It’s been a bit since things have been implemented. Time to throw down my thoughts on the Gathering professions.

So, there are three Gathering professions; Herbalism, Mining and Skinning.

Each one, at each level of skill, grants one neat extra ability.

Mining grants a passive Health increase. (Toughness +300 at 375 skill)

Skinning grants a passive Critical Strike bonus. (Master of Anatomy +15 Critical Strike bonus at 375 skill)

Herbalism grants a self-cast Heal over Time spell that does not trigger the global cooldown, can be cast in forms, and costs no Mana. (Lifeblood 1200 health over 5 seconds at 375 Skill)

Now, my Druid is an Engineer/Herbalist.

No, please, don’t ask me to explain why this happened. I’m not sure I even know anymore.

The point is, I can farm Herbs, and also gather Motes with my Extractor. If anything, Engineering is a second gathering Profession for me that also let’s me make neat stuffs.

I have to say, looking at each Gathering profession, applying the results and looking at gear and stat levels in Wrath of the Lich King, that I think that the decision as to whether you take Mining or Herbalism as a feral Druid tank is going to be interesting.

On the one hand, the extra Health is always on, and providing a nice benefit. At level 450 skill, that will be +500 Health. If you raid a lot, it is likely you have multiple Healers watching your back. You might very well feel that the Health will be more beneficial in the long run, increasing the effect such things as Survival Instincts and Frenzied Regeneration have on you. It’s all trickle down, and the more Health you have, the more other things it affects in positive ways.

But I’m going to go against the common thought on this one. I’m going to throw my money behind Herbalism as being the one that is, long term, the best overall choice.

The Heal over Time effect, Lifeblood, is very powerful in a world where we can only use one Potion in a single fight, no matter the fight’s duration, and where Ghostcrawler has said that instead of challenging a Tanks’ ability to hold aggro, they are instead going to task the healers with long mana-draining fights.

Lifeblood restores 1200 Health over 5 seconds, and generates corresponding threat, at the current skill max of 375. In Wrath, with a max skill of 450, it’ll go up to 2000 Health over 5 seconds. It has a three minute cooldown.

It works in forms… it works in Stealth… it works while flying in our Flight Form. But it does not scale with +Healing/Spellpower.

In raids, like I said, I think it’s going to be tight. The extra Health from Toughness is a nice big chunk.

But if you 5 man tank or solo tank as much as or more than you raid tank, then I think Lifeblood is just better.

In a 5 man, having only one healer, if something happens to silence them or take them out early, having your own HoT on a 3 minute cooldown can be amazing. Sometimes, you just need to hold out for a minute or two until the Healer can be rezzed and regain some mana. Or run back in. 

If you’re soloing, well, it’s even more of a life saver, obviously.

Here, I’ll give you a pair of examples.

We ran a couple regular Magisters Terrace runs last week, with me as the main tank.

We didn’t really plan on using CC. We were going to have fun, and since on the first run we had two Hunters, and on the second I had another feral tank with me, I figured that if we want something kept busy we had two pets to throw at it (Sent em after the warlock every time, damn that warlock went down fast). On the second run, we had two tanks, what the heck do you need CC for?

Anyway, on the first run, we went to take down the first boss, and while pulling the first group of trash in the bosses’ chamber, clustered around the crystal, one of the pets ran wild, grabbing not only the second group, but then running into the middle and pulling the two trash there, plus the boss, all while we were still outside the chamber working through the first trash group.

The great big wall activated, locking us out from affecting the green crystals the boss drinks from when he runs out of mana, so yeah. Whoops!

An army of trash, and the boss.

I had the immediate thought, “Well, that’s a wipe”, but I figured, as long as we’re here, might as well kill as much trash as possible, right?

At this point, I’ve settled on a routine of using Lifeblood early and often, Barkskin whenever it is up, and Survival Instincts/Frenzied Regeneration only when things go belly up.

I also carry Health Potions and Charged Crystal Focus whenever I can.

So I pop Barkskin and Lifeblood, Demoralyzing Roar, Swipe and Mangle and Maul, most especially Maul since the new Glyph lets it hit two targets, and it does a LOT of buffed damage now. I get everyone on me as much as possible.

