Thessaly

This leads to a number of questions: What do Druids sacrifice for Rebirth and Innervate? Is it possible for us to be on equal footing as other tank classes, given that we have those abilities? How do those abilities compare to something like Spell Reflect? A paladin can Lay on Hands, how does that factor into things? Will we forever have the stigma of being caster hybrids despite needing to hybridize tank and melee dps within the one tree? How long do we give up new toys because we have an irreplaceable core ability shared by all our trees?

These are not easy things to balance, and I haven't really seen any Devs responding in the sense of the big picture, or indicating that they appreciate the big picture.

Being able to tank is not really my biggest concern. Having itemization to do it is.

 

Calen

I am a little surprised with the 'Million Monkeys' approach to class problem solving that Blizz seems to be taking here and there in WotLk - I mean, there have been a number of forum suggestions (both official and here at EJ) that have appeared in game, and I'm not saying that they've been bad ideas.. but it doesn't exactly inspire any kind of faith in their development process or their overall game vision..

From the WotLK Druid beta forum thread: Pvp not tanking for once G-crawler


Post #7Followed by Ghostcrawler Post #9Provided those numbers approximate what actually gets implemented, it seems possible that in decent dps gear, you'd be running against the 6s cooldown. In the current int-less feral gear with 6500 mana would generate about 108 mp/5; 9K mana would up that to 150mp/5.

Still rather pitiable, but better than nothing. I think this could be significantly upped without becoming dangerously overpowered, given that without something like a lvl 80 version of the [Staff of Natural Fury] *and* all the cost reduction talents a feral can drop that 7k mana pool just by shifting alone in 4-5 shifts, in a minute or less. Shame I can't see how I can fit it in for anything but a pure 'cat' build or a PvP spec.

Back to the development process for feral PvE Tanking I can't help but boggle at the homogenization of talents - I enjoyed the unique and optimized gear that we had in TBC, and the 'best OT' niche we had in raiding. I didn't particularly envy the prot pally AoE tanking role, (unless our prot pally was away) or begrudge those with shields and encounters that required them, and was happy to do my best to dps and hybrid it up while the warriors MT'd.

If the goal is simplification with the changes for tanking in WotLK, I suppose they're achieving it, and at the same time the itemization changes seem to be aimed at making gear 'simpler' ..

My worry is that with all the class synergies slowly being made less complicated, the class requirements slackened, niche roles removed.. how long until we all find this game equally boring, regardless of class or role, as we get less options (gear, niche roles, etc) for which to optimize our own performance?

I think the answer is yes, although the way it worked out in TBC (as OT/DPS) we could actually use our 'caster hybrid' side. It's hard to measure the value of a perfectly timed tranquility on your dps group, or a seamless rebirth/2xT5 regrowth/innervate on your best (briefly dead) healer. I always wanted to see those cooldowns burnt because we are hybrids.

I don't really want to be a gimped tank, but I don't want to be a 24/7 MT either.. I don't want to be a 'cat durid' who never casts a heal or offtanks.. but it does seem WotLK will mean (as a feral druid) picking your favorite 3-5 buttons and mashing them, pretty much all the time.

I'm not sure that in WotLK the homogenization/specialization will really play out in a way like TBC where our caster hybrid nature wasn't a stigma. The lack of itemization to support it suggests an intent to depart from feral hybrid play, which in my mind is a rather sad departure.

Edit: Damn you Thessally, you keep adding good stuff to which I feel compelled to respond!

 

Phorage

Anyone looked into professions for ferals?

Since they are buffing things like skinning, it would be interesting to get some thoughts on this.

I have been LW/JC since TBC release and it really looks tempting to keep it like that from what I have seen so far.

 

• Caniki

I'm keeping Alchemy for the 40% bonus to elixirs, and picking up Inscription for the 7th Glyph.

