New Cat Forms

Due to the insanity that is my life right now, I have yet to delve completely into devouring the Patch 3.2 Notes. Needless to say, the thing I am most looking forward are the newly redesigned Feral Druid forms for both Night Elves and Tauren, and for both our bear-y best friends and we felines.

My first reaction to the new Night Elven kitty cat forms was: “YES! I can be a PINK cat!”! I have, quiet honestly, always wanted to be a pink cat. But after some thought, I was truly on the fence whether I really liked these new forms or not. I don’t know why I need to wear little bracers or why I have bells around my neck, and I was unsure if I liked all the color combinations. I was starting to feel like the Tauren got the better end of the staff on this one.

But as soon as I got onto the Public Test Realms I finally got to sink my claws into the new forms, first hand. After spending several hours with my future self, I am decidedly very happy about the changes. I have really only played around with the pink coloration. I had planned on playing with the other colors a bit, but I am so loving the pink kitty and have been traveling the world with her to see how different scenery and lighting affects how pink she really looks. I, of course, took many screenshots along the way, and will share them with you here.

If you are also PTR-ing it up, you can find me on Broxigar, both as “Kathoid” and as “Druidkitty”.

A side by side comparison of New Pink Kitty vs Old Kitty.

Stopping to sniff the flowers in Timbermaw.

Finally! Four toes to match out four-toed footprints!

New Pink Kitty running through Winterspring

Going for an RP stroll around Stormwind.

Decided to stop and take a quick dip in the Canals of Stormwind.

Run! Hogger is after us!!

In Duskwood, I slowed down for a breather.

If you have Berserking on your weapon, this is the fun color you will turn when it procs!

Rawr!

Woo. That was exhausting!

So as you can hopefully see, the lighting really affects the coloring of this new pink Kitty option. I will definetly be sticking with the pink once Patch 3.2 goes live!

If you would like me to check out a different color for you, or would like to see the Pink Kitty travel to your favorite destination in Azeroth, send me an email at DruidKitty AT gmail DOT com!

Patch 3.1 is here!

Highly anticipated Patch 3.1 finally hit us this week, bringing with it Ulduar, Dual-Specs, the Argent Tournament, and much server crashing and downtime. I haven’t dabbled into Dual-Specs yet, and I am just begining the Argent Tournament quests, but I have set foot into Ulduar despite all the Server and Instance downtime and seen a couple of the bosses – which I will elaborate more on soon in another post.

3.1 also brought a lot of Druid changes our way, and I’d like to go over specifically the Feral DPS changes, and how I think they will affect us. But first, let me highlight the changes to refresh our memory.

3.1 Patch Notes Feral DPS Druid Digest

Class Changes – Druid

• Faerie Fire and Faerie Fire (Feral): Now decreases armor of your target by 5%. Has a 5-minute duration, and a 40-second PvP duration.
• Maim: This ability is now considered a stun, and shares a diminish category with all other stuns. It no longer has a chance to break from the target taking damage. Duration lowered to 1 second per combo point.
• Pounce: No longer affected by diminishing returns with other stuns, however, it now shares a diminishing return with Cheap Shot (Rogue).
• New Talent: Primal Gore: Grants the periodic damage from your Lacerate and Rip abilities the chance to critically hit.
• Primal Tenacity: The damage reduction while stunned effect now only works in Cat Form.
• Rend and Tear: The critical strike bonus for Ferocious Bite reduced to 5/10/15/20/25%, down from 10/20/30/40/50%.
• Savage Roar is now considered an Enrage effect and now increases physical damage done by 30% instead of increasing attack power.
• (Resto) Improved Mark of the Wild: Now also increases all of your total attributes by 1/2%.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Berserk: Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 seconds.
• Glyph of Savage Roar: Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 3% bonus damage done.
• Glyph of Shred: Now increases remaining duration on Rip by 2 seconds each time it is used, up to a maximum of 6 seconds.
• Glyph of Survival Instincts: Increases the percentage of your maximum health received from Survival Instincts to 40%.

Bug Fixes

• Swipe: Now properly affected by area-of-effect damage caps.

My thoughts?:

The changes to Fairie Fire are minor, and all it really breaks down to is saving you a GCD by having it last 5 minutes now. The change to 5% armor is just so it scales better – it shouldn’t make much of a difference at all.

