• moz

Compare them to the T7 gloves (both 10/25) and they make them look like a joke. I suspect they are getting changed in a major way given the allocation.

 

Disargeria

I don't mean to overreact here, but I feel that they've forgotten about idols and relics in general. Most don't provide a meaningful benefit. A lot of them are extremely limited, situational and don't scale. I think the most frustrating part is the lack of acknowledgment of our concerns. Seeing warriors get such a nice ranged tanking weapon makes me sad.

 

Azsh

Part of the problem I have with a lot of this is it's really going back to square one for druids.

I don't buy that armour is too powerful and that single powerful items that differentiate you from the rest of the pack are a bad thing...

Eg. [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]

This item, once people got just how awesome it was for tanking threat (pre and post nerf) was a one off that required 2 extremely rare RNG drops + 100 arcanite (fun) +10 elementium (less of a problem but still took a bit) and the easiest bit of the whole questline was killing an "epic" (lol) outdoor raid boss...

Tfury was a big up compared to everyone else using [Quel'Serrar], for example.

*shock horror*

Who would have thunk it, you put in the rewards and get great items and that elevates you and your performance over others who do not have said item. \= |

The only real change the armour and FAP changes make (imo) is that other classes can now use items that were previously tasked pretty specifically to druids, although I don't really expect to see a warrior tanking with a druid staff any time soon ("wot block, I don't need no block!!").

The whole thing just reeks of the Dev team being drunk at the wheel and at this point, they are willing to throw out any idea and essentially test in live rather than go back to the drawing board, look at the core tenets of bear tanking ie. what we are trying to do, how we accomplish that, what tools do we need to do it, how do we get those tools.

edit: Typo...

 

Kiln

Ghost crawler has the ultimate druid armor listed as "-- The ultimate bear modifier should be 4.7 (Dire Bear form) x 1.66 (Survival of the Fittest) x 1.1 (Thick Hide) x 1.02 (meta gem)."

Unless I am reading it wrong, Survival of the Fittest should only be 1.06 (6%). If the post was taken directly from the developers spread sheet there could be some issues with the modified armor.

 

Disargeria

Here's where you got confused, you missed his previous post.


World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Upcoming Feral changes, Part II

 

Deliverance

They are when the difference in performance is so great that people start questioning the ability of those without the super powerful thing to perform at a useful baseline level a), when acquiring those super items depends on the luck of the random number generator b), when they come from quest rewards where making a single wrong choice dooms you for months afterwards to substandard performance c), or only being available to one section of players at the same level d).

We have seen (a) with the current whining about the "armour nerf" - where said nerf is of exactly the same scale as not getting Defender's Code/Offering of Sacrifice to randomly drop (b), something that is only available in potentia to 25 man raiders and not 10 man (d).

We have seen (b) in the past with the Badge of Tenacity, we saw (c) with the Mark of Tyranny - for a long time, one of the most common type of posts on the WoW druid forums regarded how to somehow get a GM to change the quest reward when you'd taken one of the other trinkets, and for those with a long enough memory there was Thrall's Resolve as a horde only reward meaning that an alliance bear entering MC was worse off than a horde bear (d) since he'd only have the Ring of Protection and Band of the Great Tortoise.

These are all bad things from a design point of view despite their undeniable coolness factors and the great joy for those who are lucky/good/in the right place to get the single powerful items. Fundamentally, game balancing is much easier when you do not have to make things achievable by both those with the powerful items and those without and at the same time not making it too easy to those with it. Which is probably why we didn't see an Atiesh, a Thunderfury, or a Sulfuron Hammer in TBC - but saw a bow with a fun side effect instead. The developers do not appear to want to see some characters differentiate themselves too much from the pack they are traveling with in terms of power level, and who can blame them for that?

Despite the loss of some flavour, I fully support this change - it makes for better base game mechanics overall.

 

Roywyn

So, you don't think that an item which is best-in-slot for six raid tiers is a bad thing (some might argue seven before the final nerfs)?

