Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 146

david0925 · 09/21/08, 4:09 AM

Armor Values right now:
Helm: 470
Neck: 336 (Boundless Ambition)
Shoulder: 434
Cloak: 490 (Cloak of the Shadowed Sun)
Chest: 578
Bracers: 253 (ilvl 213 bracers)
Gloves: 362
Belt: 325 (ilvl 213 belts)
Leggings: 506
Boots: 398 (ilvl 213 boots)
Ring: 490 (keystone greatring)
Ring: 462 (nerubian shield ring, I cannot find another epic armor ring, please correct if you find one)
Trinket: 850 (Defender's Code)
Trinket: 550 (Offering of Sacrifice)
Weapon: 714 (Origin of Nightmares)

Totals out to be: 7218

after 550% bear armor modifier (400% from bear form, 110% from Thick Hide), that comes out to be 39699. This is armor excluding agility on gear and gems/enchant(should people stick with them

Using the formula
DR% = Armor / (Armor + (467.5 * AttackerLevel - 22167.5)) from Wowwiki

Comes out to be ~70.5%, or 29.5% damage taken.
29.5% x 0.88 (PoTP)= 25.96% damage taken, or a final conversion of 74.04% damage reduction from armor and talent. This looks to be pretty solid even if we turn out to have subpar avoidance, can anyone confirm/correct the math?

Assuming all the math above are indeed correct, this still seems somewhat close to the armor cap (29.5% taken versus 25% taken), and really got me thinking whether this is on target with Blizzard's current design. It seems to me that the jewelry was given armor for death knight tanking purposes, but whether the fact that we get such a large armor contribution from such slots is noted or not remains to be seen.

seminarca · 09/21/08, 4:29 AM

Originally Posted by Niton

With both the Malygos-10 and Malygos-25 quest reward necks being pure Paladin/Warrior fodder, it's still midly concerning. You'd expect the quest rewards to be the most generic items of the lot, yet they seem to be about as specialized as they could be. Warriors and Paladins have use for Armor, as influenced by design choices for items such as [Ring of Hardened Resolve] - you'd expect one of those two rewards to be at least useful to all 4 tanks, if not favoritized.

This is honestly such an empty argument. Warriors and Paladins could have argued at the start of TBC that the Karazhan rep tanking ring and Magtheridon head quest tanking ring were both optimized for Druids. Sure, armor isn't completely useless for them, but most Warriors I know switched to [Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen] and [Ring of Sundered Souls] just as soon as they could.

edit: My point being, of course, that Blizzard isn't intentionally going out of their way to screw Druids over (just like they weren't intentionally going out of their way to screw Warriors/Paladins over at the start of TBC). There are alternates for us, and as falk has pointed out, trinket slot progression is brilliant this time around (we have already seen 2 high armor trinkets, one being a raid drop) as well as armor on necks (which we've not had before).

xpuntar · 09/21/08, 6:23 AM

Why do I have a feeling, that Blizz will totally screw feral tree?

I mean. I have already seen from some reports that damage in our tanking form (dire bear) is quite high and with insane damage bursts.

With recent change to Protector of the Pack to give bear additional AP scaling (+6%) it will make our bear form THE FORM to PvP with.

I really question Blizz work here. Yes we want scaling for cat form, but Blizz give our tanking form some insane damage buffs and damage scaling, which boost our bear damage quite a bit.

I can foresee a big problem in near future, where BC deja-vu with Dire Bear will happen again.

Selmarix · 09/21/08, 7:05 AM

If threat is not a problem, these are interesting tanking items:
Armor - Items - World of Warcraft

No avoidance or threat stats, but a massive stamina advantage over anything else in those slots. And bears scale very well with stamina.

A weird thing with WotLK arena gear is that the plate melee sets have about 50% more stamina than the other sets.
Won't that cause arena balance problems in the end?

Valerian · 09/21/08, 9:58 AM

Originally Posted by david0925

Assuming all the math above are indeed correct, this still seems somewhat close to the armor cap (29.5% taken versus 25% taken), and really got me thinking whether this is on target with Blizzard's current design. It seems to me that the jewelry was given armor for death knight tanking purposes, but whether the fact that we get such a large armor contribution from such slots is noted or not remains to be seen.

This concerns me as well. If we're once again that close to the armor cap (and probably over it with inspiration/ancestral fortitude) we get to that problematic scaling point early again. Ideally we'd want to be continuing to get gear that allowed us to increase our best stat (armor) continually as we continue progressing. I suspect they may change the armor formula again or nerf either the bear armor % gain or the offset pieces with armor on them.

Tappin · 09/21/08, 10:35 AM

Originally Posted by david0925

Assuming all the math above are indeed correct, this still seems somewhat close to the armor cap (29.5% taken versus 25% taken), and really got me thinking whether this is on target with Blizzard's current design. It seems to me that the jewelry was given armor for death knight tanking purposes, but whether the fact that we get such a large armor contribution from such slots is noted or not remains to be seen.

