Duilliath

How does that even come close to customisation ? You start with Braxxis, upgrade to Earthwarden, then to the SSC staff. There's no question whatsoever what to use, unless it simply didn't drop. Then there's the MH staff which you might want to use on Brutallus if you feel like it. Again, nothing to customise. People don't do customisation. They do optimalisation. If it's the best they have access too, they'll use it. Otherwise they won't.

Why on earth would you want a system where there's multiple drops in the same tier which all essentially are the same ? I'm aware it's a bit like that currently (just compare Hunter Gun from Al'ar, Hunter Bow from Vashj or a few similar items), but there at least multiple classes can use those items. Who else is going to use a Feral Tanking Staff ? Or DPS staff for that matter ? The Restos ? So what - then yer still in the same class.

 

Qutossar

If MH Staff had like 160 Endurance there were customisation.
It would be difficult to decide what is better.
(Just a little example !)

It *is* possible to introduce different items that are optimal for different encounters.
Optimisation makes customisation more difficult - but also more rewarding.

It is also possible to make different items that do different things, but are so hard to optimise that nobody really does it.
Like a staff that substatially increases feral attack Rating against a staff that adds a stupid amount of life.
Both are good against parry hastes - but which one is better ?
If it comes down to taste, Blizzard has succeded.


Same can be doen with tier sets. Especially with the reduced amount of items in WotLK.

 

TheNameLessOne

Rogue dagger are the one place where the is 'customization' and it leads to nothing but cursing and griping.

'Customization' == useless bloat that has no purpose in the game.

 

david0925

So let me get this straight. Your logic is that since we have an reduced amount of items, we should re-bloat boss loot tables by introducing 2 kinds of feral staff, whose only difference is on taste? That sounds like taking a step backwards to me and goes completely against what they are trying to accomplish through loot integration.

So basically what you're asking is for 2 different items, but serve almost identical purpose, so that 50% picks one and 50% picks the other one?

I think that's complete failure rather than success =\

Maniq is my hero

 

Jone

Remember, the whole point of this is to let us share rogue gear -- make it AP, not strength, or we're back needing special snowflake leather. The last piece of rogue gear with strength was their vanilla dungeon set, and I doubt they're getting more anytime soon.

 

kalbear

I think that's a poor thing to go for regardless. I would like the bear and cat itemization to be more similar in overall desires, but there isn't going to reasonably be a time where you will have only one gearset. At the very least the choices in gemming and enchanting will necessitate having multiple sets.

If the tier items get bonus armor it will mean essentially that druids have the same choices they do in BC late game - that only the tier gear is at all of any use as a bear, other than the random ring/amulet/trinket/cloaks that drop. I would very much prefer this not to be the case, and that more gear bears would use would drop or otherwise be available.
For tanking, I would like to have multiple weapons. The big problem is that for feral druids the weapon is such a huge chunk of itemization that it can't go too far in one direction without messing it up. Right now, it's typical for me to switch between the [Wildfury Greatstaff] and [Staff of the Forest Lord] depending on threat, avoidance and armor needs. That's not particularly optimal though; the Staff is a huge hit in armor, and usually can't be used for any serious hard-hitting encounters. Having tanking weapons that focus more on things like expertise/hit would be good, as would weapons that focus more on avoidance and weapons that are just good overall. [Pillar of Ferocity] is something of a failure because it isn't as good of a threat weapon as it could be nor does it work as avoidance. If we had something with some agility and a lot of AP instead of strength, it would be a good alternative.

Because weapons are so important to tanking I think having multiple choices in drops, turn-ins and other sources is a good thing.

 

Tappin

While it's true that every class has a best item, almost no other classes have the druid's situation from TBC. At least for tier slots, bears went crafted or dungeon drops --> T4 --> T5 --> T6 with badge and pvp gear somewhere in the progression. Most other classes go dungeon gear --> (KZ/Gruul/Mag drop slightly worse than T4) --> T4 --> (Slightly less than t5 quality raid drop) --> T5 --> (Slightly less than t6 quality raid drop) --> T6 with badge and pvp gear somewhere in between. Sure, tier gear is better than the raid purples, but the choices are there. Very few other classes ONLY have tier upgrades available. Similarly druid tanking goes AH staff --> Rep Reward --> T5 trash drop --> Nothing. Other classes have weapon upgrades in each tier as well as badges.

Tier gear should be better than other gear at the same level. But no class should be limited to tier gear or 1-2 pieces per slot to look forward to.

Hopefully allowing us to share rogue gear and/or tanking off-slots with other tanks will avoid this dearth of upgrades to look forward to.