Pretty quickly, everyone died but me and Barrhona, the Paladin that was healing the run. Not much I can do to stop the boss chain-exploding at full mana over and over.

I used every trick in the book to keep aggro on me and whack stuff, and really focused on the trash and only tagged the boss to keep him off Barrhona. My attention was reducing the numbers of trash for as long as we lived.

Barrhona did some great healing, but I never saw him dip below 2000 mana. And although I did trigger Survival and Frenzied midway through the fight, the fact is that the trash was all dead, and the boss was down to around 10k health before I mildly inquired in vent to see if any of our other members ever planned on rejoining us, since you can zone back in and come all the way to where we were, on the far side of the door.

So we ate every one of the bosses full force explosions, because we had no way to interrupt him drinking. In the end, he was out of mana and forced to whack on me.

And I attribute our longevity to being able, during a long long fight, to pop Barkskin and Lifeblood every time the cooldown is up. Well, and to Barrhona’s healing.

“Ah!” I hear you say… “But you had a Paladin healing you! That just means the Pally kicked ass, not that Lifeblood was your savior!”

Yes, I’ll grant you that. But that brings me to example number two.

We were in the second run, with a Shadow Priest, a Shaman Healer, another feral Druid, a Mage, and me. Names are withheld to protect the guilty.

We were squared off against Priestess Delrissa, and her PvP cohorts.

I equipped my tanking gear, which is light on Hit but heavy on longevity. And we kicked it off.

Our first goal was to kill the Priestess and get rid of her heals, and then move down from there. We had the rogue, the mage, the warlock, and the saurian warrior adds.

We got the Priestess down, and were working on the second kill when party members started dying. We got the second one dead just as our last team member went down… except for me.

I was facing the Mage and the Rogue, and the Warlock had been sheeped off the pull but would break any second.

Since I’m a Druid, I fear no sheepage. The stunlock of the Rogue, though, that I fear. So I go stun the Rogue in bear and shift to banzai in cat form with Berserk and Mangle and finish the rogue off just as the warlock breaks sheep and joins the fun. I shifted back to bear and turned to the Warlock. 

The Mage has been pounding away, so his mana is getting low. I figure the Warlock is still full, and can fear me bad, so I’d rather take his ass down as fast as I can first.

I turn on the warlock, and it’s a pure health race to see if the two of them can beat me down before I can get it to one on one odds. And my health is hovering right at the 500 - 1500 mark, up and down, with Lifeblood and Improved Leader of the Pack making all the difference.

The Warlock goes down, all my abilities are on cooldown, I’m at less than 500 Health, I turn to the Mage, Feral Charge him, and he Ice Blocks.

He Ice Blocks!

Needless to say, I shifted and threw down all my heals on myself, and it was over. Sucker!

A longevity fight, against three opponents. If I had 300 extra Health, it wouldn’t have helped that much. I would have been toast.

Having Lifeblood every three minutes, however, makes a massive difference when the fight goes sour and you’re on your own, or the Healer is silenced and you just need to hold out another couple seconds to get your Berserk/Mangle x10 thrown in there.

There ya go, my opinion on Gathering Professions.

I would never recommend taking a profession just for the extra buff. But IF you have the characters to allow you to shuffle professions around, and the free time, and you’re interested in trying it, I can assure you it is pretty sweet. 

I understand Moonkin love it since they can cast it in forms without a mana cost, too!

So, last night, the first full night after Patch 3.0.2, I took my nice new Bear Tanking Talent spec for a drive.

Yes, it has Berserk. Yes, I decided to try it out without Omen of Clarity. Just FYI.

The location for this test run?

Heroic Magister’s Terrace.

Why?

Because I’ve never done it on Heroic and gotten past the Priestess PvP fight before.

Well, okay, so we only ever went in there on Heroic once, and ran out of time for the evening before getting the Priestess down. It’s not like we have tried for months with epic fail. Too busy playing a ton of alts and doing Kara, really.

Still, it counts as not having been done by me before. So by gosh and by golly, Heroic MgT! Who’s up for it?

Turns out Cassie was up for it with her new Combat Swords spec (as suggested by Chase, the Rogue columnist for WoW Insider), Graimerin with his Paladin and a fresh new Healing spec, Elystia and her Mage, and Doodlebug on his Über-Warlock Doozie and a Destro spec.

