madrussian

OK ive read your complaints, ive seen the 'nerfs' and 'buffs' but i decided to go to the ptr and test the changes myself.

let me explain the scenario. me, lvl 70 Prot warrior with all the rage cost reducing talents, full defiance and improved thunderclap.

shandis lvl 70 NE druid feral specced etc, ill let him pitch in on his exact build/gear setup.

buffmemore lvl 70 DWARF warrior non prot spec

Joecrack lvl 70 human male warrior non prot spec.

location = regular mode underbog, picked it because we could tank the trash without worrying about heals and botched aggro. the sole reason of this test was to see and compare threat generation between druids/warriors.

1st test was autoattack ONLY. im using http://www.thottbot.com/?i=59508 as my current tanking weapon.

druid wins this test hands down, i cannot generate enough threat (at least with this weapon, didnt have a slower weapon to test with) i pulled the mob but as soon as shandis started attacking it went to him.

2nd test. autoattack+sunder armor/lacerate, this was tested on the bog giants in underbog. i pulled the giant and started attacking same time as shandis, then started spamming sunder as shandis was spamming lacerate. the giant stayed on me because i have full defiance. next giant we had buffmemore do the same routine with shandis without defiance and lacerate generated more aggro than non defianced sunder. we repeated this test 2x with same results.

3rd test. autoattack +thunderclap/swipe on the spore thingies 3packs i did the pull and started thunderclapping same time as shandis, at first the mobs were on me but after shandis did a few swipes they all turned to him, notice i have improved thunderclap that does more dmg+slow and defiance. i attribute this to TC having a cooldown and swipe having no cooldown. test was performed 2x with identical results.

4th test. autoattack+shield slam/mangle. we BOTH started out with full rage bars we built up from a random trash pack and went to spam mangle/shield slam on one of the bog giants. i got the first shield slam off but as soon as shandis started mangling the giant stuck to him like glue. they both have same cooldown so the only conclusion i can make is mangle>shield slam as far as threat goes.
test was repeated 2x with identical results.

5th test. the 1st boss in underbog. spam all your abilities and see who holds aggro better. i win in this case which isnt surprising because thats how blizzard describes a prot warrior, the best aggro/mitigation for bosses. we did that untill we all wiped due to us being idiots and not moving away from the mushroom :P

all members involved in this test will back this post up as soon as they see it. here is the screenshot of our party.

http://img109.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ptrtestyx9.jpg

note imageshack will not last long so if someone can please rehost it i would appreciate it.

my conclusion. druids are still GREAT tanks! especially for 5man content and damn near close to warriors when it comes to boss fights, i wouldnt hesitate to let one of our guild druids to tank a boss if they had sufficient gear for it. if you dont believe me and other people that witnessed this, wait untill you can test this yourself, go to the PTR and try it out. its FAR from as bad as it looks i think youll be surprised.

 

• Zyla

I appreciate your testing. I have the following issues:

1. Why bother testing auto attack aggro?
2. Lacerate is not functionally equal to sunder armor. There are many, many mobs that are immune to it. While they may have the same relative threat I'd think you'd even agree that sunder is not your main aggro getter anyways. ( Yes I have played a MT warrior for a year as well.)
3. The mangle test is encouraging because it seems to me that they sneakily added a threat bonus to mangle above its prior functionality. This makes me happier.

Your boss test is questionable because in most occasions, the first person hit will be able to hold aggro based on the increased rage taken from damage, unless the second person's aggro generation is grossly stronger.

 

Axium

Your methodology strikes me as a little strange, since the rage you get from having aggro and taking damage is more than someone who is OTing and only generating rage from their damage. Druid or not.

 

madrussian

if you have a better suggestion on how to test this im all ears.

 

Axium

Well it works for a cursory look into it. The only things I could think of would be to either test threat/second or threat/rage with the assistance of someone doing small white damage unarmed and seeing when they pull–but you'd have to be a little masochistic to go that far. :P

 

Brissa

The first thing that comes to mind is download a threat generation mod like KTM. Test it out so that it actually works (that you pull aggro at 110% of the other tanks threat).

After you know it works properly you start tanking 2 identical mobs at the same time and see who generates the most threat according to KTM. Not only will it show who generates most threat but also the relative difference.

 

• Disquette

perm img link: http://www.discofiend.com/wow/ptrtestyx9.jpg

----- sig ---------------
Discoepfeand - rogue / Disquette - shaman
A stormstrike / shocks /watershield timer-bar addon: http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/9729/
"Moogle has mentioned this in passing a few times but never elaborated on it. Perhaps we can entice him to respond." - Malan

 

madrussian

thank you

 

BeeLz

or you could just get back in, let the druid pull now and try to outaggro him when he has the boss on him? :p

 

madrussian

im afraid that would be impossible, at least with the current weapon im using. i just wouldnt be able to generate enough rage to put out more threat than a druid :P

 

• Exewut

Or have someone tank and then a druid and a warrior both try to get it off the first tank?
Not to mention a druid in dps gear will create heaps more aggro, but he won't have the tanking stats (should be around 50% armor reduction with dps leather) needed to stay alive vs a mob which matters, so which gear was he using?


