Cataclysm Talent Preview!

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.