Cassie and I updated our addons, mostly Omen, Recount, Cartographer, and Fubar and all it’s little joys. We hurriedly arranged our buttons and checked for new spells at the trainer.

I gladly blew 24 gold to get my new Revive out-of-combat ressurect spell, and the new Nature’s Grasp that we get without having to invest in the Balance tree.

I then equipped the Major Glyph of Maul that Ishvi made me, and bought a Major Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration off the AH for 8 gold.

Let me show you how I set up my button bar for the run.

Okay, I move with the mouse, and use the numbers to activate attacks. So, with a new layout, there was some hesitation on my part when doing it that way.

On that button bar, the way I lay things out is with an eye for ‘opening moves’ on the far left of the bottom bar. Then, as I go from openers to common abilities, I move from left to center. I linger in the center, going back on forth on frequent abilities. The less repetitious an ability becomes from there, the farther to the right it goes.

So you can see on the bottom, I have Feral Charge and Enrage, my two main opening moves, on the far left. Then I put Frenzied Regeneration conveniently right next to Demoralizing Roar, then Feral Faerie Fire, then the 4 core attack abilities, Mangle, Lacerate, Maul and Swipe. Then I finish it with Growl, Bash and Challenging Roar.

Before 3.0.2 my attacks were laid out in order of GCD and threat priority, but I am still measuring the new speed of Mangle, the effects of Maul, and how much I like Swipe. These may change a bit.

On the top button bar, I start with my favored land mount (it always goes there on all my toons), followed by the core abilities that are now shared by all forms, with an eye towards optimizing my Bear bar synergy.

I have Tiger’s Fury positioned in kind of the ‘red-headed stepchild’ position, because I never used it in Kitty but it’s supposed to be buffed now so I plan on testing it out. I then have Survival Instincts directly above Frenzied Regeneration, for the synergy between them.

Frenzied Regeneration now heals over time based on your max health at the time it is cast, healing .3% of max health per point of Rage, at the rate of 10 Rage per second for 10 seconds. So, 3% of max health per second for 10 seconds. Survival Instincts boosts your max health temporarily by 30%. So I pop Survival Instincts to bring my health in Bear from 18,000 to 23,400… and then pop Frenzied Regeneration which heals over time based on a max health of 23,400, or 702 health per second, 7020 health total. They go together like Rum and Coke. If I were to just pop Frenzied Regen without SI, it would heal for 540 per second, instead. Hey, a difference of 1620 health is a Potion all by itself when things are tight!

After Survival Instincts, I have the core abilities that I wanted handy, right over my Mangle through Swipe set; Berserk, Barkskin, Lifeblood (the Heal Over Time you get with 375 Herbalism), Super Healing Potions, Charged Crystal Foci, Healthstones, Tanking Trinkets, and of course then we drift out towards the edges again with Entangling Roots and Nature’s Grasp.

Everyone’s got their own style of doing things, and I sure don’t want to come across like I think this is the best. Not hardly. People use tons of different mods to arrange buttons, and all sorts of different play techniques. Lost of folks put everything on hotkeys and would never dream of clicking a button.

This is just my way of doing things that I’ve used for a long time, and I like it.

Anyway, we strolled on into Heroic Magister’s, and I was excited to see how it would go.

Boy, did I stink it up in there for the first couple pulls.

The first thing I noticed?

My Rage seems to decay a LOT faster than it used to. I mean, eyeblink and it’s gone.

Used to be, I’d shift, pop Enrage, say to go ahead and Sheep pull, and have no problems picking up whatever came running. I was so used to never having a problem, I damn well forgot just how much Threat a Sheep pull causes a Mage.

Well, at least three seperate times last night Elystia died simply because I said to pull, and I didn’t have enough Rage to blow out a candle by the time her cast time was done and the group came running.

Once I actually got something fighting me, the Rage came fast and easy, but the first few seconds of a pull require timing and care.

The next thing, of course, is that Swipe is lovely. But so is being able to use Pots, Healthstones, and Crystal Focus whenever we feel like it, or when the Healer is a little busy keeping a squishie alive.

