Unbearably HoT

In the past, there’ve been few compelling reasons for a Raider Bear to pick up the talent Feral Aggression. For one, Feral Aggression offered precious little raiding utility for Cat DPS (as Ferocious Bite never ended up being viable in Burning Crusade). But Feral Aggression also boosts the melee AP reduction of Demoralizing Roar, the dr00d answer to a Warrior’s Demoralizing Shout—which sounds good. Why isn’t it?  The base and improved version of Demoralizing Shout always outclassed Demoralizing Roar. Thus, as long as your raid group was running with a Warrior (and really, who wasn’t?), you could effectively mete out your points elsewhere.

For the full rundown, you can read my previous explanation, but here are the base numbers:

Untalented
Rank 6 Demoralizing Roar: -240 AP
Rank 7 Demoralizing Shout: -300 AP

Talented
Rank 6 Demoralizing Roar: -336 AP
Rank 7 Demoralizing Shout: -420 AP

Wrath provides more incentives to drop 5 points into Feral Aggression. Take a look:

Untalented
Level 77 Rank 8 Demoralizing Roar: -408 AP
Level 79 Rank 8 Demoralizing Shout: -410 AP

Talented
Level 77 Rank 8 Demoralizing Roar: -571.2 AP
Level 79 Rank 8 Demoralizing Shout: -574 AP

As you’d expect from Blizzard’s effort to streamline tanking, each class needs to be interchangeable, and I’d argue that the differences between Demoralizing Shout and Demoralizing Roar will be negligible. So do you need to place points in Feral Aggression for Wrath of the Lich King? If you do have a Warrior, whether DPS or Protection, it’s best to coordinate with him or her and ascertain who would be best served by picking up the Improved version of either ability—because it’s probably worth min/maxing.  

Who’s hurt more by dropping talent points into the improved versions? A Protection Warrior potentially loses out on 5% Parry or sacrifices situationally useful Protection talents. 

0/10/61 With Improved Demo Shout; missing Parry.

5/10/56 With Improved Demo Shout; with Parry. but missing useful Protection talents.

7/3/61 Ideal.

One might argue that Druids at least get the additional buff to Ferocious Bite. Although overall Cat DPS will be punished by spending points on what are generally considered “Bear Only” talents, there may still be circumstances under which you’ll have to do some abysmal damage—and Ferocious Bite is now a viable portion of our ever-complicated Cat DPS rotation. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth taking at the risk of sacrificing TPS improvements, but here goes:

0/60/11 With Feral Aggression. Missing Shredding Attacks, Improved Leader of the Pack, and Brutal Impact. 

0/61/10 With Feral Aggression. Missing Omen of Clarity, Brutal Impact, and King of the Jungle. 

0/60/11 Ideal. No Feral Aggression.

Although some of the above talents are arguably unnecessary or situational, they still compose a laundry list of tanking tools (however minor) that get left by the wayside just because we need to sink five points into FA. If I end up having to talent my shout, I anticipate mirroring the 0/61/10 build. 

 

Did 30% AOE damage reduction sound too good to be true to you too? The developers thought so, and even though the tooltip still reads Cat Form, Bear Form, or Dire Bear Form, the talent “Predatory Instincts” will now only affect Druids in Cat Form. This accompanies the Dire Bear form armor nerf, down to 370% from 400%. Now, supposedly, this will end up balancing Bear Druids and “bring us in line” with the rest of the tanking classes, but there’s been murmuring that we’re back to being “mana sponges.”  On October 3rd, Ghostcrawler stated:

I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but…. 

Predatory Instincts is a huge nerf. You just haven’t seen it yet. It only works in cat form. 

I hinted that this might happen before, but as it was, a druid was going to be the only tank people took for dragons like Malygos. That would have been particularly true for any encounter that was supposed to be a resist fight, because the druid could skip a lot of the resist gear. Your health pool should still make sure you handle those fights sufficiently. 

Sorry. I know the nerfs aren’t fun after having gotten a few buffs, but despite some early concerns, we ended up with bears far and away as the best tanks at handling damage. I’m sure you would want us to do the same thing if death knights were that far above the other tanks.

For now, I’m trying to remain optimistic (especially since we’ve somehow picked up a Paladin-esque 20 yard Growl) and came up with a new tanking build last night. This build (0/60/11) assumes a Protection Warrior in the raid group. More commentary to follow. 

