nightcrowler

Mantaining 5xlacerate stacks for the +20% bonus or dropping lacerate at all?

 

• Astrylian

Assuming there's going to be some bleed on the mob, drop lacerate entirely (safe to assume, in raids, I'd guess, with rogues and warriors both keeping bleeds up most of the time). If no bleeds on the mob, then yeah, lacerate once every ~14sec (not worth stacking up to 5 immediately, just slowly stack up to 5).

Again, to emphasize, this was just napkin math, using just ballpark figures. So if someone wants to do the actual math, that'd be spiffy.

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Nemmerle

the talent i hate most still exists: Naturalist

5 wasted points to the resto tree because it's a must have -.-

 

ionasej

I want to bring up that there are 3 issues currently remaining in regards to Feral base mechanics and talents.

1. Itemization of tanking Amulets/Backs/Rings/Trinkets and the FAP hack
2. PvE tanking "abilities"
3. PvP vs PvE spec



1. GC acknowledged, that he would want to remove FAP, but they do not have it on high priority. Removing FAP and letting us scale with weapon damage would allow us to use 2h maces and 2h "staffs". This is to be done later (in or after WOTLK), it seems.

In endgame (not early game) we will see another itemization issue. Esp. DK scales like holy shit with almost every item tank (everything that has no block) and reaches insane avoidance numbers, paladins are mechanically broken there right now (but that can be fixed without calling for itemization issues). Overall all 3 other main tanks will have lots of options to fill amulets, cloaks, rings, trinket slots - while we will only have very sparse and few. That is not good, either we need to make USE of defense rating and parry rating at least or CONVERT it to something else. That will fix the itemization issues and give us equal amounts to chose from.



2. Worse than this is: Feral mechanics look well now after the last push in regards to tanking (and dps, but no idea about numbers, which can relatively easy fixed - in contrast to basic design issues such as these discussed here) but they still lack a wide range of abilities. Why is this the way it is? Feral Combat is the ONLY tree/school in game that has almost no synergies with other trees/schools AND it is the only school that takes a class from somewhere where it is NOT to somewhere where it should be (an almost complete caster to an almost complete melee class). This explains why feral talents have to be very special and maybe even very strong. A 0/0/0 rogue just does lots better damage and scales lots better than a 0/0/0 "Feral" Druid, and a 0/0/0 Warrior just tanks a very lot better than a 0/0/0 "Feral" Druid. Balance Druids profit from Restoration abilities/school, Restoration benefits from Balance abilities/school, Arms Warriors benefit from Fury and Protection trees, Protection Warriors benefit from Arms and Fury trees and so on.

Basically there are two ways to go. One is like making us more like enhancement shamans: they can use their "off-schools" quite well - all time. The other way is to specialize Feral Combat more, remove the use of other schools, the possibilities to do so, up the costs of opportunity to do so but give Feral Combat lots more talent based abilities in addition to the already strong tree (cause the tree must make up for all the missing scaling factors that other specs already bring by base abilities like DPS Rogues or TANK Warriors)

Making FFF base line and adding a new talent based Last Stand ability was ONE right way to go, adding more talent based abilities further widens the Feral tree and makes it independent from the other 2 Druidic schools. Currently Warriors/Paladins/DKs have around 25 tanking buttons, while we have around 15, a large gap to close! How to fix this? Well just allow the use of Balance and Restoration abilities in Bear Form, let the bear access the his pool (but still hide it from others), same for Cat Form. Heals won't be so strong, cc will be strong - yes, but spells that are too strong (Tranquility, Roots, Cyclone, Battle Rez) could just be excluded. Another way to work around the lack of abilities Feral Combat specialization brings is to a.) lower GCD of shift-Ins very much (like 0.5sec) and make shifting very very much cheaper (like now its 35% base mana costs, but it should be somewhere around 5%) by deep tree Feral talents. This way at least in PvP Ferals have lower cost of opportunity to use other schools/abilities but Feral and this removes the need to add more and more talent based abilities to the Feral Combat tree.



3. PvE specs, with the last push, are pretty nice imho, you can min/max tanking or DPS very very well - but you can just cut out your support options and be a perfect single target main/boss tank and almost perfect cat DPS: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft ( I hope Blizzard either knows this or does not read this part of this post

But what about PvP? The mana return of imp. LotP doesn't do the job, and the more you want to do PvP the more "utility" talents you will need ... which drastically lowers your DPS: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
2/2 Shredding Attacks, 3/3 King of the Jungle, 1/5 Rend and Tear, 2/2 Master Shapeshifter = 8pts missing
And even when taking all those abilities there is still no mana DRAIN still no Mortal Strike (why do so many other specs have it), still no GCD-less kick/pummel (yes WotLK: Pummel/Kick = no GCD but only self CD) - no silence, just Maim, which does NOT do the job cause it is a Finisher. Nothing that let's us kill a healer ON THE LONG SIGHT (I do not want to burst down healer's, that is just unfair).

