Upcoming changes
For now, all I’ve got is that Starfall can’t be dispelled.
We are also discussing Mangle (Cat) or Rake buffs so cats don’t feel so penalized by positional requirements, particularly in PvP. (src)
Bear Tanking in WotLK
Druid threat is on par or greater than other tanks, and with the Swipe change, that includes group threat as well. Druid dps while tanking is very high. Druid dps while not tanking may still be the highest of the tank classes.
Druid mitigation is so high in Naxxramas that we’re worried they may overshadow the other tanks, in which case we might have to change it.
So if you want to make an argument about Feral shortcomings, you’d either have to argue that they won’t continue to be great in several raid tiers (which is a valid concern, but one that all the tanks have) or that you don’t like their abilities. On that front, we have attempted to juice up several of the Feral’s existing abilities, including changes to Frenzied Regeneration, Bash, Barkskin and Faerie Fire, as well as offering a new survival ability and a new burst threat ability, and finally letting you benefit from both consumables and weapon enchants.
You might still argue that the druid abilities are different enough from warrior abilities that it may present a problem, though we’d like to avoid pushing them any closer together if we can help it.
As it stands right now though, we have a lot of confidence that bears are going to be excellent tanks. (src)
Feral Q/A
What about Cat DPS? Are you balancing the “tank capable” classes in a category by themselves, or will they have equal DPS to everyone else as per other posts and such?
Cat dps is looking good at the moment. If you get +dps gear and focus on the +dps talents, your dps should be very competitive.
Feral and balance PvP is much more problematic than PvE at this point…
I’m not trying to duck PvP issues, but it has so many different issues and is very sensitive to the numbers on a few specific abilities and to player skill. It is much harder to do PvP tests and determine if things are okay. I will say on the Feral front, we are looking at buffing Rake and Mangle for cats to make up for the positional requirement of Shred.
It seems as though the Druid forums are the only one of the forums in which “HIGH THREAT AOE ABILITY” isn’t touted as part of their multi-target ability. Is Swipe going to have the same additional threat modifier as Death and Decay, Thunder Clap and Consecrate?
Making an ability “causes high threat” is a last resort. It’s wonky and tends not to scale as well as damage. Sometimes it’s the only option we have to keep a tanking ability useful without turning it into the best damage ability available. In our last tests, Swipe’s threat per second was very competitive with what paladins could dish out. We don’t think at the moment that it needs more +threat to do its job.
Also, please consider the effect on creating Armor pieces in so many slots. Like you said, there’s going to be an issue with Mitigation, but also consider that Avoidance is going to be lower because we can’t benefit from Parry or split our avoidance between Parry and Dodge to stave off diminishing returns.
Yes, that is the risk. I will say that in Naxx, the bears are just taking less damage overall, which means even with lower avoidance, the huge amount of armor makes up for it, ignoring the fact that druid health also gives them a huge cushion for when they do take a lot of damage at once. We have done tests at higher tier levels, but if things start to fall apart, we hope to be able to right them in a timely fashion. Remember, it wasn’t a stated goal for druids to be able to tank Sunwell. It is now. (src)
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