Just a thought : many tanking items are itemised with +def, which is useless because of 3/3 SotF. Has anyone evaluated moving to 2/3 or even 1/3 SotF to make it valuable ?
I considered that as well, but +2% to stats is a very solid talent by itself, so even without the -crit% then it would still be among the better talents.
If we reach a similar DTPS as all the other tanks, but do it through high armor instead of avoidance (and block), I'm not sure I see a problem with that. Though of course the DTPS does indeed need to be similar.
Any clue how much avoidance the other tanks are reaching compared to your 32%, given similar gear level?
Just a thought : many tanking items are itemised with +def, which is useless because of 3/3 SotF. Has anyone evaluated moving to 2/3 or even 1/3 SotF to make it valuable ?
More specifically :
- how much def should we need to make up for one point in SotF ? Can this def be gained throught known def trinkets/rings/necks only ?
- If not (which is likely), would the freed talent point be beneficial enough to compensate for the regemming/reenchanting ?
It takes 25 defense skill to remove 1% chance to be crit. 4.918498039 = 1 defense skill so about 123 defense rating to remove 1% chance to be crit.
2/3 points in SoF would require 197 defense rating to stay crit immune.
1/3 points would require 443 Defense rating to stay crit immune.
0/3 Points would require 689 Defense rating to stay crit immune.
The first point you could potentially make up with jewelry, capes, trinkets and gems/enchants, but would you seriously want to do so?
Just a thought : many tanking items are itemised with +def, which is useless because of 3/3 SotF. Has anyone evaluated moving to 2/3 or even 1/3 SotF to make it valuable ?
Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I understood it we will still benefit from the anti-hit and the +dodge parts of +def as we do now, hence making defense less useful for us than the other tanks on a cost per point basis but certainly not useless. It will not be a stat any bear will want to maximize for, but "less useful" remains useful.
That said, to answer your question: Given a base bear build, I cannot see any talent points not yet taken that has a value greater than +2% stats for purposes of either avoidance or survivability - threat is another matter, but it seems unlikely to be a major issue. Trying to wring more use of +def by reducing the investment in one of our best multipoint talents and requiring us to wear a certain amount of +def looks like a losing solution in general.
As an example, look at this degenerate bear raid build, which lacks the following talents helping bear: BI, NI, ILotP, PT, KotJ, R&T in Feral, NS/MS and Intensity in Restoration. Assuming for the sake of argument that you want something that specialized for raid tanking in the first place (debuff maximizing and MT bear willing to go without very good hybrid talents so long as bear is slightly stronger), just which of those talents would be worth 2% stats and which of those few (if any) wouldn't be better paid off by reducing another talent instead of SotF? Going for a generalist build, a cat build, or a more-bear-than-cat build gives much the same result - there are very few things better than +2% stats for one talent point, and those that exist are already part of the base talents everybody will take.
From a practical perspective, if I were truly trying to maximize a bear tanking spec completely ignoring cat and just could not live without reduced stun/fear durations and the ability to spell interrupt every 30s, I'd probably strip 11 points out of restoration before removing one point in SotF ending up with something absurd like this 0/71/0 build, since +10% damage and OOC, while nice, do not give me the avoidance or survivability that SotF does.
It's definitely not quadratic. If anyone can find a neat way to assign item levels using a quadratic scale so that each succeeding tier is X% better than the last, I'd like to confer with them.
As you can see, the stats derived from item level can fit either a quadratic polynomial or an exponential function. Both fit equally well.
It's a huge mistake, and I hope someone will post that on the beta forums. I'm fairly certain this will lead to problems and unwanted nerfs like:
a) A primal fury nerf due to nearly limitless rage on large pulls.
b) Some internal cooldown on natural reaction's rage gain.
c) A swipe cooldown
d) An overall damage nerf because swipe spam is so good.
I don't really see this is an issue though, surely in any situation where we have enough mobs hitting us that Natural Reaction and Primal Fury's rage refunds give us infinite rage, we'd already be getting close to that from the mobs hitting. Either way I don't think it is worth panicing about.
