I think this post speaks for itself why bear damage had to come down :P


I know i know dps gear but cmon /wink

I offtanked Gruul in almost full dps gear, I just slapped on some armor pieces to bump my armor up to around 19k with raid buffs. Like someone previously said, you have to watch your threat generation because you can easily overtake the maintank. I was even doing decent damage, 2.2k mangle / 1.8k mauls.

When a druid is forced into full tanking gear, mangle / maul becomes approximately 50% less effective and our threat production is in the neighborhood of warriors. I'm afraid the changes will severely gimp tanking druids in full tanking gear.

Druids in mixed gear can run around with, effectively, 460 defence in terms of crit avoidance. Still do great dps in catform and decent dps in bearform which in turn equals massive threat and while still being a decent offtank or tank for soft/medium hitting monsters.

Warriors will never be able to do that, they either go full dps gear and be a horrible OT/MT but able to do good dps or the opposite. There's a link below to one of our dps warriors, works nicely for him in terms of damage. It's not top on dps meters, but around 80% of the top dps.

http://armory.wow-europe.com/#charac...l&n=Mightydude

Druids can switch between being a tank / dps during a fight and warriors can't. If Blizzard insists that druids need to be able to do both at such a level that they are desirable for raids in either role, they need to nerf the armor bonus from bearform a good deal more and at the same time re-itemize so that armor is cheaper together with better itemized tank items for druids. One advantage that druids will still have is that they only have 1 tree for feral combat that covers both tanking and dps. So they can switch around between fights for different purposes, just not in fights. That's about as good as it can get in terms of levelling the playing field between warriors and druids in my opinion.

Reducing the armor / stamina bonus is a step in the right direction, I just don't think the current itemization supports it. Look at some of our best tanking items, they're GREEN items for christs sake and there aren't many good upgrades in the 25 man instances. There are some decent items in Karazhan but not many, they're all low on armor for example if I remember correctly. At the same time we'll have warriors gathering up plenty of upgrades in 25 and 10 man instances and begin closing the gap.

In essence, I think Blizzard are hurriedly trying to fix the current situation so that 5 / 10 man content is balanced between warriors and druids in terms of tanking. With the new changes I'm confident that tanks will regain a solid grip on the tanking throne. Maulgar will still work for druids, you have so much time to build threat on the bastard anyways that druid threat production is irrelevant.

Agreed, I'd often find myself doing as much or more damage than almost any class in 5 man heroics when I'm tanking. In normal 5 mans it's just ridiculous, you're so far ahead of everyone in damage because you're the tank and get first dibs on most monsters. Example, that guy in Auchindoun that summons the 4 elementals during the fight. I went in and crit him for 5k total with mangle / maul and chopped off 5% of his hitpoints before the fight had even started.

With the massive nerf to bearform damage I'm sure it will be much more reasonable now, but when the druid is going to tank something that requires full tanking gear our damage will be pathetic and as a result of that I'm afraid of our threat production.

An underbog lord in heroic would be a good test case, it does plenty of damage and is not immune to lacerate as far as I remember and everyone can dps it immediately.

And people said a fury warriors in dps gear with every buff imagineable doing near top damage (unable to tank though due to low hps armor etc) were overpowered.


I just find it funny. I find feral druids to be the satire of WoW after all the overpowered calls i got when i was fitted in naxx fury gear :P

That's not sustainable DPS, and I doubt it happens very often.

I've never outdamaged any competent dps'ers in guild 5-mans. In pugs, yes. In groups with mouth-breathers, yes. In a group with dps'ers trying as hard to dps as I am to tank, I'm 4th above the healer.

Shocking discovery: on my warrior in my dps gear I top meters tanking in pugs too. It turns out unlimited rage allows you to do fairly good dps. (shocker).

My pleasure.

This is an update of my previous post with a larger dataset, and a few corrections. If it is a little drawn out and pedantic please forgive me; I intend to repost this on the official forums.

Goal:

Compare druid melee threat from Live to PTR. Note that I am looking at relative maximum threat from physical damage only. Lacerate and all other threat tools are unchanged and therefore not included.


Methodology:

Identical gear on Live and PTR, no idol equipped, non-imp MotW and OoC the only buffs. Spec'd for FI, NW, etc etc.


