Druid Changes Patch 3.1 - Page 48

halmmar · 03/28/09, 4:41 PM

Originally Posted by Boevis

Other tanks have stun reduction capabilities, so instead of making any fight with a stun favoring druids (which I'd debate in the presence of IF)

Having tanked as both DK and Feral I can say that the stun "immunity" on IF is pretty worthless on (current) raid bosses. At least on Maexxna it's a scripted event, and you'll stun no matter what.
Still. after shadow priest stun nerf it's only what... Mages are the only class left with stuns that you use cat form against. There are no raid bosses that stun, etc. And if they did AoE stun, it would still be useless (in raids you would want stun time reduced as cat in order to poke the boss faster). Still, I didn't spec the talent before so it's not much of a loss to me.

--

The 2T8 bear bonus seems so very bad though. 2T7 at least did something (although a drop in the bucket). Hope the people who can post on US forums complained a lot. The crit chickens did and got their bonus changed, and ele shamans got mp5 removed.

Allev · 03/28/09, 5:53 PM

Originally Posted by Boevis

Except we're not seeing a change to Stoicism, Iron Will, or Icebound Fortitude. Other tanks have stun reduction capabilities, so instead of making any fight with a stun favoring druids (which I'd debate in the presence of IF) they'll not be able to implement any fight where stunning the tank is an important element without completely alienating Druids, much like Fear effects did from release through Hyjal. If they took all of these abilities away, Druids would still be the weakest of the Tanks in any stun situation given our relative lack of defense (+Miss%) compared to the other tanks. Though I am forgetting Barkskin, which assuming it could always be up for stuns, would represent a <7% reduction in damage taken in comparison to the 5.6% miss (which is of varying average DR) of other tanks. As it stands, this is a PvP nerf to one of the least represented classes (0 in the tournament), and a potential PvE nerf that would violate Blizzard's "take the player not the class" stance

I'm amazed that you believe that defense's +miss% is a larger factor than the fact that warriors/pallies lose their block while druids still have a stamina and armor advantage. One could make an argument that the Savage Defense change was evening the field for nontrivial stun mechanics.

Suffice it to say, however, that I wouldn't be surprised to see other stun reduction mechanics disappear as well.

Herb · 03/28/09, 5:58 PM

Originally Posted by Wulfmanjack

Savadge defense procs not of bleed crits only of normal melee crits. Testet it again today. Just put a lacerate on an test dummy and stop attacking.

As of PTR build 9733, Savage Defense now procs of bleed crits (both Lacerate and Rip).

thinkthis · 03/28/09, 11:14 PM

I can confirm that all crits now proc savage defense (this includes rip, and lacerate - too bad they took rake out of primal gore). You can also bleed multiple targets and proc savage defense for every crit you achieve on any one of them.

Does the latter mean you are going to want to pull an add up to a boss (assuming there are adds) and just keep a 1 stack lacerate up on it? You could have someone else tank the add. You could just throw lacerate on it and continue to take only damage from the boss. Except now you are proccing SD like crazy.

On fights like gluth where you swap tanks this means you go cat form and throw a quick rip up and then when you taunt back and go bear form you now are getting SD procs from both lacerate and rip and your regular hits.

Nerf inc?

Edit: I'll add that this somewhat addresses my major concern of insufficient mitigation done to mobs that stun you for awhile, thus preventing you from proccing savage defense and therefore leaving you to take it up the rear with our fairly big 3.1 armor nerf (maxxena berserk web wrap anyone?)

• Melthu · 03/28/09, 11:48 PM

Berserking does not benefit from Predatory Strikes.

6756 AP unbuffed: http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/4...2809233553.jpg

7196 AP with Berserking proc: http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/2...2809233616.jpg

extsr2001 · 03/29/09, 1:11 AM

Originally Posted by Batguus

The thorns change makes my old T1 macro alot more interesting again. What you do is get 3 pieces of the Cenarion set in MC and make a macro using an Outifitter type addon, mine looks like this:

/cast [combat] Thorns
/stopmacro [combat]
/outfitter wear Thorns
/cast Thorns
/outfitter unwear Thorns

And voila you have 15min Thorns when you cast it out of combat.
The disadvantages are that it takes 3 inventory slots, and when you cast it on a player in combat, whilst you arent in combat, you will go into combat from casting Thorns, and will get stuck in Cenarion pieces.
That does make me wonder, is there a macro command to check if your target is in combat?

With the change to Thorns; Thorns: This spell will now properly use the druid’s spell power to determine its scaling instead of the target’s spell power.

