Gah! So busy. This needed to be up, like, yesterday.
IntroductionQ: What's the point & purpose of this FAQ?A: Short & simple answers for people who want a quick fix. You don't need to have followed the beta changes since day one. This is for those who didn't read everything on EJ, didn't pour over changes and just want to know what the heck is going on.
Q: You're wrong! My research says blah!A: Maybe. And if so, point it out and I'll correct it. But I warn you - I do a lot of research and I'm good at it.
Q: But what about 5-mans? Or PvP?A: I don't care. This is for bears who are MTing 10 and 25-man content, especially 25-man. It is probably suboptimal for other choices.
Q: You smell, and I hate you!A: Enjoy the
WoW forums then. I get flamed over there all the time too.
Q: You don't talk about trash mobs, enchants, or detailed gear selection!A: Nope, this is quick and dirty. I've talked about professions, gear choices, various good stats and other things elsewhere.
Q: You're just repeating stuff on EJ, Tankspot, and Toskk's forums!A: Largely yes. That's kind of the point - I do the reading so you don't have to.
Mechanics & play changes:Q: What rotation do I use?A@80: For single target it's mangle when it's available, lacerate if there is no lacerate on the target, swipe when it's available,
pulverize to keep the buff up after 3 lacerates, lacerate otherwise. Faerie fire if you're in a low-rage situation. Maul if you're in a high rage situation. For multitarget it's largely the same, save that you should prioritize spreading lacerates around to proc more mangles if possible. And start the pull by thornsing yourself.
A@85: For single target it's mangle off CD, lacerate if there is no lacerate on the target, thrash off CD, swipe off CD,
pulverize to keep the buff up and lacerate otherwise. Faerie fire when you're low on rage, and maul if you're in high rage or need a quick boost of threat. And start the pull by thornsing yourself. On multitarget, rotate between swipe and thrash and lacerate otherwise, throwing mangles and mauls in when you have the rage.
Q: Stack lacerate to 3? But I thought it stacked to 5?
A: Nope. Lacerate is only three stacks. And even better, the damage it does to start with is significantly better, and the dot is pretty weak. Which makes it quite spammable.
Q: Pulverize is that good?
A: Yep. Pulverize helps with more savage defense, helps with rage, and does a good amount of damage by itself.
Q: So the single target rotation uses both of our AoE abilities?
A: Yeah, at least right now; both do significantly large amounts of threat and damage.
A:
Thrash is an ability learned at level 81. It's great threat and applies a bleed.
Q: So no more swipe spam?
A: Nope! Swipe has a 6-second CD, as does Thrash. You'll want to plan to use swipe based on the fight and make sure that it's up if adds spawn at a specific time.
Q: So no more faerie fire?
A: Faerie fire costs no rage but isn't that great in terms of threat any more, at least not compared to lacerate.
Q: Wait - so what happened to mangle? What's the new berserk thing?
A: Berserk now gives a 30% chance to your lacerate ticks to reset mangle's CD. There isn't an improved mangle any more - but the lacerate ticks mean that you have a good chance to get extra mangles if you're paying attention. That means lacerate should be up all the time (it should be the first thing you do after pulverize) and ideally you should pulverize only right after a lacerate tick.
Q: All my attacks had /cast maul associated with them - should I keep doing that?
A: No! Maul has a 3-second CD, is off the GCD (so you can use it whenever) and doesn't do nearly as much threat and damage as it used to. Plus it's a huge rage sink, and chances are you don't want to mess with your rotation too much to use it. It's better used in multitarget situations or at the start of a fight to get a good threat lead.
Q: So the magic number for defense was 156 defense rating or 103 resilience rating before. What is it now?A: 0. Bear form &
Thick Hide automatically take care of being uncrittable.
Q: What are the new cooldowns bears have?A:
Survival instincts has changed to be a true shield wall - 60% reduction every 5 minutes. Barkskin is unchanged.
Frenzied Regeneration (with the
glyph) is now sort of like the old survival instincts but doesn't increase your current health unless you're very low, but adds the guardian spirit ability. All are very strong.
Q: Okay, those are pretty big changes - what else has happened? A:
Skull Bash is your new interrupt. And it's a mini-charge too!
Q: Anything else?A:
Vengeance is pretty neat for bears. Especially since Vengeance combines with
Savage Defense to make blocking kinda ridiculous at times.
A: Not any more! With it being modified by mastery, increased via vengeance and being fairly large anyway it means big, big blocks quite often.
Q: So what other goodies am I getting come Cataclysm?
A: Not a lot, sadly. I mentioned thrash, which feels like an answer to a question that doesn't matter any more (how to tank lots of mobs easily, which you shouldn't be doing!). At 83 you get
stampeding roar, which is somewhat neat but has such a small radius currently it's not super useful. Still, it's another dash and it's in bear form. And at 85, you get
wild mushroom...which is essentially as useful as hurricane.
A: It's horrible now for ferals; it gives back mana based on the caster's mana pool.
A: Yeah, it's a bad design. I hope it goes away soon.
Q: is there any good news?
A: well, you can use
tranquility to heal anyone, sort of like a divine hymn, but unless you have
nurturing instinct chances are it won't be useful.
Gear:Q: Where's all my extra armor?A: On leather, extra armor is long gone. On nonleather there's a bug that removed a lot of it; it should return soon.
