The Best Week Ever

My wife likes to watch “The Best Week Ever” on TV. I’m not even sure what network it is on, but after sitting next to her for enough episodes (typically with me in Wow fishing or farming), I’ve got the gist. So, without further ado…

“QUAICHE… You are having the BEST WEEK EVER!”

Why? I went from bring reasonably well geared as a Bear tank to almost as good as I can possibly be (until we’re clearing Naxx-25 every week) in just a few days.

Given the changes that happened to feral druids this week, it might seem odd that this is the week I got so much stuff, but sometimes that is just how things work in this game.

The goodness started for me on Monday. Some time during the day I got wind of the pending 3.0.8 patch. It may have been in one of the IRC channels on Freenode or maybe I caught it on WorldOfRaids. I can’t remember.

I had already made my Durable Nerubhide Cape the previous day “just to have in the bank”, so that slot was now up to par. But my neck, rings and trinkets were about to get the nerf bat, so over lunch I ditched work and logged into the game to see what I could do.

Chalol, one of my officers, was in-game (it was MLK day so he was home from work). His JC can make Titanium Earthguard Chain and Titanium Earthguard Ring, both excellent pieces when gemmed right, so I had him make those up for me. 3.0.8 wasn’t here yet though, so in the bank they went next to my new cloak.

That night I ran my obligatory Heroic Drak’Tharon to make another attempt at the Keystone Great-Ring. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve killed that skele-dragon at the end, but that is my cross to bear. I will have that ring dammit!

On Tuesday the rumors were confirmed. 3.0.8 was here and along with it a new version of Rawr (2.1.7). I started comparing my other pieces while downloading patch over lunch. I had been going back and forth on the T7.10 chest and gloves for a while now, but the way the stats all started lining up, I got more Mitigation and Survival by making the switch so once the patch was installed and Dragonblight was back up, I headed over to the vendor and spent 140 Emblems of Heroism getting my Heroes' Dreamwalker Raiments and Heroes' Dreamwalker Handgrips. That is 5 pieces upgraded in three days.

“BUT WAIT, THERE IS MORE!”

I had already purchased my Valor Medal of the First War weeks ago, and used it for certain fights, but now it clearly overpowered the Badge of Tenacity so I made that swap permanent and put the Badge in the band for old times’ take.

At this point I was ready for Naxx-10 that night. I was raid leader and one of our two tanks that night and I felt pretty good about my numbers.

Naxx went well. We had a good fun group. We didn’t rush and had an occasional “oops” wipe, but were able to take down everything we faced. Anub was straightforward—we do him without kiting on 10-man and just burn fast. On Grand Widow Faerlina (a fight I enjoy), the Boots of the Worshipper dropped. Since there were no other ferals in the raid, it was mine. Sweet! Maexxna followed and also went down.

After Arachnid, we went on to the Plague wing. Noth was a breeze, as expected, then we marched over to Heigan. Heigan is an easy fight in 10-man. You learn the dance and do it. The dance is simple, look where the fire is about to be. Once it pops up, move to where it just was. Rinse, repeat.

But nothing is ever so simple. Slowly, we lost raid member after raid member. A few here because the tank was holding Heigan too close to the platform which messes up the healers. And we got the disease on a bunch of people too, which can be bad when the healers are dealing with 300% cast times.

Eventually Heigan is at 30% and everyone is dead but the pally tank, a shaman healer and a warlock.

“Should I DI Mack?” asked the tank.

“Hell no,” I said. “Kill him.”

I hate to give up on a fight that can be won. And I know Heigan can be won with a healer and tank and a DPSer. So it took a while, but these three folks burned him down steadily but surely. It was a wonderful thing to behold. Great job guys.

In our guild we joke that Naxx-10 doesn’t actually have any feral tanking gear, so I expected very little as I looted the body. Imagine my delight and surprise when I saw Staff of the Plague Beast and Cuffs of Dark Shadows. Again… no other ferals in the raid (and no rogues) and since both were upgrades for me, they were mine! WOW!