Is there math somewhere that can tell me how my spell power will scale for the overall effect also taking into account Taking 3 points into Brambles since for a 25Man raiding druid perhaps wont need E&M since a Warlocks COE is far superior in 3.1?

• Adoriele · 03/29/09, 1:18 AM

Originally Posted by extsr2001

a Warlocks COE is far superior in 3.1?

Uh? It has the same magnitude of effect, and requires them to not use a damaging curse. E&M not only is applied by out main nukes, meaning we don't have to give up anything to place it, but the talent also gives 3% total damage, stacking multiplicatively with all other %damage sources. The puts it a fair distance away from "far superior".

Grond · 03/29/09, 1:32 AM

I don't think the the Primal Tenacity change was for PvE, Ghostcrawler stated they would not be using stun mechanics on raid bosses anymore. Also they removed it from caster form as well which would make no sense from a PvE perspective although that part of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me from a PvP perspective either. I checked about a dozen parses and rake was approximately 18% of damage on Patchwerk and 16% on other bosses. I would like to know if Blizzard felt feral was scaling too well or they just decided to nerf the 2 big buffs they had added by half. It makes more sense to me to remove the SR glyph entirely and leave Rake on Primal Gore given feral scaling issues.

PrayForDeath · 03/29/09, 5:55 AM

Originally Posted by halmmar

There are no raid bosses that stun, etc. And if they did AoE stun, it would still be useless (in raids you would want stun time reduced as cat in order to poke the boss faster). Still, I didn't spec the talent before so it's not much of a loss to me.

The talent lets you take less damage while stunned, not shorter stuns (you're confusing it with fear).

I think removing Rake from Primal Gore simplifies our decision making process a bit during boss fights, as the penalty for having Rake drop will be much smaller.

Centarion · 03/29/09, 6:04 AM

I´d say it actually makes it harder, because you have to decide now whether you refresh rake, shred to increase rip or (worst case) mangle to keep the bleeds high.

edit: That said, I think it's a good way to tune down feral-dps(pve) and burst (pvp), though it might slow down our scaling a bit.

kbranch · 03/29/09, 6:50 AM

Originally Posted by PrayForDeath

The talent lets you take less damage while stunned, not shorter stuns (you're confusing it with fear).

It sounded to me like he was saying that a duration reduction would be preferable to the current (worthless in PvE) cat form damage reduction, not that it was actually implemented as a duration reduction.

Hellebore · 03/29/09, 8:21 AM

Originally Posted by extsr2001

With the change to Thorns; Thorns: This spell will now properly use the druid’s spell power to determine its scaling instead of the target’s spell power.

Is there math somewhere that can tell me how my spell power will scale for the overall effect also taking into account Taking 3 points into Brambles since for a 25Man raiding druid perhaps wont need E&M since a Warlocks COE is far superior in 3.1?

In a quick test on the PTR I got the following numbers with 0/3 brambles:

0 spell power = 73
900 spell power = 133
1522 spell power = 174
1822 spell power = 193
2033 spell power = 207

Napkin maths shows this as a spell power scaling of ~0.066 I think?

A quick skim over some recent WWS reports shows that at 207 dmg a hit it will make up ~5% of a warrior add tank's dmg output on something like Sarth3D this is up from ~1-2% where thorns is currently.

An estimate for raid buffed caster at 2.5k spell power and 3/3 brambles would be a damage shield of 73+(2500*0.0667)*1.75 = 364.8125 a hit or fairly useful.

dukes · 03/29/09, 10:22 AM

Brambles is +75% thorns damage (not 15%) which results in approx 420 damage per proc in your previous calc. Considering that you should be able to get about 3500SP with trinket procs, you're looking at ~535 damage per proc.

hiisukun · 03/29/09, 10:53 AM

I'm not looking forward to the possibility of taking ~400-500 dmg per hit when I attack a moonkin (or any of his arena partners, or battleground teammates) as a kitty. Sounds horrid.

Interesting PvE change in terms of 25man content, but sits a little awkward with the nurturing instinct talent - which only gives 'healing' power not spell power. Thorns scaling will still exist in earnest for tank druids not rolling around in a group containing a tree/moonkin (in 5mans, 10mans, pvp, etc.) - but it will be based on gearswapping all that lovely offset spelldamage gear for buffing thorns.

A very awkward mechanic.

Huggme · 03/29/09, 1:40 PM

In all honesty I hope they will realize how much penalized feral is by the thorns change and make it scale with some feral stat aswell as spellpower (All other tanks with reflective tanking ability have it scale somehow don't they?). They'd probably have to tweak thorns a bit, since we don't tend to have loads of stats while in caster form as ferals if they decided to scale it with AP for example.
Fingers crossed, since feral thorns now are pretty pathetic xD