After a lot of humming and hawing, I have finally settled on a talent spec that I think I like. This spec has stood up after running a number of 25-man raids and heroics, in a mix of main tank and dps/offtank roles, and it does the job nicely.
Talent Spec Link
Click here to view the spec: 0/60/11 feral spec
Situational Information
A player's raiding spec should be customized to the role that they play within their guild. Que Sera Sera has a definitive main tank (Vakfaroosh), and thus in my case I am often is called upon to dps or offtank progression content, which in turn affects the choices made when selecting talents. If you are a pure DPS or main tanking feral Druid then you will likely want to tweak the above spec to compensate.
Talent Breakdown
A brief explanation of the talents chosen follows.
Ferocity [5/5] - Almost a must-have talent. Improves both your rage and energy efficiency on some very core attacks.
Feral Instinct [3/3] - A huge buff to Swipe, which is very important in early Wrath raiding. Since most pulls are AOE-fests, you'll want Swipe as powerful as possible.
Savage Fury [2/2] - A huge damage boost to skills that you use a lot. Impossible to avoid.
Thick Hide [3/3] - Armor is king, thus more is better.
Feral Swiftness [2/2] - Extra dodge is great, as is extra movement speed (especially now that it works indoors!)
Survival Instincts [1/1] - A real panic button for a bear. The big heal can come in quite handy when things get messy while tanking.
Sharpened Claws [3/3] - More crit. Not much else to say.
Shredding Attacks [2/2] - Taking this used to be all about rage efficiency for me, however the game changes in Wrath have made that less of an issue. I tried running without Shredding Attacks for a while, but found that it severely hampered my ability to put out respectable DPS. If you plan to Mangle-spam then avoid this talent, but if Shred is on the menu, pick it up right away.
Predatory Strikes [3/3] - Lots more DPS and threat, but more importantly this is the doorway to the must-have 'Heart of the Wild'.
Primal Fury [2/2] - How can you not take the free rage and free combo points?
Primal Precision [2/2] - Expertise is one of my favourite stats, hands down. It's nice offensively, and helps avoid parry-gibs defensively. Great all around choice for a feral.
Feral Charge [1/1] - Ranged taunts really cut down on the usefulness of this talent, but it is still a good way to re-engage a boss after a knockback. The kitty version of feral charge is pure joy, and can be used for the amusing pouncing animation alone.
Natural Reaction [3/3] - This talent provides an essential boost to dodge that is a must for any feral that plans to tank even a little bit. The rage gain on successful dodges removes the ridiculous rage starvation that used to occur when you outgeared an instance.
Heart of the Wild [5/5] - Big health boost for bears, big AP boost for cats - I can't find any reason not to take this talent.
Survival of the Fittest [3/3] - This talent was crucial for all ferals due to the stat boost, but doubly so for bears due to the armor that is baked into it.
Leader of the Pack [1/1] - A feral Druid's innate group buff. Take this.
Improved Leader of the Pack [2/2] - The healing provided to a group by this talent is non-trivial, and makes it worth the two points for sure.
Protector of the Pack [3/3] - A tanking essential. This talent was added to mitigate the removal of extra armor on leather gear. Take it if you plan to tank.
Predatory Instincts [3/3] - After running without this talent for a while, I looked at some logs and realized how badly not having it gimped my DPS when I was not tanking. A crucial talent if you expect to be a useful offtank.
Infected Wounds [1/3] - To a certain extent I took a single point in this because I like the idea of the talent - but couldn't justify removing two extra points from anywhere else. I also run with prot warriors who will be thunderclapping, so the full extent of the talent is wasted when I need it most. Main tank / small group bears or PvPers should probably load up all three talent points here.
King of the Jungle [3/3] -If you're like me and use enrage as you pull then this talent gives a great initial threat boost. It's also amazing for cat DPS because of how it turns Tiger's Fury into an energy generator (and thus transforms that skill from useless to amazing).
Mangle [1/1] - A Druid's bread and butter.
Rend and Tear [5/5] - Why some Druid's avoid this talent I will never know, because it is monstrous. It is reasonable to assume that all of our targets are bleeding (Lacerate, Rake, Rip), so Rend and Tear makes our main damaging attacks do a load more damage. What's not to love?
Berserk [1/1] - This talent doubles as a panic button (oh no, I'm about to run into Archimode's fire and wipe the raid!) and a huge damage/threat boost. Take it, use it, love it.
Furor [5/5] - I am addicted to the free rage when I shift into bear - I admit it. Combine this with an Enrage, and you can queue up a Maul and land a Mangle to start any fight.
