The attacker/target range mechanics are being re-evaluated it might be changed for Wrath of the Lich King to fix most of the existing bugs, including the ones affecting the attack range of Feral Druids.

There will be a new model for the Druid's Dire Bear form and the Dire Cat form will be introduced.


!!!!!! Dire kitty form !!! :D


http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=9454.0


-Annikk

Dire Kitty was on my list of wants... did you see the other things? Like:

a) Totems like Windfury affect us in forms... can you imagine the threat generated by a bear form druid who windfury procs????? Of course you are gonna need that threat for all of the fury warriors who are dual weilding big two handers and get a windfury proc.
b) On hit abilities in trinkets and enchants now affect in forms!!! Like Mongoose etc... Amazing Plus potions in forms. This gives us HUGE access to more trinkets and some of the rogue based weapons might have more affect for us.
c) Windfury is a Personal enchant. So you can have your normal enchant, your weapon enchant like a sharpening stone/weightstone and windfury going all the time..... that's just sick.
d) Roots use indoors and out. reliable CC for druids now. Boomkin no longer have to be ignored and overlooked for mages.

http://www.worldofraids.com/news/169.html

that link has a very nice summary of the class changes planned at this point.

Yeah man :> I'm just particularly pleased about those two..


-Annikk

Windfury for cats isn't so special thanks to the 1.0 attack speed, but for bears it's ridiculous. Another huge one for druids of all sorts is that totems are raid-wide, which will likely mean that druids can get both windfury and grace of air at the same time. That's a huge boost to a cat, as usually you don't get to be with a shaman or the shaman must put down WF.

Berserking with fully talented Mangle and Windfury is going to be funny.

Hit 3 people with Mangle, buffed +15%, with Windfury going off sometimes, whilst immune to every type of CC. Insane aggro right there ^


-Annikk

Just read this about Dire Cat form on EJ...

Dire Cat Form
Instant cast
35% of Base mana
Shapeshift into dire cat form, increasing melee attack power 110% of your agility, armor contribution from items by 180%, feral attack power contribution from your equipped weapon by 100%, and allowing Off-hand attacks. Also protects the caster from Polymorph effects and allows the use of various cat abilities.

The act of shapeshifting frees the caster of Polymorph and Movement Impairing effects.Seems quite a bit OP if you ask me. I suspect it might be bogus.

/disagree tlbj, doesn't sound (or can't assume) OP for three reasons:

1. assuming equal gear, in pvp cat form is way under powered (still fun, but only because I don't expect to win much)

2. we need to compare the buffs ferals are getting with the buffs other classes that already outperform us are getting

3. we need to compare the buffs ferals are getting with the relative power of the mobs in the xpac

I'm posting this prior to reading the EJ stuff, so subject to edit later, but kitty really does need a significant boost to become generally desirable in raids and seriously viable in pvp.

That being said, I must admit to being a bit of a Blizzard apologist...given the complexity of WoW and and the impossibility of knowing what the playerbase will do with whatever they implement, they do a phenominal job of managing and balancing the classes.

Edit: Just read the EJ thread and apparently Dire Cat is a concept only, and hasn't been put on the Alpha servers yet.

which part sounds OP tlbj? AP 110% of agility? as it is right now, based on mostly S3 gear, with S2 shoulders and S2 mace, that's a minimal increase in AP from where i am now... as far as the armor goes (or anything else, really) i'll take as much OP as i can get lol... i was a little bit "outside the wave" (gnarly surf reference) when BC was released and Mangle was OP before it got nerfed, and haven't yet had the chance to enjoy being obscenely OP compared to other classes...

There's a lot of great info in that thread about feral dps scaling relative to other classes and what Blizzard seems to be experimenting with to solve it. I read all 9 pages of that thread fairly quickly...I could probably spend 3 or 4 hours reading all the info and theorycrafting available on the web.

