Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 159

kalbear · 09/29/08, 2:16 AM

I posted a comment on the itemization in the druid forums and item forums. Hopefully it'll be seen. Also hopefully they'll improve the Naxx-10 and 25 drops instead of flat out nerfing the feral enraged staff.

Falk · 09/29/08, 2:19 AM

Actually, the current issue is ferals have way more flat mitigation and not nearly as much avoidance as the other tanks. (No, this isn't because I'm stacking that. The numbers don't add up even when I've actively tried to work out a high avoidance set). This will cause issues as gear levels get higher and avoidance starts scaling upwards for all 4 tank classes, diminsihing returns taken into account.

I wouldn't be surprised if the blue staff was toned down armor-wise.

Zuult · 09/29/08, 3:30 AM

Just a thought : many tanking items are itemised with +def, which is useless because of 3/3 SotF. Has anyone evaluated moving to 2/3 or even 1/3 SotF to make it valuable ?

More specifically :
- how much def should we need to make up for one point in SotF ? Can this def be gained throught known def trinkets/rings/necks only ?

- If not (which is likely), would the freed talent point be beneficial enough to compensate for the regemming/reenchanting ?

Oiysters · 09/29/08, 3:49 AM

Originally Posted by Falk

Actually, the current issue is ferals have way more flat mitigation and not nearly as much avoidance as the other tanks. (No, this isn't because I'm stacking that. The numbers don't add up even when I've actively tried to work out a high avoidance set). This will cause issues as gear levels get higher and avoidance starts scaling upwards for all 4 tank classes, diminsihing returns taken into account.

I want to make sure I understand this - we have less avoidance that the other tank classes because they nerfed our agility to dodge ratio, we lost the dodge component of defense rating due to not needing the stat, and we cannot block or parry? And they are attempting to compensate for the lack of block or parry with flat damage mitigation, i.e. high armor values?

Falk · 09/29/08, 4:09 AM

I'm not saying that's what they've intended, but that's pretty much how it is on beta at the moment. I'm sitting around 32% dodge with full tank spec, and I doubt I could push it past 36-38% with full Naxx25 gear without the sacrifice of a boatload of stats (i.e. swapping out armor jewelry for DPS/agility jewelry)

Edit: rechecked numbers.

Nilaus · 09/29/08, 4:49 AM

Originally Posted by Zuult

Just a thought : many tanking items are itemised with +def, which is useless because of 3/3 SotF. Has anyone evaluated moving to 2/3 or even 1/3 SotF to make it valuable ?

I considered that as well, but +2% to stats is a very solid talent by itself, so even without the -crit% then it would still be among the better talents.

Beace · 09/29/08, 4:49 AM

If we reach a similar DTPS as all the other tanks, but do it through high armor instead of avoidance (and block), I'm not sure I see a problem with that. Though of course the DTPS does indeed need to be similar.

Any clue how much avoidance the other tanks are reaching compared to your 32%, given similar gear level?

Sir Loin · 09/29/08, 5:23 AM

Originally Posted by Zuult

Just a thought : many tanking items are itemised with +def, which is useless because of 3/3 SotF. Has anyone evaluated moving to 2/3 or even 1/3 SotF to make it valuable ?

More specifically :
- how much def should we need to make up for one point in SotF ? Can this def be gained throught known def trinkets/rings/necks only ?

- If not (which is likely), would the freed talent point be beneficial enough to compensate for the regemming/reenchanting ?

It takes 25 defense skill to remove 1% chance to be crit. 4.918498039 = 1 defense skill so about 123 defense rating to remove 1% chance to be crit.

2/3 points in SoF would require 197 defense rating to stay crit immune.

1/3 points would require 443 Defense rating to stay crit immune.

0/3 Points would require 689 Defense rating to stay crit immune.

The first point you could potentially make up with jewelry, capes, trinkets and gems/enchants, but would you seriously want to do so?

Ja7us · 09/29/08, 5:32 AM

Depends if you have most of that defense anyway (if those items are already the best available, say).

Deliverance · 09/29/08, 6:02 AM

Originally Posted by Zuult

Just a thought : many tanking items are itemised with +def, which is useless because of 3/3 SotF. Has anyone evaluated moving to 2/3 or even 1/3 SotF to make it valuable ?

Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I understood it we will still benefit from the anti-hit and the +dodge parts of +def as we do now, hence making defense less useful for us than the other tanks on a cost per point basis but certainly not useless. It will not be a stat any bear will want to maximize for, but "less useful" remains useful.

That said, to answer your question: Given a base bear build, I cannot see any talent points not yet taken that has a value greater than +2% stats for purposes of either avoidance or survivability - threat is another matter, but it seems unlikely to be a major issue. Trying to wring more use of +def by reducing the investment in one of our best multipoint talents and requiring us to wear a certain amount of +def looks like a losing solution in general.

As an example, look at this degenerate bear raid build, which lacks the following talents helping bear: BI, NI, ILotP, PT, KotJ, R&T in Feral, NS/MS and Intensity in Restoration. Assuming for the sake of argument that you want something that specialized for raid tanking in the first place (debuff maximizing and MT bear willing to go without very good hybrid talents so long as bear is slightly stronger), just which of those talents would be worth 2% stats and which of those few (if any) wouldn't be better paid off by reducing another talent instead of SotF? Going for a generalist build, a cat build, or a more-bear-than-cat build gives much the same result - there are very few things better than +2% stats for one talent point, and those that exist are already part of the base talents everybody will take.

