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

Quackers

Bladefist

300. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 12:56:58 PM PST

im not even going to go there, the only way kael was tankable by a druid pre 3.0 was when your gear was > encounter by a lot. illidan may have been tankable with some ridiculou strategy that involved your so called intervene rotation, similar to the rogue that tanked illidan with 103% dodge, however both situations may be possible, its not plausble. to a lesser extent, when u first went to SSC, hydros was a liability to tank as bear as well but i didnt include it simply because it was possible, and even somewhat plausible

Quackers

Bladefist

301. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 12:59:29 PM PST

Q u o t e:

GC doesn't want it to be a nerf. What do we need changed to make it not a nerf?

AP-> armor conversion or iLotP having no CD (scales well with the HP pools and crit rating we will have), or adding an avoidance to X stat (although the idea of going from high mitigation to high avoidance sounds about as fun as... well it doesnt sound fun)

re stated ideas by plenty of smarter people than i

Phalyn

< The Beatniks >

Kirin Tor

302. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:02:55 PM PST

Q u o t e:

GC doesn't want it to be a nerf. What else do we need changed to make it not a nerf?

I like parry. I can parry with a paw! At least tne NPC bears can.

Starlax

< RIOT >

Zangarmarsh

303. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:05:06 PM PST

Add a talent dowin in the tree that is called "armored bear" or something. The talent would increase armor and or implement paw parry that is the same as parry. Also, giving us a new look.

I don't know I'm just sick at looking at the same bear skin haha.

Felhoof

< Fire and Blood >

Quel'dorei

304. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:07:53 PM PST

Parry would be the simplest solution. It already exists on a lot of the gear that druids want, it would make defense more desirable and essentially give two more stats to reasonably scale with. It does remove a lot of the 'flavor' of the druid tank, but I think that having two tanks with block mechanics and two tanks with higher avoidance mechanics is not a bad way to go.

I personally would like an offensive->defensive conversion, as it solves the problem with having PvP gear be better for tanking in many slots than non-PvP gear. Making something like an AP->armor conversion would make both strength and AP desirable, and it would be fairly easy to make a 2 AP->1 armor conversion that would make up (or come a lot closer) for the lost armor via this last change. The disadvantages are that it brings bears close again the the armor cap and has odd effects with raid buffs, but that's not ridiculously detrimental and can be dealt with (for example: AP from your gear instead of total AP).

Adahn

< Epitomé >

Spirestone

305. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:09:31 PM PST

Q u o t e:

Roughly doesn't mean exactly equivalent. This is important.

Maybe a bear is a bit more of a mana sponge. Maybe our being immune to sheeping or our having 4K higher stamina will be a key issue that comes to play for certain bosses. Maybe for some bosses you want a warrior but our ability to go dps instantly (esp with bear mechanics changing) will make us highly prized in every raids (which is the real concern to me).

Every tank can tank any boss? Great... that's basically been my experience for most of BC anyway... but it doesn't mean that every tank is the best one for every boss. If that was true it really would be too simple and no fun.. the fact that having a druid healer for the first boss in ZA was important was cool, just as having a bear tank for bosses who sheep was important was cool. You could do those encounters without druids, but it gave us a special role for important bosses. it's good to have specialization in the the larger context of "roughly equivalent." Certain classes making certain encounters easier is good, but making a certain class the ONLY class that can do a role is bad.

Here's the reality you deluded optimist.

If you are not up to par you will not be brought period.

How many mages did people bother using in TBC?
How often did you use a paladin tank pre 2.3?
How many raiding boomkins, elemental shaman or alliance retadins did you see?

Pomdeterror

< Three Bros Dojo >

Moonrunner

306. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:12:01 PM PST

Q u o t e:

GC doesn't want it to be a nerf. What else do we need changed to make it not a nerf?

The problem with this question, as you have quite rightly pointed out elsewhere, is that we don't know if our math is correct. Our math seems right to us, but we don't know for sure. In particular, there is some pretty big variance possible regarding the treatment of cloak armor and bonus armor.

So we can't say what needs to be done to make this not a nerf, because we don't know with certainty how big a nerf it is, if at all. I certainly don't claim to be an expert, or have nearly the experience of most of the posters in this thread, which is why I generally read and not post.

But the only way for us (read "you smart folks") to help find a solution is to further define the problem. And we can't do that without GC answering questions about cloaks, and confirming/correcting our math. Ideally, it would be nice for him to post a sample gear list he and the other devs used when coming up with the 22/44/66. But then he would be opening the door to a lot of detailed back and forth arguments, which isn't really the style of posts on these forums.

I suspect that we won't hear anything more substantive from him. He's kept us informed of what changes are coming, arguably better than any other dev has in the past, for which we are, of course, grateful. This will go live, and they will see what happens. As they have always maintained, if it looks like bears are really falling behind (which probably won't become evident until the majority are into post-naxx content) then they will come up with some way to adjust it.

