coredumperror

WoWInterface Downloads : WotLK Beta - All WotLK-compatible addons that I know about. With beta being so much in flux, these don't all work all the time. Update often!
ZThreatMeter : WoWInterface Downloads : WotLK Beta - This threat meter works great for me. It takes the output from the new built-in threat API and formats it into a window that's similar to Omen's threat bars.

As for my own experience with these, I've found that ZThreatMeter is pretty much a total Omen replacement. I ran normal Utgarde Keep at lvl 73 yesterday, and ZThreat rocked. I also noticed that, much like the new "Snared" text that pops up for everyone to show that the mob is snared, you also get a "Changed Target" text over mobs that de-aggro you for someone else. This is excellent for those ranged mobs that you couldn't pull to yourself for the Berserked Mangle-spam (which is AWESOME).

I noticed something rather disturbing while I was tanking, though. It may have just been that my party members were terrible, but I did 50% of the entire groups damage for the whole run, doubling the next best player's DPS. I can only hope that feral tanking DPS doesn't get us nerfed into the ground again like early TBC.

 

CD

I imagine many raid boss encounters will allow for an early heroism and of course things like drums, Tricks of the Trade and Hysteria could also add even more dimensions to our initial cooldown stacking and just produce some silly TPS and DPS results.

The downside is of course the Enrage armour penalty but if you're stacking cooldowns near the very start of fights in most situations you'll be able to pull with AF/ Inspiration already up.

It would probably be fairer if things like Enrage, Hysteria and Berserk didn't stack.

 

Merendel

As we've seen mage tank and even warlock tank have been done but thats not why I'm replying to this specifically.

They can not balance druid tanks vs other tanks by assuming innervate and battlerez will be available unless they give us the ability to use it while tanking. Yes in BC about half the fights have some opportunity for a MT druid to sneak in an innervate safely, a few less for BR as they have small windows of opportunity. most of these fights are multi tank fights where you can be reasonably sure you wont take a hit for a short period of time. Unless every fight is like this or they give some ability to cast BR or innervate from bear form it is no more fair to druids to balance things assuming these tools are on the table than it is for other tanks to ignore them altogether.

From the OT role brez and innervate must potentially be balanced around as an OT has more opportunity to use them. I like OT but I like MT as well and they are trying to move away from the niche roles and OT was our niche. if we are going to be MT's they cant deny us MT tools others have because we have these powerful tools when we can not use them in most MT situations.

Honestly I'd like to see a talent deep in feral. Partial transformation. When activated allows the druid to cast 1 spell without drooping their shapeshift. 1 minute CD. This would allow a bit more of our hybrid nature to show as we are the most specalized of the hybrids. Pallies do not give up their spellcasting while tanking, they drop some of their defenses if they try to cast but not all of them, we drop all of them currently. enh shamies do not give up their ability to cast healing or ranged spells, they may not be as effective but even they gain more spell power from their talents than we do from NI. Ferals are forced to give up a great deal of their class to specialize and that is being furthered in the expansion with cat and bear splitting to an extent. if they want to force specialized roles that is fine but they need to balance us as specialists not hybrids in that case.

 

Valerian

There are a very limited number of fights in all of BC where you have absolutely no opportunity to Bres. Kara there's a fairly good number where its not doable. But even once you hit SSC/TK the number starts getting reduced a fair amount. In BT there's like one where you cannot Bres as MT (gorefiend). Hyjal I'll grant practically none of the fights you'd be able to MT and Bres on. Sunwell I believe every fight offers the chance to Bres people. So even as MT this is a fairly strong ability that does need to be taken into account.

 

david0925

Hyjal you can definitely Brez during Rage's DnD and Anetheron's inferno cast, the other three bosses you can't do it.

Maniq is my hero

 

tlbj6142

I see GC mentions we need better AoE threat in this blue post.The fact that he mentioned it makes me think they are working on something. Otherwise it would have said "Dude, use Berserk and Mangle/Tab" for AoE.

