On a side note, this makes the odd trinket [Living Root of the Wildheart] that much better; having a 4000 armor proc 40% of the time will be pretty decent without anything resembling armor.
I'm pretty pleased with these changes - the armour change as well as the mana change.
I am a bit saddened by the loss of pure feral tanking weapons though. I understand it'll clear up the loot list a bit more still, but I never quite saw the problem there. Warriors use Brutalisers + Some Shield vs normal DPS weapons.
Let's just hope that it gives them some more leeway to play with the stats on the weapons. Say, Expertise vs Hit rating, Agility vs Strength vs Stamina etc.
Clearing up item budget on staves (no more armour), we might be able to expect an even bigger bump of stamina compared to other tanks...
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Kalbear - I seriously doubt they'll keep the proc chance as is if that trinket will be so important. Blizzard is quite keen on removing the need for old content gear.
Ignorance can be solved with a book. Stupidity requires a shotgun and a shovel.
Is it just me or do you get the feeling the compensation will be in the form of a higher base dire bear modifier (in the realm of probably 450%) to "fix" the issue of having to wear armor accesories before?
I am a bit saddened by the loss of pure feral tanking weapons though.
That's not to say there won't be tanking two-handers vs. dps two-handers. Given that Death Knights can use maces, I wouldn't be surprised to see defensive stats on 2h maces (tons of stamina, dodge, that sort of thing) start popping up that can be used by both.
Bear armor coefficient is going to be something they need to tackle carefully, as it will affect Resto and balance as well if they choose to go bear form (lol arena balancing)
I would assume they'll just increase the value of each point in Thick Hide... at least that makes the most sense to me. Or they can do some combination of bumping up the base dire bear/moonkin modifer + bumping Thick Hide depending on how happy they are with moonkin/ base bear armor modifiers.
Regarding Feral Staffs, yes they'll obviosuly have to do some re-itemization (probably not worth re-itemizing TBC staves). Hopefully this will get us seeing some nice 'tank' weapons with agil + dodge, having some hit on feral weapons in general, and maybe just maybe finally seeing some feral weapons with sockets??
I'm happy with the change. In fact it's very similar to what I suggested months ago. It would be nice to be able to shift in a bonus armour staff like warriors shift in a shield, but it does put a strain on itemisation doing it that way, and if they really want that sort of effect they could add a equip bonus to select feral staves of increases your armour in bear form by X. Although using an idol might make more sense.
An interesting mechanic would be something which that increases your armour in bear form, while reducing your Feral Attack Power. You could make it a talented ability, or an idol or even a glyph.
If the concern is pvp balance, in regards to additional armor, increasing the modifier of bear form itself and/or thick hide would seem to do little to keep that armor out of the hands of restos and moonkin. It seems to me that they'll have to add the extra armor to the (leather) items themselves or, as Blizzard has done with so many other tweaks they want only affecting ferals, tack it on to a preexisting talent deep in the tree. I'm not sure if its the most elegant solution, but if adding another multiplier exclusive to feral bears is the goal, then rolling it into Protector of the Pack seems to make the most sense.
If the concern is pvp balance, in regards to additional armor, increasing the modifier of bear form itself and/or thick hide would seem to do little to keep that armor out of the hands of restos and moonkin. It seems to me that they'll have to add the extra armor to the (leather) items themselves or, as Blizzard has done with so many other tweaks they want only affecting ferals, tack it on to a preexisting talent deep in the tree. I'm not sure if its the most elegant solution, but if adding another multiplier exclusive to feral bears is the goal, then rolling it into Protector of the Pack seems to make the most sense.
They just removed all the green armor from leather to consolidate drops. I could see the most likely solution being adding it into a talent somewhere deep feral. We have too much to add a new talent, so rolling it in would be easy and safe as far as arena balance goes.
They just removed all the green armor from leather to consolidate drops. I could see the most likely solution being adding it into a talent somewhere deep feral. We have too much to add a new talent, so rolling it in would be easy and safe as far as arena balance goes.
Right, my point was that there are only a few ways to give us back the mitigation from armor we'll be losing after this change that won't impact the other two specs. I should have been more clear, I'm not suggesting a return of bonus armor, just that if they don't have that option - you've got to find a way to work in another multiplier. At one time, someone suggested a talent which converted AP to armor - I think adding that mechanic to Protector of the Pack (possibly in lieu of the AP bonus) would be a more interesting solution than a simple +%armor modification. I'm not sure that it would be the best fix, but it would give us defensive scaling from an additional stat (something we've been asking for for awhile now).
Right, my point was that there are only a few ways to give us back the mitigation from armor we'll be losing after this change that won't impact the other two specs. I should have been more clear, I'm not suggesting a return of bonus armor, just that if they don't have that option - you've got to find a way to work in another multiplier. At one time, someone suggested a talent which converted AP to armor - I think adding that mechanic to Protector of the Pack (possibly in lieu of the AP bonus) would be a more interesting solution than a simple +%armor modification. I'm not sure that it would be the best fix, but it would give us defensive scaling from an additional stat (something we've been asking for for awhile now).
