oldmandennis

This is not a whine thread!

Assuming there is no more itemization for bears, but warriors continue, at what point are warriors going to be clearly the superior tank, and bears only asked tank I'M LOOKING FOR A BEAR encounters and adds?

To me it looks like bears top out at 25k armor and 13.75k health with 33.5% avoidance (dodge+miss) unbuffed, or 26k, 17.25k, 37% buffed. (hope I did the math close to right)

Warriors probably start be better when they have roughly 80% of those stats, due to defensive stance and block pushing crushing off. What I would like to know is if that's achievable in Karazhan, is it likely possible in Serpenshrine, or what.

I've moved to the acceptance phase :P I'm trying to figure out when to switch over and start acquiring resto gear (or leveling an alt).

 

suicuique

You shouldn't.
Bears would still have some advantages. Even moreso if you consider, that the theoretical optimal warrior often is not possible because of GCD and latency issues (short: too many buttons to press to really play a warrior to his theoretical optimal performance). Even having the shield block up every time ist sometimes not a matter of practicability. Not to speak about shield bash/spell reflect issues. This is btw not a whine, but my personal observation. Could be, I suck. But IMHO its often overlooked if you only look at "paper stats".


As FYI: Im not best geared by any means, but have most "must have" blue items out of the instance with best (IMHO) possible enchants. My stats at the moment are 13K HP, 12.5K AC (!! it is that low), ca 36% dodge+parry, 490 def ... all unbuffed.
The most immediate (and achievable) upgrades for me would result in an increase of ca 300-400 HP, 1K AC (at most), and 2-3% dodge+parry.

Hope this helps your assessment.

 

Aphyrax

The problem with acquiring gear for feral first and then for rest is that it is not easy. Once you do a quest, the other rewards are forever out of reach. And I doubt many guilds will happily let you accumulate multiple sets of gear when other people still need the tokens for their first set.

So if I were you I would acquire the few extremely good quest rewards (Jerkin of Untamed Spirit comes to mind) and some of the stuff that drops from lower level instances. See http://elitistjerks.com/showthread.php?t=9725 for a good list. Then once you hit heroics and raids I would only collect what you are actually going to use in those circumstances. And odds are that is going to be resto and even balance gear before feral gear.

 

Lavode

Aphyrax: Thats not a matter of choice. The optimal bear gear is virtually all quest awards and the like. Gearing resto and / or balance after that is inevitable. I dinged 70, zerged trough the specific quests that give you this stuff, and have lived in instances since. Moslty heroic mode with a bit of kharazan poking on the side.

This is what I am currently using from the top down:

Head: Cogspinner Goggles of The Bandit, with CoT enchant. 220 armor, 31 agi, 46 stanima, 62 ap, 16 defence rating, 17 dodge rating

Neck: Necklace of the Juggernaut, 18 agi, 30 sta, 21 defence rating

Shoulders: Shoulderpads of assasination, gemmed /canted tank. 25 agi, 37 stanima, 19 defence rating, 42 ap (really should get some better gems for these..)

Back: Bogstock scale cloak, 223 armor, 22 stanima, 12 agi, 16 defence rating. I could get thoriumweave, but I am riding the thin edge on having enough defence/resillience for crit immunity, and swapping would drop me below the magic 5.6% total, so.. Not going to happen.
Chest: Chestguard of the talon, with +6 stats : 378 armor, 41 str, 40 agi 27 sta 6 int, 6 spi

Wrist: Umberhowls collar enchanted sta +12: 281 armor, 17 str, 10 agi, 36 sta.

Weapon: Earthwarden. Doh. 500 armor, 35 agi. 24 defence rating, 24 combat skill rating, 525 feral ap.

Hands; Verdant gloves enchanted superior agi: 393 armor, 23 str, 29 agi 27 sta

Waist: Marshals DragonHide Belt: 21 str, 21 agi, 30 sta, 12 int, 21 resillience, 33 +heal

Leggings: Ash tempered legguards, with cleft patch.: 475 armor, 26 str, 26 agi 61 stanima.