Besides that there is just too much bloat regarding PvP and PvE. I understand that Blizzard wants us to respec for Feral PvE Tank, Feral PvE DPS, Feral PvE Roleswitcher, and PvP Feral. PvE wise its okay, but PvP wise there is just to many mixing of PvE and PvP talents. Its fine that there are some Bear only and some Cat only (or almost only) abilities. But where are those PvE talents that do not help for PvP?

I think Feral Instinct's STEALTH Bonus and Nurturing Instincts should really merged into a 2pt talent, the swipe bonus can be added onto another talent. Same goes for Infected Wounds and Primal Tenacity. Why merge them? Well Infected Wounds once was a talent where you could take one point, but now you have to spend all, its a PvE and PvP talent while imho Primal Tenacity is PvP only since there is no more stun RESISTANCE (which would be helpful in 5mans and in encounters such as MH trash waves).

Further HotW really needs a fix to scale our mana pool HUGELY by our health pool. We do not need more INT or more INT in our gear - the gear homogenization besides FAP and tanking jewelery is a GOOD DESIGN principle - that helps not only us but many other specs and the designers - we just need a good buffer to work against with our imp. LotP.

(sorry for the few spelling and grammar mistakes, not my native language)

p.s. Furor needs a PvE Buff. Right now it is more or less a pure filler talent. At least it should use its chance based scaling and should scale its power with more points. Better would be a swap of Naturalist and Furor and a change from scale of chance to scale of power.

 

foxglove

It's not actually a "must have" in a bear spec since its value over ten points (with Furor being only a utility talent now) is lower than the purely "threat" talents in feral. I am probably going to spec 0/61/0 when 3.0 hits live, and an MT spec at 70 is probably going to be 0/71/0. If you plan on being the offtank/cat sort, then you need 10 points there for Omen of Clarity anyway--and Omen of Clarity is more DPS per point than half the feral talents even if you consider it an eleven-point talent. Getting Naturalist + Omen of Clarity for those 11 is hugely worth it for DPS regardless of which tree they're in.

Regarding Furor, I actually like it better in its current incarnation--and remember, it's in the first tier, so I wouldn't expect it to be superpowered. (The fact that it was before with powershifting was, let's face it, broken.) There's more to WoW than main-tanking a boss or spamming Shred, and Furor is a huge convenience in any situation where one is changing forms, which includes escaping from snares as well as switching from bear to cat, or cat to caster and back to throw a Rebirth.

 

tlbj6142

Things I noticed last night on the PTR...
Too much dodge? -- I had nearly 40% dodge in my T4-ish bear outfit using this spect, I know I don't have that much on Live, maybe only 36%? I thought we lost dodge...

And green armor on S2 but not T4? -- WTF? The only pieces I own that have "additional armor" are PvP pieces everything else now just has white armor. I hope that changes. With the above build I'm have 4K less armor than I do on live.

FWIW, I tanked a Son of Gruul (the one above shat) last night. I had plenty of rage with the above build. I even had to blow FR 'cause I wasn't getting heals.

 

dukes

At low levels, we're gaining dodge (mainly because of Natural Reaction). Once you get to higher levels, the diminishing returns and changes on the agi->dodge ratio really start to kick in (especially on BoK and Grace of Air), and you'll see a drop compared to 2.4 values.

They will change all pieces that have any additional armour afaik, they just did it for the major pieces first to show their intentions (and because, in all fairness, the small amount of additional armour on PvP gear doesn't make up for the lack of stats at 80, while on Sunwell pieces it probably does).

 

seminarca

Natural Reaction will make up for the dodge lost due to the Agility to dodge ratio change at level 70 at T4 level gear: since you don't have as much Agility to begin with, the loss in dodge from the ratio change is less. At higher gear levels, you end up with a net loss in dodge despite Natural Reaction.

 

Melthu

A while ago one of the blues said that they bumped up our base dodge (and possibly crit) to compensate for our agility:dodge conversion nerf. They then later added Natural Reaction for another 6% dodge, with the result of actually boosting dodge even after the agility nerf except in extreme cases like M'uru add tanking sets.

Edit: Beaten twice. Ouch.