 

Sarasper

I'm wondering what the new armor target will need to be for the time before the xpac but after the next patch. Has anyone calculated the needed armor to achieve 75% damage reduction assuming 3/3 mother bear and 4 other people in your party? Not sure if mother bear has 12% or 15% reduction since it could count either 4 or 5 people in the party. Is the damage reduction from mother bear and armor a multiplier or additive? If additive, I got 20,300 armor for 63% reduction as the equivalent cap assuming mother bear adds another 12% reduction.

 

nightcrowler

Edit:

My math was wrong, the correct formula is: DR = 1 - (1 - armor/(armor+16635)) * (1 - 0.12), so you need 41920 armor to reach 75% mitigation with Mother Bear.


Old post:
To reach 75% reduction with Mother Bear (12%) you need 37027 armor (it's multipicative):

DR = 1.12*armor/(armor+ 16635) (vs. lvl 83)

For istance in full t7.10 you have 34387 (with devotion aura) armor.

 

Mijae

If 12% reduction, 75% total would need 30140 armor... 15% would need 28704. We will still be able to still get over 30k using an armor weapon, BoT, and badge/Karazhan rings. However, reaching that armor point does not necessarily need to be a focus anymore with crushing blows gone.

Multiplying reductions does not work like that. You need to reduce damage taken, not increase damage mitigated.

DR = 1 - (1 - armor/(armor+16635)) * (1 - 0.12)

I believe he was asking at level 70. At 80, 75% mitigation would require 41921 armor.

Feral DruidStats spreadsheet
v3.2.0.0.xls - updated 8/4/2009

 

halmmar

Indeed. I'll post the formula since incorrect ones were posted

0.25 = 0.88 * (1 - X / (X+400+85*(73-59))

 

Nestario

You will not really be gimped in a OT role as you describe it. Even with a full cat specc I am sure you will be able to Offtank and also Tank heroics.

I hope you are aware that you have only seen T5 and maybe start of T6 content so you may notice the OT role has diminished to Trashtank for most of BT. Tanking in Sunwell isnt too bad but all mobs there will hit you that hard so your side abilitys are nice but not as valuable as they had been in earlier content.

Therefore most Feral-Druids you will see either want to be able to deal competative DPS (and maybe switch to bear to tank trash) or MT any bosses without beeing afraid to be replaced by another class just because that class has better scaling or similar.

Something else: If you really want INT on your PVP gear you can still use gems for that. Some way to regenerate some of your mana would be nice however.

 

Brute

Without any points in any of the bonafide 'MT Bear' talents you'll still be a fine and capable trash/offtank. Really the heavy duty bear talents are for those who *want* to be maintanking those final, main raid bosses. If you consider yourself a 'gimp' tank because its more strain on your healers when you try tanking raid bosses without those bear talents, well I;m not sure how to respond to that....

 

• Daboran

Actually, I don't think our hybrid role diminishes at all in BT/Sunwell as it stands.

The case here is that with the same talent spec, but changing gear as required, Ferals can either maintank a boss or offtank/trashtank where required, yet at the same time have sufficient dps with a change of gear that you would not necessarily kick them out of the raid for encounters where only one tank is required (such as Teron, Felmyst etc), especially considering that they bring Innervate/Rebirth/Tranquility/LotP to those fights.

The main concern of myself and others I think is that this may no longer be the case. If we spec fully into a maintank spec Feral, will we be asked to recall back to Moonglade and respec for fights where multiple tanks are not needed or even worse simply be asked to leave the raid in favour of a Rogue?

For me this is the main point that I haven't seen addressed in the talents - of course, the numbers are still in flux, so it's yet to be seen how it plays out.

 

Liar

And why would that be bad? You have to forget the notion of the TBC Feral Druid who could MT and DPS with one spec because the goals for Bear are now to MT all bosses OR for Cat to do Rogue style DPS. Obviously, that would not be fair to other tanks and Rogues if you could do it all in one spec. If you don't like having to decide on one role, then get a hybrid spec where you can OT well then DPS equally well. It's not like Druids will be the only ones asked to respec on one tank fights, so having a choice is great. MT, DPS or OT/DPS, pick whatever suits you best.