Not to mention being able to pop Survival Instincts and Frenzied Regeneration if the Healer is busy.

And popping Barkskin whenever under attack by more than one mob.

The next thing I noticed was that our Threat generation is quite lovely. I have definitely seen a big spike in Threat output. I was almost… not 100%, but almost, able to keep every Mana Worm on me for the entire AoE fight (the ones you pull right before the second boss), even with Elystia blasting them all out with her AoE. Towards the very end, usually two or three would fly past me to her before they all died, but for the most part Swipe kept the Worms VERY busy, and off the Mage.

Another thing of note, I found that even though Lifeblood is a nice, no Mana cost HoT that we can use in Bear form, I almost never used it. Since it does take a spot on the Global Cooldown, even though I had it I almost never popped it, because Mangle now has such a fast cooldown when fully talented that you just don’t want to waste a Mangle. But I did use it a couple times.

Basically, what I found was, if I wanted a shot of Health, and I was willing to blow the GCD, I was more willing to slam a Healing Potion than trigger a HoT. That may change when tanking easier fights, or longer fights, but on the four-pulls of short frantic duration I frequently was more concerned with insta-Health and throwing the Threat far and wide than on casting HoTs.

Like I said, I made more than my share of mistakes while getting used to having a LOT more toys to play with, and seeing what I liked using where… but one thing that was a hard lesson to internalize, was that Growl has a 20 yard range now.

At least three times, we’d be beating hell out of a group, and the Sheep would finally break, or the Sap would break, and I’d be busy with two mobs and Swiping around, and the mob would run for Graimerin, and I would spin around, and guess what? Feral Charge.

Damnit.

The second time I caight myself doing it, it got annoying. I’m too used to Feral Charge to nail someone in the backfield. I keep forgetting I can just turn around, Growl to get him off the Healer and onto me, and stay right there in place to finish the kill priority before Charging off to pick him up.

It’s far more efficient to stand in place and continue to beat heck out of your opponents, than to go charging off, dragging them all into melee range of the Healer, making the melee DPS chase after you all, and send everyone into Chaos just to pull Threat off.

Duh. TWICE!

No, much better to see the bad guy break and go running, and simply stand in place and pivot if necessary, throw down a long range Growl, and go back to beating the heck out of your primary kill targets. If things take too long, and the mob loses interest in you again, THEN decide if you want to Charge or wait for another Taunt. Geez.

Another thing? Berserk is AMAZING… but it DOES have drawbacks.

First, I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep hammering it home; before you trigger Berserk in Bear form, make damn sure Mangle is OFF cooldown.

When triggered properly, you can spam 10 Mangles one right after the other, BAM BAM BAMx10, right smack in the face of the bad guy. But if you trigger Berserk when Mangle is still on cooldown, from what I’ve seen it looks like it immediately removes the Haste buff you get from being specced fully into Improved Mangle, and you have to wait out the entire remaining old slow cooldown before you can finally start spamming the Berserk Mangles.

I haven’t timed it, but I was watching it close, and that seems to be what is happening. I’ll definitely be testing that out more.

The other drawback to Berserk, is that sometimes you DON’T want your attacks to hit more than your one main target.

We were fighting Kael’thas, and I was tanking him and beating hell out of him, and I decided to pop Berserk and Mangle the unholy heck out of him to fry his little Blood Elf brain before our first floater session with the globes.

And just as I begin to unleash the chain Manglex10 of DOOM, the Phoenix spawns RIGHT ON TOP OF Kael’thas.

Guess what? Birdie took the same ten Mangles… and the casters were never able to kite his butt off me. We lived through that, but Cassie was obviously in melee range and died.

The ‘My attacks hit far and wide” issue wasn’t limited to Berserk. Other times, I intentionally found myself in tight quarters with a Sheep nearby, and I did not dare use Maul, because I have that Glyph equipped that let’s it hit two targets… and I was afraid to break Sheep. Another couple times, I was sure the Sheep was far enough away so I could safely pop Swipe, and broke it anyway. I dearly need to test the exact range limits of Swipe when turned to the side.

