Lobo
09-20-2010, 12:59 PM
This is mostly a bur post, sum other tanking stuff may be thrown in, such as block & parry mechanics. This is mostly my impressions and conclusions drawn from the current beta build. Please correct all spelling and grammar errors, as well as incorrect or outdated information. Slut make a cat post when you're not busy whoring around, slore. Don't make me do both. Hyper make a tree/owl one if you want too, it is a good way to solidify in your mind how our class/roles will be Δing in cataclysm. Nothing teaches you material like writing a paper on it. Other than doing it ofc.
Rage Normalization.
1) Rage is no longer generated based on damage done by auto-attacks. Instead, each auto-attack provides a set amount of Rage, and off-hand weapons will generate 50% of the Rage main hands do. This amount is based on a constant formula which factors in the base swing speed of the weapon. This means the Rage gained should be averaged out between fast and slow weapons. The constant formula also gives them the ability to easily increase the rage gained if it feels too low (or reduce it if is too high). They are also implementing the following mechanics, which will still allow rage to improve to some extent as we improve our gear:
* If the attack is a critical strike, it will generate 200% Rage.
* Haste will accelerate swing times to generate Rage faster.
2) Rage from damage taken will no longer be based on a standard creature of the character’s level, but instead will be based on the health of the warrior or druid. Again, there is a constant that is multiplied by the rage generated in order to allow for fine-tuning. This calculation ignores all damage reduction from armor, absorption, avoidance, block, or similar mechanics, so improving your gear will not reduce rage gained.
3) We will provide warriors and druids with more instant sources of rage. For example, the warrior shouts are changing to work more like the death knight ability Horn of Winter. Instead of Battle Shout consuming Rage, it will generate Rage but have a short cooldown. Both classes will have additional methods to generate Rage in an emergency or bleed off Rage when they have too much.
4) All “on next swing” attacks in Cataclysm are being removed. Heroic Strike and Maul will be instant swings that cost a variable amount of Rage. For example, imagine Heroic Strike costs between 10 and 30 Rage. You must have at least 10 Rage to use the attack, but it will consume all available Rage up to a maximum of 30. Any Rage consumed above the minimum will cause the ability to hit harder, and in some cases much harder. We will tune the ability so that it’s generally not a good idea to hit it when you have low Rage (unless everything else is somehow on cooldown) but becomes a more attractive button the higher your Rage.
% Damage Reductions from Demo Shout/Roar/Vindication/loldksmightgetone?.
They have Δd it to a percent physical damage reduction (10%) instead of attack power reduction.
Bur stuff
Talent Δs
1) SotF is gone, thick hide makes us uncrittable now. Because our hide is thick. It also absorbed SotF's extra 33% armor contribution while in bear form. Keeping our bonuses from talents the same as in wrath. 10% increased armor contribution from leather, and the additional extra 33% armor contribution while in bear form.
2) LotP is always imp now niggas, and the 4% heal has been upgraaaaded. 8% now.
OH TRUUUUU. Unfortunately the heal/mana restore only applies to the druim now. So no more Anub'Arak self-sufficiency groups. Though the 5% crit is still raid-wide.
3) Fury swipes..(hereby known as furry swipes, because paws are furry).
Sweet Jesus. If only maul was still an on-next-swing ability and a furry swipe proc on a maul would proc another maul... Unfortunately this is not the case, as maul will be an instant cast rage dump ability off gcd but not linked to our auto attacks anymore. Thus making this talent sadly less lustrous. It's either furry swipes or KotJ, which is the usual 15% enhanced damage while enraged. And since enrage now causes us to take 10% more physical damage while activated (and we won't have our 4 piece T10 bonus to negate it). KotJ looks like an extremely awful choice. Though it looks like furry swipes cannot proc omen of clarity (thanks slut), the extra rage & threat from the additional hit is still useful. This places furry swipes ahead of KotJ. Another note on enrage: enrage currently provides an instant 32 rage, and an additional 10 over 10 seconds (though this may Δ.), it's likely we'll just us a /cast enrage; /cancelaura enrage macro for mid-fight rage boosting to dodge the 10% increased damage taken drawback.
3) Feral aggression is mandatory, it allows us to get all three faerie fire stacks up there in one cast. It does not improve our demo roar anymore, nor does any talent. As the boss attack power reducing abilities now reduce damage caused by the boss on a percentile basis (10%). All roars/shouts/vindication/dksmightgetonetoo abilities are the same in regards to the percent of damage reduced, and cannot be improved further.
4) Brutal impact is pretty good now, it brings our 13 yard interrupt down to a ten second cooldown, but it only reduces the cooldown on bash by 10 seconds now, instead of the old thirty. Perhaps the base cooldown on bash may get reduced at some point. Also of note is that bash and feral charge no longer interrupt.
5) Survival instincts now reduces our damage taken by 60% for 12 seconds. Finally. Thank god. The 30% health increase cooldown now lies with frenzied regeneration. It also brings your current HP up to 30% if you're below that because Fiesty sucks. Still heals you 0.3% of your maximum health per rage point consumed, at a maximum of 3% of your maximum HP per tick (consuming 10 rage per tick, one tick per second.).