Obviously things won't work the way they are on beta. But they're changing things. It wouldn't take much, though, to balance us in rogue gear and/or make less wasted stat points in tanking off-slots. We could get some survivability from str on tank gear (maybe even reducing offensive value of str in bear). We could get more survability from stats on rogue gear (AP, hit, crit?) They could even go so far as to make rogues want str and put str on our gear. This would have the added benefit of making rogues able to share dps war / enchance / ret dps items. The main problem is past itemization. It's probably a huge amount of work to go back and fix all of the items to match the newly modified class desires. But, they have chosen to change the gear many classes want. A lot of work in inevitable.

Personally, I'm optimistic. A wider range of gear would make the game more fun. They just need to let us know how we're going to get survivability comporable to other tanks using the gear they intend us to wear.

Regarding weapons: I'm all for making us be able to tank and dps without 2 full sets of gear. I doubt that will ever happen given enchants and gems. Sta gems/enchants in tanking gear and dps gems/enchants in dps gear requires 2 sets of gear (unless 1 stat is ideal for both and gems/enchants are available for that stat in all slots. Before beta, agi was close to this). As long as they allow weapon swaps in combat, I would like to see 2 weapons specialized for each role. Weapon swaps from defense to offense are a big chunk of our (and really several other classes') ability to swap roles mid fight.

 

dukes

The whole point of the itemisation rework is to make it so theres lots of items viable for different classes without having to have individual items for specific specs that would then be wasted. They're certainly heading towards this with the grouping of healing/damage gear for casters, and similar stuff for plate tank classes. By consolidating leather melee gear into one too it means there's plenty of different pieces of gear that will be available that won't be for a specific class. It would be nice if they can manage this for weapons too, either by reworking Predatory Strikes into something that directly gives FAP from DPS, or something similar.

Please stop whining that itemisation won't be there, the current changes show that Blizzard have both a vision for where they're going and know what they're doing with it. More druid changes are to come soon, as commented by some of the blue posts. Sure, if the next feral push shows that they don't see to know whats going on, or change things in a way that seems bizzarre, discuss it (preferably without directly whining).

 

kalbear

On a side note - any ideas on how they're going to make items actually desirable for T6/T6.5 wearers come Wrath? If there is no bonus armor on items (which is where it increasingly sounds like they're going) virtually every single piece of gear a T6/T6.5-geared bear will be wearing is going to have significantly more armor than its counterpart. The only way I can see it working is if they make all the other stats on leather (presumably rogue leather) so much more valuable that stacking them must be done.

But I'm at a loss as to how haste, AP, hit rating and agility can be made so much stronger than armor is right now for overall tanking.

 

Nezralix

If this is the case, they'll just convert all of the extra armor stat to stamina or something, like they converted all spell damage to strength on Ret paladin gear (on leather items, obviously, not on rings/trinkets/etc., which appear to be itemized with extra armor on early Wrath gear).

 

Tappin

That's why they can't just up our value from the stats we already love (sta, agi, armor). I'm assuming we'll get survivability from some other stat (or results of stats like ap --> survivability and ap comes from ap, agi, fap, and str?)

If they keep us limited to agi, sta and armor and just 'turn up the knobs', we'd have a problem with caps (armor and maybe even dodge).

Either way, they also might end up going back and changing some of our existing gear (lower armor, more str or ap or whatever). That's basically what they did for a bunch of other stats (melee haste / spell haste --> haste. +heal --> +spell, +melee/spell hit --> + hit, etc). The changes were retroactive.

 

Blackpatch

Feral staves, however they're designed, are useful to one spec in one class. That's bad because a smart loot table builder won't put too many of them in the game, which makes it hard to find upgrades.

Let's assume that bonus-armor items leave the game and that Blizz figures out a solution for +defense on leather. The remaining things that ferals want for PvE are AGI, STA, AP, hit, and crit. These stats can also be found on hunter polearms, which are another example of a less desirable weapon drop. So, I propose that druids be given polearms, that feral DPS be allowed to scale with weapon DPS at whatever rate Blizz thinks optimal, and that hunter melee itemization acquire a bias towards polearms. This will combine two less-popular weapon categories into one, and maybe lead to fewer Void Crystals overall.

CONSERVE YOUR RAGE AND LUST

 

Tappin

Making cat 2 hander dps weapons wouldn't be too difficult I think. We could use ret / MS weapons if we benefitted from weapon dps (1 weapon dps = 1 dmg in cat and 2.5 dmg in bear). Obviously they'd have to adjust for feral base damage. And some of our moves that would lose AP scaling might need to scale a little different.

Bear weapons would be more difficult unless we could get enough armor without armor on a weapon.