On the damage we're doing, I blitzed 70->75 in the last few days as I've finally got a break from work and I ran 1 UK and 3 Nexus instances. One of the nexus runs I did without a healer and it was pretty easy to be honest. With a combination of Mark of Blood on bosses and bigger elites plus another ability (not sure what it was, was a blood DK ability healing me for 1kish every few seconds) I very rarely had issues with near death except when one of the Ret Pallys decided we weren't pulling enough in one go. My point is this run with 1 death knight, two ret pallys and a rogue, I came third in DPS without leaving bear form (rogue and 1 ret pally were above). I can put Death Knight down to inexperience but the other classes I was very close on, I pulled 1000 dps. Beserk had a lot to do with it I think, you can really just go nuts with it on the bigger packs and tab targeting is really no issue with its threat gain (unless a DK likes to play with his flying taunt skill). Not only that it was doing insane DPS. With RNT and a lacerate stack thrown up before hand I was ripping through packs with maul and mangle and was even using Beserk on single target bosses simply gor the ~1.5k dps it was providing.
Infinte swipe targets should be interesting but I'm a little worried it might be overpowerd not damage wise but targets that can be pulled. With infinite swipe and a healer I wouldn't really see problems in pulling 4-6 packs in nexus or UK at a time (we were pulling 2-3 with DK passive heals plus off heals on DPS that pulled from ret) and with sufficent AoE classes should be able to drop them incredibly quick after an initial 10-15 second aggro period. I could literally forsee clearing Nexus especially in 10 minutes doing it. I guess leveling parties aren't a big balancing concern for Blizzard but there it is.
Our leveling I'm pretty impressed with, I'm getting FB crits upwards of 6k with ease at this level. Opening with Pounce/Rake then a few mangles then FB leaves pretty much anything dust. Bigger elites are tougher due to the bear nerfs and the fact Mother Bear doesn't work solo but I've managed 90% of the 2 and 3 man elites as solo and much of this is due to the improved Frenzied Regeneration.
Originally Posted by Shadowed
The best part is, not only were you late in linking it, that's an April fools topic from 6 months ago.
Has anyone made a post on the beta boards about our armor scaling yet? Once again we seem very close to being able to Cap our armor after the first raid instance which is a major problem with our scaling and the scaling of buffs like inspiration. I can see people not wanting to get "nerfed" to start but if we keep ourselves capped (or at least capped with inspiration) right off the bat, we're going to have some pretty big scaling issues later once again.
Thorns scales off of spell power. The problem is that it scales off of the spell power of the recipient, not the caster. Ideally you'd have a resto or balance druid buff you with thorns and then it would hit pretty hard (over 200 a hit) but it's not working quite right yet.
I'm curious if thorns checks the spellpower of the recipient at the time the buff is applied or the time thorns reflects damage at the enemy. If it's case #1, It would benefit us to carry a set with as much spell power as possible on it. If it's case #2, it won't help ferals much (some raid buffs give us spell damage)
Consecrate uses 1 GCD every 8 seconds, while swipe uses one every 1.5 seconds when you spam it. Assuming that swipe does the same TPS as Consecrate, consecrate will be better because it takes 4 less global cooldowns (not complaining at all, just analyzing)
With internal threat buffed on Swipe, depending on how much it got buffed, I am wondering if it will overtake (or already have overtaken) lacerate in terms of single target threat. In either case that makes lacerate either a Maul buff for 5/10 mans, or "shudder" anti-rogue pvp tool like rend only.
I'm curious if thorns checks the spellpower of the recipient at the time the buff is applied or the time thorns reflects damage at the enemy. If it's case #1, It would benefit us to carry a set with as much spell power as possible on it. If it's case #2, it won't help ferals much (some raid buffs give us spell damage)
If I remember correctly, it checks on the fly. Whilst mucking about on beta, both [Idol of the Unseen Moon] procs and Owlkin Frenzy procs increased damage while mobs were hitting me. With my amazing 980ish spellpower in my Balance set at 70 (which, incidentally, is actually my healing gear for the most part) I was getting 110-140 ticks of Thorns dependent on buffs, with full Brambles. If they fix this to work properly (i.e. take the casters SP, not the users SP) then it could be quite a nice extra bit of threat/damage on AoE mobs, especially combined with Retribution Aura.