Now we’re up to 7 pieces in 3 days. Amazing.

Of course, that night I ran yet another Drak’Tharon run to get my ring but of course it didn’t drop. Bah! That thing doesn’t exist.

Wednesday I logged in late after hanging out with my wife in front of the tube. Started to put together my Drak’Tharon team but got high jacked for a quick Vault of Archavon 10-man run. The mage PvP piece and T7 Shaman pieces dropped. The former got taken but the latter got melted. Oh well.

Off to Drak’Tharon for another attempt at my ring. I have to again thank all these folks who keep running that same place over and over with me. I could do that place in my sleep and Kendal, often our healer on these runs, has geared up quite well, so we walked right through as usual.

We do the stupid skele-dragon again, nothing new there. Go to loot… and…

MY RING! Finally, I could replace the Ring of Earthen Might with the Keystone Great Ring.

That is a total of 8 epic quality upgrades (9 if you include the trinket I bought earlier) in just four days.

Here’s my final gear list and stats as of last night (exported from Rawr):

Head	Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm
Neck	Titanium Earthguard Chain
Shoulders	Trollwoven Spaulders
Chest	Heroes' Dreamwalker Raiments
Waist	Trollwoven Girdle
Legs	Gored Hide Legguards
Feet	Boots of the Worshiper
Wrist	Cuffs of Dark Shadows
Hands	Heroes' Dreamwalker Handgrips
Finger1	Titanium Earthguard Ring
Finger2	Keystone Great-Ring
Trinket1	Valor Medal of the First War
Trinket2	Essence of Gossamer
Back	Durable Nerubhide Cape
MainHand	Staff of the Plague Beast
Ranged	Idol of Terror
Tabard	Tabard of the Wyrmrest Accord
Shirt	Black Swashbuckler's Shirt
ExtraWaistSocket	Regal Twilight Opal
Character:	Quaiche@US-Dragonblight
Race:	NightElf
Health:	39127
Agility:	1073.72
Armor:	35502.44
Stamina:	2899.778
Dodge Rating:	255
Defense Rating:	101
Resilience:	51
Dodge:	42.0132%
Miss:	7.217291%
Mitigation:	72.76498%
Avoidance PreDR:	55.45892%
Avoidance PostDR:	49.23049%
Total Mitigation:	86.17291%
Damage Taken:	13.82708%
Chance to be Crit:	-2.493659%
Overall Points:	312433.6
Mitigation Points:	144643.7
Survival Points:	141727.9
Threat Points:	26062.01

 

“QUAICHE… You are having the BEST WEEK EVER!”

Undocumentd Nerf – Handwraps of Preserved History

I was warned by a friend this was coming, but I forgot to include it in my last post because I hadn’t yet been in game to confirm.

Handwraps of Preserved History has been seriously nerfed for Bear tanks.

Prior to today, it was very over-budget. We all knew it. But we all wore them anyway. Today they corrected it and made me take them off.

Here are the old stats:

And the new stats:

Needless to say, they were quickly replaced with Heroes’ Dreamwalker Handgrips and a +16 Agililty gem.

Patch 3.0.8 – Feral Druid Perspective

I spent some time today reviewing the 3.0.8 patch notes. Since it is going live today (YAY!), I thought it might be good to review the parts of this patch that affect Feral Druids.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_3.0.8

Enjoy!

Armor Changes

The most talked about change in 3.0.8 for feral druids is the so-called “armor nerf”:

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.

This was something we've known about for a while and I think has much less impact for level 80s than it would have had when we were wearing our level 70 gear, which was heavily stacked with "green" armor values. Most of our current gear doesn't have bonus armor.

The more important part of that change, however, is the "or any other items with any armor" bit. Again, we knew this was coming, but essentially it significantly reduces the total impact that armor has on necklaces, rings, trinkets, cloaks and weapons. This is significant for Bears because pieces where the overall mitigation value was mostly about the armor will now be worth far less than before.