 

Valerian

Is the parry/dodge thing confirmed as being real or an error? This would help enormously. Next, it appears we get less diminishing returns on dodge (from rating or defense) than warriors do on dodge/parry. This method can be used to equalize the "benefit" of defense between druids and other tanks. I haven't looked at current numbers (and suspect the tanks that can parry still benefit a fair bit more from defense), but this CAN be changed, though it would essentially be by nerfing the other tanks and not buffing us.

 

Selmarix

Changing around the diminishing returns does not change the value of defense in comparison to dodge rating for druids.
And the current higher cap on dodge for druids compared to warriors only compensates that warriors can tap 3 separate diminishing returns compared to the 1-2 druids can tap.

 

• Diameter

We also have dodge from agility (which seems to be ignored so far on the plate tanks gear) and I'm not sure if that is getting diminished returns from it. I would expect slightly lower avoidance than other tank classes, but due to higher armor value, it should all balance out to the 1-2% difference the blizzard class developers are attempting to balance. I really believe bears are shaping out to be great, with a minor tweak to an existing ability to help our AOE threat generation.

 

Malazaar

The avoidance stat as a whole gets diminishing returns, no matter if it comes from defense, dodge rating or agility.

 

Janraea

I wish people would stop calling it that. This is not 'diminishing returns', it's 'consistent returns', just like armor until the cap. I'm not confident that it's implemented that way at all, but if it is, dodge rating would scale the same way that 'reduces damage taken by 10%' does.

 

• Astrylian

Actually it is diminishing returns on avoidance, and the math has been figured out. Combat Ratings at level 80

You can say that it's 'consistent returns' on time to live from avoidance, but avoidance itself does indeed have diminishing returns.

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Janraea

My mistake! I thought I understood how it works, and I didn't. >.<
Thanks for the link.

edit: What I intended to imply was that adding 1 dodge rating when you have 50% dodge is just as effective as adding 1 dodge rating when you have, say, 25% dodge. I was mistaken, and here is an example case that shows the diminishing reduction (which isn't terribly severe).

Adding 1% worth of dodge rating (1% pre-DR) gives a druid with 50% dodge an extra .339% dodge, and one with 25% dodge an extra .64% dodge.
Adding that rating to the first druid was worth a total of .753% addition damage reduction (avoidance delta).
Adding that rating to the second druid was worth .914% additional damage reduction.
Going from 25% actual dodge to 50% actual dodge lowered the effectiveness of dodge rating by around 18%.

This is assuming 8% miss rates (base + IS/scorpid). If DW bosses get extra miss, dodge probably doesn't have diminishing returns against them.

I think it would have been better implemented to make rating give the same avoidance delta at all levels of gear, but this is reasonably close.

 

Maeltne

If the stat/rating->Time to Live (TTL) is 'linear', then the stat/rating->%avoidance has 'diminishing returns'

If the stat/rating->%avoidance is 'linear' then stat/rating->TTL is 'exponential'ish'.

The preceding also holds if you replace avoidance with mitigation.

I guess this means that there isn't a clear winner on the STAM/AGI argument, but that some kind of ideal ratio is going to result.

... I wonder if some sort of Time to Die (TTD) extraction might someday be made for DPS stats? I don't really see how, or why such a think would be necessary.

 

halmmar

And that ratio will be quite different depending on the nature of the boss. Stamina will probably always be a good choice for gemming (works on non-physical damage and keeps you alive when the boss gets in 9 hits in a row).

 

david0925

Has anyone done an analysis on mitigation gained on marginal percent of dodge? Namely how much mitigation one gains when he gets another percentage of dodge. As it is right now, avoidance scales with itself in the sense that you get a much bigger benefit going from 98% to 99% dodge, than from going from 0% to 1% dodge. I am wondering if diminishing returns merely returns the mitigation avoidance gives to a constant (linear level), or if it's meant to punish heavy avoidance user.

In the subject of stamina versus avoidance. I think stamina is the worst choice of gemming and enchanting, but this isn't an argument on that so I'll stop here (just voicing my opinions)

Back to actual itemization: How do people look at the agility and dodge should they decide to gem for either one of those for avoidance? As it is right now at 80, it takes roughly 40 dodge rating, or 50 agility to get 1% dodge. While the actual numbers will change because of DR, the relative ratio of needing 25% more agility to achieve the same amount of avoidance should remain the same. At the same time, agility is still a dps stat (although not as good as hit or strength in a raid setting post 3.0, IIRC) and a threat stat since it scales primal fury well. However, it is not the best threat stat as well. So agility has become a very hybrid stat, as it has both offensive and defensive power for a tank. Dodge rating has the most defensive stat, but offense wise it is limited to rage gained from Reaction. So is there anyone who will still gem for agility to some extend comes 3.0 and beyond?

