Something like an actual level 85 talent tree finally got posted, so let's go over it quickly. More posts coming as I consider ramifications, hack them into toskk's calc, or whatever else.
Tier 1
Sharpened Claws - Currently called Savage Fury and living in tier 2, otherwise unchanged.
Ferocity, Feral Aggression - Unchanged. However, Feral Aggression will likely become a required raiding talent due to changes further down the tree.
Tier 2
Shredding Attacks - Uh oh. Only reduces cost of Shred by 10 - 50 energy instead of 42, unless the base cost gets reduced. This is kind of worrying for our current playstyle; Shred currently barely stays ahead of Mangle DPE-wise, even propped up massively by bonuses and glyphs. I'm watching this space closely to see how it plays out.
Tier 3
Improved Feral Charge - Kind of a weird mechanic. Increases damage after using Bear charge, and allows use of Ravage without stealth after Cat charge. This one's going to require some actual testing - depending on how it works, it could actually be a DPS increase to run out, go bear, and charge every 15 seconds. I'm hoping not, it's bad enough keeping all the other balls in the air without that headache. I strongly doubt it'll be worth using Ravage, uh, well, ever, unless they significantly buff its damage over current levels.
Tier 4
Fury Swipes - 4/8/12% chance for an extra autoattack, 6s ICD. Kind of a sword spec clone. Given an 3k average for autoattacks on a raid boss, that's a MAX of 500 DPS (which wouldn't be bad at all for 3 points), but given probability, there's still a 10% chance you could go 12-13 seconds after the ICD expires without a proc. So you'll see between 6 and 20 seconds between procs, putting the actual DPS increase at possibly 250-300ish? Ballpark. Need to hack it into Toskk's sometime.
Tier 5
Predatory Strikes - FAP scaling removed, now increases Ravage's crit chance if target is over 90%, and still grants instant Nature spells. This has become, as far as I can see, a pure PVP talent now - that is to say, it looks mostly worthless for PVE.
Tier 6
Endless Carnage - Increases duration of Rake, Roar, and Pulverize by 3/6 seconds. Well, I wasn't far wrong about getting 2T9 baseline - it's talented, AND better. Hot. Roar duration increase isn't bad but is probably fairly minimal in terms of DPS increase, except at the opening 1-2 point level. May help with constantly clashing timers - it's something I'd need to test out.
Survival of the Fittest - No longer grants stats, is now a tanking-only talent basically.
Tier 8
Primal Madness - Tiger's Fury and Berserk increase max energy by 12. This is really absolutely minimal - I'd ALMOST venture worthless. It might buy an extra Shred under Berserk if everything's used cleverly. Otherwise, I can barely even see the point.
Tier 9
Nom Nom Nom - I've been talking about this for a long time, but they've actually done it. Unfortunately, it's not as well-implemented as I was hoping - it's only active under 25%. Better than nothing, but oh how I wish it was active full-time.
Pulverize - Bear-only talent
In all... It's OK. We'll see. More tomorrow, got to run now.
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Shred has been dropped to 50 base energy cost so now down to 40 energy talented.
ReplyDeleteI was unable to find the original post that I read that in however I did find a post with GC confirming it to be the case:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25172124961&pageNo=3&sid=1#43
" Shred is indeed 50 base.
The idea is not that you can take every talent point you desire. If anything, the decisions are going to be harder. "Bloat" is what players sometimes say when there are still talents remaining that they want to pick up.
Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer "
Looking at the talent calculator on MMO Champs, assuming it is accurate as of the current build, it looks like as DPS ferals we actually have so few talents that contribute to us we may as well take all of them regardless of how worthless they may be.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that they have lowered the number of ranks on some talents, and made some others of no value to us at all that previously were, such that, combined with 5 additional talent points we have an excess.
Other than improved feral charge (which I suspect will end up being just for PVP along with predatory strikes to give pvpers a guaranteed critical ravage to open their fights with) it is possible to take every single talent that adds anything at all to DPS and still have a point left over.
That includes those talents whose DPS gain is nominal at best talents like Feral Instinct, Feral Swiftness (id never go without but not strictly a DPS gain), Feral Charge, Improved Leader of the Pack, Infected Wounds, Primal Madness, and Improved Mangle.
All of those were taken, despite most being of only nominal value, and we STILL have a point left over. Deciding which talents are worth while this time around does not appear yet as though it will be of any consequence in a cat spec.