Goodbye Badge of Tenacity and Nerubian Shield Ring and hello Valor Medal of the First War and Titanium Earthguard Ring.

But what about our Armor? Well... they've addressed that with a talent change:

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.

The feeling I'm getting at this point is that we will end up with better mitigation after this change. Also it will let us use our non-leather slots to focus on Dodge (up to 50%) and Defense (after 50%) instead of just stacking armor.

Feral Attack Power

Another one that has been getting lots of attention is the changes to how Feral Attack Power (FAP) work:

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.

But there is another little related wrinkle in there…

Polearms: Now trainable by Druids.

Taken together, these are pretty cool. Polearms like Black Ice suddenly move to the top 3 list for feral kitty DPS. Not many others right now compare with that particular polearm, and none of the polearms really do much for tanking, but still... the options are interesting.

I spent some time a couple of weeks ago talking to Astrylian (author or Rawr and contributor on the EJ druid forums and friend of mine). It turns out that the FAP has always been a function of the DPS of the weapon, but what is changing is that now the FAP is automatically calculated.

You've maybe seen screenshots like that show shows FAP on the Titansteel Destroyer or other non-feral pieces. The interesting thing is that a non-druid WOULD NOT SEE THAT LINE in the tooltip.

So where does it come from? Here's the equation:

FAP = (DPS - 54.8) * 14

Since the titansteel Destroyer has 186.5 DPS in the patch, that gives it 1843 FAP. Pretty cool eh? It gets even better. There are now weapons that were basically hunter weapons that are available to us (and vice versa). Any 2H weapon you can equip will now get a FAP tooltip when your playing your Druid.

BTW, Black Ice has 203.7 DPS. That gives 2084 FAP. Since it also has 108 agility and 72 hit rating, you see why it can rate so high on feral DPS.

The potential downside to all this is that we may find Hunters and others classes interested in rolling against us on pieces. I don't think it will be a concern for us, but it does open the pool up a bit.

Other Ability Changes

There are a number of smaller, but still important changes that hit today:

Growl: Range increased to 30 yards

Sounds good. Stack that with Glyph of Growl and you shouldn't have any trouble with runaway mobs in Heroics or that boss transfer on the Four Horsemen event in Naxx.

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.

Sweet! Since the expansion, we've all noticed that shapeshifting seems to cost more than it did before. Powershifting is way too expensive to even consider. Maybe this will change that... maybe not.

Protector of the Pack: No longer changes value based on party size.

Sounds good to me. Everyone likes Attack Power bonuses right?

Savage Roar: The buff now persists outside of Cat Form but only provides its benefits while in Cat Form.

This may be useful for those times when you need to switch out of Bear for just a few seconds to grab that errant trash mob. Now when you go back to Cat your 5-CP Savage Roar will still be there ticking away.

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.

Finally kitty cats get some AOE damage. Given how the game seems to have become an AOE fest, I'm glad we've not been left out of the fun.

Shadowmeld: This ability will now properly restore threat when it is canceled. 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.

Bummer. I only just learned about our own little "Vanish" trick and now it is basically gone. Oh well...

Bear Form: This ability will now grant the correct attack power per level for levels 71-80.

Good. Better threat gen for bears... except...

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.

...then we lose some. Net effect? Not sure yet.

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.

Darnit! A cool sploit I didn't know about nerfed before I could even try it.

Profession Changes for Ferals

There are also some changes to professions that are relevant to bears and kitties:

Increased the critical strike rating granted by ranks 5 and 6 of Master of Anatomy.

We might see a few more ferals regretting having dropped skinning now.

A new recipe for [Worg Tartare] is now available for purchase with Dalaran Cooking Awards. This delicacy imbues hit rating and Stamina upon those brave enough to eat it.

If you need hit rating, here is another recipe you might wanna try. No fishing required for this one.

Added a new recipe to enchant bracers with Stamina. You can buy this recipe from Vanessa Sellers in Dalaran.

