Bezayne

Supposed my druid would indeed get to dodge levels as high as that, pray tell how am I supposed to hold aggro? Dodge = no rage = no threat building. I would have to rely on mangle solely as I would need so skip mauls to get at least some rage from auto attacks. I am sure the dps would love to sit picking their noses while I show them how good I can dodge.

 

Wons

Warriors and Druids... it aint much different if you look on the stats on them.
Me and Our druid buffed up for fight.
He had 20k Hp i had 18k Hp.
He had 47% dodge i had 44% avoidence.
About the AC he had little more then me, like 10-15% and that defence stance makes up for. I'm on about 18k Armor with stoneshields. Then i havent counted like Priests proc they can get with more armor or paladins buff from Lay on Hands.
The AC is not that much of a problem when the warrior can use stoneshields and get other buffs from raid.

Our guild have allways liked to have Warrior tanks for the simple reason they have Last Stand that can save them from dieing, and also on the enrage face they can use Shield Wall wich is good then the healers can focus on something else for a short while.

The major disadvantage for druids is that they cant take potions in feral form. It means they cant have Stoneshields up during the fight.
The second disadvantage they have is that they dont have shield block. Means they will get crushed alot more. And for you that says shield block have its failor, but what i get crushed like 1-2 times per boss. 90% of the time he dont get in more then 2hits within the 4 seconds.
The third disadvantage they have is that they dont have any "life saving" spells. While warrior have Last stand they can use when they are near death situation. Warriors also have Shield wall they can use on near death situations or time em for the enrage face. I would say most healers like when they hear tank poping shield wall on the enrage when healers are on low mana.

The aggro has never been any problem. Not if the tank know how to play.

But i can say one thing, druids is best tanks when it comes to trash.

 

Zacara

Well, this is of course only something which can be utilized if the tank survival/mana is an issue instead of aggro building. Avoidance has the huge advantage of scaling exponentially as opposed to armor which scales in a linear fashion. With the current gear available it seems as if druids will move from the high armor/stamina machine which pre-TBC and early TBC shows to a high avoidance tank unless they re-itemize the feral sets at tier6 level.

And on the other issues posted here, I would agree that multiple attacks is probably one of the most troublesome mobs a warrior can face. I felt the same thing against the Prince in Karazhan. His flurries of attacks could be really nasty when you get that unlucky string of crushing/hits all the way through, this is something which will gradually become less promininent once the tanking gear reaches overall higher levels of avoidance.

What surprises me is that it is already now possible to reach 50% percent avoidance in tanking gear. We saw that when the gear was nearing those numbers in pre-TBC WoW they stopped itemizing +dodge tanking items and focused alot more on block. Something I myself interpreted as if they didn't want to see tanks reaching 60-70% avoidance.

 

slitz

This of course assuming you have BoS, which a lot of guilds don't have yet. I personally have to work my ass off in order to stay over the warlocks / shadow priests in threat since you simply can't afford putting a shaman with all of them for threat reducing totems.
While this may or may not be a none existing issue for most alliance raiding guilds it's still a issue that tons of horde guilds have to deal with on a daily basis, so simply discounting it isn't such a good idea.
Of course in a fight like Maulgar where adds need to die first it doesn't matter, but not every single encounter include irrelevant threat mechanics.

 

Jayde

Druids benifit far more from Inspiration and Imp. LoH than a warrior, as they have higher values which when multiplied become even higher values. 10-15% in armor terms is a huge amount of armor advantage. Defensive Stance does not make up for it the way you think, due to it being multiplicative instead of additive.

An example, presuming 10000 base damage, 60% armor reduction on a Warrior, and 70% armor reduction on a Druid.

60% armor, 10% defensive stance: 10000 * .4 * .9 = 3600
70% armor: 10000 * .3 = 3000

With 60% armor mitigation, defensive stance is only giving you about 4% mitigation of the base damage value. As such, in my example the Warrior ends up taking 20% more damage than the Druid--which is certainly non-trivial.

Basically what you saying reflects exactly what I was saying more or less... in your comparison, the Druid has more HP, more armor, and more avoidance thus is less vulnurable to potential one-rounding should it occur.

Shield Wall is great and all, but I like being able to reliably make attempts and kill stuff without relying on a 30 minute cooldown.

Both classes have pros and cons, but honestly I think the Druid situational advantages are pretty clear.

 

Boevis

Except you just completely ignored Crushing damage, and the DR from Block/Shield Block. 375 is not an unreasonable amount to block for (I've seen posts claiming up to 500). Oddly that puts both the druid and warrior at taking 3225 damage from that attack. Except 70% is pretty unreasonable for druids, 28000 armor is not going to allow 47% dodge in the least, 25k armor maybe, that's 67.64% DR compared to the warrior's 60.08%

Oh, and Inspiration only brings out bigger numerical returns on druid armor, not on % DR. The warrior takes 5.21% less damage when inspired, the druid takes 4.68% less damage when inspired. Bottom line, warriors currently have better DR than druids.

