So I rolled a druid recently because I decided I wanted to tank. I already spent all of BC raiding on 2 seperate healer classes so I felt druid would be a better choice to warrior in case I wanted to go back to healing (or casting). Anyway the point of my druid right now is just to tank.
Looking at the new top tier talents, I think I'm seeing a serious lack of thought to expanding our tanking.
King of the Jungle will be great for kitty DPS but who enrages while in combat to take advantage of the 15% increased damage?
Infected Wounds may have its advantages in some situations if mobs aren't immune and you have rage coming out of your ears to keep mauling. But generally there will be others who can keep similar debuffs up easier than us.
Imp Mangle I can't see the point of. Does anyone really have trouble generating enough threat with mangle how it is? Do people have trouble getting lacerates off before the debuff fades? The only advantage I can see if having the option of tanking 3 mobs at once and having more freedom to stick a mangle on your second and third targets without having to sacrifice the debuff on your primary one.
Primal Aggression will increase our maul damage by 10% which would be useful for when you are rage soaked and desperately need more threat than mangle lacerate/swipe can put out. But really how often is this? And even so in this situation normal maul would be fine.
Berserk is the only worth while tanking talent I can see. Obviously the 30% extra health for 'oh shit' moments has been long needed and the ability to break yourself out of fear is a no brainer. I get the distinct impression that Blizzard may be focusing bears to be the master of tanking groups of 3. Shift and enrage for some range and pop beserk and pull. You have increased health to take the initial attacks and can open with a maul that will hit all 3 for snap aggro. Maybe pop a second maul if you can and start swiping, put up mangle on targets with imp cooldown.
Looking at the current tanking specs and proposed WOTLK tanking specs they seem very much the same besides some points spent in seemingly PVP/Kitty primed talents just to get Berserk. Its like most of the top tiers of feral is made to improve your ability to DPS in a hybrid build or to PVP but not giving us enough points to properly do it.
I can`t really see your point. Mangle/Maul are your best single target TPS sources and both get improved. Together with Primal Precision we are king of single target TPS like at the start of BC. Enrage give a good starting TPS boost and against casters and low hitting mobs its nice to have. Hitting 3 targets with mangle/maul while berserk is active is more a gimmick, perhaps its useful in pvp when focused, while tanking i would activate berserk only as an oh shit button and nothing else.
One of the best changes for tanking is the change in Survival of the Fittest.
I can see Berserk proving very effective for Aoe tanking. Perhaps not quite on par as a prot pala, but cycling mangle and maul on different targets while spamming swipe should easily mean we could keep around 9 mobs glued to us at least. I believe the cooldown for Berserk Bear is quite short, in the region of 3 mins. This would still allow it to be used as an "oh shit" button later in a fight.
Berserk is on a 5 minute cooldown last time I checked the talent preview; it may have changed since then.
First impression about the feral tree is that it feels really bloated to me. There are a lot of nice talents, but they are really spread out. Right now I think I'm still debating between Improved Mangle (useless for bear) and Savage Fury....Basically comes down to which is better, increased cat mangle damage, or reduced energy cost on mangle.
Together with Primal Precision we are king of single target TPS like at the start of BC. .... One of the best changes for tanking is the change in Survival of the Fittest.
Poor itemization, overscaling and needing less to get to the defense cap/crushinging immunity lead to druids being kings of tanking and threat early in BC. With tanking and itemization getting reworked, i wouldn't be too sure about regaining the "king" spot again.
Poor itemization, overscaling and needing less to get to the defense cap/crushinging immunity lead to druids being kings of tanking and threat early in BC. With tanking and itemization getting reworked, i wouldn't be too sure about regaining the "king" spot again.
If we're not the king of single target tanking and look to be a distant last in terms of both aoe tanking and mitigating magic damage what will our niche be? "High" dps while tanking? It looks like DKs will do that too. Debuffer? Looking at how insanely good imp FF is the only unique debuff we'll have is Mangle and that's just not great at all.
I really hope the "Camouflage" ability people have posted would be for us rather than hunters, it is the exact ability we need- something to break combat and let us switch gear and really get a chance to play the hybrid role.
Poor itemization, overscaling and needing less to get to the defense cap/crushinging immunity lead to druids being kings of tanking and threat early in BC. With tanking and itemization getting reworked, i wouldn't be too sure about regaining the "king" spot again.
Not to mention that the other 3 tanking classes will have to stack defense and thus be immune to daze. SOTF should provide immunity to daze while in Bear Form.
Encounters like Felmyst really bring to light the need to rework useless/annoying mechanics like Daze. I was really happy when they changed Defense to no long affect Daze chance last year .. it would have meant more people (Warriors & Paladins) would have run into the issue (getting Dazed in raid instances) and complained .. and Blizzard might have taken a closer look at the "why"s instead of just undoing the change.
As far as I recall, Daze was implemented to make travelling through open zones more dangerous. In a world of 280% flight, it's completely irrelevant.
