You are the Dancing Bear, Youn--Wait. Bear?

Lin, Lin, you've got the lyrics wrong! Isn't it supposed to be "you are the dancing queen, young and sweet?" Well, here I tell you: no.

We'll be dancing bears soon, if what's in the PTR goes through.

Er, Lin. Do we *want* to know?

Maybe. Well, either way, you'll hear it from one person or another, and probably get to play it too.

And no, I'm not talking about the Gloves of the Dancing Bear [which, by the way, if you can explain to me why the Dancing Bear gloves are caster gloves... well. I'll give you more strudels than you can ever eat].

What I'm trying to get at is Swipe. We'll be dancing bears soon!

A few days ago, GC said,

We are going to take another look at Swipe. Since we are trying to fix some problems where druids are too good at tanking it seems reasonable to also look at cases where they struggle.... [in] this case we are trying to realize our goal of having 4 viable MT classes and druid AE threat generation is cumbersome.

As a response to the health and armor nerfs [yes, again. I dislike you, Blizzard, I hope you know] that is in effect on the PTR.

The new version of Swipe? A friend classified it as "bear-swipe-clap" -- a bear Thunderclap.

Swipe: The Bear Form and Dire Bear Form version of this ability no longer has a targeting requirement and hits targets behind the druid and to the sides.

What I want to know is how our paws will reach behind us to Swipe. One friend suggested we used our back legs to do it. Another... well, he imagined us doing pirouettes. A big lumbering bear dancing to get all of the painful stuff to hit us instead... because we dance so awfully.

Yeah. That's it.

Either way, it seems to be an acceptable solution for Swipe [for, as a tank, I've often charged in and be spun around, and have to readjust to hit everything, and, by then, the overzealous DPS have started in and things are just everywhere]. 

Acceptable, yes, but how do they justify it on a bear? What will the animation look like? Will we spin? Will we stand still? Are we doing pirouettes?

This may be very, very interesting...

[Caption: "Owww. Dancing hurts. And I'm really dizzy..."]