4.0 and Imp Feral Charge (aka Stampede)

A new "bug" I found while playing around on the PTR while I was sick yesterday:

Talented Stampede may not be "working as intended." Sometimes it won't allow ravage to be used; others, you can cast 6-8 unstealthed ravages for free and rack up the CP. The text of the talent states,

Stampede 2/2: Increases your melee haste by 30% after you use Feral Charge (Bear) for 8 sec, and your next Ravage will temporarily not require stealth for 8 sec after you use Feral Charge (Cat), and cost 100% less energy.

"Next" Ravage would usually mean only one free ravage within the next 8 seconds, rather than all ravages within the next 8 seconds, so I'm going to guess it is currently bugged. I think it's also a safe bet that the handful of times that it refused to let me cast ANY unstealthed ravages after a feral charge was also a bug, and I'd estimate that happened about 25% of the time while I was testing it in Orgrimmar.

Regardless, I did come up with a handy castsequence macro that let me ravage away to my heart's content (when the game let me).

#showtooltip /cast [mod] Savage Roar /castsequence reset=8 Feral Charge(Cat Form), Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage

Binding it to my T key, I was able to just spam the key to charge and immediately begin my Ravagey chomping. Holding shift in the middle of the spam would use up the quickly-earned CP in a quick Savage Roar buff, and I could easily return to my ravagery without much in the way of keystroke changes. Amusingly, I also have T bound to one of my mouse's buttons (15 button mouse) giving me freedom of motion at the same time.

Scawy kitty. And to think that, glyphed, feral charge only has a 28 second cooldown, and the ravages cost no energy. This is why I suspect a possible bug... it seems a little OP :)

SPOILERS: Cata Talent Trees for Feral Druids

In case you didn't read my little ramble on the resto version, here ya go:

I don't like posting about things that might not be true, so I avoid blogging about any of the leaked data. I'm also a staunch supporter of the NDA: if someone has agreed to keep a secret, then they shouldn't betray that trust. In addition, if the developers haven't said it themselves, it's not worth believing... especially in as early a stage as an Alpha test. Since Blizzard has now released some "official" talent tree previews (the ones at MMO-Champ have designer comments), we can now "safely" look into what they're considering for druids in regards to Cataclysm. Important note: the wowtal (mmo-champ) calculator appears to differ slightly on numbers than the wowhead calculator. I don't know at this point which is more accurate, but I'm going to guess and hope it is the wowhead calc, as the wowtal one says swiftmend heals for 1, wg got a nasty nerf, and imp bark only does 20% bonus armor.

Anyway, some good feral-talents discussions I've seen are Alaron's, Icedragon's, Saniel's, BBB's.

FERAL

First Tier:

• Savage Fury moved here from 2nd tier, renamed Sharpened Claws.
• Ferocity and Feral Aggression appear unchanged.

Second Tier:

• Shredding Attacks moved here from 4th tier. The shred energy-reduction has been nerfed down to 5 per point from 9.
• Thick Hide and Feral Instinct appear unchanged.

Third Tier:

• Predatory Instincts moved here from 8th tier. It is no longer limited to cat form, but it also no longer grants any sort of AoE-damage reduction: it is only a crit damage boost.
• Feral Charge moved here from 5th tier, otherwise appears unchanged.
• NEW: Imp Feral Charge: for bear, it increased the damage of your next three attacks, and for cat, it allows ravage to be cast without being stealthed. That's going to mess with my [stealth] modifier macros.
• GONE: Sharpened Claws no longer exists in its old form; the name was salvaged to rename Savage Fury, but the talent's old effects were nixed. The talents it opened are now independent or reworked into other talents.
  
• Feral Swiftness appears unchanged.

Fourth Tier:

• NEW: Fury Swipes, an auto-attack proc to grant an extra auto-attack in cat or bear. This was probably added to even out our white-to-yellow damage balance, which in WotLK is much more heavily reliant on yellow attacks.
• GONE: Primal Precision.
  
• Nurturing Instinct was moved here from the 5th tier; appears otherwise unchanged.
• Primal Fury is unchanged, aside from removing the pre-requisite talent.
  

Fifth Tier:

• Predatory Strikes: no longer a pre-req for Heart of the Wild and has been slightly reworked. At 2 talent points (previously 3), this talent now focuses purely on cat-form. As before, it retains the effect of proccing insta-cast nature spells off your finishing moves (20% chance per combo point consumed); however, instead of boosting raw AP, it now boosts the crit of Ravage by 50% if your target is high (90%+) health.
  
• Brutal Impact was nerfed in terms of the bash cooldown: reduces by 10 seconds rather than 30.
• Heart of the Wild moved here from 6th tier and made into the pre-req for LotP; appears otherwise unchanged.
  
• Survival Instincts: moved here from 3rd tier; appears otherwise unchanged.

Sixth tier:

• NEW: Endless Carnage. Increases the durations of rake, savage roar, and pulverize (new bear ability) by 6 seconds.
  
• Survival of the Fittest nerfed; it no longer increases all attributes by 6%. The armor bonus and built-in "defense cap" are unchanged.
  
• Natural Reaction appears unchanged.

Seventh Tier:

• King of the Jungle: no longer reduces the energy cost of feral forms, and is now a pre-requisite for a new talent, Primal Madness. Moved here from 9th tier.
• Primal Tenacity nerfed; reduces damage by only 15% while stunned in cat form, down from 30%.
• LotP and iLotP appear unchanged.

Eighth Tier:

• Protector of the Pack and Infected Wounds appear unchanged.

Ninth Tier:

• NEW: Primal Madness 2/2. Cats extend their energy pools by 12 extra energy (112 total) for the duration of Tiger's Fury and Berserk, and bears get 12 rage immediately with enrage and berserk. Part of this is remnant of the old Intensity talent in the resto tree.
  
• Mangle and Imp Mangle appear unchanged.

Tenth Tier:

• NEW: Nom Nom Nom. ........... I can't stop grinning over this talent name, and I seriously hope they keep it. A pure cat ability, when you FB any target at or below 25% health, it'll refresh the duration of your rip on that target. I like.
• GONE: Primal Gore. Presumably this is because all bleeds and HoTs and DoTs will inherently crit, now.
• NEW: Pulverize. This talent and ability now replace Primal Gore, with Rend n' Tear being its pre-req. It is a bear ability that consumes lacerate applications for extra damage as well as buffing the bear's crit chance for 10 seconds by 2% per lacerate consumed by the attack.
  
• Rend and Tear itself appears unchanged.

Eleventh Tier:

• Berserk appears unchanged.

RESTO-for-FERALS

First Tier:

• GONE: Imp MotW.
• NEW: Blessing of the Grove, increases the damage of Claw (!) and Shred by 4%. These 2 points will be used to open the third tier, in place of the old Imp MotW.
  
• Furor appears unchanged.

