Survival Instincts -- Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Duration still 12 seconds.

o.O

Uhm... whoa. I do not understand this change at all.

For instance, Warriors also have Shield Wall and it also reduces damage by 60% for 12 seconds on a 5 minute cooldown, and they can glyph it to be a 3 minute cooldown which reduces damage by 40%.

Okay, that whole bit above with the line through it... all wrong apparently. This has changed since I last looked at warriors. Now, Shield Wall is a 50% damage reduction on a 5 minute cooldown and there is a second-tier protection talent which reduces the cooldown by 60/120/180 seconds (making it a 3-minute cooldown talented), but it still only reduces damage by 50%. Next, you look at the glyph which increases the cooldown by 2 minutes, but also grants it 20% more damage reduction. Which means that IF you are a prot warrior and you glyph for it, your Shield Wall will be a 4 minute cooldown for 70% damage reduction OR a 2 minute cooldown for 50% damage reduction.

The reason that this Survival Instincts makes no sense to me is because it would be like giving a Fury Warrior a 50% damage reduction button. That is it... the problem that Blizz has not yet commented on (and I hope that they do not) is that Survival Instincts can be used in Cat Form for essentially no lost damage while every other tank has to be tanking specialized, for one, and must be in the correct stance to use this ability, for two. Warriors have to be in defensive stance to use Shield Wall, for example, while Ferals can press Survival Instincts in Cat Form.

I worry that there is an unspoken "oh btw... SI not available in Cat Form anymore" looming, but we shall see.

Nine days without a post is too long, I know. There are a number of mitigating factors that keep me from posting on a day to day basis. I could discuss how I have been working 9-10 hours days for a few weeks now trying to get stuff done, or how I have not really been sleeping at night, or how WoW is not really a fun game at the moment (mostly due to the lack of any real PvP), or how I spend what little time I have working on my WoW video (that I promised a few weeks ago... sigh). None of that stuff really matters... I'm going to post more often.

This latest build was largely a balance pass with some updates to long withstanding PvP imbalances. For instance, Blood Elves no longer have a racial that gives them a percent chance to be missed by spells and instead are given some arcane resist instead. I know it's a small point to make, but when you NEED that Cyclone to land on that BElf Rogue or he will kill Guntir, and at the hit cap your Cyclone "misses," it is the kind of feeling I believe murders get right before they snap.

Cold coffee...

The big-ticket items in this patch are largely being ignored on the Beta boards, which I find odd. I was using a pal's WoW account to post on the Druid Live boards, but his account got hacked and he had his password changed, so I am back to square-banned for the moment. That being said, I have not been back to the Live boards in a few weeks now, so I do not know how they are taking this latest balance.

All MS-effects are reduced to 10% effect.

It has been a long time coming, but the day is finally here where we might see some actual balance amongst the classes who do and do not bring the MS-effect. Warrior damage is really high at the moment, and Hunters have always had rather high damage. Rogues are going to be middle-of-the-pack damage in PvP and should be tops in PvE. I guess Blizz finally looked at the numbers and said "well, the only way we will be able to balance damage in PvE without giving the MS-wielding specs an unfair advantage in PvP is to reduce the effect of healing reductions."

Kudos Blizz, kudos!

I bring sad news as well: Brutal Impact has been reduced from 30% increased mana cost to 10% increased mana cost. I know it is a small nit to pick, but was this debuff really so powerful? At the end of the day, MS-effects scaled against healing done, which of course means that MS-effects scale in general. 10% of a small heal is useful, and when that healer gets more spell power and heals for more, 10% of that is more. However, no healer will be concerned with their mana costs after a certain point. Damage, healing, and mana regeneration will scale, but mana costs will remain static, so that 10% increased cost will be the same number in four tiers of gear.

Stampede now reduces the cost of Feral Charge (Cat) by 100%, so it becomes an even better cooldown (which I suggest Glyphing to 28 seconds).

