Armor Values right now:
Helm: 470
Neck: 336 (Boundless Ambition)
Shoulder: 434
Cloak: 490 (Cloak of the Shadowed Sun)
Chest: 578
Bracers: 253 (ilvl 213 bracers)
Gloves: 362
Belt: 325 (ilvl 213 belts)
Leggings: 506
Boots: 398 (ilvl 213 boots)
Ring: 490 (keystone greatring)
Ring: 462 (nerubian shield ring, I cannot find another epic armor ring, please correct if you find one)
Trinket: 850 (Defender's Code)
Trinket: 550 (Offering of Sacrifice)
Weapon: 714 (Origin of Nightmares)
Totals out to be: 7218
after 550% bear armor modifier (400% from bear form, 110% from Thick Hide), that comes out to be 39699. This is armor excluding agility on gear and gems/enchant(should people stick with them
Using the formula
DR% = Armor / (Armor + (467.5 * AttackerLevel - 22167.5)) from Wowwiki
Comes out to be ~70.5%, or 29.5% damage taken.
29.5% x 0.88 (PoTP)= 25.96% damage taken, or a final conversion of 74.04% damage reduction from armor and talent. This looks to be pretty solid even if we turn out to have subpar avoidance, can anyone confirm/correct the math?
Assuming all the math above are indeed correct, this still seems somewhat close to the armor cap (29.5% taken versus 25% taken), and really got me thinking whether this is on target with Blizzard's current design. It seems to me that the jewelry was given armor for death knight tanking purposes, but whether the fact that we get such a large armor contribution from such slots is noted or not remains to be seen.
With both the Malygos-10 and Malygos-25 quest reward necks being pure Paladin/Warrior fodder, it's still midly concerning. You'd expect the quest rewards to be the most generic items of the lot, yet they seem to be about as specialized as they could be. Warriors and Paladins have use for Armor, as influenced by design choices for items such as [Ring of Hardened Resolve] - you'd expect one of those two rewards to be at least useful to all 4 tanks, if not favoritized.
This is honestly such an empty argument. Warriors and Paladins could have argued at the start of TBC that the Karazhan rep tanking ring and Magtheridon head quest tanking ring were both optimized for Druids. Sure, armor isn't completely useless for them, but most Warriors I know switched to [Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen] and [Ring of Sundered Souls] just as soon as they could.
edit: My point being, of course, that Blizzard isn't intentionally going out of their way to screw Druids over (just like they weren't intentionally going out of their way to screw Warriors/Paladins over at the start of TBC). There are alternates for us, and as falk has pointed out, trinket slot progression is brilliant this time around (we have already seen 2 high armor trinkets, one being a raid drop) as well as armor on necks (which we've not had before).
Why do I have a feeling, that Blizz will totally screw feral tree?
I mean. I have already seen from some reports that damage in our tanking form (dire bear) is quite high and with insane damage bursts.
With recent change to Protector of the Pack to give bear additional AP scaling (+6%) it will make our bear form THE FORM to PvP with.
I really question Blizz work here. Yes we want scaling for cat form, but Blizz give our tanking form some insane damage buffs and damage scaling, which boost our bear damage quite a bit.
I can foresee a big problem in near future, where BC deja-vu with Dire Bear will happen again.
No avoidance or threat stats, but a massive stamina advantage over anything else in those slots. And bears scale very well with stamina.
A weird thing with WotLK arena gear is that the plate melee sets have about 50% more stamina than the other sets.
Won't that cause arena balance problems in the end?
Assuming all the math above are indeed correct, this still seems somewhat close to the armor cap (29.5% taken versus 25% taken), and really got me thinking whether this is on target with Blizzard's current design. It seems to me that the jewelry was given armor for death knight tanking purposes, but whether the fact that we get such a large armor contribution from such slots is noted or not remains to be seen.
This concerns me as well. If we're once again that close to the armor cap (and probably over it with inspiration/ancestral fortitude) we get to that problematic scaling point early again. Ideally we'd want to be continuing to get gear that allowed us to increase our best stat (armor) continually as we continue progressing. I suspect they may change the armor formula again or nerf either the bear armor % gain or the offset pieces with armor on them.
