3.2 Kitties – What you need to know – Preview

***An updated summary post has been made with all 3.2 kitty changes. Click here to jump***

With all the new material coming out for 3.2, I figured I would wait a little before posting. Now that majority of the information has come out, it seems like an appropriate time to try and consolidate all the changes that are happening for 3.2 and how it will affect us kitties.

Kitty Nerfs

As I’ve discussed in previous posts, we are slated for a nerf in 3.2. 

• Mangle (Cat) now causes 200% normal damage plus 566 (down from 634) damage at max rank.
• Rip now causes [ 6/12/18/24/30% of AP + 774/1332/1890/2448/3006 ] damage over 12 sec at max rank. (Down from [ 6/12/18/24/30% of AP + 828/1422/2016/2610/3204 ] damage)
• Shred now shred the target for 226% damage plus 666 at max rank. (Down from 742.5)
• Swipe now inflicts 250% weapon damage. (Down from 260%)

It seems that Blizzard is on the right track though as they are nerfing the base damage instead of our scalability. This should in essence reduce the damage a new kitty druid can do when they first hit 80 (as an example) vs a fully Ulduar geared kitty kat while at the same time, keeping the mechanics the same. Some good discussion posts have already started to crunch out the numbers which show minimal effects (less than 5%?). Also remember that if you’re lucky enough to have a mangle/trauma bot, the only reductions you’ll be facing are from Rip, Shred & Swipe. The easiest post to identify how the changes will affect us were made by Anubisck on EJ

T9 Sets Released

Here are the three sets for the next raid instance Crusader’s Colliseum. Traditionally since the release of WOTLK we’ve had 2 sets (10 and 25) however with the new release of this upcoming instance, Blizzard is moving to a 3 tier system. The ilevels of the 3 upcoming sets are 232, 245 and 258, the natural assumption being:

• 232 – Colliseum 10 Easy Mode
• 245 – Colliseum 10 Hard Mode/Colliseum 25 Easy Mode
• 258 – Colliseum 25 Hard Mode

Stats for each set can be seen in the hotlinks above. The models are just placeholders (t7/t8) and will be replaced with the proper ones in due time.

T9 Set Bonuses

Here is the proposed sets for feral druids, while the 2pt9 bonus is pretty sick, the 4pt9 bonus is not. It seems like this may be a placeholder as almost all the 4pt9 bonuses across all classes are some sort of +5% bonus. Lets hope this isn’t the finalized version else it looks like we’ll be going back to carrying a 2pc bonus only.

2pt9 - Decreases the cooldown on your Growl ability by 2 sec and increases the duration of your Rake ability by 3 sec.

4pt9 – Increases the damage reduction granted by Barkskin by 10% and increases the critical strike chance of Rip and Ferocious Bite by 5%.

New Druid Forms

The old forms will be going away, and the new forms will be coming whether you like it or not. Details and samples can be found in my old post here and also here on Blizzard’s page here.

New Badge Items

A full list of the new badge/profession gear is available on MMO-Champion which can be purchased through Emblem of Triumph.  Due to all the new badge change where all raid instances & heroic dungeons will be dropping Emblem of Triumph, ilevel 245 gear (better than Ulduar) will be accessible to all, making gear extremely available (casuals win again?). It is very apparent that all of the new gear will have a tonne of ArP, which will allow most people to scale back on the amount of gemming for ArP and back to gemming for more Agility once you’ve hit the cap (100%).

Pro Tip: Exchange your Emblem of Conquest badges for Runed Orb and sell them now before they decrease in price!

Probably the most exciting item is a cat & bear idol (Idol of Mutiliation) which will eliminate the need to be carrying two idols at the same time. Perhaps I can finally toss my Idol of Terror (lol?)

That’s it for now, as more information comes I’ll add to this post.

How am I doing?

So folks, it’s been about two months now (and 2500 hits later!) since I started this blog and I’ve seen it steadily grow to a good following so I thank you all for coming to see what I have to say and for continuing to come back as well. I wanted to do a checkpoint to see how you think I should proceed with this blog. I’ve been working on getting a good rhythm going in regards to posting style, posting frequency and whatnot but I’d love to hear your input so I can cater towards you, the reader.

Special thanks to the following blogs who have been gracious enough to link me up and help me grow:

• Lissana @ Restokin
• Jacemora @ Druid of the Moon
• Darksend @ I’m not feral, I’m a Bear
• Runy @ Unbearably HoT

I have a lot of ideas for future posts, including my series on Pimp your Druid which I have yet to start. For now, any feedback is appreciated, if there is something else you’d like to see feel free to leave it in a comment.