Maim, Pounce, and Primal Tenacity changes aren’t that important to a Raiding Kitty, but will be much more important to a PvP Kitty. I don’t spec any points into Primal Tenacity, so no change here for me.

Our newly added talent Primal Gore makes me a happy Kitty, and should make Bears happy as welll. In cat form, it gives each tick of Rip the chance to crit, and now that Rip can last upwards of 26 seconds (with T7 2-set, Glyph of Shred, and Glyph of Rip) this can add up to quite a bit more damage over time. The chance to crit is based off your own Crit Chance, not some seperate number, so with my Crit Chance at 47.13% unbuffed, I can expect to see a nice bit of extra damage compared to pre-3.1 numbers. As for Bears, it gives each tick of Lacerate the chance to crit, which will add up to more threat.

The change to Rend and Tear only applies to Ferocious Bite, which I very seldom use in my Raiding rotations. I’m not sure if it is used more in PvP or not, but I don’t see this change so much as a nerf as it is just balancing out the classes.

Savage Roar has been changed from an extra 40% Attack Power to an extra 30% Damage Done (33% with Glyph of Savage Roar). I’m really not good with numbers, and am not even sure how to do math to see what the change would be here. Reading a bit on forums and the like seem to work it out to be a buff rather than a nerf, but how much of a buff I am not sure yet. I really haven’t spent too much time in Ulduar or any raid since 3.1, so I’m not sure how much more DPS I am doing post-patch. If anyone has any more mathematical insight into the SR change, please let me know and I will update as needed.

While Improved Mark of the Wild is not a Feral Talent, I am recommending that all Druids, whether Feral, Boomkin, or Resto, put two points into this talent. Some Ferals, myself included, have had points into IMotW for quite sometime due to the lack of other Druids in Raids in order to provide the best possible Raid buff. This talent now goes beyond the buffs and now gives 1/2% to all attributes. It may not seem like a lot, but being a baseline Talent, it is definetly worth putting points into.

The Swipe change is one I have been expecting for a while. Seeing as it is a “Bug Fix” I can see that Blizz never intended for any of us to be doing 21K DPS or the like. Don’t look at this as a nerf, look at this as just a bug fix. We weren’t supposed to be getting such insanely high DPS, however limited the time is, and they are just restoring the balance. I don’t know what the actually AoE damage cap is, but I can still do quite a bit of DPS while swiping. Don’t think it Swipe is going to suck now; it doesn’t.

Onto the Glyphs!:

• Glyph of Berserk and Glyph of Survival Instincts aren’t impressing me that much. I am guessing that these two new Glyphs are made for our Bear friends. (Any Bears wanna confirm this?) I haven’t paid for my Dual-Spec yet and haven’t really looked into what Glyphs I will want for Bear Tanking, but I will consider these when I begin to look.
• The change to Glyph of Shred makes me very happy. Previously this would “Increases the damage dealt by Shred to stunned and incapacitated targets by 20%.”. For raiding, this really didn’t do much for me, but as one of the few Cat specific Glyphs, I had it. However, now it is a must have for a raiding Kitty. I will get into my “Cat Rotation” in a future post, but the main goal is to keep both Savage Roar and Rip up at all times. With the T7 2 set bonus and the already existing Glyph of Rip, Rip will last 20 seconds. If you Shred three times during that 20 seconds, the Rip will last a total of 26 seconds. Very nice indeed.
• The newly added Glyph of Savage Roar also is a must have for all Raiding Kitties. It gives us an extra 3% damage done when Savage Roar is up, to a total of 33%. As I said, one of the goals of a Cat Rotation is to keep Savage Roar up constantly, so an extra 3% damage done overall is nothing to laugh at.

I plan to update my previous Glyph posts soon to reflect these changes and additions.

I hope everyone else is enjoying Patch 3.1 as much as I have been. I love the Argent Tournament quests, the new Fishing Dailies, and am really looking forward to seeing all that Ulduar has to offer!

Don’t forget that The Feast of Noblegarden is fast approaching us now! It begins on Sunday, April 26th and runs for a full week until Saturday, May 2nd! I will, of course, have guides up for all the newly added achievements once the event starts!

Kitty Swipe: An Updated Review

Now that it has been many months since “Swipe (Cat)” has been added, I would like to take some time to talk about it again.