Is it frustrating to know that we may well be put into a situation of having to play catch-up after MT spots are assigned and general opinion regarding tank viability has been established? Definitely. Has this clearly accomplished what the devs inteded it to with respect to changing our itemization? Seems not to have to me, but what do I know? Time will tell.

Quackattack

< Team RCA >

Akama

307. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:14:25 PM PST

I feel like you guys aren't even following the thread at all. what lissanna's question, and nearly all of the useful discussion in this thread, is referring to, is the armor changes that ghostcrawler announced.

parry is not needed. block is not needed. removing the cd from ilotp is not needed. no completely new druid mechanics are needed. the only thing that is needed is for our armor to stop being nerfed, and to allow our mitigation to scale in some way in the future.

from the math I've been seeing, it appears as if reverting to the previous bear armor multiplier of 400% in addition to the announced changes would solve the issue of armor being nerfed. the scaling part still needs some work.

Caelean

< GankAndSpank >

Akama

308. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:18:24 PM PST

Q u o t e:
Given a choice between what you "think" and what the math tells us, I'm gona believe the math. We lose up to 10% mitigation from armor, we're not going to get that back from trinkets with dodge (for example).

So using lootrank.com, with a weight of 4.43 for agility and dodge, 2.79 for defense, 0.59 for armor, and 1.69 for expertise (the old bear template with a 0 value for stamina), the best Naxx level trinkets, necklace, cape, and rings are worth 2696 tank points (dodge, miss, and armor mitigation.)

Rerunning the same query with armor of 0.1, to represent no multiplier, I get 1704 tank points from the best gear. (It should probably be more like .13, so we're erring a bit low for the post-patch results.)

The 10-man tier set has 3246 armor. Adding the 66% to it, we get 2142 bonus armor. 2142 armor is worth 1263 tank points, for a total of 2967 tank points post-patch, for a net increase of 271 points, or equal to about 61 dodge points or 1%.

You can plug in some other numbers once we get solid results for level 80, but the agility:dodge:defense ratios are at least pretty close. And I'm not looking at Stamina or other stats, but it looks like the new gear is overall a slight improvement there as well.

(Items being compared:

Pre-nerf: Valor Medal of the First War, Defender's Code, Gatekeeper, Keystone Great-Ring, Cloak of the Shadowed Sun, Amulet of Autopsy)

Post nerf: Valor Medal of the First War, Repelling Charge, Hemorrhaging Circle, Keystone Great-Ring, Cloak of the Shadowed Sun, and Heritage.)

Quackers

Bladefist

309. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:18:41 PM PST

Q u o t e:
I feel like you guys aren't even following the thread at all. what lissanna's question, and nearly all of the useful discussion in this thread, is referring to, is the armor changes that ghostcrawler announced.

parry is not needed. block is not needed. removing the cd from ilotp is not needed. no completely new druid mechanics are needed. the only thing that is needed is for our armor to stop being nerfed, and to allow our mitigation to scale in some way in the future.

from the math I've been seeing, it appears as if reverting to the previous bear armor multiplier of 400% in addition to the announced changes would solve the issue of armor being nerfed. the scaling part still needs some work.

well following your logic, going to the previous bear armor multiplier of 400% in addition to the announced changes isnt needed either. people giving ideas of how to scale is their opinion, much like yours was an opinion

Lissanna

< Ergo Bibamus >

Cenarion Circle

310. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:19:25 PM PST

Q u o t e:
I feel like you guys aren't even following the thread at all. what lissanna's question, and nearly all of the useful discussion in this thread, is referring to, is the armor changes that ghostcrawler announced.

parry is not needed. block is not needed. removing the cd from ilotp is not needed. no completely new druid mechanics are needed. the only thing that is needed is for our armor to stop being nerfed, and to allow our mitigation to scale in some way in the future.

from the math I've been seeing, it appears as if reverting to the previous bear armor multiplier of 400% in addition to the announced changes would solve the issue of armor being nerfed. the scaling part still needs some work.

I think parry would help with the itemization & scaling issues in general, regardless of the armor change... but I've been saying that on and off for months...

Reverting back the base bear armor multiplier may be a good start.

Lissanna, 74 druid, Elune
Lissiel, 70 shaman, Elune

All I hear is: "Blueberry waffles are fine. Buff strawberry waffles. Nerf chocolate waffles."

Nimizar

< Delusions of Adequac… >

Proudmoore

311. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:20:23 PM PST

Q u o t e:
II like the post that actually looked at the breaking point on armor bonus/non-armor bonus, saying the key point is around 55% of armor from leather is the break-even point. Basically the trinkets, rings, etc we may have now have less vlue , but this opens up a world of high agility, dodge, high stamina, etc. items that we may not have considered before (and agility is our main avoidance stat).

