Mistaya

I went to bed last night with 21k armor and I woke up this morning with 30,500.

Today was a good day.

Yeah Gruul is broken. After two attempts with all our melee getting hateful'd to death and having no idea why I slapped on bear gear, joined our prot war hateful tank and it went down without a hitch. I don't know if its a glitch because it works perfectly fine as long as you have 1 MT and 2 OT. Who knows?

 

Feorthas

Wow; I was happy to get 3000 free armor, getting 9k is a TON.

 

Zeln

Even if Gruul is broken, I always found that playing around the edges of his hit circle got rogues killed. After I swapped to standing pretty much directly in the middle of Gruul's model rogues rarely would die. We're going there tonight, so I obviously don't know about the hitting person number 3 yet.

 

Tierce

So I'm trying to socket the healing gear I've picked up from Karazhan now that it's been upgraded, but since I haven't been doing the healing thing, I really don't know what the best gems are for druid healing. Was hoping somebody could bring me up to speed or point me to a good resource. I've got several blue sockets and a yellow socket. I'm Tanking spec'd and don't heal very often, just keep the gear around in case.

Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?

 

Jini

I'm a fan of Royal Nightseyes (9heal, 2Mp5) for Blue and Red Sockets. Dazzling Talasite (4Int, 2Mp5) would be my choice if I wanted a yellow. Teardrop Living Rubies (18 heal) are a decent alternative for Red sockets.

 

dukes

Anyone other than me think that dodge/armour is rather excessive? :p Inspiration is up, but other than that there's no "short term" buffs on there that you could expect to not regularly (imp LoH/trinket activations)

Currently raid buffed (with GoA) I'm running around 31.5k armour and 54% dodge. Pretty silly really! Check the crit chance too - that set of gear is actually pretty good for DPS too. For anything that I don't tank all the way through, I swap thoriumweave cloak for Razor-scale and the heroic badge ring for the feral shapeshifters signet (more threat/more dps).

If I had the time, I'd go and get a Badge of Tenacity, which would give me ~33k buffed armour.

 

Mistaya

Alright here's a math question that's probably going to make me sound like an idiot.

My warrior friend in his tank gear has 16k armor and is sitting at 60-61% DR.

I have 30k armor and am sitting at 74-75% DR.

He says with defensive stance he's at 70% DR. I didn't think it worked that way but he's pretty adamant about it. Is he right? If warriors can get so close to the DR cap at 75%, what's the point of druids having retarded armor values? I shouldn't have to get double his armor for 5% DR... I thought the whole point of our armor value was to mitigate the crushings we are forced to eat. It doesn't really change anything but I feel a lot less useful if this is so.

 

Boevis

He's very much incorrect. Defensive stance is multiplicative with armor's DR, so he effectively has 1-((1-.6)*.9) = 64% DR. Block occurs after DR though, so depending on the boss they can have anywhere from an effective +1% to +10%.

Druids aren't really meant to be the better physical mitigation tank. We are gimmick MT's, and superb OT's due to our threat.

 

• Falk

This one warrior was pretty adamant about that too, and I asked him, "So what happens if you theoretically had 95% mitigation from armor? Does your 10% from defensive stance put you at 105%, effectively healing you every time you take physical damage?"

His reply was along the lines of "That's why it's capped at 75%" before proceeding to call me an idiot.

Edit: To be more on topic... 32k armor and ~40% dodge (buffed, GoA) is now a total beast on heroics where crushings rarely happen.

While experience in 2.1 is still pretty limited, my gut feeling says druids currently make the best heroic tank, a toe-to-toe physical mitigation tank for 'stable' content (i.e. when the raid, especially healers, are used to the fight thus not requiring pots/healthstones/last stand-esque oh-shit buttons) and awesome low-rage offtanks.

For pushing new content, though, a warrior is still always the better choice.

 

Tasonir

It seems to me that armor is very plentiful now, and that does concern me. It means that either the armor formula or cap needs to be changed in order for us to continue, as we always have been, the "armor" tanks.

I doubt that the 75% cap will move higher than ~33k it is now, and I also extremely doubt they'll raise the cap over 75%. Either would make the armor druids get from progression a viable upgrade path.


The only other option is to swap out more and more pieces for dodge gear, keeping yourself near the cap. As your armor pieces get upgraded, use less and less "armor" pieces and more dodge pieces. This would make druids much more spiky in the long run, and since we already take crushing blows, I'm a bit worried. I really hope something is changed with the cap, but...not holding my breath, I'm afraid. Anyone want to start spreading the word and rally support for an 80% armor cap?

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I'm not sure why there's a cap on armor as it stands. You could never get enough armor to get like 90% reduction or anything.

Though to be fair it's consistent with the reduction from resistances, but inconsistent with avoidance since that's completely uncapped.

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

 

◊ Ulfgar

It probably is worth noting that our mitigation in raids is less than shown on the tooltip because of the fact we're fighting mobs of level 71-73 a lot.

But yeah, armour got a massive buff in the patch, more so than I'd really been expecting.

