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Old 03/31/08, 6:09 AM   #2821
Phorage
Von Kaiser
 
Night Elf Druid
 
Frostmane (EU)
Originally Posted by spartakos View Post
I prefer to see the cup half full than half empty.
I still have to find a WWS where the warrior tank gets less average and max damage than his feral tank tank buddy.
Not exactly an answer but:

We killed Brutallus last night (me and prot warrior tanking) and I noticed some interesting facts. When we wiped due to tank death it was always, always the prot warrior dying (we have equal gear). Looking on meters for the kill I actually took more damage. But it was easier to heal, obviously. If there is one fight in the game at the moment where feral tanking is shining, it really is Brutallus.

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Old 03/31/08, 9:28 AM   #2822
Inaiwae
Piston Honda
 
Night Elf Druid
 
Sylvanas (EU)
Unbuffed stats for Brutallus

To druids who tank / intend to tank Brutallus, what are your unbuffed (without MotW) stats? I am curious if mine are comparable to other high-end tanks. We will try him soon, i switched agility for stamina, and i am not sure if my dodge is not way too low.

Mine are: 35500 armor, 18000hp, 40.6% dodge

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Old 03/31/08, 10:01 AM   #2823
Falk
Soda Popinski
 
Falk
Night Elf Druid
 
No WoW Account
I'd say that's more than enough.

At this point there are different reports from different guilds and I think it really depends a lot on what mitigation factors there are in a raid (Shadow Embrace, for example, is huge) as well as how the druids/warriors gear/gem and even the type of healers on the tank (Armor buffs anyone?).

For us, I took overall 10%-15% more damage than the warrior tank (and a whopping ~36% more on the kill attempt... wtb better dice) but the warrior exploded a lot more.

For warriors there seem to be two trains of thought - massively stacking avoidance to 'defeat' Sunwell Radiance (personally I don't see how it works, but it apparently... does?) or stacking a lot of stam. For druids though, I'd say still go for stamina and mitigation. We get to take more hits on average than a warrior and still survive. In the days of massive spirit regen and shadow priests, I don't think healing a tank that takes more damage overall is even an issue.

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Old 03/31/08, 10:04 AM   #2824
Daboran
King Hippo
 
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Tauren Druid
 
Twisting Nether (EU)
Originally Posted by Inaiwae View Post
To druids who tank / intend to tank Brutallus, what are your unbuffed (without MotW) stats? I am curious if mine are comparable to other high-end tanks. We will try him soon, i switched agility for stamina, and i am not sure if my dodge is not way too low.

Mine are: 35500 armor, 18000hp, 40.6% dodge
I can check later, but I believe that's about where I am too - see my post a few pages back about my proposed gear.

Remember that if your raid group composition will stand it you can afford to be slightly below the armor cap and rely on Devotion Aura to get you there, which allows you to gear slots with less armor and more dodge.

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Old 03/31/08, 10:36 AM   #2825
elvensnow
Glass Joe
 
Draenei Death Knight
 
Rexxar
Idol of Feral Shadows

I was wondering about the Idol of Feral Shadows now in 2.4. I know there was some speculation earlier in the thread but I haven't seen any real evidence backing which is better, Feral Shadows or Everbloom.

According to Rawr, without any raid buffs on other than MOTW and FF, FS is a winner. And when I add debuffs like Sunder, EB comes ahead. Now, this makes sense because of armor penetration, however I was thinking through the math and just not seeing it.

Again according to Rawr, I have approx 35% crit, and shred an average of 2.2 times per 12.8s cycle.

So using these stats, for EB idol we have:
88 dmg * 2.2 shreds * 1.35 crit * 1.3 mangle * 0.6 from mob damage reduction = 203 added damage per cycle.

For the FS idol we have:
4 CP * 4 ticks * 7 dmg per tick * 1.3 mangle = 145.6 added damage per cycle.
And for 5 CP it is 182 added damage.

So it seems to me that neither CP for the FS idol can outpace the EB. Please correct my math if it's wrong -- I'm not entirely sure about the real mechanics at play here. But for the EB idol calculation I was not even factoring in better raid buffs or more armor penetration at all, and it still looks to me like it wins on damage. And yet Rawr tells me that the FS is better. Is there something I'm missing?

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Old 03/31/08, 10:45 AM   #2826
Allev
King Hippo
 
Allev's Avatar
 
Tauren Druid
 
Mal'Ganis
6 ticks of rip, not 4.

So you multiply your numbers by 3/2 for rip, and you get 218.4 for 4CP, and 273 for 5CP.

Edited for those that don't know better: for raid DPS (if you're in a DPS group), use the flight form quest idol "Idol of the Raven Goddess". Less personal DPS, more raid DPS.

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Old 03/31/08, 10:58 AM   #2827
Falk
Soda Popinski
 
Falk
Night Elf Druid
 
No WoW Account
Originally Posted by Daboran View Post
I can check later, but I believe that's about where I am too - see my post a few pages back about my proposed gear.

Remember that if your raid group composition will stand it you can afford to be slightly below the armor cap and rely on Devotion Aura to get you there, which allows you to gear slots with less armor and more dodge.
Actually, no amount of armor is useless here (arguably even past the cap) because of the Stomp mechanic. Of course, don't gimp anything JUST to boost armor though - it's only 10 seconds of stomp vs the rest of the fight.

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Old 03/31/08, 1:13 PM   #2828
Ledneh
Von Kaiser
 
Ledneh's Avatar
 
Tauren Druid
 
Mal'Ganis
So, Sunwell Plateau. I was just linked to this spell on WoWhead by my guildies--apparently every mob in there inherently reduces my dodge by 20% and raises their own tohit by 5%.