To be honest, I don't think that is really the point of the change at all. I think the point is twofold:

1. Keep feral druids away from the armour cap in T8/T9 gear (which we haven't seen yet).
2. Make feral druid armour progression smoother and more natural instead of being so heavily reliant on specific items with lots of bonus armour.

There's another thread where a druid posted about tanking currently without their +armour items, and pointing out how their healers complained (and rightly so, because losing 100% of the armour from +armour items now is a hell of a lot worse than losing 79% of the armour from +armour items post-patch when it will be partially balanced by a 66% increase in innate gear armour).

At the moment, if a feral druid isn't getting a huge chunk of bonus armour from their jewelry and cloak slots, they make a terrible tank. After this change, while those +armour items will still probably be best-in-slot for druid tanks, they won't be essential the way they are now. Sure, the absolute peak of armour mitigation with T7 gear is lower, but by the time a significant number of people have farmed Naxx to that degree, Ulduar should be out with T8 gear.

Good monkey! You pressed the button when the light went on! Well done! Have a peanut!
WARNING: THIS GAME IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE AS A SOURCE OF SELF ESTEEM.

Felhoof

< Fire and Blood >

Quel'dorei

312. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:20:44 PM PST

Q u o t e:

from the math I've been seeing, it appears as if reverting to the previous bear armor multiplier of 400% in addition to the announced changes would solve the issue of armor being nerfed. the scaling part still needs some work.

The 'scaling part still needs work' is the part people are talking about. Simply changing armor back to 400% (and giving a 9.13 armor multiplier) will not solve the issue with druids only scaling with agility or their scaling relative to other tanks. It just means that at the Naxx level, they're on par with other tanks in terms of mitigation.

It isn't required now, but something else would be a good thing to ensure that bears are not always being tweaked relative to faster-scaling tanks.

Roeman

< Silent Escape >

Silvermoon

313. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:23:34 PM PST

AHHHHH!!!
Soon... they'll remove bear and cat form from the trainers and make them high level talents :)

The reality, druids, is that these changes really simplify our itemization. They're doing this to remove or reduce "druid specialty gear" from the game, and our fear is that the projected gaps in mitigation won't be filled with itemization.

If they're willing to go to these lengths to alter fundamental bear form and cat form mechanics, we can hope they won't stop altering mechanics until our desired upgrades are simple to understand, simple to acquire, and comparable to other class' upgrades.

Just think of how huge the badge of tenacity was for feral druids... what other class/spec has to go on such odd tangents to stay competitive in their discipline? I realize this takes some of our eliteness out... and I realize that at current projections, it's a nerf.... but nothing prevents them from correcting itemization for us moving forward. (This this, by the way, is the ideal time to make these sweeping changes before we've acquired gear that may benefit us much less during later instances).

Seriously. We HAVE been wanting rings and trinkets more than helm upgrades (with good reason) for a while now... let's take a breather... and see how they intend to use current (or newly developed) itemization to correct a mitigation/avoidance gap we're seeing.

The sky isn't falling... they've adjusted a fairly confusing aspect of our mechanics that had us seeking green profession and quest rewards... and hopefully they'll come back with some options for what we lack.

edit: clarity

[ Post edited by Roeman ]

Lissanna

< Ergo Bibamus >

Cenarion Circle

314. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:38:32 PM PST

It'll probably take a couple days for the devs to sort stuff out.

I'll try really hard not to freak out over the potential armor/mitigation losses that the mathy people are reporting...

But there are still losses even with this change. So, what we need to see is what additional changes are going to make it such that it's a change without being a direct reduction in armor & damage reduction to raiding tanks.

We're saying "the fix you implemented is not enough".

[ Post edited by Lissanna ]

Lissanna, 74 druid, Elune
Lissiel, 70 shaman, Elune

All I hear is: "Blueberry waffles are fine. Buff strawberry waffles. Nerf chocolate waffles."

Srathor

< Flammable Marmots >

Earthen Ring

315. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:39:01 PM PST

What would make this better. Strength based parry. And block rating lowering LOTP internal cooldown. With Block value adding a static amount to LOTP heals.

Oh and Swipe in Cat form for AE. :)

Srathor

I bite

Akkium

< Affirmative Action >

Fenris

316. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:44:09 PM PST

Q u o t e:

GC doesn't want it to be a nerf. What else do we need changed to make it not a nerf?

Add parry driven by strength. That's all it would take to make *everyone* happy. Many more rings/trinkets will be useful, more maces will be shareable with DKs, we'll have another scalable stat on a separate DR to solve scalability issue, we'll still feel different from warriors/pallies because of no block, and we certainly feel different from DKs. *Everyone* would be happy.

Parry driven by strength.

