - and to make sure you do not lose aggro on a boss where your DPS is a bit overzealous.

So we go from "Not really having any panic buttons" to "Holy crap! Which one should I use?". I like it :)


Other stuff
There are some other changes as well. Not only can we use all items in forms (as well as eat and drink), weapon enchantments that proc now work also. Mongoose, here I come! Increasing agility also increases dodge as well as crit for us bears - more avoidance FTW.
Feral Faerie Fire has also been altered. It can be trained now instead of having to spend a talent point on it (with Survival Instincts taking its place). Also, its threat has been increased substantially (only when used in bear form), and it does a little bit of damage now (5% of AP + 1). This makes it a better ability for pulling, and as it is free, a good source of threat when you are rage starved and have a GCD to spare. Another nice aspect of this change is, that it now "tags" a mob, so when soloing you no longer need to get in melee distance to make sure a mob is yours.
Another changed ability is Bash; it now also has an interrupt component. This is independent of the stun, so you even can interrupt stun-immune mobs.


Looking at all these changes, I think we will do well with the expansion. Assuming, of course, that we well not be nerfed into uselessness (which I don't think we'll be).

As a nice ending to this post, let me give you an example for a tanking build: 0/60/11
I've not taken Rend and Tear (stronger Mauls are nice, but not worth 5 points) and Brutal Impact (a stun/interrupt every 30 sec instead of 60 sec may be necessary for some encounters, but I hope not).
Edit: changed the build to go for 2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild and 3/5 Furor. Thanks for the suggestion, Felkan!