In terms of bonus armor lost, at Naxx-25 levels we're looking at about 15800 armor lost from the rings, trinkets, cloak, amulet, two trinkets and weapon slot.
If they wanted to replace that same value they would have to make the bonus armor bear multiplier change from 5.17 to 9.92.
A really dirt simple way for them to 'fix' this would be to have a deep feral talent double the contribution of armor that dire bear provides. I really don't like this; I think feral needs at least one more stat and preferably a few more stats to scale with. But it is a possibility.
This is good news, as long as they get the maths right in order to ensure that our mitigation is not nerfed despite the large chunk of armor we will lose with this reduction to armor benefits from non-leather items.
Personally I would love to see something like a passive ability which gives us 2 armor per 1 AP in bearform. This would give us mitigation scaling based on STR, something all tank classes except druids currently recieve. And all of the tanking accessories are loaded with STR. My concern is that if we don't get something like this it basically means that all accessories are far worse for druids than other tank classes.
Edit: If the 15,000 Armor mentioned by the above poster is correct the conversion would need to be more along the lines of 1 AP = 3 or more armor. Not sure exactly what sort of AP a naxx-25 geared bear could expect to have.
Tanking rings/necks/cloaks typically have strength, block, parry, defense, expertise, armor and stamina. With the proposed change to armor, stamina and expertise would be the only stats bears would get good mitigation/TTL benefit from - previously we could compensate by getting huge mitigation benefits from armor on those items which had it, however when this ceases to be the case basically all tank accessories will in all cases be better mitigation for other tank classes than for druids.
King of the Jungle used to be an extra 10% armor modifier, it could easily change back to that considering the bear part of KotJ is useless.
That just adds it as another "must have" talent which can currently be skipped from a pure bear build.
From comments on the WoW Forums, it seems like the multiplier would need to be around 700% prior to thick hide for bears to not lose mitigation from the changes.
I actually like Kalk's suggestion that PotP have an additional use for AP, although this may not be possible if they are still looking at removing FAP altogether.
Until such a time as this comes out on the test realm, I will continue to get whatever +armor items I can find.
Personally I would love to see something like a passive ability which gives us 2 armor per 1 AP in bearform. This would give us mitigation scaling based on STR, something all tank classes except druids currently recieve. And all of the tanking accessories are loaded with STR. My concern is that if we don't get something like this it basically means that all accessories are far worse for druids than other tank classes.
The biggest problem with an idea like this is that it requires some odd mechanic choices to avoid tying it to feral AP. And you want to not tie it to feral AP, as that means you couldn't get rid of feral weapons down the road.
I always thought they should make blocking be a dual-use statistic: +blocking for warriors and paladins, +armor for bears and death knights. It'd be similiar to the way they are converting parry into parry/dodge.
To me it seems feral ap as it is isn't really the problem, but rather needing weapons that are completely useless to other classes. We either get a fairly small selection of weapons to choose from, or raids have a lot more feral weapons dropping than they need. The simplest way to fix this would be to simply give us a trainable feral skill to give the appropriate amount of feral ap from normal weapons. For example something like "You gain 14 attack power for every 1 damage per second over 55 on your equipped weapon while in cat, bear, dire bear or moonkin form." That would be a simple solution to let us use weapons other classes use, and you wouldn't need to rebalance us around getting less attack power from Unleashed Rage or talents like Predatory Instincts.
While I cannot deny the benefits of this change, it also makes me somewhat uneasy for the future. While leveling to 80 and while gearing up at 80, I will always have to make the judgement calls as for whether I want to be well itemized in the beginning and sub-optimally geared after the patch, or vice versa.
Also I could never really see the enjoyment in game balance rollercoaster rides. Reading history we can tell for sure that the transition won't be flawless, or even close to it. Here's to another half year of uncertainty!
Druids already gain the least from def, dodge benefits all tanks equally, armor (outside the 8 body pieces and possibly cloak base armor) will now benefit tanks equally, agi isn't present on traditional tanking gear, and druids get the best multiplier on stam (though leather has less overall stam than plate). Is the intention that the higher scaling druids gets from stam will be enough to offset the gains from all the other stats tanks will gain? And although at face appearance, druids gain a choice in accessories, there will be heavy competition among agi based dps for agi/stam pieces, and with how tank pieces are itemized, from an equal ilevel upgrade, the other tanks gain more than a druid would unless the piece has some ridiculously disproportionate amount of stam on it. In general, it's not so fun being constantly second in line for upgrades because you don't gain as much from stats as other classes (aka shadow priests throughout tbc compared to mages and locks).
There's also the issue of whether Blizzard just changed the "super stat" of druids from agi to stam rather than actually fixing the issue of druids only looking towards a single stat for item progression. I don't mind that they want to change how armor works for druids, but I'm concerned that it's one less stat to scale from out of an already small pool of scaling stats, and that there's still a very awkward dichotomy between the stats present on leather and traditional tanking accessories (to the extent that stam is the only actual common stat). Creating items with high agi/stam/dodge/def could help, but that's just littering loot tables with class specific junk that Blizzard was trying to get away from.
