Bear tank item comparisons - Page 51

Boevis · 05/25/07, 2:34 PM

Well, getting to 80% would be a long way off.

Going from my current max armor (t4 except gladiator chest, thoriumweave, umberhowls, manimal, zierhut, violet ring, badge ring, MoT, SHotM) to T6 with all the fixins that I've seen (Den Mother, Natural Power, Badge, Ring from Magth, Pillar) is an upgrade of 1190 armor = 6545 in bear with thick hide.

With all those upgrades, ie. getting the max armor possible from what we've seen, it would still take nothing less than max armor buffs (lol elixir) and the improved Lay on Hands to make you hit 80%. I really don't see why anyone would have a problem with removing the armor cap considering the improbability of it actually mattering (oh look, druids can actually tank enraged bosses if a paladin blows their 1 hour cooldown compared to warriors doing it with a 30 min cooldown ability ... )

Touf · 05/25/07, 4:13 PM

Originally Posted by Boevis

Well, getting to 80% would be a long way off.

Going from my current max armor (t4 except gladiator chest, thoriumweave, umberhowls, manimal, zierhut, violet ring, badge ring, MoT, SHotM) to T6 with all the fixins that I've seen (Den Mother, Natural Power, Badge, Ring from Magth, Pillar) is an upgrade of 1190 armor = 6545 in bear with thick hide.

With all those upgrades, ie. getting the max armor possible from what we've seen, it would still take nothing less than max armor buffs (lol elixir) and the improved Lay on Hands to make you hit 80%. I really don't see why anyone would have a problem with removing the armor cap considering the improbability of it actually mattering (oh look, druids can actually tank enraged bosses if a paladin blows their 1 hour cooldown compared to warriors doing it with a 30 min cooldown ability ... )

Uh...so basically what you want is to remove the cap until armor gets so high they have to nerf it again?

Crowbite · 05/25/07, 5:31 PM

Originally Posted by Touf

Uh...so basically what you want is to remove the cap until armor gets so high they have to nerf it again?

What he's saying is that it's not possible to get armor that high so why have a bloody cap.

Boevis · 05/25/07, 6:09 PM

We weren't quite capable of hitting 80% with imp LoH before BC came out (mostly due to shoddy itemization) but we could come close.

They'll just change the way armor works 70-80 like they did with changing it for 60-70, I'm really not expecting to ever be able to hit 80% in my gamelife.

Jayde · 05/25/07, 8:41 PM

Originally Posted by Tytal

What he's saying is that it's not possible to get armor that high so why have a bloody cap.

Because mitigation over 75% is horribly powerful.

Boevis · 05/25/07, 9:46 PM

Originally Posted by Jayde

Because mitigation over 75% is horribly powerful.

The problem with this argument is the way in which armor scales.
To go from 68.75 to 75 (a 20% effective gain) you go from 26310 armor to 35880, a 9570 increase.
Going from 75 to 80 (another 20%) you go from 35880 to 47900, a 12020 increase, 25.6% more than it took for the last 20% gain.

Considering it's very possible to keep someone under the effects of inspiration constantly, it's silly to punish feral druids for being designed as the "lol armor" class, that never the less gets crushed and always takes damage when hit, while warriors are able to bypass this 'cap' with defensive stance and block.

It won't break the game allowing druids to break 75% DR, we wouldn't magically become the MT of choice again. All raising/removing the cap would do is allow druids to actually make use the best gear available and their healers to actually make use of their talent points that they needed to spend because of warriors.

So, I managed to hit 82% dodge before 2.1 hit. I wasn't prepared for the patch to hit when it did, and was planning on doing my video in a proper raid with an Enh Shaman, Prot Pally, and multiple (4) druids in 2/5 Moonglade, and Songflower Buff to make up some of the dodge with Rejuv's and an extra 28 agi ... but, I had to settle for a Elem Shaman, Prot Pally, and 0 Druids as backup.

Went and killed Reth'hedron on Twilight Ridge, and dueled the warrior with him DW just for fun. I'll edit the boss fight with some music later, for now, here's 15 seconds of wiff.

http://files.filefront.com/loldodgew.../fileinfo.html

Mordinm · 05/26/07, 4:46 PM

Apparently they added a blue BoE trinket with 308 passive armor and 150 agi one use. Saw it on the AH for far to much but the price should drop. Seem like the best druid trinket I have yet seen.

Boevis · 05/26/07, 5:49 PM

Originally Posted by Mordinm

Apparently they added a blue BoE trinket with 308 passive armor and 150 agi one use. Saw it on the AH for far to much but the price should drop. Seem like the best druid trinket I have yet seen.

It's been posted a few times. Yeah, best tanking trinket, I may stop using MoT in favor of Pocket Watch since I don't really need armor.
Bear tank item comparisons

Cryect · 05/27/07, 5:48 AM

Originally Posted by Jayde

It is a "problem" from a certain perspective, however it is there for an extremely good reason.

If you plot the survivability gain from percentage damage reduction on a graph, you will see that 75-80% is where the curve really starts taking off dramatically. If it was possible to get up to 80% reduction (potentially stacked with other ways of reducing damage) incoming damage could easily be reduced to trivial amounts.