Assuming all the math above are indeed correct, this still seems somewhat close to the armor cap (29.5% taken versus 25% taken), and really got me thinking whether this is on target with Blizzard's current design. It seems to me that the jewelry was given armor for death knight tanking purposes, but whether the fact that we get such a large armor contribution from such slots is noted or not remains to be seen.
I believe the armor cap is armor only. So, we do have some more room than we had in TBC. I believe we can get all the way to 22% mitigation ((1-.75) x (1 - .12)). Ignoring avoidance and spell damage this is 12% less damage than we took in TBC. Pretty solid. The un-usefulness of inspritation and devotion is a huge bummer at that point.
But on top of only taking 22% damage we get:
No crushes
Less magic damage
Barkskin
Mini shield wall
A much larger lead in health than we had in TBC (at least from what I've seen in Naxx gear for the 4 tanks)
Even if we hit the cap, we could choose to swap one of those trinkets for a dodge trinket. On level 80 trash we'll likely have to do this pretty early to avoid wasted stats.
I think druid tanks are looking pretty good going into WotLK.
That said, I think they missed a chance to avoid a lot of problems with the druid class. Since I first heard rumors of the new SotF, I've been posting that I thought scaling on 2 stats with huge multipliers was a bad idea. Bears would scale more consistent with other tanks and be easier to itemize if they had done something like giving us a small amount (similar to str's value for other tanks) of mitigation or avoidance from ap (and therefore str on shared gear) and/or extra value from defense and then lowered one of our multipliers slightly. Instead they gave us two talents. They're great talents, but they don't make us want to upgrade our gear more.
As a bear you get the blue ring and think, "well, I'm done with rings now". (GC said there will be a purple armor ring, but the point still stands). You get a trinket like the badge of tenacity and you don't care what other trinkets are in the game. You get armor capped and then you think start looking at Rawr thinking 'are there any items with just sta, agi or dodge in here?'
Hopefully I don't sound greedy, but it's more fun to play the game when there are upgrades available in each slot throughout an expansion.
If instead we cared about armor, agi, sta, defense, ap and str we would expect almost any shared tanking item to be an upgrade to our tankability. We'd expect almost any leather with more iLvl to be an upgrade.
Ever since I got the turtle ring in Tanaris and thought 'wow, that's SO good for bear form', I've loved how unique druids are. But I still think the designers would be better of if we scaled on more than just:
Armor (inflated values available on half our gear)
Agi (available on half our gear)
Dodge (available on the other half our gear)
Defense (kinda-sorta-not-really)
Sta (sponge-mode scaling)
Overall I'm pretty happy. My main gripes atm are:
1. Forced to take furor for pve builds. (make furor base or make shifter / improved a 5 point tier-1 talent or move naturalist and omen both down a level)
2. Cat form damage and more specifically how much of that damage comes from white hits. Balancing cats by making yellow an even higher portion than it is now is a mistake. (making hit, haste, etc. less valuable than other classes).
3. Int portion of HotW needs to be fixed. (Scale mana or mana regen on ap or sta)
4. Large number of items that are good for 3 of the 4 tanks.
5. So much expertise with precision (mainly for cats)
6. Is PvP gear as good / better for tanking?
I completely agree that Blizz's reasoning behind our itemization for both forms is just bizarre (bordering on the illogical); but, as long as the outcome is something worthwhile, I suppose I can roll with it.
My problem, Tappin, is one of utility and purpose. Will the high armor and high stamina translate into a tanking niche? Did Astrylian ever get an answer regarding our tanking niche?
I think they're regretting the niche comments. In order to be viable MT on any boss, you can't be all that specialized. Everyone needs to be able to take the same hits without being a drain to healers (by taking more damage or forcing more emergency or overheal moves due to spike damage) and hold threat. That doesn't leave a lot of room for specialization.
There still does seem to be some differentiation though.
Warriors are still the best all around tank, with the most tools at their disposal.
Paladins still tank 5+ mobs better than anyone else and manage threat via consecrate and porcupine threat.
Druids still have smoother damage and higher health pools to make healing smooth, but less panic buttons and slightly more damage overall. (And both of these aspects are more true in TBC? No crushes, less magic damage, and a greater health pool lead?) We still are the most valuable (maybe tied with DKs?) at tanking part of the fight and dps'ing the rest.
Death Knights look to be better spell damage tanks with a huge variety of short term tools?