I still do not know exactly how to feel about Tiger's Fury. At the moment, it is our best dps cooldown by a huge margin: it gives us 60 energy (with KotJ) and it increases our damage done by 15% for 6 seconds. The problem I keep running into is that it feels like you want to use it with Rip and Rake every time it is up, but that makes the rotation rather unwieldy when we must have bleeds up for Shred to deal full damage. Our opener is a little odd, but it makes sense if you use Feral Charge before Pounce for a quick nigh-guaranteed 3 combo points for 50 energy, then a Mangle for 35 energy, and those 2 GCDs will have gained us at least 20 more energy for a 45 energy total allowing a Shred to follow the Mangle with no waiting. Essentially, unless you have the worst luck in the world, this opener will guarantee you 5 combo points and allow you to use Tiger's Fury for Rip and Rake at 15% bonus damage. There, you used both your ~30s CDs in your opener and got off three bleeds, the more-powerful two at 15% bonus damage, a Mangle, a Shred, a Ravage, all within two seconds of your opening stun wearing off. It is not much to say, but in practice this opener will get you wins against most classes 1v1 simply because you have put out 160 energy worth of damage before the opponent could move again.

Soothe was changed to have a cast time, which is interesting because I do not think most people understood that it removes all Enrage effects on a target. While most players in PvP will only have one (I think), it may come up in PvE that bosses or mobs will have more than one or a stack of many.

Ultimately, the only real changes right now are so ground-breaking that I cannot really comment on their impact. MS-effects being nerfed to 10% is HUGE from a balance perspective, but it just means that those classes will likely get more damage to compensate for it... or those classes already deal too much damage and will be largely ignored. It is very hard to tell, and we are supposedly a month and a half away from release.

... I miss doing arenas ...

Blizzard released the updated mathematics behind the Feral buffs, and while MMO-Champion is operating under the assumption that these are "temporary 4.0 buffs which will be reverted at 85 in Cataclysm," they are probably more likely permanent buffs for Ferals. MAYBE other classes will have their numbers toned back, but Ferals needed the buffs at 85, so it is likely that our numbers will stick.

* Rip now scales from 18/37/55/74/92% of Attack Power depending on combo points, up from 8/16/24/32/40%.
* Ferocious Bite now scales from 10.9/21.8/32.7/43.6/54.5% of Attack Power depending on combo points, up from 7/14/21/28/35%.
* Rake now causes scales from 2% of Attack Power for bleed damage, up from 1%. Now scales from 42% of AP for additional bleed damage over 9 sec, up from 18% of AP.
* Mangle additional damage has been increased from 726 to 1136.
* Vengeance - Entering Cat Form will cancel this effect.

So, before the latest updates, let's look at the tooltip calculations for each of the updated abilities:

Rip (just looking at 5pt) - (501 + 0.40 * AP) damage over 16 seconds.
Ferocious Bite - (1570 + 0.35 * AP) - (1710 + 0.35 * AP) damage.
Rake - (361 + AP * 0.18) damage over 9 seconds.

So, let's say that after the Feral Attack Power removal we had something like 5k attack power (for easier maths). Then we would have the following:

Rip: ~2500 damage over 16 seconds (~313 damage per tick).
Ferocious Bite: ~3350 damage.
Rake: 1261 damage over 9 seconds (~400 damage per tick).

You can see why Ferals complained... our finishing bleed was doing less than Claw. Let's look at the new maths:

Rip (just looking at 5pt) - (501 + 0.92 * AP) damage over 16 seconds.
Ferocious Bite - (1570 + 0.545 * AP) - (1710 + 0.545 * AP) damage.
Rake - (361 + AP * 0.42) damage over 9 seconds.

With the same 5000 attack power, we would see damage like the following:

Rip: 5101 damage over 16 seconds (~638 damage per tick).
Ferocious Bite: ~4325 damage.
Rake: 2461 damage over 9 seconds (~820 damage per tick).

So there ya go... they roughly doubled our bleed damage. Keep in mind, also, that I haven't calculated in Mangle (30%), Mastery (~45% in my gear), talents (2 more ticks on Rake), or glyphs (15% more Rip damage), so these numbers are designed to look low.