 

Hoonboof

Warriors will be able to use Thunderclap in defensive soon. 20% attack speed reduction is more shield block coverage meaning it'll add up to in excess of 20% less incoming melee DPS. Couple that with demo shout and defensive stance, throw in our oh-shit buttons and we'll start to eclipse Druids in just about every situation soon (that is, unless the druid has a warrior clapping and demo shouting his mob -_-). We've also got a little more hidden avoidance through chance to be missed due to stacking defence than people give us credit for.

I have unbuffed;
41.5% combined dodge + parry
6.6% (515 defence) chance to be missed
25% block
= 17% chance to get a hit that could potentially crush
11.8k health
13.2k ac

So without keeping shield block up, 15% of 17% is 2.5% chance to be crushed. Raid buffed even better. We have ohshit buttons for when stuff goes tits up. We might take unlucky burst damage worse, but we take it less often and have ways of dealing with it.

Druids are better when you have loads of mana to throw at them, Warriors are better when you don't.

:goon2:

 

sulliwan

Uh no, you still have 15% chance to get crushed and a 2% chance to take a normal hit.

 

Plea

What he said, and thunder clap applies to druid too. It would be really retarded if a warrior wasnt even worth a thunder clap amount in a druid tank scenario.

 

Jayde

I covered crushing damage analysis in great length in my previous post on Page 5, so I felt no reason to cover it further.

In typical scenarios, Druids often take less damage than Warrior anyway, even with crushes taken into consideration.

I'll say the same thing I said to another Druid earlier: stop nitpicking about the exact values used. I picked random 60/70% numbers because the person I was replying to said he had 10-15% less armor-based mitigation. That is all. It doesn't really matter if those numbers were 40/50, 50/60, 60/70, or whatever. The point and example still stands. All things are relative.

There is little point in nitpicking Druid numbers when you use completely unrealistic Warrior numbers in your examples also.

 

Schnappi

Boonhoof, am I missing something or shouldnt it be 26.9% chance to be hit with those numbers?

Also I think you have 11.6% chance to be missed. 5% base + 6.6% from Defense. That would still leave you at 21.9% hits though.

 

Jayde

Why would a Druid not have Demo Shout/CoW or Thunderclap available to them as a MT? Typically these buffs are kept up by offtanks or DPS Warriors anyway, not the MT. I never kept Thunderclap or Demoshout up when I was trying to MT a boss on my Warrior--unless the OT died for some reason.

Both classes have hidden toys for certain situations. For instance, another reason Druids are nice on Maulgar is that they have an additional 15% (10% next patch, I guess?) chance to avoid his whirlwind, as it is an AE attack and affected by Predatory Instincts. But, those kinds of special cases can more or less be ignored for a general anaysis.

As the others stated, you still have a 15% chance to be crushed. Crushing blows are the last thing to be pushed off the combat table.

 

Hoonboof

Well shit, I should have spotted that.

:goon2:

 

• Umph

I think it's only the crit damage being reduced, not the AoE avoidance (I hope).

 

slitz

375 block value isn't unreasonable at all, it is however very unreasonable with 60% mitigation and while still maintaining high amounts of hit points and high amounts of armor.
With 13.4k hitpoints, 56% mitigation, (not counting defensive stance) and around 34% avoidance I shield block for 254 damage.
If I stack up block up to 450 block, I have 55.3% mitigation, 465 defense, 26% avoidance and 12k hit points.
If I want 375 block value, I simply won't be able to keep up my crit immunity, my rather high hit point pool nor will my avoidance be on par. It's not as easy as it sounds to just stack up with a lot of block value since you still have some critical points you need to achieve as a warrior (my own goal).
First you want the 490 defense to be crit immune, secondly, you want to have 25% block rating, third you want at least 12.5k hit points unbuffed and lastly you want at least 35% avoidance.
These numbers doesn't come for free, not even shield block rating is trivial to get to 25% with the current itemization, so assuming a tank geared warrior with 375 block value is more a wish than a reality with the current available gear.
The numbers shown on the block value is a normal block value number for a tank that want to be able to compete with druids on the different encounters.

 

Ichal

The change in damage reduction from adding a percentage to armour value has a maximum at some value, and then decreases for higher armour values.

For 25% added armour, the maximum is around 10-11k, so for this discussion warriors should get a bigger benefit from Inspiration than druids, although the difference if probably minor.

Druids having some armour modifier doesn't matter, adding 25% is adding 25%.

 

Nathariel

Quick check. Yes it is still 15% chance to avoid AoE at the moment.

 

Jayde

That's good to know, thanks.

In regard to Ichal, my point about Inspiration was that it was being supposed in the post I was replying to that Inspiration would help the Warrior "catch up" with the Druid in AC, but until the Druid is easily capping out at 75%, that isn't really true.