While I cannot deny the benefits of this change, it also makes me somewhat uneasy for the future. While leveling to 80 and while gearing up at 80, I will always have to make the judgement calls as for whether I want to be well itemized in the beginning and sub-optimally geared after the patch, or vice versa.
I don't think so. Most of the gear that had armor on it in the non-leather slots was optimal because of the high dodge, defense, and armor. Most of the gear without armor on it in those slots had things like block rating. This changes slightly what gear is 'best' in every slot, but only just, and if you go for high-armor items now it won't hurt you appreciably in the future.
I think the AC change will help make bears better "natural" tanks. If they buff Bearform AC mutiplier and remove the need for specialised trinkets I would imagine the leap from quest gear to entry level raiding gear wont be as big as for some of the other tanking classes. We already dont have to worry about being uncrittable. Now, if i understand the change correctly, they are saying that we no longer need to seek out our most valuable stat since they will effectively be building it into bearform, though we dont know how yet. This is not unlike to the situation when BC launched and bears found themselves the best tanks straight out of the blocks, but once gear started getting better (and blizz nerfed us heavily) that position started to change.
I could see it all just ending up in crazy hunt for rare +dodge trinkets and rings unless - as someone has alluded to already - they go and change existing gear heavily.
On the question of feral staves. We do have to hope they convert the +AC to somthing usefull for bears, otherwise why would you not just always go for the dps staff now? They usually have agility on them so will likely end up giving more avoidance, (no numbers to back that up at the moment so feel free to flame.). They will generally give more threat. It's too ealry to know, but I'm hoping they spend a serious amount of time re-itemizing to give us some geniune "tanking" gear or else they might as well just remove those staves from the game and only give us dps staves.
on a side note: I miss maces and 1-handers. I know they are trying to simplify itemization but i would love to see some feral one-handers and decent off-hands so i could have some variation with my gear selection. something like +hit off-hand/+stam off-hand/+dodge or AC off-hand etc.
I agree with the view that some other base tanking stat would be nice. At least in BC i had to think about dodge + def + AC + stam. In LK, it looks like I will only have stam + dodge to choose from. I can see very little reason - at least at the moment - why bears would not all end up in exactly the same gear. There seems very litle reason to personalise playstyles since blizz seems to be removing the stat wiggle-room that allowed many of those personal choices
Last edited by gobbles : 11/04/08 at 9:07 PM.
Reason: spelling
That would be another 3 mandatory points for a pure Bear specc, I'd rather have it built into PotP.
IIRC, nearly all of the jewelery with bonus armor I saw so far had the new common tanking stats on it (Stamina, Strength, Def-Rating, maybe Dodge/Parry rating). Although Strength and Def/Parry-Rating are less useful for Bears, we were desperate for these Items because the bonus armor more than compensated the lesser useful stats.
With bonus armor gone, I see me using DPS necks which most likely will have Stamina and Agility as defensive stats, rendering me even more vulnerable to Dodge-DR :/
Edit: Note to self, don't reply after refreshing half an hour ago -.-
As has been said before, it seems that the natural way of implementing this Feral armor change would be to (greatly) increase the Dire Bear Form's armor multiplier, well past even the TBC-release value of 450%.
Given the above, and given that only actual leather armor items will receive the multiplier, doesn't that mean that raw ilevel upgrades would be extremely valuable to a Bear tank, if only because of the large armor increase?
That is, I envisioned the possibility of rolling on Naxx-25 gear as an upgrade from Naxx-10 simply because of the higher ilevel and subsequently higher armor, without even looking at the stats.
I'm worried that instead of getting into a situation where Bears get armor capped by T4 and have to wear archaic armored jewelry, that they instead will need to roll on anything and everything that's a tier higher than their current gear.
Originally Posted by urotas
To me it seems feral ap as it is isn't really the problem, but rather needing weapons that are completely useless to other classes.
Blizzard has no qualms with niche itemization even in the midst of their vaunted homogenization program. We still see block value on plate tanking boots (useless to Death Knights), tanking-specific weapons (useless to Rogues/Shaman/etc.) and an entire repertoire of Holy Paladin spell power plate (useless to all other plate-wearers).
Stamina is NOT mitigation. It's the stat i am very iffy about when it comes to playing with simulation. While I am not dismissing stamina at all, it will be nice to not overvalue stamina, which is something simulations do a lot (mitigation and survival points assume unrealistic situations, which while provide good numbers, need to be looked at with a grain of salt).
In regards to dodge, people need to stop avoiding it like the plague. The only reason it is in the game is to prevent avoidance from scaling too well. Regardless it still scales damage taken in an exponential method. The diminishing return just prevents someone from reaching melee immunity as well as make the exponential jump not as steep.
As has been said before, it seems that the natural way of implementing this Feral armor change would be to (greatly) increase the Dire Bear Form's armor multiplier, well past even the TBC-release value of 450%.
This would have to be implemented in a deep feral talent, or the TBC arena restoration druid supremacy would be repeated.
11/04/08, 5:47 PM
