brokentuzk

Ok so I am not a JC but I notice that both of the two list above their is no mention of [Essence of Gossamer] If my math is right the EoG gives around 1700HP plus the shield is a nice bonus becuase it does not do a full block which means you dont lose the rage gained. Of course in certain situations I would rather have a trinket with use to it but for over all I like 1700HP from a trinket.

 

Monedula

Not really on topic, but I would still like to comment on your reaction;
The [Essence of Gossamer] is a good trinket, but it looses its value when raidbuffed.
Test Rawr and see that when you get raidbuffed your stamina increases much. The bit extra stamina from that trinket is not worth it then and drops to the 4th position (for me at least), not counting alchemy and JC trinkets.
[Valor Medal of the First War] is raidbuffed the nr2 trinket I can use.

 

Allev

Just a reminder, Rawr's "overall" ranking isn't telling you the whole story. More stam is always more useful than agi/dodge on a caster boss, for instance-- you really need to know the context.

Also know that the weight of survivability versus mitigation is purely up to Astrylian's discretion (or at least, has never been explained as anything else) since Rawr's creation. This is adjusted somewhat by the "soft cap" survivability, but I doubt you're checking whether that is enabled or not.

Regardless, you have to adjust to every scenario-- on trash, you're most likely not going to die unless you pull extra mobs, and when that happens, armor/avoidance is probably more valuable to minimize throughput. On hard-hitting bosses, you want as much buffer as possible. The trinket location is the easiest gearslot to adjust for these circumstances, and you should probably get them all and use them depending on the situation.

 

• Cluey

Actually Astrylian has commented on the stamina soft cap which is why the stamina trinkets drop in value. The conversation is somewhere in the main Rawr thread.
If you click on the options tab there is a Survival Soft Cap section where you can choose the value of unmitigated damage you want to be able to survive, the rankings will change to reflect afterward.

 

Allev

I wasn't making a point about the formula used for soft-capping, I'm talking about the formulas used pre-soft-cap-- for instance, if the soft cap were infinite, how do you determine the ratio of avoidance to survivability? Survivability is effective health (i.e. you could take 140k of unmitigated hits), but avoidance doesn't have any "meaning" behind it. It's how much average damage you don't take, that is scaled to be somewhat proportional to survivability.

In other words, it's completely fair to treat them as completely different scales, as they are completely consistent in how they treat data. But adding them together is only relevant in the context where the ratio between them makes sense. There isn't any info available on how that was done, there never has been, and it has never been customizable. The soft-cap adjusts those

Thus it makes more sense to look at avoidance individually, then survivability individually, and balance them appropriately for the situation. Just know that you're not working off of provable math, but general feel. Don't take the estimation of a pure avoidance trinket against a pure survivability trinket at face value, essentially. (Especially one with a proc that isn't easily modeled.)

 

Paladin0228

I am going to have to disagree with this comment. If either of those trinkets 'lose value' when raidbuffed it would actually be the [Valor Medal of the First War] ... Avoidance items suffer diminishing returns, stamina does not and feral druids have plenty of avoidance from agility as is.

 

Incadelico

I'm thinking about using this MT spec.
I'm not entirely sure where to spend those last 5 points. On one hand 5/5 FA might be a good idea, depending on how hard Ulduar bosses will hit, on the other hand I'd personally prefer having KotJ and iLotP.
Any thoughts?

 

nightcrowler

I'll go for This spec when Ulduar cames.

 

Talsin

Well you mean last 4 points as you didnt pick OOC yet.
So on that point those 4 points are more if you are going for a pure MT or OT/DPS role assuming your not dual speccing between every fight, else i would skip on KotJ and perhaps even fill out Furor.




Ilotp over imp mangle?
Isn't pure bear MT wise, handier to get the mangle drop ilotp or let one of the warriors TC so you can get the 3 points out of infected wounds? (Or even the feral agression).

 

Fasc

Unless you get the full 3/3 Improved Mangle, you aren't getting anything and even then, the increase in threat isn't very big at all versus the arguably equal increase in utility/survival with Imp LotP. No Infected Wounds is a bane to me when I see Druids without it that rely upon Death Knights or Warriors to maintain the debuff for them. 25-man raids may allow for this on a great deal of fights but there can and will be times where you will be on your lonesome OTing or MTing something while the DPS do their thing elsewhere for a time. 10-man raids even more likely and although it is laughable, 5-man runs as well.

I'm actually considering the exact spec Nightcrowler posted but with the change of shifting all the points from Ferocity to NS/MS over in Restoration. In terms of Bear MT, both are directly contributing to our threat, one via efficiency of Rage and the other being a straight up increase in damage. Druids are fairly well known (notorious to some Warriors I know) for pretty much having unlimited resources on all but the most trivial of encounters, Mauling almost 100% of the time. While I wouldn't want to lose that for 4% more damage, I wonder if Rage will actually be an issue given Ulduar25 damage taken profiles. Probably not the best build to use for easier content but trivial is trivial so why worry?

Also note without Imp Mangle, and what I think was confirmation that FFF was applying properly despite iFF and Misery being present, I wouldn't have "wasted" Mangles sitting with my using FFF in a rotation. I'm thinking very simply at this point with a Mangle/FFF/Lacerate/Swipe Repeat rotation and perhaps a slightly better rotation can be made with Improved Mangle, but I haven't bothered given how much stronger FFF is in terms of threat now relative to Mangle.