Orbit-uary

This post has been a bit delayed but a few weeks ago we killed the Flame Leviathan hard mode (Orbit-uary) which consists of leaving  all four towers of FL’s defensive towers up. While previously it was a very RNG based fight which required a bit of luck, it has since been nerfed (as all content in Ulduar) and probably is now in line with where it should be in terms of hard mode progression being as it is the first hard mode people should encounter.

Flame Leviathan Hard Mode – Orbit-uary

• The Flame Leviathan has 88 million HP
• Tower of Storms: Thorim’s Hammer – Physical damage. Extra damage at point of impact. Also increases physical damage by 25%
• Tower of Frost: Hodir’s Fury – Frost damage and entombs vehicles near the impact point in ice. Entombed vehicles are stunned for 1 minute, taking damage over time. The tomb can be destroyed with fire damage, a single cannon shot will suffice.
• Tower of Flames: Mimiron’s Inferno – Fire damage and a AoE damage zone. Also increases fire damage by 50%Tower of Nature: Freya’s Ward – Nature damage and summons Writhing Lasher and Ward of Life adds. Also decreases fire damage taken by Leviathan by 10%

Vehicle Reponsibilities

• Seige Engine Driver: Interrupt Flame Vents
• Seige Engine Turret: Kill Freya Adds and shoot down Pyrite
• Demolisher Driver: Ensure pyrite is rolling (10 stack) at all times and launching player onto Flame Levithan to induce shutdown.
• Demolisher Turret: Kill Freya Adds and pickup Pyrite
• Chopper: Pick up launched players and drop oil slicks

General Strategy

• The vehicles used should be 2 Demolishers, 2 Seige Engines and 1 Chopper, in other words 1 demolisher will have 1 person loaded to start, and another person in the passenger side. 1 Chopper should be empty.
• Only 1 caster should be launched onto Flame Leviathan at a time and should kill both turrets alone. This will allow both demolishers to have someone picking up pyrite at all times, ensuring pyrite can continue rolling throughout the whole fight
• After the first shutdown, the person (caster) who was previously in the passenger turret should load up and be launched, while at the same time, the chopper picks up the person that was previously launched and is brought back to the demolisher to continue picking up pyrite.
• An excellent diagram of positioning is located here

General Tips

• Use the highest ilevel gear you have (regardless of spec/gems/enchants etc). Vehicle HP and damage done is based entirely on your total ilevel of your gear.
• During your learning process, do not repair!!! Broken gear (0% durability) will still give you the same amount of hp/damage done.
• Before the fight starts, start shooting down Pyrite (lasts 3 mins now) so that there is ample supply for pickup
• It is the demolisher drivers responsibility to be aware of where pyrite is available and to drive to those areas
• If your demolisher is being chased, use boost often, it is possible to boost turn and keep your pyrite stack rolling
• You should always have two people in the demolisher passenger seat picking up pyrite
• People in turrets should never attack Flame Leviathan as the damage is minimal, their focus should always remain on killing freya adds & shooting down pyrite/picking up pyrite.

Is Kitty Pew Pew Too Good?

Since the release of 3.1 there has been a lot of controversy as to whether cat dps is too high. Although there have been a lot of threads of discussion (and by threads I mean mostly qq) there have been few and far Blizzard responses. However, Ghostcrawler has finally come out and made a somewhat definitive statement on the issue. My thoughts are his statement is pretty spot on so lets try and break it down.

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

Kitty dps is probably a little too high. It’s tricky though because it is a very demanding spec to play well and if nerf it for the best players, the less-skilled ones might really see their dps plummet.

I’ll say again that we purposely designed Ulduar to have a great diversity among the bosses. Depending on which bosses you look at, the list of whose dps is too low or too high changes. If Ulduar had 3 additional or 5 fewer bosses, the answer would probably be different.

“It’s tricky though because it is a very demanding spec to play well and if nerf it for the best players, the less-skilled ones might really see their dps plummet.”

It’s been stated on multiple occasions that kitty dps is a very demanding spec to play effectively. It’s best illustrated by this image. When you first look at the flow chart you may laugh and say “lol funneh!” it’s actually pretty accurate in terms of the thought process you need to go through. Couple this with the fact that majority of feral druids out there are primary bear MT/OT’s and offspecced as cat, there are few and far cat only druids out there who can truly push the theoretical limits effectively. While the theoretical maximum dps of a feral druid is quite high, in reality the execution to obtain those type of numbers is extremely hard and not plausible on many of the fights in Ulduar.

