Druid Cat form changes in 1.7

[Kevin]

Older news but Caydiem has posted about druid changes in 1.7 and states that 1.8 will change the trees. (no blues after page 2)

In the upcoming content patch, there are significant changes to Cat Form. Here's the run down:

    * Cat Form's base damage (not attack power, but the cat form's "weapon" damage) has been increased.
    * Each point of Agility now adds 1 Attack Power.
    * Rip's damage per combo point has been increased.
    * Ferocious Bite's damage per combo point has been increased. In addition, extra energy now converts to damage at a higher rate.
    * The global cooldown on Tiger's Fury has been replaced with a one-second self cooldown. Its duration has been increased to six seconds.
    * Rake's damage has been increased.

Also, the combo point problem with Ferocious Bite -- wherein the points would go away on a miss/dodge/parry -- should be resolved.

I have also been informed that talent changes for Druids (which should, among other things, further enhance Feral viability) are still on the way and currently scheduled for the content patch after 1.7.

There is a school of thought that talent changes should be made to increase the Feral form viability, and the developers are of that mind also... but they were also not satisfied with the level of effectiveness for all Druids, regardless of specialization. The changes is 1.7 should boost that significantly.

I'm very happy about the fix the to the combo point issue. I've lost 14 combo points to a single mob before with misses, dodges and such. Cat DPS relies on the finishers more than a rogues does. Completely losing them drops it a fair bit.

With the agility it appears that this is just a bonus. The affects of strength appear to not have been changed at all. So this doesn't really mean 3 complete gear sets. Your base feral set will still be alright though agi enchants might be the way to go for the dodge, crit, and cat attack power bonus.

I've actually found cat to be quite usable. Though it's fun that my DPS in raids goes up the longer the mob stays alive. Cat's can't burst like a rogue, but more chances at crits and a decent finisher do allow us to put out big damage numbers if we have the time to do it. I've stolen aggro from the tanks with my cat. I actually need to move where cower is my bar to make it easier to use. I've mentioned that a cat does 80-90% of rogue in growing up to L60. The gap is getting wider at 60 though and they haven't fixed this with the changes, they just did a Blizzard Band Aid. This doesn't fix the item scaling issues that druids have just like some of the caster classes. It does pretty much give all L60 cat druids 70 more AP from the base agi alone and 5-10 more damage a swing on a 1.0 speed weapon isn't nothing but when you get more purple people eaters from BWL out and about and as the "casuals" get more purples from Onyxia and Molten Core the druid will slip back more without any major boosts. All the epic druid gear is caster caster caster (just like the pally gear).

I've often wondered why there aren't druid only or just anyone items that have a mod like +50 attack power in feral form, or +2% crit in feral form, or +300 armor in feral form. An epic feral focused set would be nice as well. It seems one of the simpler ways to tackle the problem and a way that Blizzard in their item junky ways would seem to want to adopt. I've seen things like adding 5% of a weapons damage to you "claws" but I'm not sure about that. I've wondered about druid only items you can slap in the ranged weapon slot to help out as well. This would also be something that might be nice for thrown weapons as well. Though that starts to make that ranged slot a hybrid ranged/trinket slot and raises other issues.

Oh well just passing on some info that some had heard over the guild and guilded channels the other night.

[Brista]

Good adjustment

I too like my druid. However, when I play on one of my other characters it's a shock to see how fast mobs drop.

The analysis of Str v Agi for feral druids on the official forums went into some length and concluded that Str added more dps but not by a lot. I just wonder whether these changes mean that Agi will surpass Str once they are implemented

I agree with you on an item based solution. Seems to me that if a druid is meant to be played in different forms which is what blues have said then where an item bonus gives a Warrior +50 AP, gives a healer +8 to heals, then the equivalent for a druid should be 50 AP when feral/+8 heals when caster since we only benefit from one at any given moment. I guess Wardrobe mod is a partial answer but it seems very inelegant, a failure of the basic game design

All told the combination of these boosts and a new tree (if it's as much as a step up as the hunter new talent trees) should make druids very enjoyable to play without being over-powered

[Gurnsey]

    * The global cooldown on Tiger's Fury has been replaced with a one-second self cooldown. Its duration has been increased to six seconds.

This is more significant a change than I think most people realize. With a little attention, the fact that it doesn't trigger the global cooldown means that it works out to a constant +40 dps at a cost of 30 energy every 6 seconds, or effectively, a +40dps buff that reduces your energy regain to 50% of normal. Not too bad especially for long fights, and the consistency means that you won't pull aggro on a series of lucky crits (or at least are less likely to). It doesn't eat energy as fast as you regain it, so you even have enough to use other skills while this is up (better now cause it doesn't trigger the global cooldown)!

Keep in mind that this is only from my experience messing around with my wife's druid. Your results may vary.