Yes, I still think that Swipe is a little OP – in the numbers. However, Swipe is still in no way sustained DPS and there is no way to make it sustained DPS, therefor it is really not all that over powered at all. I like to think of it as a fun thing to play around with, not something that is going to make me the best DPS overall for the raid.

When I say “fun”, this is what I mean:

No, I did not photoshop my Recount meter. Yes, that is 21,380 damage per second. I wish I could say that this is from a Level 80 instance, but this is from Ahn’Qiraj: the “gauntlet” you have to run down that has dozens of little bugs in it. We pulled the whole hallway and AoE-ed them down at the end. I just had to bash Swipe a few times to get them all down, but there were so many of them that it added up to a whole lot of damage. (For reference, the druid below me on the chart is a Boomkin, also AoEing.)

I don’t think Blizzard ever intended for any class to do 21K damage per second; hence this small, unnoticed “Bug Fix” from the patch 3.1 notes: “Swipe: Now properly affected by area-of-effect damage caps.” I don’t know the specifics on what this will cap the Swipe DPS at, but I am pretty sure that we won’t be seeing any 21K DPS for a while.

Even though this “Bug Fix” seems like a nerf, I am hopeful that this small change will help fix my biggest problem with Swipe: Dying. Because “Swipe (Cat)” does so much damage, it also pulls a ton aggro, which results in me dying. A lot.

I finally got down to doing my own testing with the Idol of Perspicacious Attacks to see if it would effect Swipe (Cat) at all. While I’m not the best at running scientific experiments, my results seem to show that in Cat form the Idol doesn’t have much affect, if any at all. In Bear form it does noticeably, albeit slightly, increase DPS. In my testing though, I did notice that the thing that increases damage most with “Swipe (Cat)” is when Omen of Clarity procs. So if you haven’t included Omen of Clarity in your Feral Build and you want to maximize your Swipe damage, you might want to include it when you get your free respec tomorrow when Patch 3.1 hits.

PTR Patch 3.1 – Feral Glyph Changes

Well, as they say it does, March has certainly come “in like a Lion“. My hopes for an early Spring were some what squashed today as Old Man Winter decided to dump another pile of his crappy white crap all over the North East yet again, causing much mayhem in its wake. While we in Upstate NY weren’t hit quite as hard as a lot of other parts of the country, the snow was enough to make the roads horrible locally, and so I stayed home from work to spend way too much time staring at the TV and grinding mostly-pointless WoW Reputations, like Wintersaber Trainers and Timbermaw hold.

I did, however, decide to make something productive out of my day, and so here I am with newly formed thoughts on these ever changing PTR Patch 3.1 notes. As it seems that some of the overall class changes and abilities haven’t made their way to the PTR quite yet, I am sure there more changes in store for us that just haven’t been announced yet. And so with that thought, I have decided to first go over all the Glyph changes and put in my two cents on the changes.

Glyph Changes

• Glyph of Shred

New: Each time you Shred, the duration of your Rip on the target is extended by 2 seconds, to a maximum of 6 seconds.
Old: Increases the damage dealt by Shred to stunned and incapacitated targets by 20%.

This is a very welcome change. This Glyph was really only useful for soloing previously. Anything that increases damage or duration of Rip will make a big change for overall damage done while raiding. And I haven’t tested this out yet, but I am sure that this will stack both with the Tier 7/7.5 set bonus and the Glyph of Rip bonuses to Rip, as those two stack with each other.

New Glyphs

• Glyph of Berserk -

Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 seconds.

This will up the durations to a total of 20 seconds. Nice glyph, but I think that there are other glyphs I would rather have for a Kitty DPS build. I’m not sure if it is one I would include in a Tanking build. I will have to play around with it to see.

• Glyph of Savage Roar -

Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 6% bonus damage done.

With the overall change to Savage Roar, changing its effect to an extra 30% Physical Damage from and increases 40% Attack Power, I am not sure exactly how much this will buff Savage Roar compared to how it is now, but this is definitely a glyph I want to have in my Kitty DPS build.

• Glyph of Barkskin -

Reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 1 to 0% while Barkskin is active.

