World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Upcoming Feral changes, Part II

Ghostcrawler

Blizzard Poster

0. Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 04:48:09 PM PST

This is an update to my previous post on Feral armor changes.

ARMOR
As previously announced, we are changing the way bear armor works so that bonus armor on items does not receive the bear armor multiplier. Specifically this means that weapons, trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks with bonus armor will not be multiplied by the bear bonus. Only cloth and leather will benefit from the Bear and Dire Bear multiplier.

We are compensating Ferals for this armor loss by improving the Survival of the Fittest talent. In addition to its current effects (stats and crit prevention), it will now also increase armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 22/33/66%. That should be very close to your current armor bonus. This makes Survival of the Fittest rather over-budget by talent standards, but we figured it was one talent we can be pretty certain most tank-oriented druids will have (and to be honest nearly all Ferals).

FERAL ATTACK POWER
We are no longer going to have weapons in the game which improve feral attack power. Instead, your attack power will scale based on the dps of the item. Practically speaking this means almost no change for any gear you currently use -- you should not see your dps change. What it does mean is that we can create the occasional dps staff that could be used by druids or hunters (or very undergeared warriors), and that Ferals may occasionaly use two-handed dps maces. We are going to convert all existing Feral staves over to this new system (but again, you should not notice any change to your dps). We are also adjusting the UI so that when druids look at these weapons, you will see what the improvement will be to your damage in forms. This does not mean we are no longer going to create bear and cat weapons, just that those weapons will be slightly less niche than they are now.

These changes will be in place in the next patch. This patch will ship sometime before the 3.1 major content patch featuring the Ulduar raid.

Runefaust

< KotW >

Dark Iron

1. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 04:54:16 PM PST

cool

edit: First!

[ Post edited by Runefaust ]

Baddos

< Jolly Rogers >

Ner'zhul

2. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 04:54:24 PM PST

Nice change, less gear to get sharded helps everyone out.

Quackers

Bladefist

3. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 04:55:18 PM PST

ok this was about 1500x better than the first post, thank you for specifics, regardless of implications

Edit: only hiccup i see is if this is applied before thick hide or after.

P.S. our itemization still is horribly flawed but thats another isue for another thread.

[ Post edited by Quackers ]

Andelwind

< Fists of Rage >

Undermine

4. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 04:55:20 PM PST

Good to know. This just may work out.

Running an instance with a pally tank is like having sex,if its a pain in the ass, you aren't doing it right.

Azlil

< Whîte Rîce >

Anetheron

5. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 04:55:55 PM PST

Sounds good on the change to armor, was hoping it would be exclusive to feral druids only.

and more weapon oppertunities
/rejoice

Keltarin

< Slane Baanrit >

Silver Hand

6. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 04:57:44 PM PST

I am actually finding myself really enjoying the consolidated gear, as I can now use a lot more than I could previously. This will help even more in that regard. Cheers, devs!

Remember November 16th...
Remember February 23rd...

Angua

< Tribal Moonshiners >

Llane

7. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 04:59:40 PM PST

Figures, and I just said they might put it on Protector of the Pack, then thought they might throw it on Heart of the Wild while heading home!

But shouldn't it be 22/44/66%? It bugs me to see odd progression of talents :)

Edit: Even though this is a tanking change, does the Survival of the Fittest change read for just Bear/Dire Bear or armor in all forms (like Thick Hide). If the latter, this sounds like a nice survivability boost for Cats too.

[ Post edited by Angua ]

Your way is not the only way. Its probably not even the best way.
This is a game we play for fun. Or at least thats why I play.
return Spirit*Spirit/144 > Int ? Intensity : Dreamstate;

Bloodfeud

< Vorpal Rabbits >

Lightbringer

9. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:02:29 PM PST

Excellent -- though I expect a number of druids will be writing down their armour totals before the patch and comparing them post-patch.

Now the only question is scaling of mitigation from the DPS jewelry druids will wear against the tanking jewelry plate tanks will wear.

Feranel

< End of Decency >

Proudmoore

10. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:07:03 PM PST

Nice, very happy about the FAP Change, maybe we can use Pole Arms now too since they usually have good Feral Stats on them?

"That is correct. At level 80, you will be tanking in rogue DPS leather (no, I'm not joking) which will have no defense on it."
-Gingersnaap, Crushridge

Termoil

< Smoke And Mirrors >

Caelestrasz

11. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:08:07 PM PST

Sounds like some good changes...