 

kalbear

To be fair, GC has also mentioned that the druid models suck and are a high priority to be fixed...in another expansion/large content patch.

At this point any AE threat talent must be based on existing mechanics that either the druid or another tanking class has. My suspicion is that they will give druids a super-swipe that hits 8-10 targets, either via talent or via glyph.

 

Neddie

They keep saying they don't want to buff swipe because that's all we'll use. I assume they mean we'll use it when single-target tanking as well as multi-target tanking. (Anybody remember tanking pre-BC)

Why don't they just make the damage/threat scale based on how many mobs are affected so more mobs = more damage / threat. If you're tanking 1 mob swipe is never worth it. If you're tanking 2 you're better off tab-mangling. If you're tanking 4 or more, swipe is the way to go?

 

Malazaar

I would like something like this to resolve the AoE-issue:

"Blind Rage (5s CD): Your next attack will hit every target within 10m range but only do 25% damage".

So you basically use your existing abilities and just pop blind rage for every other maul/mangle to keep up your aoe threat.

Also this could be used for things like getting a bleed on every target for increased maul damage (via r&t) or just for insane dot damage (if you stack lacerate high enough).

 

Skytor

The diminishing returns on avoidence have been implemented - with some significant work on understanding them going on over in the Combat ratings at 80 thread

All of the data provided so far has been from warriors and indicated that for them Parry and Dodge operate on seperate diminishing returns.

Some data from druids, especially those with ultra-high avoidence sets would be good - the key question (and hope) is does dodge for us diminishes by a different factor?

 

Neddie

Is mangle worth it for DPS anymore?

In the new patch, mangle only affects bleeds, shred is buffed by targets that bleed, correct? In other words, mangle buffs rip, rip buffs shred.

If that's the case, I'm wondering if it's ever worth mangling while doing raid-style DPS. I took a recent WWS report and found that 34% of my damage was from shred, 19% from rip and 7% from mangle. I adjusted the numbers and assumed that rip was doing 23% less damage (i.e. it wasn't benefiting from the 30% increase to damage from mangle) and that all the energy was being used for shreds instead. What I found was that you do slightly more damage (1% more) if you spend all your energy on shreds and let rip tick for less.

Obviously with a 1% difference it could swing either way, and if any other class (rogues, warriors, death knights(?)) is doing damage using bleeds it might still be worth mangling for the raid dps boost, It is interesting though that with the change to mangle not affecting shred, there are situations where mangle isn't needed for DPS anymore.

BTW, does someone in Beta know if we still have the (imo stupid) huge attack power lead over other DPS classes? I hope not, because I'd love for battle shout, etc. to buff me as much as they buffed other classes.

 

Malazaar

No, shred and maul were adjusted to work with effects that also increase bleed damage (e.g. new mangle and trauma). So you still have to mangle if you don't have an arms warrior with you.

 

Tappin

I'd prefer to get AE threat in a way that doesn't do a lot more damage. I want to hold threat and take a beating as a bear. Damage is a perk. I'd rather not get another 'bear damage is too high, beat them back into place!' nerf. Bear damage got a lot of love (so did the other tanks, but still, it's bear dmg vs other classes).

Beserk is bear mangle dps goodness.
Maul can be 1.2 (SF) x 1.3 (Mangle) x 1.2 (RnT) better than it is today.
Maul can hit a second target with a glyph.
Swipe gets 30% more damage, hits a 4th target and gains an extra +5 rage proc chance.
KotJ can increase dps slghtly.
From what I hear we have a lot of rage.
We should land a lot more hits with precision and expertise.
We have a LOT more ap on our tank gear than TBC.
We get 20% windfury haste (maul / white hit only)
Strikes scales better than it used to.
Some people will pick up 4% more damage in bear (shifter)

My solution would be much simpler: add a large threat component to demo roar, something along the lines of the other 3 tanks' 'X mob threat' moves. It doesn't make us go nuts on the damage meters. It hits X mobs in 360 degrees. It doesn't involve another button. It makes it a good idea to attack debuff mobs on an AE pull instead of wondering if you can afford the rage on a low threat move.

