◊ Lord BEEF

Discuss druidic things here

Please keep posts constructive

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• Zyla

ooo a tasty new thread ^_^.

First order of business:

Feral: New Fury Warrior?

Seems to me that this is the way they're pushing our spec.

 

• Crowbite

Only not so much because then we would be stealing fury warrior jobs and they can't heal soooo....

Anyway, all the druid concerns stem from the crap that is the tier 4/5 gear. Honestly, I'll take these nerfs if they throw some real gear upgrades in the tier stuff. Hell, I'd even trade a few of these nerfs if they let enrage make you immune to fear.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Blizzard is re-evaluating the raid gear in general. I think the best thing we can do is to encourage them to adjust the feral set to be very specific for improving tanking, and not just the same 'all stat' gear but at a higher item level.

I think most druids would agree that they'd rather have a consistent source of tanking upgrades, and have dps upgrades be the scarcer items as non set drops, crafted items, and stolen rogue gear.

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

 

• Zyla

Sounds like the most reasonable request. Or simply to just add another set thats pure tanking gear. The feral sets offered seem to be useful for one thing only, PVP, and there's the gladiator set which is better for that purpose as well.

 

• Playered

I'ld agree that a Cat, and a Bear set would be ideal instead of a pure stats no mods powershifting set with no real use.

If im on a fight where I have to Tank, DPS, and Heal - then I will just wear a mix of the best tanking gear, followed by decent dps & healing items rather than try and find 1 item for each slot which does everything and most of the time fails.

However I spose asking for even more than we have will just bring on more whines from Mages and Warlocks and Hunters who only have 1.

Alternativly they could simply remove the Int / Spi from the set and invest it in Armor, and Ratings:

Greaves of Malorne
342 Armor
+38 Strength
+28 Agility
+33 Stamina
+17 Intellect
+16 Spirit

into

Greaves of Malorne
392 Armor
+38 Strength
+28 Agility
+33 Stamina
+8 Hit Rating
+15 Crit Rating

 

• Zyla

Why not put in +armor gems that work as base AC? Then practically every socketable item can be made into tanking gear, which correct me if I'm wrong, is the entire point of socketing to accomplish things like this.

 

Kazanir

Ok. I'm going to re-create our Tier 4 set as a set designed for tanking but still quite good for cat form, taking into account the nerf to our damage (i.e. it needs a bunch of Str on it.)

Posting the list in a sec.

Edit: Has anyone else realized how WOEFULLY under budget the Tier 4 feral set is? I'm coming up with an ilvl of 93 for the current gloves...

 

Melthar

The beautiful part is that T4 isn't changing at all on current test server, so will still be such.

 

Kazanir

A proposed Tier 4 set designed for good tanking ability and also reasonable cat-form DPS:

Gauntlets of Malorne, Epic, ilvl 105
Leather, 408 armor (+200)
+29 Str
+25 Agi
+34 Stam

Headdress (Stag-Helm? come on) of Malorne, Epic, ilvl105
Leather, 421 armor (+150)
--Red socket
--Meta socket
--+4 Agi socket bonus
+32 Str
+32 Agi
+45 Sta
+15 Hit rating

Mantle of Malorne, Epic, ilvl 105
Leather, 430 armor (+180)
--Blue socket
--Blue socket
--+3 Hit rating socket bonus
28 Str
23 Agi
38 Sta
+13 Hit rating

Greaves of Malorne, Epic, ilvl 105
Leather, 442 armor (+150)
+38 Str
+33 Agi
+55 Stam

Breastplate of Malorne, Epic, ilvl 105
Leather, 483 armor (+150)
--Red socket
--Blue socket
--Yellow socket
--+3 Hit rating socket bonus
+31 Str
+36 Agi
+50 Stam

See how easy it is to create great bear gear that is also reasonable for cat form DPS (in addition to very survivable?) The key is to note that Crit and Dodge rating are both quite inefficient for us compared to Agility (in cat and bear, respectively) and so the only rating we really need (in both forms!) is Hit. An even mix of high Str and Agi gives us maximum returns on our item budget (like the old AQ40 leather) for both threat in bear and overall cat DPS output.

 

• Playered

The whole set is an ilvl of 93-97 for pretty much every class

And just like warriors, bear tanks need -some- hit rating.

And your set is more of a Tank>DPS set in which case it still fails.
It should be more 50/50 or a different set for each.

 

• Whiteknight

I'd like armor gems for my warrior too.

Honestly, it seems like a great way to design hybrid class set gear is to simply load them up with sockets and leave the decisions up to the players. Put spirit on your druid set if you want it, or armor, or more stamina...

 

• Playered

Indeed but that would conflict with Meta Gems for hybrids and be hard to control.

 

Kazanir

I think pouring the int/spirit/crappy ratings I took off into Stam is a worthwhile trade, even for cat gear. It is much more geared to bear certainly, but there is something about a lot of survivability in cat via Stam (for PvP and PvE) that is appealing, and would differentiate us from the more glass-cannon rogues.