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

 

Valerian

Frankly its just something we took for granted. What happens to the extra prot warriors in a raid when they arn't needed? They either get sat or have to respec to arms/fury for dps. Druids are going to be the same except its going to just be different talents in the same tree (for the most part). I'd gladly take this specialization if the only cost is a respec and a summon (possibly less if the whole dual spec thing comes into play).

 

foxglove

I discovered this morning on the PTR that Trauma knocks off Mangle, and I furthermore could not get Mangle up if Trauma was up. Trauma also does not buff Shred. Another druid said he could overwrite it only if its duration remaining was less than Mangle's.

With the 18s Mangle glyph (not available at 70 due to the requirement of Northrend mats), Mangle would presumably always overwrite Trauma; however, Trauma would still overwrite Mangle under 15s (so after 3-4 seconds?). This would completely botch Cat cycles; we'd scarcely be able to Shred.

It would be a good idea to file bug reports for this if you have access to Beta or the PTR.

 

Skytor

For us at least, most of the time the Prot Warrior would tank and the Druid would DPS because it was an easy solution to do it that way around and until late BT the damage output would be acceptable.

Its interesting to note the oft quoted GC post along the lines of "grab and 2 tanks from four classes and you are good to go..."

I'm somewhat hopeful that this means that there won't be the wild variations in tank numbers required through progress - contributing to a more stable. drama free guild line up. (think back to the guild re-adjustments based on 4-5 tanks for Keal vs 1-3 tanks for all of BT).

That doesn't rule out fights that need 4+ things tanked - it just means that adds 3+4 should be tuned for a arms/fury/cat spec in roughly teir-1 tank kit - which was largely the way things were done in 40 man if memory serves.

Encounter design never really has "spare healers" or "spare dps" - it doesn't seem unreasonable to make it a requirement on the raid design team that there must always be work for 2 fully spec'd tanks (and no occasional requirements for more than 2 fully spec'd tanks).

 

Calen

Honestly, I could care less about my ability to tank trivial content, and 5 mans, and I'm well aware of the limited need for anything but the occasional trash tank in Hyjal/BT. Theoretically in WotLK we will get to pick a competitive dps spec, which will require us to lack the majority of the key tanking talents leaving us crittable, minus thick hide, etc.

Do I want to run around heroics, getting crit, or get pasted by raid trash as a paper tank? No, not really. I'd rather have a non-tank spec'd warrior/pally put on their tank set, and be uncrittable. Perhaps it's just me, but I find being some kind of high threat, stam geared offspec style mana sponge tank to be fundamentally unsatisfying. It drove me nuts back in the 1.8 MC days being unable to hit uncrittable, and I'm not really excited about returning to that style of tanking/offtanking. Please don't assume that I'm some kind of moron who'd try to take a cat spec into a raid MT role..

I guess I should do a comparative analysis of 'cat build' off tank vs fury or ret off tanks, and see if decently geared dps pally/war are the new preferred hybrid 'dps/ot'. Given the way both of those classes make full use of the multitude of tanking stats, I'd be surprised if they don't quickly surpass a 'cat tank' as an OT.


The raid I run has a decent number of tanks, but as it's far on the casual side of things (5-7 hours, 1-2 nights a week) we have a bigish roster, casual attendance and a fair bit of shuffling. As melee/tank officer I'm still looking at our prot warriors for MTing once we start on 25's again in WotLK. Pallies will be the AoE tank, DKs? we will have to see, and druids..

If they do manage to resolve the hideous itemization issues (optimal item point bleeding) and bring us up to par as MTs, and similarly turn feral dps into something truly competitive that scales during progression we might slip in as the MT if our regular tanks are otherwise committed on a given raid night, or as melee dps, given that I spec appropriately for either.

