Thank you for the update and the acknowledgement of the math, as well as the corrections and clarification on the multiplier and how it works.

It sounds like for now we'll have to just revisit this later to see how bears are doing. I do appreciate that you made this change, as i think it gives bears a lot more freedom for gearing, but I would really like to see another change to make offensive stats found on rogue gear more desirable for bears. Still, I realize that won't be happening any time soon.

Thank you again for your swift and reasonable responses. Above all else, the customer interactivity and ability to cogently listen to complaints this product excellent.

I do also want to add that changing the strength on the staves to AP so that they are desirable by more than one class would be welcome, even if it is a slight nerf to bear/cat dps. As an officer in a raid I'd rather have gear that can work with more than one class drop more often.

Gear options continue to look grim past Naxxramus. But I get the feeling thats the plan.

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Q u o t e:
I’ll buy that you *want* more scaling stats. Nobody has demonstrated to our satisfaction that you need them.

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What exactly are you looking for in order to find an argument satisfactory?

I honestly have no clue as to where there's any room for disagreement here. A class with two scaling stats (one of which is on a DR, the other of which you're busy devaluing in as many ways as you possibly can) will always scale in an inferior way to a class with three, four, or five scaling stats. It's basic math, inherent in the iLevel system.

Is it that you feel druids do not need to scale? Is there something about the iLevel system and scaling we don't know or aren't addressing?

If it's just "We don't want you scaling" then say so, it'll save us all a lot of time writing pointless posts. If it's something else, please let us know what, because frankly I -- and, judging from a lot of posts around here lately, a lot of other bears -- are at a loss as to what you're looking for and where you're trying to bring ferals.

awesome, ferals getting the old bait and switch again just like they did in BC

btw, they're going to nerf bear berserk too. just watch.

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Q u o t e:
Gear options continue to look grim past Naxxramus. But I get the feeling thats the plan.

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Well yup. Its been confirmed now. Blizzard is okay with feral tanks having 2 viable stats. Although I can promise you its not very fun as a bear to gear for.

Our jewelry and leather armor have completely conflicting stats.

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Q u o t e:

I honestly have no clue as to where there's any room for disagreement here. A class with two scaling stats (one of which is on a DR, the other of which you're busy devaluing in as many ways as you possibly can) will always scale in an inferior way to a class with three, four, or five scaling stats. It's basic math, inherent in the iLevel system.

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That's true, but it may not matter. If two stats scale very well compared to 5 stats that scale okay, you can be at a similar level of value with those 2 stats for a long time. It doesn't really matter if other classes will scale well at some point as long as that 'some point' isn't in this expansion.

This was true before as well; essentially, druids scaled only with armor and agility in TBC, and druids were the strongest tanks because they scaled so absurdly well with those two stats.

The trick is that when you have only a couple of stats that scale well, it's easy to make those stats too good or not good enough.

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Q u o t e:

The trick is that when you have only a couple of stats that scale well, it's easy to make those stats too good or not good enough.

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Not to mention Diminishing Returns and Item Budgets will mean that classes based off of multiple stats will have an easier time upgrading, and will continue upgrading longer than one what has hit the DR.

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Q u o t e:


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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To me, this sounds like you're saying "prove it to me" instead of proving it yourself. Its quite simple to do this, especially since you have more tools available then we do. Get a boss that does 10000 damage per swing at a pace of whatever you like. Get a warrior that is ilvl 187 geared (blues), 10 man geared (Naxx, obsidian, and Malygos) and then 25 man geared. The mitigation difference between the 4 tanks should be within 2-3% of each other. The difference should change LESS THAN 1% per upgrade (Blues -> 10 man -> 25 man). Also, the theorectical eHP (effective HP) and time to live should be similar between the tanks, which this test will also show!

However, when I get home, I'll be in a ~1200ish queue, so I'll have almost 2 hours to do this. I'll throw together a simulation similar to what I did for druids over 2 years ago. My question is this GC:

What is the plan for druids to use on Necks, Rings, Trinkets, and Cloaks? Are we expected to use the Str, Stam, Def/Block/Parry in those slots or are we expected to use the offensive catered items? (Agi, Stam, Crit/hit/expertise) because this will make a huge difference in my simulation.

**(This isn't about what we're going to use or what is deemed best, but what Blizzard *expects* us to use in their own simulations. This will help clarify how you've come to your conclusions so we can accurately debate those conclusions whether its for or against!)**

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Q u o t e:


Yes, we do that all the time. We haven't found Feral mitigation to be lacking, and my point is that even if we do, we can fix that by tweaking the numbers. Regardless of the outcome, it doesn't prove that the class needs more defensive stats on which to scale. If the bear mulitiplier is 700% (and there is no armor cap), then I promise you will scale very well with every piece of armor you pick up even if you have no other stats. You will be far and away the best tank and the easiest one to gear as well.