 

Shiftir

One thing I'm wondering is, if they're going to homogenize our stats, health, and mitigation to the point where we're no better than warriors on those issues, where's my feral parry, paw block, talent to make frenzied regen swiftmend (instantly consume all rage and convert it to 25 health/rage), and make it a dual 41 point talent for all I care, but give me improved bear form that reduces all damage taken by 10%. Then you can cut my armor multiplier so that I have no more armor than comparably geared warriors, because I'll be able to parry, I'll be able to block, I'll have shield wall and last stand.

But they don't appear to want to do that, they like the fact that bears are different, they just seem determined to ensure they're inferior. The truism though is that outside of 5-man pugs and stupid soloing tricks, being an inferior tank generally means you won't be tanking.

The other problem is a lot of druids don't seem to care about tanking; they're happy as resto or think that doing sub-rogue dps with all the downsides of being in melee range as a cat and being able to pop and innervate someone makes them a unique snowflake. These folks are inferior dps, will soon be inferior tanks, and can't heal for beans because they're not resto. Yes, I love sucking at all my roles.

I know I'm not the only one pondering what to do with my druid if this hail of nerfs goes through - my warrior is almost 64 and I'm thinking if I can't beat em, I'll join em. Why play hard mode when Blizzard clearly isn't going to support it with itemization?

 

• Daboran

I mentioned this elsewhere, but it seem to me that the best move to give Druids true flexibility would be to swap SotF with Savage Fury in the tree.

It's now possible to gather an offtank set of gear and tank efficiently (only 415 defence required) with a Feral/Resto (~30/~30) build. Voila - you have a healer with adequate raid offtank ability and decent healing for the price of a gear swap. Keeping SotF at 3 points makes sense as it's a pretty powerful talent - you may have to move Imp Shred or change it but I don't think so - Shred is hardly an imbalancing move in PvP -Imp.Shred is more a PvE talent.

If you want to go the "Fury Warrior" or "Tank" route you invest deeper in Feral and give up the healing utility in favour of damage and better tanking talents (as it should be for balance reasons).

Of course yet again it boils down to Feral itemization to make this feasible too.

 

Tuftears

I foresee the future of druid itemization being armor pieces with zero stats and 20 sockets. Druids will be jewelcrafters!

Anyway, on a more serious note, I'd like to see druids get something experimental and different, not be watered down versions of warriors. It should be easy to point to a fight and say, 'a druid would be better here', then at another fight, and say 'a warrior would be better there'. As it stands, it's not at all clear now.

Giving swipe a threat multiplier for instance, made druids obvious choices for pulls with several mobs. Now that the swipe multiplier has been removed and warriors have Thunderclap usable in defensive stance, warriors have become the one-size-fits-all choice.

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

Chimp

Very true. Although the hypothetical gear listed above seems like it would definately be very nice for both forms, as it makes great use of the generous returns on armour/agi/stam ... obviously armour being the easiest way for blizzard can get the 'most value' out of the itemisation points available to ensure the gear is useful for both cat and bear.

Would Feral Druids prefer to completely ignore int/spirit on all their gear? I would have thought even relatively small amounts of each would be incredibly useful for the occasional clutch heal (to save yourself or another raid member) ... or even just switching forms a couple of times when sudden need to OT / BR /innervate arises.

 

CD

I totally agree but for that to work we'd also need to be able to hold aggro without Mangle- meaning Maul would probably need to be buffed again.

As things stand we need 33 Feral as a minimum for adequate durability in a raid setting (Even just for offtanking). That means we can't get any tier 7 talents from the other trees and it seems a bit like telling DPS/ Prot warriors they need to miss out on MS or 5/5 Flurry if they wish to offtank.

 

CD

Some Hybrid items would be good but we already have those available- Moonglade, pvp stuff, random leather epics from heroics. We desperately need some pure feral sets now and maybe ZA/ T6 instances could give a mix of hybrid and pure feral upgrades at some stage in the future.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I hate it on my tanking gear, but I actually like it quite a bit on my dps gear. For example I absolutely love the moonglade set pieces. Generally I'll just pop out to heal the main healer if they've taken damage but they still need to keep healing the tank.

That said, I'd easily give up moonglade for high armor / solid dps items like the examples posted in this thread.

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

 

• Exewut

I actually prefer some spirit/int on my dps gear.
Perfect example is Netherspite. Do one transition, run and shift out to heal some raid members while the healers regen, and shift back in. With enough spirit you can do this every transition and make the healer's life a lot easier.

But then again, if I had to choose between T4 gloves and Windslayer wraps, I wouldn't have to think long.

 

Boevis

There's a big difference between a couple pieces with int, and the 74 that is on Malorne, especially when you consider that the gloves have no agility, and the entire set has only 124 stamina (the "best blues" for the same slots have 183 sta with the same number of sockets)

 

◊ Greenexile