It's kind of hard to get excited about that as our new 'respeccing hybrid of last resort' role, and it still seems like a stretch to me that the beta issues for tanking and dps will even be resolved.


As far as the idea of gemming PvP gear with Int.. I'm kind of speechless that people make this kind of suggestion - we have a T6 5 point talent that gets totally ignored by itemization, and the 'solution' is that we make up for it by spending all our gem slots on it? I don't see any other classes having to screw around with gemming for an essential and talent affected stats that is otherwise totally absent on the gear.

 

Liar

Your whole point reads like "I refuse to pick up Surival of the Fittest, a talent that alone makes us uncrittable and gives us a moderate DPS boost, just to make a point about Cat specs not being able to tank anything". And for the record, not being able to be uncrittable didn't stop Druids from tanking back then in 1.8 at all. Crits then were hardly threatening as a Druid. It's only in TBC and Wrath where they became extremely dangerous and you even got a talent for that now.

So what exactly is the point of your post? Your guild will only allow you to MT if no other tanks are around even if you are competitive? That sounds more like a guild issue to me than an issue with Druids.

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

 

Nestario

There will not be any classic "tank niche" in WotLK. There will be differences of course but they are all minor. Therefore your assumption is just the same as all those people who just ignored Feral and Paly Tanks for serious raid content during the first few month of TBC.

€: So why pick a druid: Just because there is no reason not to! If you are able to react to some odd circumstances faster than your warrior (ie you are the better player) you will be the one that gets picked!

And i dont see why gemming your arena gear with INT would be too bad. You can gem it for more damage, more survivability or even for more utility. I prefer that solution alot over having Itempoints "wasted" on INT when you are in a setup where you want max out all damage you can get.

My problem in Sunwell is even with a gear swap i am not able to deal enough DPS to not get rotated out on those bosses i will not be tanking. But hopefully that will change soon. Even if i will have to respecc several times a night thats still more pleasant than just waiting outside.

 

Calen

I'm suggesting that as it stands, (given gear and skill being equal) unless I'm the only possible MT around, I don't know why *I* would select myself as the tank over a warrior. There are a few reasons - prot warrior tanks have more exciting buttons to push, both giving them some situational advantages and also making the MT job less of a 'yawn and mash the keyboard' experience in boredom, which represents lvl 80 druid tanking at the moment. The TBC hybrid feral playstyle provided more variety than a dedicated MT and I didn't find it boring at all.

Yes, it's currently possible to take SotF in a reasonable dps build, but only because how lackluster some of the other current dps talents are; this is something which I'm expecting to see change before this all goes live if we're really going to be competitive dps.

The point of my post was supposed to be that the hybrid role of druids is being almost entirely removed, which I was illustrating with the two non-overlapping specializations. This *is* something that the devs have suggested as their intent, but if we are not even usable as an OT's at higher gear levels versus other pure dps spec'd classes, due to the nature of the current plate itemization, we lose the last of our feral hybrid role to another class, which seems rather punitive.

My apologies if it managed to come off as a contrived whine, or without direction.

 

Liar

I think your problem is not that a Druid could not be MT if he wanted to, but that you don't want to be MT because it's boring to play. That's obviously subjective so I can't say anthing against that. But I don't think you should get your hopes up too much if you want to press as many different keys than a Warrior while tanking because that would mean they would have to clone all abilities and they said they will not do that. If you really really despise MTing as Druid, then why do you not try a Warrior or Paladin MT? Like I said, it's not the fact that you can't MT as a Druid that's your problem but "how much fun" it is. Naturally, I would like every tanking class to have fun while tanking because we are rare as is, but if that is just not possible then try the alternatives and see if you like them better.

That said, there is always the option to keep your TBC role by speccing a hybrid build with Bear and Cat talent. You obviously will not be the best tank or DPS like this but atleast you get to do both roles with a gear swap then.

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

 

Melthar

On top of the impact upon cat cycles, this would also be a big hit to maul damage, which would adversely affect bear threat.