If a Warrior has 12000 armor and a Druid has 14000 armor (disclaimer: totally random numbers :P) the Warrior will gain 3000 armor from Inspiration whereas the Druid will gain 3500 armor from Inspiration. Obviously, the armor gap increases by 25% as well, meaning that the Druid pulls further ahead.

Although the formula for mitgation% on armor is curved, this is to make the survivability gained per armor point linear. As, really, we are only concerned about survivability--not some magical % number--Inspiration is more benificial the more armor you have, up until you start capping out. Inspiration in my example is offering a 16.7% increase in its survivability gain on the Druid vs. the Warrior.

 

suicuique

490 to be crit immune is a given

The next 3 "requirements" are ... somehow ... dubious.
Where do you get the notion, that you need 25% flat block chance so that you can push crushings off the table by activating shield block?
It does not work that way as far as i can see.
Even with shield block active there are STILL misses/parries/dodges active.
Its just the "block" part that is expanded by a flat 75% percent points.
Your 2 blocks with enhanced blocking chance are only expended when you are not dodging/parrying/... an attack.
I'm pretty confident about that.

Or am missing something fundamental?

Care to point me in the direction to a definite shield block analysis in this regard?

Same goes to your 12.5 K HP requirement or 35% dodge+parry chance. Where did you get these?
I myself have 13K HP, am crit immune and block for 354 in my tanking gear.
Im not sure about AC and dodge but IIRC these are about 12K AC and 34%+ dodge/parry.

I disagree.

 

Boevis

Jayde, Nitpicking is necessary when you make statements the likes of which are the cause of our upcoming nerf, and which are in reality untrue. We simply do not take less overall physical damage than a comparable warrior.

If we are going to do this, lets do it right.

Warrior: Blindlabel (my guild's current MT Warrior) Base Stats
13148 Armor (12778 from armor)
13444 hp
839 Sta
185 Agi
266 Str
26.17% Block Effective 25.57%
17.10% Parry Effective 16.50%
22.61% Dodge Effective 22.01%
507 Defense (Uncritable, additional 6.28% Avoidance from Miss) Effective 10.68%
Block Value: 265

Now lets throw on some buffs.
17684 Armor (59.65% DR vs 73)
18505 HP
1201 Sta
346 Agi
460 Str
Same Block, Parry, Defense
27.76% Effective Dodge
54.94% Effective Total Avoidance
275 Block Value

Without Shield Block up, he is going to take (just so you can see my math)
(DMG*((.0465*.4035*.9)+(.15*.4035*.9*1.5)))+(DMG*.2541*.4035*.9-275)
This works out to be: (DMG*.0986) + ((DMG*.0923)-275)
With Shield Block it's simply: (DMG*.1636) - 275

Myself
4701 Armor (3915 from armor) becomes 22318 Armor in Bear
9265 HP (12999 Bear)
539 Sta (647 Bear)
393 Agi
30.67% Dodge Effective 34.07 in bear
416 Defense (Immune to crits thanks to SotF, additional 2.64% Avoidance from Miss) Effective 7.04%

Myself on Buffs
6915 Armor (3915 from armor) becomes 24532 Armor in Bear (67.23% DR vs 73)
13874 HP (19600 Bear)
858 Sta (1030 Bear)
592 Agi
48.28% Effective Dodge
Same Def
55.32% Effective Total Avoidance
I take DMG*(.2968*.3277)+(.15*.3277*1.5) or (DMG*.1710)

Maulgar hits for 20k every 2 seconds.
Warrior average: 1771.5 incoming DPS
Warrior average, shield blocked: 1498.5 DPS
Druid: 1710 DPS

Currently I take 61 less DPS than a warrior with a broken Shield Block, and I'm the one getting nerfed.

(Buffs are Kings, Devotion, GoA, SoE, Imp, Fort, Mark, Elixirs of Defense, Mastery, Agility, Strength, 20 Sta Food, Flask of the Titans, and Stoneshield on the Warrior)

Feel free to take a look at our gear on the armory if you want to make comments about the gear. http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/

 

Unraveller

Hasn't this argument been Beaten to death with the "Toughness" and "Thick Hide" analysis? In every one of these discussions, some misguided person says "Toughness gets worse the better your armor gets", and then 3 people clearly respond disproving this... How can we think Inspiration is any different? It is also a % armor increase...


Druid:
Base 24,000 armor: 69.45% reduction|||| incoming Dmg is 30.55%
Insp. 30,000 armor: 73.97% reduction|||| incoming Dmg is 26.03%

Improvement of 14.8% (difference / base)

Warrior:
Base 14,000 armor: 57.01% reduction|||| incoming Dmg is 42.99%
Insp. 17,500 armor: 62.37% reduction|||| incoming Dmg is 37.63%

Improvement of 12.5% (difference / base)

[edited: below are for level 73 values]
For interest, the maximum effective armor is 35875 (75% reduction), after that, armor ceases to increase. That would put the "soft" cap around 28,700 before inspiration.

 

Boevis