Tier 12 Feral first impressions

So wowheadnews.com and mmo-champion.com just released T12 set bonuses. As always, I open them up with a thought of "let's see how blizz gives cats great set bonuses and bears terrible ones this time".

To give some background, this is what T11 looks like :

# (2) Set: Increases the periodic damage done by your Rake and Lacerate abilities by 10%.

# (4) Set: Each time you use Mangle (Cat) you gain a 1% increase to attack power for 30 sec stacking up to 3 times, and the duration of your Survival Instinct ability is increased by 50%.

Lacerate is massively frontloaded, i.e. most of it's dmg and threat is on application, not the ticks. Also, unlike pre cata, we don't keep a full stack up. We keep resetting it and stacking to 3 again. Simply put, the 2pc bonus is a joke.

The 4pc is ok, but since SI has a 3m cooldown, it's unlikely to have a massive impact in my opinion. More to the point, in order to get 4pc, you have to take a few t11 peices with haste on, rather than items with more appropriate bear stats, like [Poison Protocol Pauldrons], [Morrie's Waywalker Wrap], [Double Attack Handguards], or [Tsanga's Helm]. The passive bonus from those stats outweighs the 4pc by miles.

Anyway, I digress. The purpose of this post is to highlight the new T12 bonuses :

* Feral 2 Pieces - Your attacks with Mangle, Maul, and Shred deal 10% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 sec.
* Feral 4 Pieces - Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to extend the duration of Berserk by 2 sec and your Barkskin ability grants an additional 10% chance to dodge for 12 sec.

The 2pc is a really nice threat increase for bears on single target... but the 4pc is just GODLY. Dodge is quite simply our best stat other than agility (which includes dodge), so I couldn't have come up with a better bonus if I tried.

On top of the theorycrafting bonuses (which is the most important thing, after all. stats > looks), the firelands theme of all of the set bonuses is also mind-blowingly cool.

Unless T12 items have truly horrific stats, I'm going to be forced to get 4pc at all costs. Plain and simple.