I guess Blizzard wants to avoid another "rogue" tank like in end-BC, where a rogue could stack avoidance to become unhittable. I thought the diminishing return of dodge took care of that.
But since we have dodge rating only on back, neck, ring& trinket slots, I believe this will be a loss in avoidance. Lets wait until we have some numbers about druids and other tank classes.
I can't imagine, that Blizz wants druids to stack stamina again. And gemming dodge? We'll see...
Argh, red again...
I thought, dodge rating on items would go up to compensate for this, while agi would stay at the same value. Hm, decreasing the only avoidance stat by 15%? Sounds like a lot
Unhittable players aren't the problem, they were effectively eliminated by diminishing returns (for example, a druid with 5% base miss chance would need over 500% dodge chance to become unhittable. That number shrinks by a good amount once you add up all of the possible non-DR sources of avoidance, but it's still an absurdly unreachable amount). It's the same problem they ran into during Sunwell with standard tanks: avoidance across the board is so high that in order to put pressure on tanks you need bosses to hit for extreme amounts, often over half of a tank's health. This then forces your healers to spam without thinking since 2 unavoided hits in a row can kill the tank, which is a design they're trying to avoid.
It does seem a little odd to me that they'd reduce the effectiveness of avoidance across the board instead of toying with diminishing returns. A flat 15% reduction in effectiveness will be almost completely countered by the increase in item level. Either they're going to nerf avoidance again when 3.3 comes out or they were only worried about avoidance values in full Icecrown gear and are just looking ahead.
From going on the PTR, dodge% appeared to drop anywhere from 1.7 to 2.5% depending on the gear of the druid. Raidbuffed it went up to maybe 3%.
It's not a large nerf, but it is a nerf.
I believe they're trying to rein in avoidance ratings slightly while buffing DKs slightly and nerfing druids slightly. They still don't seem to understand that as long as things hit for 30k+, healers must ignore avoidance.
Looking at Set Bonuses for tanking:
2t7: 5% More Lacerate Damage. I guess it increases your tank DPS, which is non-trivial now, the threat from Lacerate comes from a Static value and the damage has little to do with it.
4t7: +3 Seconds Barkskin Duration. Pretty awesome actually, considering fights like Sarth and various Enrage events.
2t8: Clearcasting off Bleeds. Honestly terrible for a tank, with 5 Rage on Crit, 3 Rage on Dodge, and Bosses that hit for 10k+, the last thing a tank needs is something that makes our abilities cost not rage.
4t8: +8 Seconds Survival Instincts Duration. Really not that good. Increased Health isn't that strong a cooldown when tanking because it just makes more for Healers to have to fill up. I can't think of a place where +8 sec is going to help you get past a particular damage phase.
If you're in Ulduar doing Hard Modes, the various items from those are going to be better in general (except gloves). Higher iLvL means higher armor guaranteed, and usually more Stamina, Agility, Sockets, and AP. Until 4t9, none of our Set bonuses are better than simply just having better stats.
I'm also vaguely disgusted that Dodge is getting nerfed and Parry buffed. Feral is already generally considered the weakest of the tanking classes by the majority, and DK's are generally considered the strongest. Obviously there's still Bears, otherwise this thread wouldn't exist, but I'm very curious how many of you can still be called the Primary Tank in guilds with Pallies, Warriors, and especially DKs.
The only thing I can think is they are worried they'd have to put in an Icecrown Radiance type effect to counter high feral Dodge values. I played around with an all agility set in current BiS and I think it came out at about 63% dodge, but had less than 40k hp raid buffed which is obviously suicide.
As for gear they say the non-set pieces are better but I just picked up the T8 as it is much easier to get. I wanted to let stuff like [Legguards of Cunning Deception] and [Shoulderpads of the Intruder] slide to a few rogues first before taking them but they've actually never dropped yet for us. [Embrace of the Gladiator] I got one for DPS, nobody seems to want it though so I'll probably take it for tanking next time.
For the 4xt8 I've found it really useful for stuff like Algalon and Council. Nobody seems to agree with me though 2xt8 is pretty nice in 5 mans too where you're typically a bit rage starved. Not really here or there for this discussion but there you go.
The 4xT9 bonus is awesome though, 48 sec cd on barkskin with 12 sec uptime means you'll have it on for over 25% of the fight.
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.
I personally have never died to a lightning gib, and I do this fight in +Stam gear and no resilience. We rotate tanks as our cooldowns are up, so even when he crits, it's only for 35k or so. When sitting at 53k hp, it's not hard to just eat up all the damage. I personally use the FR pieces as well to help mitigate Sif's attacks, but I just eat everything else. Works pretty well for us, YMMV.
Essentially - however we found it best that its best to just stop swapping regardless after the 6-8 stack mark. At this point one tank keeps it till death (soulstone if you want to) pop your armor pot / chain healer cooldowns/anything you have (might want to save last stand incase you have to soulstone and tank if 2nd tank dies) when you get hit with unbalancing. If you do go down tank #2 is ready with whatever cooldowns they have (pref. 2nd feral with 30 second last stand), if god mode last stand runs out and the boss still isn't dead you are using 2 ferals you always have that soulstone/res'd first tank ready to go with another 30 seconds of last stand sitting at 70k+ hp. Thorim's attack speed gets too fast that late in the fight to guarantee a good tank swap without cooldowns anyway that you might as well just use them on the tank that is already tanking and let him keep it.
Edit: Also, why do people always come back to the idea of idol swaping, has never been a good idea, never will be a good idea.
e2: 4t8 is exceptional for IC, Thorim, bonus duration not quite so amazing as stated on anything else.