I'd be fine with very sporadic upgrades since nobody else can use them. Something like: rep --> badge reward --> mid game raid token turn in --> end game raid quest reward would be fine as long as:

a) itemization in the other slots is considerably better (as they seem to be shooting for).
b) higher iLvl tanking weapons are itemized to be better tanking weapons than lower ones (yes Pillar, I'm looking at you).
c) we don't go several tiers without any tanking weapon upgrades (go go SSC Staff!)

 

Wyldthang

Why not just implement a weapon token system as well? For example, each boss that dropped a weapon would now drop 2 "of the Weapon" tokens (yeah, I know, really creative with the name). All 2-handers would require 2 tokens to purchase and each 1-hander (including off-hands) would require 1 token. That way, weapon token drops would always be useful, allowing raid members maximum benefit from the weapon drops. Blizzard could even randomize it more by allowing a 0/1/2 token drop possibility on each kill. I think it would lead to a lot less loot rot (which Blizzard has expressed as one of their design goals) and there would be much less RNG causing people to wait for months for that one drop.

Another idea for the weapon customization that's been discussed in recent posts could be an Anathema/Benediction type on use effect for a weapon, thus allowing the player the option of which version would be most beneficial for a specific fight. I know that's highly unlikely, but I liked the idea.

 

Azo

Given the time frame of the beta it seems unlikely that we'll be given a overhaul of the FAP mechanic, would hope that due to the huge scaling implications and such it could have, that changing us to work off a weapons base DPS would be a key, 'first step' change to the spec, not a 'knob we can turn' kind of deal, who knows though.

From what we've seen so far with tokens Blizzard doesn't seem to want to make every drop a token, a simple solution, no doubt mentioned before, would be to have a vendor or NPC (Maybe someone in Moonglade or something who can changes every tier, to make it feel less like another token) who can turn a balance staff that dropped into a equivalent feral tank/dps and resto staff. Avoids removing all luck from the loot tables but reduces waste.

An Anathema/Benediction type deal would be great, but I can imagine the complaints from pretty much every other class, hybrid or not, wanting their weapons to switch when they respec to be huge.

 

• Falk

If you had 100k HP and 25% avoidance for M'uru, you're going to eventually die. Granted, that's one specific role in one specific encounter, but there you go.

 

halmmar

A good loot table would contain exactly 0 feral staves and give them to us as reputation rewards (like [Earthwarden]) and tokens (like the [Staff of the Forest Lord]).
Obviously you would need several tiers of tokens to allow progression above a certain level.

A good loot table would also keep all idols, relics and totems away from raid drops (spec-specific drops are prone to getting sharded).

 

• Cluey

The amount of feral attack power on the weapons is tied to the item level and quality, so what you are suggesting has effectively already been done.
They can either add the FAP line to weapons we can equip or do as you suggested and have a way of converting the weapon DPS into +form DPS. As Blackpatch said there are other weapons like the hunter polearms which we could share, maybe there is more to come which we don't know about. Going back a long way now, druids were able to use polearms back in the original beta, I wasn't in the beta but remember a lot of crying about them being taken away, it would be quite amusing if we got them back all these years later.

I touched on the higher ilvl weapons not being as good because of bad itemisation in an earlier post, the changes to Predatory Strikes means that the badly optomised weapons may be better anyway. Would 20% more FAP make Pillar better now? Certainly not for mitigation but for threat I expect a few would argue the trade off would be worth it.

I look forward to seeing what they change with our talent trees when they get around to us.
Looking at the current trees and a few of the builds people think will be good or that they will use, there were quite a few people skipping the 45-50 point talent. Given a 40 point investment to get to a talent something is wrong if after getting to it it isn't deemed good enough to take.
It was also interesting to see how many people are willing to skip Improved Leader of the Pack, it is an amazing talent for soloing but once you get into group play and especially raids the shine has gone and it's usefulness diminished to a point where not having it wouldn't be noticed.
On a fight like Brutallus it is nearly all over heal, even when tanking, and if you are in as DPS it doesn't do anything unless you get burnt and then it isn't something the burn healer is going to factor into their healing output on you.
On a fight like Felmyst the over heal isn't high but if you didn't have it would anyone die or would a healer run out of mana?
If it was changed to add a mini PW:S type effect from any overheal it caused would it be worth taking again? Would it be too strong?

 

manapaws

To fix up my lack of source in my original mention of this.

(My emphasis)

This doesnt sound any different to the way it currently is, no?

 

Duilliath

Well, there you have my reading and reasoning - it's split in two distinct bits:

"Attacks that require you to be behind a target will no longer be able to be parried," => By mobs and players

"nor able to be dodged by a player." => Players only

Would make sense to me anyway to just remove the checks for the attack completely, rather than have a separate string in PvE and PvP. Especially since you *can't* do a Shred/Backstab unless you're behind someone, which automatically disqualifies the attack from being parried in the first place if all is done as it should be done. In a way that already takes care of the Parry/Dodge check.