It either needs to be disabled in raids, or be affected by a character's "crit reduction chance" as opposed to the Defense stat on items.
As for our "niche", it will remain the same as it always has, as the go-to off-tank. Out of all the tanks (save DK, for argument's sake, I'm leaving them out until we really see what they have to offer), none can put out the damage of a druid switching to cat.
Also, by bringing our DPS gear to raids, we can tank trash, DPS on bosses, so for raid instances that require a certain number of tanks on trash, but fewer on bosses, we aren't a waste of a raid spot, such as in Hyjal.
Dunno. Unless armor is substantially improved for warriors, druids are going to be the go-to tank for anything that does physical damage primarily, especially big hits. Crushing blows were a big reason druids weren't the best tank for every encounter anyway, and in almost every single case a bear tanking something that can't crush is the optimal choice.
My suspicion is that the armor values are going to be changed a bit so that everyone's closer, but I also suspect that'll make items like [Badge of Tenacity] that much better since they will not have a replacement equivalent in WotLK. And I still have no idea how they'll balance things like rings having armor.
There is always the option of never implementing gear that is overpowered for one class/specc and only useful for others. Armor on cross class items would be such a case aswell as tanking itemized feral staves instead of giving them more generic stats (agility, hit, expertise).
The crushing removal and SotF buff might also indicate that there wont be special druid gear with extra armor, but only rogue/druid shared gear putting druid tanks into line with other tanks physical mitigation.
And they never were reluctant to nurf old gear that got side-effect buffed out of the game again (ZA trinkets, still waiting on the BWL mage trinket and DMC:Blue Dragon though).
This all seems aimed at removing the questionable capping mechanics, be it 100% avoidance, 75% armor mitigation or crushing blow hittable. Hopefully they will rework the whole combat system to a more intuitive "multi-hittable" one, it would get rid of or scale most of these questionable mechanics already.
Are you talking about the removal of the ability to actually crush the tank which has happened to Sunwell bosses and bosses like Archimonde? Or are there actually hints in alpha leaks that they may be planning to remove crushing blows in general oder through talents in tank trees?
Are you talking about the removal of the ability to actually crush the tank which has happened to Sunwell bosses and bosses like Archimonde? Or are there actually hints in alpha leaks that they may be planning to remove crushing blows in general oder through talents in tank trees?
The complete removal was hinted by this change:
"Shield Block: Increases your chance to block and the amount blocked by 100% for 5 sec, but will only block 1 attack. 30 sec cooldown."
The new improved Shield Block talent reduces the cooldown to 20 seconds. This renders warriors completely unable to become uncrushable, but increases their block value on this one attack considerably. Warriors get no means to increase their avoidance or mitigation anywhere else. Either warriors will become squishy high aggro spelldamage tanks, worse than DKs on the job though, or the combat system is getting reworked alot.
This is based on the information of the last alpha obviously, who knows if they stuck to it with reworking paladins, but at least DKs dont have anything working with old mechanics either (high armor or block) and it would also fit with the mentioned rogue gear merge.
They've spoken repeatedly about their unhappiness with crushing blows and the mechanic as it works. My suspicion is that they'll not remove the mechanic (which was originally designed to keep lower-level chars out of higher-level areas), but they'll make it so that crushes only happen when weapon skill is 20 points or higher than a character's unadjusted defense skill. Essentially making bosses unable to crush at all.
I think that what we'll see is any non-tiered item pieces will be lacking bonus armor at all. Only tiered pieces and maybe the random trinket will have any bonus armor. That should give druids a good amount of extra armor (required to make up the difference between blocking and not) but not so much that they become capped. It also neatly solves the issue of scaling as you go up in gear. I still don't see how TBC items are going to become obsoleted however, especially rings and trinkets. Perhaps they won't, and we'll have plenty of druids desperately looking for a badge that costs 10k gold or more.
Perhaps they won't, and we'll have plenty of druids desperately looking for a badge that costs 10k gold or more.
I think this is more probable not the case. The armor values needed for a certain mitigation went up reasonably from vanilla to BC. If they do again, badge will loose most of its value automatically - and will hopefully replaced by another kickass trinket.
I think this is more probable not the case. The armor values needed for a certain mitigation went up reasonably from vanilla to BC. If they do again, badge will loose most of its value automatically - and will hopefully replaced by another kickass trinket.
Except that one of the higher rated trinkets for a non armor capped druid is a pre BC armor trinket from LBRS (I think).
Perhaps the biggest reason druids cap armor now is that it is the only way to reduce damage from crushing blows. If they remove the mechanics from bosses, we won't need to go crazy on armor anymore. Avoidance becomes even stronger. Of course we only have a few choices that we can gear for, so it's not like good armor pieces won't still have value.
The problem with considering trinkets is that previously there were not many available with any tank stats at all. Many of these were introduced with patches after TBC release too (including badge). There are now many with high stamina and a couple with good avoidance. We'll probably still end up fighting for items like SMI just for the avoidance even though we're already uncrittable.
