Tier-10 Set Bonuses: Druid

(I tried something for this article. I linked all abilities mention to WoWHead so you can see them if you aren't familiar with them. If this is a distraction, or if you would like to see it more often, leave a note in the comments)

Today marks the first in what I hope will be several posts discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the upcoming Tier-10 set bonuses. If you have not yet seen them, you can view them HERE. In this post I will be looking at the Druid set bonuses, starting with what I know best: Feral.

• 2 Pieces (Feral): Your Swipe (Bear) and Lacerate abilities deal 20% additional damage and the cost of your Rip ability is reduced by 10 energy.
• 4 Pieces (Feral): 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.

One thing to note about feral set pieces is that one set must cover two different specs and raid roles of the same tree, Tank and Melee DPS, which is why the Feral bonuses seem to carry a lot with them. The Tank half of the two piece bonus doesn't provide any added functionality to any abilities (which seems to be the case with a lot of the T10 bonuses), but it increases the damage of our spam threat abilities. Swipe and Lacerate are used in between auto-attack Mauls and Mangle cooldowns, and contribute a fair bit (in Lacerate's case) to a substantial part (in Swipe's case) of a Bear's threat. In AoE situations, this should be a near 20% damage/threat increase. On the DPS side of the set bonus, we see a cost reduction in the second most important ability a Kitty relies on (the first being Savage Roar), Rip. A typical Feral Druid DPS attack priority involves keeping Savage Roar up, followed by keeping Mangle up (if there is no Arms Warrior or no Bear Tank), followed by keeping our bleeds active (Rip and Rake). After those conditions are met, Shred is used as a filler and to generate Combo Points. Reducing the cost of Rip means I will have spare energy, which can be used to either hit with more Shreds, or fire off a Ferocious Bite.

The 4pc bonus is where we see that functionality change for abilities. By default, Enrage reduces base armor by a percentage (depending on whether you are in Bear or Dire Bear, so basically are you level 40 or not) while generating rage over the duration. It is a handy ability used at the beginning of a fight to generate rage before engaging a boss, though is not practical to use while tanking as it is a substantial reduction in mitigation, and if you are tanking Trial of the Grand Crusader you just can't afford it (though you will NEVER be rage starved in that instance). A deep Feral talent gives Enrage a small damage boost when active, useful for Off-Tanks on fights where aggro switches but a mob is taunt-immune (Void Reaver in TK: The Eye, for example), but otherwise goes unused. This bonus not only removes the penalty, allowing it to be used while tanking a boss, but goes one step further to offer another mitigation cooldown. Enrage is on a one minute CD, as is our other primary mitigation cooldown, Barkskin. With this set bonus, I can now run 12 up, 48 down of 32% damage reduction, which is a lot of reduction on not a lot of cooldown, or, for longer sustained damage, 24 up, 36 down of 20% then 12% damage reduction. My guess is that the first scenario will be the more likely one, meaning that bosses in Icecrown Citadel will be hitting hard but predictably, in the vain of Three Drake Sarth's Fire Breath.

The Feral DPS 4 piece has an interesting story to it (well, interesting if you were a Feral at WotLK launch). That bonuses use to be a part of a deep Feral talent Primal Gore, which now only grants the crit change to Rip and Lacerate. Rake was removed from that talent because it was deemed "too powerful". This seems to hold true since, even without Rake dots critting, Feral DPS is still highly competitive (though falls to the wayside when your gear falls behind, as I've noticed lately...). Also, traditionally, the goal of a set bonus was to challenge a player to decide at what point raw stats outweigh the benefits provided from them, which means the bonuses had to be good. Take the WABAC machine to The Burning Crusade expansion and look at the Feral 2pc Tier 4 set. It provided melee attacks in Cat a chance to generate 20 energy. This bonus was so powerful that it took until 4pc T6 to even consider dropping it, and with the release of the "non-set set pieces" (bracers, boots, belt) in Sunwell, the new hotness became 2T4, 4T6. It was that good. The reason it was so good is because it was a near direct mirror of an existing Rogue talent in deep combat, Combat Potency. I don't expect this bonus to be quite as necessary as 2T4 was, but it WILL be a nice boost to Feral DPS.

Overall I am very happy with the DPS side of the bonuses (especially with the mediocre T9 DPS bonuses), and the tank bonuses blow me away. I will for sure be aiming for 4T10 as soon as I can get my hands on it. This post has gotten longer than I expected, so for now I leave you with the Feral bonuses. If you would like to see your class's set bonuses features, leave a note in the comments or, if you are feeling so bold, write a short overview of them and send it my way and I will list them up here for you.