 

Boevis

T2.5/3 Lasted until level 65 for some classes, and up to 70 for other classes (Resto Druids as an example). I didn't replace all my T3 until I picked up the PvP items, both for resto and Feral (similarly, T4 helm dropped late so I used that old Guise of the Devourer for a long time). And then of course there's . Considering how rarely Blizzard manages to make a trinket designed for druids, I imagine I'll be using [Badge of Tenacity] for a while unless by some miracle I need 57 Stamina.

I think the problem I (and aparently many druids) have is that Blizzard seems to acknowledge the different needs of Feral Druids compared to Rogues, Hunters, and Warriors, but simultaneously refuses to actually do anything about it; whether it be changing mechanics or implementing sufficient "druid" gear (by sufficient I mean the ability to fill every slot with items designed with druids in mind instead of 18 different trinkets designed for rogues that are "not bad" for every other Physical DPS class, in addition to every other slot except for our set bonus's).

And coming from the standpoint of one of the MT's for a progression guild, I don't think anyone particularly minds getting a 5th [Pillar of Ferocity] when getting a good (albeit not perfect) item to drop early and often meant 2 of the Tanks could handle Azgalor during a silence or Bloodboil with 12 bleeds stacked. There's guilds out there with too many DPS Swords or caster Staves, and while I'm sure it makes your Holy Paladins and Resto Druids happy to have DPS items for farming, they do as much good for the raid as having mages wearing Feral Staves. The Sunmote turnin system even further alleviated the problem by having half as many items required for the same number of specs. It's still annoying when you see Resto/Boomkin gloves for the 6th time instead of Pattern: Mage Chestpiece, but it's just as annoying to wipe 25 times because your healers aren't geared enough.

Further, Feral Staves may be "for Feral Druids only", but what about Daggers? Hunters tended to use Polearms, Rogues have been favoring Swords since AQ40 (Mutilate was ok for your 3rd rogue if not enough swords dropped I guess), Shaman want slow OH, so that leaves Non Orc/Human Fury warriors that would want to OH a Dagger. 1 Race per faction of 1 spec of 1 class. Not counting Arena weapons or other Vendor items, there's 15 Daggers from Kara-KJ. 4 Feral Staves. They even started designing Offhands for both Backstab (fast) and Mutilate (slow) so there's actually more offhands designed for a spec that isn't even used outside of rare arena teams than there are for a spec designed to be capable of "Being the MT for a guild"

I personally think the way they had it in BT/Hyjal was very nice for tanking (aside from a couple items having to come from badges instead of having a higher iLevel and dropping in the instance) with a Kinda Feral designed Cloak and Boots dropping off Trash, universal Neck, Ring, Trinket from bosses, and the rest being filled in by nice Badge Gear (Bracers, Gloves, Belt) and set tokens.

 

Liar

You can get parried on Shreds for one simple reason: server lag. I have seen it happen in PvE atleast and I assume PvP isn't any different. So this is a buff, maybe not a huge one but a buff nonetheless.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Duilliath

I never denied it being a buff - the above was my reasoning for the same mechanics being (or going to be) in place for PvE and PvP.

Though buff might be too big a word - it's more of a fix (one letter less, yay) as it sorts something that shouldn't even be possible to happen in the first place.

 

Snarley

Well, as has been mentioned about the token system in wrath, each tier of raid is going to have different tokens. I think blizz is a step ahead of us with feral tanking/dps weapon itemization in that it probably is not going to be a drop and it is most likely going to be found on Badge vendors or rep vendors.

This would prevent loot rot while also allowing for specialization and a predictable time table for players to be able to clear content. IE good players who are able to clear all the content somewhere even without that extra gear, will be receiving the tokens faster and upgrades quicker. While players who need to rely heavily on the gear to over gear an instance and help get encounters down, will receive the upgrades slower.

Good system imho.

 

unitsinc

Bear Form armor compensation
Bears need to be compensated for less bonus armor on leather and lack of parry and block. Period. We haven't added those talents or bonuses or whatever they are going to end up being yet because the game isn't in a state where we could say e.g. what amount of armor a L80 tank needs to handle Patchwerk. Pointing out where you think bears (or any class) fall short in mitigation (or any aspect of tanking) is helpful. This is a beta though, and there is going to be a lot of iteration until we're happy with everything.

Source: MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Feral Concerns in WotLK


See, Blizz knows what they're doing. They just haven't gotten to our trees yet. Look how much mage and DK trees have changed since the beta went live. We'll get our time in the spotlight for fixes. Its still incredibly early in the beta.