With the release of Wrath of the Lich King looming on the “soon” horizon, many players find themselves looking for ways to keep themselves busy. Here are 12 steps to ensure you’re as prepared as possible for stepping foot on the shores of Northrend. (Hint: buy warm boots)
People love to speculate. Whether it’s oil, futures, gold, or changes to our favorite game, we love to scry the future using dubious methods that range from rolling the bones to data mining. Me? It gives me hives. Okay, not really, but I hate speculating. Why? Because I could be wrong. It’s odd, yes, but that idea that I really don’t know keeps me from wanting to get crazy with preliminary information simply because I know how often I have been wrong. Assumptions are funny that way. Blogging isn’t exactly held to a high standard, let’s be frank, but one thing we try to do here at R4L is ensure that we aren’t just talking out of our knotholes. Even when we are.
That said, it’s hard not to want to know what’s going on and what the loudmouths in the blogosphere like me think about it. So here it is, commentary from a solitary bear in the woods about what may or may not be. Speaking as your unsolicited ursine seer, these are the Feral-relevant points I’ve found.
New Druid Spells
Lock Jaw
Finishing move that stuns the target and deals damage. Lasts longer per combo point: x points: x+1 seconds (level 75)
Maybe all the BC crying about Druid stunlocks are on their way to fruition. I like this. A lot.
Feral Talents
King of the Jungle
While Enraged in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form, your damage is increased by 5/10/15%, and your Tiger’s Fury ability also instantly restores 20/40/60 Energy.
I rarely, if ever, use Enrage. The temporary armor reduction has never sat well with me. It’s a personal choice, I know a lot of Druids that use Enrage frequently to give them the up-front rage they need to hold aggro. I just shift a lot. I start almost every pull in caster form with a Moonfire, then shift to Dire Bear. Regardless, this is nothing but a buff for Bears and could be really nice in PvP. The Tiger’s Fury portion of the ability is, perhaps, the most interesting one. The verbiage is loose enough I can’t quite tell if Tiger’s Fury’s energy restoration only fires during Enrage or if it’s a passive addition to Tiger’s Fury in general when picking up this talent. Either way, Tiger’s Fury suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
edit: as has been pointed out, Enrage is Bear-only. Disregard the talking out of my backside.
Nurturing Instinct
Changed from 50/100% Agility as +Healing to 35/70%.
I never use this. If I specced for some serious PvP I might… then again, if I specced for serious PvP I’d be Resto.
Primal Aggression
Increases damage done by your Maul and Shred attacks on bleeding targets by 2/4/6/8/10%, and increases the critical strike chance of your Ferocious Bite ability on bleeding targets by 10/20/30/40/50%.
This is worth it for the Shred bonus alone. If you ever do DPS in a group, this is fantastic. The addition to Maul is nice for the aggro, and possibly for PvP. The latter part of the talent is interesting, and I can only see it as a way to encourage the use of Ferocious Bite as a finisher now that they’ve realized none of us use it outside of soloing.
Challenging Roar
Cooldown changed to 3 min (down from 10).
This would be really cool if Warriors didn’t get it too. I won’t complain, however.
Maul
Description changed to “A strong attack that increases melee damage by x and causes a high amount of threat.”
Ooh, a verbiage change! Goodie!
Predatory Strikes
Increases your melee attack power in Cat, Bear, Dire Bear and Moonkin Forms by 50%/100%/150% of your level and 7%/14%/20% of any attack power on your equipped weapon.
More scalability, I assume. As we level this talent gets worse and worse, but perhaps the latter part of the talent will make it more worthwhile. That alone will already outstrip what we get from the first part of the talent. Overall, a very good thing.
Ferocious Bite, Rip
Damage values changed.
As I don’t know the values, I can’t really comment.
Primal Precision
Changed from 30/60% energy return on failed finisher to 40/80%.
Interesting talent…I like it! VERY nice for times when you aren’t Hit and Expertise-capped.