Barkskin isn’t something I think about much as far as Cat form, but I found it very useful last night while I temporarily respeced Bear to OT for Naxx 10. Using Barkskin in Bear form is still very new to me, as when used in BC it would shapeshift you out of form. Now it can be used while tanking to lessen damage taken while tanking by 20% for 12 seconds, every 60 seconds. If you are defense capped already, this will make no difference to you, but if you are still working on your tanking gear and are a few points under, this Glyph will help you stay alive just a little bit longer. Eek! Sorry to all Bears! I am so used to Bear Tanking in BC still that I forgot that “defense cap” doesn’t apply to Bears anymore. So this Glyph is really not for us ferals. ><

I will need to look for these new glyphs on the Auction House on the PTR to see if these are Major or Minor glyphs. I am thinking they are all Major, with a chance that the Barkskin may be a Minor. I will update once I figure it out!

- – - – -

Please see my Patch 3.1 Post here to see what all the changes were once the patch went live.

PTR Patch 3.1 Notes

As a blogger, there should be a rule against going to sleep early. Last night I decided to hit the hay a little earlier than normal, therefor missing the release of the Patch notes and all the hub-bub that went along with it. And now the PTRs are up! And, why of course, it has to be a hectic day for me otherwise, so I am just sitting down to digest all the patch notes and changes now.

Here is the PTR Patch 3.1 Notes Digest for Druids:

Druid Tier 8 !

Finally we get our first look at what our Tier 8 gear will look like for us. I was concerned after seeing what the Rogues had to work with, but am very pleasantly surprised that our T8 is quite Druidic indeed! Check it out here! I love all the paw prints, vines, and moons!!

Druid Glyph Changes

There are a few changes as well as a bunch of additions for all druids. No say on whether these will be Major or Minor glyphs, but it is nice to see a few additions that interest me. Feral Glyphs are bold.

• Glyph of Rebirth — Players resurrected by Rebirth are returned to life with 100% health. (Old: Increases the amount of health on a character brought back to life via Rebirth by 100%.)
• Glyph of Starfall  — Reduces the cooldown of Starfall by 90 sec. (Old: Increases the duration of Starfall by 2 sec.)
• Glyph of Berserk *new*  — Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 sec.
• Glyph of Wild Growth *new*  — Wild Growth now affects up to 6 targets.
• Glyph of Nourish *new*  — Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target.
• Glyph of Savage Roar *new*  — Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 6% bonus damage done.
• Glyph of Typhoon *new*  — Reduces the cooldown of your Typhoon spell by 3 sec.
• Glyph of Barkskin *new*  — Reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 1 to 0% while Barkskin is active.

Druid Class Changes

It’s nice to see changes across the board for all Druid Specs. Many changes for us Ferals. I will post more on what the changes will mean to me very soon.

Balance

• Faerie Fire now decreases armor by 5%. (Previously decreased armor by a set amount)
• Owlkin Frenzy (Tier 8 ) now procs off physical melee and ranged attacks. (Previously was triggered by all attacks)
• Owlkin Frenzy is now properly considered an Enrage effect.

Feral Combat

• Faerie Fire now decreases armor by 5%. (Previously decreased armor by a set amount)
• Savage Roar changed to increase physical damage done by 30%. (Previously increased attack power by 40%)
• Maim now stuns the target instead of incapacitate.
• *New Spell* Savage Defense, 1 rank, level 40 – Each time you deal a melee critical strike, you gain Savage Defense, reducing the damage taken from the next physical attack that strikes you by 25% of your attack power.
• Survival of the Fittest (Tier 6) now increases your armor contribution from cloth and leather items in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 11/22/33%. (Previously 22/44/66%)

• Predatory Strikes (Tier 4) now increases now includes Moonkin Form in its effect.
• *New Talent* Primal Gore, Tier 10, 1 point talent – Grants the periodic damage from your Rake, Lacerate and Rip abilities the ability to critically hit.
• Savage Roar is now considered an Enrage effect.

Restoration

• Abolish Poison now ticks every 3 secs for 12 secs. (Previously ticked every 2 secs for 8 secs)
• Replenish (Tier 9) : This talent is now re-named “Revitalize” and now also works with Wild Growth.

