I'm sure Blizzard's itemization team has noticed now, how incredibly difficult it is to make anything, idol or talent, that affects Mangle, due to the dual nature it serves from bear v cat.

In cat, we're actually rewarded for using it as infrequently as possible, simply because the only reason we need it up, is to Shred for the significant gain. On the flip side, for bear, we're rewarded by spamming it, due to the absurd threat that Mangle produces.

How then, do they itemize for this? Not just Mangle, but any of our abilities. I think this is the corner they've found themselves in. [Idol of the Raven Goddess] is an amazing example of items done right, as it's catering to no specific ability, no specific trait, yet it's still keeping the essential principles behind the relic slot; something unique to the class, and slightly out-of-the-ordinary.

We need to see more of these. Something that isn't grossly overpowered, yet any druid, regardless of spec or group/raid role, can equip. I'd be happy with an epic version of IoRG, even if it was an 2-3 rating/5-7+healing increase, or perhaps something that effectively adds 1/3 of a talent point (as IoRG does) to each of our trees, yet only those specced into X tree can really take advantage of the Idol's effect.

Idol of Not-Sucking
Your Shred and Mangle abilities ignore 320 of your opponent's armor.

Another Idol of Not-Sucking
Your Mangle ability also increases your attack power by 170 in Bear Form and 220 in Cat Form.

These took my less than 1 minute to come up. When Blizzard designs idols, they obviously don't do any in-depth analysis in regards to the amount of threat/dps that it will increase. Why else is the heroic badge idol still the best one in the game? Why is a iLvl 141 idol essentially worthless for anything but farming? This can be applied to other gear design decisions: Why is 2piece T4 the best set bonus in the game?
This extends to nearly every piece of gear in the game, Morogrim DPS sword with armor, warrior T6 with agility, Archimonde dropping priest pants without any spirit, etc, etc.

Sadris, neither Idol really addresses the whole tanking neededness. (Inventing words ftw) Something that addresses that we cannot advance past 75% mitigation would be nice as we are capped on armor mitigation half way through tier 5. Another "oh shit" button would be an amazing help for tier 6 tanking as that is what we are lacking and it hurts.

Which will never happen. There is a reason Blizzard nerfed the Idol of Health, Life Giving Gem, etc. etc. They do not want scaling items. So the only other option is static increases to existing abilities.

Why not an Idol that gives you +x Stamina in Bear, +X Strength in Cat and +Intellect in Caster? Obviously that is an item designed after HotW and it doesn't scale so there should be no problem with the implementation.

Or what about a dodge rating Idol modeled after Feral Swiftness? Guys, it's not that we don't have mitigation talents in our Feral tree to model Idols after, it is just that Blizz chose to give us even more idols modeled after threat talents.

I like the idea of the Idol of the Raven God, and Liars' idea would also be great, but if it was adds 9 stam, 9 str and 9 int... i'd be saying the exact same thing about Liars' idol as I am about IotRG: i like the idea.

The reason Everbloom and Brutality are used so extensivley by ferals is because we have all done the maths, and figured out which idol is the best for our dps/threat (as well as there are trvially easy to get). Unless the numbers on the cool idea idols actually make them useful, it will just be another shard for end loot/crystal for the rogues' next mongoose enchant.

I want idols that actually mean something. I want idol choices that I can match to my playstyle and talent spec. I want idols that will define my threat/dps/heal rotation. (Ok, that last one may be a bit too much) Right now, the number of useful idols/librams/totems is one for each role. Maybe that's a good thing? We know which is the 'best' and we can all aim for it, ignoring the rest.

Are you kidding me, what exactly is there to aim for? Once you get the Idol of the Avian Heart from Morose, you're done, you never have to look at another idol again. If you count Heroics as separate instances, we haven't seen an upgrade for our tanking idol in 46 instances, Wrath, Starfire, and Rejuv haven't been upgraded in 28 (Assuming you did all the non-70 instances before getting the idols)

The problem is that "The best" for many of our roles is so far from being the highest ilevel, it's pathetic. Go on Thottbot and sort them by level. The top 3 are worthless, then there's 5x 115, of which only the HT one is good (Raven Goddess got banked when I realized how useless it was for the MT group in my guild) After that, I suppose Moongoddess, Everbloom, Avenger, and Harolds are the best for their purposes, mind you, once you get past the HT one, you're out of raid instances, The Wrath and Rejuv idols are from soloable quests, and down in the "requires level 60" realm, we have the Idol of Brutality which is still the best for Bearform.