Berserk – Changed
Old: Removes all Stun, Fear, Snare and Movement Impairing Effects and increases your energy regeneration rate by 100% while in Cat Form, and increases your total health by 20% while in Bear Form. After the effect ends, the health is lost. Effect lasts 20 seconds.
New: Reduces the energy cost of your Cat Form abilities by 50% while in Cat Form, increases your total health by 30%, and causes your Mangle (Bear) and Maul abilities hit up to 3 maximum targets while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form. Berserk instantly clears all effects which cause loss of control of your character, and makes you immune to them for the duration. Lasts 20 sec.
I won’t comment on the old version, just the new. This is nice. The ability to wipe Fear or Mind Control and be immune for a few seconds is something we’ve needed for a long time, something that will keep us in the running for those MT spots. The Cat bonuses are nice. The Bear swipe-effect is neat, but could be problematic with nearby CC so the jury’s still out on that. The health bonus is like a sweet sweet topping on a talent already full of delicious.
Restoration Talents
Master Shapeshifter
Grants an effect which lasts while the Druid is within the respective shapeshift form. (Bear Form: +2%/4% Physical Damage) (Cat Form: +2%/4% Critical Strike Chance) (Moonkin Form: +2%/4% Spell Damage) (Tree Form: +2%/4% Healing)
The only new Resto talent is worth looking at. If you can squeeze this in, it comes after Natural Shapeshifter. I’ve always liked Natural Shapeshifter, less for powershifting and more because I’m in and out of Bear a lot when I tank, and even more when I PvP. The reduction in cost has always made this worthwhile. Now there’s this juicy little tidbit that helps not only your tanking, but also your DPS in Cat Form. So yeah… snag this if you can fit it in. I wouldn’t call it crucial yet, but it sure is tasty.
General Changes Affecting Ferals
Entangling Roots can now be used indoors as well.
OMG… wow. Good for all Druids regardless of spec.
Base damage of Maul, Rake and Ravage has been increased.
Yay! Not super-fantastic, but a nice change.
Demoralizing Roar now removes more attack power than before.
Okay. I only ever use it for the teensie bit of aggro now and again anyway.
Soothe Animal is now instant cast.
Has anyone issued an Amber Alert for this ability yet? I can’t remember what it looks like.
Tiger’s Fury no longer costs Energy, but now has a 30 second cooldown.
In and of itself, this change still doesn’t make the ability useful. The cooldown means you’re still going 3 seconds between useful abilities and only 4.5 seconds (at best) of the Tiger’s Fury is usable. Talented, however, Tiger’s Fury may find a spot back on my bar.
Hurricane cooldown has been removed.
O.o Interesting. I don’t use Hurricane that often except for gimmick pulls, but maybe you Restos and Balance types use it more. Either way, it’s a nice change.
Frenzied Regeneration now only has one rank. Frenzied Regeneration will now restore 0.1% of your max health per rage instead.
In Bear Form, running only Mark of the Wild, I have 16,974 health. That’s what… 170 health per tick? Right now it’s giving 250 per tick. Now, obviously, health pools are likely to be significantly larger come the expansion, but let’s face it: that means that this ability will be just as dismal then as it looks to be now. As it stands it’s only used when there are no other options and rage is plentiful. Potting macros work better. Maybe there will be another way to scale this at release but as written, this’ll see less use than it does in its current form.
Ferocious Bite’s damage for extra energy now scales with attack power.
Hmmm… I am starting to think they want us to use Ferocious Bite.
Nature’s Grasp can now be used indoors as well.
Very nice change. Enhanced indoor Druid CC. Finally.
Brambles now gives your Thorns and Treants a 5/10/15% chance to daze the target for 3 seconds when dealing damage in addition to it’s old effect.
Thorns? Hmmm…nice for PvP, that’s for sure, and a dazed target runs slower even in PvE so it could be helpful in controlling runners if you can fit it in. I don’t currently see an elegant way to do so, but I’m sure the talent trees still need to be revised before release.