Second Tier:

• Naturalist is no longer on this tier; it has been moved deeper. You'll need the 3 points of Natural Shapeshifter (which appears unchanged) combined with Blessing of the Grove to open up the third Tier.

Third Tier:

• GONE: Intensity. The rage effects of this talent have been put into the new feral talent, Primal Madness.
• Naturalist has been moved down to this tier from the 2nd. While the cast reduction now also applies to Nourish, the physical damage boost is unchanged.
• OoC and Master Shapeshifter appear unchanged.

It is unlikely a feral will go much deeper into the resto tree than that :)

Feral/Turkey Sketches

I spent some time stick-figure doodling various bears, kitties, and moonkin :D I hadn't really done many bears before, so they took a bit of time to settle into the style of my others.



I think Scythe will like the "WTF" cat.

Cataclysm Kitty Combo Points

In reading through the rogue review, I came across this interesting comment on combo points:

(Rogue) To complement the change to combo points, non-damage abilities such as Recuperate and Slice and Dice will no longer have target requirements and can be used with any of the rogue’s existing combo points, including combo points remaining on recently killed targets. This will not affect damage abilities, which will still require combo points to be present on the specific target you want to damage. To coincide with this, the UI will be updated so that rogues know how many combo points they have active.

After reading this, I was curious if they are considering to implement similar for druids: I'm thinking especially of Savage Roar. Someone else thought the same thing and asked on the forums. GC's response:

Q u o t e: Are cats receiving a similar change for Savage Roar and their UI, or is this going to be completely rogue specific? It will most likely apply to cats as well. (source)

This is also mentioned in another blue post:

Using Savage Roar after a target with cps on it has died will help too. (source)

/happy kitty. It's not 100% definite, but it is likely that cat druids will be able to use combo points from recently-dead mobs to fire off a Savage Roar, rather than having those combo points completely lost and useless to them.

Maul, Melee Haste, and Maul Macro

I'm going to ramble a bit about Maul.

Maul is, currently, an "on next swing" attack that does not set off the GCD: that means it can be tied to other abilities in a macro so that it will be triggered while you're using that same GCD to do another attack, like swipe or mangle.

In low-rage situations you don't want to be using it--mangle and lacerate are better threat builders per mana cost and are instant attacks that don't rely on your swing timer--but in MOST cases, a bear tank wants to use maul on every autoattack (which has a slow 2.5 second "attack speed" anyway, impacted by haste). It's a way to use up excess rage and build extra threat.



Full Raid Buffs include a Moonkin aura or Ret Pally aura 3%, and a Imp Windfury Totem or Imp Icy Talons 20%. The formula for druid bearform melee attack speed as of 3.1.3 is

speed = 2.5 base / {[1+ raid buff .2] * [1+ raid buff .03] * [1+ (haste rating/2522)]}



Macro Rambling

To make use of Maul, I have chosen to tie it to Mangle. It's not the most eloquent of macros, and it could use some work, but what it does is fire off maul every time I attack with mangle, unless I hold down alt.

#showtooltip /cast [mod:shift,form:3] Ferocious Bite;[mod:alt,form:3]Rip;[form:3] Maim; [mod:shift] Lacerate;[nomod:alt] !Maul /script UIErrorsFrame:Hide() /cast [mod:alt] [ ] Mangle (Bear)() /script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Obviously, with a 6 second Mangle cooldown (4.5 second talented) and a much faster swing timer (even without haste gear or buffs), you'd want to be using maul more often than mangle, assuming you have the rage to do it. Sometimes, you'd also want to use mangle without Maul since you may not have the rage to power a maul. This is where the macro trips up, and why it has all that script stuff in it (hiding the "you can't do that yet" errors for when Mangle is on cooldown).

I'm considering tieing the maul to lacerate, too. Lacerate runs off of the standard ability GCD, which is not (to my knowledge) impacted by haste. As it's a trigger, you just have to make sure you aren't triggering it on and off with your macro, just turning it on with /cast !Maul.

/cast [mod:shift,form:3] Ferocious Bite;[mod:alt,form:3]Rip;[form:3] Maim /stopmacro [form:3] /cast !Maul /cast [mod:shift] Mangle (Bear)(); Lacerate

Of course, we'd want a way to lacerate without triggering Maul in a low-rage situation. Below is one way to enable this, by having a modifier: "if alt is held, don't cast maul!"

/cast [mod:shift,form:3] Ferocious Bite;[mod:alt,form:3]Rip;[form:3] Maim /stopmacro [form:3] /cast [nomod:alt] !Maul /cast [mod:shift] Mangle (Bear)(); Lacerate

...will have to try it out later. If someone gets a chance to test the macro for me, please let me know if there are any issues with it in a comment :)

Another consideration is to find a way to toggle Maul to Mangle at the same time, with a separate on/off switch. This will probably require use of a third modifier key, CTRL, one I don't usually use because I have it as my ventrilo push-to-talk. This macro will do is the same as above, and also cast Maul with Mangle if CTRL is held.

/cast [mod:shift,form:3] Ferocious Bite;[mod:alt,form:3]Rip;[form:3] Maim /stopmacro [form:3] /cast [nomod:alt/ctrl]!Maul /cast [mod:shift] [mod:ctrl] Mangle (Bear)(); Lacerate

Again, the above macro is untested at the moment, and I'm thinking there must be a more elegant way to do it. I just haven't gotten a chance to test it in-game to tweak it, yet (still doing that whole moving thing!). Play with it if you'd like :)


Maul Glyph

When glyphed, it'll hit two targets. This can be a bane or a blessing, depending on whether that guy you just mauled happened to be a sheep, or if it's stealing threat off a fellow tank who is trying to keep a ton of adds off of you while you tank the big bad boss. If you have glyphed it, be sure to remember that you've got an out-of-control off-target maul that will randomly hit another mob in your melee range. Try to work with it: as many problems as the glyph can cause, it has far more benefits in the current WotLK multi-mob tanking scene, you just have to be aware of it and work with your raid to keep it from breaking CC or stealing aggro.


Cataclysm

"All “on next swing” attacks in Cataclysm are being removed. Heroic Strike and Maul will be instant swings that cost a variable amount of Rage. For example, imagine Heroic Strike costs between 10 and 30 Rage. You must have at least 10 Rage to use the attack, but it will consume all available Rage up to a maximum of 30. Any Rage consumed above the minimum will cause the ability to hit harder, and in some cases much harder. We will tune the ability so that it’s generally not a good idea to hit it when you have low Rage (unless everything else is somehow on cooldown) but becomes a more attractive button the higher your Rage."

Given this and the other planned rage changes, I'm not sure what Cataclysm will mean in terms of how often we will be hitting our maul button to tie that extra damage to our auto-attack swing. That's one of those test-realm or "wait and see" sorts of things. I think that, ultimately, they want us using it when we have rage to do so, but with rage becoming something they want us to have to watch more carefully, maul may become less of a "default this as on" and more of a "don't use it unless I say so" ability, where a macro like the one earlier in the post would have it fire off maul only with the alt key held rather than when it's not held.