Maniq is my hero

 

ionasej

@ tlbj6142
This is the trend, non scaling it is called. You get worse gear: you get better relative stats, you get better gear: you get worse relative stats. That would be okay if we just made profit of defense rating and parry rating (directly or indirectly)

 

ionasej

Diminishing returns on avoidance (or now the more linear scaling of 1% more average TTL by 1% avoidance, do not know if the formulars result into 1 to 1, right now on live in high end regions it is sick, 80 to 85% miss/dodge/parry gets you 25% more time to live if I got it right) ... well DR on avoidance do not matter in terms of itemization issues.

By the item formula other tanks just scale better with with more more stats on items and items having very high item lvl. Just remember items DPS items that cut out STA but would have STR, AGI, CRIT, HIT, EXP, AP, this item just has lots more benefit than an item with equal item level that just has attack power.

We will want to use armored neck/cloak/ring/trinket anyway so our "choice" is limited there by our class mechanic design, BUT it is furthermore limited by our use of defense and parry rating. Right now, in means of itemization there are 3 classes of tanks, class 1 Warrior/Paladin class 2 DK, class 3 Druid. If they just fix that to set DKs and Druids in one line (and even push the use DKs get from armor a tiny bit) then there are MORE EQUAL CHANCES OF REGULAR ITEM UPGRADES. Gear starving is no fun.

 

Malazaar

It is still not linear but exponentially. Granted, not nearly as severe, but it is still there.

Assuming a base avoidance value of 20%, the first point of dodge increases your TTL by 1.65% (1.56%), the 10th point by 1.78% (2.04%) and the 50th point by 2.59% (11.11%). The values in the brackets indicate pre-diminishing returns values.

 

Neddie

It seems obvious to me that the solution is to have 'defense' mean something different for each type of tank. For warriors and paladins it increases the chance to block, for warriors, paladins and death knights it increases the chance to parry and the chance to be critically hit, and for all tanks it increases the chance to dodge and the chance to be missed.

Currently those are the benefits each class gets from defense, but there's that pesky 0.04% value. Pre 3.0 druids under the crit cap get 0.04% chance to be missed per point of defense, 0.04% reduction in chance to be crit, and 0.04% more dodge. If you're uncrittable you only get the 0.04% more dodge and 0.04% less chance to be hit. Over the crit cap it's 0.04% more miss, 0.04% more dodge per point of defense. Why not scale that 0.04% based on how many of those benefits you actually get? Leave it as-is for warriors and paladins. Since Death Knights can't block let them get 0.04*5 / 4 = 0.05% chance to parry, dodge, be missed or be crit per point of defense. That should make up for the lack of any "tanking 2-handers", since a lot of shields (esp. lower level ones) tend to have defense on them. Similarly, since ferals can no longer be crit and can't parry or block, give us 0.04*5 / 2 = 0.1% chance to be missed and 0.1% chance to dodge per point of defense.

It will mean that defense isn't a completely wasted stat for feral druids, and won't be overpowered since we won't be seeing any post leather in WotLK with defense on it.

I'm pretty sure that we will end up noticing that we have no defense in WotLK as it is. Dodge helps when you're in control of your character but AFAIK when you're stunned the combat table is down to hit/crit/miss and dodge, parry and block are all removed. An uncrittable plate wearer has a chance to be missed of 10% or so. An "uncrittable via talents" druid will only have a 5ish % chance to be missed.

 

nightcrowler

I know that those arguments are from other topics but I saw a lot of misinformation in this last page so I copy dodge formula and rating conversion at level 80.

+1% to dodge requires before diminushing returns:

122.962450975 Defense Skill Rating
39.34798813 Dodge Rating
42.36402261 Agility (39.966 with SoF, 36.3328 with SoF and BoK)

dodge has diminushing returns:

effective_dodge = 1/( 1/a + 0.956/(dodge_from_equip)) +base

where a = 116.8909884
base = b*(base agility) + base_dodge
with b = 1/42.36402261 = 0.023604935
and base_dodge = 4.985370689 (naked dodge) + 10% from talents
base agility = your naked agility

Taking into account the dodge conversion, base dodge and agility, you'll start to se diminushing return after about 27% dodge (total)

 

Janraea

Last I read, the .956 value wasn't certain (appears to differ between classes - Combat Ratings at level 80 )

How certain are you of the formulae you're giving? The ratings thread doesn't appear to agree with them - in particular, if the diminishing returns are only applied to the dodge from equipment, delta_avoidance probably doesn't diminish.