Anyway, we blasted through Heroic Magister’s Terrace, we beat everthing up, we struggled a LOT with figuring out the Princess fight, wiping three times, until Cassie sapped the Warlord, Doozie banished the engineer, Elystia Sheeped the Eeherial, and then we all unloaded on the Monk, destroyed him, and then took down the Priestess, and one after another annihilated the last three as they broke CC.

On that fight, the abilities we have simply SHONE, as it was so delightful to be able to pop Survival Instincts, Barkskin, Healing Pots, Healthstones, Nature’s Grasp, and Berserk in Cat form to just survive solo LONG past when I’d normally be picking myself off the floor.

My biggest, most hugest mistake of all, though?

I forgot, as we were doing it, that my Entangling Roots work indoors now. I forgot! We are sitting there discussing CC methods on the damn pull, and I COULD HAVE ENTANGLED ONE!!!!!!111!

Moron. /sigh.

My conclusion?

We can take the concentration we used to devote to keeping track of aggro levels on different mobs and multiple targeting, and apply that concentration towards a ton of wonderful abilities that are designed to keep us alive.

IF I can remember I have the damn things.

Next, I think I’d like to tank a Heroic Shattered Halls.

I’m definitely going to do Magister’s again on Heroic. SOON. It was a lot of fun.

Oh, and since I am in all Badge gear and Kara epics… I think you can rest assured, our armor number reduction has not changed our fundamental capability of effectively tanking a Heroic MgT.

And since most everyone seems to be geared way better than me these days, you ought to be quite, quite excited.

I cannot wait to see what Druids will get up to next. I’m already hearing stories of Whelp pulls in Onyxia’s Lair, and others pulling the eggs on purpose in UBRS looking to get the Leeroy Jenkins achievement, and similar delightful happenings.

Ah, it’s a beautiful day to be a Bear.

Oh, and grats to Cassie on getting the Shard of Contempt! Woohoo!

EDIT! Whoops!

Sorry folks, the screenshot of my UI was posted wrong, and I’ve been swampeda t work so I wasn’t able to even know, let alone fix it. My bad!

Edit again: the unit frame mod I use is X-Perl, I like it a lot, a great all in one mod that you can customize quite well.

The bar I use for quickmarks is called… well… QuickMark.

I know I said I was going to bed… but I tried one last time, and got in.

And respecced and chatted.

Then I went into Zul’Farrak, to the area with all the Scarabs, to taste-test Swipe.

Can you see the shit-eating grin on that Bear?

I think you can!

And just for a little Bear’s eye view of a single Swipe in action…

What do we do, we shift, shift…

What do we do, we shift, shift…

You know, those of you that don’t have kids, and/or haven’t seen Finding Nemo must think I’m crazy sometimes. I love Dory.

Anyway, tomorrow brings changes.

It’s been confirmed that tomorrow brings “The Patch”.

First change… we get an out-of-combat resurrect spell.

Now, seriously… I have heard there are people honestly QQing about this.

Protip: QQ is stupid speak for crying. I guess the QQ is supposed to represent two eyes with tears coming off the bottom. Whatever. Oops, I meant emoticon slang, not stupid. My mistake. *cough*

I have myself personally been on a Shadow Labyrinth run with a Resto-specced Druid as the healer, for a Kara key run, a long time ago. We were about appropriately geared and certainly not overpowered, not by a long shot.

Even though it was a pretty reasonable run, with no outright wipes, we had a single person die on pulls and boss fights pretty dang frequently, especially on the pulls prior to the mind control boss fight.

Having a Resto Druid as the 5 man healer, with only the original long-cooldown battle rez was HELL.

Pull, fight, someone dies, 10 minute wait for the run back. Pull, fight, whew good. Still alive. Pull, fight, someone dies, 10 minute wait for the run back. Over and over.

In the end, I think that one run, from start to Murmur clear, took like three hours. Maybe longer. It was pure Hell. 

Every healer class needs a no-cooldown out of combat resurrection. Period.

As far as the whining, I’ve heard that if Druids get an OOC rez, they either need to lose battle rez, or every other class needs to get one.

Well, keep in mind that I believe that all classes fundamentally should be buffed if there is inequality. You getting new fun stuff does not, in any way, make my character somehow less fun to play. If you reduce what I already have, then you have hurt my fun. If a Dev buffs your class… well, I’m still the same. Same class, same fun. What, I’m supposed to be jealous of you? Oh, please. That is so 9th grade.