 

Neddie

Ah, I misread the tooltip, "Effects which increase bleed damage also increase shred damage". That's some confusing wording imo... well a confusing mechanic at least.

 

Maeltne

So with the recent changes to Rend and Tear, is this still accurate?

Edit: to account for PI being a 3 point talent.

Looks like the only thing I can skip now is (Master) Shapeshifter. /sigh. Back to the drawing board.

 

Tappin

Mijae would have more accurate numbers, but those are based on RnT being 10% damage and PI being 5 talent points. But, I'd guess it's a lot closer to

Savage Fury: 341.35 (170.68)
LotP: 99.9
Primal Precision: 167.65 (83.83)
*Rend & Tear: 256.26 (51.26)* NEW
Predatory Strikes: 142.39 (47.46)
Naturalist: 220.87 (44.17)
Imp Mangle: 120.21 (40.07)
Sharpened Claws: 119.89 (39.96)
Predatory Instincts: 108.16 (36.05)
*Rend & Tear: 128.13 (25.63)* OLD
Feral Instinct: 67.72 (22.57)
Master Shapeshifter: 93.11 (18.62)
SotF: 36.98 (12.33)

RnT depends on how much you use it though. It depends on having lots of rage, since other moves can be better if you're rage starved. It also scales with haste and winfury where mangle, swipe, lacerate do not.

I'm kinda wondering about the conventional wisdom of holding off on maul when rage starved. Yes you lose white hit rage generation. But with talents and glyph, it seems like maul is getting a lot better scaling than most of our other moves.

With talents and a bleeding mob, maul is likely to be:
[Base] x 1.2 (sf) x 1.2 (RnT) x 1.3 (mangle) x 1.1 (naturalist) = 2.06 base dmg

If you have the glyph, a second mob, and mangles / bleeds spread around, that goes to 4.12 base

Spreading mangles and lacerates is work. That would be hard to do, but with 2 mobs, it would be easy to add another:
[Base] x 1.2 (sf) x 1.1 (naturalist) = 1.32 x base.

So on 2 targets with the glyph, it would be easy to get 3.38 x base maul damage every application. I don't think any of our other moves scale that well. Once you get mangle and lacerate up, maybe that's worth losing white hit rage? For two targets, it's probably better to mangle, lacerate, mouseover mangle #2, mouseover lacerate #2 and then get a few juicy 4.12 x base damage mauls?

 

Malazaar

Yes but then you are back to the "just spam one button to death and you're fine" problem - the same reason they didn't want to buff swipe further. I think an ability with a short cooldown that also involves some thinking and variety would be a better solution. If you are worried about too much damage, that modifier on Blind Rage could easily be 10% or so, this was just an example - also the rage cost could be huge (like 50 rage or so) so that we lose some mauls when using that ability.

 

Neddie

I agree that we have to be careful about doing a lot of damage, especially early on. I wouldn't mind being the highest damage single-target tank. That makes sense as a niche for ferals. It sounds like we will need to be able to tank large groups of mobs. The other talent I could see us getting some multi-target tanking love built into is thorns.

Right now thorns does very little damage/threat and doesn't give druids any kind of an edge because it can be given to other tanks too. What would be nice is to add something onto Survival of the Fittest or Natural Reactions saying "Any thorns effect on you does 100/200/300% more damage to attackers". Paladins grab targets with consecrate, but I think most of the threat they cause is with retribution aura and holy shield. Warriors will be grabbing mobs with thunderclap, but I think a lot of their AoE threat will come from "Damage Shield".

I think what we need is something to convince mobs to start hitting us instead of running past us to our healers, and then something else to keep them on us once they start attacking us. Thorns is the obvious source of reflective damage, and a deep bear talent like SotF or Natural Reactions makes perfect sense for a buff like this.

