Stamina's only purpose is to survive burst damage - once you have enough stam to survive a worst case scenario, your time to live is the same unless you have enough stam to survive another melee hit. Stamina is further devalued by the way healing has been designed for this expansion - for the Nef fight, tanks are receiving on average of 4-6% overheal, meaning that for the vast majority of the time, tanks are not at full health, and any addition stam you have has literally no affect on your survivability.
On the other hand, agility is a mitigation and avoidance stat, giving crit, AP, dodge, which contributes to savage defense uptime and absorb amount (an attack that is dodged also means that SD will be up longer).
It looks as though it is confirmed that us bears will be having some threat nerfs shortly: from the 4.0.6 patch notes:
# Lacerate damage has been reduced by approximately 20%.
# Mangle (Bear Form) weapon damage (at level 80+) has been reduced to 235%, down from 300%.
# Maul damage has been reduced by approximately 20%.
# Pulverize weapon damage percent has been reduced to 80%, down from 100%.
I don't think we can be surprised with the threat nerf with the damage that bears were able to put out.
However, I'm kind of surprised that there are no survivability changes in the patch notes. I was under the impression that druids were underperforming in that department, and expected at least a token buff.
Are druid tanks doing better than I believed? The new agility focus has given us a good lead on avoidance over other tanks, but at the expense of a noticeably lower health, as well the other tanks seeming to have more reliable masteries. Is our dodge just that good? Or is our mastery actually competitive?
Has anyone actually been having problems with threat? Other than maybe at the 30 seconds mark when misdirections and tricks fall off I tend to be so far ahead of the DPS on threat that it is a complete non issue.
In fact since Cata, I can't recall ever seeing anyone pull threat at any time other than during those first 30 seconds, which you can just berserk during.
However, I'm kind of surprised that there are no survivability changes in the patch notes. I was under the impression that druids were underperforming in that department, and expected at least a token buff
Bear armor has been greatly buffed. I had little over 34k before patch, and I'm sitting at close to 44k right now (both unbufed)
I'm not sure I'm imagining things or not, but I seem to have lose a bit of HP since patch. It's not a huge amount, but normally I was able to break 150k buffed in raids (stacking agility), and was unable to do so tonight.
It looks like there´s been a bug with the old Protector of the Pack talent in that if you had that talent when the 4.0 patch came you retained it´s 12% damage reduction and 6% AP buff no matter how you spendt your talent points later. 4.0.6 fixes this bug and the armor buff compensates for the loss of those 12%. So if you didn´t have the ghost talent bug you should see a significant increase in mitigation whereas if you had it all along you propably won´t feel much of a change.
There´s a blog post here explaining it in more detail and a thread on that topic at the official forum. It´ll be intersting to see what Bashiok finds out about the issue.
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It looks like there´s been a bug with the old Protector of the Pack talent in that if you had that talent when the 4.0 patch came you retained it´s 12% damage reduction and 6% AP buff no matter how you spendt your talent points later. 4.0.6 fixes this bug and the armor buff compensates for the loss of those 12%. So if you didn´t have the ghost talent bug you should see a significant increase in mitigation whereas if you had it all along you propably won´t feel much of a change.
Not a significant increase but increase nonetheless. I went from 57% reduction to 63% reduction. that's 18% less damage taken. minus the 12% from PotP is still 6%.
It's sucks though people who had this talent lose another 6% AP on top of the threatnerf we already have.
I'm one of the ones with the ghosted PotP, so the threat nerf was significant. I actually had a situation yesterday where in a heroic, a single-target mob that I hit first with berserked mangle spam left me for an elemental shaman casting CL. I spent some time before the night's raid doing something I haven't done since Cata: reforging a few pieces for expertise/hit.
I've been one of those laughing at threat since Cata started, and it's still largely a joke for a single target raid boss after Vengeance stacks up, but I'm looking now for discussion of the best possible opening threat generation.
Is there a higher-threat opening combination than berserked mangle spam on a single FFed mob? I have 1 point in the enrage talent, and typically use it as part of my opener unless the boss hits like a truck.