Omen of Clarity is now a passive effect instead of a self-cast buff.
Wow! For this alone I could keep playing. *falls to knees to praise Blizzard gods*
Feral Charge is now available in Cat Form as well.
Rocket Kitteh! This looks to be a lot of fun. Shadowstep for cats! Sorta. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been trailing behind someone in PvP barely out of combat range. Maybe this will occasionally allow me to grab one of them. Of course, they may just turn around and kill me, but hey, we Druids like to live on the edge.
Improved Mark of the Wild has been reduced to a 2 point talent, increasing the effect of Mark of the Wild by 20/40%.
I still wouldn’t take this over Furor. Besides, if you take it you’ll have to do the buffing.
Survival of the Fittest’s effect has been doubled.
Okay, this really throws me. Doubled? So… we won’t need Defense gear… AT ALL? I have to be misreading this. Phae! Pinch me!
Mangle (Bear) now increases the damage of your Maul ability instead of the Shred ability.
This is both a practical change, and a somewhat disappointing one. With a Bear tank I could generally ignore Mangling and just use Shred like it was going out of style. Still, since I mostly tank, I like the Maul damage buff. A minor downturn to Cat raid DPS, perhaps… very minor.
I’m going to have to go visit the pages for the other classes to get an idea whether this is — overall — a buff or if it just keeps us in the running. I do know, for instance, that Rogues can now Sap kitties and bears. That will hurt in PvP if they can catch you. Warriors, as I mentioned earlier, also get a reduced cooldown on their AOE taunt, so it’s not really a buff for either of us when you come right down to it. The implication is that we’re going to need greater AOE threat management.
Point being: without context many of the changes are neither good nor bad, they’re just… changes. Still, several of these are exciting and I’m looking forward to the expansion.
Oh, and Phae has threatened me with bodily harm if I don’t post more. Expect to see photos of my mangled bear carcass soon.
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Hooray for Currant! We’ve missed you.
Incidentally, someone needs to badger Andridge into adding rockets to his cat form model edits…
Since Enrage is only useable in (dire) bear form, I’m pretty sure the talent simply has two different effects based on which form you’re in. If you’re in bear form and hit Enrage, you get the damage increase. If you’re in cat form and you hit Tiger’s Fury, you get the energy back. I highly doubt that the talent will require you to go bear form, hit Enrage, then go cat form and use Tiger’s Fury within the few seconds that Enrage is active.
I suppose it’s possible that WotLK will make it more attractive for Ferals to shift forms back and forth but it seems counter-productive and would really only be useful for DPS ferals, as a bear tank shifting to cat form would be a Really Bad Idea™.
about Tiger’s Fury. “In and of itself, this change still doesn’t make the ability useful. ” well.. perhaps not alone, but keep in mind bonus from King of The Jungle “your Tiger’s Fury ability also instantly restores 20/40/60 Energy” to be honest Ill go for this talent to get some extra energy for 1% boss ‘DPS like hell’ situations, and shred, shred, shred after Lock Jaw.
more interesting is ‘Infected Wounds’ talents.
I think that they HAVE TO and they WILL change this talent.
because now they use this talent on every important feral skill (except Lacerate).
that means that after a 10 seconds, every enemy should have 5 wounds stacked.. so -50% to attack speed.
can you imagine that?
me neither.
however this is skill from tier 9, so is just too high for typical PvP only (IMHO).
so they will nerf this skill and make usable in raids (Im not talking about Supremus fight, but if I could infect Kaels adds this would be handy), or they will move it to lower tier and make it pure PvP.
Reading the tooltip on Frenzied Regen it converts 1% PER RAGE or per point of rage. Since it converts 10 per tick you are looking at 1670 per tick which is much much more. If that holds true you can effectively heal yourself to full off of a full rage bar. I may actually use this ability now
I think I’m gonna need a game pad to play. Seems like Blizzard has added 2-3 more “useful” buttons for both Cat and Bear. Yikes! I think I was happier when I only needed 2-3 buttons per form with an occasional tap on 3-4 other buttons (FFF, Demo, Growl, FB, etc.).