I'm curious if thorns checks the spellpower of the recipient at the time the buff is applied or the time thorns reflects damage at the enemy. If it's case #1, It would benefit us to carry a set with as much spell power as possible on it. If it's case #2, it won't help ferals much (some raid buffs give us spell damage)
I just tested this in beta. When I put the lvl 70 thorns on myself, in my resto gear, it was returning ~100 on hit. When I took off my resto gear, without recasting the buff, it was hitting for only 27, as the tooltip suggests.
Then I tried putting it on a different player and dueling her to test the damage return. I found a pally, put Thorns on her while wearing my feral set, and attacked. Thorns returned 66 damage, presumably scaling off the pally's spellpower (since I have none in my feral set). Then I put my resto set on, rebuffed her with Thorns, and attacked. Same 66 damage per hit, meaning my resto set made no difference.
So, thorns scales off the recipient'scurrent spellpower. It's utility for tanking will therefore be very low unless this is changed. Considering, however, that I read a blue post about how they're changing mechanics that work like this (PoM is being changed to credit the casting priest, instead of the target), this may change. However, this still doesn't really help us in comparing to a warriors' Damage Shield talent, because a boomkin/resto could cast Thorns on the warrior in addition to that talent, and easily recast the buff mid-fight.
However, all is not lost in terms of having to recast the buff mid-fight. Glyph of Thorns is quite interesting.
In either case that makes lacerate either a Maul buff for 5/10 mans, or "shudder" anti-rogue pvp tool like rend only.
As of right now on the beta bleeds and dots aren't taking rogues out of stealth anymore, although they still take druids out, so having bleeds up on rogues will not make a difference anymore. I am not sure if this is just a bug or a design change, but it has been there for at least two patches.
As of right now on the beta bleeds and dots aren't taking rogues out of stealth anymore, although they still take druids out, so having bleeds up on rogues will not make a difference anymore. I am not sure if this is just a bug or a design change, but it has been there for at least two patches.
There's no way that's intended. They already have the best tools in game to remove dots from themselves (Cloak of Shadow and Hunger for Blood), so there's no reason that they shouldn't be knocked out of stealth from a dot.
Is the threat component of swipe still split among all the targets hit by the swipe? If so, on large pulls the threat per target could be pretty weak compared to consecrate. If the threat per target is close to consecrate, they can nerf the hell out of swipe's damage component and it wouldn't bother me too much.
Is the threat component of swipe still split among all the targets hit by the swipe? If so, on large pulls the threat per target could be pretty weak compared to consecrate. If the threat per target is close to consecrate, they can nerf the hell out of swipe's damage component and it wouldn't bother me too much.
Uhh... what? As far as I know, swipe does dmg x bear threat multipler, on each target it hits, regardless of how many that is. Is this wrong?
As you can see, the stats derived from item level can fit either a quadratic polynomial or an exponential function. Both fit equally well.
Extend your quadratic function up to the 300-400 ilvl range and tell me how intuitive it will be to assign tier item levels if you want to make each tier 13% of an upgrade. I have no idea why the heck you're choosing to pursue this line of debate.
Originally Posted by Tacocat
I don't think it's over budget, just that itemization points seem to be allocated disproportionately :
Origin of Nightmares
((714/14)^1.7095+(77)^1.7095+(100)^1.7095+(150*2/3)^1.7095)^(1/1.7095)*1.2 + 26 = 308
(not my math).
Yeah, Armor is something a druid gets a -lot- out of in terms of item budget : effectiveness. It's one of the only stats in the game that Blizzard has to keep an extra watchful eye out for in terms of itemization. For example most other offensive/defensive stats 'handle themselves' in terms of effectiveness regardless of how badly you mangle an item's stat allocation. Armor on the other hand has to be strictly controlled. In TBC you could see how they had the wrong and right ideas in various points of the development cycle.
The obvious 'wrong idea' would be early on, when we had the god-like green quest reward set which put us roughly at 29-30k armor, vs T4 which (at that time) had no bonus armor. There was a clear disconnect between two itemization sub-groups and the class designers as to what should have been done for druid armor levels.
