Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 64

Emi · 08/11/08, 9:07 AM

I've not seen this here so here it goes ...

Bracers of Deflection - Item - World of Warcraft

Why we, currently, don't have parry has been one of those long unanswered questions and the possibility of us seeing it in WotLK has been brought up here already.

Are we seeing a glimpse of that dream finally becoming a reality ?

Needless to say, i'll explode in laughter if this ends up to be meant specifically for a pvp rogue but hey ... stranger things have happened before.

Madrail · 08/11/08, 10:13 AM

I've seen a lot of discussion in this thread about whose gear we're going to be cadging from, but one thing that I've heard brought up in regards to WotLK itemization hasn't really been mentioned that I noticed (apologies if I missed it). Obviously we don't have any real info yet, so we're basing discussion on what we do know, but from what I'd heard most major drops from the 10 and 25 man progression dungeons are going to have 'item normalization' on them, ie: their stats will be set by the class of the person who gets them, rather like the tier gear but more pervasive. On the one hand, I think this will help avoid the question of 'rogue leather with stats we don't need' (and possibly even 'tanking rings with block value'), on the other hand, given season 2 feral pvp gear I don't trust Blizzards itemization at all. =p Also, while it wouldn't quite leave us waiting for tier gear, the overall effect is the same. I dunno. Honestly, I think someone should make a Rawr model updated as information becomes available and send it to Blizzard. They clearly can't do math on their own.

Also, in regards to the earlier discussion about cat dps, I agree that there's no need for it to match rogues (although if they split the tree enough I see no reason it shouldn't reach the 95% someone suggested earlier). Likewise I agree that rogues will whine to high heaven again if it's that close. Screw the rogues. They can whine all they want about not having raid buffs, but they also get an ass-ton of combat abilities on top of their high dps. Honestly, though, 95%, 90% whatever, it needs to be rebalanced to be within a reasonable range. Not the 60% it is now. I know plenty of people want to stay Tank/off-dps, and I can understand that. They can deal with being 60% of a rogues damage then. I really like the idea of being able to kitty dps effectively. It's what drew me to play a druid. Is that stupid from a numbers standpoint? Yes, probably. However, I think it's pretty reasonable from both an aesthetic and gameplay standpoint. I enjoy the gameplay of kitty dps, and I just plain like the idea. I'm not saying Blizzard needs to bow to my personal whims, but I'm clearly not the only one. Let's face it, being a shapeshifter and eating mobs faces is fun. Heck, they even gave it to Warlocks now with Demon Form.

KraxisSingular · 08/11/08, 10:13 AM

Originally Posted by Emi

I've not seen this here so here it goes ...

Bracers of Deflection - Item - World of Warcraft

Why we, currently, don't have parry has been one of those long unanswered questions and the possibility of us seeing it in WotLK has been brought up here already.

Are we seeing a glimpse of that dream finally becoming a reality ?

Needless to say, i'll explode in laughter if this ends up to be meant specifically for a pvp rogue but hey ... stranger things have happened before.

Heh... These and the Prot Warrior talent that adds 5% dodge and Rogues are already well on their way to become avoidance tanks again.

Edgeworth · 08/11/08, 10:35 AM

From http://blue.mmo-champion.com/10/8765...ortitude.html:

We still would like all 4 tanks to have their own niche, and unless we change something down the road, the design is still for the warrior to be the best tank for single bosses that hit hard for physical damage (which to be honest, has tended to be most of them so far).

Assuming that Paladins will still be kings of tanking many mobs at once, and Death Knights will be ahead of the pack on encounters where magic damage is prevalent, I can't help but wonder what is left for Ferals. Threat on DPS race fights? (I don't consider offtanking trash/boss adds, then shifting out for mediocre dps to be a niche.)

Perhaps someone in beta could ask the devs in which kind of encounters they feel the Feral will be the best tanking choice? Given the statement about warriors above, I'd really like to hear some kind of similar mission statement for Feral tanks.

seminarca · 08/11/08, 10:42 AM

I really have to /boggle when Druids talk about parry as some kind of holy grail. Aside from the slight haste on next swing, it's the same exact as dodge from a defensive point of view. It's actually worse if you consider the rating requirement differences. Why is parry so exciting? What if you took 20% of your current dodge, set it aside and pretended it was called "parry" and then reduced your actual dodge by 20%. How does that make us better in any way?

Itemization? Just so they can stack different forms of avoidance on 1 item? Nup, we already do that with Agi and dodge rating. More returns from Defense? We are getting 6% crit reduction from talents in WotLK. The only thing it might conceivably do is make some of the shared slot items better than they otherwise would be.

