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:

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.

Feral Aggression