Is this true? And if it is... fuck, I'm going to have to completely regem and reenchant from sack-o'-dodge to sack-o'-stamina, aren't I?

I mean, we're not even close to SP yet, besides maybe trash farming, but if this is what Blizzard wants I guess I should follow along, huh?

(edit) 25 != 20

(edit 2) Okay, looks like from reading the past couple pages I'm pretty much correct. Oh well, may as well just get it over with.

Last edited by Ledneh : 03/31/08 at 1:35 PM. Reason: 25 != 20

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Old 03/31/08, 2:30 PM   #2829
Deavan
Glass Joe
 
Night Elf Druid
 
Stormrage
It's really not as detrimental as you think it is. I actually regemmed to get more agi/dodge than I previously had. I find the avoidance goes a lot farther than mass stamina for this fight so long as you can stay above about 21khp raid buffed. WWS. Yea I know. 23 attempts. Bite me.

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Old 03/31/08, 2:42 PM   #2830
Astrylian
Rawr
 
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Night Elf Monk
 
Stormrage
Originally Posted by Deavan View Post
It's really not as detrimental as you think it is. I actually regemmed to get more agi/dodge than I previously had. I find the avoidance goes a lot farther than mass stamina for this fight so long as you can stay above about 21khp raid buffed. WWS. Yea I know. 23 attempts. Bite me.
The value of avoidance scales with avoidance. With Sunwell Radiance, all but the most extremely avoidance-oriented characters will suddenly get more benefit from Sta than Agi, whereas without, Agi could commonly double Sta in value. The clear picture is, as long as Sunwell Radiance is up, stack Sta. Once that buff is gone (there are rumors that it'll disappear once the gate to KJ opens), stack Sta until you can reach unhittability, then go for that.

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Old 03/31/08, 3:13 PM   #2831
Falk
Soda Popinski
 
Falk
Night Elf Druid
 
No WoW Account
Actually, I was pretty much 100% pro-stam-stacking, but after seeing practical results of warrior avoidance stacking, it got me thinking a little.

Yes, avoidance is better with more avoidance, so Sunwell Radiance definitely diminishes the value of avoidance somewhat.

On the other hand though, Stamina past a certain point does... not much, either. I'm going to say that you'll need to be able to take a stomp, plus a high MH hit, plus a high OH hit, and have over about 2k hp left as a buffer. That's 5 + 9 + 5 as a worst case, so 21k stamina is 'fine' in that sense. More stamina past that point will only add a little benefit as to being a little margin of error from not being topped up fully before a stomp, or having fewer heals land between stomped attacks. Brutallus no longer parry-thrashes, so if healers can't land heals between that and his next set of attacks, it's a problem with the healers, not the tank.

This is why I believe avoidance stacking can and does give practical results, especially for a warrior tank. If you're not going to survive a second round of combat with 3-4k extra hp, you might as well stack avoidance and reduce the chances that that second round of combat (or the first) lands.

The counter-argument, of course, is the fact that if you can go for more stamina and provide yourself that buffer, why not? So what if I'm taking more damage overall in the course of the fight? I don't die often, and OOM issues from healers chain-spamming heals for some periods of time in a fight isn't a problem nowadays, what with the regen buff and shadow priests.

Personally, like I said previously I'd still recommend going for mitigation and stamina first and foremost as a druid tank. I know I've exploded a very little of the time with how our healing is doing this fight, and I'm overall happy with my decision. We did it with 2 tanks (warrior and feral, tanking through stomp), 7 healers, and shadow embrace, for what it's worth.

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Old 03/31/08, 3:53 PM   #2832
Ledneh
Von Kaiser
 
Ledneh's Avatar
 
Tauren Druid
 
Mal'Ganis
Then I guess I'll just ask you all, since I don't really know anymore where I want to go. You can see my current Bear gear in my armory; actual unbuffed (no mark) stats:

14.8k hp
30.9k armor
42.07% dodge
uncrittable

2055 ap
32.79% crit

I've fiddled in Rawr and such things, but I can't say anything conclusive about whether or not I should regem for pure stamina or stay in my current mostly agility with a little stamina permutation.

(we're up to Teron in BT and spent all last night wiping horribly to Archimonde for our first time, for an idea of our progression)

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Old 03/31/08, 4:22 PM   #2833
Larisroth
Piston Honda
 
Orc Death Knight
 
Thaurissan
A quick question for those that have actually made it into sunwell. (we should today). Do any of the mobs crush?

If not then we do get something back from losing that avoidance. Furthermore in practice the maximum theoretical damage over any given period will be reduced.

Let's say we have a druid under the old model with 70% avoidance (dodge and miss). Then they'll take 15% crushes and 15% normal hits. for a total of 37.5% of the before mitigation damage. With the sunwell model, and no crushes they'd take 30+25 = 55% normal hits.

A high avoidance warrior with 70% avoidance (dodge, parry and miss) would take 30% normal hits outside of sunwell and then 55% inside.

Of course it also depends on the comparative mitigation, and while warriors have a superior setup, it's still close to a a wash.

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

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Old 03/31/08, 4:32 PM   #2834
Tembetyu
Glass Joe
 
Tauren Druid
 
Bloodscalp
I was wondering if anybody had done numbers on the SSO neck pieces as to their usefulness.

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Old 03/31/08, 4:38 PM   #2835
Axl
Von Kaiser
 
Night Elf Druid
 
Icecrown
Brutallus, thankfully, does not crush. It would be HI-LARIOUS if he did though.

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