Minor Vacation

Been a while but hey, what are you gonna do about it?

A lot of new information to cover, and I'll start with what is probably most dear to my heart - Feral PvP.

This is the build I use.

Note that for starters it's a Mangle build. You don't get *that* much additional benefit by using Shred over Mangle, yet you manage to lose 8 talent points. I don't like that.

I'm currently in 2 Hateful, 2 Deadly, and still holding on to a few Eviscerator pieces (which I will be replacing soon enough).

I stayed out of Season 5 completely after finding out how broken it was. It was nigh impossible to improve to get any better gear to make yourself improve more. On top of that, Pally + DK was pretty much an autowin.

Now I'm doing 2s with a DK, and 3s with a Rogue and DPriest. We didn't actually manage to make any time for 3s this week, but we did get in ~17 games in with our 2s team. Most of it was spent with my partner figuring out how / when to use all his buttons (the same reason I stopped PvPing on my DK). However once we got it down we did fairly well - even against DK/Pally.

In BGs I can pretty much 1v1 anything. The only things I can't reliably kill are DPriests, RShamans, and RDruids. That is mostly because I haven't gotten my rotation down quite well enough against those particuarly opponents. Against any DPS class I can pretty much tear them to shreds, unless a Mage pops every single cooldown in existence to kill me.

Melee DPS are especially yummy to kill. And getting sweet revenge on Warlocks is sweet.

I'll have more on Ulduar in the coming days.

Prmal Joke

I was really excited about the new talent "Primal Gore" that is going to allow Lacerate and Rip the chance to crit. Then I learned it has a pre-requisite of "Rend and Tear". That ended the thrill for me.

From what I can tell Primal Gore is being designed as a PvE only DPS boost. Now the question you will have in response to this is "Why the heck do you think that?" The answer is fairly simple: Shred.

As it currently stands, in order to take Rend and Tear, you have to sacrifice either utility or survivability. On top of that, if you do that 5 points into Rend and Tear you might as well sink an extra 2 into Shred (-18 Energy cost) so you can actually use that ability. So we're essentially talking a whopping 8 talent points for Lacerate and Rip crits in PvP. 8! Here's a summary of what you have to lose in order to get that one talent:

1) Master Shapeshifter (2 Points): -4% Crit in Cat form and -4% Damage in Bear. I like it for the crit and extra combo point generation - allows for easier Savage Roar upkeep (which is infinitely more important than any other finisher).

2) Natural Shapeshifting (3 Points): +30% Shift Cost. This might not be a such a big deal - except with this and Primal Tenacity you will be down to a 224 mana cost Cat or Bear form. 224. That's it. I don't know about you, but I like having mana available to Cyclone, Roots, Heal, etc.

3) Thick Hide (3 Points): -10% Armor. This is probably the first one I would lose if I had a choice - although I would really rather not at all. I like the survivability.

4) Natural Instincts (2 Points): -20% Healing in Cat, -70% Agi as Healing Power. No. This is such a huge survivability talent I would never give it up under any circumstances.

So I'm forced to pick 8 of those 10 points and throw them away for a talent I would never use anyway if I had Rend and Tear (if you have R&T you better be using FB and not Rip)? You have got to be kidding me.

Make the pre-requisite Imp. Mangle like it should be.

I love eating things.

Really. I love eating things.

Or to be more accurate, my Druid loves eating things. I never could get a handle on PvP on my Death Knight (my brother managed to, heh) but I've always loved playing as a Feral Druid. Initially I was skeptical because of the massive changes to Feral Druids. However after Blizzard finally realized that tiny mana pools were actually a HUGE problem for Ferals, and gave us epic reduced shifting costs, we got our utility back.

Now we actually can shift in and out as necesarry, heal ourselves, etc.

I've also come to realize that Feral Druids do incredibly powerful DPS in a PvP setting. Once I had Savage Roar up I was getting 3k crit Mangles on a Shaman. A Shaman. 6.5k Ferocious Bites were also very common on clothies. Not to mention the fact that we have a 3min cd "I Win" button against Warlocks. Not like I ever needed one before but ever since it was released in Pre-BC it was just amusing.

Oh and this is all in 187 Blues or worse except my weapon (Titansteel Destroyer) and Hateful Bracers.

It scares me to think what will happen once I actually have some gear.