Spherus

It seems like the change to bonus armor (green armor no longer counted towards the multiplier) will largely remove the edge pvp gear has for tanking, but I'm wondering more along the lines of guilds that want to prioritize tanking gear for their tanks in order to progress more quickly/easily. For warriors/paladins it's pretty obvious, for druids it is not and it doesn't seem reasonable that every piece of non-set gear with high agility or high stamina falls under this category.

Edit: You certainly may be right in the sense that Naxx/Eye/Sanctuary are easy enough it doesn't really matter what we equip, but presumably the gear we pick up now (meaning doing those zones) will be used going into the next, more difficult tier.

 

Fasc

Well sure the current Brutal gear will pale in comparison (I was planning on getting rid of most of it once in Naxx-25 anyway) but I was speaking more so at the 80 level in attempting to acquire Deadly gear over some of the equal item level PvE pieces. Some are simply stronger in all stats save for offensive ones which is rather silly given our threat output.

 

Deliverance

Fasc, at least for 10 man raiding, I would happily give up a few dozen stamina and a smidgeon of agility in return for a significant increase in dps while tanking as the tank's damageoutput has the potential to be a significant part of the total raid damageoutput. Having more health does not always beat killing a boss faster.

 

kalbear

This is not the actual change being made.

The change is that armor in non-leather slots will not be multiplied by the bear armor multiplier. The secondary change is that all staves will have their armor completely removed.

I've seen this statement (the Bonus armor) one done multiple places, and it's simply incorrect. It probably stemmed from an odd statement GC made, but if you read the original blue post and the examples you can see precisely what GC meant:

 

TheNameLessOne

The PVP gear beats out (or ties) the PVE gear due to it having higher stam and roughly equal agility (some pieces even had more). PVE gear wastes stats on garbage like haste and AR. PVP wastes stats on resilience but favors other tanking stats. That is why the new PVP gear beats out the PVE stuff, you are trading a minor threat loss for increased survivability. Tossk and Feltest made a rather large post on the beta forum explaining it, I'll can see if I can dig it up.

 

kalbear

I'm Feltest, by the way.

It really depends on the piece of gear in question. The belt/boots/bracers are especially good PvP items for PvE as they have sockets that PvE doesn't have, making it much better in terms of stats. There are a couple of other particularly good pieces - most notably the PvP items that don't compete against the PvE gear with expertise. And we're not talking about a smidgen of agility or stamina; we're talking about 100+ stamina and 50ish agility.

The real big win is that you can get the pvp gear before you go into Naxx, which means you're doing Naxx progression with Naxx-level gear. That's quite strong, and puts druids in quite a good position as progression tanks. If that pattern holds for T8 and 9, it will make them very strong.

 

Spherus

Apologies - I was talking about the additional "green" armor on leather pvp gear (aka brutal) not being multiplied (only the underlying base armor on the items). I had forgotten they were removing this component completely in Wrath.

This is something I sincerely hope is addressed in the revamp of mitigation for bears. It would be a true pain if pvp gear were always better on a per-slot basis compared to drops in the raiding zones themselves.

 

Promethius

DPS classes like rogues, hunters, enh shamans and fury warriors would most likely get more procs from a zero cd Imp LotP than a bear in single target situation. When I proposed my idea for losing the cd on Imp LotP, I had also suggested that the aura aspect for healing also get removed and make the healing for the druid only, but this was before seeing how Blizzard decided to mess around with Vampiric Embrace. They appear to have the capability of making the healing effect stronger on the originator of the ability than the rest of the raid. Thus, a way to balance the aura aspect to avoid making the ability too strong for non tanking ferals could be to implement half the intended healing to be base line in LotP, and provide the other half in Imp LotP but for the druid only, as well as the proper mana return. As an example, let's say the intended balance is 2% hp restore, 4% mana restore. LotP would provide 1% restoration of hp on crit to anyone with the aura. Then each point of Imp Lotp would increase that by 0.5% and give 2% mana restore per point.

Although, if the parses for healing done by Judgment of Light are accurate and Blizzard considers that to still be within balance, perhaps full effect healing from a no cd Imp LotP isn't even an issue to pve balance. However, there does seem to be inconsistency in how Blizzard is handling passive healing effects, so who knows what's considered too powerful.

 

Edwardino

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but you can still do the original Feral Charge in cat form. I.E. Shift to bear->Charge->Shift to cat. FC in bear is still off the GCD. Shifting of course isn't, but by the time you reach your destination you should be good.

I only mention this because Bear FC has a 15 second CD while Cat FC has a 30 second CD- but they're both linked. If you charge in this fashion, your Cat CD will refresh in 15 seconds.

I'm a tad bit angry at Blizzard outright stating that they wish to limit shifting as much as possible. To me, it has always been the drive behind the class. Tricks and quirks such as these should be encouraged as they promote skillful play. Perhaps by pointing this quirk out I'll be indirectly contributing against this idea (as it may be nerfed), but I figured in a game such as this, we need all the skill-based elements we can get.