(As an aside, my DPS on Cho'gall last night was a thousand less than our prot warrior MT, with roughly equal Vengeance time, and I had the advantage of not being the adds tank, so it should have been higher had things been equal. I'm used to being significantly ahead of him in DPS. Given how well-geared our DPS is getting, that's a concern for me.)
I don't think we can do anything else other than putting FF up on the pull, putting a single stack of Lacerate up for the Berserk procs (to allow more Mauls at the start, in case you are low on rage for some reason) and then Mangle spam. Even then, an unlucky miss/dodge/parry streak on the pull means that our melee simply start dying one by one.
The question that I have is is it even worth reforging a few pieces for some extra expetrise and/or hit? I am currently sitting at 1.4% hit and 10 expertise. I am really not sure that without reforging the majority of my gear I can get a high enough level to help my threat generation on the pull. I was actually even considering letting our warrior do the pull on the majority of the encounters, thinking that his threat might be actually higher than mine (the new Inner Rage might be quite useful). I am not sure why we did not try it yet, but it's probably worth a shot.
As a side note, I ran into another small problem on Conclave heroic last night. Without the extra 12% magic damage reduction the Permafrost was hitting quite a lot harder than it used to. I ended up switching my second stamina trinket out for the TB resistance one. That meant that I could use Barkskin and the trinket to mitigate almost all of the casts.
Looks like a new hotfix was just added in that rolls back the mangle/maul changes (or pretty close). Hoping this resolves the issues, especially since it'll re-buff Berserk mangle spam. From the hotfix notes:
Mangle (Bear) and Maul (Bear) damage has been increased by approximately 10%.
Aside from mangle spamming and opening with FF, it might also be safe to suggest that (when possible) you charge to your target for the Imp. Feral Charge buff. It may not seem as much, but the additional haste will allow for quick rage generation, which in turn will provide for a much more smooth opening.
I've been hanging around on the edges of the forum, and I haven't had any problems with tanking before Cata, but since I've been having an awful time with tanking. I'm still working on getting my gear up, but I'm at 339, so I'm working on it. And I've gone through this thread and am trying out the spec and glyps suggested, but I'm still trying to get the hang of it. But from what I can tell, my agro keeping-ness has fallen dramatically! So my question is if the spec suggestion that is up is still relevant to 4.0.6? Or is there another one that I'm just not seeing?
Also, on another note, I've always had problems with casters, 2 in a mob in particular (like the two casters is Thrown of Tides during Lady Naz'jar) who are opposit ends of each other. So hypothetically speaking I'm in a situation where I have no CC, and I have these two casters on opposite sides, what's the best way to tank them?
About Lady Naz'jar, if you have no real CC, you can still assign a war or a rogue to kick and stunlock one caster while the other is being nuked or you can also bash one while heading for the second, hoping your DPS can manage the first one themselves. You can also root the big naga while focusing the two casters first.
Overall, having a sheep, hex or frost trap on a caster is easier but, heh, sometimes you just don't have the right group. :/
According to the latest PTR notes, Savage Defense will be changed to:
Proc only from non-periodic critical hits
Absorb damage over 10 seconds, not just the next physical hit
Obviously the first item is a bit of a nerf, but it strikes me that the second is a pretty substantial buff, especially if we assume that it will now absorb magic damage as well (the wording of the change on mmo is a bit vague).
I would imagine that this is going to alter (increase) the bear values for mastery, crit, haste, and maybe even hit/exp, as Savage Defense will now be much less limited in its effectiveness but also will require direct white/yellow hits to proc. Any thoughts on this?
According to the latest PTR notes, Savage Defense will be changed to:
Proc only from non-periodic critical hits
Absorb damage over 10 seconds, not just the next physical hit
On live it doesn't proc from periodic ticks, it's just a tooltip change for clarity, which has been the pattern so far in this patch. Changing it to absorb all damage instead of only physical would be quite a change. The original blue posted which mentioned that they were thinking of changing it from a one hit wonder to a proper absorb didn't mention anything about it becoming all damage. Odds are the new tooltip is just vague and we'll have to wait for the official patch notes, a clarification from a blue post, or the PTR to be up for confirmation.