[Kevin]

    * The global cooldown on Tiger's Fury has been replaced with a one-second self cooldown. Its duration has been increased to six seconds.

This is more significant a change than I think most people realize. With a little attention, the fact that it doesn't trigger the global cooldown means that it works out to a constant +40 dps at a cost of 30 energy every 6 seconds, or effectively, a +40dps buff that reduces your energy regain to 50% of normal. Not too bad especially for long fights, and the consistency means that you won't pull aggro on a series of lucky crits (or at least are less likely to). It doesn't eat energy as fast as you regain it, so you even have enough to use other skills while this is up (better now cause it doesn't trigger the global cooldown)!

Keep in mind that this is only from my experience messing around with my wife's druid. Your results may vary.
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I actually meant to comment on this change before I got side tracked. This takes tigers fury from being used pretty much only before ravage (ambush equivalent) to something that you can use a fair bit for a good consistent boost. This helps with some of the problems I mentioned where I need some time with the mob to get my DPS up from finishers and a few extra shreds. This will allow me to still contribute some higher damage on those mobs that are only going to be around long enough to one or two combo points at most and stand a good chance of you not being able to use the combo points at all.

[Watto44]

I'm very keen to jump on the test realm and check these changes out. I agree that the tiger's fury change is a good one. (Incidently, I also use it when farming if I can't stealth before fighting a mob. TF plus two boosted shreds isn't exactly a replacement for ravage, but it's better than nothing.) Unfortunately, my standard running around farming/WSG/general PvP set has a massive +6 bonus to agility. >< I guess it's time to get my farming boots on, and right now items that give a bonus to all stats are looking nice. (Songbird's Blouse and Wildheart Kilt are the two that come to mind, unfortunately Stratholme hasn't been good to me lately.)

I'll also be interested to see how big the buff is to Ferocious Bite is, but mostly I'm just relieved that the combo point bug has been fixed for it.

All in all, nice changes, although I'm still looking forward to some new talents. :D

[Trien]

This'll be a welcome addition to our pretty low DPS, though it does bring back the issue of scaling, as the melee classes get some big boosts to their damage from using better and better weapons. The caster classes too have this same issue, though they have some selection of +spell damage to play around with, but still not quite as nice as a plain weapon upgrade. As for us druids, we're stuck with trying too boost +str, while our feral 'weapon' damage is stuck in one place.

The addition of 1AP for every 1agl would add roughly 100AP to my cat form. I have a feral-oriented set of gear (mix of +AP/crit gear like Devilsaur and all-around +stat items like Songbird, Death's Clutch, Boots of the Shrieker to give me a usable mana pool) which gives me about 528 cat AP... with 104 agl at the moment. I hit roughly 100 DPS in battle using skills, against similar-level mobs, which isn't really a lot.. (and only maybe 50 DPS in bear). An extra 100AP won't add a huge amount, so I guess we'll have to see how much the boosts to the skills damage is.

Going to really like the Tiger's Fury change, though will have to adjust to using it a lot more. Some talent changes would be nice, since at this time, focusing on the other two talent trees beside Restoration is nowhere near as nice as focusing on Restoration.

You can obtain Songbird Blouse solo as a druid, though it'll take some luck (took me about 50-60 dungeon resets spread out over 2 weeks before I got mine). Stealth through the service gate entrance, and head under the big lattice grate on your left, west of the first two packs of mobs. Hearthsinger Forresten has a number of spawn spots though, so he won't be there every time. If he is, you'll see him to the north as soon as you exit the corridor, and you can faerie fire pull him into the corridor and fight him there. Supposedly a 1 in 5 chance of dropping the blouse, took me about 10 kills, picked up a few Piccolos of the Flaming Fire along the way too. :)

[Concillian]

You can obtain Songbird Blouse solo as a druid, though it'll take some luck (took me about 50-60 dungeon resets spread out over 2 weeks before I got mine).
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I don't think you can anymore. I think some of the mobs had stealth detection added to keep people from doing things like this solo.

[Quark]

I don't think you can anymore.&nbsp; I think some of the mobs had stealth detection added to keep people from doing things like this solo.
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Yep, Strath now has stealth detection in lots of places. Soon I see stealth detection being everywhere, to prevent farming runs, and thus screwing Rogues that want to Sap everywhere ...

[Artega]

Yep, Strath now has stealth detection in lots of places.&nbsp; Soon I see stealth detection being everywhere, to prevent farming runs, and thus screwing Rogues that want to Sap everywhere ...
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So just kill everything in your path like we warriors do!

Damn pampered rogues... :P

[crowley]

They are positive changes but it's still just throwing more band-aids at the problem.

The real problem is that Druid form damage is static. Sure there are attribute bonuses, but all classes get attributes bonuses to melee even priests & mages, to say that Feral forms do have scaling because of attributes is like saying 4 wheels on a car is a feature.