The 'right idea' would be how the tier sets (+ sunwell tank leather) had their bonus armor rationed out. You can see that although the ratios of the other stats changed from tier to tier (most notably Str:Agi) bonus armor went up smoothly.
Questionable would have been the progression of armor on the rings obtainable at various points of progression, as well as the pretty-much static values on weapons (Only Hyjal Staff had more armor than the rest, and was otherwise horribly itemized as a tank staff anyway)
In terms of how WotLK is looking, they seem to be getting more of the 'right idea', for example looking at rings - dungeon blues while levelling up are in the 200-300 range, 80 blues are around 300-400, epics going higher. Ditto cloaks, necklaces, and even trinket slots. The Enraged Feral Staff seems to be an anomaly.
Originally Posted by Beace
If we reach a similar DTPS as all the other tanks, but do it through high armor instead of avoidance (and block), I'm not sure I see a problem with that. Though of course the DTPS does indeed need to be similar.
Any clue how much avoidance the other tanks are reaching compared to your 32%, given similar gear level?
This is pretty much as anecdotal as anecdotal gets, but at the moment ferals make the best Hateful Strike tanks for Patchwerk for pretty obvious reasons. Napkin math off the top of my head says that druids start losing out on DTPS at higher gear levels, but would continue to maintain a massive HP advantage as is, assuming the current itemization trends scale upward. Not to mention Ancestral Fort/Inspiration/LoH soft capping will hit druids sooner than lower armor classes. Much less distinct a difference than in TBC but there you have it.
Has anyone in beta noticed whether the "chaining" effect on swipe is still there? In other words, on live I notice that when picking the three targets for swipe, often a caster or other mob that is outside of the normal melee range will be hit as well - I'm a little curious how infinite target swipe will interact with the ability to CC in close quarters.
Someone posted a page or so back that the initial swipe target has a 5 yard range, but the extra targets have an 8 yard range, and that this is the current mechanic on live.
As you can see, the stats derived from item level can fit either a quadratic polynomial or an exponential function. Both fit equally well.
I plot log(fap) against level and fit a least-squares line; I plot sqrt(fap) against level and fit a least squares line. I assume the error in the FAP is 1 due to rounding. Then chi^2 for the log fit is about 87 while chi^2 for the sqrt fit is about 11000. Neither fit works, but the log fit is much closer (for 6 degrees of freedom, P(chi^2 > 87) ~ 10^-16 while P(chi^2 > 11000) ~ 0). If I push the error in the FAP up to 5 (assume the itemization team took some liberties), then chi^2 for the log fit is about 3.5 while chi^2 for the sqrt fit is about 437. In this case the log fit is plausible while the sqrt fit still isn't (P(chi^2 > 3.5) ~ 75% while P(chi^2 > 437) ~ 10^-91).
In summary, the assumption that log(fap) ~ level (i.e. fap ~ e^level) yields a reasonable fit while the assumption that sqrt(fap) ~ level (i.e. fap ~ level^2) does not.
Just a thought : many tanking items are itemised with +def, which is useless because of 3/3 SotF. Has anyone evaluated moving to 2/3 or even 1/3 SotF to make it valuable ?
More specifically :
- how much def should we need to make up for one point in SotF ? Can this def be gained throught known def trinkets/rings/necks only ?
- If not (which is likely), would the freed talent point be beneficial enough to compensate for the regemming/reenchanting ?
it wouldn't be worth it. If you already had the +def on your gear you do not gain any extra avoidance or mitigation by dropping SOTF, the anti crit is actually being put to use but there is no additional benefit. In addition you loose 2% stats on all your gear not just those items with defense. Any other place you'd want to put those talent points would need to add 2% stats or an equivalent amount of relevant defensive/offensive ability + have something in addition to make it a more valuable point. there just isnt any talent in competition to SOTF that fits that bill.
Theres just no profit in dropping points from SOTF just to feel less guilty about haveing defense rateing on our gear. Bliz dosent want ideal itemization for us apparently so we just have to work around a few wasted stat points.
09/29/08, 5:49 AM