It's frustrating to have 2 items still on me from pre-BC, though I will inevitably replace my MoT with the Badge when it drops.

As said before, bears are stuck with a lv60 idol, trees are stuck with a lv66 quest reward or SL drop and kittens are stuck with an idol you get for running 3 heroics. All of this because the only way to replace these would be copying the idol and increasing the numbers - and they're already close to being "overpowered" compared to other ranged slots.

As far as I'm concerned, the relic slot should be totally revamped and just be shared +stats across druids, paladins and shamans, like wands. Then, add class-specific but extremely small boosts.
It would not be very original, but neither are any of the idols currently worth using for any class. The tankadin one from badges is basically the same as a gun which has 42 block rating on it, the elemental shaman one is equal to a wand with ~10mp5 (assuming chaincasting) etc.

Some ideas of how relics should look in my eyes:
Relic of the Tank
+25 Stamina
+10 Defense Rating
+5 Agility
Equip: Increases your dodge rating in Dire Bear form by 6.
Equip: Increases damage (and threat, obviously) done by your Holy Shield by 3.
Equip: (well, nothing for shamans I guess unless Blizzard is going to allow Shamans to tank)

Relic of the Healer
+10 Stamina
+15 Intellect
Equip: Increases the effect of your healing spells by up to 20.
Equip: Increases the ticks of your heal over time spells by 2.
Equip: Your Chain Heal will gain an additional 5 healing per target.
Equip: Your Flash of Light will generate 1 rage on your target.

Relic of Melee DPS
+10 Stamina
+20 Strength
Equip: +8 melee critrating.
Equip: Your Shred damage is increased by 4.
Equip: Your Windfury Weapon's Attack Power bonus is increased by 10, does not apply to totem.
Equip: Your Seal of DPS will increase your holy +damage by 3. (ok my knowledge of ret pallies is absolutely zero and I have no idea what they use for DPS but you get the basic idea)

Basically some stats which you could expect from a ranged slot plus an extremely small class-specific bonus. The stats should be equal to same-level wands/ranged slots with the class-specific bonuses being a replacement for being able to shoot/throw.

Advantages of this system:
- More people could use a single item. 2 classes could use tanking relics, 3 classes could use +healing/+spelldmg/melee dps relics. Current relics are usually useful for exactly one class of one spec with only one exception that I know of (Raven God for druids which funnily enough is a quest reward, the only place where people don't mind spec-restricted loot if there are options for all specs).
- The class-specific portion of any relic should not be useful enough to give any of the classes priority when it drops.
- Would give some small interesting bonuses while not being a basis to keep the relic forever when you are able to get a higher ilvl one. Like it or not but going from SL loot (druid +lifebloom healing) to SSC (druid regrowth mana cost reduction) loot should actually be an upgrade, even if the lower ilvl one has a slightly better bonus.
- Don't have to worry about stuff scaling forever and being the best forever. Even if you really like the bonus on a lv70 idol they shouldn't be good enough to make you keep it at 80 because you'll lose a lot of stats (and the stats upgrade will probably increase your DPS/healing/tanking by more than the bonus did).

Disadvantages:
- It can be hard to come up with unique bonuses which actually benefit the class but aren't too overpowered. Beginning with old set bonuses would be a good start though.
- Changing all old idols to this system would be needed which is going to take quite a lot of work (re-itemizing ~80 items to be useful for all classes).
- People don't like change and will qq. Can't prevent this and no matter what you say they won't realize that currently it's one slot where other classes get upgrades every tier of raid instances and we don't.
- In the case of tankadins, I think that it'll be extremely hard to become uncrushable without the "overpowered" Holy Shield relic so paladin tanking would need a fix. Druids can't block so you can't place a crapload of raw block rating on a tank relic without totally defeating the point of the change.

