Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 173

Gruturistic · 10/02/08, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by Melthu

The problem, as has already been pointed out, is that this does nothing to free us from the death grip that armored jewelery slots currently have on us. Maybe you don't have a problem using a quest blue trinket due entirely to its bonus armor, but it's not really a great way to balance the game.

Tanking Brutallus with a Badge of Tenacity sucks?
Not in my opinion.

What sucks is the lack of an upgrade path for said Badge of Tenacity. I don't have a problem with wearing armor jewelry as long as I can pick up at least 1 upgrade from every tier of progression.

Massive armor has been the bear tank's "flavour" for very long and will still define us, although to a lesser extent, in WotLK. It's one of those very few stats we benefit a lot from, and while I concur it sucks to cap it early, or even get so close that Inspiration/Ancestral Fort becomes pointless, I don't quite agree with all the people so eager to shake even more of it off. It keeps flattening the game.
The tanking classes have already lost too much of their differences out of gameplay mechanic and necessity, let's make it even duller and make 4 exact clones.

Maybe I'm biased, but I tanked as feral since before TBC (crazy, I know) and had to learn to live peacefully with the concept of extra armor gear being our best resource but, at the same time, extremely rare and hard to come by (Mark of Tyranny? Check. Smoking Heart of the Mountain? Check. Ring of Protection? Check. Heavy Dark Iron Ring? never dropped for us. No more upgrades till Twin Emps and Razuvious? Check.)

Sadirin · 10/02/08, 10:21 AM

Originally Posted by nightcrowler

Ok. I've finished simulations.

Thank you for your work. However I have some questions / do not understand something.

1) DPS/TPS-Values
Did you use different equipment (juwels, enchants can and will be different for tanking and DPS) for bear and cat? Or did they use one equipment?

2)
Cat-Spec + cat form + cat equipment = 5090 DPS, while bearspec + bear form = 3000 DPS
What is with bear-spec + cat form + cat equipment?

3)
What about mangle-spam (with the new 200% scaling) vs mangle/shred, especially concering shredding attacks (2 talentpoints are an interesting reason not to take shredding attacks if mangle and shred are comparable in total dps)?

What would be the best DPS-cycle with the new mangle and rake? I think something around "mangle / rake / SR /mangle to 5 cp / rip" wwith an occasional bite if rip is still ticking and you already have 5 cp.

Would that be an option for serious DPS, compared to "mangle / rake / SR / shred to 4+ / rip (or bite)"?

4)
What kind of juwels did you use? I assume Agilty, because at T7-10 level, at least to toskks calculation, agility seems to be on par with strenght, with added boni of dodge and higher burst damage.

5) Ideally you could just write down the DPS/TPS-Values (for the new and the conventional dps cycle). *g*

bear spec + cat form + cat equipment
bear spec + cat form + bear equipment
bear spec + bear form + cat equipment
bear spec + bear form + bear equipment

cat spec + cat form + cat equipment
cat spec + cat form + bear equipment
cat spec + bear form + cat equipment
cat spec + bear form + bear equipment

5) I do not understand the data about the scaling between rip and bite. What is better now for Naxx-level? And by what difference/margin/scaling?

6) Would the DPS decrease be inacceptable if you would just use mangle/rake/SR/rip(bite) spam and so freeing up 10 talentpoints in feral agression and rend & tear? Or is the crit chance increase in rend & tear even with rip as the finisher so important?

Gruturistic · 10/02/08, 10:21 AM

Originally Posted by Kazanir

By the way, removing armor from feral staves wouldn't fix the problem in the slightest. Fix 30% of the problem, maybe.

Definitely true and I should have been clearer than my "pushes the armor cap 1-2 tiers farther".
The amount of AC on some cloaks, neckpieces and trinkets is scary.
Halving it (and ensuring sensible upgrades exist much farther down the progression path) would feel more appropriate.
I still stand by my suggestion of removing all of it from weapons, though. The current WotLK feral staves bloat (at least on the known loot tables) is quite unreasonable, esp. given the effort in streamlining itemization to reduce loot rot.

Kazanir · 10/02/08, 10:26 AM

Originally Posted by Gruturistic

Definitely true and I should have been clearer than my "pushes the armor cap 1-2 tiers farther".
The amount of AC on some cloaks, neckpieces and trinkets is scary.
Halving it (and ensuring upgrades exist much father down the progression path) would feel more appropriate.

Wrong. No matter how much is on them, it'll still be pretty overpowered. Maybe if they had so little as to only be useful to bears. But regardless, the whole issue is just vastly dumb.

My new thread on the beta forums is here: WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> How to fix Bear Armor/HP scaling

Please don't be idiots in that thread. I want it to be seen and hopefully responded to and not have a lot of garbage for Ghostcrawler (or whoever) to wade through.