Any idea possibly when this patch may be available? I'm not after an exact date i'm not that impatient just a weeks/months type of guestimation... i'm pretty sure there are druids reaching 80 who have geared for the change and are possibly starting to tank Heroics/Raids with a little bit of a dis-advantage having not picked up rings/neck etc. with bonus armor...

Glimmervoid

< Repentance >

Misha

12. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:13:12 PM PST

I'd like to know how you'll compensate Balance druids for this change (and every other armor change since alpha). A lot of Moonkins (including myself) used items like Seal of Danzalar to try mitigate a bit more of melee's ridiculous damage.

Ever since the expansion went into alpha, Balance's survivability has gone down (Loss of extra "green" armor in pvp sets, moonkin armor mod nerf, now this), I'm honestly concerned about this since Balance's survival has to go UP, not down.

Jeraan

< Fac Ut Vivas >

Cenarius

13. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:20:11 PM PST

Thick hide will be "items?" Or cloth/leather?

And cloaks count as "cloth" or jewlry?

[ Post edited by Jeraan ]

"Ugh, pod Six... I HATE pod Six. Total suck pod."

Morrigàn

Jaedenar

14. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:23:38 PM PST

First page? =O

Edit: Yay! Also <3 Ghostcrawler!

/fangirl dance

[ Post edited by Morrigàn ]

http://www.xkcd.com/390/
<3

Niosso

Aman'Thul

15. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:31:46 PM PST

Q u o t e:
Thick hide will be "items?" Or cloth/leather?

<- This

Also,

Will the current tanking staffs with armor be re-itemized with more appropriate tanking stats? ie armor -> dodge or agi or expertise or stam or a combo of them.

Is the current dire bear modifier remaining unchanged or is it reverting back to 400% (pre-beta nerf)?
Not that this really matter as long as the mitigation remains basically the same when combining the two multipliers.

Assume others will do the detailed calcs on the different gear levels but back of the envelope calcs makes this in the right ball park.

Itemization still isn't perfect because there is still basically no choice but the combined tanking gear with armor for druids. This is due to almost all other combined jewelery containing parry, block, etc. Stuff that doesn't help druids at all. Also the dps jewelery doesn't contain enough agi and stam to be useful for tanking.

Scaling maybe an issue but that will be played out over the next months (till the end of xpac).

Tieb

< The Wanderers >

Uther

16. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:41:00 PM PST

SotF is a good choice for the armor talent.

I'm impressed at the speed of the change to FAP, too. I'm not really sure how much difference it will make in the end, though -- it opens up 2H maces to us, and our staves to warriors, but given most of our (good!) staves have a lot of strength on them I don't really believe they get opened up to hunters.

It won't cause harm, though, so long as feral-itemised weapons continue to drop :)

The sky is falling!

Termoil

< Smoke And Mirrors >

Caelestrasz

17. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:45:16 PM PST

"Thick hide will be "items?" Or cloth/leather?

And cloaks count as "cloth" or jewlry? "

Thick Hide will cover any armor from both cloth and leather items and cloaks will count as jewelry as stated clearly in the first paragraph.

Tieb

< The Wanderers >

Uther

18. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:49:04 PM PST

Q u o t e:
Thick hide will be "items?" Or cloth/leather?

To maintain the correct balance, Thick Hide will need to remain "items" -- but +10% on a trinket doesn't make the armor on the trinket more valuable than any other stat could ever possibly be, so it's not really a problem.

Cloaks are not cloth items. Remember, this change is coming so that we don't look only for items with armor on them and ignore everything else. There's no bonus armor on cloth, leather, mail, or plate, but there occasionally is on the miscellaneous items. If the multiplier was not removed from cloaks, here's the list of items you'd want:

http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4.-6&filter=qu=3:4;cr=131:109;crs=1:1;crv=0:0

Four items total kind of sucks!

(Unfortunately, setting a filter for no defense rating, some dodge rating only shows two cloaks, one a BoE crafted, but dodge rating is not the only useful stat for tanking, at least :)

The sky is falling!

Tewa

< Dungeon Crawl >

Icecrown

19. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/19/2008 05:52:05 PM PST

GC, the whole point of this change was to give Druids more options in selecting gear, right? So that we don't always have to have armor rings and armor trinkets.

If the math works out, this will work for making this change "not horrible" for Druids.

But if we're not wearing +armor rings and trinkets, what is Blizzard going to do to make the +strength, +parry, and +block tanking rings/trinkets appealing to Feral Druids?

Making this change not horrible is only half the puzzle. Making it so that we don't HAVE to wear +armor accessories is only part of the problem. What are you going to do to make the alternatives actually appealing? Otherwise, we'll still just be wearing +armor accessories, because there is nothing else.

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