• Improved Regrowth (Tier 6) renamed Nature’s Bounty. Increases the critical effect chance of your Regrowth and Nourish spells by 5/10/15/20/25%. (Previously increased just regrowth crit by 10/20/30/40/50%)
• Intensity (Tier 3) now allows 17/33/50% of mana regeneration to continue while casting. (Previously 10/20/30%)
• Improved Mark of the Wild (Tier 1) now also increases all of your total attributes by 1/2%.
• *New Talent* Improved Barkskin, Tier 10, 2 point talent – Increases the damage reduction granted by your Barkskin spell by 5/10%, and increases resistance to Dispel mechanics by 30/60% while under the effect of Barkskin.
• Living Seed: This talent now accounts for your ineffective healing, rather than effective.
• Replenish: This talent is now re-named “Revitalize” and now also works with Wild Growth.
• Tree of Life: You can now use Nature’s Grasp and Thorns while within this form.

There are many, many other changes that will have an affect on myself and many druids regarding dual specs, mounts, raids, gear, among other things, that I plan to discuss soon.

These changes will certainly be tweaked many times before they ever hit us on the live Realms. I am trying my best to get my Druid copied to the PTR so I can mess around will all the changes (and maybe get in Ulduar raiding) before it does go live. There is also no set date for when this will go live.

Want to stay up to date with all Patch 3.1 goodness? Check out MMO-Champion.com for their great coverage on all the changes coming to the game we love.

Patch 3.0.9

We can expect to see patch 3.0.9 this week; a minor patch to tweak a few things here and fix a few bugs there. A few things interest me in the notes for this patch.

DRUID

• Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.

THE OBSIDIAN SANCTUM

• Changed the color of the fissure in the Obsidian Sanctum to be more visually distinct.

As for the FB change, I don’t see this as having a huge effect in PvE/Raids since I don’t use FB in my rotations, unless I have extra energy to burn before I need to re-up Savage Roar or Rip, and when I do use it I don’t wait to fill up to 100 energy before using it. However, I can see this having a big affect in PvP as it will reduce the amount of burst damage that we can do. Blizzard has mentioned in the past that they don’t like how bursty FB can be in PvP, so this is one way they are going to fix that. I don’t see this so much as a nerf, but more of a way to try to balance PvP a little more. I really can’t say I PvP much though, so if I should be QQing, let me know.

I welcome the change to OS fissures with open arms (paws?) as I can see this being very helpful while attempting OS with any drakes up. My guild recently downed our first OS+1, and one of the things I was having a hard time was seeing the fissures, since they tend to blend in with everything going on around us. Changing it to a more obvious color will mean I will have to spend less precious nano-seconds frantically searching for them. If you haven’t tried OS+drakes, it is probably the most hectic, insane thing out there.

The other thing I find exciting about this patch is the number: 3.0.9. Sure they could throw us a 3.0.9A or a 3.0.95, but numerically speaking the next patch we should get should be 3.1. Let’s just hope they don’t mess up something huge like Wintergrasp and crash our servers on raid night.

Upcoming Patch 3.1 Changes

Now that Patch 3.0.8 is here, and has been fixed from all the bugs it brought along with it, it is time to start all the speculation that comes along with the next incoming patch. With last week’s fake patch note release a lot of people have begun to dream of what could be headed their way, along with Ulduar, once the patch hits us. Ghostcrawler, over on the WoW Forums, has stepped up to the plate and released some of the planned class changes. Yesterday Priests, Rogues, and Shamans got their fix, today Warlocks, Warriors, and Druids get theirs. Keep in mind that this is probably not all the changes we will see, and chances are that some of these will be tweaked from how they are written now.

Ghostcrawler writes:

DRUID

• Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.
• Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.
• Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.
• Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.
• Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.
• Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.
• We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

So let’s break down all these changes, shall we? And yes, I would like to look at all the changes, including our cousins the Bear, Moonkin, and Tree. Remember that 3.1 brings the promise of Dual-Specs, and now is as good a time as any to think about what your alternate spec will be, if you haven’t already decided. I personally am leaning strongly towards Bear; not that my guild is lacking tanks, just that all I did in BC Raids was Tank, and I miss it at times.