6) Protector of the pack is gone, the 12% damage reduction in bear form has been added to natural reaction (which still gives the old 6% dodge/+3 rage per dodge).
7) Rend and Tear... Remains unΔd, but 5 talent points for 20% more maul damage on bleeding targets is a freaking lot. hopefully we'll still get a decent amount of OOC procs and reach the 60 rage threshold often enough for maul to still rock. This talent remains mandatory as it is the gateway to pulverize.
8) Pulverize: Requires Dire Bear Form. Deals 120% weapon damage plus additional 943.2 damage for each of your Lacerate applications on the target, and increases your melee critical strike chance by 3% for each Lacerate application consumed for 10 seconds.
Costs you one of your lacerate(s) on the target in return for the instant damage and the 10-second (18 seconds with Endless Carnage, which is clearly mandatory) critical strike boost. There's no cooldown and it's an instant attack, but costs 20 rage each time, so this really isn't spammable unless you're in a high-rage scenario. With a full rage bar and a full stack of 5 lacerates, you could theoretically spam pulverize, obliterate your stack (and your rage in the process), and get a huge threat boost in return. While also keeping up the crit bonus, which helps with savage defense & threat (remember crit is low in cataclysm). Each lacerate consumed provides a stacking 3% increase to crit, stacking three times up to a total of 9% crit. So we'll likely be throwing three lacerates up, letting them tick down, then pulverizing them and repeating this cycle.
9) Berserk. Jesus Christ this talent is awesome. Blizzard just fixed the feral tanking rotation/priority system. Putting your last point in feral in berserk actually feels like its your 31 point talent. Allowing your lacerate's periodic damage to proc a free mangrel 30% of the time (this actually seems a little high, but hopefully they won't notice) is pretty pimp. This livens up the monotonous MANGREL,FFF,RENEWLACERATE,SWIEP,MANGREL,FFF,SWPIE, SWIEP,MANGREL,RENEWLACERATE,SWEIP,MANGREL that is todays tanking. Get ready to add that buff to your power auras and MANGRELMANGRELMANGREL as soon as you see that spinning tribal design thing in rainbow colors cover your screen. But be able to differentiate between your OOC and berserk proc power auras, as an omen of clarity buff should always be used on maul barring cooldown.
10) Primal madness will either be mandatory or useless. Looks very useless for burz as of now and I'm confident it will stay so. This is good as it allows us to spec without any hard decisions, with one point remaining.
11) Notice omen of clarity isn't in the restoration tree anymore. It's trained at 20. It's effects have not Δd.
--Here is my bear spec--
http://wowtal.com/#k=-wZnH7Iuh.a0o.druid
The excess one point can be placed into either stampede or KotJ, I prefer stampede.
Rage Normalization.
1) Rage is no longer generated based on damage done by auto-attacks. Instead, each auto-attack provides a set amount of Rage, and off-hand weapons will generate 50% of the Rage main hands do. This amount is based on a constant formula which factors in the base swing speed of the weapon. This means the Rage gained should be averaged out between fast and slow weapons. The constant formula also gives them the ability to easily increase the rage gained if it feels too low (or reduce it if is too high). They are also implementing the following mechanics, which will still allow rage to improve to some extent as we improve our gear:
* If the attack is a critical strike, it will generate 200% Rage.
* Haste will accelerate swing times to generate Rage faster.
2) Rage from damage taken will no longer be based on a standard creature of the character’s level, but instead will be based on the health of the warrior or druid. Again, there is a constant that is multiplied by the rage generated in order to allow for fine-tuning. This calculation ignores all damage reduction from armor, absorption, avoidance, block, or similar mechanics, so improving your gear will not reduce rage gained.
3) We will provide warriors and druids with more instant sources of rage. For example, the warrior shouts are changing to work more like the death knight ability Horn of Winter. Instead of Battle Shout consuming Rage, it will generate Rage but have a short cooldown. Both classes will have additional methods to generate Rage in an emergency or bleed off Rage when they have too much.
4) All “on next swing” attacks in Cataclysm are being removed. Heroic Strike and Maul will be instant swings that cost a variable amount of Rage. For example, imagine Heroic Strike costs between 10 and 30 Rage. You must have at least 10 Rage to use the attack, but it will consume all available Rage up to a maximum of 30. Any Rage consumed above the minimum will cause the ability to hit harder, and in some cases much harder. We will tune the ability so that it’s generally not a good idea to hit it when you have low Rage (unless everything else is somehow on cooldown) but becomes a more attractive button the higher your Rage.
% Damage Reductions from Demo Shout/Roar/Vindication/loldksmightgetone?.
They have Δd it to a percent physical damage reduction (10%) instead of attack power reduction.
Bur stuff
Talent Δs
1) SotF is gone, thick hide makes us uncrittable now. Because our hide is thick. It also absorbed SotF's extra 33% armor contribution while in bear form. Keeping our bonuses from talents the same as in wrath. 10% increased armor contribution from leather, and the additional extra 33% armor contribution while in bear form.