Also interesting that at this point it looks as if Blizz is trying to differentiate between a tanking feral spec and a dps feral spec for pve, and then a third dimension for pvp. I have to admit to not being a fan of this idea...ostensibly feral druids are subpar to their parent classes because of their access to very low power versions of two other parent classes. I hope if Blizz splits the feral tree such that we have to choose between being viable dps or a viable tank, they shrink the difference in performance between us and the parent class quite a bit from where it is now.

There is also discussion of having 2 specs you can swap between for free. No idea on the mechanic of that yet, but it means one could swap between cat spec and bear spec..

-Annikk

There is also discussion of having 2 specs you can swap between for free. No idea on the mechanic of that yet, but it means one could swap between cat spec and bear spec..I'm aware of that, but if I had two specs, I'd probably have a PvE (bear) and a PvE (resto) build. But for those that always have a healer around, a Bear/Kitty (with PvP talents) would be a nice combo.

It does raise a lot of interesting possibilities. I think I would default to a pve cat spec, with option to insta-change to pvp spec. That would suit my playstyle the most, I think.


-Annikk

I was reading elsewhere that some folks think the attack speed reduction of IW will work on boss mobs, but not the movement slowing effects. Appartently there are similar effects in the game today that do affect bosses' attack speed.

I have to wonder if a 50% speed reduction on boss attacks might adversely affect rage generation. I'm sure I'd be fine if I just use Mangle/Lacerate, but on a boss I like to land as many Mauls as possible. Seems like I'd have to be more careful about if/when I use Maul on mobs (boss or trash) as I might become rage starved more easily due to IW.

There are effects that effect a boss's attack speed, but not by 50%. That's ridiculous. If true, no one would stack avoidance (because of rage gen) and every bear would have huge amounts of health. Also, a feral would be mandatory for every serious progression guild.

feral attack power contribution from your equipped weapon by 100%, and allowing Off-hand attacks.That would be the ridiculous bonus. 110% agi isn't that special (it's not such a huge boost) but there's already a talent that gives another 70% boost from your feral AP weapon. In addition to that, we'd get another 100% bonus? So before any other stats are factored in (no agi, no str, nothing), a staff of the forest lord would give 2800 AP by itself.

Yeah, that's silly.

Personally, I don't like the separation of cat and bear specs. I guess being able to swap between 2 specs for free was their way around that. However, since OTing requires going back and forth between tanking and dpsing, the free swap doesn't help much.

I don't really think that you would have to. The tree is big enough that you can't take every talent that is decent for cat and bear, but it's not like you need to in order to work reasonably well. My suspicion is that you'll get one or the other depending on what you'll be for raiding and stick with it, and both will be fine for the other task. We'd be talking like 2% mitigation as a bear vs. 2% damage done as a cat. It's not like you're dropping mangle.

Two Blue Posts confirm that there is no intention to impliment a Dire Cat Forum at this time. What they meant was new skins for cat form possibly through Inscription or a Repeatable Quest. :(

I would quote the Blues, but... Server is busy, please try again

[Edit->]

We have no plans to implement a "Dire Cat" form at this time. "Dire Bear" exists for the sole purpose of upgrading the Feral Druid's armor value to match the Warrior/Paladin etc. (Druids get no shield)

We do, however, intend to allow Druids to be able to use items and enchants with procs in forms, which I believe will work in the next beta build (don't hold me to it though).


I think what Kalgan meant was that we intend to do different texture variances for Druid forms, including Cat form. Which is true, though not sure how soon we're going to get that. They may come from a repeatable quest, or through inscription.

Regarding the "Feral Range Bug," that really is not a bug. Have a Warrior, Rogue or any melee class play without using a snare and you'll encounter the same issue. The issue is that the server and client are not sync. When you try to do damage to the target, while your client shows him on your screen, the server disagree's and gives you an error. Snares help alleviate the problem, which is what we're giving Feral Druids in the form of "Infected Wounds" for the expansion.

Yeah, there's no dire cat form, windfury is now just a 20% base haste boost, and the agi->crit rating has been nerfed.

Sigh.