Feet: supple leather boots, with 12 sta: 352 armor, 19 str, 11 agi, 36 sta

Finger: ring of unyielding force: 200 armor, 27 sta, 21 defence rating.

Finger 2: Violet signet (honoured) 230 armor, 30 sta, 14 defence rating.

Trinket: Mark of tyrrany: 180 armor, 10 arcane resistance, 12 dodge rating
Trinket 2: Smoking heart of the mountain: 150 armor + 7 all resistance. I should replace this with a poltryiser, but.. not a miner, and materials are ruinous on the AH.

On test this gives me 23258 armor, 11204 selfbuffed HP, 31,14 % dodge, and 2.2 % extra "chance to be missed" from defence, so a total avoidance of 38.34 % These are still respectable stats, apart from my rather abysmal HP - But this is just about the best possible bear kit, and look at that list. See any kharazan drops on it? Heroic mode lewts? Nope. And its not that I havent looked. I basically spend all my outlands hours in one heroic instance or another, and my collection of healing and moonkin leather is /frigtingly/ good, to the point where I can respec to fill any shortage in our raids pretty much at will (and I do. Expensive habit :-) ) But I am not finding any upgrades on my bear kit anywhere.

 

Juno

With my current gear, which is an assortment of quest greens, instance blues, 2(+1) Karazhan epics (King's defender, Barbed chocker of discipline and Wrynn leggings after patch), and some pre-TBC gear (wrath boots, styleen, wrath helm) I got 44,15% avoidance, that is, not counting shield block, with 12.2k hp, 11886 armor. There's still some upgrades for me in heroics and karazhan. Boots of Elusion, some boots from pandemonium heroic, chess event boots, attuman wrists after patch, shield from nightbane or sha'tar exalted or heroic badges. There's tons of tanking items, tons. I don't get why there's 2 tanking boots so close to each other either, several headgears in 5man and Karazhan aswell. Our items don't scale per say though. Anyway, with those stats I got 314 block and 22.41% block rating.
After the patch I'm counting on loosing about 400hp from item changes, Wrynn leggings will dampen the blow though. With T4 head and Boots of Elusion from Karazhan I'll gain about 3%-4% dodge and about 300hp.

Just like Suicuique said, it is impossible to use all your available skills so theorycrafting about them is pretty hard. Such as Shield block getting used before it can be used again, and shield reflect only working on mobs that blizzard wants it to work on. Take for example sorcerous shades or the other spellcasting shades in Kara, they cast regular bolts, but can't be reflected. Heroic strike can't be up all the time either.

 

Zacara

Well geared feral druids can still get 23-24K armor after the patch. It will take a very long time (Read several new tiers of gear) before warriors arrive at equal level of raw mitigation even with defensive stance added. This makes druids good at soaking spike damage of physical nature on top of their nice immunities (Disarm and polymorph).

This is on top of the fact that if you want someone to tank something for part of the fight and DPS the other part, then nothing comes close to a feral druid in potential (Judging by the tier5 set I believe this is what Blizzard has designed feral druids to do). The raiding aspect of feral druids is far from dead with the upcoming patch.

 

• Zyla

I honestly don't understand why warriors don't have more armor.

 

Plea

So you accept druids are clearly far better than warriors right now?

Edit : This was pointing the op, should have clarified.

 

• Zyla

Not at all. Merely pointing out that theres no reason for warrior armor to be so comparatively low. Each point of your armor is worth more then a point to a druid because of Crushing Blows/D Stance, so I understand why it is necessarily lower.

I can't possibly state that I feel druids are clearly better when I take crushing strings of over 20k in 3 sec from prince on a common basis, despite my armor.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Call me crazy but I have a bit of faith that there are some high armor purples awaiting us in serpentshrine and/or tempest keep that will keep bear tanking relevant

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

Plea

I agree with Beef. You were already capped at armor with inspiration procs, with blues; what did you expect blizzard to put in your epic tank gear? I have experienced it many times on my warrior now, a nerf usually means they're trying to make itemization mean something. I would be oneshotting every and any clothie with old ms & enrage.

Also, this 'there isnt no itemization' belief is a bit too pessimistic, and actually wildly spculative too. It sounds too much like 'warriors are gear dependant' which isnt half true right now, but still many people worship on that idea.