Naturalist [5/5] - A straight up damage boost to everything. Rawr.
Omen of Clarity [1/1] - Free rage or free energy on a fairly regular basis. If you're smart (and observant) you can really milk this for all it's worth. For added bonus, it procs when you most need a free attack: i.e. when you're cooking, or making potions, or whatever.....
Notable Exclusions
Not everything could make the cut, and I felt like I wanted another three or four talent points to spend. This probably means that Blizzard has done a good job at creating the feral talent tree. Here are some of the talents that I cut not justify in the end.
Feral Aggression - In 25-man raids our warriors handle the debuffs, and I don't participate in 10-man raids enough (due to time commitments) to justify the points spent here. If you raid without warriors frequently, or do a lot of 5 or 10-man runs, then investing two or three points in this talent may be prudent.
Brutal Impact - While Bash has been buffed substantially in Wrath, and promoted to the ranks of a real interrupt, even the fully talented cooldown of 30s is too infrequent for it to be reliable in PvE. Ferals who love the PvP game will probably be all over this one, but it has no place in a PvE spec in my opinion.
Nuturing Instinct - An odd talent that is probably most beneficial for soloing Druids, or those who PvP frequently.
Primal Tenacity - I expect to take the most flak for not having this in my build, however I have not found it to be necessary, nor even remotely worth the three points. Perhaps in PvP where fears and stuns are commonplace this is a good talent to take, but instances and raids in Wrath of the Lich King don't seem overly full of them. If I need to break out of a fear I'd rather pop my Berserk ability, or use my PvP trinket - reducing the duration a little bit does a tank very little good.
Improved Mangle - Due to how the global cooldown works, take either three points of this, or none at all. Given the unbalanced ratio of tank threat to DPS threat right now, there is no reason to take this talent - the three points are better used almost anywhere else.
Intensity - I miss this talent, but I can't justify three talent points for 10 free rage given all of the goodies that have been added to the feral tree in Wrath.
Natural / Master Shapeshifter - These five talent points basically equate to 4% extra damage in bear form, or 4% extra critical strike in kitty form. Neither is a very good deal for the cost given the other options available in the feral tree.
29 comments:
Are there so few mobs/bosses that are affected by IW to make it so worthless? What about 5-man bosses?
Assuming bosses/mobs are affected by IW, it would seem to offer a significant amount of DR via reduced mob DPS. Any one done the math of the DR it offers?
Bosses are affected by the slower attack speed that IW gives, but not by the slower movement speed. Trash is affected by both, but mobs fleeing in instances is such a rarity.
My spec is very similar, but I removed all the points in Rend & Tear and dumped it in Infected Wounds and Intensity. R&T is near useless to me because I'm never in cat form except when soloing and my maul is strong enough now that I don't need the additional damage or threat it provides.
Regarding IW, does it offer a greater benefit to me than iLotP? I understand iLotP is a great group buff. But for me the bear, is IW > iLotP? IOW, does the DR provided by IW greater than the +healing I'll see from iLotP?
@K: I can see dropping RnT for a pure bear spec. And I really miss Intensity. Especially since everyone seems to be even more willing to start DPS'ing before I even pull.
IW is important if you are MTing a boss. For progression you want that slowing attack speed debuff. R&T is also great for threat and or bear/cat dps but you need the talents that go with it. With all hybrid builds you take what you need to fit the group you're in.
Oh I can't post this from my phone but using RnT with the maul glyph is great for tanking 2-4 adds. Just put lacerate on a couple mobs and you'll see a nice increase in damage and threat. But I'm spec'd for a more MT role so I don't waste points in cat talets like PP since I'm expertise capped without it.
@Felkan:
I'd have a hard time recommending that any feral drop ILotP. Chances are there are other points that you can ditch if you're looking to pick up IW. (And comparing the two is really apples and oranges - it's be extremely tricky to do.)
If you don't run with a warrior, go ahead and grab 3/3 IW - you won't regret it. If nothing else, follow K's suggestion and drop points from Rend and Tear.
I don't think I can give up R&T. If you're doing hybrid it's great damage for cats. If you're doing bear it's one of the best threat talents you can get, better than improved mangle even.
The big advantage to having IW is being able to tank things by yourself without a warrior putting up tclap. Among other places, this is great for heroics. Most mobs appear to be affected by IW nowadays. I run enough stuff that doesn't have a handy warrior that IW is pretty good for me - but it does absolutely gimp cat dps not having shredding attacks.