Q: So what, we're supposed to wear rogue leather?A: Yep.
Q: That sucks!A: Not really, not any more. Most leather pieces have as much stamina as plate pieces do. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be.
Q: What rogue leather is best then? It's got all these weird-ass stats...A: The only stats that help mitigation/avoidance directly that are on rogue leather are agility, stamina and mastery. Crit somewhat helps make more savage defense procs, as does hit and expertise, but they aren't big deals. And agility is huge now.
Q: How is agility huge?
A: Well, for a bear it gives crit %, dodge %and 2 AP per agility point. It's quite the one-stop shop for the well-to-do bear. Note that it doesn't give armor any more. Yeah, I don't know either.
Q: Mastery?
A: It's a lame name, I know.
Q: Okay, but that wasn't the question. What does it do?
A: For bears, Mastery increases the size of your savage defense shields by 4% per mastery point. This sounds wimpy, but it ends up being quite substantial; each mastery point at 80 increases absorption by about 400-500 damage, and that increases quite a bit with vengeance.
Q: But doesn't that mean PvP gear has the best stats for tanking then?
A: Yep! At least it has the best mitigation/avoidance stats. The PvE gear is better for threat. Sadly this hasn't changed in 4 years either.
Q: So great...I have to pvp now, don't I?
A: Not really. It may give you a small advantage, but since you can't reforge resilience away it loses a lot of item budget.
Q: Reforge?
A: Yeah! This is the biggest thing for bears in a long time. You can convert 40% of a secondary stat (not agility or stamina or strength) into another secondary stat that isn't on the item. For bears, this means that you can convert haste (which is pretty weak for bears) or extra hit into dodge rating or mastery.
Q: So what you're telling me is...
A: Yes! Tanking leather is back! Sorta.
Q: What about the non-leather items?
A: This is sort of a tough one. On the one hand, the tanking non-leather items can have extra armor. On the other hand, the DPS ones have agility and more threat, which can give more boosts. I'd recommend taking the non-leather tanking pieces with + armor when they exist, take the tanking trinkets that give stamina and armor, but look for high-agility and high-mastery jewelry otherwise.
Q: So defense is gone...what does that mean for gear?
A: It means look for gear with armor, agility, mastery, and dodge. Strength is okay but not thrilling.
Q: How about gems?
A: Stamina is still the king. Agility is better than it was before, but avoidance still isn't thriling compared to the gains you get from stamina.
Q: You have mongoose on your tanking staff?
A: Sadly Mongoose is still the best bear enchant at 80. At 85 there are going to be better ones, at least.
Q: Okay...what about other enchants?
A: In general, go for stamina and agility, then avoidance.
Talents:
Q: Wow. What happened to our tree?
A: It went boom. You now pick a specialization (feral) and then get talents roughly once every other level. The total talents that you can have at level 80 is 36, and at 85 is 41. And you can't get any talents from any tree other than feral until you've spent 31 points in feral.
Q: Survival of the fittest is gone! So is MANGLE? HOW IS I DON"T EVEN GAAARHRGHG
Q: So what spec would you recommend?
A: At 80, you can't go deep into the resto tree - so I'd go with something like a
0/33/3 build.
A: at 85, you want to get perseverance and you might as well get master shapeshifter along the way, so you end up with a
0/32/9 build. There are a few options available for those points.
Q: There don't seem to be a lot of options for bears.A: That's not a question, but yeah, you're right. Most of the talents that are somewhat situational are either completely suicidal (
King of the Jungle) or just aren't useful for bears at all (like
Nurturing Instinct). Your options come down to
brutal impact,
infected wounds or
stampede, basically. Of those I'd recommend skipping stampede, as it's only useful at the start of a fight.
Q: What about natural shapeshifter/master shapeshifter?A: Master shapeshifter would be good if it were only 2 points, but it's essentially 3. And natural shapeshifter is worthless. There's not a lot else to spend your points on, though.
Q: King of the Jungle?A: One of the best cat talents, but only meh for bears. Nice for an early threat lead but not all that useful otherwise. And threat really isn't that big of a concern right now. Still, get it if you plan on doing any decent amount of kitty.
Other choices:Q: What Inscriptions?A:
Mangle,
Berserk,
Lacerate,
Frenzied Regeneration and
Feral Charge. Also
Challenging Roar. I'd recommend swapping between the
rebirth and the
thorns glyph for the third major.
Q: What professions?A: Too early to tell, but my guess is jewelcrafting (since it's useful for all specs of druid) and either leatherworking or engineering.
Q: If I'm taking all these bear talents, how do I dps as a cat?A: Much better than before. The main cat talent you don't have is King of the Jungle, but your shreds, rakes, and rips all hit fairly hard. You also are missing out on glyphs which hurts, but it's much better than it was before.
Q: Wow...you're a sexy theorycrafter. You're so smart when you explain things. Where can I find
the places that you stole this from more information?
A:
EJ forums on Cataclysm Feral druids - the big one.
Combat Ratings at 85, which talks about diminishing returns
Beta forums, which kind of suck right now
MMO Champion, which has the latest updates on specs and talents
Rawr, the best damn optimizer on the planet.
Plus a whole ton of places that I can't be bothered to mention.
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