/shrug. Interesting stuff. :)

ICC10 Offspec Kitty Gear

So, as I've been working through ICC and the dps have picked up their gear, naturally some of the feral leathers have found their way into my bags for my dualspec kitty time. There is a lot of off-set feral leather in ICC10, enough to more or less skip the entire T10 kit... of course, that would be loosing out on set bonuses, but when it's your offspec and your frost badges are being sucked up into resto, there's not much you can do.

One major thing I've noticed with the ICC10 leathers is that it lacks expertise.

This is a pretty big problem. I have the T9 232 hat with its little chunk of expertise keeping me just a bit below the expertise cap (which is 26 total, including talents; I have about 22), and now I've also picked up the funky little Discarded Bag of Entrails that looks like it came off the digital set of the movie "9." The ICC hat is, of course, a huge upgrade... in everything but expertise. And, as if to mock me, the gem socket is yellow: not something I can easily slip a pure expertise gem in to attempt to make up for the huge loss, not without loosing out on the socket bonus.

The alternative is, of course, to socket expertise in other parts of my gear. Using those wonderfully expensive cardinal rubies and overwriting the agility rubies I put in not two weeks ago. All for an offkit.

See where this is annoying? Balancing all the melee caps is THE MOST irritating part of trying to keep up a kitty offspec, because I know that as soon as I put in those expertise gems, I'm gonna probably pick up some new pair of legs or bracers or neck and end up just socketing agility into those anyway.

Grrr. The feral gearing fury and wrath, it burns.

For now, I've not socketed out the new hat. I've been healing in all the raids lately so I haven't needed to equip my feral kit, but the hat has sat in my backpack, staring up at me with its little glowing wisp of green smoke curling up around my flasks and potions and lucky rock. I'm worried it's going to eat my T9 hat before I get a chance to swap them... but I will take that risk, and bide my time until I either break down and get the expertise rubies for my other pieces, or get a new piece of gear that I can socket fresh with that missing expertise.

EDIT:
"Current stats:" 731 Arp (w/NEScorp), 221 hit, 22 expertise
New hat stats: 819 Arp (over cap), 221 hit, 14 expertise

EDIT EDIT:
A neck upgrade dropped my expertise another -2 points and overinflated my hit by some phenomenal amount. Gahhhhh. Why do upgrades mess with my head like this?

3.3.3 Mangle changes

While this has much less impact on kitties in raids with a bear tank or arms warrior,

Mangle (and Trauma) now increases the damage of bleed effects for 1 min. (Up from 12 sec)

...
/jaw drop
...
/dance


Especially in ten-man raids, cats often have to apply their own mangle. Mangle does less damage than shred, and it must be juggled around rip, rake, and savage roar. Few druids glyph it in favor of stronger glyphs. This change is drastically reducing the impact of Mangle on the kitty-druid-dot-debuff-juggle.

It boils down to more raw dps on a single-target fight, since the druid can spend more time shredding and less time mangling. Yay!

10-strict Sindy down

She's very tough in ten-strict gear. We tried lots of strats. We wiped a lot. And we finally got her tonight, with what is likely the strangest re-working of our raid that we've yet seen. :)

• MT: our prot warrior
• OT: our resto druid as a dps cat spec
• Healers: our prot pally (in holy kit), our shadow priest (in disc kit), and our resto shaman
• DPS: unholy DK, ret pally, 2x warlocks (afflic and destro), marks hunter
  

So... we put our HoTs (me) into cat gear/spec and told her to go bear periodically in P3 to taunt it off the warrior (burn every cooldown possible to stay alive, including frost pots), while the warrior dropped his mystic buffet stacks as quickly as he could and taunted her back before the bear-cat-tree got frost burnt.

Me: OMGOMGOMGSAVEMEH O.O;

It worked. Major props go to our offspec healers, and it just highlights the importance of having a geared offspec in such a small raid that is a different role than your mainspec. Even if it means taking a healer and making them dps/ot while taking a tank and a dps and making them heal... because currently, nothing compares to a feral druid's ability to be uncrittable and have survival instincts in a dps spec and armor pen gear!!



We're staring down Arthas on his throne right now and refreshing ourselves on his strat. We're all pretty giddy right now after hurdling Sindragosa... let's see if she turns out to have been harder than the Lich King himself :)

Rocket Bear

^_^

Feral Cat vs Mutilate Rogue

Patch 3.3

After mostly healing on my druid through pug-5s, I was given the opportunity last night to dps in cat form through a couple of the ICC instances. Most recently, all of my dps play has been on my rogue, and I was shocked at myself for needing to consciously break my rogue habits in order to get back into the "groove" of cat dps.

I literally had to tell myself, "stop playing like a rogue."

(note: table looks nicer on the blog itself than through a reader. Go CSS.)

	Mut Rogue	Feral Cat
	Both can open from stealth or unstealthed.
Opening:	Get SnD and HfB up	Get Mangle, FF, Rake, SR up
Bleeds:	Optional; Garrote or Rupture to start HfB if no one else puts a bleed up.	Necessary; Rake and 5-CP Rip Mangles or Trauma boost these
Threat Redux:	ToT misdirect Feint	Cowerlol
Ack! Aggro:	"Stop it/ Flee it" Vanish Evasion Kidney Shot Gouge Cloak of Shadows	"Tank it" Barkskin Survival Instincts (if specced) Bear + Bash, Frenzied Regen Maim
DPS Cycle:	Mutilate <-> Envenom 1 min HfB refreshes	Juggle to keep these up: SR, Mangle, Rip, Rake Shred around the timers FB finish if timers look good 5 min FF refresh
Combo Points:	lol	Use Shred, Mangle, Rake to build to: 5-CP for Rips 3-5 CP for SR 4-5 CP for FB (if you can work it in)
Interrupts:	Kick Gouge (incapacitate) Kidney Shot (stun)	Maim (incapacitate, requires CP) Bear + Charge
Energy Boost:	.... Thistle Tea?	30sec: Tiger's Fury!
AoE:	FoK, 50 energy	Swipe, 50 energy
Versatility:	er, diff kinds of poison? (heavily nerfs damage, though!)	Heals (weak unless geared and dualspecced) Tank (weak unless geared and specced)
Misc:	Love anyone who will put a bleed up Envenom refreshes SnD +3%crit to party from poison	No poisons to reapply No weapon skill to level Love Arms Warriors (trauma) and Bear Tanks (mangle) Love moonkin (FF) +5% physical crit aura to party 4% heal on crit with aura

Is one better than the other? No, not really. Both have their ups and downs, and both can do similar amounts of damage... in fact, they buff each other and synergize well together. However: they do have a different playstyle from each other, currently. With a ruptureless cycle on my rogue, though, I must admit that playing her feels a lot simpler than playing my feral druid!