Perhaps the real changes in 1.8 will address the situation, such as a talent that allows weapon damage to be factored into feral forms, but these current changes seem to just catch the Druid up to the current level of itemization. Once more instances & uber weapons are introduced, the gap widens again. A perpetual cycle.

[Warlock]

They are positive changes but it's still just throwing more band-aids at the problem.

The real problem is that Druid form damage is static. Sure there are attribute bonuses, but all classes get attributes bonuses to melee even priests & mages, to say that Feral forms do have scaling because of attributes is like saying 4 wheels on a car is a feature.

Perhaps the real changes in 1.8 will address the situation, such as a talent that allows weapon damage to be factored into feral forms, but these current changes seem to just catch the Druid up to the current level of itemization. Once more instances & uber weapons are introduced, the gap widens again. A perpetual cycle.
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It's possible Druids will get more per attribute point and it should be possible to balance highend weapons through this ratio..

Instead of a warrior getting say an extra 10 from Str on his [thelatestraidgear] set and an extra 5 from [thenewpurpleaxe], a druid with the same grade of equipment may get the same 10 from Str and 5 from Agility. Net +15 to each over [lastweeksbestset] but achieved differently.

I truly would like a scaling instant of some sort for Bear form, though.

[Quark]

The real problem is that Druid form damage is static.
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This is the problem with many skills in the game. It's why Eviscerate slowly becomes worse and worse. It's why Garrote and Rupture aren't that good to begin with. Since a Rogue has forms of non-static damage, the static damage skills quickly deteriorate to nothing at 60.

This is why Blizzard also needed (needs?) to add more +spell dam/heal gear, because all caster damage is static.

[Trien]

I don't think you can anymore.&nbsp; I think some of the mobs had stealth detection added to keep people from doing things like this solo.
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It actually is possible still, but you have to be a *lot* more careful than you used to be (just tried it a few minutes ago). Probably not possible before L60 though, unless perhaps you have a few points in improved prowl.

This is why Blizzard also needed (needs?) to add more +spell dam/heal gear, because all caster damage is static.

Seconded. Perhaps it's just me, but it feels like the existing +spell power/+heal gear is nowhere near as powerful as I would like. I think the main complaint is that for any decent amount, you have to find it on a bunch of gear, rather than a single piece. Though having faced off against some very nicely equipped casters sometimes I wonder...

[Quark]

So just kill everything in your path like we warriors do!

Damn pampered rogues... :P
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Thanks for ignoring the point completely.

[crowley]

This is the problem with many skills in the game.&nbsp; It's why Eviscerate slowly becomes worse and worse.&nbsp; It's why Garrote and Rupture aren't that good to begin with.&nbsp; Since a Rogue has forms of non-static damage, the static damage skills quickly deteriorate to nothing at 60.

This is why Blizzard also needed (needs?) to add more +spell dam/heal gear, because all caster damage is static.
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Yes you're right of course, Druids are far from the only ones to feel the effects from this. Of course, all MMORPGs seem to do this, but somehow I was expecting more from Blizzard. They did a such a good job of making skills % based in D2, it really kept the life of that game going so far beyond it's shelf date.

[Watto44]

Yes you're right of course, Druids are far from the only ones to feel the effects from this. Of course, all MMORPGs seem to do this, but somehow I was expecting more from Blizzard. They did a such a good job of making skills % based in D2, it really kept the life of that game going so far beyond it's shelf date.
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Hmm, perhaps Bliz changed some things in D2, but I remember the best gear for my sorcie was all low level. But that's beside the point...

The problem seems to be that this issue wasn't addressed before release, when major design changes could still be made. +spell damage items are as much of a bandaid as the changes that druids will be getting. Without a mechanic that allows spell damage to scale the same way that a new weapon scales a warrior or rogue's damage there is always going to be a - whether real of perceived - disparity between the two. A new weapon for a warrior/rogue/hunter/shaman repressents a noticable increase in DPS compaired to say, new shoulders. For the casters, a new weapon is comparable in terms of damage increase to new shoulders, unless the weapon has a +spell damage stat on it.

This has, IMO, left Bliz in something of a bind. They either, a) change game mechanics so spell damage scales with new weapons, or B) plonk +spell damage on every caster weapon out there. The first option is essentially out of the question, and the second seems to be a little clunky for my tastes.

Incidently, has anyone done any testing to compair the DPS increase between a melee class and a spell class at level 60? I'd be intersted to see some stats on this.

[Warlock]

To a first approximation, warriors get +1 DPS per 7 strength and their weapon; caster classes get +1 DPS per 3.5 +spell damage but no weapon.

Melee does better than that due to abilities that add extra attacks and from positve feedback (more damage give more rage hence permits more skills that do more damage each), less than that due to armour and active defences.

Casters do better than that through talents and equipment that reduce cast time, worse than that due to resistances, interrupts and casting delays.

I don't feel that the sky is falling for casters.