Armour being a powerful stat is alright.
Armour being so powerful that you won't even bother looking at items without it even if they pack twice as much item budget is not.


There is however one thing that I don't like about +66% AC on survival of the fittest, namely that non-ferals will have a hard time tanking a leveling dungeon.

Any Warrior and any Death Knight can tank them.
Any Paladin can tank them. Holy may be bit lighter on threat, but the survivability of any spec is alright.
Druids who are not feral won't have SotF, which means they'll lack 40% of their natural armour (from 166% to 100%).

One could argue that if they don't have any armour jewelery/cloak/staff, they have as much armour as before the change.
So they should be alright, but it still feels like a pretty large difference between ferals and non-ferals.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Grubsnik

The TTL calc for agi does contain the armor bonus
Sheet "TTL per stat", Cell F3
Comparing itembudget for bonus armor is pretty much irrelevant, leather can't get +armor on it any more, and anything else that gets it, won't be getting any of the mods to make it truly interesting. Besides the math from my viewpoint is not about how best to itemize a given piece, but rather allow people a way of comparing different items for tanking. There you conversion of 1.5x for stam vs. agi makes no sense, since that has already been done when they made the item in the first place.

The one thing that might be relevant to explore in detail, is when defense rating becomes interesting vs. agi, i've seen numbers around 50% dodge mentioned, but i don't know if people were talking raw or effective dodge, and if they were comparing to dodge rating or agi (which both grants more dodge, than dodge rating and gives bonus armor).

I did the math for that case, mainly with regards to avoidance scaling, conclusion was that we lost about 6% TTL on avoidance, but gain approx. the same from agi->armor.
With regards to the base armor scaling of plate vs. leather, the new talent means we pull ahead by a bit as levels increases, even though warriors also get more armor from shields.

Its worth noting that the original items selected for druids favored armor rings and necklaces, which could possibly be exchanged for items with higher agi/stam.

http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t26297-f...45/#post969249

Conclusion
Right now, there are no scaling issues, the only possible change could be block values getting out of hand, but afaik, blizzard is actively monitoring how well that scales, and is prepared to bring it in line if it goes completely haywire.

 

Habba

This is purely anecdotal as I don't have any data to point to at the moment but, I haven't noticed a decrease in proc chance on the idol. Everything I've seen indicates that it is still giving me a 75-80ish % up time.

 

mesullivan

You're right, my stupid.

That's what I thought until I looked at it. But in fact it looks like armor from non-leather items actually scales better than any other stat for both mitigation and TTL at raiding gear levels, without the buff. Which I guess makes sense, if it wasn't decent without the bear buff, nobody but bears would ever have worn high armor items.

It's true that the numbers you generate are what matters for gear comparisons, I'm just saying that given similar item levels, there's no good reason to swap armor items for agility/stam items, as some have suggested -- the armor items are still good if they are of an appropriate item level.

I just ran through it assuming that miss is effectively linear (we will have so little that DR means nothing), because I could not find a formula for DR on miss, so calculations will be adjusted when I find one.

After accounting for armor from agility, it looks like defense will never be better than agility as a practical matter. The crossover point comes at 73.2% effective dodge (after DR but with base and talents added back). This requires 114.3% raw dodge from stats/ratings which I very strongly doubt will ever be achievable at level 80. For normal gearing, it looks like 1 defense rating will be worth somewhere between 1/2 agi at low gear levels, and 2/3 agi at high gear levels. For very high avoidance levels not yet possible, it might get into the 80-90% range.

Defense becomes better than dodge much sooner, at 52.86% dodge (53.75 raw from stats), which requires 2114 dodge or 1920 agility.

Defense actually fares better than I expected compared to dodge. It looks like defense will be worth about 67% of dodge and 50% of agi even at low starter gear levels, heading up to 80-90% and possibly overtaking dodge at very high gear levels. So it's going to be in the mix even if won't be quite as good as the other options for most (all?) of us.