Is it possible that Blizzard is planning to go the route of other MMO's (FFX online comes to mind) when it comes to end game. Blizzard has already stated that 5, 10 and 25 man raids are going to be less time consuming, not as difficult, PvP gear is going to drop, and the overall increase in class shared gear. With gear being something that was seen as the great divider between your average player and those more fully committed to their progression in game. I would assume that it is plausible that we might have the option to earn spell ranks or more talent points at some point to further our in game experience. This however does go against the in game trend that most epic and desirable items are so not only because of stats, but also because of aesthetic reasons. This would possibly alleviate some problems I've seen discussed in the druid thread while impoving and changing the overall gameplay style and mechanics for all classes. Any thoughts?
Is it possible that Blizzard is planning to go the route of other MMO's (FFX online comes to mind) when it comes to end game. Blizzard has already stated that 5, 10 and 25 man raids are going to be less time consuming, not as difficult, PvP gear is going to drop, and the overall increase in class shared gear. With gear being something that was seen as the great divider between your average player and those more fully committed to their progression in game. I would assume that it is plausible that we might have the option to earn spell ranks or more talent points at some point to further our in game experience. This however does go against the in game trend that most epic and desirable items are so not only because of stats, but also because of aesthetic reasons. This would possibly alleviate some problems I've seen discussed in the druid thread while impoving and changing the overall gameplay style and mechanics for all classes. Any thoughts?
There's no real evidence or even rumors of WoW moving towards an EQesque type AA system. Endgame has been all about itemization and with the sweeping changes to allow less RNG related drame from your loot, it certainly seems endgame character progression in WotLK will also be itemization based.
Of concern to Ferals (from the WotLK beta patch notes):
Druid
o Entangling Roots: Can now be used indoors.
o Faerie Fire (Feral): Now an 11-point talent, down from being a 21-point talent.
o Feral Charge (Feral) is now a 21-point talent, up from being a 11-point talent.
o Feral Charge (Feral): Can now be used in Cat form.
o Feral Instinct (Feral) no longer increases threat generated in Bear form, but now increases damage done by your Swipe ability by 5/10/15%.
o Hurricane: No longer has a cooldown (was 1 minute).
o Improved Faerie Fire (Feral): Now also works with spell hit, in addition to ranged and melee hit %.
o Mangle (Feral): Now increases the damage done by Maul in addition to Shred.
o New Spell: Revive - Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. (Ranks 1-7 added)
o Omen of Clarity (Restoration): Now a passive spell. Now also works for spells (healing and damage). Proc rate is roughly 6% with a 10 second internal cooldown.
o Primal Tenacity (Feral) now reduces damage while stunned by 5/10/15%, and reduces the duration of fear effects by 5/10/15%.
o Soothe Animal can now be used on Dragonkin as well as Beasts.
o Soothe Animal is now instant cast.
o Survival of the Fittest (Feral): Increased to 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.
o The mana regeneration penalty when in Bear Form, Dire Bear Form and Cat Form has been removed.
We've seen most of it already .. but:
o Improved Faerie Fire (Feral)
WHAT?!?! This one is probably a typo.
o Feral Instinct (Feral)
It's worrying that they haven't mentioned an intrinsic threat increase for Bear Form like they did for Defensive Stance. More Swipe damage will be nice for AoE tanking.
o Revive
Now we'll have to help during wipe recovery T.T
o Omen of Clarity
10 second ICD came out of nowhere, proc chance went up though. This seems like it will hurt more than help.
o Primal Tenacity
I like this change. Imagine this form of the talent for something like Kalecgos.
Omen of Clarity had a 30sec ICD before, resetting if you go out of combat.
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I am really curious if they nerfed our threat by 15% or just forgot to mention some kind of merge of this ability to bear form. Could someone check bear form tooltip in beta client?
But the rest of the changes, which were not known before, are positive. Primal Tenacity looks much better than before, i never liked the randomness of the previous version. As for OOC, i too wasnt aware of any ICD, and i would swear that i saw consecutive OOC procs within few seconds. However i like this new version, mainly because it is now interesting for restoration and balance druids as well.
I think sadris meant it had a 30 second ICD in the latter stages of the alpha (?), it definitely doesn't have one in live. I suppose the reason they increased the proc chance and added the ICD is for balance (as in not the talent tree) because it now procs off spells too.
Similar to other comments, I'm concerned about the nerf to threat. Even at Sunwell levels of gear it's not easy to keep threat ahead of a buffed raid. However, without knowing how the revamped tree affects Bear damage we don't know what the effect will be (especially now that "Mangle (Feral): Now increases the damage done by Maul in addition to Shred").
It could be that Bear damage has increased a lot, and along with improvements to party/raid buffs they needed to remove the threat increase in order to stop Bear threat from going to insane levels.
07/13/08, 3:21 AM