I agree the wording of SotF seems odd. I suspect there must be some new game mechanic changes going on otherwise this talent seems a bit IMBA. Maybe blizzard is making a new skill (other than +def) that we will need to collect? I thought I read that +res will not longer work outside of “PvP”, so that might be another indicator that we will see a new game mechanic for PvE. Which, I hope means PvE Ferals will no longer be expected to PvP to fill-in 2-3 equipment slots (shoulders, gloves, etc.).
I’m wondering what is replacing those 3 unused talent point slots in the first tier of the Restoration tree, since Imp. MotW will only be a 2 pt. talent. Not that I mind Furor, but it is of little value (re: none) to a Restoration Druid who plays dmg caster when soloing, not to mention Balance Druids themselves.
As for Soothe Animal, I believe its in the Balance section of your spellbook.
I think the change was to reflect the Priest ability, Soothe Mind, which has been instant cast for a long time, if I’m not mistaken. Its the same effect, but affects humanoids, so its inherently more worthwhile 99.9% of the time. I would have been happier if the ability were changed to some kind of a threat dump for Balance to use.
As for SotF, I would guess that Blizzard has decided to make its job a little simpler in terms of itemization, and perhaps to make Feral Druids more viable in the sense that less gear swap is needed to be a viable off tank, therefore allowing raidng Ferals who aren’t necessarily tanking to play their role more effectively on the fly, as opposed to DPSing in tanking gear or offtanking in DPS gear. I don’t know though, that may make absolutely no sense, since I have never run as Feral above lvl 30.
@Yggdrasil: Good thought on the SotF change.
I also noticed that the Feral talent tree appears (though it is tough to truly know until you see how the new skills work into the mix) to force you to decide between Cat _or_ Bear talents in a few cases. Whereas with the current tree, one spec will give you both without affecting the other. So, maybe the SotF change is a way to lessen this pain???
“The addition to Maul is nice too, especially for building aggro and for those times in Cat when you can’t be behind your target.”
I think you’re thinking of Mangle. The maul change will only affect bear form.
I thought I read that +res will not longer work outside of “PvP”
OMG! Where? Soooo good if true! I hate that anything in the world environment I have to wear arena/BG gear for.
Thanks for all the comments!
@ ketsugi: Um, yeah. I feel dumb. Excellent catch there.
@ SuraBear: Yeah, that was a typo I thought I caught but that went through anyway. I’ll fix it. Another good catch.
As for the itemization, I’m still looking forward to seeing how it looks once that becomes available.
@Itsnoteasy: That’s the first thing I thought, too!
@Ketsugi: I also doubt that WotLK will encourage shifting from one form to another. From what I’ve read, it seems that Ferals no longer regenerate mana when they’re in Bear Form/Cat Form, making powershifting a lot more difficult.
@Warscreamer: Yeah, Infected Wounds is pretty ridiculously good in its current form, especially when you consider that the 50% attack speed reduction is likely to affect spellcasting speed, too, since melee and spell haste are being combined. Feral Druids would have an undispellable, physical Curse of Tongues. Of course, maybe this is revenge for all those kitty cats I’ve hibernated in BGs…
@Artorin: I’m afraid that I don’t follow. The description for Frenzied Regeneration that I’ve found reads, “Frenzied Regeneration now only has one rank. Frenzied Regeneration will now restore 0.1% of your max health per rage instead.” So at a rate of consumption of 10 Rage/sec, wouldn’t that mean 1% of your health every second or 10% total?
@NotAnIssue: I’m actually considering how I will have to adjust my Nostromo layout to include all these new and amazing skills. I already have most keys serving double duty via macros with a CTRL modifier. I might have to bite the bullet and add an ALT modifier for the expansion.