From a practical perspective, if I were truly trying to maximize a bear tanking spec completely ignoring cat and just could not live without reduced stun/fear durations and the ability to spell interrupt every 30s, I'd probably strip 11 points out of restoration before removing one point in SotF ending up with something absurd like this 0/71/0 build, since +10% damage and OOC, while nice, do not give me the avoidance or survivability that SotF does.

halmmar · 09/29/08, 7:09 AM

Originally Posted by Falk

It's definitely not quadratic. If anyone can find a neat way to assign item levels using a quadratic scale so that each succeeding tier is X% better than the last, I'd like to confer with them.

As you can see, the stats derived from item level can fit either a quadratic polynomial or an exponential function. Both fit equally well.

Vaccine · 09/29/08, 7:54 AM

Originally Posted by Tappin

It's a huge mistake, and I hope someone will post that on the beta forums. I'm fairly certain this will lead to problems and unwanted nerfs like:
a) A primal fury nerf due to nearly limitless rage on large pulls.
b) Some internal cooldown on natural reaction's rage gain.
c) A swipe cooldown
d) An overall damage nerf because swipe spam is so good.

I don't really see this is an issue though, surely in any situation where we have enough mobs hitting us that Natural Reaction and Primal Fury's rage refunds give us infinite rage, we'd already be getting close to that from the mobs hitting. Either way I don't think it is worth panicing about.

On the damage we're doing, I blitzed 70->75 in the last few days as I've finally got a break from work and I ran 1 UK and 3 Nexus instances. One of the nexus runs I did without a healer and it was pretty easy to be honest. With a combination of Mark of Blood on bosses and bigger elites plus another ability (not sure what it was, was a blood DK ability healing me for 1kish every few seconds) I very rarely had issues with near death except when one of the Ret Pallys decided we weren't pulling enough in one go. My point is this run with 1 death knight, two ret pallys and a rogue, I came third in DPS without leaving bear form (rogue and 1 ret pally were above). I can put Death Knight down to inexperience but the other classes I was very close on, I pulled 1000 dps. Beserk had a lot to do with it I think, you can really just go nuts with it on the bigger packs and tab targeting is really no issue with its threat gain (unless a DK likes to play with his flying taunt skill). Not only that it was doing insane DPS. With RNT and a lacerate stack thrown up before hand I was ripping through packs with maul and mangle and was even using Beserk on single target bosses simply gor the ~1.5k dps it was providing.

Infinte swipe targets should be interesting but I'm a little worried it might be overpowerd not damage wise but targets that can be pulled. With infinite swipe and a healer I wouldn't really see problems in pulling 4-6 packs in nexus or UK at a time (we were pulling 2-3 with DK passive heals plus off heals on DPS that pulled from ret) and with sufficent AoE classes should be able to drop them incredibly quick after an initial 10-15 second aggro period. I could literally forsee clearing Nexus especially in 10 minutes doing it. I guess leveling parties aren't a big balancing concern for Blizzard but there it is.

Our leveling I'm pretty impressed with, I'm getting FB crits upwards of 6k with ease at this level. Opening with Pounce/Rake then a few mangles then FB leaves pretty much anything dust. Bigger elites are tougher due to the bear nerfs and the fact Mother Bear doesn't work solo but I've managed 90% of the 2 and 3 man elites as solo and much of this is due to the improved Frenzied Regeneration.

Valerian · 09/29/08, 8:31 AM

Has anyone made a post on the beta boards about our armor scaling yet? Once again we seem very close to being able to Cap our armor after the first raid instance which is a major problem with our scaling and the scaling of buffs like inspiration. I can see people not wanting to get "nerfed" to start but if we keep ourselves capped (or at least capped with inspiration) right off the bat, we're going to have some pretty big scaling issues later once again.

Diameter · 09/29/08, 9:27 AM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF

Thorns scales off of spell power. The problem is that it scales off of the spell power of the recipient, not the caster. Ideally you'd have a resto or balance druid buff you with thorns and then it would hit pretty hard (over 200 a hit) but it's not working quite right yet.

I'm curious if thorns checks the spellpower of the recipient at the time the buff is applied or the time thorns reflects damage at the enemy. If it's case #1, It would benefit us to carry a set with as much spell power as possible on it. If it's case #2, it won't help ferals much (some raid buffs give us spell damage)

david0925 · 09/29/08, 10:05 AM

On the consecrate versus swipe issue:

Consecrate uses 1 GCD every 8 seconds, while swipe uses one every 1.5 seconds when you spam it. Assuming that swipe does the same TPS as Consecrate, consecrate will be better because it takes 4 less global cooldowns (not complaining at all, just analyzing)

With internal threat buffed on Swipe, depending on how much it got buffed, I am wondering if it will overtake (or already have overtaken) lacerate in terms of single target threat. In either case that makes lacerate either a Maul buff for 5/10 mans, or "shudder" anti-rogue pvp tool like rend only.