Out in the real world, it’s a goddamn miracle when I manage to throw together professional-looking attire before the sun comes up. Most of my wardrobe color coordinates in such a fashion that I’d need to make a grievous error in judgment to look like a fool, and that suits me just fine. Unless there’s a particularly important meeting in which I need to impress my decades-older colleagues, I never plan my outfits in advance. I haven’t even looked at wedding dresses yet.

In game, however, where the cool factor of any armor is hopelessly shrouded by a large-assed, gaping mouth bear, I carefully consider each option. I make lists. I (occasionally) use a calculator and cross-reference rating values. WoW is geared, no pun intended, toward end-game content, where there’s little room for improving your character beyond armor and weapons. Thus, to prepare for Naxxramus, I’ve been following the lead of my fellow Crushtaceans and have assembled a preliminary tanking “wishlist.”

This list only takes into account Rare or Epic quality items from Heroic dungeons, items obtainable through BoE World Drops, or BoE Leatherworking craftables. As was the case with Burning Crusade, I imagine we’ll see some quest items and/or Normal drops that will be on par or better than these (i.e. Umbrahowl’s Collar, Supple Leather Boots, Manimal’s Cinch, being better than initial pre-buffed Karazhan gear etc.), but remember that this list is rudimentary at best. All items are subject to change often, and may be edited to reflect stat revaluing. Suggestions are welcome, especially as we find out where some of these mystery items drop.

Head:

Mask of the Watcher
Eviscerator’s Facemask (BoE LW)

Necklace:

Pendant of the Nathrezim (CoT: Strat)
Shadowseeker’s Pendant
Titanium Earthguard Chain (BoE JC)
Amulet of Wills (Normal, Halls of Stone)

Shoulders:

Sprinting Shoulderpads
Trollwoven Spaulders (BoE LW)

Back:

Cloak of the Enemy (Nexus)
Flowing Cloak of Command (Normal CoT: Stratholme)
Cloak of Tormented Skies (BoE LW)

Chest:

Crystal Infused Tunic (Keristraza, Nexus)

Wrists:

Bindings of the Tunneler

Gloves:

Bile-Cured Gloves

Gilt-Edged Leather Gauntlets (King Ymiron, Utgarde Pinnacle)

Waist:

Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt (Ingvar the Plunderer, Utgarde Keep)

Legs:

Ravenous Leggings of the Furlbolg
Legguards of Swarming Attacks

Feet:

Slag Footguards
Boots of the Neverending Path (Argent Crusade, Exalted)

Rings:

Nerubian Shield Ring
Keystone Great Ring (Drak’tharon)
Signet of the Accord (BoE World Drop)

Trinkets:

Essence of Gossamer (Azjul-nerub)
Offering of Sacrifice

Idol:

Idol of Perspicacious Attack (30 Venture Coins)

Weapon:

Enraged Feral Staff (Utgarde Keep)
Staff of Trickery (Violet Hold)

It’s a start. What are you wearing?

Apparently, Protector of the Pack, coupled with our normally reasonable mitigation, has absolutely blown the developers’ minds. 

However, we are probably going to have to nerf bears. If we don’t, they will be the only MT choice for serious guilds. At the moment, bears in decent gear take less damage, have more health and generate more threat than the other 3 classes by a wide enough margin that we think it’s a problem. This is even true on bosses that do a lot of magic damage (like Malygos).

I use the word “nerf” because players use it, and I don’t want to hind behind euphamisms. But changing the numbers doesn’t have to mean nerfing you into the ground. We just don’t want you to dominate. I’m sure you’d feel the same way if Protection paladins were just head and shoulders above the other tanks.

We understand that some Ferals felt they were nerfed in BC either prematurely or in such a way that kept them steadily behind other tanks. (Though Sunwell Radiance was largely for bears.) We will try to make intelligent changes so that you’re still out there tanking the Lich King himself. We want you to be about as good as warriors, paladins and death knights, not way above or below them.

Did they really anticipate that we wouldn’t generate an insane amount of threat after steadily continuing to buff our damage? After level 80 armor items received a little more love in the AC department, our physical and magical damage mitigation became totally awesome a little ridiculous. Clearly, I’m interested in seeing where this goes, but I’m not surprised.