 

Tappin

Not really, for the same reason consecreate or thunderclap aren't the only thing tanks use in WotLK. They do a lot of total threat, but little to each mob. It's just important to get a little threat on each mob (not just 4) so the healer doesn't get aggro. The AE dps'rs need to give you a few seconds to get a roar or 2 and a swipe or 2 before they unload.

They could put roar on a 6 second cooldown (like consecration or thunderclap) so you don't spam it on AE pulls. But on 1-4 targets, it's not like you'd spam roar. It would do less threat than swipe on 4 mobs, more on 10+ and 0 damage. Against 1 or 2 mobs, maul, lacerate and mangle would still be the clear winner.

It would let us get that initial X mob threat and then assuming dps'rs don't throw AEs in the first few seconds, you should be good after a few swipes, a bunch of thorns damage (now 3x as much threat as 70), and maybe a second roar.

I like the idea of us being the high dps tank too. We always were the highest 1-3 mob dps tank. Paladins won when there were 4+ mobs. I think it should stay that way. Paladins (and dks) can have the multi-mob dps lead as long as i can hold aggro on those same pulls. Paladins can ae-solo. I have cat form. Imagine the 'they took our jobs!' whines you'd get if it was more efficient for bears to solo by grabbing 10 mobs in bear form and AE'ing them down.

 

Coldturkey

I know the idea has been beat to death but they could give us another roar with a damage + silence compontent and do double duty for pvp. The problem with that will be that it will need a long cooldown (45+ seconds would be fair) and that could be used as snap aggro on the mobs and then maybe a % based reflection baked into thick hide or some other bear heavy talent (ie 5% of damage taken is reflected at the attacker) which would allow our aoe threat to scale but not too quickly. The only problem i can see with the "thorny fur" is that against bosses 5% of a swing is a considerable amount and it might not work so well against casters and ranged physical.

 

Vvildcard

I really like the idea of your Thorny Fur... mainly because it's a talent that scales down with gear as required to be balanced. Ie: Better gear (more damage mitigation) = less reflection but ability to tank higher level mobs OR you can manually lower gear (worse mitigation) = more threat but inability to exploit it on bosses.


To extreme's, Thorny Fur could never become the ultimate farming tool since all the lower level stuff is getting mitigated to near nothing.

Something about that really feels balanced to me. Anyone see it differently?


I guess there is a point where we don't want to make passive threat so high that we don't have to do anything to keep aggro... but I don't really see that happening here ... at least not in any competitive DPS environment.

 

tlbj6142

Another blue post (from today).

I really don't want a super-swipe. As it seems sort of silly. I think a "thorny bear" self-buff castable in bear form while out-of-combat that last 30-45s would be neat. Just enough to hold them on the initial pull but after that we'd have to tab-swipe (or if it gets really bad, berserk-tab/mangle) to keep them on us.

 

Beace

I don't really understand the recent hype about AoE tanking. We've handled it just fine in TBC with a 3-target swipe, except the really big groups that basically only a prot paladin could handle.

Has it been shown the encounters in wotlk are designed in such a way all tanks suddenly need to be able to handle 10 mobs?

 

kalbear

There's a number of 6+ mob encounters in CoT Strat that make it harder for a bear to tank, particularly in heroic. There are other places where many multiples of mobs are needing to be tanked as well. In addition to that, swipe had not been holding aggro well enough on the mobs it did hit to make it viable as a 4-5 mob aggro generator.

I'd much rather swipe get slightly buffed and have some kind of new mechanic (thorny bear would be great) to get some aggro on many, many mobs, but in this late stage of the game I think that's simply not going to happen.

 

Septus

I certainly don't think a swipe(still constrained by a cone or 180 degrees) without a target limit would be silly, but I don't know what the ramifications might be beyond standard aoe tanking in an instance. That's not an insignificant change.