 

Kink

I went from 21k armour to 27.5k armour. I am also at 24.5k life unbuffed and I am sure I was lowere than that before >.<

Having not logged in to my druid for a while I cannot be entirely sure of the stat upgrades. However I noticed everything seemed quite a chink higher than it was, so no complaints from me at all.

I really have to say that I once again feel a bit over powered against melees in PvP though. Rogues are once again a total joke to kill (with the above stats, my mangle still crits for 1400+).

I can understand the reason now behind the armour multiplier nerf, as well as the +health to bear form nerf. Originally everyone thought it was because bears were overpowered, but now it seems that bears were fine, but they had no gear progression.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.
The only problem is, it's often an incoming train.

 

Liar

24.5k HP and 27.5k AC at the same time? Would love to see your gear (and if you are uncrittable and have enough dodge etc).

 

Lavode

Fairly sure that was a typo- I have a 27300 armor/14k life/35 % unbuffed dodge or so setup now, all with heroic/kharazan/grulls lair loot. this isnt excessive for this stage in progression, like it was when I had similar stats in quest greens.
It /is/ rather monstrous when applied against melee in lesser gear, (had a very silly undead rogue in blues duel me.. after all his cooldowns were blown I was at 60 % and he was at 0) but.. one of the entire point of the arena system is that if I seriously pvp I wont be going up against people I massively outgear, right? or indeed, rogues silly enough to pick the bear as the first target.

 

◊ Oggie

Pace what is said here Mistaya, going from 70 to 75 DR is deceptively huge: 16.7% less damage on all hits means that (unless I did my back of the napkin math wrong) assuming the warrior never gets crushed the druid will still take considerably less damage.

I realize this is very rehashed material, but just because the % doesn't go up much....

Btw, I'm actually shocked that druids are hitting the AC cap already (or getting close). I really thought that they wouldn't let that happen so soon...kinda lowers the utility of AH/Inspiration/impLoH, and that's a shame. Maybe later in BT that we haven't seen there's some stacking -ac buffs or something?

 

Monsanto

My guess is that it would be to stop druids from being able to farm lower level instances for cash while having 100% damage mitigation through armor. You could aggro the whole instance and just swipe spam all day.

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

 

dukes

I think it's more a design decision - it allows druids to hit the cap without having to wear a full tanking set - means their OTing set is much more effective because you can use a decent amount of DPS gear along with the tanking gear.

It does mean theres a slight imbalance in PvP against physical damage classes, which is kinda stupid.

 

Lavode

I have a 27300 armor/14k life/35 % unbuffed dodge or so setup now, all with heroic/kharazan/grulls lair loot. this isnt excessive for this stage in progression, like it was when I had similar stats in quest greens.
It /is/ rather monstrous when applied against melee in lesser gear, (had a very silly undead rogue in blues/greens ask for a duel at the auchindon stone... after all his cooldowns were blown I was at 60 % and he was at 0) but.. one of the entire points of the arena system is that if I seriously pvp I wont be going up against people I massively outgear, right? or indeed, rogues silly enough to pick the bearform druid as the first target.

 

Cronjob

I totally agree with that, rogues cant burn me down fast enough and they blow every cooldown they have in their attempts. However the flip side of that is that all that armor does nothing against a fear kiting Lock or a mage and even maybe a good pally.

So in th end I think it balances out. While we might be stronger against one set of classes we are weaker against others.

 

Liar

In all honesty, who of us is PvPing in full tanking gear in Arenas? I for sure don't because I need the AP/Crit and mana to change roles. After all you can't tank Rogues in PvP.

 

Tierce

I definately don't pvp in full tank gear, I don't think many do. I've seen several complaints on the WoW boards since the patch (many by fellow druids /boggle), and I think most players don't understand that it's the gear that has changed, not the class. The class isn't unkillable, overpowered, whatever, there are just better gear options. Other survival classes can stack survival gear too and be equally hard to kill, but they have to sacrifice the same DPS and flexibility as we do if we choose to wear tank gear for PvP.

Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?

 

Boevis

Well, I'm sure we can get to 45k armor with Inspiration.

vs Level 73 mobs, 80% DR would require 47900 armor. Assuming imp Devotion, Mark, Defense Potion (550), and ~300 Agi ... you'd need 37500 counting those buffs to get to 80% with Imp Lay on Hands.

 

Cronjob

Well not in arenas but in world I actually do switch to tank gear. /blush for druids and some warriors

Mostly because I have so much health and armor and I know I can simply out last them. I usually start in cat to get my bleeds in then go bear and watch them bleed as I absorb their shots. Especially now with the armor buff. I've dueled rogues several times and for me I have better success with tank gear and starting in bear. If I do kitty gear and start in kitty they usually find me first before I see them. Then its a matter of stun lock and blinding and I am toast. In bear form with tank gear on they burn every cooldown and still cant get me down so I outlast them.


For mages and warlocks I keep kitty gear on because I need the crit and AP to burst damage them down.