I enjoy both. I like the free and "easy" mutilate/envenom, with her vanish and ToT; I like the feral DoTs and weaving them together, with bear form to help a tank handle an unexpected circumstance. I just need to remember that they do play differently from each other... and to stop using SR at 1-2 CP when it's just going to run out in 10 seconds, because no, Rip and Shred won't refresh it :D

Acronyms/Abilities:

SnD: Slice and Dice, attack speed buff, refreshes on each Envenom/Eviscerate
HfB: Hunger for Blood, 10% damage buff
ToT/TotT: Tricks of the Trade, a misdirect
FoK: Fan of Knives
Mutilate: CP-generating attack boosted by poison on target
Envenom: finisher attack boosted by Deadly Poison on target; buffs poison applications for a short time
Garrote: bleed opener from stealth
Rupture: bleed finisher; I personally run a ruptureless rotation atm.
Kick: interrupt, requires no cp
Gouge: incapacitate, requires no cp

FF: Faerie Fire, -armor debuff
SR: Savage Roar, 30% damage buff
FB: Ferocious Bite, high-damage finisher
Mangle: attack with debuff that boosts bleed and shred damage
Shred: CP-generating attack, requires being behind the target
Rake: CP-generating bleed DoT
Rip: bleed finisher
Feral Charge: Bear-form provides a short root/interrupt; cat provides a daze
Maim: incapacitate effect that requires CP

T10 4-pc Resto: Rejuv = PoM

"Each time your Rejuvenation spell heals a target, it has a 2% chance to jump to a new target at full duration."

While several other blogs have picked at this a bit already, I wanted to chime in with my view of it as a purely 10-man raider:

It blows.

The key problem with this, for me, is that it can (assuming that the wording follows all the other jumping buff mechanisms) jump off of the tank (in about 1 in 50 ticks of rejuv, or about 4-5 reapplications). I need to heal the tank. I keep a rejuv on the tank(s) because:

1. It adds a health buffer to the tank.
2. It gives them a small rage/mana/RP bonus from revitalize procs.
3. It makes them swiftmendable in a pinch.
4. It buffs nourish.
5. It's cheaper and quicker to cast than regrowth, without the front-loaded heal at the initial cast of the spell that would just be overheal if I'm casting it purely for the bonuses in 1, 3, and 4.
   

If it's going to jump off of the tank on a random tick of healing, that's a problem. I have zero interest in collecting 4-pc T10 for my resto kit, if this is to be the set bonus.

On the positive side, if the T10 gearing for 10-man raiders is anything like T9, then not wanting the set bonus does at least leave me more open to picking up offset pieces from heroic modes, which are more easily obtainable than the same item level of tier pieces.


Feral 4-pc:

"Your Enrage ability no longer decreases your armor and instead decreases all damage taken by 12%, and the periodic damage done by your Rake ability can now be a critical strike."

...holy $&^@. That's awesome. Maybe I will be using my badges to buy offset gear instead of main-kit. My only concern with the feral set bonuses is that they lack the duration-increasing abilities found in the previous tiers, which will in turn reduce the amount of time a cat can spend shredding or FBing as they then need to use more energy/GCDs in keeping their rakes, mangles, SRs, and rips up. I don't think the energy reduction to rip (2-pc bonus) will impact that timing very much, in comparison to the timer increases on the previous sets.

3.2 Hit Rating Cap

FYI, the hit rating cap has not changed for 3.2.

I want to dispel this rumor!! I don't know where some have gotten the idea that the hit cap was altered in the patch, except that the moonkin Balance of Power talent's text description was changed and is misleading (it's still 2%/4% +hit per talent point like it was in 3.1, they just mis-wrote the new tooltip text). Lissana at Restokin has also pointed this out, complete with Blue-Post linkage. There is no change in the moonkin +hit cap (which you can find the breakdown on here).

Feral druids, your hit cap has not changed at all from before 3.2 (nor your expertise cap, for that matter), and there are no feral +hit talents to even confuse the tooltips on :) The 3.1 feral cat/bear hit cap information here is still accurate.

Maybe we should get a shammy out there to start spamming Purge Rumor. :)

Raid Icons

Pugging has brought my attention to the fact that a lot of players really have no idea what the real raid target icon order is, as listed in-game. When raid icons were released, a lot of party leaders defaulted to "skull" as the primary kill target as it symbolizes death, etc. Skull is the last mark in the list. Going BACKWARDS up the list from there is X, which became the common PuG 2nd-target. Strangely, many puggers have no concept that skull and X aren't actually the first two icons in the list, or that other marking systems are out there, and why.

• The Icons
• Boss Mods: Skull and X
• Personal Tank Icons
• DPS Discipline
• Handling Puggers
  

The Icons

This skull -> x assignment is backwards from the actual listing of icons. The icons are listed as follows for left-to-right reading countries:


When listed top-to-bottom, they are read in the same pattern: Star, Circle, Diamond, Triangle, Moon, Square, X, Skull. They are also labeled in the system 1 through 8 in this fashion:

Star	Circle	Diamond	Triangle	Moon	Square	X	Skull
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
{Star} {rt1}	{Circle} {Coin} {rt2}	{Diamond} {rt3}	{Triangle} {rt4}	{Moon} {rt5}	{Square} {rt6}	{Cross} {X} {rt7}	{Skull} {rt8}

Listed in {} are the chat commands for each icon, which will insert the icon into your chat window. The number labels 1-8 are used in the game's code and in macros when referring to raid icons. A very useful icon script the guilds I've been in have used for tanks marking their targets is:

/script SetRaidTarget("target",1)

You can change the 1 to be any of the numbers 1-8 of your choosing. The script, when created as a macro, will then quickly assign the chosen raid icon to your target. You can change "target" to be "self" or "mouseover" as well.

My own keybind for this is on mouse button 5 and ties other actions into the button using modifiers, in the following macro:

/cancelform [mod:alt] /cast [mod:alt,target=mouseover,help] [mod:alt,help] [mod:alt,target=player] Regrowth /stopmacro [mod:alt] /script SetRaidTarget("target",1) /clearfocus [form:1] /focustarget [form:1] /cast [form:1] Mangle (Bear)(); [form:3] Shred

Edit: I added in the /clearfocus and /focustarget lines at Celeritas' suggestion :)


Boss Mods

The problem with the Pugger -> marking system is that boss mods such as DBM and Bigwigs have long used both Skull and X for their own scripted boss warnings, which is reasonable considering Skull and X are the last two in the list. The mods will drop that icon on a player to bring attention to them for things such as life leech and slag pots. If a guild is using either of these marks for kill targets, things get chaotic as they try to remark mobs mid-combat, usually manually. You can easily get around this, however, if you break away from the Pugger skull/X mark mentality and use the other icons.