• Savage Defense – This one is for our Bear buddies. Of course they don’t specify if this is an ability that you will have to put points into, or just purchase from the Druid Trainer. As I haven’t tanked in what feels like eons, I’m not really sure how needed this ability is. I’m not sure what most Bear’s crit is, but the Bear Tank in my guild is sitting at 21% to crit with a mix of Epics from Heroics, Naxx 10 and Naxx 25. That means that he would get that shield 21% of the time, or 1 out of every 5 melee attacks. I know this is good, but not sure how big the effect will be in the long run.
• Survival of the Fittest – Again, for our Bears. Because of the above change they will be reworking this ability and reducing its bonus armor. “Reducing” isn’t a word we like to hear, but remember that there isn’t an amount or percentage mentioned here, so save the QQs until we know if it is going to be a big reduction or not.
• Faerie Fire – Currently, FF decreases armor by 1260. Changing it to 5% will mean that it scales based on your target. Improved FF should not be affected by this, as Imp has nothing to do with Armor. The “see warrior update below…” says this:
  • Sunder Armor (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 4% per application, and is now a single rank. Creature armor has been globally reduced so that debuffed targets should take about the same damage from physical attacks that they did before this change. The net effect should be that this debuff is slightly less mandatory in PvE and is not disproportionately more powerful against cloth targets in PvP.
• Thorns and Nature’s Grasp – I see these as being more useful in PvP, but may also see some use in PvE. As these are both defensive spells, I don’t see this really affecting the balance in PvP at all, since it does minimal damage, and gives Trees a little bit extra time to escape an oncoming attack.
• Survival Instincts – One for our Boomkins! I think this is a nice little addition for them, although I know they would like to hear more than just one minor change. SI gives them 30% if their maximum health for 20 seconds. I use this ability if I am ever OTing and get a bit low, or if I pull aggro accidentally, so I see that Boomkins would be using this in the same manner.
• Replenish – Replenish is a talent in the Resto tree that causes people being healed by Rejuvenation to have a chance to gain back their energy, rage, mana, or runic power. Renaming it “Revitalize” with clear up any confusion between it and Replenishment. Having it work with Wild Growth now will mean that when being healed by Wild Growth, the people being healed will get a chance to regain energy, etc. from that healing spell as well.
• Sustained Damage of Feral Druids in Cat Form – While I do not see a huge need for this for me personally, I will welcome the change as it means I will probably be able to out DPS a mage or a DPS warrior. And I am sure that many Feral DPS Druids who are new to the class/spec will welcome this change. Note this will not affect Burst damage, so Swipes won’t be getting any extra damage.

Overall, way more changes for Ferals, both Cat and Bear alike. I am sure our fine feathered and barked friends will see changes more than just this teaser when 3.1 goes live. To me it makes sense that Cats and Bears would get a bunch of changes, because there have been so many changes since 3.0 and the introduction of Wrath to the Feral talent tree and how we play. I hope that the Feral DPS changes bring more people into the class and spec, as it still seems that Kitties are still few and far between.

Still no set date for 3.1 yet, but this sure gives me a lot to look forward to!

Patch 3.0.8 is here!

After many a Tuesday spend waiting, Patch 3.0.8 is finally here! The servers are still down as of writing this, so log on and get that patch downloading before everyone else!

For full patch notes, head over to the World of Warcraft site here.

Patch 3.0.8 Overview for Feral Druids

General

• Bonus Armor: The mechanics for items with bonus armor on them has changed (any cloth, leather, mail, or plate items with extra armor, or any other items with any armor). Bonus armor beyond the base armor of an item will no longer be multiplied by any talents or by the bonuses of Bear Form, Dire Bear Form, or Frost Presence.
• Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped. (Like Faerie Fire)
• Shield Wall, Barkskin, Guardian Spirit, and Divine Protection are now off the Global Cooldown.
• The run speed in spirit form has been increased by 50%. Night Elves in Wisp form will now move at a bonus 75% speed.

Druids

• Feral Attack Power: All weapons now have the potential to grant feral attack power based on their dps (as compared to the best superior-quality weapons available at level 60). Players will see their existing feral weapons grant roughly the same attack power as they did before (+/- 2 or so), but many new weapons will be options for the feral druid. Some feral weapons have had strength converted to attack power to be more appealing to other classes able to equip them. All druids will see the amount of feral attack power granted by an item in the item tooltip, if it grants any, but other players will not see that information.
• Growl: Range increased to 30 yards.
• King of the Jungle – The Bear effect is now physical, and thus cannot be dispelled.
• Polearms: Now trainable by Druids.
• Primal Tenacity: Now reduces the cost of Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear Form by 17/33/50% in addition to its previous effects.
• Protector of the Pack: No longer changes value based on party size.
• Savage Roar: The buff now persists outside of Cat Form but only provides its benefits while in Cat Form.
• Survival of the Fittest: This talent now grants 22/44/66% bonus armor in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form in addition to all of its previous effects.
• Swipe: Swipe (Cat) has now been added at level 71, dealing 260% weapon damage, costs 50 energy with no cooldown. All talents affecting the Bear Form version affect the Cat Form one as well.

