Comments on: “Just keep shifting”

By: Hammaer

Hammaer — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:03:38 +0000

Primal Precision question: is the 10 expertise really worth 2 points for bear tanking? Given that all ferals will be desperately hoarding points, is that one we can skip? IMO, Shredding Attacks is more useful for the cheaper lacerates, no?

Also, question on King of the Jungle – if I read it right, you can use Tiger’s Fury for 30 energy to get back 60 energy? Does that not seem odd to others?

By: Bludgeoness

Bludgeoness — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:36:27 +0000

Another thought about primal tenacity. We are losing a lot of armor, so we will be relying a lot more on dodge. If you get stunned, you might need that 30% reduction to all damage. Also that reduction is magic damage too. Odd that we get a magic damage reduction which we normally don’t have. I’ll take it until it gets nerfed!

By: Bludgeoness

Bludgeoness — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:15:51 +0000

I sorta disagree wrt to King of the Jungle. My thinking is that the new way to pull trash will be Roots (now that we can do that), Moonfire something, then shift bear, enrage, and start combat. If you are really worried, pop barkskin (since you can do that now). The initial threat generation is going to be awesome. Otherwise, you shift bear and only have ten rage to work with. So then you have to get pummeled a little bit before you can serious generate much threat. Either way involves getting early heals. I would prefer to get those heals when I can also make sure that everything plans on eating me and not the healer.

Also, improved mangle seems odd. Either spend 0 or 3 points in it (I’ll probably spend 3 like you). Otherwise you get hit by the GCD anyways. So, you lose a lacerate to mangle once more. Well not really lost, just pushed later in the chain. Helps also with trash because then you can spread that Mangle love around sooner.

I’m also going to take berserk, Honestly I never have threat issues on bosses, at least not compared with trash. And for bosses that summon adds it will be nice to mangle the crap out of them the way we used to swipe. AOE tanking is going to be sweet.

Apologies if someone said some of these above, I didn’t read every comment.

By: Beathooven

Beathooven — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:16:54 +0000

WTS Goblin Jumper Cables XL.
They made me, as an engineering druid, special. That’s right, first death of the run I could res you, and still have Battleres up.
Guess I’ll give them to the warrior who I often lend them to if I haven’t used Rebirth.

By: Erthshade

Erthshade — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:40:44 +0000

I think I’m only going to spend 60 points (pretty much exactly the same as your build BBB minus OOC for now, I took my level 80 projection and figured out what could wait) until I see how my rage and threat generation go.

By: Cy

Cy — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:03:57 +0000

B³, yeah, I could go for that too. Actually kinda makes more sense that way.

Either way, I’ve got another thing to harp on my favorite bear tank about when we wipe. We tease him about everything. Kind of a guild thing. I always /stink him before the first pull of every raid/instance, as well as threaten to give him a bath when we’re done.

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:57:02 +0000

Cy, I’d rather go the other way. I’d rather give every Druid an OOC res, and then make the battle rez an ability that you could reduce the cooldown of around tier 3 of the resto tree. Maybe return to base 30 minutes for all classes, and then let a tier 3 reduce it by 5/10/15 minutes, with a proportional increase in amount of health and mana you return with.

I think tier 3 in resto, with 3 points to fully invest, would balance the 15 minutes, and increase the utility of returning when you ahve more health and mana in the middle of a big fight, which is where you use it most anyway.

But that’s just my two cents.

By: ARA

ARA — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:53:07 +0000

Fantastic!

I forgot to mention, a druid over at tankspot created a talent & gear analysis: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/40464-3-0-feral-druid-pre-wrath-leveling-guide.html

Its a very useful writeup, including new gear options now that we dont need defense, some of which can be purchased with badges. I’m also going to regem everything tomorrow, and thank god the price of gems has fallen considerably.

By: Cy

Cy — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:38:45 +0000

I’m sure I’ll be in the minority here, but I have been slightly against all druids having a normal rez. It’s the only class that can do all four roles in game (tank, ranged DPS, melee DPS, heal) which is fine, since that flexibility has always had a few drawbacks.

Now don’t get me wrong — I want all of my healers to have a non-combat rez. I think that’s essential, and I don’t understand why there are people out there who disagree with that.

I just don’t think it should be a baseline ability for all druids. Maybe talent it in the resto tree, or put a cooldown on the base spell and talent the cooldown off with a point spent a tier or two into the resto tree. *Maybe the cooldown does exist and such, I’m going off of a very short memory of druid changes in beta, since I have little reason to follow them except for curiosity.)

Anyway, I definitely prefer it being baseline to druids not getting it at all. It just seems like the dev team took the easy way out with this approach, and now the druid class seems a little less unique and more like every other hybrid. But every class seems to be losing a bit of that as time goes on.

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:26:36 +0000

ARA, I figure tomorrow I’ll put up a post specifically asking for replies with your new tanking stories, and I’ll put a link to it on the side. Because I will love to see how folks either find ways to have fun, or find things that they don’t like or tips to share once these changes go live.

Having the gear change is going to throw all tanking gear guides out the window for one thing, so I’m looking forward to messing around.