Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 71

Psibeast · 08/15/08, 11:11 AM

I'm thinking of it has a new skill, learned at the trainer. Instead of us going Lacerate Lacerate Lacerate Mangle (or switch lacerate for swipe if applicable), let's have something more interesting to do. You could spam it every cooldown, but if it catches a 200 damage hit it's not very interesting, or you could anticipate when a big hit is coming and use it defensively. For example, you see a spell being cast at you, and you know it's gonna hit for a bunch, hit that button and absorb it.

TimWischmeier · 08/15/08, 12:00 PM

Originally Posted by Psibeast

This would give the Druid an active way to mitigate it, and would involve a bit more skill on the part of the druid.

I would really love to have more possibilities to show a bit skill when tanking. That said, since I got the combination of Badge/Moroe's (which was when we started Gruul and Mag), I just rarely used other trinkets (up to Felmyst now). Why? I love have some buttons I can reactively or proactively use. It's tremendously helpful to pop those two trinkets about five seconds before a stomp, because you are most probably at full health when stomp occurs, which will help the healers alot. Hopefully when reworking bear tanking they will give us some talent which would make us able to show some skill while tanking.

Toranshalur · 08/15/08, 12:17 PM

What about a change to frenzied regen? Make it an activatable no-cooldown ability, consuming X rage per second when active and restoring Y health per second (or % of total hp)

You get hit a lot - lots of rage, frenzied regen activated, some damage mitigated.
Hit not very much, not much rage, cant spare any for regen, no damage mitigated.

It's a similar idea to health regen on being hit, but as rage is generated while being hit, might as well use it.

Psibeast · 08/15/08, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by Toranshalur

What about a change to frenzied regen? Make it an activatable no-cooldown ability, consuming X rage per second when active and restoring Y health per second (or % of total hp)

You get hit a lot - lots of rage, frenzied regen activated, some damage mitigated.
Hit not very much, not much rage, cant spare any for regen, no damage mitigated.

It's a similar idea to health regen on being hit, but as rage is generated while being hit, might as well use it.

The reason frenzied regeneration isn't used much as a raid setting tanking ability is that it is simply too weak. Furthermore, it consumes far too much rage for the amount of benefit you get from it. The most important point, though, is that it simple doesn't scale. You get the same amount of health from a full rage bar no matter how hard you are being hit.

My suggestion both scales (the amount of damage you mitigate is directly linked to the amount of damage you are taking), and adds a tactical skill element. You use it at the right time, you mitigate a lot of damage. You use it at the wrong time, you get little benefit. You need to make choices - do you want to use it or keep it off cooldown for emergency? you need to react quickly if you see a big blow coming.

pininer · 08/15/08, 1:05 PM

Originally Posted by TimWischmeier

I would really love to have more possibilities to show a bit skill when tanking. That said, since I got the combination of Badge/Moroe's (which was when we started Gruul and Mag), I just rarely used other trinkets (up to Felmyst now). Why? I love have some buttons I can reactively or proactively use. It's tremendously helpful to pop those two trinkets about five seconds before a stomp, because you are most probably at full health when stomp occurs, which will help the healers alot. Hopefully when reworking bear tanking they will give us some talent which would make us able to show some skill while tanking.

Similar to your idea, I had been mulling over in my mind for the last couple of days a new druid ability called Natural Dispersion, with similar functionality. The ability I was considering was really the druid answer to spell reflection, and went something like-

Natural Dispersion:
Takes one magical attack cast upon the druid and converts 100% of the magical damage into a 10 second heal over time on the druid. Cooldown 15 seconds (or so).

I figured with the homogenization of tanking abilities, and our overall lack of magical defense that this would be a unique way to get similar functionality to a warrior, without just copying spell reflection. Instead of making the dynamic offense, like a warrior, it would be more defensive (helping to mitigate the lacking static magic dmg reduction). REally though the buff coudl be anything instead of a hot- increased dodge, -10% magic dmg buff, a group heal over time.

I wouldn't expand it to physical attacks though because I think it could potentially op us, and give us a huge advantage over other tanks for bosses that have cleaves or other big physical attacks.

Mara · 08/15/08, 1:23 PM

The below post, while admittedly a "gross simplification" is rather worrying.

WoW Forums -> Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King

"Currently we are talking more about HOW classes tank, not WHAT they tank. Potential examples: The warrior tanks by having a shield, a lot of mitigation and avoidance. The druid tanks by having a huge health pool. The paladin tanks by using passive reactive abilities. That is a gross simplification, but perhaps you get the idea."

I don't tank with a huge health pool? Do you? I may have 1-1.5k more health, at most, fully buffed than our Warrior MT when we are both wearing stam-whore gear.

A warrior tanks with "a lot of mitigation and avoidance"? Wasn't the sunwell radiance debuff introduced largely because Druids could hit avoidance cap on bosses? And when have warriors ever hit the armor cap like Druids do?

