Head first into 4.0.......point 1

So 4.0.1 is almost upon us... unless of course the patch is delayed for some reason.  Everyone will have quite a bit of adjusting to do once we are finally able to log in.  The first thing I’m pretty sure I will do in game is redo my talent specs and then re optimize my gear.  I will also most likely end up disabling all of my addons just in so my interface doesn't explode. I’ve wanted to do a post on my proposed druid specs and maybe death knight spec just to share how I will approach 4.0.1.  I think I will talk a little bit about  feral for the time being as I have been raiding as feral dps a lot more often then healing as of late (sadly that may reverse in the future..only time will tell).  Because of that I guess I feel I have a little more insight on whats going to be changing with  the spec than resto at the moment.    I will post my experience with balance and resto after the patch goes live.    

Feral Talent spec:


At level 80 we will have only 36 points, and 31 of those have to be spent in the Feral tree before we can put any points in the Restoration tree. This makes the Tier 2 talents in the Resto tree unreachable until Cataclysm is released.

Level 80 Kitty raid spec here

In my opinion, these are the necessary talents dps wise for a kitty build.  I skipped Predatory Strikes because I don't envision myself using ravage too much before cataclysm comes out and I don't mind missing out on the chance to proc a free nature spell.  I also skipped over Primal Madness because while you are dpsing there should not be a time where you need your energy capped really.  That's debatable I guess.  That leaves 2 points left over for a level 80 kitty to spend.  In all honesty it does not really matter where you put these points as I don’t believe any of the other talents will have a significant influence on your dps at 80.   


There isn't much reason to put the remaining two points into Natural Shapeshifter because you wont be be able to get to Master Shapeshifter at level 80.  That leaves us with spending the remaining two points somewhere in the feral tree.  


Supposedly feral will be lacking in regards to the damage we will be doing once 4.0.1 goes live.  The remaining talents can arguably provide a little utility in a PVE environment depending upon the situation.  I personally never specced for any of these talents once I specced feral dps in Wotlk and I only have a little experience with some from BC and most are only good for farming and leveling.  


Infected Wounds:  this talent puts a stacking debuff on the target and affects their movement speed and melee speed.  There are other classes with similar debuffs and there will most likely be one in your raid.  I don't know about other servers but the raids on my server always tend to be melee heavy. This can also be good for soloing and grinding physical damage dealing mobs.

Thick Hide:  This talent mainly affects your bear form and can be good for soloing and grinding but wont provide much utility in a raid.  One thing that would be beneficial is the reduced chance to be critically hit by melee attacks but I’m not entirely sure if that applies to kitty form as well.

Nurturing Instinct:  increases the amount you are healed by 10% and increases your healing spells by 35% of your agility.  A nice talent to have for soloing/grinding and makes you easy to heal in raids.

Survival Instincts:  reduced damage by 12% in bear or kitty form.  Meh.  As far as dps goes I'm not even sure kitties will have a problem with aggro at  80.  But would be a fun talent to have for soloing instances though.

Natural Reaction:  another talent that will make soloing in bear more doable as kitty spec.  Otherwise no PVE utility at all for cats.

Pulverize:  Just a new ability for bear.  


Instead of taking Primal Madness off the bat I decided to put two in Thick Hide so I will probably go with Nurturing Instinct or Primal Madness or a combo of the two so I wont go crazy if i get thrown away as a valuable melee dps and can at least farm instances or something.


As far as glyphs go they seem pretty in order.  Kalon over at the ThinkTank blog has some pretty good information on how to optimize gems and stats (if reforging is available) and much more.

Although I won’t talking much about the resto changes, here's a glimpse of the proposed resto spec I may be rolling with.  Unlike feral, there are a lot of options to choose from when it comes to restoration talents and even less of these options seem useless imho.  I'm really looking forward to that and to the challenge of healing in ICC!  The balance tree is awesome in my opinion as far as PVE utility goes.  Even the not so necessary points are fun and interesting to have.  Here’s a glimpse of the balance spec or something close to it that I will be using.  A lot more on balance and resto in posts to come!