2) LotP is always imp now niggas, and the 4% heal has been upgraaaaded. 8% now.
OH TRUUUUU. Unfortunately the heal/mana restore only applies to the druim now. So no more Anub'Arak self-sufficiency groups. Though the 5% crit is still raid-wide.
3) Fury swipes..(hereby known as furry swipes, because paws are furry).
Sweet Jesus. If only maul was still an on-next-swing ability and a furry swipe proc on a maul would proc another maul... Unfortunately this is not the case, as maul will be an instant cast rage dump ability off gcd but not linked to our auto attacks anymore. Thus making this talent sadly less lustrous. It's either furry swipes or KotJ, which is the usual 15% enhanced damage while enraged. And since enrage now causes us to take 10% more physical damage while activated (and we won't have our 4 piece T10 bonus to negate it). KotJ looks like an extremely awful choice. Though it looks like furry swipes cannot proc omen of clarity (thanks slut), the extra rage & threat from the additional hit is still useful. This places furry swipes ahead of KotJ. Another note on enrage: enrage currently provides an instant 32 rage, and an additional 10 over 10 seconds (though this may Δ.), it's likely we'll just us a /cast enrage; /cancelaura enrage macro for mid-fight rage boosting to dodge the 10% increased damage taken drawback.
3) Feral aggression is mandatory, it allows us to get all three faerie fire stacks up there in one cast. It does not improve our demo roar anymore, nor does any talent. As the boss attack power reducing abilities now reduce damage caused by the boss on a percentile basis (10%). All roars/shouts/vindication/dksmightgetonetoo abilities are the same in regards to the percent of damage reduced, and cannot be improved further.
4) Brutal impact is pretty good now, it brings our 13 yard interrupt down to a ten second cooldown, but it only reduces the cooldown on bash by 10 seconds now, instead of the old thirty. Perhaps the base cooldown on bash may get reduced at some point. Also of note is that bash and feral charge no longer interrupt.
5) Survival instincts now reduces our damage taken by 60% for 12 seconds. Finally. Thank god. The 30% health increase cooldown now lies with frenzied regeneration. It also brings your current HP up to 30% if you're below that because Fiesty sucks. Still heals you 0.3% of your maximum health per rage point consumed, at a maximum of 3% of your maximum HP per tick (consuming 10 rage per tick, one tick per second.).
6) Protector of the pack is gone, the 12% damage reduction in bear form has been added to natural reaction (which still gives the old 6% dodge/+3 rage per dodge).
7) Rend and Tear... Remains unΔd, but 5 talent points for 20% more maul damage on bleeding targets is a freaking lot. hopefully we'll still get a decent amount of OOC procs and reach the 60 rage threshold often enough for maul to still rock. This talent remains mandatory as it is the gateway to pulverize.
8) Pulverize: Requires Dire Bear Form. Deals 120% weapon damage plus additional 943.2 damage for each of your Lacerate applications on the target, and increases your melee critical strike chance by 3% for each Lacerate application consumed for 10 seconds.
Costs you one of your lacerate(s) on the target in return for the instant damage and the 10-second (18 seconds with Endless Carnage, which is clearly mandatory) critical strike boost. There's no cooldown and it's an instant attack, but costs 20 rage each time, so this really isn't spammable unless you're in a high-rage scenario. With a full rage bar and a full stack of 5 lacerates, you could theoretically spam pulverize, obliterate your stack (and your rage in the process), and get a huge threat boost in return. While also keeping up the crit bonus, which helps with savage defense & threat (remember crit is low in cataclysm). Each lacerate consumed provides a stacking 3% increase to crit, stacking three times up to a total of 9% crit. So we'll likely be throwing three lacerates up, letting them tick down, then pulverizing them and repeating this cycle.
9) Berserk. Jesus Christ this talent is awesome. Blizzard just fixed the feral tanking rotation/priority system. Putting your last point in feral in berserk actually feels like its your 31 point talent. Allowing your lacerate's periodic damage to proc a free mangrel 30% of the time (this actually seems a little high, but hopefully they won't notice) is pretty pimp. This livens up the monotonous MANGREL,FFF,RENEWLACERATE,SWIEP,MANGREL,FFF,SWPIE, SWIEP,MANGREL,RENEWLACERATE,SWEIP,MANGREL that is todays tanking. Get ready to add that buff to your power auras and MANGRELMANGRELMANGREL as soon as you see that spinning tribal design thing in rainbow colors cover your screen. But be able to differentiate between your OOC and berserk proc power auras, as an omen of clarity buff should always be used on maul barring cooldown.
10) Primal madness will either be mandatory or useless. Looks very useless for burz as of now and I'm confident it will stay so. This is good as it allows us to spec without any hard decisions, with one point remaining.
11) Notice omen of clarity isn't in the restoration tree anymore. It's trained at 20. It's effects have not Δd.
--Here is my bear spec--
http://wowtal.com/#k=-wZnH7Iuh.a0o.druid
The excess one point can be placed into either stampede or KotJ, I prefer stampede.