 

david0925

Only down side to this is mana consumption, but it does seem vastly better than cat form feral charge since it's on lower CD and actually immobilizes. The only cat form feral charge benefit has been the cute cat "i'm going to kill you" leap animation anyway.

Maniq is my hero

 

Makapuu

While the post is a bit old Blizz has stated that tanks getting PvP gear to tank is not anything they want to see. This as things stand as of now is not the case, especially with the new armor changes and what not.

How and if they address this will hopefully be at the same time they adjust us for the change to armor. As they have to do something to make the raid gear better than PvP gear for raiding.

Agi is all ready a bad choice due to DRs but Sta would be worse as it would exaggerate the PvP superiority. The ILotP idea would help as PvE stats would give it more procs than PvP gear. Almost any offensive to defensive conversion would be a great benefit to this issue seeing as how PvE gear has greater offensive stat budgets compared to equivalent iLvl PvP gear.

Regardless, I ground out honor for gear in tBC and while I found it distasteful if need be I will do it again if I have no other choice.

 

kalbear

They can also change the PvP gear so that it has int on it, but that's only half the battle and doesn't solve the belt/boot/bracer slot. Really, the only thing that can make PvP gear worse than PvE gear is to make a strong conversion from an offensive stat to a defensive one. Stamina and agility are at least as good if not better than the PvE counterparts, and since the PvP gear has more sockets it makes it even better for this. Armor will be the same, and since you can get the PvP gear sooner than you can get the higher PvE ilvl items, armor will be in some cases better.

I don't honestly expect this change to happen in the 3.0.4 (or whatever) patch there is, as I expect they'll want to get it out early.

 

manapaws

They already said that resilience was going to take up a larger proportion of pvp gear's budget. It'll therefore be "under budget" for pve use, but will still serve as good intermediary gear if you're unlucky with drops or prefer to farm BG's than mats for a crafted piece.

 

Merendel

Cat is a bit better for reaching hard to reach places as well. It will sometimes leap over pathing obstructions that bear charge can not. I can think of a couple of spots where bear charge errored saying no path available where cat charge worked. That said bear charge is far superior on anything that is moving or likely to move soon. Cat charge you almost always end up well outside of melee range on a moving target.

 

kalbear

They've said this, but it turns out not to be true in practice. In practice the budget spent on resilience is comparable to the budget spent on haste, armor penetration and a bit of AP/crit. So yes, you're wasting budget on resilience with PvP, but you're wasting budget on damage stats (some of which are particularly poor) on PvE.

 

Mijae

This isn't really true. Guilds will be pushing Naxx long before you will be able to get a set of PvP gear, probably before the next arena season even starts. Even for top arena teams it still takes time to acquire points. If you saved up honor you will be able to get a few of those pieces and can still grind out others fairly easily. Perhaps in later tiers when points can be saved ahead and a full set bought within a week or two it might be an issue. This is also assuming arena sets coincide with PvE tiers and are released at the same time. Through most of BC PvP gear trailed behind PvE tiers though.

Another large consideration will be set bonuses. Since T7 are junk for bear, it makes sense to ignore them. However, maybe they'll actually give us something useful at some point. Of course, then they go against their concept of making non-tier pieces good alternatives.

Feral DruidStats spreadsheet
v3.2.0.0.xls - updated 8/4/2009

 

kalbear

This is all true, but for the non-5 piece set it's immaterial. Most people will be able to get these pieces close to immediately since they require rating but not arena points. And of course, they don't count towards any set bonus.

The ilvl 200 gear is also best in slot for pre-naxx gear for many of the slots as well, which is helpful for gearing up to do Naxx, but isn't as big an advantage.

 

TheNameLessOne

Also depending on team size it is trivial to get 500 points a week (assuming you are half way decent). Why deprive a rogue or kitty druid a clear upgrade for something that you are guaranteed to trash in two to three weeks?

This is why adding some sort of attack power to mitigation is need so the PVP gear of equal item level is always inferior to the PVE equivalent. Basing anything off stam (which is what iLotP changes would do) just compounds the problem and makes it even worse.

 

Monedula

Are druid tanks the only ones with this problem? There are no other tanking classes that would favor PVP vs PVE gear?
If so what are those classes suggesting?

 

kalbear

For the other classes, pvp gear has advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is that it helps get to uncrittable faster - sort of like what it used to be for druids. The disadvantages is that it has no avoidance worth anything and only marginal shield block. It's basically all DPS gear at that point - DPS gear with a lot of stamina. That's not nearly as good for other tanking classes as it is for a druid, and unlike a druid they have choices with respect to wearing dps gear for tanking.

Basically, it's better than the equivalent dps plate for tanking, but much worse than the equivalent tanking plate. If druids had tanking leather that'd likely be better. Since we don't, pvp is it.

 

Solux

Hi, everyone, like a few others I've been lurking here watching the discussion, without being sure I had anything substantial to contribute.

I've seen a lot of discussion here about how to scale as a tank in Rogue gear and I'd be happiest to see those options which see us taking loot from a variety of sources to increase our opportunity to pick up loot and our ease of getting vital items, which has been something of a problem in BC, with having to wait for a specific staff item to drop to give us a real weapon upgrade.

