by Allison Robert
New Bear and Cat Forms
Y helo thar, Tauren cat form. I have but one thing to say to you, my stiff-eyed, pinch-hipped, three-phalange’d affront to the natural order:
That’s right, folks. Redesigned Bear and Cat forms go live today, and that sound you hear is the sound of a million sobbing Druids who believed that the game would go to its final reward with the same ugly-ass forms. We’re still crossing our fingers for updated Tree of Life, Moonkin, Travel, and Aquatic forms — and there was a small spark of hope recently from a comment made by Ghostcrawler in the Druid Q&A:
For the official word, do we have plans to update more druid form models at some point in the future?
Ghostcrawler: I know for a fact that the current Travel Form and Aquatic Form are loathed by the artist who redid bear and cat. We do have plans to update additional forms at some point in the future.
If someone meets either Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street or this unknown artist at BlizzCon, please buy them a refreshing beverage or possibly small nation of their choice, and send me the bill.
General Overview
- MOONKIN: Balance of Power was retooled to reduce all spell damage taken rather than the chance to be hit by spells. Owlkin Frenzy has been improved to restore 10% of your base mana over its 10 second duration. And the biggie: Eclipse’s lunar and solar procs are now on separate cooldowns. What does this mean for your rotation? Keep Moonfire and Insect Swarm up as usual, but cast Wrath until you get the lunar Eclipse proc, then cast Starfire until you get the solar Eclipse proc. Lissanna has a more involved discussion here, and Graylo’s run the numbers on the % damage increase you should realistically expect.
- BEARS: The only change likely to have any impact on you is the 15% nerf to the agility-to-dodge and dodge rating-to-dodge conversion ratio. Combined with the 8% buff to parry returns from +parry rating, this has the effect of (slightly) improving parry’s desirability as a stat before diminishing returns. Obviously, that only impacts the tanks who can parry. Having logged onto both the live realms and the PTR to check, I’m seeing a 1.77% dodge loss between my live bear and PTR bear (both unbuffed), which is within shouting distance of the math that Kalon ran on the changes. Enrage is also getting a small buff and will instantly produce 20 rage, then 10 over the next 10 seconds. Also, we’re finally losing that incredibly annoying Pillsbury Doughboy-esque “Poke my tummy!” Savage Defense animation.
- CATS: Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeerfs — but small ones. Most Cat damage abilities are getting a flat, percentage-based reduction, with commenters pegging it around a 2% DPS loss overall. King of the Jungle is also getting the Bear/Cat shapeshifting mana cost reduction currently linked to Primal Tenacity.
- TREES: As is now customary with patches released on days that end in -y, Blizzard is nerfing Lifebloom. Innervate’s functionality has also been tinkered with, mostly over concerns related to Resto mana efficiency in PvP (see below); it provides about half the mana it once did, but its cooldown has been reduced to 3 minutes. If you’re having mana issues past the patch, I’d invest in a Glyph of Innervate, stat. Nourish is once again being buffed by getting yoked to Empowered Touch. If you follow Blizzard’s design trajectory to its logical conclusion, Nourish will eventually become a 0.5-second cast ability costing 50 mana and healing for 8 billion, whereas Lifebloom will be renamed to Just Put The Damn Spell Out of Its Misery FFS. This concerns me.
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by Amanda Miller
Over the past few days, some upcoming professions changes for Patch 3.2 have been announced, and although they are not as detailed as they could be, several of the changes will have quite an impact.
First and foremost, every profession-specific buff is being upgraded. This includes an Enchanter’s ability to enhance their own rings, a Leatherworker’s bracer enchants, and more.
These buffs also answer some of the concerns surrounding the upcoming Jewelcrafting nerf that epic gems might be introduced without a buff to the Dragon’s Eyes, which, in combination with the fact that these gems will no longer be prismatic, would effectively squash the Jewelcrafting bonus.
Jewelcrafters will also do well to note that they will be able to acquire epic gems by prospecting Titanium. Combined with a Blacksmith’s two extra prismatic sockets, this powerful duo is one of the most popular profession combinations.
In addition, Engineers will be seeing some welcome changes to their profession that may make it more appealing. Unfortunately, some of the details have not been made public, so the competitiveness of their self buffs, for example, remains to be seen.
Engineering Changes
Here, I will discuss a few of the more significant ones and the ways in which they’re going to affect us.