I really think Intensity is a luxury talent that is just not worth it. Rage is rarely a consideration any more, especially with swipe hitting unlimited mobs and generating rage that way and OoC's existence.
For a bear tanking raid content, iLotP will be functionally useless for you. It may do some good for the rest of your party, but the amount healed and the unpredictability of the healing means that it's just not going to affect much of anything. It's insane for solo and 5-man play however.
All of this just solidifies the fact that there is no one spec that a feral Druid can pick and be guaranteed that it is optimal in all situations. As stated in the intro to the article, you really do need to think about the sort of activities that you are likely to engage in, and pick your talents around that.
My hope is the discussion of WHY the talents were picked/excluded is more valuable that the actual EZmode link to the talent spec itself.
As for IW (Hey wait a minute why is this mage commenting on a Bear Talent?) It is important for mages that someone be placing the attack speed debuff on the Mob. In patch 3.0.8 this debuff "should" enable mages to benefit from Torment of the Weak and that's 12% damage. So it is very importnat from our perspective that someone be slowing the boss down.
-- Sofea
I came up with an almost identical Spec - except I took one point out of each Imp Mangle, and King of the Jungle and put them in Infected Wounds. I feel that the decreased attack speed is beneficial; we too have an excellent prot warrior, but she is usually tanking other mobs at the time. I have to time the KotJ a bit differently, but it seems essential to have. Same with RnT. Thoughts?
-N
Anon - taking one point out of imp mangle is the same as taking 3 points out if you're doing anything as a bear. You might as well move those points to something different. Almost anything, really.
KotJ is essential to have for cats, but it's largely meh for bears unless you're doing trash or offtanking a lot. Even then, there are a lot of other options.
@Anon:
As Kalon said, Imp mangle is 3 points or 0 - there is no middle ground. The sticking point is the 1.5s global cooldown. (I can expand more on this if you'd like - lemme know.)
Given the above, I'd take all 3 out of imp mangle, and put them in IW.
I specced Primal Precision until I hit 80 and with some of the new gear I picked up I'm expertised capped. So dropped those 2 points. Also I've found that 2 points in King of the Jungle seems to work pretty well.
It provides enough of an energy burst I can pounce, mangle, TF, and then shred twice :)
I've been using almost the identical spec as well, only I have 2 points in IW, taking 1 point from KotJ. I find that I can sacrifice the 20 energy on tiger's fury and still have it useful, while making IW a little more powerful has a big effect.
Another reason I like IW: When the debuff shows up on a mob, I know it's been mauled or mangled. This helps me tab through mobs in aoe situations and easily distinguish which ones I need to boost my threat on.
@ K & K -
Perhaps it's the early hour, but I'm not sure I completely understand how the Global cooldown makes it useless unless all three points are in ImpMangle. I've been having the prot warrior do more of the main tanking recently so KotJ is good to have. I can simply take 1 point out of IW and make that 2/3 and max out Imp Mangle instead... I'm fairly certain I'm not expertise capped atm though.
-N
@anonymous:
I think the theory is that if you have 2 points in imp.mangle you're at a 5 second cooldown. Normally, you have 3 global cooldowns between mangles, clocking in at 4.5 seconds if you use your GCs right away. But if mangle's CD is 5 seconds, you essentially have to sit and wait for .5 seconds to use your mangle. Alternatively, you could use another skill immediately, but then you won't be able to use mangle until after that global cooldown, making the time between mangles 6 seconds. And 6 seconds is what mangle's cooldown is regularly. So with imp.mangle, I tend to agree with the logic that it's all 3 points or nothing.
@ John:
Thanks, that actually makes perfect sense. Perhaps with the latency I never really noticed that, but I'll be fixing the build in a few minutes. Thanks.
-Nik
The -only- difference between your spec and mine is that I kept 2/2 Nurturing Instinct and don't have pts in Survival Instinct & IW. +600 spell power is too hard to give up! It makes a difference during transitions where you can't do any damage, but you can still patch people up.
I don't MT, so I have the luxury of not picking up SI. As an OT-DPS spec, I think moving the aforementioned 2 points into Predatory Instincts might be a better option.
I find that I end up using SI a lot - even when soloing. I'm not sure that I could give it up at this point.
I ran with Nurturing instinct through the tail end of TBC and agree that it can be awfully useful.
Just discovered your list, looks cool ty. Hmmm I maybe will remove the bash talents - you're right, I put em in without thinking, but I never use it except in 5 mans. It seems to suck as a spell interrupt too - shield slam is much more effective.