But anyway, the Druid battle rez is a unique aspect of the class. Just like the Shaman self-rez, which healing Shamans can Talent to be able to use every 40 minutes. Is that too long of a cooldown? Well, I think that it should be shortened. It certainly wouldn’t hurt me if a Shaman can self-resurrect more often. Sure! Paladins can bubble, and can bubble others to prevent a full on raid wipe. Do Druids get that? No. Are we crying about it? No. Priests kinda get a rock with the “Oh I died, but I got to linger on as an angel for a bit and still heal”, but you know what? A reasonable response is to ask for a Priest BUFF. I think people that get jealous at what other classes get and demand a nerf are silly. 

I swear, I think that all it comes down to is, the whining non-Resto Druids want less competition for 5 man pugs. So get over it.

People get so worked up about whether they will still be wanted in a raid, if their class isn’t a unique and special little snowflake.

Guess what. They are rebalancing everything and removing many gimmicky fights with the stated intention of making it so that every class overlaps on key areas. So, if you aren’t brought on a raid, Blizzard says the only real reason should be that you suck, not your class.

I think that’s hilarious. If any single thing is going to create strife, it is going to be the restructuring that comes when raid leaders in serious raiding guilds examine what key buffs they need for raids, see who can supply them, and then cut people out of runs that used to be a sure thing, because now they can get what they want without having to take someone they hate.

Oooh, there is gonna be some angst.

Moving on….

As of tomorrow, Swipe is supposed to affect unlimited numbers of mobs.

So we get to play around a LOT more.

Tomorrow, I want to hear stories of Feral Druids off-tanking the adds on Illhoof and Swiping them ALL into oblivion, without Warlocks.

Oh sure, if you always have a Warlock or two, that’s fine… but I best not hear anyone say they are passing on Illhoof because they don’t have a Warlock available, when a Feral Druid is in the house.

I think it sounds fun, and I’m looking forward to trying that out just to see if we can rock the joint. Plus, I want to go tank a Heroic Magisters run or three on my Druid, and see how she goes. Our guild Paladins are burnt out on it.

And for a bonus, Threat generation has been buffed, so even with the loss of Salvation, classes are supposed to be able to focus on dealing damage and keeping the tank alive, and spend less time worrying about threat levels.

I’ll believe it when I see it, but doesn’t that sound fun? After all, how many times do you hear someone say “Oh crap, I keep pulling off the tank, what happened? Oh shoot, that’s right, we don’t have a Paladin in the group. Sorry gang! Can I get a rez?”

A lot will change, but remember, my Druid brethren, this is the best possible time for this to happen. We get our new Talent trees, we get new abilities, and we get lots of time for addons to break, and be reborn. Serious raids are mostly shut down, so we have plenty of time to raid existing content, and get used to how what we were doing has changed, before we step up to the new Expansion.

Hold on tight, because tomorrow is going to be a crazy day for everyone.

For the Sidhe Devils, this Friday’s Karazhan run is going to be nuts. I know we have an internal Fight Club going down over who gets to main tank with the new changes. We all want to see it firsthand.

For myself, I’m looking at respeccing Windshadow to the following;

Level 70 Druid (0/50/11)

Balance (0 points)

None

Feral Combat (50 points)

Ferocity - Rank 5/5
Reduces the cost of your Maul, Swipe, Claw, Rake and Mangle abilities by 5 Rage or Energy.

Feral Instinct - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage done by your Swipe (Bear) ability by 30% and reduces the chance enemies have to detect you while Prowling.

Savage Fury - Rank 2/2
Increases the damage caused by your Claw, Rake, Mangle (Cat), Mangle (Bear), and Maul abilities by 20%.

Thick Hide - Rank 3/3
Increases your Armor contribution from items by 10%.

Feral Swiftness - Rank 2/2
Increases your movement speed by 30% in Cat Form and increases your chance to dodge while in Cat Form, Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 4%.

Survival Instincts - Rank 1/1
When activated, this ability temporarily grants you 30% of your maximum health for 20 sec while in Bear Form, Cat Form, or Dire Bear Form. After the effect expires, the health is lost.

