Big Druid Changes in Build 8885

The latest build brings a major rework of the balance tree and some changes in restoration and feral as well.

As there are now completely up-to-date talent builders yet, I will wait for a day until you see some posts about the new possibilities.

In short: Feral got two new talents and some others moved around, restoration got a small change to Furor and balance got a major overhaul, with some talents that are useful for healing moved upwards (resto builds will now want to put around 14 points in balance), and a lot of changes and new talents.

More tomorrow.

Thanks for Listening, Blizzard!

Well, sometimes they prove that they DO listen to us. Shortly after the change to Furor, CM Jimmythenumbers came forward to say that they changed it to the following:

Gives you 100% chance to gain 10 Rage when you shapeshift into Bear and Dire Bear Form, and you keep up to 100 of your Energy when you shapeshift into Cat Form, and increases your total Intellect while in Moonkin form by 10%.

Just as I (and many others) suggested. Thanks!

Also, the intellect bonus for Moonkins is very exiting. 10% seems a tad bit much for a tier 1 talent, so expect that to be reduced. Still, a nice way to spend five of that ten points you need to get to OOC.

Shifting the Power

Powershifting is gone.

They have changed Furor and the energy regeneration mechanics for ferals in the latest beta build. Now, if you shift out of form and back again, you do no longer simply have 40 energy flat. Instead you will be given the amount of energy you would have had without shifting, up to a maximum of 40.

Some examples:

You have 100 energy, shift out and back again; now you have 40 energy.
You have 0 energy, shift out, cast a Rejuvenation on yourself and shift back again; now you have 15 energy.
You have 0 energy, shift out, cast a few heals, chug a potion and shift back again; now you have 40 energy.


Basically, this is a nerf for raiding ferals, as we no longer can pump up our energy in exchange for mana. In PvP the effect should not be noticable, and in all other aspects of feral play there should be no disadvantage at all.

As they explain it, this is to counter a tactic they never intended to be part of feral gameplay and they do not want to have to balance around it. Which is understandable. If you think about it, King of the Jungle gives you 60 energy, and is much further down the talent tree (and on a 30 sec CD) - giving out 40 for just 5 talent points, some mana and a GCD seems kind of unfair.


What I am wondering is this: Why not go all the way? Have energy regeneration continue regardless of form. If I am in another form for 10 seconds or more, give me my full 100 energy (as long as I have put my 5 points in Furor)! The new system proves that it can be done using the current game mechanics (actually, due to a bug in the changes done, right now that is the way it works on beta realms).

That would counter the nuisance of waiting for 60 energy every time we shift to cat form.
On the other hand, with King of the Jungle we have a free method that doesn't use up a GCD. And powershifting much more frequently than every 30 seconds is not feasible anyways, so really we do not lose much.

All in all, I do not mind the change. I personally found powershifting to be a crutch anyways.

To Bear the Burden - The Future of Tanking Part 1

The good news first: Blizzard wants all four tanking classes to be equally capable of tanking everything. Guilds that do not have a protection warrior will be able to tackle everything just as well. Every class will get their niche in which they are strongest, but no encounter will need a certain class.
They even go as far as saying that even non-tanking builds can do 5-mans well.

Now the bad news: Not to decry Blizzard's good intentions, but some of the blue posts indicate that they do not really know what to do with bears and in which niche to put them.
What they aim for:

• Warriors get the best mitigation
• Paladins stay kings of AoE tanking, with improvements for single targets
• Death knights will specialize in magical damage
• Druids get the most health

Combined with the fact, that quite often druids are not mentioned when the other classes are, this does not sound encouraging. Who would take a MT-druid that needs more healing when they can get a warrior who does the same, but takes less damage?

I'll return to that point further down, but first take a look at how things are now.


The Current Situation

Today the premier tanking class is the protection warrior. No matter where you are, you will not go amiss having one with you. Some encounters even require their abilities.
Pallies are the best by far in 5-mans (and Karazhan), and are very nice to have in Hyjal. But they take more damage than warriors and run into threat problems on long boss fights (and when offtanking).
Druids are the best OTs, pretty good on hard- and/or fast-hitting bosses (high AC) and generate the most single target threat, but require a bit more healing and have no emergency buttons whatsoever.

Druids and warriors are pretty much the two tanks of choice in 25-mans, especially when tackling new bosses. Most raids also have one slot for a protection pally to handle AoE situations.

The biggest problem all tanks face is game mechanics (followed by overzealous DPSers).

There are two aspects you have to focus on: Holding aggro and staying alive.

In order to stay alive you have to stack AC, dodge, parry, block and defense (druids rely on dodge and AC only).
What makes this really difficult are crushing blows. They are a mechanic where a certain percentage of attacks hit you for 150%. Here comes the fun - their random nature can lead to nearly unavoidable wipes. If you are unlucky, you take several in a row. That is an amount of damage which your healers cannot compensate. Especially fast hitting mobs are a problem in that regard.
To counter that, high-end tanks try to get crush immune. That means either you use active abilities (Shield Block, Holy Shield), or you stack your stats high enough to reach around 103% avoidance to be passive crush immune; something only warriors and pallies can do. Druids can reach maybe 80% passively, and have no abilities (which is one of the reasons we get that much AC).