Do you get bored being the eternal OT/kitty? Maybe you're cool with it but I would hate it. Being the little gimp of an old skool prot warr is not my idea of raiding fun :P Tbh, I think we do a better job in a lot of fights, although that's now how blizzard designed it. Our prot warr will often go down like a sack on some random enrage... Arent they famed for having "oh shit" buttons?
Anyway, druids often just dodge right through it as if it never happened... or soak up the pain and live to do it all again :)
@Anon:
Thanks - my pleasure.
Regarding kitty/OT duty: I actually like this role because it is based around the versatility of the Druid class. The fights I like the most are the ones where I can switch from cat to bear (or vise versa) and perform different roles. Of course, then there's the "hero bear" moments where you're only supposed to dps, and the MT goes down, so you shift to bear form and save the day.
In the end it's about what you want from your toon though - I can totally understand druids who want to specialize as tanks, and see nothing wrong with that at all. It's just not my thing.
I agree with Karthis - I do like to MT, to be the guy that's soaking the dmg and protecting everyone, but I feel that druids' greatest asset is the ability to adapt to situations and perform some really interesting maneuvers mid fight. As a cat I can shift to pick up stray mobs or take over for a dead tank, I can innervate healers and battle res, I can cyclone mobs that get out of reach or need to be interrupted, I can toss heals or perform an emergency tranquility (very useful!), I can root, I can stun, I can... well you get the point! It's a ton of fun to be a swiss army knife provided you can use all your tools quickly!
Its a nice spec I think Ill try it as Id like to try and let some other tanks do the MTing next week.
Just a quick question for all of you who claim to be expertise capped without Primal precision. Where did you get the requisite 60 expertise to do that Ive come no where close to the 1900+ rating you must of found on gear and Id really like to know what gear pieces Im missing cause I would love to knock that parry chance off the bosses hit table.
Oh Yeah about IW I dropped it this week because unless Im in a 5 man(where everything is so easy that you dont need it) it always gets pushed off because our 20% slow is worse then warriors 30% and tankadins 24% and Death knights 20% (is part of their dps when dpsing of OTing) so it just seems worthless for me to talent something that everyone does better or cheaper then me. Good call on dropping it made my life more fun this week on my journey through naxx : ).
Oh yeah @ johnmlimm
Ive tranquilitied to save the group Bres'd innervated and all other things you shouldnt do while tanking to all save a wipe its fun as a feral druid MT to end the Grobbulous fight with everything on CD. Talk to people(namely healers especially if you have a holy priest you can do anything stupid you like once every 5 mins or so) anyone can bres only done it once on patchwerk though that 10k(melee) 15k(hateful) combo in caster form with dodge trink(only pushes me to 33% in caster form) and barkskin was exhilarating and why I love MTing just tired of hearing the whining from other tanks.
in regards to OT/Kitty: that's my dream role. I respect that some want to MT, and there is more 'glory' attached to that position normally, but as dps/OT/Hero, I have a great deal more fun and - IMHO - use my class to it's fullest.
I honestly pity prot tanks. I can MT just as well, and do when they're not around, but I'm so much more flexible. It's easy to MT - no more challenging than OTing; but that's all you do. Blah. Leave it to our gimped iron wearing cousins if you ask me - not because they are better at it, but because they can't do anything else.
@Wintersdark:
Exactly - which is why I say that tanking has not yet been homogenized: http://teethandclaws.blogspot.com/2009/02/has-tanking-really-been-homogenized.html
For pure main tanking in 3.1 i firmly believe 0/55/16 is the way to go, it offers the best threat and mitigation out of the possible builds.
with master shapeshifter, primal gore and so on, just do not take improved mangle as it's actually a problematic talent right now because the 4.5 sec CD interferes with the faery fire 6 sec CD.
In case anyone cares i did write a article a week ago about why imp mangle is actually a very bad talent for bears *shrug*
@Tarskin:
Could you link your suggested build? I'm interested to see where you got the other 2pts required to pick up master shapeshifter in a MT build.
cud this spec also be considered as feral kitty? i understand that they do not need thick armor so was wondering if others could post some healthy suggestions for me plx
THANKs
I really don't see the benefits of losing master shapshifter. I'm trying to find somewhere else viable to put the talent points in but the 4% incease to cit in cat and damage in bear seems indispensable. At the moment I am runnin a 2v2 with a resto shammy with 900 res, so the main aim is to try and all out dps while ccing and the like. Here is a link to my current talent spec. Currently I have one talent point free but am not quite sure where to put it...
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/druid/talents.html?tal=0000000000000000000000000000503202132322012053100033310511005503012000000000000000000
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