We’ll source wowhead this time. I’ve included the Druid notes and others that will be important. (See my previous post for my thoughts on the original changes. In brief, the bleed nerfs and Shred/Mangle buffs should roughly balance out.)
Druid
Talent Specializations
Balance
Feral
Restoration
Glyphs
Professions
- Enchant Bracer – Agility – Permanently enchant bracers to increase Agility by 50. Requires a level 300 or higher item.
Creates Enchant Bracer – Agility. / Reagents: Hypnotic Dust x 12, Maelstrom Crystal x 2, Volatile Air x 15- Enchant Bracer – Major Strength – Permanently enchant bracers to increase Strength by 50. Requires a level 300 or higher item.
Creates Enchant Bracer – Major Strength. / Reagents: Hypnotic Dust x 6, Maelstrom Crystal x 2, Volatile Earth x 25- Enchant Bracer – Mighty Intellect – Permanently enchant bracers to increase Intellect by 50. Requires a level 300 or higher item.
Creates Enchant Bracer – Mighty Intellect. / Reagents: Hypnotic Dust x 4, Greater Celestial Essence x 4, Maelstrom Crystal x 2, Volatile Water x 15- Enchanting: Enchant Off-Hand – Superior Intellect now increases intellect by 40, down from 100.
Items
For ferals, there’s some PvP nerfs across the board (though the cc duration change is global), but the biggest nerf is global; the Glyph of Entangling Roots no longer making it instant. Oh well. We didn’t root much anyway, but it makes control as a resto/balance druid much more difficult, I’d imagine. Resto gets a significant throughput buff, which is helpful, but I was hoping for a mitigation cooldown of some kind.
Gear-wise, all of the crafted gear is going to sprout a socket, which will significantly improve its value (especially the LW chest, which is pretty underwhelming currently). I’ve already discussed the new metas, which are very nice, and the Left Eye trinket gets a quiet buff which will help solidify it as the second-best heroic 5-man trinket, behind Tia’s. Profession-wise, LW’s dominance is over, and all non-LW’s should grab the bracer enchant as soon as it’s economically viable to do so. Engineering also becomes much less bad now; Synapse Springs is equal to 96 static agility (vs. +50 str, current BiS enchant) which will provide a boost very close to the +80 agi from other professions. (I’ll let someone else work out the actual math.)
On a side note, apparently I got a WoL ranked DPS spot on Halfus last night. #198! Woo! Blink and it’ll be gone! (And I died about 15s before the boss did. Yay for Furious Howl stun in a fireball barrage; Double yay for frantically spamming SI and it not working during Howl.) Who needs epics? :P (Yes, still working on the raid gear list, hopefully I’ll finish it before the patch changes all the valuations.) I’d also like to work up a feral PvP guide (more BG focused then arena focused); if anyone has any good resources that I can “borrow” from, please let me know.
And my ranking’s gone. Wow, that was fast. For those that don’t want to click through, it was 32.3k DPS.
Oh, and the new Alchemist stone is decent, but it spends some item budget on the boost to potions, which isn’t very useful. I’d rank it below H Tia’s and H Left Eye. The intellect version, however, is probably close to BiS for resto druids, since the potion increase applies to concentration potions as well.
Real shame about the Entangling Roots glyph, the spell actually got usable now that it was instant (I PvP mostly as resto), I mean, it breaks so fast from dmg it took longer to root someone than the time they were stuck. Oh well, frees up a glyph slot I guess.
The roots glyph was huge for ferals. One of our biggest strengths now is as a flag carrier. When running away in travel form an instant roots and back to traval form was VERY powerful as you could do it several times and get away. Bummer about this.
Aww… gonna miss having two instant CC’s for pvp. But yay bat form!
As for the engineering tinker, it stacks with normal glove enchant, so it should be better than what most professions get. Also, as you have control over when it’s up, it may be even better (combine it with berserk, tiger’s fury, etc.).
This. Its just a 96 bonus agi and easily available epic helm
I understand the roots nerf, it was far too good for ferals. I think they should add it back in some form for Balance/Resto though…
As your ranking, sorry to hear it. I’m sitting at #23 Halfus 10-man with 33.7k, and hoping to beat that mark this week. The key to that fight is dotting Halfus with Rake/Rip, switch to adds, once rake/rip wear off Halfus, reapply!
You’ll never beat the Top 10 people unless you just stay on Halfus the entire time though, which will get you yelled at from your guild :)
So lets try to total up the feral pvp nerfs:
* CCs reduced to 8 seconds (not druid specific, but hurts us more than say, warriors, DKs and rogues. Classes that aren’t exactly doing poorly in pvp right now)
* Reduced SB lockout timer
* Glyph of Entangling roots nerfed, making entangling roots borderline useless in pvp, especially combined with the new pvp duration (previously a staple)
* Berserk no longer removes fear and grants fear immunity
* Damage moved from bleeds to direct damage
Pretty hefty, you’d think they’d want to try these nerfs one at a time instead of all at once to make sure they don’t overdo it. It used to be that feral druids were rogues that have traded target lockdown for more widespread CC but I guess we are going back to just being a crappy version of rogues.
I got ranked #188 on Magmaw 25N tonight with 22012 dps. I expect to drop out of the list any minute :) Even did a combat ress during the fight.
Anyways, roots nerf is going to suck a bit, but as cokeroft said, its understandable.
how do you say this trinket falls in now to the rankings?
http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/68776/quicksilver-alchemist-stone/
Engineering tinker stacks with the normal enchant (since 4.0.3 patch). So now you get enchant + 96 agility. While this is great news for us, it also means there is now less chance they will allow cogwheels to be used in later content on random armor or provide new helms with new tier.
ZybakTV and Neandrathal are two excellent YouTube channels you must see for your feral PvP guide. Watching these guys PvP made me switch my dual spec from balance/resto to feral(cat/arena)/feral(bear/BG).
I think this pvp nerf kinda out weighs them all.
“Shapeshifts: Entering or leaving a shapeshift no longer cancels root effects.”
Its horrific.
reading about your DPS.. 32k?
I think I’m doing something wrong :/
Warscreamer @ Moonglade
Halfus gets a 50% damage taken buff for each dragon that is killed. So you can only compare Halfus fights to other Halfus fights. I managed 22k on a Halfus attempt in 10man. (Avg = 15-16k dps)
Cheers
Manatree @ Shadowsong
Glove tinkers stack with enchants. Confirmed personally.
Glad to see Engineering brought up to par.
So Engineering will just be on par, it’s not going to be ahead again right? I’m comfortable with LW now and don’t really care to switch back unless the DPS difference is noticeable. I doubt it is though.