I seriously doubt it'll be altered to include magical damage. The way Bashiok announced this change, coupled with Warrior/Paladin block, together with the base intent of this change (to make Savage Defense not-suck on multiple mobs) leads to the fairly logical conclusion that it simply places a shield on the Druid which will absorb a set amount of (physical) damage. Rather than falling off for a single point of damage, you now get the full bang for your buck.
Coupled with the upped damage on Thrash and reduced cooldown on Swipe, this'll make Bears far more potent on multiple mob fights.
Ignorance can be solved with a book. Stupidity requires a shotgun and a shovel.
It hasn't been altered. The skill tooltip doesn't mention physical damage but the actual spell does. Nothing's changed in that respect. The spell tooltip reads "Absorbs X physical damage".
It will help with 2-3 mobs. It will not significantly help with more than that unless they hit like kittens. Maloriak adds are a good example, as they each hit for 8-10k; this means a bear will absorb two hits instead of one, but the issue is still that you can't count on absorption of most all attacks like you can with shield blocking.
It's a step in the right direction, but as long as it's a static amount of damage that doesn't scale based on incoming damage, as long as it's on or off entirely based on chance and as long as it cannot apply to all mobs at the same time, it will be a very different (and often worse) form of block. The times when it is going to be better is when the mobs hit is so low that absorption can take away significantly more damage than the 30% (or more depending) that a block can. For instance, bears are going to be amazingly good for running older content, similar to how good pallies and warriors were in WotLK with their block mechanics.
I know that the accepted notion is that the Effulgent meta trails quite a bit behind the venerable Austere, but I did some (very basic, and probably quite shoddy, for which I apologize) napkin math.
The 2% extra armor from Austere provides my bear with about 900 extra armor, or an extra 0.46% physical damage reduction.
4,351908 Physical damage * .0046 = 20018 physical damage reduced. (I was wearing an Austere gem for that encounter)
1,621324 Spell damage * .02 = 32426 magical damage reduced (Had I been wearing the Effulgent)
Do these numbers seem right to you? It seems weird to me that the "bonus" from a meta would reduce such a paltry amount of damage on a 9 minute fight.
Again, my apologies for the awful math, but if someone could point me in the right direction, I'd be much obliged!
Vengeance doesn't scale infinitely and doesn't scale with incoming damage. Given that bears are already maxed out on vengeance very quickly on bosses in this tier it's not like there's anywhere else to go.
Another way to put it is this: when a bear and a shield wearer walk into the next set of dungeons, we'll assume that they'll have upped the damaage output of those bosses. It doesn't matter how much they've increased the damage from those bosses for the paladin and warrior (and to a lesser extent the DK) - a certain % of the damage will be stopped.
Whereas for the bear to gain parity with where they are now compared to other tanks on shielding, they'll have to gain more gear. They will absorb exactly the same amount of damage in Firelands starting out as they do right now. The paladin and warrior will both block for more assuming that they're taking more damage.
Again, this isn't necessarily a broken mechanic - you can keep adjusting bear avoidance and mitigation via armor to deal with it so that all tanks take roughly the same damage for a given fight. But that's all you can do - for a given fight. If you change the incoming damage all of a sudden bears take significantly more or significantly less damage than a shield tank. Sometimes it'll be good, sometimes it'll be bad, but it'll never be balanced. It can't be.
I know that the accepted notion is that the Effulgent meta trails quite a bit behind the venerable Austere, but I did some (very basic, and probably quite shoddy, for which I apologize) napkin math.
The 2% extra armor from Austere provides my bear with about 900 extra armor, or an extra 0.46% physical damage reduction.
4,351908 Physical damage * .0046 = 20018 physical damage reduced. (I was wearing an Austere gem for that encounter)
1,621324 Spell damage * .02 = 32426 magical damage reduced (Had I been wearing the Effulgent)
Do these numbers seem right to you? It seems weird to me that the "bonus" from a meta would reduce such a paltry amount of damage on a 9 minute fight.
Again, my apologies for the awful math, but if someone could point me in the right direction, I'd be much obliged!
Here's the correct maths. Assuming you started at 45000 armor (since 2% gives you extra 900)
I'd still prefer Effulgent over Austere for Nefarian though, since the magical damage comes in large bursts that are more likely to kill you than the physical damage.
02/07/11, 12:15 PM
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