 

Boevis

I'm certainly not capped, though I could be if I chose to, I just happen to chose not to most of the time. Why you may ask? Because the 4.34% dodge I get from Wardens Hauberk beats the crap out of the 1258 armor I'd get from Ghoul Skin Tunic (4 hit rating and 8 stamina pretty much seals the deal) There are certainly fights where having higher Mitigation is necessary for survival (Maulgars Crush-Arcing-Crush kills me in avoidance gear, but is barely survivable in armor gear) But overall, higher avoidance just has better payoffs than armor with the new DR calculations.

With Grace-Kings-Mark-Greater Agi and that lovely 2 piece moonglade bonus going on me, I have just over 50% Dodge. Only 24k armor with Devotion Aura, but 50% Dodge. This leaves me with plenty of room for upgrades compared to the green armor druids that are capping their armor already, and my overall Mit is higher. It's also amusing having 25% regular hits and 15% crushing hits.

 

Jayde

Despite what conventional wisdom may say, Warriors get hit by crushing strings too...especially on fast-hitting mobs where the 2 ticks from Shield Block can't cover the hits you are recieving in the 5 second period. Most importantly, they get hit considerably harder by them than Druids do when they land.

 

Grymm

I think Blizzard designed the feral abilities with this fixation on "hybrid" performance. You'd cat form dps, bear form tank, pop out and heal all using more or less the same gear. You wouldn't run around with a 0 int/0 spirit/0 plus healing set. Look at the feral T4. It's hybrid. It does everything ok.

The issue is: hybrid gear (not hybrid classes) suck. You can't make a raid out of 25 people who do everything ok. You need people at the opposite ends of the spectrum. You need protection specced warriors, healing specced priests, those twitchy combat dagger rogues. This is where you find your best performance - when everyone specs and gears for a roll and performs that roll as efficiently as possible. Feral druids, and I have on (66), wear either dps leather or tanking leather. You don't mix gear. The healing stuff is separate and stays in the bag unless you need to heal. You can change gear out of combat.

Thus, you got druids stacking high armor/agil/stam leather for tanking. They have high crit, dodge, survival, and offensive rage generation. There were scenarios where a druid was superior to a protection specced warrior. Blizzard re-evaluated and thought "wait, what about that hybrid gear we made you". And the druids said, and rightfully so, "That crap is garbage". Blizzard painted protection specced warriors as the top dawg tank. They wanted feral druids to be serviceable as tanks similar to arms/fury warriors and paladins. I think if you can make a decent comparison between a bear and a prot war, then a bear is clearly superior to an arms/fury warrior in tanking. My 66 druid, at the moment, has higher dodge than I have parry + dodge at 70. He's got more armor and will have more hp at 70.

The impending nerf clearly takes druids tanking down a notch. Hopefully, however, they will redo the feral T4 to be a feral set. The warrior DPS set doesn't have tanking stats on it. I don't see why the feral set has a significant investment into int/spirit/healing. I don't think it's correct to nerf a class to balance it structurally with other classes and then also to continue to indirectly nerf it by not properly instituting itemization for it.

 

◊ Fellwraith

It needs to be more than just malfurion's bulwark 2.0 though. I don't think you can get away with only 1-2 epics per instance when you've got a warrior getting 4+ upgrades for tanking.

This goes back to one of the fundamental problems with druids as they built them today, there's 1 tree for ranged dps caster (does anyone seriously go 41 points in balance? If not should they consider killing the tree entirely and just splitting feral up?), 1 tree for melee dps + tanking, and 1 tree for healing - but only 3 sets. Really the best answer is to create a fourth tiered set for tanking. Leave it up to the druid how he wants to specialize his gear, but that specialization has a cost - just like it does for warriors.

 

Shiftir

Blizzard has shown time and time again that they do not intend to raid-itemize feral tanks. Even in AQ40 the "feral druid gear wasteland" there is not even a full set of tanking gear (did I say set?) and the tanking gear that is there does not have defensive stats other than armor/agi.