Tanking has traditionally consisted of threat, mitigation & avoidance, where health was often considered merely a part of mitigation. Health doesn't give us more threat (unless you are counting being alive vs. being dead as more threat). Health doesn't give us more avoidance.

I like the Natural Dispersion idea in that it gives at least one idea on how a druid could tank with 'a huge health pool.' However, do we want to encourage Blizzard to take this route? Better yet a Feral on Beta who can make a persuasive post re: how tanking with health will require Blizzard to give us additional new abilities and creates an unwanted tax on healer mana, when they are already facing new issues due to the elimination of down-ranking.

Duilliath · 08/15/08, 1:30 PM

Come on.

Reading comprehension, people !

It was
1) an example
2) about WotLK and not at all about the current state of affairs.

Now stop throwing hissy fits and at least read and understand what the blue says.

Toranshalur · 08/15/08, 1:47 PM

Originally Posted by Psibeast

The reason frenzied regeneration isn't used much as a raid setting tanking ability is that it is simply too weak. Furthermore, it consumes far too much rage for the amount of benefit you get from it. The most important point, though, is that it simple doesn't scale. You get the same amount of health from a full rage bar no matter how hard you are being hit.

My suggestion both scales (the amount of damage you mitigate is directly linked to the amount of damage you are taking), and adds a tactical skill element. You use it at the right time, you mitigate a lot of damage. You use it at the wrong time, you get little benefit. You need to make choices - do you want to use it or keep it off cooldown for emergency? you need to react quickly if you see a big blow coming.

Sorry, you didnt really understand what i meant. The numbers on frenzied regen can be altered, and it does scale - with how hard we are being hit (if, like i suggested it has no cooldown and is just switched on or off) or it could scale with stamina or anything like that.

It doesnt have to be frenzied regen, but should be something like a reactive block (like warriors' is pro-active, activated when incoming damage is anticipated) so that it's basically life tap in reverse, using rage instead of mana.
For example, feral tank takes massive hit > full rage bar > uses "rage tap" > regens some health, like a warrior would have blocked it already.

On this idea that warriors are avoidance tanks and druids hp-based tanks; it seems flawed. Isn't that the tbc design? Yet warriors gem for stamina, and druids for agility. As you get more hp, avoidance gains in power (in terms of reducing chance of death from burst damage) and as you gain avoidance, stamina gains in power. You can't have 2 tank classes based around different tanking mechanics which should go hand-in-hand.

Psibeast · 08/15/08, 1:48 PM

I think that the fact that it is a recurring example in the blue posts when referring to druid tanking in wotlk is what got people worried. They are afraid that the examples they give reflect their current state of mind.

Sorry, you didnt really understand what i meant. The numbers on frenzied regen can be altered, and it does scale - with how hard we are being hit (if, like i suggested it has no cooldown and is just switched on or off) or it could scale with stamina or anything like that.

The thing is, it converts rage to health at a constant rate. Right now it is not very hard for us to fill our rage bar. It doesn't even take a very hard hitting boss to do so. You get a lot of rage from your offensive abilities as well. If I don't maul, I get a full rage bar even against trash mobs just due to the damage I am doing, so the incoming rage reflecting incoming damage isn't very accurate.

The other thing is, it doesn't really create a "niche" for druids. It doesn't affect the way a druid tanks and doesn't make the druid more suited to certain kinds of encounters.

Mijae · 08/15/08, 2:00 PM

While the Natural Absorbtion is a nice idea, it would need to be drastically scaled down. If you gain the same health as the damage taken, it's essentially like you avoided the hit. This means it is essentially, press X button to guarantee the next attack that would be a hit is instead a miss. That is quite an emergency button I'd love to have. However, every 6 seconds is far too frequent imo.

I prefer the idea about the Natural Dispersion idea. It's a great way to reduce overall healing required for high magic damage without actually mitigating the damage.

Barkskin in form is still the most simple change and is readily available. It might be interesting to have an active defensive ability on a shorter cooldown, but it seems they are even moving warriors away from it.

Jone · 08/15/08, 2:05 PM

Originally Posted by Psibeast

I think that the fact that it is a recurring example in the blue posts when referring to druid tanking in wotlk is what got people worried. They are afraid that the examples they give reflect their current state of mind.

Agreed, I've seen "big health, low mitigation/avoidance" at least twice (hereand here) in connection to druids, and I hate the idea. I've got stam gems now because I was going 50>0 in one hit on Teron, but I've always been most pleased to put in agility. I love the high dodge/armor bear tank and am a bit worried about the low mitigation these two comments seem to imply.

kalbear · 08/15/08, 2:10 PM

The biggest problem I have with that example - of any tank's niche being 'tons of stam' - is that it is inherently a poor scaling mechanic relative to mitigation or avoidance for tanking purposes. 20% more stamina is not the equivalent of 13% more mitigation as you increase the amount of damage you take. If the blizzard developers are going to give any tanking class this as their niche that tanking class will have an inherent disadvantage relative to others going forward. I'm also confused how predictable, larger damage is better than predictable, smaller damage or unpredictable smaller damage.