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by Allison Robert
If you’re not familiar with basic Freya strategy, try here. Multiple commenters have noted that the fight bears a passing resemblance to Sartharion, but I always felt like Solarian was an equally good, if not better, comparison. If you can survive her annoying adds, the fight turns into a tank and spank. If you can’t survive her adds…well, the view from the Ulduar graveyard is really quite lovely.
As an aside, the fight also looks and feels more frenetic than it actually is. Watch any Freya videos closely, and you’ll notice that a clean kill is basically controlled chaos.
BEARS: To be frank, this isn’t really a difficult tanking fight. If you’re tanking Freya, all you’ll be doing is keeping her occupied until the raid finishes the six waves of adds, so just make sure you’re not outranging your healers and that you keep an eye on healthy mushroom spawns once an Ancient Conservator is up. Threat is not a concern on Freya; feel free to use your a high mitigation set to reduce healing load.
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by ALLISON ROBERT
A quick word about the quartermasters; you won’t have early access to the Ebon Blade or Sons of Hodir quartermasters for the purpose of browsing the merchandise. The Sons will be hostile to you until after you’ve done a long (but very entertaining) quest chain to get them to neutral, and the Ebon Blade quartermaster will only be “phased” into existence after you complete a quest chain that gives the Knights control of the Shadow Vault. The Argent Crusade quartermaster is available if you can get to their base camp in Icecrown, but don’t bother rushing; the earliest you can use any of the gear they offer is level 78.
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Glyphs you’ll want to look for:
- Glyph of Swiftmend. Hands down, 100%, the best Restoration Druid glyph out there, in my humble opinion. Its usefulness absolutely cannot be overstated. It removes the need to spend the mana and a cast time or global cooldown re-applying Regrowth or (more likely) Rejuvenation, and essentially turns both of these HoT’s into an emergency heal without having to sacrifice the HoT afterwards. It’s absolutely invaluable for 5-man healing. It may turn out to be less so for raids given the new abilities given to other healers, but instant compensation for burst damage on a tank while your HoT continues to roll is just amazing. I love this glyph and have never replaced it in the beta.
- Glyph of Healing Touch. This essentially turns Healing Touch into a flash heal. I played around with a bit for a 5-man healing but wasn’t too impressed, and at level 80 you’ll get a real flash heal, Nourish. In all honesty, this is probably a much better glyph for PvP-oriented feral druids, who will generally have Naturalist. Between Naturalist and this glyph, Healing Touch becomes a 1-second cast, which will be extremely useful for PvP.
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New abilities:
- Revive. Yes. It is, indeed, an out of combat resurrection for Druids. There, there. Don’t weep. You can go ahead and let that idiot DPSer you pugged for your 5-man run die pulling aggro over and over again. No longer will you have to struggle to keep this person up while they inadvertently tank half the instance just because you’re sick of having to wait 5 minutes for them to run back. Let them die. You can rez them. Or not. Not everyone knows we have this yet. Shhhh.
New talents:
- Master Shapeshifter. Worth it? Possibly, but if you want or have to skip it, it’s not game-breaking. As people have pointed out on Eliah’s 3.02 changes for ferals comment thread, you get less out of Master Shapeshifter per point than it presently appears, because the talent requires an investment of 3 points in Natural Shapeshifter, which is far from being a necessary PvE talent (and even less so now that you’re not required to shift out of Tree of Life in order to decurse or move at normal speed). So it’s essentially a 4% boost to your healing for 5 points, not 2. With that said, it’s not terribly difficult to accommodate this talent even in a build at 70, if for no other reason than having to pick up 5 talents in the second tier of the resto tree. Naturalist is still designed for ferals, you’ll probably pick up 3/3 Subtlety, leaving you tohave to invest at least 2 points in Natural Shapeshifter, so…yeah. This may come down to the usual early resto-tree game of “Which Useless Talent Is Less Useless?”
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The single biggest change for most restoration Druids with patch 3.02 will be the disappearance of at least four commonly-used PvE and PvP specs:
- 8/11/42 (the traditional resto PvP spec)
- 11/11/39 (Resto PvP with Insect Swarm)
- 13/11/37 (Resto PvP with Insect Swarm and Nature’s Reach)
- 11/0/50 (PvE Tree of Life with Insect Swarm).
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