All of that would be good and well. But the problem is the other part of the tanking equation: Threat.

The threat you generate does not scale all that well with tanking gear. The abilities have a fixed component and their damage multiplied by the factor you gain from Defensive Stance, Bear Form or Righteous Fury. That means to increase your threat output, you have to increase your DPS - but you cannot do that, as your equipment is focused on taking lots of damage. If you rely on passive immunity, your gear is gimped threat-wise, and if you go for active immunity you spend far too much GCDs and rage/mana on keeping your abilities up.
In addition as a druid or warrior with better equipment you tend to get problems generating enough rage, as a paladin you run out of mana (which you gain by getting healed). As an example: In full tanking gear my feral druid tends to be around 65% dodge (even more with a shaman in my group). That means less than one in three attacks actually hits me and generates rage.

So, as your raid increases its DPS with every equipment upgrade, you actually tend to decrease your threat output. Combine that with damage dealers that do not watch their threat and you arrive at one of the reasons why tanking becomes so frustrating in high-end raids: you do not fight the boss - you fight your own raid.

See the second part on how this will change and what Druids can expect.

WotLK Release Date Speculation

As so many others I will throw out my estimates for the release date of the coming addon.

Currently the beta is running, with the level cap at 77 and no content beyond that. No raids yet, Lake Wintergrasp is still not functional, most professions are not yet complete and all classes are still being worked on heavily.

I am pretty sure that most content is already finished to some degree, it just has not been put on the beta realms yet.

One can venture an educated guess by looking at the calendar. There are two events in October that may be a perfect opportunity to launch the expansion, or at least the in-game events that lead up to it.

The first is Blizzcon on October 10th and 11th. The other is Hallow's End, which starts on October 18th, and ends on November 1st.

From wowwiki.com:
Hallow's End marks the day the group of undead, who would later be known as the Forsaken, broke free of the Lich King's dominance and once again regained their free will. They celebrate this occasion by setting fire to a wickerman after a short speech from Sylvanas herself and smearing the ashes across their faces.

Blizzard CMs have stated repeatedly, that the launch of the expansion will be preceded by some kind of world event.
Now, my guess is, that this introductory event will either be a modified Hallow's End or will be tied into it in some way. Blizzcon would also be a good point to launch patch 3.0 (which most likely will come before the addon hits the shelves, same as with patch 2.0 and BC).

This would put the release of the addon itself somewhere at the end of October or the beginning of November.

Another way to get an estimate would be to look at BC. The beta for BC started in early October 2006, with the signup beginning late September. The game came out January 16th, 2007.
This puts the duration at slightly less than three and a half months. With the WotLK beta starting in early July, this would suggest mid to late October, which fits nicely.

Of course Blizzard does not have the habit of keeping hard deadlines with their projects. Their release cycle is dictated by internal technical factors, not external ones as with so many other companies (which is a Good Thing)

Still, fitting the whole story of the Lich King into existing events is too big an opportunity to let it slip by and I am pretty sure that they are trying to get it done in time for it.

Beta Builds: Feral Raid DPS

This is the first post in a series that looks at the talent builds which will be coming with WotLK. Of course, the current trees are subject to change.

0/54/11 (+6)
This is the basic build that contains all essential damage enhancing talents, with 6 points left. Feral Swiftness, Brutal Impact and Feral Instinct, while really nice in themselves, do not directly increase your DPS and are only in there to get the prerequisites for talents further down.

Let's take a look on some selected talents.

Feral Charge (1 point)
Not a DPS talent in any way, but you need the point to go further down the tree and the other alternatives are not as good. Especially now, that it works in cat form as well. It is still in question whether the cat version interrupts and/or works on bosses, but helps against knockback effects (e.g. Lurker) and to move around and position yourself behind enemies quickly.

Primal Precision (2 points)
Some people might argue that it is a talent focused on dealing more damage and wonder why I omitted it from the build. The reason being that it becomes completely useless, once you hit the expertise and hit caps with your equipment. It is a possible choice for some of the six points left though, especially in the earlier stages of raiding.

Nurturing Instinct (2 points)
I am torn on that one. One the one hand, it is not directly useful for your DPS, and with our small mana pool (especially with the expansion, when we will share more equip with rogues) the increased healing output is not really interesting for backup healing. On the other hand, receiving 20% more healing can make the life of your healers easier and enable you to survive longer. On the gripping hand, it gives your self-healing with HoTs a pretty big punch, which could leave you standing while the rogues and warriors get turned into corpses, when your healers have no time to keep melee DPS up. If you add a self-cast Lifebloom and/or Rejuvenation into your powershift (maybe even with a weapon switch), it could amount to a significant contribution.