Sharpened Claws - Rank 3/3
Increases your critical strike chance while in Bear, Dire Bear or Cat Form by 6%.

Predatory Strikes - Rank 3/3
Increases your melee attack power in Cat, Bear, Dire Bear and Moonkin Forms by 150% of your level and 20% of any attack power on your equipped weapon.

Primal Fury - Rank 2/2
Gives you a 100% chance to gain an additional 5 Rage anytime you get a critical strike while in Bear and Dire Bear Form and your critical strikes from Cat Form abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add an additional combo point.

Primal Precision - Rank 2/2
Increases your expertise by 10, and you are refunded 80% of the energy cost of a finishing move if it fails to land.

Feral Charge - Rank 1/1
Teaches Feral Charge (Bear) and Feral Charge (Cat).

Feral Charge (Bear) - Causes you to charge an enemy, immobilizing and interrupting any spell being cast for 4 sec. This ability can be used in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form. 15 second cooldown.

Feral Charge (Cat) - Causes you to leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 sec. 30 second cooldown.

Natural Reaction - Rank 3/3
Increases your dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form by 6%, and you regenerate 3 rage every time you dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form.

Heart of the Wild - Rank 5/5
Increases your Intellect by 20%. In addition, while in Bear or Dire Bear Form your Stamina is increased by 20% and while in Cat Form your attack power is increased by 10%.

Survival of the Fittest - Rank 3/3
Increases all attributes by 6% and reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 6%.

Leader of the Pack - Rank 1/1
While in Cat, Bear or Dire Bear Form, the Leader of the Pack increases ranged and melee critical chance of all party members within 45 yards by 5%.

Improved Leader of the Pack - Rank 2/2
Your Leader of the Pack ability also causes affected targets to heal themselves for 4% of their total health when they critically hit with a melee or ranged attack. The healing effect cannot occur more than once every 6 sec. In addition, you gain 8% of your maximum mana when you benefit from this heal.

Protector of the Pack - Rank 3/3
Increases your attack power in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 6%, and for each friendly player in your party when you enter Bear Form or Dire Bear Form, damage you take is reduced while in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 3%.

Infected Wounds - Rank 2/3
Your Shred, Maul, and Mangle attacks cause an Infected Wound in the target. The Infected Wound reduces the movement speed of the target by 17% and the attack speed by 7%. Stacks up to 2 times. Lasts 12 sec.

Mangle - Rank 1/1
Mangle the target, inflicting damage and causing the target to take additional damage from bleed effects for 12 sec. This ability can be used in Cat Form or Dire Bear Form.

Improved Mangle - Rank 3/3
Reduces the cooldown of your Mangle (Bear) ability by 1.5 sec., and reduces the energy cost of your Mangle (Cat) ability by 6.

Restoration (11 points)

Furor - Rank 5/5
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%.

Naturalist - Rank 5/5
Reduces the cast time of your Healing Touch spell by 0.5 sec and increases the damage you deal with physical attacks in all forms by 10%.

Omen of Clarity - Rank 1/1
Each of the Druid’s damage, healing spells and auto attacks has a chance of causing the caster to enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the Mana, Rage or Energy cost of your next damage, healing spell or offensive ability by 100%.

EDIT: Okay, this is an edited version, because I stupidly used my pre-Predatory Instincts version. Careless, careless Bear. As I said a couple weeks ago in Shifting Perspectives, Predatory Instincts doesn’t work in Bear anymore. Sadly, I assumed that I had updated my build notes since then. Thank you to everyone that caught that.

First, keep in mind I only play Windshadow as a tank. I almost never, ever solo as Cat. Since I will not be soloing until the expansion is released, I looked at what to respec to as a main tank for 5 mans and raid groups.

Second, from my own personal playing on the Beta, I have decided, just for me, that I want to roll with Omen of Clarity at level 70 while tanking, rather than Berserk.

I expect, at level 70, to see the extra attacks from Omen of Clarity being more frequently beneficial than Berserk. I bet most of you want to take Berserk instead to play with it. If so, That point in OOC can easily be put in Berserk instead. I imagine I will be respeccing often, and will do the same to taste test the differences. I’m just saying, keep in mind it may be perfectly valid at 70 to take a pass on Berserk. 