Yes, I thank you for agreeing with me so eloquently.

Having stats on Idols and reducing the specials would certainly create an upgrade path. Allowing idols with higher ilvl to be definitely 'better' than previous idols. The question begs though, why did Blizzard decide to give us set bonus items instead of stat items in the first place?

I believe they stated at the time that they wanted them to be more "flavoursome" than simple stats.

There is a possible issue that if you start putting stamina onto idols, Bears could start hitting imbalanced levels of buffed hp.

Actually, i really like that idea as whole, although i would not use the actually given item descriptions. I would prefer no stats on relics, but equip: and maybe even long-timer bound on use: effects, in order to differentiate them from Bows, Guns and suchlike.

I even agree with sharing the relics between the three classes, which only have relics slots, because it would clean loot tables a little bit. Right now, if we make a twink run or something like that in kara, and Moroes drops Avian Heart, everyone goes 'Oh damn, that piece of crap again'. Besides beeing badly designed in regard to actual healing style of most endgame resto druids (why spamming HT, which is so much worse than Paladins/Shaman spamming; idols used by our resto druids in endgame are sometimes Harods, but mostly Emerald Queen -for rolling Lifebloom- or Raven Goddess -if in MT Group-), at this point at the game most druids have found their own style of healing already, and HT doesn't play a very big part of it, sadly.

But i would tend to expect boni from idols, which are not the usual 'does X more', 'costs X less' variation. Lets look at your healing example, that is nice for evaluating your thought. Stats are something i don't like to see, this just doesn't fit with the relic idea. The first equip effect is a gerneic effect for all 3 classes. Thats a very good idea. Give one bonus to all classes, and then an additional to each of them, i really like that. The second one i would change. Expanding Ticks by 2 would mean 9 Second Lifebloom rolling... Just think about, what would mean it to Tree Druids in terms of 5SR, LB upkeep and LB efficiency. You should be sure, that every affect after the global one only effects one class/spell/mechanic to make it possible to balance it. Your third equip effect is way better, i would say, maybe a little bit to weak, but i do see the idea. The last equip effect is something, which would i look after as an designer. A mechanic, which is something not achivable by any other means, but still has a small effect on the game itself.

Raven Godess is an relic which shows another way which relics could work. One relic per class with an effect for each of the three talent trees. To offset the loot pollution, make it a token drop, which only Shaman/Paladin/Druids can turn in for the real Idol. Or don't make it a Lootdrop, but more like Atiesh. Let there be a possibility for each boss or maybe special trash to drop a 'Idol Piece', which said classes could collect, and turn in after collecting a certain numbers of pieces.

Additional advantages: Less Bag pollution. Actually i carry 4 idols with me. Avanger, Moon Godess, Harod's and Emerald Queen, changing them with macro bound spells, depending on what i actually do in the raid at this time. Mixing Idol effects would reduce the need to do so. Less frustrating while upgrading Idols. Right now its like 'Oh, it heals for 20 points rejuv more, whooping change, yeah'. If Idols would have unique abilities, it would take me time and creativity to evaluate if and how this idol could best be used.

Disadvantages, which i dont agree with: No, you don't need to change old Relics. Why should you? Introduce new ones over some time, and old one will become obsolete. Up to the new ones they will still be used and even sought after. Or maybe make only Epic Relics Cross Class or Cross Spec. I don't see any problems with need for old Relic redesign.

It means that the extra 446hp (assuming tauren bonus) from 25 stamina suddenly takes you over the "imbalanced" threshold.


No, I have no idea either. :shrug:



I wonder just what is the highest HP you can possibly achieve while still keeping 30k armour and crit immunity. I'm pretty sure it must be in the 25k region, if not more.

I demand a Paladin +stam Libram you HP-spoiled Druids =)

On a serious note, I did talk to fellow druids and they said that t4 is like the only remote tanking set druids get, what is it like beyond t4 for you guys? Itemization-wise I'm hearing random trash drops and your tier sets provide zero alignment to tanking.

Kind of harsh, but I don't know why Blizzard is taking so long to balance out PVE gear and PVP gear.