=/

edit:

Originally Posted by Edgeworth

Perhaps someone in beta could ask the devs in which kind of encounters they feel the Feral will be the best tanking choice? Given the statement about warriors above, I'd really like to hear some kind of similar mission statement for Feral tanks.

That's definitely a question worth asking.

Also, Maim is now our Kick on bosses:
* Maim now interrupts the victim's spellcasting for 3 seconds.

It's unclear whether the stun effect remains, but at least the interrupt should work on bosses like the S3/S4 glove bonus.

Aeverius · 08/11/08, 11:15 AM

Originally Posted by seminarca

I really have to /boggle when Druids talk about parry as some kind of holy grail. Aside from the slight haste on next swing, it's the same exact as dodge from a defensive point of view. It's actually worse if you consider the rating requirement differences. Why is parry so exciting? What if you took 20% of your current dodge, set it aside and pretended it was called "parry" and then reduced your actual dodge by 20%. How does that make us better in any way?

If nothing else were to change (ie, no Parry-related talents, etc), giving Druids the ability to parry would let them make better use of Defense as a stat, since they would accrue 3/4 of the benefits instead of half. Obviously still not as useful as shield-wearing classes find it, but equal to DK's at least.

Mara · 08/11/08, 11:22 AM

Seminarca:

At the moment, any Feral in Sunwell would love to have 20% of their dodge converted to parry, due to the Sunwell Radiance debuff. This debuff hits Ferals with greater impact than Warriors/Paladins, few of which have 20% dodge to lose in the first place. As to greater benefit from Defense, until we see Lvl 80 items, we wont' know if there are rings/neck/cloak out there other than the +defense loaded War/Pal/DK items. Granted, we are discussing WotlK, and they will probably fix avoidance values to prevent 100% avoidance tanking, but it does make a difference. As a sidenote, it would also be a minor buff for pvp purposes vs. the warrior overpower ability [which I thought I had read was going to be changed, but didn't see anything on mmo.champions latest warrior patch notes].

Muggins · 08/11/08, 11:40 AM

Originally Posted by Mara

This debuff hits Ferals with greater impact than Warriors/Paladins, few of which have 20% dodge to lose in the first place.

Please don't say stuff like this. A warrior geared enough for brutallus would find it very difficult to drop himself below 20% dodge without purposely picking some inferior pieces. I myself can reach ~30% dodge when raid buffed very comfortably and i don't even come close to the perfect gear layout.

Falk · 08/11/08, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by Mara

Seminarca:

At the moment, any Feral in Sunwell would love to have 20% of their dodge converted to parry, due to the Sunwell Radiance debuff. This debuff hits Ferals with greater impact than Warriors/Paladins, few of which have 20% dodge to lose in the first place.

Are you thinking in terms of quest greens? There is absolutely no way a warrior/paladin is having sub-20% dodge. Unless they're getting ready to raid Karazhan.

Besides which, if I traded in 20% dodge for parry, I'd still have 60% dodge leftover for Sunwell Radiance to eat. I don't want to think what you're doing with your gear to arrive at <40% dodge, that -20% would result in <20% left.

Deathstorm · 08/11/08, 1:27 PM

Originally Posted by seminarca

I really have to /boggle when Druids talk about parry as some kind of holy grail. Aside from the slight haste on next swing, it's the same exact as dodge from a defensive point of view. It's actually worse if you consider the rating requirement differences. Why is parry so exciting? What if you took 20% of your current dodge, set it aside and pretended it was called "parry" and then reduced your actual dodge by 20%. How does that make us better in any way?

I believe this is the reason ferals got so much dodge from agility, to compensate for not having parry but losing that same scaling from dodge means we need to get some form of avoidance from somewhere else. I'd say odds are we'll get parry to save them figuring out a different mechanic and seeing as they want us to be looting rogue and warrior gear for tanking there might even be a sort of logic to it.

Originally Posted by seminarca

Itemization? Just so they can stack different forms of avoidance on 1 item? Nup, we already do that with Agi and dodge rating. More returns from Defense? We are getting 6% crit reduction from talents in WotLK. The only thing it might conceivably do is make some of the shared slot items better than they otherwise would be.

As it stands the only avoidance stat we truly care about is agility, point for point it's better than anything and that's poor design so I understand the reasoning behind changing its scaling but without seeing these other changes the blues keep alluding to it's hard to know for sure. I'm actually dreading what they're going to do, I just don't think they'll manage to figure out a sensible way to allow a feral to tank well with str, agi, parry, def, dodge, block etc even if the suggestions here about putting in conversion talents sounds straightforward.