I believe the armor cap is armor only. So, we do have some more room than we had in TBC. I believe we can get all the way to 22% mitigation ((1-.75) x (1 - .12)). Ignoring avoidance and spell damage this is 12% less damage than we took in TBC. Pretty solid. The un-usefulness of inspritation and devotion is a huge bummer at that point.
But on top of only taking 22% damage we get:

No crushes
Less magic damage
Barkskin
Mini shield wall
A much larger lead in health than we had in TBC (at least from what I've seen in Naxx gear for the 4 tanks)

Even if we hit the cap, we could choose to swap one of those trinkets for a dodge trinket. On level 80 trash we'll likely have to do this pretty early to avoid wasted stats.

I think druid tanks are looking pretty good going into WotLK.

That said, I think they missed a chance to avoid a lot of problems with the druid class. Since I first heard rumors of the new SotF, I've been posting that I thought scaling on 2 stats with huge multipliers was a bad idea. Bears would scale more consistent with other tanks and be easier to itemize if they had done something like giving us a small amount (similar to str's value for other tanks) of mitigation or avoidance from ap (and therefore str on shared gear) and/or extra value from defense and then lowered one of our multipliers slightly. Instead they gave us two talents. They're great talents, but they don't make us want to upgrade our gear more.

The design also leads to things like this:
Rings - Items - World of Warcraft

As a bear you get the blue ring and think, "well, I'm done with rings now". (GC said there will be a purple armor ring, but the point still stands). You get a trinket like the badge of tenacity and you don't care what other trinkets are in the game. You get armor capped and then you think start looking at Rawr thinking 'are there any items with just sta, agi or dodge in here?'

Hopefully I don't sound greedy, but it's more fun to play the game when there are upgrades available in each slot throughout an expansion.

If instead we cared about armor, agi, sta, defense, ap and str we would expect almost any shared tanking item to be an upgrade to our tankability. We'd expect almost any leather with more iLvl to be an upgrade.

Ever since I got the turtle ring in Tanaris and thought 'wow, that's SO good for bear form', I've loved how unique druids are. But I still think the designers would be better of if we scaled on more than just:

Armor (inflated values available on half our gear)
Agi (available on half our gear)
Dodge (available on the other half our gear)
Defense (kinda-sorta-not-really)
Sta (sponge-mode scaling)

Overall I'm pretty happy. My main gripes atm are:
1. Forced to take furor for pve builds. (make furor base or make shifter / improved a 5 point tier-1 talent or move naturalist and omen both down a level)
2. Cat form damage and more specifically how much of that damage comes from white hits. Balancing cats by making yellow an even higher portion than it is now is a mistake. (making hit, haste, etc. less valuable than other classes).
3. Int portion of HotW needs to be fixed. (Scale mana or mana regen on ap or sta)
4. Large number of items that are good for 3 of the 4 tanks.
5. So much expertise with precision (mainly for cats)
6. Is PvP gear as good / better for tanking?

Camulos · 09/21/08, 12:30 PM

I completely agree that Blizz's reasoning behind our itemization for both forms is just bizarre (bordering on the illogical); but, as long as the outcome is something worthwhile, I suppose I can roll with it.

My problem, Tappin, is one of utility and purpose. Will the high armor and high stamina translate into a tanking niche? Did Astrylian ever get an answer regarding our tanking niche?

Tappin · 09/21/08, 12:43 PM

I think they're regretting the niche comments. In order to be viable MT on any boss, you can't be all that specialized. Everyone needs to be able to take the same hits without being a drain to healers (by taking more damage or forcing more emergency or overheal moves due to spike damage) and hold threat. That doesn't leave a lot of room for specialization.

There still does seem to be some differentiation though.

Warriors are still the best all around tank, with the most tools at their disposal.
Paladins still tank 5+ mobs better than anyone else and manage threat via consecrate and porcupine threat.
Druids still have smoother damage and higher health pools to make healing smooth, but less panic buttons and slightly more damage overall. (And both of these aspects are more true in TBC? No crushes, less magic damage, and a greater health pool lead?) We still are the most valuable (maybe tied with DKs?) at tanking part of the fight and dps'ing the rest.
Death Knights look to be better spell damage tanks with a huge variety of short term tools?

I think we'll do OK with tanking. We don't have all the tools or as much AE threat. But we do take a beating and have some panic buttons now (including the new trinket use effects).

I do wonder about the utility. When we're main tanking Innervate and Battle Rez are difficult at best. On a 25 man raid, we don't bring much that isn't easily covered by other classes. But then, the same can be said about almost every class now, with all the non-stacking abilities.

Camulos · 09/21/08, 1:00 PM

Blizz may be regretting the niche remarks, but that is exactly how progression raid slots are filled aren't they? Which tank will give us the best chance of beating this boss? If the answer is never "the bear", then where does that leave us? I guess OT damage sponges?