Ghostcrawler

Blizzard Poster

317. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:45:06 PM PST

Hi.

On the subject of weapons, this change should be transparent to most druids. You will end up having a few more items that you can use, but your feral staves will continue to do the damage they do now. If it makes it clearer, imagine that feral attack power is not going away as a concept, but weapon dps will instead translate to their current FAP values. This is also not license for us to never again add weapons which are optimized for druids. It should just provide more options in between major upgrades.

On the subject of armor, the intent of the change is to give you more options in which trinkets and other jewelry you use, instead of always having to rely on the (relatively rare) bonus armor pieces. (We don't think the solution of just dropping bonus armor pieces everywhere is a great one either -- no single stat should trump the others by that much.) The change isn't intended to be a nerf at all. A lot of numbers have been thrown around in this thread. Give me some time to review them and see where any discrepancies lie.

Our design remains to have fewer specialized items drop so that more loot is actually valued by someone in the group. A lot of the druid itemization was a relic of the older system and we have been wanting to convert it over. But with any change like this, it may take some time before all of the rough edges are smoothed over. To use a tired cliche, the designers tend to take the stance that the design of WoW is a journey not a destination.

On the myriad of other topics...

I realize some players have made some passionate and intelligent arguments for other ways in which bears can scale from gear. That isn't something we are going to do at the moment, but something we may investigate in the future. I understand that it's fun to improve tanking gear, and while we don't want it to be such a burden to get the +armor pieces, we also don't want the choices to be so meaningless that you aren't gearing for tanking at all. Let's see how things stand after these changes go live.

We are not adding additional weapons that druids can use at the moment, but we may consider it in the future.

Block is a very good stat now, and we have read a lot about the notion that "unblocked hits are the new crushing blows." We don't want the block mechanic to mean that death knights and druids (and possibly even paladins) are left behind. Again the goal is to have four viable tank classes. That doesn't mean identical, but it also doesn't mean that druids get swapped out for some fights or relegated to permanent off-tank status.

Fyros

< Riders of Azeroth >

Quel'dorei

318. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:48:25 PM PST

First?
I look forward to these changes.
Thanks GC.

Celik

< Myth >

Malorne

319. Re: Upcoming Feral changes, Part II 11/20/2008 01:53:54 PM PST

Q u o t e:

what other classes use Agi & stam on 2-handed maces & staves?

We're limited by needing a 2-handed weapon, and we're limited by only being able to use 2 types of 2-handed weapons.

So, it is potentially better, and potentially worse. In fact, the changes to +armor and +FAP are both potentially better and potentially worse. Neither are necessarily buffs on their own, because it doesn't change the fact that we have funky gear issues, from trying to tank like a warrior without block/parry in the same gear that rogues use to DPS in - and not being able to dual-wield one-handed weapons, so that we don't benefit from any one-handed weapon.

So, druids can't just pick up rogue weapons, and we can't pick up swords/axes.... Even hunters aren't limited to just maces/staves. Sure, they could make staves that hunters would want, or maces that...

oh wait, what class uses AGI as their primary stat and also uses 2-handed maces? We could potentially share 2-handed maces with ret paladins, since tanking paladins will use a 1-hander and shield. Do ret paladins use 2-handed maces with stats that druids could use? I don't see either change particularly helping our itemization...

AGI is only our primary stat for tanking. For DPS, STR is better than AGI now.

Q u o t e:
AHHHHH!!!
Soon... they'll remove bear and cat form from the trainers and make them high level talents :)

The reality, druids, is that these changes really simplify our itemization. They're doing this to remove or reduce "druid specialty gear" from the game, and our fear is that the projected gaps in mitigation won't be filled with itemization.

If they're willing to go to these lengths to alter fundamental bear form and cat form mechanics, we can hope they won't stop altering mechanics until our desired upgrades are simple to understand, simple to acquire, and comparable to other class' upgrades.

Just think of how huge the badge of tenacity was for feral druids... what other class/spec has to go on such odd tangents to stay competitive in their discipline? I realize this takes some of our eliteness out... and I realize that at current projections, it's a nerf.... but nothing prevents them from correcting itemization for us moving forward. (This this, by the way, is the ideal time to make these sweeping changes before we've acquired gear that may benefit us much less during later instances).

Seriously. We HAVE been wanting rings and trinkets more than helm upgrades (with good reason) for a while now... let's take a breather... and see how they intend to use current (or newly developed) itemization to correct a mitigation/avoidance gap we're seeing.

The sky isn't falling... they've adjusted a fairly confusing aspect of our mechanics that had us seeking green profession and quest rewards... and hopefully they'll come back with some options for what we lack.

The problem isn't with the change in itemization ideology. It's the fact that the change in ideology also currently comes with a nerf.

[ Post edited by Celik ]

Forum > CLASS ROLES > TANKING