In all honesty, the Pugger Skull-for-Kill-Target is a "lowest common denominator" tradition, implemented for group members who don't know the actual icon order and for tanks that have to pre-mark all of their targets before combat. It shocks me how many players don't know the order, when it seems to me so basic a thing. If you don't know the order and plan to raid, I highly suggest you learn it, as you can't rely on skull/x in high end raids.

If you're really stuck on the use of skull/X for your kill targets, you can go into your boss mods' LUA files and change the SetIcon line to a different corresponding icon number. Each of your raid assistants will have to make the change as well, and every time your boss mods were updated, you'd all have to make the change again manually.


Tanks with Personal Marks

Ever since the implementation of target icons in the game, I have run with guilds that assign each tank their own, "permanent" icon for all guild runs. In the days of necessary CC, we assigned semi-permanent icon targets to mages and hunters as well! The MT is often Star, the first icon, but different tanks have had their own favorite marks and can certainly choose a different one!

Personally, mine has been in raids, though I moved it to for the purposes of pugging on Kae-bear.

In Vortex:

• our warrior uses
• our feral uses
  
• our paladin uses
  

Our only rule in the icon claims has been to leave skull and X alone, as they belong to the bossmods!

The tanks each used the above /script SetRaidTarget("target",1) and tied it to an easy-access key or mouse button (I use Mousebutton 5 for it), so that they can quickly mark a target while attacking mid-combat. You can even add a /cast AttackName or a /startattack line to the macro to make your click more versatile.


DPS Discipline

Breaking further from the Pugger marking system, most of the raiding guilds I've been in have opted for a variable kill order rather than having a set "moon then triangle" or even "skull then x" order. Obviously, this is something for voice chat communication and thus not really feasible in a pug (unless you use that ingame voice chat, but I won't go there). As far as a guild's internal raids are concerned, however, having a shifting command of which icon to kill first is a great way to discipline and train your DPS: discipline and attentiveness that is helpful, or even necessary, for learning boss fights and difficult strategies. Raiders need to be alert and able to react quickly to the leaders' commands, and variable kill orders are a way to train it.

The guilds I've been in that didn't use this variable kill order had a lot of difficulty with getting DPS to listen to the raid leader when it came to important target switches or interrupts during boss fights.

For raids without that level of discipline (PuGs) or communication, a set kill order among the tank targets is optimal.


Puggers

When dealing with Puggers, you never know what you're going to get. Some will adapt quickly to the personal tank-mark system, while others act like you've just shoved their head under water off the side of an iceberg while the frenzyfish are swarming up from the depths, gnashing their teeth in hunger.

Generally, it is good at the start of the PuG to announce "My target icon is (whatever), please kill it first." Those used to the Pugger mark style will just have to change from looking for Skull to looking for your mark. If they argue, just explain that you have it macroed, and they typically will not argue further: if they don't know about the game's raid mark order or are that unwilling to break Pugger tradition, then macros are probably a foreign continent for them as well.

From there, don't mark all of the adds. Having too many marks up will confuse the puggers and make them ask for the full kill order, and even after explaining it, inevitably some will forget and still dps the wrong target. Only mark the one that you are focusing on (aside from those rare CC), as a tank: the one you'd like the DPS to kill. Once your current target is dead, mark the next using your script. Think of your tank-mark as a "I'm putting threat into this one, so you're safe to dps it" icon.

In a way, this is easier than the skull->X strategy since the DPS only has one mark to look for, so they really have little room to complain about the break from pugger tradition.

• If DPS is on the wrong target, call them out on it and remind them that they need to be on your marked target.

• If there are multiple tanks, establish an order of precedence from the start of the instance: "Our MT is Soandso, their mark is , so kill the Star first. Our OT is Suchandsuch, so kill thesecond. Kill order: -> ."

• Alternatively, if your raid needs further simplicity, have your MT pull mobs off of the OT and/or remark them with her own target mark so that the DPS is absolutely clear on what to kill next. Thus, there will only be one mark for your DPS to pay attention to, and they can ignore all others. Whether this is skull or the MT's own mark doesn't matter as long as the dps is warned ahead of time.

TL:DR,

• For one, be aware that Skull->X is actually backwards in the icon list order and that boss mods will automatically reassign them to important boss-specific alerts on players, so they are generally unsafe for use in raids as kill target markers.

• For two, I highly suggest using a targeting script for tanking to apply a mark to your target. This will save time between pulls as the tanks/RL will not have to manually mark each target for kill order, and it will more easily establish which mobs are being actively tanked vs being an offtarget.

• For three, if you go against the typical Pugger style of Skull->X kill order, be ready to let the DPS know what kill target they should be going after at the start of the instance. Many Puggers are easily confused.

Kae's New Bear Form

3.2 Release

It's been confirmed; 3.2 is being released today. On that note, a huge congrats to Fusion (Turalyon - US) for downing Yogg+0 last night as a server first! You guys made it just in time, he got nerfed quite a bit with this patch.

The following is some commentary and pointing out of things I find significant in this patch, as a raider and a healer and a druid!

Cross-Class Notes:

• Epic Gems - Kaeya, my little mining rogue, hasn't seen much of a workout since I've been splitting my WoW-time between my two druids. I saw a lot of titanium nodes while farming Hodir rep on feral-Kae, and had a little pang of regret that I wasn't out mining up titanium ore instead, since I beleive there's a very good chance that you'll get at least one epic gem out of every stack of titanium ore prospected.

• Mount collectors - go pick up your extra undead pony / baby kitty from the appropriate faction vendor back in old Azeroth. The other mounts are purchased through seals, so if you've saved up enough after all the minipets and hippogryph and other mounts, then you have far more willpower on those dailies than I do :) There is also now a ravasaur trainer quest in Un'Goro for horde, akin to the wintersaber trainer line for alliance in Winterspring.
  

• Pet collectors -Shimmering Wyrmling is BoE for the same price of 40 seals as the other tournament pets, but only useable/purchaseable at exalted. If you'd rather save your seals, you can buy it from another player, technically. There are also a slew of little baby raptors, one of which can be purchased from Brianni in Dalaran; the others drop off of various rare-elite raptors around the game, or can be farmed from the raptors in WC, Zul'Drak, and ZG.
  

• Children's Week -This starts from Orphan Matron Aria in the Eventide in Dalaran. You will get one chain or the other between the Wolvar and Oracles, likely dependant upon whichever faction you're currently not hated by. If you want to switch, remember that you can do so by challenging the lich in the cave in eastern Sholozar, and killing the NPC of the group that you no longer wish to be factioned with (it's horrible, I know) while killing the lich. There is also a chance that you can just choose one or the other of the kids from the Orphan Matron and save all that hassle, so check first before going off and switching factions.

• New tournament dailies - If you're exalted with the sunreavers/silver covenant, you get something new to do, if you're like me and are entirely burnt out on the 3.1 dailies. There are also a banner, tabard (with tournament-hearthing action!), and squire available for purchase to those thusly exaltified.