Sadirin · 10/02/08, 10:33 AM

Interesting to read, but I am not quite sure if the need for even more talent points is really that helpful.

Korhaug · 10/02/08, 10:49 AM

Kazanir - I am concenred about your suggestion to replace mitigation with self-healing. While lowering mitigation is apparently neccesary and reducing the effectiveness of armor jewellery is a valid (though unlikely) solution, self-healing is considerably less reliable in tight situations then regular mitigation. It offers much less protection against burst damage, and over time I suspect will lead to large amounts of overhealing (either of itself or of the tank healers).

Moreover, you completely flipped the functionality of lotp and ilotp, effectively forcing all feral druids to spec 3 points into it. I suspect the designers will find the latter undesirable, and the former unacceptable.

Yaelle · 10/02/08, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by Grubsnik

DKP values are an artefact of your own guilds looting system. People using lootcouncils, fixed price dkp or whatever people choose to do, won't be affected.

Getting your tanking gear cheap is a measly bandaid for not having any choice in the matter in the first place.

It does not matter really how items are distributed.
Fact is, we're moving from a balanced supply and demand market to a market with high demand.
As an example, take the Felmyst trousers, which are a sunmote turn-in from DPS-Leather, which is quite similar.
Here you have an extreme high demand with a very low supply and I don't think I would want that for every slot on my tanking gear, including rings, amulets and cloaks.

Kazanir · 10/02/08, 10:55 AM

Originally Posted by Korhaug

Kazanir - I am concenred about your suggestion to replace mitigation with self-healing. While lowering mitigation is apparently neccesary and reducing the effectiveness of armor jewellery is a valid (though unlikely) solution, self-healing is considerably less reliable in tight situations then regular mitigation. It offers much less protection against burst damage, and over time I suspect will lead to large amounts of overhealing (either of itself or of the tank healers).

Moreover, you completely flipped the functionality of lotp and ilotp, effectively forcing all feral druids to spec 3 points into it. I suspect the designers will find the latter undesirable, and the former unacceptable.

How can I put this nicely? I can't. REPLACING MITIGATION WITH SOMETHING THAT ISN'T MITIGATION IS THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT.

Bear mitigation right now is much too high and needs a capital-N-nerf or bears will be the only acceptable choice for end-game content with bosses that can one-round a tank. I know that self-healing, like avoidance, isn't mitigation. After the changes I propose, we'd have the same mitigation as plate tanks, while compensating for their higher avoidance with our higher self-healing, both of which serve the same purpose.

Mezoth · 10/02/08, 10:57 AM

The only reason the felmyst trousers are so in demand today is that they are better for several classes (enh shm, hunters, dps warriors) then the plate gear. Blizzard seems to be trying to rectify the fact that mail and plate wearers want the dps leather, which should lessen the demand down to just the leather wearers for the majority of the gear.

Korhaug · 10/02/08, 11:23 AM

Originally Posted by Kazanir

How can I put this nicely? I can't. REPLACING MITIGATION WITH SOMETHING THAT ISN'T MITIGATION IS THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT.

Bear mitigation right now is much too high and needs a capital-N-nerf or bears will be the only acceptable choice for end-game content with bosses that can one-round a tank. I know that self-healing, like avoidance, isn't mitigation. After the changes I propose, we'd have the same mitigation as plate tanks, while compensating for their higher avoidance with our higher self-healing, both of which serve the same purpose.

You're right, and I was wrong. Lowering mitigation was the entire point, and I missed it.

I still think your solution, while elegant for druids, is too elaborate to be implemented at this point. It will require re-itemizing all the tank jewellery (and skewing DK itemization in the process so DKs will have to be rebalanced as well), flipping lotp and ilotp, and inserting an icd change into a talent.

It would actually be easier to insert the self-healing into Natural Reaction and have it proc from dodge (though yes, I would prefer that it scales with crit).

Merple · 10/02/08, 11:32 AM

Originally Posted by Korhaug

You're right, and I was wrong. Lowering mitigation was the entire point, and I missed it.

I still think your solution, while elegant for druids, is too elaborate to be implemented at this point. It will require re-itemizing all the tank jewellery (and skewing DK itemization in the process so DKs will have to be rebalanced as well), flipping lotp and ilotp, and inserting an icd change into a talent.

It would actually be easier to insert the self-healing into Natural Reaction and have it proc from dodge (though yes, I would prefer that it scales with crit).

Having a self-heal proc on a dodge is totally backwards. You just _dodged_. Barring complete healer failure or a AoE pull situation, you've got no damage to be healed.

Janraea · 10/02/08, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by Kazanir

How can I put this nicely? I can't. REPLACING MITIGATION WITH SOMETHING THAT ISN'T MITIGATION IS THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT.