I think we'll do OK with tanking. We don't have all the tools or as much AE threat. But we do take a beating and have some panic buttons now (including the new trinket use effects).
I do wonder about the utility. When we're main tanking Innervate and Battle Rez are difficult at best. On a 25 man raid, we don't bring much that isn't easily covered by other classes. But then, the same can be said about almost every class now, with all the non-stacking abilities.
Blizz may be regretting the niche remarks, but that is exactly how progression raid slots are filled aren't they? Which tank will give us the best chance of beating this boss? If the answer is never "the bear", then where does that leave us? I guess OT damage sponges?
Blizz may be regretting the niche remarks, but that is exactly how progression raid slots are filled aren't they? Which tank will give us the best chance of beating this boss? If the answer is never "the bear", then where does that leave us? I guess OT damage sponges?
Blizzard has stated several times now that they want "the best player" not "class X" to be the answer to your question.
Blizz may be regretting the niche remarks, but that is exactly how progression raid slots are filled aren't they? Which tank will give us the best chance of beating this boss? If the answer is never "the bear", then where does that leave us? I guess OT damage sponges?
That's true. But what if the answer is: "All of the tanks hold threat and are easy to keep alive on this fight. A {insert class name here} would be a little better because of {some not-so-significant mechanic}. But mainly we just need more {dps, raid awareness, strategy, braincells} to get this fight down." Good examples would be fear fights (stance dance is better, but fear ward works fine if you have it), 2-3 tank threat fights like VR or Gruul (bears are better threat when not taking hits, but not necessary), and Hyjal trash (paladins help, but other tanks manage with a little more work).
If that's true, and {insert class name here} is not always the same class, niches won't be that crucial.
I'm not saying it is that way. I highly doubt it will. It might not even be a great idea. If they did manage it, I can't imagine a tank's job being all that interesting. There wouldn't be fights where you have to be good at your class' unique abilities to get by. But it is possible to make all 4 tanks (or a combination of any 2 tanks, etc) viable for any raid by dumbing down the tank part of the fight and/or homogenizing the tank classes.
Another possibility is that any tank can do a fight but {insert class name here} is always a slightly better choice (warriors pre-TBC). That's bad design too because it means that class is THE tank.
Going the other way... if you need specialized tanks most of the time... if 1 fight needed a prot warrior, the next required a DK, and the following required a feral tank, we could probably expect tanks to sit out some fights until that content was on farm status? Or worse, we could expect certain tanks to almost never be brought.
The reality of this game is that it is an MMO. If Blizzard stress too much about everyone's viability on every rolls you'll have just three "classes" left by the next expansion: Tank, Healer, DPS. Even then Tank and healer can do dps, and two healer classes can tank, so why not make a mage able to tank because all they can do is dps? This is a pretty extreme example, but hopefully I got the point through. As important as balance and fairness are, diversity and flavor still plays a very important role in success of MMOs. Going too extreme to either balance or flavor will hurt the game.
The "problem" with balancing druids is that we have 2 of the most power tools that are not necessary for smooth fights, but are invaluable when fights do go slightly wrong (innervate and battle rez). If those two abiltiies are ignored when it comes to balancing tanking abilities on the four tanks, there can be other kinds of balancing issues. On the other hand, if they balance tanking abilities ignoring battle rez and innervate, then druids suddenly becomes the king of tanking and utility classes when you are able to pull off rezzes. This isn't necessary fair to the other three tanking classes.
From a more personal perspective I've enjoyed doing OT more than MT because OT tend to change roles and do a little bit more often, but I do respect the ferals that spec feral just to tank exclusively. However, these two core abilities will always limit our feral (or any tree) tools, and from a balancing perspective, that's not necessarily unfair.
There are worse problems to have than having too many skilled tanks log in that can all handle the night's raid.
Most tanks I know are unusually devoted to the game, to the point that at least one of those tanks would have a well geared healer or dps class or enough gear and money to respec and cover a different role. In the druid's case, you could probably do it with a gear swap without even having to respec. Personally, I would appreciate occasional nights where I didn't tank (though I'd hate to play 100% cat feral).
There are worse problems to have than having too many skilled tanks log in that can all handle the night's raid.
