The armor changes witht he math you posted looks ok to me.

The FAP changes are a little weird. If you are gonna scale it on weapon DPS, I can grab a fishing pole with 186.00!

I think it would be better overall to scrap the scale off that. Instead, change it so our AP conversion modifiers double in forms. Suggested change:

Current AP for Bear is STR*2 change it so we get STR*4 for AP when in bear.

Same for Cat, except change to AGI*4.

This should let us scale perfectly with stats. For example:

My 74 Druid has 432 STR while in Tank gear. That would give me an extra 864 AP with the suggested changes.

That way we can focus on stats, and not have to compete for DPS weapons against other melee heads as much.

Just my 2 cents though.

Thanks GC for staying on the boards and listeneing. Love your show!!

As a side note, can you please add more items for Bear tanks as quest rewards while leveling?

Something with STR/AGI/STA and dodge.

Thanks again!

You might rather we use a new level 80 trinket with some wasted block. I doubt that even with the change, many, if any, will be better than the armor trinkets still.

I still plan to wear the armor trinkets/rings/etc. Why? Because more stamina is already rather useless and the agi to dodge ratio is crap-tacular. This change has not allowed us to diversify at all. This change has mearly made us a poorer tank.

If this was step 1 of a multi-part change, then you might have something. Armor is no long insanely better than other stats, it's now just slightly/moderately better. Now, to complete this change, let us scale our midigation OR avoidance from something else; be it strength, ap, crit, whatever. We need more scaling defensive stats. That is the root of the problem.

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This guy hit the nail on the head.

GC, how you can first post that this is not a nerf, and then admit that this change will in fact leave us with less armor than we otherwise would have had? How is that not a nerf? So our armor is gradually being reduced through the loss of bonus armor and the change to DB's armor modifier made back during beta, dodge has diminishing returns, we dont have block or parry, what exactly are we supposed to focus on as tanks? You said you wanted all tanks to be viable, it sounds like druids are just intended to be the last resort when there's no warrior around. Nobody's asking to be a warrior clone, I'm sure I'm not the only druid who has a prot warrior alt. But you can make sure we are every bit as good as they are.

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It's not a nerf because he said they would have nerfed those items that were giving you the extra armor anyway (those good trinkets/etc). You obviously didn't read the post, and don't really care about druid tanking, and are just looking for a reason to complain. Blizzard isn't stupid, they want all the tanks to be viable. Think about what you're saying for a second, and read his post. They're not trying to make you less viable. /sigh

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GC is so awesome he cannm edit his title without getting an redit line in his post.

/bow

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True.

Also, thank you for explaining the details of what will and will not get the armor multiplier.

On to the topic at hand, I'm fine with only scaling off of Armor for Mitigation, instead of having block, but the question begs to be asked:

If the bonus 66% works exactly like the Bear Form Multiplier, why was it merely not included with Bear Form?

If the answer is to limit the mitigation that Resto and Balance Druids have in Bear Form with Caster Leather, would it not be better to increase Bear Form's Armor based off of stats on Melee Gear, i.e. some form of AP-> Armor Conversion, or allowing the Multiplier to apply to Armor gained from Agility?

We're not asking to be warriors or paladins. Just viable tanks. And have fun playing the game once in a while. We're not asking to be OP, just competitive. Surely you can recognize there are other issues (not just armor) affecting ferals that are simply getting swept under the table.

We have absolutely no itemized idol spot this expansion. Our AoE threat is 60-70% that of a warrior's or paladin's. We have very little choice in terms of gearing now: Agility or Stamina. Whereas other tanks get to choose from a plethora of tanking stats. By the way, item choices and gear choices is supposed to be a good thing right? I think you said that yourself. But I digress.

So here's a very real question for you GC:

You said that in the future if Druids are falling significantly behind warriors (and other tanks) you'll make additional changes.

At what point would that be?

We already take more damage than warriors, so at what point do you consider us broken? Do we have to take X% more damage, provable by shear math?


(edit: took some of the emo out, trying to keep it legit)

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It's not a nerf because he said they would have nerfed those items that were giving you the extra armor anyway (those good trinkets/etc). You obviously didn't read the post, and don't really care about druid tanking, and are just looking for a reason to complain. Blizzard isn't stupid, they want all the tanks to be viable. Think about what you're saying for a second, and read his post. They're not trying to make you less viable. /sigh

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It isn't his intention, but he's nerfing us anyways.

Note his post:

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The changes should be a buff for any druid not in full Naxx 25 gear (and I'm pretty sure that means ALL druids for the moment).