Like I said, you can argue that you would rather have lots of defensive stats because you just think it's more fun to pick up gear under that model. But now you're in the realm of wanting to change the class into something slightly different to suit your preferences. That still isn't off the table (almost nothing ever is), but it's a different sort of argument than saying "we *must* benefit from block and AP."

There are advantages and disadvantages to having a lot or a few stats to focus on. One of the disadvantages of fewer stats is diminishing returns on avoidance, but bears don't diminish on Dodge as fast as warriors in order to compensate for this. Part of the implementation of diminishing returns was to discourage warriors from stacking one stat, but that isn't an issue for druids.

I don't mean to sound argumentative in any of this. I just want to make sure I understand the issues. We were prompted to take a look at this by all of the discussions (and not just on this forum) about how few neck and trinket choices bears really had in all of WoW. By which I mean they helped us to understand the issue. We knew the situation felt a little off, but it was more off than we imagined, and we took steps to fix it.

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Even making us viable in this current set up is not satisfactory.

We already deal with no visual upgrades, now our tier gear looks like rogue gear with feral set bonuses. We press the same 3 buttons we always did.

You guys seriously botched ferals. I think the point has been made a few times - but the only thing that really matters for us now is getting new ilvl leather armor. How fun is that? It almost doesnt even matter what kind of leather it is, as long as it is a higher ilvl for more armor.

Dear Ghostcrawler,

The problem is that most of the +armor items have STR and/or defense on them, which are not good tanking stats for druids. We don't benefit from anything other than the +armor and stam on those pieces, so they aren't "fun" to pick up. Our other options would be the Damage Dealer's Agi/Stam/+AP items, which don't increase our mitigation, only our dodge avoidance - and the stamina on a lot of those isn't as high as what's on the +armor rings.

So, we're stuck with either Warrior/DK/Paladin itemized gear or hunter/rogue itemized gear, and none of it is clearly druid tanking gear.

Bear form still doesn't get attack power from agility. We don't get anything besides dodge from defense. Strength only gives us AP and not avoidance or mitigation.

Without +armor pieces that are itemized for druid tanks (with agility, stamina, armor, and maybe dodge rating), we end up with entirely unintersting ring & necklace options....

We don't benefit from other class' tanking stats, we only benefit from +armor and agility, which is our cat DPS stat. Getting agility still ends up being better than getting dodge rating.

so, we don't actually share "needed" stats with the other tanks besides the +armor and +stamina, so any other stat on the +armor ring is almost completely wasted. Then, our other option is to just stack more agility to grab dodge until we hit the dodge cap or suffer severe penalties under diminishing returns.

So, druids are unhappy because we don't share tanking stats with any tanking class, and just gearing for agility isn't going to cut it when we aren't going to find agility on the +armor rings available to us (we have to wear hand-me-downs that don't fit right), and we fear that just wearing all Rogue damage gear is going to make us take so much spike damage that we won't be welcome to main tank raids.

If you made +armor/stam/AGILITY/dodge rings, then we'd be happier - but you don't put agi on +armor rings, you only put strength.

Right now, you guys should be less focused on whether we're "wasting stats" or picking up less fun gear.

The only thing right now that'll change anything is proving to GC that we are significantly lower in mitigation/avoidance than other tanks in same level gear.

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Q u o t e:
Right now, you guys should be less focused on whether we're "wasting stats" or picking up less fun gear.

The only thing right now that'll change anything is proving to GC that we are significantly lower in mitigation/avoidance than other tanks in same level gear.

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No, the only thing that will prove it is if druids aren't taken as tanks into high-end raids, and at that point, it's already too late.

They have reduced the effectiveness of every single tanking stat a druid has available to them, and has had the effect of those stats baked into talents to compensate, to the point where our mitigation may or may not be lower right now, but we are likely going to run into problems really fast.

Having the +armor multiplier for our leather gear would have been fine, but our leather armor already had it's armor value halved during the Beta process, to the point where it may or may not scale enough when we hit higher levels.

We've always had this problem, where we were great at intro-raiding, and then scaled horribly as everyone hit armor caps and the other tanking classes could gain from two more mitigation stats than we could, so once we hit diminishing returns and armor caps, DK/paladin/warrior tanks can theoretically still gain from block and parry. So, even if we do scale with our stats, it's possible for the other tanks to benefit fully from the stats on their gear, whereas we're already wasting all the STR and defense on the gear that we're forced to pick up.

So I'm not sure if I fully understood everything posted, so correct me if I'm wrong.


TLDR:

Bears now have the least armour to go with the least avoidance and least tanking tools.!

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Q u o t e:
So I'm not sure if I fully understood everything posted, so correct me if I'm wrong.


TLDR:

Bears now have the least armour to go with the least avoidance and least tanking tools.!

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TLDR addendum:
Only once we're decked out in full Naxx gear, but who cares about tanks past Naxx 'cause we're not there yet!

Back on track....