This just highlights how good defense is likely to be for other tanks and how important balance between parry/block/dodge/miss will be for them -- spreading out the DR becomes very powerful when you start getting significant amounts of avoidance.

DR formula cribbed from Feral Druid level 80 Hit, Expertise and Dodge at bigbearbutt.

 

Boevis

I was under the assumption that all avoidance, even avoidance from talents and base, were affected by the DR, or at least the tooltip on the character pane leads me to believe this

 

Zuult

I don't read much about the "Polar" LW set, which is very close to be be the best in slot for me, according to Rawr.

Even though it has extremely high stamina, its total lack of avoidance bothers me, and Rawr indicates I should gem and enchant it for even more stamina, currently leading to about 32k HP but a terrible 25% dodge.

I have been trusting, using and abusing Rawr for quite a while now, but this made me wonder about its balance bewteen mitigation and avoidance. All the more so as I begin so see OOM healers more than I like when tanking heroics with this set : I begin to feel like a mana sponge :-(

How do you consider Rawr's balance between mitigation and survival ? Is it safe to blindly follow it ?

 

Dibsclaw

The way I have been working my stats is to say I need X amount of stamina to survive bursts (I haven't decided what X is yet, but that is a different story). Once I have achieved that I then look at pure mitigation. All you have to do for this is sort the Rawr results by Mitigation. What you are seeing in Rawr at the moment is totaled stats for Mitigation + Survival + Threat. Playing around with your gear once you hit your desired HP cap shouldn't alter it too much - almost any good tanking item will be swimming in stamina in any case.

In addition, don't forget that the Polar set has a fair number of gem sockets in it, as well as being the same item level as Tier gear giving it as much amour as you can get from any item in Naxx.

 

Melthu

According to the Combat Ratings at level 80 thead, base and talented avoidance is not subject to DR:

 

mesullivan

with the exception of armor on bear multiplied items, stam is the best stat for TTL per item budget until 29k health, after which it is overtaken by non-bear-mult armor. It doesn't get outstripped by agility until something like 45k health.

But if 29k health is much more than you need to stay alive, while 25% avoidance is not enough to give your healers plenty of mana headroom, it makes sense to look for (non-multiplied) armor or agility long before that breakpoint.

I'm interested to know what the right health number is for heroics. Mana is a big issue for healers now, so it seems that we will have to be conscious of what our stam requirement is for various content, so that we can stack avoidance once we've met it.

What's the lowest you get on health while your healer still has a reasonably full mana bar?

 

barney

I have easy access to a leatherworking toon so I just farmed up 84 heavy leathers and 8 eternal airs, made the entire pvp savage leather set. It has decent amounts of agi and stam, higher armor values... only downside is its all crit and ap. I'm using some of those pieces as a fill-in til I find some upgrades from heroics.

I made the Trollwoven belt and shoulders fairly easily also... Got extremely lucky with the AH and these mats, ended up costing me like 500g for 2 epics.


Anyone have any advice for rings? I haven't found anything I would drop the BC 60 badge dodge ring for, but I do wanna replace the kara tanking one. I'm a JC but I keep wasting my tokens on gem patterns to use for profit.

Idols? Did we get passed over for this? Seems the casters got some nice upgrades.

 

kalbear

I'd recommend against the Polar set. It has ridiculous stamina, but that's all. I'm planning on aiming for about 30k health and then going for agility until it becomes poor.

[Ring of Earthen Might] is a good improvement over Kara/Badge gear.

And there really aren't any idols to speak of.

 

◊ Spherus

[Iceforged Battle Ring] is a really solid replacement for the Kara ring (and easily obtained via a quest line in Storm Peaks). I'm still waiting on [Keystone Great-Ring] to finally replace [Ring of the Stalwart Protector].

 

Azsh

So instead of having one "super powerful" stat, we now have one super powerful talent...

Compared to the amount of work and luck needed to obtain it. If you could pick up a 6 pack of Thunderfuries at the local corner store, it would hardly deserve the term "legendary", no?