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That means we're back to square one: good while in blues in greens, and crap when we hit epics.

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The paladin healing armor is still something that doesn't quite fit in the new system and something we would like to change eventually. We have no announcements to change it at the moment though.

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As long as it's still plate, this would be awesome. Also, a little more support for melee-healing would be really nice. :)

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I’ll buy that you *want* more scaling stats. Nobody has demonstrated to our satisfaction that you need them.

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When there are only 2-3 Stats to scale, Stamina, Armor, and Dodge (dodge at least can come from 3 stats, so its fine imo) then the risk of those Stats having problems and needing constant tweaking is raised.

Look at how much Bear Form's Armor Multiplier has changed recently. I'm not saying that making Armor scale with more than just the armor on Leather Items would fix the problem, but I think it would go along way towards stabilizing, and give Ferals something to upgrade aside from the newest iLevel Rogue Gear they can find.

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It is a buff to 90% of druids. It is a nerf to a theoretical maximum that nobody currently has, and in truth wasn’t going to be able to get anyway because the armor on those items was so good that we were going to nerf them. In retrospect, a sneaky way to have handled this issue would have been to tell you we were going to nerf those items, then when there was outcry responded that we decided to change the way bear armor was calculated and not nerfed those items. I didn't choose that approach though.

The paladin healing armor is still something that doesn't quite fit in the new system and something we would like to change eventually. We have no announcements to change it at the moment though.



I’ll buy that you *want* more scaling stats. Nobody has demonstrated to our satisfaction that you need them.

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I think the point is that its NOT FUN the way you have it now. No matter what gear we choose, outside of these armor trinkets and such, we waste stats. There are zero feral druid items in game outside of feral staves/maces. Z-E-R-O (including tier gear). You acknowledge we will waste item points on stats of no benefit (block, haste, etc), but that is fine? The game is about fun and what you are doing to ferals is less fun - that should be the end of the argument in my mind but you seriously just do not care...

Again, at least you continue to make me happier I rerolled where before I was still on the fence.

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I’ll buy that you *want* more scaling stats. Nobody has demonstrated to our satisfaction that you need them.

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Allow me to demonstrate.

Not everything in this game can be proved on pure numbers. There is also something called "Fun Factor", which is very difficult to calculate because its not an objective statistic.

However, and I hope we can agree, a big part of fun in MMO's is character improvement and the choices we make to improve our characters in this game.

Creating Itemization for a particular spec where there is very little useful stat choices, and the gear is very obscure, unintuitive, and rare is perhaps not a recipe for "Fun Factor" for your more hardcore druid tank.

There may not be any numbers to prove this, but I think thats what the community is trying to tell you guys. Adding a simple converter so we feel like our stats are more useful or giving us a psuedo block mechanic so our other stats could scale would actually go a long way in an area where numbers may not matter as much.

(edit: spelling)

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I’ll buy that you *want* more scaling stats. Nobody has demonstrated to our satisfaction that you need them.

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Giving one or two stats insane modifiers to "catch up" to other tanks does not imply thoughtful design. On the contrary, these modifiers seem like a band-aid fix with little investigation beyond the proper number at a particular level of gear at a particular stage of the game.

As you even said, although a buff for most cases, for the theoretical maximum this was a nerf. What happens with tier 8 gear? Following the logical progression, if for T6 gear this was a slight buff, with T7 gear this was a slight nerf, with T8 gear this implies a great nerf. This will matter, I believe, because historically other classes, read warriors and such, tend to scale better with "end game" gear than with gear found in the initial release of new content. They get better at getting better. Granted the armor cap'd bear WAS a bad thing. 60% dodge bear was a bad thing. These are the reasons I believe we require other scaling defensive stats. You will likely have roughly the same issues with DK's in terms of avoidance. Better to solve it now then wait untill it becomes a huge problem 2 or 3 content patches down the line.


On the issue of number of scaling stats. Yes, we get a greater benefit from fewer stats. Great. Is the Item design team going to make items with ONLY those stats? How useful would these items be for other tanks? Will our coefficients get tweeked every content patch to make up for any unforseen discrepancies due to relying on insane modifiers for only a few stats? Do you have any problem with the loss of stat points on items due to only stacking a few stats on said item, comparing this to a plate tank item that can stack 7 stats and get more bang for their item-point buck?

Hey hey hey guys, don't knock all the strength and haste on my gear. It's netting me bigger maul crits..and although i don't need any help at all maintaining threat on bosses..trash dps is important..RIGHT!?!?

