A -% of dmg effect on frenzied regen or even a copycat talent like last stand for it would make it usable. They change tranquility or barkskin so much, its not really that far from what they do.

An effective tanking idol could be to grant either + hit or Feral combat skill for a short period after missing a mangle.
An idol working like that could reduce the need for + hit gems and let us stack up even more on Sta/ Agility.

There's no need for hit or feral combat skill with the current system. Sure, it does help slightly.

I've thought through a lot of idol ideas but none of them seem to make sense putting in with the context of what idols we already have.

Ability buffs? +25dmg to wrath, +55dmg to starfire, +20/50 damage to mangle, +~80 damage to shred, +~80 healing to rejuve, +~80 healing to lifebloom, +~100 healing to end tick of lifebloom, -mana cost (29?) on Regrowth, +healing on HT.
Reactive ability buffs? +~90AP on mangle
Group buffs? +9(spell)crit rating/20 healing for auras.

Those are all the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

I can't really think of anything that is significantly different from the other buffs without going overboard. Sure, +5 health regen per point of rage would be nice (+500 over a full frenzied regen) but it's entirely situational, and because frenzied regen is only 10 seconds long with idols being swappable, it's another bag space used. I think that's a major issue here - if they make idols that are useful for specific (cooldown) abilities, people will swap them as required and they get a lot more value than otherwise.

As it is as a feral, I could technically be using 6 different idols over the course of a fight. Start with +mangle damage for tanking 2 adds (initial agro), swap to party buff once add one is down to make the second die faster. Shift to heal with lifebloom/rejuve idol on, swap in lifebloom end tick idol once the lifebloom is on (does it affect the end tick or the initial cast? I don't even have it so can't test). Swap to the shred idol with a macro for the +AP on mangle when using rip (rip->mangle rotation). 5-6 idols, all used usefully in a fight.

Obviously, that's a lot of global cooldowns, but it doesn't change the fact that we can get an awful lot of use out of idols if you're willing to swap them in combat for the role you're performing. If they introduce more that give specific bonuses for individual abilities, it's going to mean even more switching. It's also the reason I assume they never implemented the -10 minute cooldown to ankh/rebirth idols that they originally gave as examples when the relic system came in. It's also the reason they'd be likely to not give a fear immunity upon enrage use idol.


I also like Kink's Frenzied Regen idea (although maybe make it 1% per two rage points to 10% per tick for 5 seconds, just so that it's not quite so good in world PvP unless you plan for it) as it would actually make it useful in a number of situations without being ridiculous in PvP (and unusable in arenas because of cooldown).

I'm not certain the solution to FR should be an Idol or that idle dreaming about idols is anything but a bit of a threadjack, but I can't resist.

Idol of Regeneration
- Increases your healing from Frenzied Regeneration by up to %50 of your strength.

If the +heal value was taken accross the 10 second duration, but applied to the base heal per rage, even 200 str would bump up the conversion from 25 to 35. Given that rank 3 to rank 4 was only an additional 5, perhaps even this would be considered overpowered (somehow).

Why shouldn't Nurturing Instinct just apply in some reasonable way to FR? It does say "Increases your healing spells by up to %25/50 of your strength".

I suppose it might provide a bit more utility to druids in more of a DPS/OT setup, since str isn't really much of a tanking stat. Not sure I would find the talent attractive enough to take, even with that change.

Edit: One of the reasons for the limited effect of FR might be related to the amount of threat that a larger self heal would provide. Between it being a self heal, and the bear form threat multiplier any substantial heal starts to become a pretty large amount of threat (provided those effects are present; I have actually not tested FR and the threat multipliers).

They will not implement an Idol that has a percentage in it. They changed Idol of Health, Idol of Brutality and Idol of Savagery for a reason, they scaled at all levels from 0 to 70. But having an idol with weapon skill/hit rating/dodge, etc would be nice even though it does go against the spirit of relic design.

Another slightly off-topic request (but hey, it's Bear-tanking related =):

My fingers are killing me after tanking Morogrim last night...unlimited rage meant I was spamming Maul, Mangle, Lacerate to keep 5 stacks up and then spamming Swipe when I could and it really did a number on my poor fingers. I started toying around with some simple macros, but I'd love to see if any of the real macro-geniuses out there have any they are willing to share.

Thanks for any and all help!

/castsequence reset=6 Mangle(Bear), Lacerate, Lacerate, Lacerate
or
/castsequence reset=12 Mangle(Bear), Lacerate, Swipe, Swipe, Mangle(Bear), Swipe, Swipe, Swipe

First is general tanking on non-sundered mobs, second is tanking on sundered mobs (if you really want to keep lacerate stacked, that is). I don't use either, but they could be useful if you find it that annoying to have separate buttons for everything.

Theres no need to keep lacerate stacked btw. The threat generation from the DoT part is pitiful (something like 15 threat per 3 seconds with 5 stacks). If you find swipe is better, just use that.

/castrandom Lacerate, Maul

That should also work as a single button to spam when mangle is on cooldown (replace lacerate with swipe if you prefer).

I can't really think of any more that are applicable.

Lacerate is a static 285 threat against a mob, plus damage done *0.2. Swipe is direct damage based afaik (1 point of damage = 1 point of threat).

This means you need to do, on average, 300 damage per swipe (slightly less possibly) to be able to do more threat than with lacerate:

No sunders (approx): 40% reduction, 30% crit -> 300 = x*0.6*(1+(.3*1.1))
Sunders(approx): 20% reduction, 30% crit -> 300 = x*0.8*(1+(.3*1.1))

X = ~375 damage without sunders, ~303 damage with sunders.

As far as I can find, swipe scales with 7% of AP added to the 84 base on rank 6. This means you need:

No sunders: 375 = x*0.07 + 84
Sunders: 303 = x*0.07 + 84

~3200 AP with 20% reduction, or ~4150 AP with 40% reduction. It depends on the amount of armour reduction you can get, anyway. Take it as a rule that if you aren't getting ~225 non-crit swipes, it's probably better using lacerate.

In a rage limited situation, this is amplified further. Lacerate is 13 rage while swipe is 15. As soon as you get a second target, Swipe will be almost as good on the main target and still produce comparable threat on the secondary target.

And yeah, GCD is 1.5 for everything but Cat/Rogue (1 second) or with bloodlust/heroism (1.2 normal and 0.7 rogue/cat)

I would disagree with you here, since swipe has 3x the chance to get a primal fury proc.

How does that change what I said? Single tanking, lacerate is better unless you're at some ridiculous AP value (~3.5k, which is possible in the DPS group with half/half gear but still hard to obtain). Multitanking, Swipe is better.

Primal fury only has a chance to proc per crit. With 1 target, that's still only one chance, and with 2 or 3 targets, it's 2 or 3 times. Doesn't change anything,

Block is generally ~7%. Blocking lacerate removes the whole component (or 7% total), blocking swipe blocks approximately 50% of the swipe (assuming swipe=lacerate threat, for arguments sake) or 3.5% total swipe threat. The difference isn't that remarkable (it lowers the threshold by about 15 damage on swipe, or ~200 AP worth). If you're offtanking it has no effect as you can't be blocked from behind.

Obviously it has more impact in a direct sense because of burst threat generation. I still generally use the rule that if 1 mob, lacerate, if more use swipe. I might change that on things like VR if I'm in the melee group though after working this out properly.