• Coliseum Constructed - built of mountain rock and the limbs of tree druids, the coliseum is finished and is now a raid instance. There are separate normal and hard modes for 10-man and 25-man raids, and all 4 have a separate raid lock-out timer.

• Badges - You can convert down, but all instances will now drop Conquest badges rather than Valor/Heroism. The Coliseum itself will now drop Triumph badges.

• Item Compare - Shift + Mouseover on an item to compare stats with currently equipped. This is a nice addition to the Alt + Mouseover which will let you select from among gear in your bags that can go in that character sheet slot, something that was slipped in amidst a previous patch.
  

Feral/Shifter Notes

• Agility/Dodge - you will need more agility to get the same amount of dodge as previous. The nerf numbers may look scary, but it shouldn't be too huge a drop, as diminishing returns ate up a lot of that before anyway. Resilience recieved similar treatment, meaning that more will be required for (non-feral druids) to become uncrittable.

• Feral changes - base damage from all attacks in the upper ability ranks has been weakened through application of foam to all kitty claws, presumably a side effect of the pedicure recieved when all druids undergo their magical art transformation. Bears can now use rage potions.
  

• Feral Skins - again, I point you to Tigerfeet's beautiful fur/skin assignment chart. Are you happy with your new skin? If not, do you prefer the old skin, or a different one of the new skins? Will you be/have you already visited the barbershop to select your feral colors?

• Travel Forms - Travel form trained at level 16 and Flight form at 60; flying forms can now benefit from crusader's aura. Also, if you have a super-fast flying mount above the base speed of your swift flight form, your flight form speed will scale up to match!
  

Caster notes

• Replenishment Nerf - a very slight nerf, but one to note for those players who often have mana difficulties. "Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second." This is 0.25% less mana per 5 seconds, a 20% nerf in overall replenishment regen. In turn, however, mp5 itself has been increased by 25% on all items. This will lead to a reconsideration of mp5 vs spirit for many druids; personally, while I had previously considered mp5 to be of significantly less importance than spirit, I may now consider them equal. Whether one stat is needed over another will probably depend on the tree's own current spellpower vs mana problems. Monitor your mana, druids!

• Innervate - 3 minute cooldown (from 6), but at half power. Use it more often and share the mana love if you don't need it. Of course, as always, if you need it for yourself, use it on yourself! I've heard recently that there are still guilds who order an innervate be used on someone other than the druid. Sigh.
  

• Resto changes - lifebloom's final bloom has been nerfed (again), which mostly makes me worry for the General Vezax fight. Since its timing was so unpredictable in whether the target would need the heal by the time it bloomed, however, I think that overall this nerf will have minimal impact on PvE healing. Empowered Touch now boosts Nourish by 20%, making it a much more attractive talent to druids who use nourish regularly (it was in my spec before, and I'm keeping it, certainly).

• Turkey changes -Eclipse has separate cooldowns for lunar and solar, which will allow for more proccing and the "weaving" of starfire/wrath cycles... for more information, I point over to Graylo's recent post regarding the Eclipse procs. Panzerkins (Owlkin frenzy) will also regen mana through the proc, which is quite nice for soloing/leveling.

And because we were all very worried about this (I know I laughed each time I saw it!):

Cenarion Set: No longer reduces the (nonexistent) cooldown on Hurricane. Instead, the set bonus increases the damage done by Hurricane by 15%.

Feral PuGing

I was quite sick at the tail end of the last week, and to keep my mind off of my roiling stomach and seething heartburn and lack of sleep, I spent a very large chunk of time playing feral-Kae. Her gear and rep were bugging me, and I wanted to see if I could just slash around in some pugs to earn badges and some new shinies.

• OS10. Bad run. We had two healers: a disc priest and a holy pally. They are typically MT healers, yes? The both of them? Yeah, sure, I get that. I wanted to smack them both, however, when they both said that they just wanted to target the tanks and only heal them. Hence, dps got NO heals. WTF. I mean... seriously, when you have a raid that has 5+ melee dps and a tank who wants to sit in the flame orbs, you're NOT going to get trash down, even with the little feral druid fleeing to stand behind the healers and BANDAGE HERSELF while the rest of the dps dies horribly, writhing in flames. Not a heal. Not one. We almost wiped to the first drake because of the AoE damage, since the MT again said "hey, don't go in the portal, just burn the drake down." Guess what that does? DAMAGES THE RAID! Now, I can understand it being the dps' fault when some stood in void zones, but dieing to straight environmental aoe that is unavoidable just because the two healers refuse to see anything but the tank's health is ridiculous. Angry kitty. Oh, and the mage didn't know he could remove curses ;)
  

• OS25. Decent run. Typical pug, nothing amazing or notable, though they had me OT the adds. I danced with fire elementals and got badges.
  

• VoA25. Bad run. I tried this several times, but the groups kept falling apart, usually because of bad healing... most of the healer puggers were in blues and self-admitted "bad alts." The tanks just kept dieing, and they easily had the gear to tank the instance. Personally, I have nothing wrong with alts in a raid like that, as long as they know how to play ;)

• VoA 10. Good run. I ran this after a very successful heroic daily run, when our 5-man heroic group decided to grab 4 extra dps and a healer and go kill Emalon with me as the OT. Very smooth run.

• Uld 10. Bad run. I had been sitting in LFG as a tank/dps for this and two other dungeons/raids, but with a comment that I should only OT or just play cat in Ulduar, because I know my gear is comparatively bad and I didn't have a separate kit for bear with the proper stam enchants. After a few mis-invites and fail-to-start groups where people didn't bother reading my comment about not having a MT-capable tank set, I took myself off the "tank" portion of LFG and just left it as "can tank anything below Ulduar" comment, as a pure dps lfg. I got a whispered invite to a U10 run after that, and since I'd been in the LFG as a dps, I figured it wouldn't be a big deal. They'd already downed flame leviathan, but that's 1 boss out of 14, right? They need a dps, sure, let's do this. Turns out, they wanted me as an MT. When I balked, they said I had the gear to do it... and I balked more. Then I inspected them. Indeed, my gear was the best among them, aside a resto druid who had more T7.5 than I did. Alright, I decided, I may as well see what happens, they seem to have confidence, in spite of their scattering of blues in scary item slots (chests, pants, helms, weapons...). So, I MT'd XT-002 and Razorscale for them, and we put a couple attempts in on Kologarn. They did pretty well for as undergeared as we all were, though many of the players really just didn't get the boss mechanics (eye beams? If I move two steps and stop, I'll be okay, right?) or even really their own class mechanics (wild growth? rejuv? why should I cast those?). I wish I could've helped them to down more bosses, but between replacing players and keeping those we had inside the instance (they kept hearthing to Dalaran to repair >.> ), and the relative inexperience at staying out of Bad Stuff™, we had to call it after Razorscale. Speaking of, the debuff was only stacking to 3 on me, so I was able to keep moving when solo-tanking Razorscale when the OT was practically one-shot, albeit very very slowly. This is new, and was a pleasant surprise, since it let us actually down the boss as the taunt-exchange just wasn't gonna happen! I'm glad my patience was able to hold out, because it certainly wasn't the Uld run that I was expecting.
  