Equipment, Stats and Target:

Wearing the typical quest item tanking gear. You can probably check the armory, I havn't really played since I did these tests.

PTR/Live
Str: 197/197
Agi: 305/305
Stam: 660/528
AC: 21504/23559
HP: 10034/10892
AP: 793/793

Infested Root-Walkers were the test subject, all 65. (They heal, which makes them convienient to beat on). I ran recap for these stats; I also recorded the combat log to disk, and have ran them through a log parser for further investigation.



Maul Threat Average

Two cases here. One uses the static threat number from Kenco's Guide to Threat (322), one uses the threat value of Heroic Strike 10 (193) as the blues have suggested the static amount is roughly equivilant.

Stance * ( MaulAvg*(100-MaulCrit%) + MaulCritAvg*(MaulCrit%) + MaulStatic )

PTR

1.45 * (338*0.768) + (739*0.232) + 322
259.6 + 171 + 322 = 753 * 1.45 = 1091 Threat

Live

1.45 * (401*.72) + (912*.29) + 322
288.72 + 264.5 + 322 = 875 * 1.45 = 1269 Threat


14% reduction in threat on Maul from Live to PTR

With 193 (HS10) instead we get:

PTR
624 * 1.45 = 904 Threat

Live
746.2 * 1.45 = 1081.9 Threat

16.3% reduction in threat on Maul from Live to PTR with HS10 as the static value.


Mangle Threat Average

Stance * ( MangleAvg*(100-MangleCrit%) + MangleCritAvg*(MangleCrit%)

PTR

306.8 * 0.776 + 672.5 * 0.224 = 238 + 150.6 = 388.64
388.64 * 1.45 = 563 Threat

Live

476*.739 + 1166*.261 = 352 + 304.3 = 656
656 * 1.45 = 951.2 Threat


40.8% reduction in threat on Mangle from Live to PTR


Swipe Threat Average

Stance * (SwipeAvg*(100-SwipeCrit%) + SwipeCritAvg*SwipeCrit%

PTR
104*0.785 + 230*0.215 = 81.64 + 49.45 = 131
131 * 1.45 = 189.95 Threat

Live
121*0.711 + 283*0.289 = 86 + 81.8 = 167
167 * 1.45 = 242.1 Threat

21.9% reduction in threat from Swipe from Live to PTR


Relative damage based TPS

Assumes unlimited rage, in a 15 second cycle.
This cycle consumes 165 rage (talented)

PTR
1091*6 + 563*3 + 190*6
6546 + 1689 + 1140 = 9375
625 TPS

Live
1269*6 + 951.2*3 + 242*6
7614 + 2853.6 + 1452 = 11920
794 TPS

23% reduction in TPS


Summary:

16% reduction in maul dmg
19% reduction in maul crit
14-17% reduction in threat on Maul


35% reduction in mangle dmg
39% reduction in mangle crit dmg
41% reduction in threat on Mangle

14% reduction in swipe dmg
18% reduction in swipe crit dmg
21% reduction in threat from Swipe

23% reduction in TPS of melee based threat.



My personal opinion about these rough tests?

The gear balancing act between AP for threat and mitigation stats is going to be even more of a constant issue when the next patch comes live, at best. At worst, to produce reasonable threat all but the best geared will have to substitute a lot of DPS items, requiring gearing like the FotM 'Paper Tank' druids.

I am not particularly enthusiastic about these changes, and I had always assumed that classes were balanced via simulation and modelling.. but with the recent (last 6 months) of various about faces with the druid class in beta, and in live, I seriously wonder if there is any actual methodology behind the so called 'balancing'. I am becoming bitterly tired of being bounced between 'viable and wanted' vs 'lol feral' and the endless gear issues.


Back to the OP, that is the druid side of the threat generation changes as tested by me. I'm not sure how to usefully correlate this to warrior threat; perhaps someone else will be able to do something useful with this data.



Disclaimer: Any/all of the calculations could be incorrect. If you see an error in this, let me know and I'll do my best to fix it.

Other Caveats: The reduction in crit damage is probably entirely meaningless since the sample sizes are still too small. For that matter the live tests are really a too small in general. Such a wildly out of character 'druid on a tree killing spree' seemed strangely embarassing on an RP realm.. and well, it was late and also, boring as hell.