Malazaar · 09/21/08, 1:19 PM

Originally Posted by Camulos

Blizz may be regretting the niche remarks, but that is exactly how progression raid slots are filled aren't they? Which tank will give us the best chance of beating this boss? If the answer is never "the bear", then where does that leave us? I guess OT damage sponges?

Blizzard has stated several times now that they want "the best player" not "class X" to be the answer to your question.

Tappin · 09/21/08, 1:24 PM

Originally Posted by Camulos

Blizz may be regretting the niche remarks, but that is exactly how progression raid slots are filled aren't they? Which tank will give us the best chance of beating this boss? If the answer is never "the bear", then where does that leave us? I guess OT damage sponges?

That's true. But what if the answer is: "All of the tanks hold threat and are easy to keep alive on this fight. A {insert class name here} would be a little better because of {some not-so-significant mechanic}. But mainly we just need more {dps, raid awareness, strategy, braincells} to get this fight down." Good examples would be fear fights (stance dance is better, but fear ward works fine if you have it), 2-3 tank threat fights like VR or Gruul (bears are better threat when not taking hits, but not necessary), and Hyjal trash (paladins help, but other tanks manage with a little more work).

If that's true, and {insert class name here} is not always the same class, niches won't be that crucial.

I'm not saying it is that way. I highly doubt it will. It might not even be a great idea. If they did manage it, I can't imagine a tank's job being all that interesting. There wouldn't be fights where you have to be good at your class' unique abilities to get by. But it is possible to make all 4 tanks (or a combination of any 2 tanks, etc) viable for any raid by dumbing down the tank part of the fight and/or homogenizing the tank classes.

Another possibility is that any tank can do a fight but {insert class name here} is always a slightly better choice (warriors pre-TBC). That's bad design too because it means that class is THE tank.

Going the other way... if you need specialized tanks most of the time... if 1 fight needed a prot warrior, the next required a DK, and the following required a feral tank, we could probably expect tanks to sit out some fights until that content was on farm status? Or worse, we could expect certain tanks to almost never be brought.

Camulos · 09/21/08, 1:28 PM

And if you have several tanks of approximately equal ability? I would think that is norm rather than the exception.

As to sitting out fights, doesn't that happen to some tanks now? I'm thinking of fights like Archimonde.

david0925 · 09/21/08, 1:35 PM

The reality of this game is that it is an MMO. If Blizzard stress too much about everyone's viability on every rolls you'll have just three "classes" left by the next expansion: Tank, Healer, DPS. Even then Tank and healer can do dps, and two healer classes can tank, so why not make a mage able to tank because all they can do is dps? This is a pretty extreme example, but hopefully I got the point through. As important as balance and fairness are, diversity and flavor still plays a very important role in success of MMOs. Going too extreme to either balance or flavor will hurt the game.

The "problem" with balancing druids is that we have 2 of the most power tools that are not necessary for smooth fights, but are invaluable when fights do go slightly wrong (innervate and battle rez). If those two abiltiies are ignored when it comes to balancing tanking abilities on the four tanks, there can be other kinds of balancing issues. On the other hand, if they balance tanking abilities ignoring battle rez and innervate, then druids suddenly becomes the king of tanking and utility classes when you are able to pull off rezzes. This isn't necessary fair to the other three tanking classes.

From a more personal perspective I've enjoyed doing OT more than MT because OT tend to change roles and do a little bit more often, but I do respect the ferals that spec feral just to tank exclusively. However, these two core abilities will always limit our feral (or any tree) tools, and from a balancing perspective, that's not necessarily unfair.

Tappin · 09/21/08, 1:37 PM

There are worse problems to have than having too many skilled tanks log in that can all handle the night's raid.

Most tanks I know are unusually devoted to the game, to the point that at least one of those tanks would have a well geared healer or dps class or enough gear and money to respec and cover a different role. In the druid's case, you could probably do it with a gear swap without even having to respec. Personally, I would appreciate occasional nights where I didn't tank (though I'd hate to play 100% cat feral).

david0925 · 09/21/08, 1:41 PM

Originally Posted by Tappin

There are worse problems to have than having too many skilled tanks log in that can all handle the night's raid.

Most tanks I know are unusually devoted to the game, to the point that at least one of those tanks would have a well geared healer or dps class or enough gear and money to respec and cover a different role. In the druid's case, you could probably do it with a gear swap without even having to respec. Personally, appreciate a few nights where I didn't tank (though I'd hate to play 100% cat feral).

I'd agree with this. While our guild never had the luxury of having too many tanks, we do have at least one of each specialized tanks that pretty much dedicate to tanking. On fights that need less tanks they often sit or respec to different roles. In contrast, even on live feral can swap to a reasonable DPS role with just a gear swap, and the DPS gap will be much smaller in wotlk. I have always thought of feral's strongest ability is to bring 90% warrior and 90% rogue at the same time with some unique abilities that make them worth bringing over rogues and warriors. While I do respect some player's desire to play a 100% bear(tank) or a 100% cat(dps) role as a feral druid, that does not feel like playing the entire subclass to me.