Most tanks I know are unusually devoted to the game, to the point that at least one of those tanks would have a well geared healer or dps class or enough gear and money to respec and cover a different role. In the druid's case, you could probably do it with a gear swap without even having to respec. Personally, appreciate a few nights where I didn't tank (though I'd hate to play 100% cat feral).
I'd agree with this. While our guild never had the luxury of having too many tanks, we do have at least one of each specialized tanks that pretty much dedicate to tanking. On fights that need less tanks they often sit or respec to different roles. In contrast, even on live feral can swap to a reasonable DPS role with just a gear swap, and the DPS gap will be much smaller in wotlk. I have always thought of feral's strongest ability is to bring 90% warrior and 90% rogue at the same time with some unique abilities that make them worth bringing over rogues and warriors. While I do respect some player's desire to play a 100% bear(tank) or a 100% cat(dps) role as a feral druid, that does not feel like playing the entire subclass to me.
I am thinking they got really well in splitting cat and bear talents, but while cat I think I got a pretty solid talent distribution for maximum dps output (and really weak bear, sigh) Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
The bear though feels a bit bloated, but I came up with this build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and I am really in doubt what utility I should get... I got infected wounds thinking it works in raid bosses since it is about 20% attack speed reduction as TC, can anyone confirm it does indeed work in raid bosses??
And feel free to tell me where I am putting the points in the wrong place in either build...
Going the other way... if you need specialized tanks most of the time... if 1 fight needed a prot warrior, the next required a DK, and the following required a feral tank, we could probably expect tanks to sit out some fights until that content was on farm status? Or worse, we could expect certain tanks to almost never be brought.
I may have done a poor job of expressing it, but that was my original point. We seem to be the tank without a tanking specialty/niche/whatever you want to call it. I think most raids are going want (not necessarily need . . . that is up to Blizz) at least one well geared warrior, pally and DK. I don't think the same can be said for the bear . . . when looking at the MT role.
I agree with david, looking dispassionately at our spec, one can see the intent was always to have us fill the OT converting to reasonable DPS role. That role is now shared with the DK. I think Rebirth and Innervate may balance well vs. DK utility, but I have to be honest and say that is more an expectation than fact.
I got infected wounds thinking it works in raid bosses since it is about 20% attack speed reduction as TC, can anyone confirm it does indeed work in raid bosses??
And feel free to tell me where I am putting the points in the wrong place in either build...
I can't confirm one way or the other (not it beta), but our raid is going leave the responsibility for that debuff on our Pallys, DKs (assuming one specs Frost) and Warriors. For the Warriors TC is now threat and mitigation ability all wrapped in one. Saves us some points that are rather high in the tree . . .
With both the Malygos-10 and Malygos-25 quest reward necks being pure Paladin/Warrior fodder, it's still midly concerning. You'd expect the quest rewards to be the most generic items of the lot, yet they seem to be about as specialized as they could be. Warriors and Paladins have use for Armor, as influenced by design choices for items such as [Ring of Hardened Resolve] - you'd expect one of those two rewards to be at least useful to all 4 tanks, if not favoritized.
I'm a little late in replying and this is a little specific, but the M'uru ring sits as a sort of special case. The armor and expertise are "wasted" item budget for warriors (While armor is good, it could have gone into even more avoidance, for example) and there's so much expertise elsewhere you want to cut down on it where you can. On the other hand, block is a complete wash for druids.
What we surmised was basically Blizzard consolidating two tank rings into one to save space on the loot table. It still wins out as pretty much best in slot for both classes due to sheer item level and the multi-stat split formula.
Titanium Earthguard is the same ilvl as the 10-man neck and is as RNG-less, for what it's worth.
I am thinking they got really well in splitting cat and bear talents, but while cat I think I got a pretty solid talent distribution for maximum dps output (and really weak bear, sigh) Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
The bear though feels a bit bloated, but I came up with this build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and I am really in doubt what utility I should get... I got infected wounds thinking it works in raid bosses since it is about 20% attack speed reduction as TC, can anyone confirm it does indeed work in raid bosses??
And feel free to tell me where I am putting the points in the wrong place in either build...
For your dps build, skipping fury is probably a mistake. Free combos is a huge part of dps and important for getting more value out of savage roar. It's definitely more dps than improved mangle. Imp mangle for a cat provides 6 energy every 12 seconds if you're doing mangles, 18 if you have the glyph, or never if you have another person doing mangle or trauma. Infected would also isn't a dps talent if you're going for absolute max damage, but it's not bad either.