• Naxx25. Good run. This was a 60%-or-so guild run by "stone axe clan" and I was one of the pug dps; apparently the guild had lost some members and was determined to complete the instance without them, and I was happy to help in trade for some upgrades to my tanking kit. What shocked me, though, was that I, apparently, really know my kitty dps rotations and can be a beast with them: I was steadily in the top 1, 2, 3 dps through the whole instance, even with a green trinket and 2 pieces of strength/armor tanking gear in my kitty kit, and even when the dps warriors left and I had to apply mangle myself! Wut?! Yeah, I didn't get it, I was outdpsing people in Ulduar gear. Kitties can be scary-good when they can keep their bleeds, shreds, and buffs in order... I know this well, as I regularly raid with a feral druid. By the end of the night, when we needed another tank for KT, the raid leaders refused to let me go bear because they didn't want to loose my dps. I was flattered, in spite of knowing that my own tank set was/is still pretty pathetic. They invited me to their Uld25 run for the next night; I was tempted to go, even though they said they were only looking at 4 bosses, but ended up going out of town instead (hubby wanted to pick up his new knife set! Shun classic, folded steel, he's quite proud of them.)
  

Around all of the raids, I was running heroics with various groups, some better than others; I hit exalted with the Ebon Blade and am working my way through revered with Sons of Hodir (I circled the Hodir valleys for hours picking up Everfrost chips). My friends list grew triple in size as I made note of those to contact for groups/raids, or who I generally thought were cool people. I'm also turning in my Nobles deck at the darkmoon faire today; I purchased the cards individually, and the whole of the deck cost me less than 3500g :)

So, overall, it was an interesting experience with high points as well as bad, and I have at least a semi-decent tanking kit now, particularly once I pick up my Greatness trinket :)

Feral +Hit Cap

Patch 3.1 - 3.3

To compliment the previous moonkin +hit breakdown, I wanted to record the cat druid +hit cap and the hit needed to ensure that bear form growls will not miss.

The hit a feral druid wants to aim for is 8% +hit, or 263 (262.32) hit rating at level 80.

You can probably get away with 262 hit rating, which is 7.99% hit. There is a very very very small chance that you will miss (1 in 10,000 attacks). If your gear collection leaves you at 262, don't sweat finding that 1 hit rating too much.

You may notice that this is the same hit rating a moonkin aims for, though the percent is different. Melee and Magical hit ratings require different amounts to achieve 1% hit at level 80: it takes 26.23 hit rating to achieve 1% spell hit, while it will take 32.79 hit rating to achieve 1% physical hit.


Weapon Skill?
Not having a maxxed weapon skill will reduce any player's chance to hit, requiring them to have more +hit rating in order to make up for their lack of skill. Feral druids are unique in that they do not have to worry about their weapon skill for their +hit, however.

• Your weapon skill does not matter in feral forms.

Druids in feral forms (cat or bear) are automatically considered to have maximum weapon skill with their claws and fangs, being as they are parts of their bodies rather than an external tool. Your skill with your currently equipped weapon does not matter, because your equipped weapon is only there to provide you stats/procs, and is not the part of you that is actually dealing damage.


Hit per Mob Level

• Level 80 mobs: 5% miss chance. This is 164 hit rating (163.95).
  

• Level 81 mobs: 5.2% miss chance. This is 171 hit rating (170.508).
  

• Level 82 mobs: 5.4% miss chance. This is 178 hit rating (177.066).
  

• Level 83 mobs: 8% miss chance. This is 263 hit rating (262.32).

Feral druids have no talents that will increase their hit rating, so they must rely purely on their gear to reach their hit cap.


Draenei buddies!
If you raid with a draenei, then you can reduce your required +hit rating by 32.79 for physical attacks.

The hit cap for a feral druid with Draenei buddies is 7% +hit, or 230 (229.53) hit rating at level 80.

Taunts and Growling?
Abilities such as taunt and growl are considered spells, rather than physical attacks, so +hit with these abilities follows the spell-hit calculations rather than physical hit. Spell-hit and physical hit are all derived from the same "hit rating" found on gear. Assuming you are hit-capped for melee at 8%, you will have about 263 hit rating on your gear already. This same amount of hit rating equals 10% spell-hit for calculating your miss chance for spells. The cap for bosses at level 80 (a level 83 mob) is 17%, so you will have another 7% chance to miss the boss with your bearform growl.

The Glyph of Growl increases your chance to hit with growl by 8%, which more than makes up for the hit rating over the melee cap. This does mean that you can be below the melee hit cap while still having enough hit that your growl will not miss!

With the Glyph of Growl, you will only need 236.07 hit rating on your gear to ensure that growl will not miss.

If you have a draenei in your party, this lowers further to 209.84 hit rating. Keep in mind that the draenei are providing you with a percentage 1% hit, which is only 26.23 spell-hit rating when calculating your +hit with growl.



Hey, what about this Armor Pen thing I keep hearing about?

Altosis posted a great explanation of armor penetration for feral druids. Go check it out :)

Feral Expertise Caps

Patch 3.3

What is Expertise?
Expertise reduces your chance to be parried or dodged, and is mostly of importance to soloing or tanking druids. Capping out your expertise will prevent your mob from dodging or parrying your attacks: something that plain old "+hit" cannot counter. +Hit will only reduce your chance to miss; without expertise, there is still a chance that your attack will be dodged or parried, even when you are hit capped.


How much do I need?
The Primal Precision talent grants 82 expertise rating, or 10 expertise. With this talent,

• A feral tank needs 377.2 expertise rating (46 expertise + 10 expertise from talent) to reach the hard tanking cap for raid bosses (level 83), as they have a cap of 14% parry.

• A cat or bear dps needs 131.2 expertise rating (16 expertise + 10 expertise from talents) to cap out against the 6.5% dodge rating of a raid boss at level 80. This is because they are attacking from behind the boss and thus they should not be parried, so they only need to get enough expertise to negate the dodge chance.

• If a dps wishes to attack from the front of the boss, they will need the same amount of expertise as tanks do to prevent getting parried.

Only YOU can prevent Parry-Storms!
"Parry Storms" occur whenever a boss or mob is parried repeatedly, as each time they are parried, their attack speed will increase. This results in faster attacks coming in at your tank. Generally, you want to avoid this, but I *have* seen circumstances where a group intentionally caused Parry Storms because the healers were bored and the tank needed rage/mana. :)

Operation: Parry Storm!


Expertise for Non-Bosses

• For anything less than a raid boss (level 82 or less mobs), you will need no more than 98.4 expertise rating (12 expertise + 10 expertise from talents) for parry/dodge negation, if you have the primal precision talent.
  