[edit] I just found the threat on the PTR forums. I find it quite amusing that the druid was in dps gear, which conveniently isn't mentioned in the post. This is like saying, We where holding an aggro competition between a fury warrior and a prot one on a boss, the fury won at multiple mob tanking on trash since he used cleave/sweeping strikes (or however it is called), and the prot one won at the boss. Do you see how faulty such a test would be?
Anyway enough ranting for me, I'll go burn a candle now for some better feral itemisation in raiding dungeons, since we'll need it.

 

◊ Sorrowheart

Stock up on rage potions and give it a try?

 

madrussian

but that would skew the results!

 

Moe

One of the really great abilities of a druid atm is to reasonably hold aggro on several mobs. In heroic instances it might be required for the druid to do that as well. Since the damage incoming to the druid is increased however, so is the required healing. I would be much more interested in how the changes on the test server affect this situation than pure tanking power against a single mob. Swipe damage has been reduced significantly there, so the question is: does it still generate enough threat to save the healers? Warriors do have a few more tricks up their sleeve to generate aggro on a group, but for Druids its just Demo Roar and Swipe.

"If you cant say what you're meaning,
you can never mean what youre saying" - Babylon 5, Centauri Minister of Intelligence

 

• squiffy

Might be time then that druids have to break out the "mouse over target mangle" macro that warriors use for sunder for multi mob tanking scenarios

 

Moe

Well .. does Sunder have a cooldown of 6 secs ?

On another thought ... I think comparing the threat of a Druid against a Warrior is not really the point. IMO you should compare the threat of a Bear against a dps class on full burn, like a melee shammy for example. A guildie always says he can do more dps if I (Bear) tank compared to the time when a warrior tanks. The point of this reasoning is: dps classes should be allowed to use their full potential, otherwise there is no point in them having certain specs. The end result of this would not be that the Bear has too much threat, but rather that the Warrior doesnt have enough.

"If you cant say what you're meaning,
you can never mean what youre saying" - Babylon 5, Centauri Minister of Intelligence

 

• diospadre

By that logic why not just make taunt attack the caster for one full minute? Then DPS classes can always operate at their full potential and we tanks can just alt tab and do other stuff while tanking.

Blizzard wants players to have to manage aggro.

 

madrussian

sorta, they can also do the same thing warriors have to, tab and lacerate/maul just like warriors have to tab sunder/heroic strike.

unthinkable isnt it?

 

madrussian

no, but shield slam does! shield slam = mangle

lacerate = sunder.

on that thought i really hope lacerate gets a fix to generate threat on bleed immune mobs.

 

• squiffy

Obviously not, however I was merely offering an example of how druids can get more tricks up their sleeves. Tricks that warriors have had to come up with to manage such things as multi mob tanking better.

 

madrussian

if blizzard intended dps classes to go all out they would have to buff both warriors and druids because as it is right now there is no way a warrior would be able to hold off top of the line geared dps'rs going all out. plain impossible unless the tank gets a huge headstart in threat gen.

 

◊ Kyth

Using my full potential doesn't mean I have to be able to go all out on every fight every time. Just because I can't full-burn on bosses from the get-go doesn't mean that dps potential from a particular spec is lost or pointless. It's still there for the end of a fight, bursting down adds, or times when I spend a portion of the fight on something other than the main boss, so can hit him especially hard when I'm on him.

 

Axium

Yeah I'm still mainly interested in the rate of threat generation each class has under certain circumstances. The whole "will druids be viable tanks still?" approach seem almost fruitless as it's been stated on several fronts that they don't want this nerf to make bear tanking inviable. Even if it seems imbalanced on the PTRs now that will almost surely be tuned before it goes live. I think it's more interesting to compare things like how the buffs to rage generation affects the warrior's threat/s and with the nerfs to druid yellow output if they're still able to keep up.

 

Moe

Well for a Druid its not that hard to stay ahead reasonably now (Pyro mages starting with crits are still a headache), its the Warriors who are lacking behind atm. I also didnt mean to say that dps could go full burn from sec 1 of the pull, but rather when the tank has his aggro they should be able to go full burn without having to hold back / taking a break in the middle of the fight. With current threat generation from Druids that is reasonably well possible, with Warriors its not ... so Warriors need a boost instead of Druids a nerf.

To all those who are "stuck" in the "learn to tab and Mangle / Maul" thinking:
- Mangle: 6 secs cooldown
- Maul: attack speed 2,5
- Lacerate: not worth mentioning for threat generating on several targets
This doesnt work for Bears the same way it works for Warriors.

Lets please not make this a Druids vs. Warriors fight, but try to look for solution for a group / raid.

"If you cant say what you're meaning,
you can never mean what youre saying" - Babylon 5, Centauri Minister of Intelligence