Hopefully this will be brought up on the beta forums and the developers can get a good grasp on effective health theory.

Psibeast · 08/15/08, 2:16 PM

Originally Posted by Mijae

While the Natural Absorbtion is a nice idea, it would need to be drastically scaled down. If you gain the same health as the damage taken, it's essentially like you avoided the hit. This means it is essentially, press X button to guarantee the next attack that would be a hit is instead a miss. That is quite an emergency button I'd love to have. However, every 6 seconds is far too frequent imo.

I prefer the idea about the Natural Dispersion idea. It's a great way to reduce overall healing required for high magic damage without actually mitigating the damage.

I actually think that the Natural Dispersion idea is far more powerful. It doesn't just fully mitigate the damage of the spell, it actually mitigates more because it replaces it with a HoT.

As for Natural Absorbtion, yes it is guaranteed mitigation of the next hit, but many things factor in here. You can't always be sure what the next hit would be. AoE damage, adds, other things like that could all contribute to this ability being wasted on a minor hit. Thus, if you want to use it effectively you must use it as close as possible to an anticipated large hit. That adds a skill factor that I think many druids would like.

Maeltne · 08/15/08, 3:03 PM

Every tank needs (excuse my poor knowledge of other tanks)

1) A 'large enough' health pool. Large enough so that you can survive ~4+s without a heal. Too little of this and you get random tank deaths, too much and ... well nothing interesting happens.

2) Passive mitigation/avoidance. TBC Druids have armor/dodge, Warriors have less armor, comparable dodge/parry/block and shield block, whose usage was so extreme that even 'activated' it counts as passive. Paladins have dodge/parry/block and holy shield, with similar usage as shield block, though thankfully not as spam heavy. What is it going to be in TBC? No idea, but the examples are so ... simple and showing a general lack of knowledge and experience that I'm moderately concerned.

3) A minor activated mitigation/avoidance/incoming damage decrease. TBC the only things that come to mind are Thunderclap and Demoralizing Shout, and these are Warrior exclusive.

In WotLK it appears that all tanks are getting an attack speed slow, although the Warriors is still by far the strongest with it's AoE application, and the Druid's by far the weakest with the number of stacks required. Warlocks are even getting one... Interesting.

Also in WotLK Warriors are getting Shield Block tuned to an ability of this class. A significant about of mitigation on a 30s activation. Death Knights are getting a similar ability in Anti-Magic Shell, but it applies to spells only.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that Paladins or Druids have anything of this type currently currently in beta. Holy shield is more of a passive/threat ability at this point.

4) A major activated mitigation/avoidance/incoming damage decrease/survivability increase. TBC the only thing that comes to mind are Shield Wall and last stand, once again Warrior exclusive.

In WotLK, the Shield Wall (50%, 10s, 5 min CD) ability has been toned down and given to Paladins (Divine Protection), 50%, 12s, 5 min CD), and Death Knights (Icebound Fortitude 50%, 12s, 1 min CD). Currently Druids have no such ability.

Also the Last Stand (6 min CD) ability has been given to Druid in the form of Berserk (30%, other stuff, 5 min CD). Death Knights have the Lichborn (+25% miss, other stuff, 5 min CD), however that is more of a proactive ability as opposed to a reactive ability, and should probably be saved to remain in control of your character. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Paladins (or Death Knights really) have this ability.

5) Abilities to remain in control of their Character. The only thing that comes to mind is the Berserker Rage (fear, sap, incapacitate, 10s, 30s CD) warrior stance dance.

WotLK Warrior retain their 30s spammable ability, and Druids get Berserk (All loss of control, 30s, 5 min CD), Death Knights get Lichborne (Charm, Fear, Sleep, 30s, 5 min CD)

6) Ability to move. Defense grants daze resistance giving all defence using classes the ability to move or reposition without a daze effect. Druid use less and so can and do get dazed, and will use even less in WotLK.

In my mind there is very little room to play with niches. All tanks need comparable (1) HP, and (2) Avoidance/Mitigation. Every tank should have a Shield Wall and Last stand type activated ability with similar cool down. Every Tank should have abilities to remain in control of their character on a similar cool down. The only place for a 'niche' in my mind is with *VERY MINOR* variations in HP/avoidance/mitiation, and with the minor activated ability.

Warriors get shield block.
Deathknights get anti-magic shell
Druids currently get ... nothing
Paladins currently get nothing.

My suggestion for the Druids minor activated ability would be the old standby, make Barkskin castable in forms. Shorten the effect to 6s, and the CD to 30s. Tinker with the % reduction if you want.

Coldturkey · 08/15/08, 3:08 PM

I kinda like the idea of the "cloak of feral" for pve and pvp. It would bring some magic damage reduction that i have longed for to druids.