Consider it this way, going from 75 to 80% would be taking your existing damage intake of 25% and reducing it by 20%. With a base damage of 10000, instead of being hit for 2500, you are getting hit for 2000. That is a simply massive leap in surviability.

My guess would be that the Blizzard designers learned an important lesson from other MMOs in which percentage modification was never capped, and the tanking issues it presents at the high end of gameplay. (The game I played last, Anarchy Online, was a huge victim to this at the high end, as stack "Reflect" shield allowed tanks to get up to the meaty part of the survivability curve and raise their survival time to crazy levels.)

So, I wouldn't expect the 75% cap to go anywhere any time soon. It's kinda the border before the curve takes off.

There is no massive leap in survivability...

Armor doesn't work like Resist where every point you get is more valuable than the point before it. You need to reach 48k armor for 80% while you only need 36k Armor for 75%. So you need to increase your armor by 33% for a damage reduction of 20% this isn't exactly game breaking when you consider you are going to have to give up something to get that mcuh armor.

BTW I'm currently hitting ~40k armor w/ MOTW, Inspiration, Devo Aura, and Trinket with means still to increase my armor higher with proper gear. LOH would reach ~50k so yeah its reachable in theory.

Tasonir · 05/28/07, 5:51 AM

While I'm not quite as dedicated in getting dodge gear (I really wish I had nimble boots), I did get a depleted badge today (off a 35 shard summoned demon, if you're wondering). So I went and put on the dodge gear I had, used the use effect of the badge along with my pocket watch, and fought a dual wielding mob for 10 seconds of invincibility.

No potions, no shamans, no kings, still hit 75%. It felt great. With a raid, it could work on dual wielding mobs without the trinkets. Anything over 90% should be good enough. I think it would be a viable strategy for always DWing mobs like moroes, would be foolish on prince, etc. I wouldn't do it in a 25 man either, but maybe if you're still farming karazhan....

Now if I can just convince my guild that theorycrafting is a worthwhile use of raid time...

Falk · 05/28/07, 6:48 AM

Originally Posted by Cryect

BTW I'm currently hitting ~40k armor w/ MOTW, Inspiration, Devo Aura, and Trinket with means still to increase my armor higher with proper gear. LOH would reach ~50k so yeah its reachable in theory.

Does LOH stack with Inspiration? O_o

Jayde · 05/28/07, 9:04 AM

Originally Posted by Cryect

There is no massive leap in survivability...

Armor doesn't work like Resist where every point you get is more valuable than the point before it. You need to reach 48k armor for 80% while you only need 36k Armor for 75%. So you need to increase your armor by 33% for a damage reduction of 20% this isn't exactly game breaking when you consider you are going to have to give up something to get that mcuh armor.

BTW I'm currently hitting ~40k armor w/ MOTW, Inspiration, Devo Aura, and Trinket with means still to increase my armor higher with proper gear. LOH would reach ~50k so yeah its reachable in theory.

You're missing my point.

It's not that it's any easier to scale up to 80%, in fact it is rather hard. It's the fact that if the cap is removed and people DO get to 80%, they are massively more survivable than before.

I can almost assure you Blizzard will never remove the 75% cap for simply that reason alone. 75% is a nice point to cap percentage reductions before they become too powerful for their own good...80% is dangerous territory.

In fact, Druids really shouldn't lobby for a change like this...all it would do is get Druid armor nerfed into oblivion when max buffed Druid survivability would skyrocket in "best case" scenarios while stacking Imp LoH/Inspiration/armor buffs/etc.

Reducing your damage intake by 20% is obviously nothing you can possibly downplay. It would be HUGE for raid boss tanking. Blizzard would have to balance heavily supposing Imp LoH rotations on Druids with stacked armor if this was the case--or, alternately, just nerf Druids. I don't think anyone really wants that.

♦ Lorewanderer · 05/28/07, 3:34 PM

Originally Posted by falkon2

Does LOH stack with Inspiration? O_o

Yes.

Bovie · 05/28/07, 4:07 PM

This talk about the damage mitigation cap got me thinking. I did a quick little Excel spreadsheet comparing the amount of armor a Druid needs to mitigate a Crushing Blow enough for it to equal a normal hit on a Warrior at a given armor level. Although complete Crushing Blow immunity is still a ways off for Warriors, it is possible with Black Temple gear.

The red values represent only theoretical values, as 35886 is the cap.

So, what do you think? Is it important that Druids maintain this level of mitigation in order to continue to be serious contenders for MT, or do we have other strengths (read: larger HP pool) that make up for it?

Tasonir · 05/28/07, 5:58 PM

While I'm not exactly sure how it will turn out, as I'm not a big fan of putting on large amount of +dodge gear (something of an armor/stamina buff), but I would assume that's the intended path. Once we can no longer keep such a high armor lead over warriors, we'll have to replace it with an avoidance lead in order to keep overall mitigation equal.

Funny, because I remember (way back when) saying that warrior's high avoidance made their damage spiky, and that druids had more armor and less dodge, for more stable damage...Ah, they were simplier times.