Even the wonderous "feral quest reward gear" does not have defense, dodge, or exceptionally high stamina. It just has armor. The fact that this armor benefits druids to a ludicrous degree is by blizzard's own design.

The only conclusion that can be reached is that Blizzard really has no idea what they are doing with druids, they don't want to spend alot of time on it to fix the items and introduce proper scaling, so instead they are going to nerf druids to match the items they've created with no clear upgrade path and no options.

I'd say the bear vs. warrior tipping point will be reached the day this patch goes live.

 

Monsanto

Honestly, most itemization problems could be solved by simply making all druid set items have lots of plain ol' armor. Go ahead and throw some spirit or +healing on there, whatever, but for the love of god don't make it 200 less armor (in caster) than some green quest reward.

Druid: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...hol&n=Monzanto
Warrior: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...n=Thundershaft
Warlock: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...gos&n=Valdamar

 

Chimp

In regards to the itemisation issue, I would assume they wouldn't bother looking at tweaking any T4/5 (or adding/modifying any existing random feral drops) until they were happy that the Bear form scaling mechanics were working. Once they have stopped making wholesale changes to the mechanics, i would hope they would re-evaluate the itemisation.

Heh, I guess it’s a little easier to be optimistic when its not your class on the line :p

As for Blizzards percieved roll for Ferals, I had assumed that the changes to Feral Druids were to off-set the obscene (and unsustainable) stacking of DPS Warriors in Raids. I'm sure blizzard want to continue to design encounters for 25 man raids that require varying numbers of Tanks, as it provides more flexibility to design new types of encounters. I know everyone got annoyed having to stack so many warriors for 4H, but most people tend to rate that fight as one of the most fun and satisfying encounter in the game.

So, I assume, in an attempt to stop Guilds having to fill 20% of a raid with Warriors, they beefed up the capabilities of the Feral Druid to make them directly competitive with Fury/Prot Warriors.

The other interesting point was touched on in this post:
- 3% crit reduction from talents (less def required)
- 25% more HP per point of stam on gear and 25% more HP from some buffs
- Stacking agility helps DPS in cat (ap + crit if wow wiki is to believed) and Bear, with awesome returns from agi -> dodge (almost twice what a warrior gets).
- If off-tanking mobs that are less than +3 lvls no crushing blows. When not taking crushing blows, the extra armour of Feral druids really shines.
- 400% multiplier on armour means relatively small increases in armour on an item reap large gains (not sure how itemisation formula works exactly. Does 1 extra point of armour on leather cost the same as 1 extra armour value on plate?)
So fights that require someone to OT' an add for a short time during a fight (then dps'ing for the rest) Druids look like they will really fill this niche well. When I used to OT something for just a portion of a fight I know I tried to get a decent mix to ensure I would survive, but I could also contribute as much DPS as possible during the fight, but it was often pretty difficult to get enough defence & HP without and still produce decent dps.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

It seems to, yes.

This is why greens are so powerful for us, since adding an effective 500 armor for bears costs as much as 100 extra armor for warriors.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

Nightsmoke

But it still doesn't change the fact that warriors are rolling 3 crushing blow avoidance dice vs a druid's 1. Spike damage wipes raids, and warriors are have a bigger basket of avoidance tactics (not to mention better tailored gear; think +def) when it comes to crits/crushings than do druids. Increasing ones odds to not have crushings land at all, versus having them land more often for less, seems like the lesser of two evils IMO.

 

Kazanir

You're crazy.

The lack of such epics in

a) Crafting
b) Heroics
c) Karazhan
d) Gruul's Lair

combined with Blizzard's awful history at this stuff and their current shitty itemization across the board has pretty much destroyed my faith. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that while all of the Tier 4 instances are lacking such epics, that the Tier 5 group will magically contain them.

 

◊ Kytrarewn

Blizzard's awful history indicates that they itemize oddly based on instance. Think about MC feral gear (bracers and maybe ACL gloves before +skill was "discovered"). BWL: Malfurion's, Taut Dragonhide belt/shoulders. AQ40: Feral Heaven. Naxx: Ghoul Skin Tunic, 4H leggings.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if TK was feral heaven.

 

Shiftir