Survival of the Fittest (3 points)
This is not only a tanking talent, as many would argue. With its 6% buff to all stats you gain some AP/crit. For level 70 with T5/T6 equip it amounts to around 1.5% crit and 100 AP. Not much, but you need some points to advance further down and in combination with the crit immunity you gain it is nothing to sneer at.

King of the Jungle (3 points)
Tiger's Fury is getting changed to a free ability on a 30 second cooldown (somewhat similar to Feral Faerie Fire). 60 energy every 30 seconds amount to 2 energy/second extra. Normal regeneration rate is at 10 energy/second. That means with that talent you gain 20% energy regeneration rate! In addition you can choose when you want to use it, making it even more useful. It is a no-brainer for almost every feral build, including raid DPS.

Improved Mangle (3 points)
For a raiding cat, Mangle is only used for its debuff, as we rely on Shred to dish out the hurting. Saving 6 energy every 15 or so seconds would seem not that great a boost to our DPS, and probably isn't. With the old energy regeneration system (one tick every 2 seconds) it was very attractive, as it reduced a 3 Shred + 1 Mangle rotation from 166 energy to 160 energy. But as the tick is now 1 energy every 0.1 seconds, it has lost some of its appeal. After taking some time to think about rotations for WotLK, we need still need every help we can get in keeping up our buffs/debuffs (more on that in another post), so I consider it a must.

Infected Wounds (3 points)
Invaluable in PvP, still a nice utility talent in a PvE setting, probably more suited for feral tanks though. Could be worth putting one point in it to reduce the damage on the tank, but no more than that. Its usefulness also depends on whether it stacks with other classes' abilities (like Thunderclap).

Rend and Tear (5 points)
One of the cornerstones of our new DPS rotation. 10% more Shred damage scale very nicely, although it will be hard to keep bleed effects on our targets for every Shred. It is the most raid-focused talent by far, as it is not worth the 5 points in PvP or solo play.

Berserk (1 point)
With its 5 minute cooldown it is not really targeted at DPS ferals. You can use it maybe twice in a fight if you use it very early; which carries the danger of pulling aggro. But who can resist an "I-WIN!"-button? This ability is so great in so many aspects of the game, I cannot imagine any feral build without it. Even if you just take it for its sheer coolness.

Nature's Grasp (1 point)
As it now works indoors, an interesting escape mechanism when pulling aggro. Maybe not that useful as a cat druid, but it only costs one point and in combination with bear form you might survive long enough for your tank to taunt the mob back.

Naturalist (5 points) vs. Master Shapeshifter (2 points)
This whole part of the Restoration tree is pretty strange. It is OK to put some feral stuff in there, as well as OOC (which now will be something every druid build will take, as it procs off spells). But in most builds you will not have the points left to go for Master Shapeshifter. Think about it: Most builds can only use one aspect of this talent, and have to spend 5 points to get it. In PvE, Natural Shapeshifter is useless ballast.
Now you can put 2 points in Naturalist and 5 in Natural Shapeshifter/Master Shapeshifter for 2% more damage and 4% crit, or just 5 points in Naturalist and gain 10% more damage. To get both, you need 10 points.
Also, if compared to other crit chance increasing talents: 1 for 5% via Leader of the Pack, 3 for 6% via Sharpened Claws. The 5 points for 4% just don't measure up.
I hope they will put some more work into that part of the tree.


I am really looking forward to the "new" feral druid and think the raiding DPS build is pretty solid as it is. Blizzard should put some work into our rotation and in Master Shapeshifter, however. Another look at the tier 2 talents would not hurt as well, as there is nothing for a raid DPS build in there.

Next: Feral PvP

Blogging Is Hard

Well, for me, at least.

Why?

I tend to be too thorough. Currently I have 2 post that I am working on. I wanted to write a little about the new DPS and tank rotations we will use in Wrath. After playing around a bit, I noticed that finding the optimal rotation will be difficult, so I started developing a spreadsheet to do that. Now I find out that I will have to do quite a bit of programming to get something that is halfway useful. This is not a problem, I am a software developer after all.

But taking 2 weeks per blog post is somewhat long, and is not the frequency I aim for. As an avid reader of several blogs I can attest that readers want posts in short and regular intervals.

Probably I should split up my posts.

How do other WoW-bloggers that are doing a lot of theorycrafting handle this problem? Do you write smaller posts that often link to other posts to explain details? Or do you craft very complete and thorough articles that have much more time between them?

Not that anyone is reading this.
(Isn't that the whole point of blogging? To pretend people do.)

Feral Swiftness Indoors

Yes, it's true!

Class designer Koraa responded to a post on the US forums asking for Feral Swiftness to be active outdoors with "Seems reasonable to me. Done =]". Another great thing coming with WotLK to look forward to.