Items

• Druid Feral Tier 7 Set: The 4 piece bonus now also decreases the cooldown on Tiger’s Fury by 3 seconds.

Bug Fixes

• Shadowmeld: This ability will now properly restore threat when it is cancelled. In addition, it will correctly remove a player from combat if it is active when that player is the last person left alive that the creature hates. This ability is now also unusable while affected by Faerie Fire.
• Bear Form: This ability will now grant the correct attack power per level for levels 71-80.
• Maim: Tooltip adjusted to match the duration the ability has always had.
• Opening: Opening doors and objects should no longer cause shapeshifted forms to be cancelled.
• Rake: The initial damage from this ability is now properly considered bleed damage, and will be increased by Mangle and Trauma.
• Savage Fury – Mangle (Bear) damage was being increased by a higher percentage than intended. This has been fixed, and in result Mangle (Bear) should see roughly a 16% damage reduction. Also fixed a bug with Savage Fury where the Rake bleed effect was not being increased.
• Survival Instincts: The extra health from this ability now persists in all forms, but the ability can only be activated in Cat Form, Bear Form, or Dire Bear Form. This prevents the health gain from occurring multiple times if constantly shapeshifting.

Patch 3.0.8 Updates, Tiger’s Fury

Once again we are seeing some changes in the patch 3.0.8 notes. (via MMO-Champion)

Upon first glance, there isn’t really anything worth writing home about for us ferals.

Druid

• Celestial Focus (Balance) no longer includes Starfall.

But upon better inspection, we have something for us.

Items

• Druid Feral Tier 7 Set: The 4 piece bonus now also decreases the cooldown on Tiger’s Fury by 3 seconds.

The cooldown on it is currently 30 seconds, so this would drop it to 27 seconds. I’m not sure how big of a deal this will actually be overall, but in longer fights, and certainly in raids, I could see this giving us slightly more DPS. I personally pop Tiger’s Fury whenever it is available.

Why Tiger’s Fury? It is a cat form, instant cast ability that increases damage done by 80 for 6 seconds. Big deal, right. But with the proper Feral build including “King of the Jungle”, this ability becomes much more. With all 3 points put into KotJ: “While using your Enrage ability in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form, your damages is increased by 15%, and your Tiger’s Fury ability also instantly restores 60 energy.” Free energy! What kitty doesn’t want that!

Why the change at all, though? Our current 4 piece bonus is not very useful: “Increases the duration of Barkskin by 3 seconds.” Yes, I know it is useful, but not all the time, and will not give us any extra DPS. This new change will give us an edge, albeit a very slight edge, too squeeze out just a bit more DPS.

And who knows, that might be all you need to push ahead above the rest and to the top of those meters!

We’ll have a [SWIPE]ing good time!

With rumors abound of a Feral Cat form AoE incoming for the past few weeks all around the web, I have joked with my guildies that “the day I get a cat form AoE will be the happiest day of my life.” While that is certainly a stretch (few things can compare to getting engaged to my hot Rogue IRL), it will definitely be a highlight of my druid life.

So with today’s WoW Insider PTR Patch Notes Post on upcoming Patch 3.0.8 I had a major SQUEEEE moments. The rumors were just rumors, hints at best, but this is the solid evidence I need to /dance all over Dalaran tonight.

FTA:

DRUIDS

• Swipe: Swipe (Cat) has now been added at level 71, dealing 260% weapon damage, costs 50 energy with no cooldown. All talents affecting the Bear Form version affect the Cat Form one as well.

Why am I so excited? Because one of the places I know I am lacking raiding is the AoE department. It has been so frustrating to watch my DPS plummet once we get to a bunch of mobs that get burned down via AoE damage. With our new viability in end game raiding due to all the Wrath changes, this is certainly a welcome addition to my kitty action bar.

There are also many happy changes for me in this upcoming Patch, including the mount restriction on getting certain mounts from your own faction, and a range increase on feral bear form taunt.

No clue on when this patch hits us, but hopefully before the end of the year. It would be a hell of a way to ring in the New Year.