If we take a look at the top dps rankings from  Wow Meter Online we see that the ratings are generally dominated by pure dps classes. Yes of course you have your ferals and other hybrids up there in some situations but relatively speaking you can see that the breakdown favours pure dps. Some will say “well those meters are your best guilds and best players with full buffs”. Well duh? This game may be casual but if you want to maximize your dps to your theoretical limits, you have to use every buff available to you. Can a player really complain about not being able to outdps another class without maximizing their own?

“I’ll say again that we purposely designed Ulduar to have a great diversity among the bosses. Depending on which bosses you look at, the list of whose dps is too low or too high changes.”

The whole discussion between pure and hybrid dps is ludicrous. The only pure dps classes in this game are: Mages/Warlocks/Hunters/Rogues. Every other class has the ability to spec into a healing, dps and/or tanking spec which qualifies that class as hybrid. That being said, the only classes that have any justification to say their dps should be higher than a feral druid (or hybrid) would be one of those. Does that mean a Mage should be capable of an arbitrary % dps than a feral druid? No, because you can’t compare a mage to a druid. It’s like trying to compare apples to oranges. You just can’t do it. Unlike Naxxramas, there is no true universal dps stress test to determine what class has the best potential dps. There are fights that cater towards casters and fights that cater towards melee. Naturally a feral druid will destroy all casters on a fight like XT, whereas a caster will destroy all melee on a fight like General. The only class that you can effectively compare to a feral druid is a rogue which in essence is the same type of dps class. That being said, a rogue of equivalent gear and equivalent skill will always beat a feral druid regardless of the fight. If a rogue is having issues keeping up with a feral druid then they personally have skill issues that they need to address that.

What about all the utility a feral druid brings vs a rogue?

True, a druid brings a lot of utility such as lotp, innervate and battle rez. If we assume a feral druid and rogue of equivalent gear and skill, what class is better to bring to raid? The answer I think is, it depends on your raid. How strong are your healers? Do you find your raid in need of rezzing bad players who die a lot? How much AOE is needed on the fight? Does your raid already have a FT bear or arms warrior? Does your raid have none of those isues and can sacrifice all that for more dps? The answer to these questions are probably variable again depending on what fight you are doing in Ulduar.

To Summarize

• A good rogue will always out dps a good feral druid of equivalent gear
• You cannot compare feral dps to another classes unless you take into consideration the context of the fight
• What is better for raids? Feral druid or Rogue? Answer? It depends!
• A nerf may be in order but must be done extremely carefully to ensure the spec remains viable for players of all levels

EDIT: Another blue post by Vaneras, thanks for the catch Mitch!

Quote from: Vaneras (Source)

It is true that Cat DPS may be a little too high, but it is important to also highlight that this is not merely a matter of throwing in a nerf here or there. Adjusting Cat DPS is rather complicated because of the fact that it is a demanding spec to play well.

If we are to adjust Cat DPS, we will have to avoid doing it in a way that makes it a simple matter for the more adept players to adjust, but harder for those of less experience. It is not our intent to punish the less skilled players with a massive loss of damage output.

Finally, a hotfix that Blizz got right

Nothing particular to post today but I read a few interesting articles that I thought I would share.

1) Freya Hard Mode gets hotfixed

It was posted yesterday that a guild named Something Diabolical managed to zerg Freya hard mode down without having to deal with the mechanics of the fight (aka adds). You can read about it further here. This naturally is a flashback to Sarth3D where guilds were ignoring all the drakes and getting their plagued proto drakes just prior to 3.1. Personally this annoyed be quite a bit as that was by far the most challenging fight in the game (at the time) and seeing a lot of punks getting their plagued proto just didn’t seem quite right. At the time Blizzard did nothing to fix this but this time around it seems they decided to do something about it. Cudos to Blizz to keeping the integrity of the challenge in tact.

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

6/15/09

• The additional healing Freya receives, through the Attuned to Nature buff, has been increased.

While the strat doesn’t work anymore, here is the vid of their zerg kill

2) Game Fuel Video

The new mountain dew game fuel has a commercial out now. Wonder what class the NE is?

3) Updated Cat Models

This is a little old but might as well add to my smorgasbord of posts, def want these models instead of the ones Blizzard announced!