It comes down to rage generation.

I expect there will be a point where gear and Dodge/Crit values return enough Rage from Natural Reaction and Primal Fury to make Omen of Clarity preferred for Cat builds, but irrelevant for Bear tanks. With infinite Rage, Berserk becomes godlike, and OOC useless.

But until I playtest everything, I am going to assume Omen of Clarity is a superior Talent investment in terms of Rage at 70. That explains why I do not have Berserk in this build, at this time.

I did, in this build, take Feral Charge, because I feel that 2 points in Infected Wounds will be fun enough, and I just want to have the leap attack in Kitty to play with. I dearly love it. In my older build, I didn’t take it because I wanted the bonus to Crit damage in Bear form and, more importantly, the avoidance, but now that those three points are freed up I feel it’s okay to lose one point in Infected Wounds just for fun. Remember that with the change to Growl having the range increased to 20′, the main reason in PvE to use Feral Charge is removed; now it can be used solely for magic interrupts. 

I took the two extra points in Improved Leader of the Pack, because I DO love being able to shift frequently when tanking/raiding, and the Mana regen looks quite good. Plus, I currently do an incredible amount of self-healing with ILotP, and when other classes get those ticks of healing from MY ILotP buff, *I* get the threat. Don’t ever discount that extra group threat from heals. I do NOT expect to keep ILotP as part of my long term spec, but before the expansion, at level 70, I think it will be beneficial.

I did not take King of the Jungle, because the damage buff is gained when you use Enrage in a combat situation, and when Enrage is activated, your Armor plummets. I never, ever use Enrage when actively tanking. It is ALWAYS used prior to the actual pull, to generate Rage. So the damage buff, for me, is non-existant. A very good Cat Talent that would put Tiger’s Fury back on my button bars, but not something I need for Bear tanking.

Please, before disputing my statement on the effects of Enrage on your armor, check it yourself in game. I have had people tell me, frequently, that Enrage does little to nothing to armor. That’s pure BS. It does HORRIBLE things to your armor while active. Check it yourself and see, you will be terrified if you’ve ever popped it while main tanking a boss and didn’t realize what it did to you.

Primal Tenacity and Infected Wounds are difficult choices.

The attack speed reduction of Infected Wounds is very attractive. In my first build, I passed on it in favor of the avoidance of Predatory Instincts. When PI was nerfed, everyone breathed a sigh of relief at having three more points freed up to put into other things. That let me put two points here for a 7% speed reduction.  

Primal Tenacity sounds attractive when I have more points to play with, but to be honest, as long as I have a Shaman with Tremor Totem or a Priest with Fear Ward, the benefit from this Talent is more situational. I may regret it later, but for now I’m going to see how things go without it.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this build, while keeping in mind, it’s a level 70 Bear tanking build with current gear, pre-expansion.

And please keep the comments relevant, folks. Level 80 builds are a completely seperate topic, spells above level 70 are a seperate topic, and anything in the expansion is a seperate topic. This is about tomorrow. We’ll get to the rest when we get nearer to having the expansion in our hands.

EDIT: Thank you again for catching the PI mistake. Sadly, with all the changes in Beta, I have worked on several different builds, and I was very careless about proofreading my notes on the one I posted today. Purely my own carelessness. 

As a second Edit… just because they have buffed our Threat generation, does not mean that we shouldn’t take advantage of every way to generate threat that we have available to us, so long as we don’t gimp our survivability, IMO. Remember, still no Salvation, and Blizzard is looking at our numbers with an eye to what we CAN do if fully Talented.

And yes, I do intend to see how far I can push current gear to remove all Defense Rating and Resilience, to make maximum use of SotF, and stack Agility and Stamina (and armor), just for fun. So I am planning on gutting my gear for the next month and messing around with it. Why not?

You can check out BBB’s newest WowInsider article on feral druid armor here.   This article looks at the changes to tanking and bear armor in general, and how those changes may change the way feral druids view their class.

And if you like what you read, post a comment on WI to conteract the crankiness BBB will be feeling after the trolls get done being nasty.  Your comments will reduce the rants I will hear later about posters on WI :-)

Thanks!

Cassie