And I definitely hope that you’re right about Ferals no longer having to PvP to get gear for PvE … especially if Infected Wounds goes live. ^_^
@Yggdrasil: As of now, they’ve changed Nature’s Focus (the talent that prevents healing spell interruption from damage) to a 3 point talent and moved it into Tier 1. This is a very nice change to reduce some of the over-the-top bloat in the Restoration tree.
Soothe Animal is probably going to be helpful in a wider array of scenarios since they’ve indicated that there will be more mobs for us to Hibernate in WotLK. It also affects Dragonkin now, which is a nice change.
Use enrage every time its up unless you’re already at max rage! The armor deduction is calculated from your base (caster form) armor level, then applied after the dire bear multiplier, so its essentially a drop in the bucket, while giving you the extra rage to continue showing everyone who that real threat monsters are in the tanking world.
<—Phail. I missed the decimal point on that thought it was 1% per rage which would be 10% per tick. 1% health per tick really is stupid if that is the case. The hunter’s spirit bond heals more then this for free….
@ Phaelia:
Great! I hated the huge cost of 5 talent points for it, particularly when the only ability affected in ToL is Regrowth, and “Dreamstate” builds didn’t really have the spare talent points available to make use of it either.
Um…No need for defense gear…so i can slot everything out with stam gems…I think i might have to stay feral in the xpac now…Phae you’re going to have to try harder to sway me to resto!!!! OMG and the Omen of clarity thing…I cheered, i think maybe blizzard is finally making druids a little more useful as DPS and in pvp from what it looks like, i should hope so.
@Currant: Thanks for putting this info together, and sharing your thoughts. It was a lot of fun to read.
Regarding the Survival of the Fittest change, if it really does remove the need for +def gear, the first thought I had was that it might be another example of what Blizzard is trying to do with simplifying item stats (and reducing how much gear we need for different roles). Mostly, this has been seen in the form of unifying gear for physical/spell dps and healing (spell power, hit, crit, etc…) and allowing talents to boost what you need. This feral talent change might be intended to do the same for tanking: +def is one of the major dividing factors between “bear gear” and “cat gear,” so perhaps this change (along with others in the talents and itemization) will allow more overlap in feral tanking and dps gear. I doubt they’d go far enough for us to only ever need one piece for every slot, but maybe we won’t need complete sets for each. Or, as others suggested, Blizzard may just have some new vile trick up their sleeves… speaking of which:
@Phaelia: Druids will no longer regenerate mana in Bear Form/Cat Form?
Oh, man… this would be a pretty harsh change, from my perspective. I think it would really mess up the fun dymanic of playing a feral druid (particularly when soloing). It would also greatly increase the chances of getting “stuck” in caster form. If this really happens, I hope they have a good reason for changing something so fundamental. It would be really disheartening if it was another PvP-driven change to punish Resto Druids in the Arenas. I think this is the first piece of Alpha info I’m really bummed to hear. :’( Most of the things I’ve read are all about increasing the fun of the game. This one seems contrary to that.
@Yggdrasil: I think they’ve done a LOT to alleviate the gross bloat of the Resto tree. Making Nature’s Focus 3 points and moving it into Tier 1, reducing Imp Mark of the Wild to just two points. Great, great changes and they let us dip a little more into Balance than we might be able to otherwise.
@Abagoo: Nice avatar!
I have to admit that the Feral changes sound pretty nice. Maybe YOU’LL have to convince ME to stay Resto! Haha! Not really. Tanking … /shudder
@Tone: Great, great point about the motivation behind removing the need for “defense” gear as a means to unify gear. Let’s face it: how many specs/classes need leather with +defense on it?
I’m also not 100% sure about the mana regen thing, but it wouldn’t surprise me AT ALL as a way to nerf Resto Druids who bunker down in Bear Form to protect themselves from mana drains. Drain-casters have been complaining for a while that we shouldn’t get to regenerate mana if it can’t be affected by a drain. I agree with you: BOO!!