Whatever the fix may be, it can't be intended that having a player of X spec in the raid has such a direct negative impact on any players with Y spec in the raid, so just post your tickets/forum posts and cross your fingers.

Beta bug report forum post:
WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> [Bug] Mangle debuff overwritten by Trauma

 

Thessaly

The implication here is that there is a smooth continuum between Bear and Cat, and we'll be able to choose how much of a tank and how much of a dps we want to be through talent choices. Currently, we make those choices through gear, and the dps side of things is capped regardless of gear. While I appreciate the intent to move the choice to the realm of talents, and allow us to be competitive on either front if we so choose, or be good but not the best at both, it puts a substantial burden on itemization. The problem is that the itemization, rather than moving in a direction that would favor such a move, i.e., separate gear for bears and cats, is moving in a direction of uniform gear not just for both aspects of Feral, but for Rogues as well.

There is only one Feral tier set. If it's geared toward tanking, those Druids who want to dps will have to use non-set pieces, and if it's geared toward dps, tanks will need to use non-set pieces. I haven't seen much in the way of non-set tanking gear, and the consensus seems to be that even MT Druids will be more or less tanking in Cat/Rogue itemized gear with generic Tank jewelry and accessories. While I like the idea of giving us choice through talents, even if it's currently implemented in an awkward way, my fear is that we're not going to get the support via itemization that we need to actually be competitive in all of the roles that our talents might afford.

 

tlbj6142

Anyone else notice this quote from this blue thread? Sort of reads like Druid tanks are a bit OP!

 

kalbear

I suspect that this will be fixed with gear. Right now the ability to get uncrittable is ridiculously hard for all non-druids, and that isn't going to fly; they don't want people just barely scraping by before entering lvl 70 instances, much less raiding. That, in turn, will up every tanking class's avoidance a bunch.

This seems fairly analogous to pre-Kara raiding, where it was fairly easy for a druid to become ready for Kara and fairly hard for a warrior. In addition, said druid had a ton more health, armor, and threat.

The balance shifts in favor of the warrior (slightly) when you get geared in all Naxx25 level gear. This is the more worrisome part, at least for bears. It isn't guaranteed that bears will scale worse as more gear is unveiled, but it is likely.

 

Mijae

There seems to be a quite noticeable gap between full rare and full epic tank sets. My estimates with full raid buffs at 80:

Rare -
~29.5k armor (no armor trinket or weapon)
~30.7k health
~69.07% DR
~54.19% avoid
~2400 TPS

Epic:
~37.6k armor (no armor trinket)
~39.1k health
~73.04% DR
~62.66% avoid
~3300 TPS

That's about 8K armor, 8.5k health, 4% DR, 8.5% avoid, 900 TPS. I didn't do a comparison yet of the BC transition, but I don't remember it going up that fast (though that was back before they re-itemized for me). However, if we get a decent pre-raid weapon with armor it might close that gap to a more reasonable level. It's still a lot of health (and I was mainly stacking agi gems).

Inspiration in the epic set would put us at 47K armor, which is very close the hard cap. With an armor trinket we're there. So, it seems we'll be near the armor soft cap with just T7. This is essentially where we were post-Karazhan (going over it with full T4). It's hard to predict if armor will be increasing enough later to actually hit the hard cap again. This is dependent on accessory pieces increasing in armor also.

The difference I'm estimating for cat is around 3750 dps in rares and 5100 in epics. That's a 33.3% dps upgrade to epics. I suppose that might be around the same relative gain as BC, but 1250 sure sounds like a large gain. This type of scaling might be an issue in PvP, though I guess it depends on health pools and healing.

Note - if my calculations are right, our threat isn't nearly enough to keep up with dps. Have they made more changes to threat other than making the bear bonus passive? I remember hearing something about changes to give passive blessing salvation also?

Feral DruidStats spreadsheet
v3.2.0.0.xls - updated 8/4/2009