They said IW should work on bosses. I'm not sure if they've fixed all of the bosses yet.
On the tanking build:
Instincts is threat, cat dps and 15% less damage from AEs.
Precision is a pretty huge bump to bear threat and makes you take less parries.
Shredding attacks isn't important for bear, but it's the second most important talent for cat dps if you're offtanking.
Imp iLotP isn't make or break, but it does increase your time to live as a tank, even if it's minor.
Master shapeshifter is pretty expensive for close to 3% threat.
What we surmised was basically Blizzard consolidating two tank rings into one to save space on the loot table. It still wins out as pretty much best in slot for both classes due to sheer item level and the multi-stat split formula.
If they want to consolidate tank rings/back/neck it's easy: str, armor, sta, defense and parry-dodge. Everyone's happy. I'm ok with them mixing things up. But the number of necks, backs and rings with 0 armor worry me. They all say "I'm for every tank except druids". (OK, a few say "I'm for paladins and warriors, less good for DKs, and bad for druids").
Not terribly sure about this. Savage Fury and Improved Mangle are both fairly weak in terms of DPS. I'm not sure if Rend and Tear is better though. The numbers really need to be run on FB vs Rip I think. I had one free point that I threw into Infected Wounds for some utility but really this could go into Savage Fury or Imp Mangle I think.
Valerian - I seem unable to look at your Pure DPS 70 spec, would you mind checking the link?
As of right now I'm hopelessly confused about the time between 3.0.2 and Wrath IRT talents, and would love to see some more examples of peoples' preferred specs, specifically:
DPS
Feral pvp
OT/dps
MT
hybrid solo/pvp/dps
I'll be a sad panda indeed if the days of being a stellar OT/dps guy and never having to respec are coming to an end.
I apologize if this is the wrong thread for this question. I wasn't sure if I should put it in the Megathread, the 3.02 thread, or this one. My guild is currently 8/9 so raiding will not be out the window for me once 3.02 hits. I'm curious if I should plan on replacing all my current agility gems with stamina ones. I didn't see gemming mentioned anywhere previously in this thread.
I'm assuming with the agi to dodge nerf that gemming for agility wouldn't be worthwhile anymore. So is stamina going to be our only choice for gemming in Wrath or will we see benefit from Dodge Rating gems. Or is Agility still going to be the gem of choice?
There is a new diminishing returns formula for avoidance in the last build. So I doubt the value of dodge is fixed yet. But currently it looks like stamina is more valuable than avoidance.
For those who wanted some numbers feedback from beta. I've jsut come back from tanking 2 heroics. I did about 1100 dps in the first one, and 1200 dps in the second. Reason for the higher was I got an epic staff from last boss of the 1st once which bumped by AP up by about 300 in bear form, even without enchant.
The group I ran with was an unholy DK , ret pally, demonology warlock. The DK and Ret Pally were doing about 1750 dps each; warlock was doing about 1400 - but had roughly the same total damage done as me.
Im not sure how to convert dps to tps, but I never lost aggro once. Was swimming in rage while things were hitting me due to Natural Reaction talent. On a couple of pulls tho I had no rage and enrage CD wasnt available so that got a little bit hairy. Used crowd control on one occassion - they werent really instances that required it though. I wish I could find a threat meter that works over there - alas the dps should be somehow convertible.
As for gear, I have 3 pve dps-oriented epics (pants/boots from naxx10 & aforementioned staff), rest is the premade blue pvp set they put you in for premade toons on beta (full blue pvp set plus epic offset pvp neck/ring/bracer/belt/feet/battlemaster trinkets). With just my own unimproved mark of the wild, im at 26907 hp, 20.5k armor, 4500 ap/35.6 crit, 31.3dodge 1.56% haste, and a pretty good amount of both hit/expertise.
In my honest opinion, I think the heroics may be undertuned. Shouldnt really be able to zerg them in pvp gear.
In my honest opinion, I think the heroics may be undertuned. Shouldnt really be able to zerg them in pvp gear.
I thought there was a blue post or a conference comment (months ago) about how blizzard was going to make heroics a bit easier in LK and that they offer their own loot tables that do not overlap with the reg version.
09/21/08, 5:29 AM
