There is not a lot going change-wise regarding PvP or Druids on the beta, so this is going to be a short post.

Symbiosis was changed, at some point and I may have simply missed it, so that Disc/Holy Priests get Cyclone instead of Entangling Roots. This change is somewhat unwelcome news since Entangling Roots was an interesting spell to give to Priests since I use mainly Cyclone in 2s for peels. With Cyclone being given to Priests, this now means that Guntir cannot as easily run off on his own and CC a melee while his healer is across the map without worry of me not being able to peel again once the melee gets back into the fray because of diminishing returns. That being said, Cyclone could certainly still be used by Guntir as an off-target CC in some situations or a last ditch effort to bait out kicks so he could continue healing (or use it when he eats a kick on his healing school). I am still entirely unsure how this is going to play out in 2s.

Going back, I am still a little miffed that Priests are given one of the Druid's CC abilities rather than something more useful; however, basically every healer is looking at what they get from Symbiosis and saying "wtf!?" The list is pretty lackluster overall. Holy Paladins get the short end of the stick with Rebirth, obviously, but even Resto Shammies are probably a little bit peeved with Prowl given that it will only really be utilized in the beginning of an arena match and since it starts Ghost Wolf form, that means that placing totems is put off until the Shaman shows himself. All things considered, being able to cast Cyclone as a Priest might be better than the alternative.

Consider situations in 2s where I get CC'd, Guntir gets kicked on Holy, and Dominate Mind and Psychic Scream are both on cooldown; if nothing else, he will be able to throw in a Cyclone on a dps to simply outlast that kick interrupt. In fact, given that Cyclone is undispellable, it might actually play out better in this one example simply because there is truly nothing an opposing team can do if they threw all their stuns and interrupts into Guntir to try and land a kill; he will still have his Nature school to fall back on and just hard-cast a Cyclone into the biggest damage-dealer until I get back on the scene to land a stun. Sure, this example is very specific and probably will not play out much in our matches (we're pretty good at not falling into these types of situations... tooting my own horn here).

Lastly, there was an update to Rogues worth noting: Deadly Brew has been removed as a talent and is now on the Rogue season 12 PvP set 4-piece bonus. In Deadly Brew's position in the talent tree we now see Prey on the Weak, which causes 10% increased damage taken from all sources (meaning not just the Rogue but his friends as well) while the target is affected by one of the Rogue's control abilities. This is not an amazing talent at 10% damage bonus, but it leaves the door open for Rogues to take the other two talents at that tier, which are Paralytic Poison and Dirty Tricks.

Since Paralytic Poison's stun shares a diminishing returns with all stuns, I doubt that many Rogues will end up taking this ability rather than continuing to use Kidney Shot; although, it may work out to be a PPM system meaning that it would be a 5s stun every 20 seconds for "free". With Wound Poison being made into a Lethal Poison, that means that the choice would be between Paralytic Poison, Mind Numbing Poison, and Crippling Poison. Early on in the expansion, we will not be seeing Rogues with their 4-set bonuses, so they will likely be forced to use Wound+Crippling at first, but eventually everyone will get their sets and I feel like Wound+Mind-Numbing is going to be the flavor for the entire expansion.

Dirty Tricks is, for lack of a better description, bad. It allows the Rogue's CCs to not break from his DoTs, but in PvP Rogues simply do not use Rupture (outside of a few edge cases), and with Wound being a lethal poison, that means that Deadly is out of the question. Basically, that means that Rogues will end up likely taking Prey on the Weak simply because it is better than the other two.


I just noticed something when looking at the new Rogue 4-piece PvP bonus (which is just Deadly Brew): the PvP sets now have two interesting bonuses. On live, Rey's 4-set bonus is moving 15% faster while in form, but according to this link, the latest set has a 2-set bonus and a 4-set bonus. The Dragonhide 2-set bonus is still that 15% movement speed bonus, which is fine by me, but the 4-set bonus is now:

Once every 30 sec, your next Ravage is free and has no positional or stealth requirement.

Hmmm, that sounds oddly familiar... is that not just a better implementation of Stampede! from live? It is really unclear (since I have not grinded Rey up to 90 and have not equipped this set) how this will work implementation-wise, but I am guessing that Ravage will "pop" into active once we leave stealth (just like how using Feral Charge Cat "pops" it into active on live) and there is an ICD of 30 seconds to keep us from using it again out of stealth.

This is a really nice addition given that it is directly related to dealing damage by way of  additional combo points and free burst damage from Ravage. I had made a post last week (or maybe the week before) about me removing Ravage from my bar in MoP, but with this little bonus, I am going to have to take back my statement for sure. Ravage does great damage, but it is truly too expensive and it "costs" us a 4sec stun opener that can be used from any direction; allowing it to be used out of stealth for free and from any direction makes it the best ability we have in terms of burst.

Horray!