The discussion of mitigation in the form of Time To Live has been illuminating for what gear I'll be needing to tank in for the future, but what I haven't seen is a discussion of what else we can do to improve our situation if this gear isn't provided and tanking becomes a matter of why we should be taken as a tank, when others can do a better job with their stats. In other words, how to convince Raid leaders it is worth taking us, when our spots are not already cemented. I'm well aware this is a perpetual argument and that skill and raid-integrating personality plays a large part in this; what I haven't seen is a comparison of how fast a boss goes down when we're tanking. We have arguably got a fair damage boost on the other classes even with Lich King and the other classes catching up on us for damage, so perhaps we need to be thinking of our contribution not only in terms of Time To Live (TTL), but also in terms of Time To Boss Death (TTBD), which is an important factor when racing Enrage timers with progression gear and is a real reason to look at taking a Druid tank. It doesn't fix the itemisation issues, but it does mean a TTL/TTBD equation may become relevant. If a boss dies faster when we tank it, is our mitigation worth slightly more to us in the greater context of preserving healers' mana pools and potion cooldowns, etc? Any way we can make complex issues of our class simpler to explain to non-Druids and reduce the perception our "nerfs" make us "inferior" tanks now is a good one. I honestly have no idea what sort of a difference TTBD makes for us.

I fully support the moves suggested to give us reason to stack DPS gear in our armor slots, since that's what Blizzard wants us to have access to, I also support it in terms of giving us a decision to make for the Trinket/ring slots. Choice is good and having access to DPS gear in these slots allowing us more opportunities for drops to improve our tanking is a good thing and means we can be firm in leaving the parry/block/defense items for our tanking brethren inother classes. Improving multiple tanks on one Boss kill is something which would have proved remarkably difficult in BC and if we can somehow come out as a Tank/DPS hybrid, yes all the other classes will whine a bit, but we will pick up the things Blizzard is intending for us. Also, nothing will really have changed. In BC, we already had a significant damage advantage over other tanks and it helps reduce my most hated aspect of BC, running around with 3-4 bags of gear in instances just in case. Thank you to the people who've suggested the mechanics by which we could gain noticeable benefit out of stacking DPS gear through AP, Agility, armour and crit.

As for the improved LotP idea to give us extra health on a crit, we already have this mechanic in place with the Innervate glyph, where we get a proportion of the mana ourselves. I know this mechanic changed recently, but it can clearly be done to benefit the caster. Whether it can be done to benefit only the caster as proposed or it's not as imbalanced as we might think compared to the paladin equivalent is difficult to say. Differences between the classes are vital to the shape of the game and giving Tanking druids a bonus to their capacity to heal themselves is very muchin the spirit of Frenzied regeneration. Hmm, that's a point. We could potentially remove the cap to LotP while Frenzied Regen is up, to increase the use of our panic button and enhance something we already have use from. May lead to us needing a slightly different cooldown for Frenzied Regen, but it's a workable idea.

 

Fasc

This and to what someone above saying that the Naxxramas gear will be more readily available, I'll agree with you on the point of the main pieces of head/shoulders/chest/legs/gloves since those require very high ratings to get the Deadly. However, I know at least the belt only required honor points and a 1640ish rating to get the 213 item lvl slot item. Considering I won't be jumping straight into 25-man Naxxramas, that's quite a nice upgrade especially since I won't need anything else until Ulduar unless they make PvP gear unappealing in some meaningful way.

As for killing the boss faster, other than going for record times, achievements, or beating enrage timers (the only important one) I will almost always favor living over threat. If the boss dies at 2:10 instead of 2:30, it won't make a lick of difference to me really.

 

Qaatar

I think the only other viable alternative to this pvp-gear dilemma would be to reintroduce Int as a major stat on the pvp gear. It would eat up more of the item budget, and at the same time, quell most of the qq'ing about feral mana pools. Since the mana pool issue is pretty insignificant for us in a pve environment, and really is only an issue in pvp, I think it would be perfect. Of course, this means that they would have to retool all of the pvp feral gear, but I don't think that it would be such a huge problem.

 

david0925

To be perfectly honest, they should either
1.Add int to ALL leather gear that's basically "free" (this was true for most of druid armor pieces in TBC where a small amount of intellect on the gear cost basically nothing)
or
2.Add int to all feral tier pieces- sure this will make it more desired than offpieces, but it's not like it's not desired in the first place due to set bonuses anyway, heh.

Maniq is my hero

 

Bluegene

Another difference between bear charge and cat charge is that Feral Charge - Cat doesn't put you into combat (not sure if is intended or bug). It is a bit anonying when i was farming low level mob for timbermaw rep, kitty charge to a mob and see them still walking away in daze ignoring you.

I actually made a macro as follow ~

/cast feral charge - cat
/stopattack
/cast prowl
/cast pounce

Hit the macro twice fast and you can get a quick kitty charge+stun combo if you start as non stealth and not in combat, might be useful in arena too.