• Without the talent, you will need 180.4 expertise rating (22 expertise).

Cat'sup!!

Getting back from lunch and doing my refresh on the druid forms development page, my heart skipped a beat when something new loaded.

The kitties are up!!


Tauren Cat image

I am pleasantly surprised, and quite happy with this new form. The face looks much more like that of a lion, and isn't trying to rip off the panthers of the night elves.

Note: for a great color assignment chart, check out Tigerfeet's blog!

Other changes I noticed include:

• Nose-ring; a tauren thing, not really a feature I'd want for my female tauren but something that is certainly distinguishing.
• Horn style: they aren't as long and twisted as before
• Colors: fur, warpaint, eyes, and horn color vary between models
• Paws: 4 claws per paw
• Mouths: they very clearly have closed mouths in these "not roaring" screenshots ;p
• Druid Symbol: it's there on the shoulder and clearly visible!
• Chin Fur: like with the night elf bear,the tauren kitty has lost the "Wolverine" cut and gained a more appropriate/natural tuft of chin fur in addition to a smoother mane.
• Decorations: the wristbands on the forelegs, and the few "hairbands" pulling away locks of the mane to separate the druid from the wild lions who would rather gnaw on the leather of such things than use them for decoration :)
  

Well done, Blizz designers! /applaud


I think I will be happy with the skin colors chosen for my moocow. She's that misty pale tannish-gray, which I am guessing will mean the white bear and white cat. If I end up with one or both of the sandy-tan feral fur colors, I won't be sad either, because I like them, too :)

Now we just have to wait and see what strange colors they've come up with for the night elf kitties! I'm still not pleased with the blue/brown night elf bear combination, but I will be stubborn and not recolor Kae's pretty dark-blue hair. She will no longer have a mange-face in bear form, so no matter what strange paints they roll her new bear form in, it *should* be an improvement just based on the model! ;)


Edit:

NE Cats image

Again, I applaud Blizzard's model team. They took a nice model and upgraded it to more detail, without loosing the beauty and sleekness inherent in the original cat design. THANK YOU for not adding sideburns, either ;) I love the addition of the face markings, and the color selections look great! Though... I imagine some guys may be upset about playing a "pink cat!"

New Druid Forms Preview: Thoughts

So, Blizz has put up an official announcement about the new graphics, with screenshots. For 3.2 (I am guessing, as they said "major content patch"), they will be adding new models for druid forms, primarily focusing on cat and bear form.

I gotta say, though, that when they had originally announced that they were working to design them more along the lines of the detail in Swift Flight Form and the Raven Lord mount, I expected more of a change than what this preview shows. Granted, I don't have much issue with the current graphic design of the tauren bear: it's a decent model, far more bearable (heh) a design than, say, tauren cat form.

• Tauren Bears
• Night Elf Bears
• The Kitties
  

Tauren Bears: Blizzard's image + Tigerfeet's Color Chart

These are some of the changes I noticed in the preview.

• Different fur colors, changeable at the barbershop (via hair/hide color in caster-form)
  
• War paint and recoloring of the druid tattoo to match
• Eyebrows??! heehee
  
• Eye color and angle/shading looks more intelligent
• The large fangs on the lower jaw are less pronounced than before
• Ears held at a different angle
  
• Horns are behind ears now, and arc forward rather than up
• Fewer wrinkles in the face (around the snarling muzzle, etc)
• Decorations in the form of horn-wraps, arm bands, collar, and "earring" (maybe coming from a horn rather than an ear?)
• Bird-skull pendant on the collar: we ate our bird form.
  
• The "beard" is now just a tuft of chin-fur; feels more appropriate for females than the full Wolverine thing
• Edit: 4 claws per paw instead of 3!

They are small changes, and certainly pleasant, so I'm not saying I don't approve... but I had imagined bigger changes, like the distinct difference between Flight Form's crow and Swift Flight Form.

ROARS: the bears can and will close their mouths. Blizzard chose screenshots of the bears roaring, so it only looks like they all still have the same open-mouthed grr-argh expression, but the blue-posters have confirmed that the bears will usually have their mouths closed while idling/sitting about/standing around etc.

COLORS: For a full color chart, I recommend Tigerfeet's blog post! Tiger made a great chart that shows what skin color will result in what bear/cat color.

I am very excited at the idea that multiple colors will be available to choose from, such as what was hinted at in the pre-WotLK-ptr minor cosmetic glyphs. The ability to have 2-3+ bears in a raid and be able to tell them all apart at a glance is really nice, particularly after I had raided through TK/SSC with 4 total feral druids. Was fun sometimes having the kitty squad, though...


"FIRE ZE KITTY LAZERS! PEW PEW!" Anyway, back on-topic...

I love that it will be tied to your actual character's own hair color: for night elves, your hair color will determine your cat/bear fur colors. For Tauren, they're adding the ability to re-dye our caster-form cow-fur, as our cow-fur will be the basis for our bear/cat colors. My own tauren bear will be the sandy tan color.


Night Elf Bear: Blizzard's image + Tigerfeet's Color Chart

...They have sideburns?!

That's my only complaint about this version. I do love the facial markings, especially as they more or less match the markings on my own elf's face. Their faces actually have fur, rather than looking as though they have mange. I think the teal-haired and white-haired elves are easy to pick out, but I'm at a loss for guessing on the others: the dark blue hair is the darkest color of those available to night elves (tieing with the dark purple), so I would expect such a color would be given the darkest bear, but then there's a brown bear with blue "hair," so I may very well end up with that form (unfortunately so, as I don't really like that blue/brown combination as much as I do the black bear). The faintly-purple-tinted bear will probably be the bear for all of those elves with purple hair. The greenish-black bear... green hairs that aren't teal, I suppose? Or the lighter blue? Maybe? /shrug

I'm not giving up Kae's dark blue hair, regardless, so I'll have to live with whatever I end up with. I just hope I don't get disappointed.

EDIT: feral-Kae will be the black bear, as that was the color paired with the dark-blue hair :) Blizz released the full color breakdown, and you can see what colors will result in the link above!


What about the other forms?

This is all the preview they've given us so far, and it's a nice teaser :) I look forward to seeing what they've come up with for the other forms, particularly tauren cats. I do still love the original night elf cat model, though, and hope that the new form for NE cats does it justice. They have promised future updates with previews of the other models they're planning to release in the next content patch, so let's keep a close eye on them!

EDIT: Cat forms post here.

As for tree, they did add that it's something still under development, so I imagine that they just can't make any promises for a tree-form graphic upgrade being ready in time for the next major content patch.

I have wild hopes of them changing night elf travel form to that of a wolf rather than the "open plains" cheetah, but I think that's just a pipe dream :) I love wolves, but shaman have had a claim on the ghost wolf for so long that I think they'd complain otherwise.