Although, like everyone else, i'm annoyed with the lack of feral gear that i want (stamina, agility) that isn't also loaded with stats i don't want (strength, block, parry, haste, defense). Nonetheless, I am encouraged by gc's post, and i think that like he said--this'll be a buff to me for a couple of months, and i'll just have to have faith that they'll make the changes they need to make if i start falling behind as content scales.

Two major issues for me: Lack of feral appropriate gear (especially for tanking)--and the way swipe works. Too little threat for the fact that i use EVERY SINGLE GCD ON IT

From my experience so far this expansion, I agree that the armor cap is far too easy to reach right now. I am very close, just missing a neck or cloak with armor on it. With Ulduar and other content still coming out, we will be getting more upgrades in armor, yet we would be over the mitigation cap, making the added armor a waste.

One problem I see is that there are many items that have parry or shield block rating/value on it, making the items not very appealing to druids. It seems as though itemization was originally intended for druids to get the plus armor pieces.

I propose that with the upcoming armor changes, to re-itemize the +armor items into possibly a more feasible druid tanking stat, such as dodge or agility, as the agility to dodge % ratio seems to be really high these days =/. Or another possible change would be to make parry into parry/dodge, as previously mentioned in this thread.

EDIT:: I also noticed that druid gear lacks a lot of +hit, if something could be done about that :)

If I could get an item with tanking stats for every single one of my neck / cloak / rings / idol / trinket slots, this would be fine. (Tanking stats being Agility, maybe dodge, maybe stamina, maybe armor - and NOTHING ELSE.)

The problem is that every other tank can stack defensive stats on every piece of gear they have. But not Druids.

Blizzard nerfed our primary choice and gave us no alternatives. Saying "we're giving you choices" doesn't make it so. Blizzard needs to take positive action, not just shove us off a cliff and spit on our body.

re: FAP and weapon changes

Will the Strength on all Staves be retroactively converted to Straight 2xAP?
I.e. so a hunter can actually use these?
(and the follow on being knowing this would be 6% nerf since no scaling of SotF)

Obviously on 2H-Maces, this will stay as Strength since DK/Pally/Warriors will want Strength.

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I’ll buy that you *want* more scaling stats. Nobody has demonstrated to our satisfaction that you need them.

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We don't need them now. Using what you posted, we seem OK up to Naxx.

We want them because so much of our gear has wasted stats for us related to survivability.
We want them because we want to get excited about possible new drops. Currently it's 'I'd love a piece of leather with more iLevel so I could have more armor, agi and sta. Oh, and a better ring would be nice, but it's not that important'.
We want value from more stats because a large chunk of non-leather is clearly designed for 3 of the 4 tanks. (No armor, no dodge, added parry or block, etc).
We want them because historically druids have been balanced early and fall behind when better itemized classes gear up.
We want them because of the way item points work. You're better off getting small amounts of several stats than an item stacks with just a few stats you like.

We will need them if, as WotLK progresses we get close to the level 80 mob armor cap.
We will need them if future gear causes us to scale slower. Do these new changes allow us to get comparable mitigation + avoidance even into theoretical tier 9 and above?

You will want them if you ever want to make a change to feral balance. A ~900% multiplier and only a couple of stats makes it a lot more difficult to make fine adjustments to bears. The volatility of armor since alpha shows the problem. It's not easy to balance bears because of our low number of desireable stats.

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From my experience so far this expansion, I agree that the armor cap is far too easy to reach right now. I am very close, just missing a neck or cloak with armor on it. With Ulduar and other content still coming out, we will be getting more upgrades in armor, yet we would be over the mitigation cap, making the added armor a waste.

One problem I see is that there are many items that have parry or shield block rating/value on it, making the items not very appealing to druids. It seems as though itemization was originally intended for druids to get the plus armor pieces.

I propose that with the upcoming armor changes, to re-itemize the +armor items into possibly a more feasible druid tanking stat, such as dodge or agility, as the agility to dodge % ratio seems to be really high these days =/. Or another possible change would be to make parry into parry/dodge, as previously mentioned in this thread.

EDIT:: I also noticed that druid gear lacks a lot of +hit, if something could be done about that :)

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In all fairness, those Extra Armor pieces are of great significance to Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights, and removing them would make us all sad.

Here's a question though: Are the DK armor multipliers going to be similarly changed to ignore bonus armor pieces?

I personally like the changes.

The only issue that I see with druids having less defensive stats than other tanks is that, the way item budget works in this game is it favors having multiple stats on an item vs only 1 or 2 stats. So this ultimately leaves us at a disadvantage in terms of itemization compared to other tanks.