Powershift While You Still Can!

Druids, your days of powershifting will come to an end soon so do it while you still can. This practice will soon meet the fate of spell downranking as both practices were never intended.

For those who don’t know, powershifting is the practice of shifting in and out of cat form to utilize the talent Furor, giving them 40 energy at max rank. Out of energy? Just powershift to get the energy to continue clawing face. The latest changes to energy regeneration make powershifting a useless practice except for getting rid of a snare.

Blizzard poster Jimmythenumbers (is this guy new?) tells us more about the subject.

The Cat Form energy regeneration mechanics you are seeing in the current beta build are a bug resulting from “powershifting” being partially fixed. We changed energy regeneration on Cat Form so that it occurs continuously no matter what form the Druid is in. However, the second half of the change did not make it in before the data pull for the build. When Furor triggers on shifting to Cat Form, your energy will be set to the minimum of its current value and 40. So, if you are over 40, it goes to 40. If you are less than 40, you gain no energy, but keep the amount you gained through normal regeneration. If Furor does not trigger or you do not have the talent, energy is set to 0.

“Powershifting” was never an intended mechanic. However, it has become so prevalent among Feral Druids that if we did not eliminate it, we would have to balance around it. So, this change effectively eliminates the possibility to gain extra energy regeneration through the Furor talent. For the intended use: shift out, heal self a bit or Innervate or Tranquility or Rebirth, go back to Cat Form, it will work as well as it ever has. source

Basically what this means is that the furor talent will only give you energy equal to the amount you should have gained from natural energy mechanic and this amount won’t be above 40. See a more detailed explanation here.

The days of powershifting to pump out more dps by getting more energy will be gone when these changes have kicked in. Cherish these days since the days are numbered. Enjoy it while you still can.