First Impressions: Bears in 3.0.2

TLDR version: Bears are amazing and tanking is fun again.

After the talent point refund, I decided it was as good a time as any to return to my origins as a Feral Druid. I decided to go for a pure Feral build so that I could get as many of the exciting new talents as possible while remaining viable as both a DPS Cat and a tanking Bear. Here is the result:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0ZxGGsfrzceRccdAo

I'll freely admit, I spent most of my time last night ripping through the 50's on my baby Ret Paladin (52-56 in five hours!). But as the night wore on, my guilt at leaving Sol all alone, logged out in the Scryer Bank, gradually dissolved the bloodthirsty fog of RET RET RET that had clouded my eyes.

I've been avidly following the development of the beta and all the resulting game changes for months, but I still took some time to review the important bits on Feral Druids before I joined some of my guildmates for a Heroic Slave Pens run. Here's a list of a few things that struck me as particularly worth noticing before I even zoned in:

* Fully talented, Mangle is down to a 4.5 second cooldown. That means you only get to use two abilities between Mangles, not three.

* Our armor has been reduced, but the flat 12% reduction from Protector of the Pack more than makes up for it. Pre-patch, I was capped at 75% mitigation from armor against a level 70 mob. Post patch, my mitigation from armor was reduced to just over 68%, but the additional 12% from PotP brings me to a whopping 80%! Rawr!

* There are more skills! Survival Instincts and Berserk are new, and Barkskin is now usable in Bear Form. I made sure to keep these three buttons on the actionbar next to my trinkets (Badge of Tenacity and Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch) and my Drums of Battle.

* Swipe hits everything in a frontal cone. This makes it dramatically easier for Druids to tank more than three mobs at once.

* Without Furor or Intensity, I can't start a fight with 40 Rage. I warned my (typically overzealous) DPS to let me get off a Swipe or two before they opened up.

I should mention that Slave Pens is my Heroic instance of choice. With some of the better players from my guild DPS'ing and healing, I have cleared that instance in just over 30 minutes. When I was in a hardcore raiding guild and aggressively farming badges for feral gear and epic gems, I cleared Heroic SP every day as part of my farming efforts. This place is definitely part of my stomping grounds.

My DPS for the run included a Retribution Paladin, a Fury Warrior, and an Arcane Mage. My healer was a Restoration Druid.

On the very first pull of three Bogstroks, I didn't try anything fancy. Since a 4.5 Mangle cooldown threw off my old rotation, I went for a simple Mangle, Lacerate, Swipe. I noticed that my Swipes hit much harder than they used to, which was to be expected, given the changes to Feral Instinct. Our (especially overzealous) Ret Paladin, Trekand, pulled the third Bogstrok from me while we were still working from the second, but given the wild damage done by Divine Storm pre-hotfix, I don't feel too bad.

For the second pull, still full of Rage, I decided it was time to try out Berserk. And it was then that I truly fell in love with the new Feral tree.

When I was cranking out three-target Mangles as quickly as the global cooldown could let me for fifteen seconds and spamming Maul to boot, I didn't need Omen (still broken at the time) to know that my threat on all three mobs was absolutely One Hundred Percent Rock Solid. The thrill I got from unleashing that level of power was simply incredible. And despite Trekand's best efforts, I held aggro through the pull without a problem.

The next pull was a pseudo-four-pull. I had to keep aggro on four mobs - a melee Naga, a melee Broken, and two caster Broken - but defeating the Naga would cause the Broken to become Neutral and flee the instance. I decided to leave Lacerate out entirely this time. I feral-charged in, opened up with a Swipe to get everyone paying attention to me, and then went to a Mangle, Swipe, Swipe rotation. I loved seeing numbers pop up over four mobs at once! It was fantastic. I decided that I'd leave Lacerate out altogether in favor of simply Swiping and using Maul as appropriate.

I used Berserk again against Mennu about ten seconds into the fight and giggled gleefully as I saw his health bar tick downward even more quickly for those fifteen seconds. Being able to summon up that level of damage and threat on demand was fantastic. We continued to clear smoothly through Rokmar.

The pull after Rokmar consists of three Naga and a Sporebat. I used to start the pull by Hibernating the Sporebat, shifting to Bear Form, and immediately activating and cancelling Enrage to get the instant 10 Rage from Intensity. This left me three mobs to hold - just right for the old Swipe - and let me start the fight with 20 Rage.

Now, I don't need to worry if I'm taking on more than three mobs - Swipe can cover it. I also don't have the benefit of instant Rage (although when I have more talent points, I will once more). So I simply charged in and worked it like any other pull. We burned down the Sporebat before it could fear anyone, and the pull went smoothly.

Emboldened by our success, I didn't bother waiting for the patrol of two Naga to return. I decided to repeat the strategy of "run in and spam Swipe" with the next pull - four Naga and one Sporebat.

I'm not sure what happened, but somehow, even though he never had a chance to cast a heal, our healer was the first one to die. Alas, poor Natama, we knew you well. And then, for the first time in the instance, my mouse flickered over to my "oh, snap" toolbar and started clicking.

Badge of Tenacity - up. Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch - up. Dodge chance is up through the roof. Keep spamming the Swipe button, keep everyone on me. Frenzied Regeneration - no lack of Rage, and I'll need the HP. Demoralizing Roar - less AP for them is good for me. Barkskin - I have mitigation on demand, wow! Start backpedaling, can't deal with the pat like this. HP's still dropping too quickly, pop Survival Instincts - holy crap, where did all that health come from?

As soon as we had taken down one of those mobs - a few seconds - Trekand began healing me and I got to experience firsthand how potent Retribution healing can be. Sheath of Light really is everything it's cracked up to be. Everlyse and Brynden kept burning away at the mobs, and as soon as a second was down, I popped Berserk and let the Mangles flow freely against the remaining three mobs to finish them off.

Total time - maybe thirty seconds. I took a second to catch my breath and realized two things. One, if it weren't for having an awesome group, that would've been a wipe. Two, if it weren't for an incredible new array of survival-on-demand options for Bears, that would've been a wipe. I was dumbfounded that we managed to pull through; it was as inspiring a moment as the first time I popped Berserk.

The remainder of the instance went off without a hitch. We ended up clearing in just about 30 minutes, and decided to go to Underbog since things were going so smoothly. It was actually a very similar experience - smooth clearing punctuated by one terrifying moment of the healer dying first on a large pull. Once again, I pushed all my buttons and Trekand saved the day with his heals. The clear took just over 35 minutes.

Overall, I'm extremely satisfied with my tanking, and I'm excited to try solo-tanking Karazhan later this week or next.