Bear mitigation right now is much too high and needs a capital-N-nerf or bears will be the only acceptable choice for end-game content with bosses that can one-round a tank. I know that self-healing, like avoidance, isn't mitigation. After the changes I propose, we'd have the same mitigation as plate tanks, while compensating for their higher avoidance with our higher self-healing, both of which serve the same purpose.

If that was the entire point of your post, it would help to state said point clearly - preferably near the beginning of the post. That said, I think your idea is pretty excellent, and solves multiple problems with a single solution.

On the other hand, I believe they were including blocks when they said druid mitigation was significantly higher than warrior mitigation, so to implement something like this, they'd need to drop our armor down closer to warrior armor (moreso than they would if they did not).

Originally Posted by korhaug

I still think your solution, while elegant for druids, is too elaborate to be implemented at this point. It will require re-itemizing all the tank jewellery (and skewing DK itemization in the process so DKs will have to be rebalanced as well), flipping lotp and ilotp, and inserting an icd change into a talent.

It would actually be easier to insert the self-healing into Natural Reaction and have it proc from dodge (though yes, I would prefer that it scales with crit).

The tank jewelry wouldn't need re-itemization. You don't see rings with armor, agility, and ap on them, so we'd just end up having to choose between armor/defense and ap/agil - that seems like an excellent situation to me, especially if we're left able to hit the cap.

Korhaug · 10/02/08, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by Merple

Having a self-heal proc on a dodge is totally backwards. You just _dodged_. Barring complete healer failure or a AoE pull situation, you've got no damage to be healed.

Oh, it's even worse then that. Even given steady damage (so the heal isn't wasted), it would lump our avoidance with our self-heal, which is significantly inferior to spacing them out because it would make damage more spiky. Furthermore, scaling this ability off dodge is much worse then scaling it off crit. Even if you compensate for the rates themselves by altering the size of the heal, scaling it off crit gives us another mitigation stat, and again more steady damage intake (since crit rate is higher, there will be more procs for a lower amount).

Out of all the permutations for the self-heal ability, Kazanir's version is actually the best - a proc off crit that scales by AP.

The problem remains that I believe Blizzard will not implement it. You'll notice that I haven't dissented in the Beta forum, because I figure it's worth a try (and it is a nice solution). I'm quite sure that Blizzard are going to keep us chained to the armor gear, and simply adjust our modifiers to bring our mitigation down to the same area as the other tanks. Again, I don't think this is the best solution, simply the most likely one.

Edit to add: this is basically a rehash of the "we can write better druid mechanics" debate. Yes, we can, but GC has specifically noted that they're satisfied (I wouldn't go as far as happy) with current druid mechanics, and that they are not going to rewrite them at this point. I think scrapping extra armor from jewelery (and making it an equip bonus counts) and inserting a self-heal element to compensate for avoidance counts as changing the base mechanics, and is too fundamental a change for them to start playing with it two weeks before 3.0.

Mijae · 10/02/08, 1:00 PM

Originally Posted by Sadirin

6) Would the DPS decrease be inacceptable if you would just use mangle/rake/SR/rip(bite) spam and so freeing up 10 talentpoints in feral agression and rend & tear? Or is the crit chance increase in rend & tear even with rip as the finisher so important?

The only way to make mangle-spam even close to shred is using both the 2t6 bonus and Imp Mangle. This is valid at entry level with blues, but the stats on new gear will pass it up in epics and even more so as gear progresses. If the goal is to reduce talents to optimize cat DPS while in a bear spec, it might work.

It would free up Shredding Attacks for a slight dps loss. It would also free up a glyph slot. However, it requires you to take Imp Mangle, which is one of the weakest bear TPS talents. RnT is now one of the best TPS talents for bear, so you wouldn't want to give that up. Even using FB every ~30 second cycle, FA not really a big boost even in a full cat spec. There's really not a whole lot you can do with those 2 points. You could take iLotP or Brutall Impact, or drop FI and max FA.

A max hybrid build might look like this, with 4 points spare to shift around: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

All this really does is move the Shredding Attacks requirement to an Imp Mangle requirement (which might not have been taken otherwise). Taking SA instead would give 5 spare points to shift around. I'd prefer to use those points in utility talents.

With any full bear spec including Imp Mangle and NOT Shredding Attacks, it would only be a marginal DPS loss to use 2t6 and remove Shred from cycles. Looking at available gear, I'd say waist and wrist have the lowest loss.

Animalfury · 10/02/08, 1:07 PM

I will, probably, get a call from moderators for this but there is a sugestion:

Glyph of Dire Bear Form
Reduces your armor by 10% but gives you 5% more chance to be missed while in Dire Bear Form

With something like this we could choose when to reduce mitigation in favor of avoidance.
This moment would be when armor cap, when a boss use an important long cd/stacking debuff hit or after 50% medium avoidance(feel free to correct me if i am wrong).

As we would be trading armor and use a glyph slot, i think it is balanced (or could be by changing the numbers).