 

Broseph

This is a dangerous distinction people insist on making. You can construe any stat to have diminishing returns, it is just more obvious with avoidance since WotLK. For instance, if you have 10k health and gain 3k, that's a 30% increase; if you have 30k health and gain 3k, that's a 10% increase. Boom, stamina has diminishing returns.

The bottom line is whether or not a stat has DR is a semantics argument, and is largely irrelevant in selecting your gear. Which trinket is better? Essence of Gossamer or Valor Medal? Here's the definitive answer: It depends on the fight and the rest of your gear. You can use rawr as a guide, but be aware of its shortcomings (for instance, piling armor and avoidance in the same mitigation category -- for some fights it's better to stack armor, for others avoidance). And don't blindly dismiss a stat or item because it suffers from DR. Be smart about it. Correctly gearing your tank is one of the subtle challenges of playing the class.

 

muhglor

0/60/11 still the same numbers. but some little changes.
1 point from Primal Tenacity to Primal gore, thats all. Motw now with all atribute +2%, thats nice.

 

• jonny

I'm not sure about Primal Gore in a tank build. Is Lacerate being able to crit really a significant boost to our threat? I've not seen any numbers on it, but at the moment I'd have it in my hybrid build and probably skip it in a pure tanking build.

 

Talsin

It was already confirmed, that bleed crits proc our Savage Defence shield, so that would be the main reason to take it.
And did anyone calculate the current TPS increase of FF vs imp Mangle yet? If not I'll try to run some numbers myself.

 

Boevis

Sorry if I missed the update somewhere, but last I read on 3/16/09 was that it was only off auto swings. Can you provide a link?

 

Nadir_Eonar

This is only anecdotal, but I had a discussion with someone about this on the EU druid forums during the last day or two, and they claimed that they were on the PTR and that SD is proccing for them on lacerate bleed critical ticks.

World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> SD is aoe tanking buff

This suprised me, as I was under the same impression as you, that SD does NOT proc from bleed ticks. If this is true it would make tabbing lacerates onto mobs in large trash pulls a good idea if you had Primal Gore, I guess. And it could also make Primal Gore worthwhile for tanking builds, if it is not at the moment.

Of course they could be lying or mistaken, I'd much rather get corroboration from somebody on here.

 

Talsin

I was under that same assumption from several people on threads, and a few who claimed testing. Turns out again i need to double check everything before believing anything. SD does not proc on Lacerate ticks: Blue confirmation This makes Primal Gore a lot less desireable in a tight point MT build.

 

Duskz

<Edited> Sorry, completely mis-read SD the first time.

Mmo-champion Build
Some minor changes from what seems to be the normal build for 3.1
-Feral Aggression is not included (We usually have a warrior who has the equavilent)
-Master Shapeshifter is included (Extra damage, more threat.)

 

Vedren

Just made a very quick basic test on the newest build and Lacerate bleed crits ARE now procing savage defense.
Biggest advantage i can think of if it goes live like this is that we can still get our shield while stunned.

 

Fallenangel

You might want to read up on how the SD shield amount is calculated.
Hint: it's not based on damage.

 

SS_Keera

Just thought i'd jump in and second that statement. For evidence feel free to check out the attached screenshot. -> Three consecutive lacerate crits refreshing SD.



If this change is intended and comes to the live server as it is, i can see it making Primal Gore pretty much a must have talent in an MT Build.
The reason for this in my point of view would be on the one hand as already mentioned by Vedren the possibility to get shields while being incapacitated (e.g. stunned) and on the other an overall improvement in the uptime of the shield. Somewhat making up for the fact that it is removed from every hit as smal as it may be.

Additionally i checked a possible change in magic absorbtion of SD with the newest build (one can dream i think ), but its still not protecting us from magic damage.

 

Huggme

Tested it myself few mins ago and you are indeed right!
Part of me likes this - Primal Gore has it's use for bear (and pretty awesome at that)
Other part sighs at the thought of having to keep lacerate stacks on gazzilion mobs while aoe tanking to get as many SDs as possible.

 

gunsmithx

I doubt you'd have to do that, you'd get enough procs off just swipe I would think, plus that's mostly trash situations and it's not like we really have to worry there.

 

Mijae

I can only see limited occasions where lacerating multiple mobs will be optimal. In the majority of cases we will be fighting for threat. Lacerate just doesn't cut it. The only time this won't be the case is if we are off-tanking multiple mobs that are not being DPS'd. This would include fights like Noth or Kel'Thuzad.

Feral DruidStats spreadsheet
v3.2.0.0.xls - updated 8/4/2009

 

Huggme

To answer both:
On trivial trash - obviously not worth it, swipe yourself to happyland. But there is trash that hurts (at least with current gear) and takes more than a few seconds to kill in Ulduar.
Swipe - You only ever get 1 SD proc per swipe at max, even if you crit multiple mobs. The question that arises is: Are lacerate procced SDs synchronised with swipe? One side of the story is that haste doesn't cut melee gcd (so your lacerate ticks happen at the same time your swipe goes off), the other side is latency and player delay.

I believe that in a situation where we need to OT 2-3, possibly more mobs with a headstart, it might be worth doing lacerate round for the extra SDs inbetween swipe procs. (Read encounters that hurt and where it actually matters how much you mitigate)