Mara · 08/11/08, 1:32 PM

I stand corrected re: relative dodge %s for Warriors/Paladins. Thank you for the clarification.
Which leaves us where we were before: Waiting to see whether Blizzard will create a separate set of neck/cloak/ring gear that benefits Ferals, or whether we are stuck using the same items as the other tanks which doesn't benefit us as much.

kalbear · 08/11/08, 2:29 PM

The question of what the bear's niche is has already been posted on the beta forums by Astrylian. It's been unanswered.

I think it's not true that being a feral druid (instead of a Bear tank or a cat DPS) is sufficiently bad for progression, at least as it was in TBC. Right now, a feral druid is a good tank in general and the best tank for a fair number of encounters, and does make learning the fight easier. Having iLotP adds to raid DPS. Having battle rez adds to progression. Having innervate adds to either dps or healing, whichever is needed. Furthermore, there are plenty of fights where being able to tank and do some damage is best - either because there are phase changes during the fight or something like Hyjal, where switching people out between waves is awkward at best. Are they required for progression? No, there are no fights where you must have a druid tank or a cat dps. But saying that they hinder progression is a bit ridiculous.

The issue now is that they are not a good choice for every single fight. There are plenty where they're suboptimal for tanking or suboptimal for DPS, but this is true for every single class.

As long as bears have a niche and as long as cats can do decent damage while providing useful raid utility I think it would be fine for progression. So far, what I've seen is their desire to make bears and cats separate while not defining what the bear niche is and only some vague notions of buffing the raid utility. It could work, but that design in general somewhat destroys what a feral druid is now.

Duilliath · 08/11/08, 3:04 PM

Originally Posted by Mara

I stand corrected re: relative dodge %s for Warriors/Paladins. Thank you for the clarification.
Which leaves us where we were before: Waiting to see whether Blizzard will create a separate set of neck/cloak/ring gear that benefits Ferals, or whether we are stuck using the same items as the other tanks which doesn't benefit us as much.

Could work as Sunwell loot does now. One item drops, you can swap it for something better designed for your class. Not a perfect solution, but I suppose they can make Death Knight and Feral Druids both share the loot easily enough since neither uses a shield.

The agi to dodge conversion is exactly why I'd like to see another avoidance bonus added. It doesn't necessarily have to be parry. But losing that much dodge (let's just say Sunwell Radiance suddenly doesn't affect Paladins/Warriors but still affects Ferals) while the other tanks stay at roughly the same level is not something I'd enjoy.

And Kalbear, almost more than role switching during raids, I'd say we have been trailblazers more than anything else. Early on bears tanked Prince Malchazar better. They tanked Morogrim / Fathom Lord better. They tanked Azgalor better. Once gear settles in, you can bring in the Warrior instead. I really would like to keep that spot myself. That, and the role switcher. It's kinda fun ressing someone when Veras vanished again.

Malazaar · 08/11/08, 3:16 PM

Originally Posted by Duilliath

but I suppose they can make Death Knight and Feral Druids both share the loot easily enough since neither uses a shield.

No, that won't work - let me explain why. Even though a Death Knight cannot block, he still needs massive amounts of defense (to gain crit immunity), as will a warrior/paladin. So all the tanking equipment will have lots of defense on it. It's true that a DK will only gain parry/miss/dodge from defense, but that is still 50 % more than what a feral gets.

Having no parry ability essentially means that every single piece of equipment with defense on it (most likely 50+ % of all the tanking equipment) will be far from optimal for us.

I believe a solution would be to double our dodge gain from defense to at least bring us up to par with DKs, but defense will still be an aweful stat for us.

kalbear · 08/11/08, 3:16 PM

I'd honestly rather not have bears be the best trailblazers again. Being great tanks in T4 was almost entirely because of good itemization on gear pre-Kara which hit caps on values such as armor too quickly. Between the bad itemization and those caps, druid became worse and worse relative to other tanks as progression continued; after T5 there simply wasn't the improvement in tanking ability because of gear compared to warriors or paladins. That was okay; between the encounter design and general abilities it wasn't like a druid couldn't tank most things, but at the same time it meant druids became suboptimal relative to geared warriors or paladins.

I would like to say that Sunwell showed very easily how well druids can do in the encounters there, and there are plenty where a druid is the best choice. So it's not as if druids became the worst choice in tanking for all fights post-T5. I would just like to see more gradual improvement in their gear and what can be tanked, which is something we did not see in most of TBC.