If you aren't a Leatherworker and are coveting our Fur Lining - Stamina for bracers, this might be worth looking at.

The epic leg armor patches now require a Frozen Orb in addition to their other materials.

Again, the non-Leatherworker ferals will feel this the most as the prices of their leg enchants will go up. Leatherworkers have a self-enchant that is almost free, so we won't care much except that maybe we can make more money selling epic leg armors than we could before.

Other Items and Gear Changes

In addition to profession and ability changes, a short list of gear changes is work commenting on:

Dreamwalker Battlegear: The Rip bonus is now 4 seconds instead of 3.

One more second of Rip for the 2-piece set bonus... hmmm... not bad. Might make me spend some badges on them for my kitty set.

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

More changes to the Feral T7 set bonuses to make kitties more powerful. Cool.

Undocumented Changes

There are always a number of “discovered” or “undocumented” changes. These come from http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_3.0.8_(undocumented_changes)

Rewards added for [Wintergrasp Mark of Honor]

Some ferals might like the Titan-forged pieces. I'm not sure how viable they'll be in PvE however.

Maim duration has been increased by 1 second. (3/4/5/6/7 seconds)

I always like a boost to abilities. This one won't affect raiding much, but may be useful soloing or in a pinch.

Survival Instincts now temporarily grants you 30% of your current maximum health for 20 sec. (Old - 30% of your maximum health)

This is actually a nerf. On those fights where the debuff from a boss causes a reduction in your maximum health (ala the red beam on Netherspite in Karazhan), your "Oh Crap" button now gives less health back. Bummer.

Thick Hide now increases your armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 4/7/10%. (Old - All items)

This is just more of the "armor bonuses for leather only" change described above. This is goodness and helps make up for the lost armor multiplier on neck, finger, trinket and weapon.

[Darkmoon Card: Death]: Changed to improve critical strike rating by 85 (Old - 85 haste)

That might make it quite interesting for kitty cats.

Raiding Resto in Crafted and BoE Gear

Since early in the Burning Crusades, Quaiche has been a bear tank. I originally converted from resto to tanking one evening when a guild officer needed a tank for Shadow Labs. I had some feral gear, but not much, so he went to the AH and bought me a set of Heavy Clefthoof gear and a ring or two and off we went. Then with the help of Emmerald’s Gear List (and later Rawr) I tanked all the way to Black Temple.

Now we’re heading into Naxxramas in the new Lich King expansion pack and the opposite is happening. We’ve got plenty o’ tanks. Bears, Warriors, Paladins and even a DK tank. But we’re short healers. “Fine, I’ll be a healer,” I said, “it’ll be fun.”

I started by crafting as much resto gear as I could (I’m a 440+ Leatherworker so made all this myself):

• Overcast Headguard
• Overcast Handwraps
• Overcast Spaulders
• Overcast Bracers
• Overcast Belt
• Wildscale Breastplate
• Earthgiving Boots
• Earthgiving Legguards

After that I hit the AH for some shopping. There are some pretty good BoE blues out there that can be had for a steal if you get lucky:

• Twisted Puzzle Ring
• Dream Signet of Restoration
• Prison Manifest
• Blood Sun Necklace
• Cloak of the Moon or Wispcloak (not cheap but well worth it)

I ended up replacing all of the crafted blue leather in less than two weeks with better drops from Heroics and Naxx-10, but those pieces and the other stuff I bought enabled me to be a Heroic and Naxx-10 healer in very little time.

One slot that is hard to fill is the weapon. I ended up with War Mace of Unrequited Love from Heroic Nexus as my main hand and Watchful Eye in my offhand, so I didn’t have this problem for long. One thing I’ve seen people using is the Chilly Slobberknocker from Champion of Anguish quests. YMMV.

This week I’m back to bear tanking again, but now I’ve got a pretty good healing set going and am totally ready for Blizzard to ship dual-spec in patch 3.1 so I can be a Bear Tree full time!