Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 72

Psibeast · 08/15/08, 3:21 PM

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.

Druids have Demoralizing Roar.

Druid use less and so can and do get dazed, and will use even less in WotLK.

Make that none. Druids will be crit immune from talents alone making Defense/resilience very poor stats for druids at wotlk.

kalbear · 08/15/08, 3:39 PM

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.

Druids have demoralizing roar, though it's not as good. They also have infected wounds, though I'm not sure whether it'll actually be usable against most mobs. Paladins have their tclap built into their judgments. Death Knights have a slow ability as well, and I believe have had an AP reduction.

• Melthu · 08/15/08, 3:49 PM

Originally Posted by Mara

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.

Sure, the idea of tanking with "a huge health pool" might seem scary if considered in a vacuum, but let's recall the changes to downranking (i.e. it's complete removal from the game). Just because you only have 1.5k more health than your warrior right now it can drastically change in the expansion.

Let's just throw some numbers out there and say you have 6k more health than a warrior tank and the boss hits for 5k. You can survive 1 hit more than the warrior, which may be long enough to let your healers heal reactively rather than pro-actively, which will reduce overheal. Again, just making up numbers, but what if encounters were designed such that druids require 100k healing and warrior require only 75k, but the fight is such that healers can reliably achieve just 10% overheal on you while overhealing the warrior by 47%. Now you've both successfully tanked the fight and even required the same amount of total healing.

That's just one possibility. It's also possible that we would need more total healing over the course of a fight, but have only half the chance to be "inst-gibbed" thanks to our large health pools, while warriors are vulnerable to non-avoidance strings. Again, you've both tanked the fight, but you have to choose between stretching healer mana running dry vs. tank gib.

Lastly, let's not forget that little if any of what the dev posted is actually in the beta at this time. Hell, the level cap is still 77, how much work do you think they've really done on endgame raid tanking balance? Even things already in the game have been subject to swift and violent change, let's not get too flustered over something that's barely a twinkle in a developer's eye.

kalbear · 08/15/08, 3:59 PM

Let's just throw some numbers out there and say you have 6k more health than a warrior tank and the boss hits for 5k. You can survive 1 hit more than the warrior, which may be long enough to let your healers heal reactively rather than pro-actively, which will reduce overheal.

No, see, this is incorrect. That's what the blizzard points were saying - druids would have less mitigation/avoidance than a warrior, but a greater health pool. So both tanks would be able to survive the same amounts of hits. A druid would just take more damage than a warrior and require more healing. This is an advantage on bosses that do magic-based damage or otherwise bypass mitigation, like Hydross. Which is a bit ironic if given to druids given their position in TBC.

• Melthu · 08/15/08, 4:10 PM

Yes, they did say (theoretically, of course) that warriors would be the mitigation tank, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can survive the same number of hits, it just means that they'd take less overall damage. If both druids and warriors could survive the same number of hits but druids required 20% more healing due to inferior mitigation we would be pretty underpowered. If we could survive a hit or 2 more than equally geared warriors while requiring 20% more healing then we'd still strain healer mana more, but we'd be more stable. That's what I would call a niche: both can tank the same fight, but somewhat differently.

pininer · 08/15/08, 6:08 PM

Originally Posted by Psibeast

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.

What would make natural dispersion less powerful is that it would only impact magical attacks (similar to spell reflect). I think one of the largest problems with druid tanking has been our weakness to magical damage, and our inability to mitigate it. The HoT aspect could be changed to anything, in fact I think it may make more sense as an added 10% reduction in magical damage taken for the duration of the cooldown. This way we have a way to fully mitigate one spell every 12-15 seconds, and then have a passive reduction in magic damage taken. This would in effect be less powerful than spell reflection (it causes no damage), results in the same degree of mitigating that one attack, and then provides a passive buff against magical damage similar to what other classes get.

Perhaps even making the ability one of the "tanking feral talents" somewhere deep in the feral tree, thus making this an ability that someone who wants to be a MT would want to pick, but someone who is more into catform would not. Something along the lines of 2 talent points-
Magical Disspersion:
1 point- absorbs 50%(or 100%- depending on balancie) of 1 magical attack, converts attack to 5% reduction in magical damage taken for 15 seconds
2 points- absorbs 100% of 1 magical attack, converts attack to 10% reduction in magical damage for 15 seconds
coodown 15 seconds.
or something along those lines.

All of the specifics could be tweaked for balance reasons, and I don’t think this would be overpowering in pvp or pve. This would then hopefully add a higher degree of engagement to druid tanking, and address one of our largest deterrent to a druid as a MT- magical damage mitigation.

Unity · 08/15/08, 8:56 PM

'More hitpoints, less mitigation' is pretty easy to balance, at least in principle - if Druids get 20% more hitpoints and take 20% more damage then simply allowing Nurturing Instinct to work in Bear would make the bigger numbers merely cosmetic. Getting the numbers right for all sensible gear combinations and attack types isn't trivial though.