That is a ludicrous statement, and the only reason they are saying this, I assume, is due to the 4piece bonus. The Tier items, and clearly druid-oriented tanking items, are all loaded with the exact same stats: High AC, high Stam, high Strength, moderately high Agility, and in rare occassions, some hit rating. I fail to see how Tier 4 is any different than T5/6 in that sense. Yes, our Tier sets are 'missing' some traditional tanking stats, def being the most obvious, but due to talents, it's very easy for us to make up the difference in non-tier slots, and to a lesser degree, sockets.

If you have a druid refusing to relinquish the T4 4pc bonus, and you're at the end of T5 zones, then they really need a wake-up call, and start to re-examine their prioritization of tanking stats.

Yeah, the +1400 armor is nice and all. But if you really break it down, over 4 pieces, that's just +350 armor, and finally, when you divide that by "bear armor factor" you need less than 70 increase in armor per piece of armor (and that's ignoring the mitigation you get through extra agility, and the extra hp you get from stamina)

We are actually not even in SSC/TK yet, and I am the MT for our guild, and I was asking the druids about these questions (in comparison to our OT Warrior's set bonuses versus benefits/etc)

I just now looked at the T4/5/6 set bonus for Druids and I think they were referring to the actual set bonuses, could you explain to me why they are itemized the way they are? I kind of see why she was saying they are not good, and it was the actual set bonuses rather than stats.

Ultimately, are the sets geared out to where a Druid can fill the MT role or are they forever OT?

I'm asking all these dumb questions because I honestly don't know what druids are beyond the standard tanking stats.

Thanks.

Set bonuses are a weak point for druid gear, always have been.... Mainly being we haven't had any up until BC. Set bonuses are pretty mediocre on everything tanking wise, and only tier 4 has a decent dps set bonus. Other than the tier 4 bonus all account for about 2% - 3% damage increase, with the tier 4 only being slightly over 3%.

The tanking bonuses are a joke though, without any actual mitigation or survival bonuses other than 4p tier 4, I am really not impressed with that itemization.

It's a thought, I'm not saying we're there yet but imagine a stamina Idol at ilvl146 considering the Khorium Destroyer which is only iLvl 105. Great, give me another 700+ hp I don't have a problem with that, but I can imagine the screams on WoW forums already...

Remember Idols were a concession to everyone running around with Egan's Blaster, these classes weren't designed with ranged slots in mind. Sure you can put stats on Idols, but I wouldn't mind betting that something elsewhere will get "rebalanced" taking into account all the extra stats at some point in the future.

They may not have been designed with ranged slots in mind initially, but given that all of the gear we are currently wearing or will wear any time in the future was designed after the introduction of relics our gear most certainly is designed with ranged slots in mind. Any choice to start adding stats or any overall redesign of relics will likewise include the overall effect on the affected classes and balancing with unaffected classes.

I think there are two reasons why druids are prefered as OT:

1. Druids can produce more threat without having aggro (= low rage).
2. Druids make more damage than an Protection Warrior.

Druids can be used as MTs without penalty on most fights. But, compared to Protection warriors, they are much better OTs.

I have to disagree with this. There are very few encounters where I feel I can perform as well as an equally geared prot warrior, and these are pretty much limited to encounters where the boss cannot crush (e.g. Azgolar, Archimonde) or where the boss doesnt hit hard enough for spike damage from crushings to be an issue.

While I can tank most of SSC and TK adequately in my current gearset there are still exceptions, such as Morogrim, where crush immunity will always give a huge advantage. Further on in BT, basically anything past Akama, druids really can't MT effectively as an unlucky string of crushings is fairly inevitable at some point and it's just too much burst for healers to reliably react to.

The other side of it is fights where either:

a. Fights where the main burst will not be from a crushing blow, but a special that is mitigrated by armour (magtheridon's cleave is a reasonable example)
b. Fights where a warrior tank will get crushed anyway. (for us this seems to happen on Morogrim, the healers found it MUCH easier to keep me up through Morogrim than our warriors).

These fights may not be clear "druid fights" but ones where we do have our own advantages.