Because the other stats don't mean as much as armour. I wonder if they ever considered making other stats worth more to us so we'll be more likely to pick different items?

If the logic behind the armour change is "if you do not have uber item X, you will be severely disadvantaged", I do not see how it's possible for non-SotF bears to tank at all.

 

◊ Abradix

Any feral with have SotF anyway. You're saying that this makes it too hard for moonkins or resto druids to tank in bear form? Without any feral talents you won't be tanking anything remotely hard anyway, and if anyone is I would tell them where the trainer is so they can respec.

 

Taudark

They chose to put it there because pretty much all feral druids are already putting there talents there. Honestly, not putting full points in SotF is just odd.

 

mesullivan

This is a misconception I keep reading (though mostly not here). There is no point where agility becomes poor. It does degrade in how much you need to give 1% time to live very slightly as you stack more, but not much. There is a point in the formulas where defense becomes *better*, and until you have very high health, stam is better for TTL.

But agility never gets worse, it keeps adding to your TTL at roughly the same rate(*1), no matter how much you stack, unless you were to hit the dodge cap, which looks like it will be impossible to do.

It's not even clear whether it will be possible to stack enough agility and dodge for defense to be better than agility, it certainly isn't possible with the currently released gear, and it doesn't look plausible. I redid the math for agility vs. defense at very high levels of dodge and zero miss, but included armor in the TTL calculation. Those 2 armor agility provides end up being worth a lot (and no I didn't multiply the bear bonus). When you account for armor, the point at which defense beats agi is at 73.2% dodge (or 114.3% raw dodge from stats, requiring 4762 agi (after kings/SoTF)). I don't think that much avoidance will be available in this expansion.

DR on agility is just like DR on armor, it prevents an exponential explosion in its value as you stack more, but it never makes it not worth stacking more at high levels (unless you hit a hard cap).

(*1): when you start with only your base dodge (+talents) but no agi or dodge rating, it take about 20 agi to give 1% TTL. When you have 30% (after DR and talents), it take about 21.3 agi to give 1% TTL. At 40% dodge, it takes 22 agi. At 55%, it takes 23.1, and reaches 23.5 at the point described above where defense becomes better (73.2% dodge). In edge cases, the exact numbers may matter, but they stay pretty close.

 

kalbear

Then 'until it becomes poor' will mean 'until the next expansion'

That being said, I do anticipate that defense will become better than agility at higher gear levels, at least as far as avoidance goes. For T7 that shouldn't be particularly of a concern.

 

Azsh

I was responding to this post. http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t36963-f...p3/#post985282 In regards to the concentration of SotF, not putting full points in that talent, if you were tanking, was odd before they added the armour factor.

The general discontent with the changes are not that people are going to be walking around with paper thin armour, it's that the general feel of the class has been reduced to a very two dimensional experience and that the general acceptance of ferals cultivated by TBC, where we could get gear specifically setup for us, will dissipate once we start rolling on items that other classes can utilise far better than we could ie. use all the stats on the item.

I understand that this forum is a traditional home of min/max'ers who will crunch numbers to determine exactly the best way to play a class. But what the devs are doing here is min/maxing the class for us while forcing us in to conflict with other players when they could just as well continue to itemise properly for ferals. What use will you have for a feral stats think tank post this change? Working out exactly when to stop stacking agi and instead opting for stamina?

 

Grubsnik

Personally i like to know how the values work out, simply so i can compare different items.

On the manner of stacking agi and stam, you will want to stack stamina and armor until you reach the point of not getting instant-killed by the boss, and then work on agi, and possibly expertise (less parries means less incoming damage).

With regards to "stealing rogue-loot" try thinking of it the other way around. Consider that all the druidloot got reitemized, so rogues could use it too. Sure you can then be upset about rogues wanting it when you aren't around. But just keep in mind that the total amount of leather drops in the game, hasn't been drastically decreased, because of this change.