I think that bears would be in a happier place if we could get rings & necklaces that had AGI and +armor on them. Since they don't exist, we have to choose between "not ideal" tank gear or "not ideal" DPS gear to tank in. Without those items, we feel like the red-headed-step children that we've always felt like - where no one even cares to itemize for an underplayed underdog spec.

It doesn't matter if druids are effective if what we have to do to be effective is really not fun to do.... because everyone will just quit druids and go play the "fun" death knights that are more effective and not much harder to level up to 80 because they start out more than half way there. I'd rather not see my species go extinct over feeling like it's not itemized to the point of not being playable for raiding.

At least with the high +armor items, we felt like we were gaining something when we picked them up. Yes, they had wasted stats, but it was WORTH it to waste those stats because the armor was so good. With the armor being "meh" and the stats being "double meh", then we get a new piece of gear and just go "meh meh blah. I guess it's an up", instead of "OMG I NEED THAT YESSSSS". You took away all the fun of the only items we were excited about picking up.

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Q u o t e:
Right now, you guys should be less focused on whether we're "wasting stats" or picking up less fun gear.

The only thing right now that'll change anything is proving to GC that we are significantly lower in mitigation/avoidance than other tanks in same level gear.

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I think everyone's point is that feral tanks are mostly fine but really unhappy when it comes to the "fun" factor of tanking. Spamming swipe is not fun. Using rogue gear with armor pen and haste, and then using tank rings with parry and block makes us feel dumb. Effective? Yeah, I guess. Do we like it? No. :(

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Q u o t e:
We would rather you use a new level 80 trinket with a little bit of wasted block on it than a blue trinket from level 62 or something with silly amounts of armor.

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This ends the conversation. Using gear that wastes itemization is not fun. Using gear that is only slight better than a complete waste (defense) is only slight less unfun. Since you are apparently ok with this, I suppose we are done talking on this subject. Adding a mechanic for (for example) % AP -> armor would help open up the dialog again. We need some sort of mechanic to make rogue and warrior itemization fun.

I could also be happy with haste affecting the ILotP cooldown. It wouldn't be as OP as removing it completely and would make all that haste that's everywhere seem more useful.

I keep hoping that something will be announced that makes me want to stay feral at 80. Wasted itemization isn't fun.

I must admit though that I like the FAP changes. I've wished for something like this for a very long time. It's very nice, but could be nicer. Could we please get the ability to train polearms? It fits lore-wise, adds another weapon option for early leveling, and gets more mileage out of drops. I would like to be able to use an edged two-hander of some sort too, but arguing for that is probably a lost cause. DWing fist weapons would be nice as well, but I won't hold out my hope here either (I would expect a fighter to know how to punch with both fists).

TL;DR

Wasted itemization isn't fun.
<3 FAP changes.
Please let us use polearms.

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Q u o t e:


No, the only thing that will prove it is if druids aren't taken as tanks into high-end raids, and at that point, it's already too late.

They have reduced the effectiveness of every single tanking stat a druid has available to them, and has had the effect of those stats baked into talents to compensate, to the point where our mitigation may or may not be lower right now, but we are likely going to run into problems really fast.

Having the +armor multiplier for our leather gear would have been fine, but our leather armor already had it's armor value halved during the Beta process, to the point where it may or may not scale enough when we hit higher levels.

We've always had this problem, where we were great at intro-raiding, and then scaled horribly as everyone hit armor caps and the other tanking classes could gain from two more mitigation stats than we could, so once we hit diminishing returns and armor caps, DK/paladin/warrior tanks can theoretically still gain from block and parry. So, even if we do scale with our stats, it's possible for the other tanks to benefit fully from the stats on their gear, whereas we're already wasting all the STR and defense on the gear that we're forced to pick up.

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Those of us that saw the math and the writing on the wall have been complaining about druid bear itemization since Beta.

If nothing else at least make 4 different tier sets for druids 1 for each major form. That is not asking that much. Since each form has different requirements and needs. Enough of the 1 size fits all crap that does not cut it.

GC, I appreciate your level of communication and quick response time. I also like how you look at the big picture to see if bears are viable main tanks for all levels of raid content.

I'm not concerned with the whole "spread it out over multiple stats" argument. In TBC, druids gained much more from agility than other tanks, and even now we suffer from less DR as you pointed out.

I do feel a bit of the "less fun", though. In the past, it was quite a rush to grab something with high armor, knowing your bear form multiplier would make it so much better. It made the Violet Signets much better for us than for other tanks, for example. Now when I look at leather armor lists, they all have the same armor value, so that removes some of the choice (fun) in upgrading. It becomes much more of simply improving ilvl rather than actively seeking out pieces with extra bonus armor, and weighing the tradeoffs. For example, in TBC I didn't go for the 100-badge chest even with its high armor, because I had the S3 chest which had much more stamina. That decision, although tough, was fun. I understand that sort of thing is hard to balance around, though.