Toranshalur · 08/15/08, 9:12 PM

Actually, that would make sense lore-wise. Druids being in tune with nature and all that; they should receive extra healing, at least from nature spells (druids and shamans).

Septus · 08/15/08, 10:15 PM

Originally Posted by Unity

'More hitpoints, less mitigation' is pretty easy to balance, at least in principle - if Druids get 20% more hitpoints and take 20% more damage then simply allowing Nurturing Instinct to work in Bear would make the bigger numbers merely cosmetic. Getting the numbers right for all sensible gear combinations and attack types isn't trivial though.

It's not quite so good as that, because healers are using more mana to heal more hitpoints.

Cuer · 08/15/08, 10:46 PM

It doesn't sound like the differences between the tanking classes will end up as dramatic as that. At least, the way it's being phrased in the latest post by Ghostcrawler:

The truth is we want 4 viable tanks for all content. I think the issues of niche and flavor keep getting emphasized because they're important to players, and rightly so. But our concern is how to keep niche alive while achieving our main goal of having 4 tanking classes in the game.

We know the tanks will have some different abilities. They may have more overlap than they did in BC, but they are still pretty far from being identical. They will likely all have slightly different stats or at least different ways of achieving their goals in mitigation and avoidance.

I opined above (or perhaps it was in another thread) that druids might benefit from having large health pools. This makes some sense since the warrior is clad in plate from head to toe and has a large shield, so maybe their mitigation and avoidance would better while the druid health buffer would be higher. But I didn't mean to imply the druid would have 30,000 health and 2000 armor. I do understand effective health theory.

I am hoping slight differences in stats will keep the depth of the raiding game while providing more flexibility in what specs you bring.

I do sympathize with all the prot warriors out there who only ever wanted to be tanks and are now worried other classes may be moving in on their turf. Totally legit feeling. But whenever we add a class, that is going to be a risk. The dps classes will also have to compete for their spots, and not just against death knights. Several specs that were not common in raids before have some of their limitations fixed now and can bring a lot to a group. You may not run with 4 warlocks or 3 hunters any longer (don't hate me because I singled you guys out -- it's just a math problem at the end of the day). We figure the best design is to allow you to be flexible. If your guild has traditionally had a lot of great casters, you should still be able to work those in. If your guild has a great bear and warrior but could never attract a competent prot paladin, that shouldn't keep you from raiding.

ionasej · 08/16/08, 4:39 AM

I subscribe to 10-20% more healing taken in Bear Form (and 20-30 in Cat Form) by 2/2 NI - though that adds more "bloat" to the tree, I would still welcome it just like that.

Can one on beta add that as a single post in the suggestion forum, while inside linking to all those "we want 4 equal powerful but different on flavour" tanks posts bei GC?

Centarion · 08/16/08, 5:51 AM

Originally Posted by kalbear

Druids have demoralizing roar, though it's not as good. They also have infected wounds, though I'm not sure whether it'll actually be usable against most mobs. Paladins have their tclap built into their judgments. Death Knights have a slow ability as well, and I believe have had an AP reduction.

Druids get 2 new demo-roars on their way to 80, making up the gap - i think warrior-shout has an advantage of 6 more reduced ap at the end before talents, which is quite balanced. IW is supposed to be druid-tc, if no warrior/pala/dk is available...

And please stop crying over current beta-tank- status - they said they are about to look into the different tanks and their way to tank, so don't go on complaining until there's another big change made.

They want every of the 4 classes to be viable MT's in raids, they won't leave ferals behind.

ionasej · 08/16/08, 6:25 AM

I do not count on what they say but what the game mechanics offer, discussion and feedback on them are a positive thing.

That being said, since IW was pushed to go up to 20% (instead of 15%) I am totally fine with how it is (PvE wise). We do not have to do anything extra, it gets applied without hitting the Thunder Clap button, without costing extra attention, extra rage or extra GCD/time. It is really a "flavour" and is great how it is (in regards of PvE DR). Same applies to DemoRoar, its fine how it is and has always been.

HP-shout though, is another issue if it keeps being party only. If its raid wide (which I hope) - then there is justification for 2 warriors in EVERY raid, but on the other side I can see a huge nerf to fury DPS and/or the swap of improved shouts from early fury into mid/deep arms. Currently (in TBC) you need a warriors in every raid, and even if its a slam warrior that adds HP shout, Thunderclap and Demoshout to your Feral Druid, tanking.

Deathstorm · 08/16/08, 7:14 AM

While we're adding things, please someone get rid of the requirement to be behind the target for shred, the positioning requirement for both end game raiding and pvp makes our best attack a real PITA at times.

Duilliath · 08/16/08, 7:18 AM

Take it up with the Rogues - I've seen something similar regarding Mutilate buried somewhere on the beta forums.