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.

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Meet My Toons: Khanus (Feral Druid)

Here is part one of the series Meet My Toons. First up in the series, you get to meet my main character, the one who bears my namesake (or rather, whose name I choose to go by). Khanus is currently a level 80 Elite Tauren Chie...., errr, level 80 Tauren Feral Druid. Khanus is the first toon I created on live realms. I went with a druid because my brief exposure to WoW during the beta saw me playing as a druid (also named Khanus, but at that time as a Night Elf). I was instantly drawn to the druid class because I hadn't seen anything like it in any of the other games I have played, and I was sold on the idea when I first saw a level 10 Druid on the beta realms. If you haven't played a druid, or aren't familiar with the class (you're missing out), level 10 is the level when a young druid first begins his/her path of the claw by capturing within them the essence of the wild bear (layman's terms: i m a bear, lololz). I just thought "Wow, that's too cool for words. I want to be a bear!" I had no idea what a druid was capable of (hint: not much, at least at that time), just that I wanted to be a bear...

That is, until I got cat form...

Cat Form opened up a second whole new world for me as a leveling druid. I could now actually put out some damage, and without having played the other classes, or for that matter grouping with them much, the paltry DPS I was putting out seemed like a lot. Leveling was a breeze with the increased run speed, and Leader of the Pack heals removed all down time. It was around the middle of my leveling that I learned the fate of all druids: Healing. I was sorely disappointed, but, knowing that I wanted to raid, I gave it a go, and at level 46 I respecced to Restoration, and healed my first instance.

And I didn't hate it. I actually enjoyed it. Sure I wasn't shredding faces, but I had a much larger impact on the group's success. A lot more responsibility lay on me now. Furthermore, I was damn good at healing. I didn't manage to raid much when I did end up hitting 60, though, as The Burning Crusade expansion was just a few weeks away. When it hit, I kept my resto spec. In fact, I enjoyed it more now that I had some actual spellpower gear. But at the same time, I couldn't help but collect some feral gear. I always tried to grab feral gear when I could, and collected myself a nice set. Then one day, while questing through Zangarmarsh, at level 64, something clicked and I got really REALLY tired of the painfully slow leveling speed of restoration.

Sure, it was nice to heal an instance every now and then, but what good was that if I wouldn't hit max level... ever? So I put my feral gear to good use, respecced, gave the new talents a whirl, and LOVED it. WOW! This was a new type of feral. I had some solid damage, and what's more, I could TANK stuff now. I tanked my first instance ever that day (Underbog), and I found out that not only did I think I was a capable tank, so did the rest of the group. I had fun tanking, but having people thank me for it? That was icing. Delicious icing. And what's more, I had control over the group. I was the leader. The other players followed ME. I was their guardian. I had found my place in the World of Warcraft. I would be a tank, but not just any tank, I would be a feral druid, and I would put every aspect of my character, and later characters, to work in a fight. I learned to maximize my survivability, to balance my gear for threat generation when needed, and optimize my DPS gear for those fights that I wasn't needed to tank. I would be an asset, not a liability. But most importantly, I would forever be a tank.

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