I have done some calculations on the tank boni in general some time ago on the eu-forums.
First of all I did ignore threat boosting boni like more damage to lacterate or the clearcast, as I was more intereseted in my ability to take some punches.
T7:
(2) Set: Your Rip lasts for an additional 4 seconds, and your Lacerate deals an additional 5% damage.
(4) Set: Increases the duration of Barkskin by 3 seconds and decreases the cooldown of Tiger's Fury by 3 seconds.
T8:
(2) Set: The periodic damage dealt by your Rake, Rip, and Lacerate abilites has a chance to cause you to enter a Clearcasting state.
(4) Set: Increases the duration of Savage Roar and Survival Instinct by 8 sec.
T9:
(2) Set: Decreases the cooldown on your Growl ability by 2 sec, increases the periodic damage done by your Lacerate ability by 5%, and increases the duration of your Rake ability by 3 sec.
(4) Set: Reduces the cooldown on Barkskin by 12 sec and increases the critical strike chance of Rip and Ferocious Bite by 5%.
Now first of all I totally agree with Boevis that the T8 boni are all terrible.
I consider SI a tool against burst damage. As such a longer duration of this tool is pretty pointless as burst has little to do with duration. Like surviving that super mega killer punch of a boss. Wich is enough, but it adds little to no gain to me having those extra HP that saved me a couple of seconds more. It does not hurt either, but I found the bonus pretty much useless in every situation except maybe on Thorim in hardmode, wich I personally have not tanked yet.
But since I am missing out quite some pve content on my druid, I may not have found the value of that bonus yet.
Now considering Barkskin.
Barkskin has a very short CD, but does not mitigate a lot of damage.
As such I have found it to be a great addition to other abilites in terms of taking huge amounts of incoming damage (like the sarth breaths), but never enough to be standing on it's own against them.
I found my self in quite a couple of fights using Barkskin simply on CD (like in Patchwork back then in Naxxramas pre Nerfs).
I calculated the gain of Barkskin-spam, taking in consideration the set boni of our tier sets:
I assume a 10 minutes fight:
Barkskin has one minute CD and 12 seconds duration baseline.
I could use it 10 times in a regular 10 minutes fight with the ability unmodified.
With four pieces T9 Barkskin has 12 seconds less CD. That would be 48 seconds then.
That would be 12,5 times Barkskin with four pieces T9 on a ten minutes fight. In an average 10 minutes fight that would be a gain of two additional Barkskin applications. Two times 12 seconds 20% less damage.
T7 four pieces makes Barkskin last three seconds longer. Every one of those 10 times I use Barkskin my damage would be reduced by 20% for 15 seconds.
This would lead to:
No Sets: 10 x Bakskin // 120 seconds Uptime
4 T9: 12 x Barkskin // 144 seconds Uptime
4 T7: 10 x Barkskin // 150 seconds Uptime
The item stats have such a large difference that T9 will be superior to T7 without a doubt.
I found it a little disturbing that I would have gotten more protection from Barkskin in four T7 than in four T9 in terms of set boni.
In real raid environement one might not want to use Barkskin on every CD, where a shorter CD would make the ability more flexible and more avaiable.
Before we get to see how the new Raid encounters really work out it is a little hard to say how useful the four T9 bonus will be.
On a side note I hope the shorter CD of Barkskin in four T9 is not calcuated into our ability to mitigate damage as a justification of nerfing our avoidance in terms of a Barkskin-held-on-CD-assumption.
Last edited by Curan : 07/09/09 at 11:33 AM.
Reason: A few typos. Sorry for my bad english :)
Feral is already generally considered the weakest of the tanking classes by the majority, and DK's are generally considered the strongest. Obviously there's still Bears, otherwise this thread wouldn't exist, but I'm very curious how many of you can still be called the Primary Tank in guilds with Pallies, Warriors, and especially DKs.
Don't know about DKs, but our feral tank has tanked Thorim hard mode 100% to 0% without any swaps, is the last (3.) tank on Steelbreaker, can easily tank Vezzax hard and is preferable to warriors/paladins on Algalon (10 man only). These may be just isolated anecdotes, but calling ferals the weakest tanks of them all seems to be quite an exaggeration.
The dodge nerf is unfortunate as it shifts some preference to DKs again, but we are well on our way to Sunwell Radiance again.
However, I am the main tank in my guild for anything that hits really hard basically. We use a prot paladin for XT, due to high threat and ability to also tank sparks, and while we haven't put IC hard down yet, usually its me and our DK swapping in P3. Thorim is all me, I tank 100%-0% and have lived the last 3 kills now, the 4pc t8 is crucial for this and IMO its invaluable for IC also as you can have it up your entire tanking rotation.
As far as Algalon goes, both our main DK tank and myself get punished just as badly by Algalon, I've been leaning more towards my avoidance set for Algalon and it helps, but we both get blown up just as quickly.
If you tank Thorim from the safe zone under the ledge the tanks need only move a VERY little bit to avoid the lightning cones that come out by rotating around Thorim a bit. It still can move him sometimes but its rare. Even still, I only bother if its near the end of the fight and he's hitting like a truck. At the start the extra damage is easily healable.
Just a note on the movement/skating thorim does.
Go into walk mode (toggle run/walk) when you get Thorim in position, when you have to move slightly to the left/right for lightning he won't skate. The other thing you can do is if he runs a bit too far forward when you taunt him when he drops, you can push him back (ala tanking Eredar twins) by standing in the middle of his hitbox, this will back him up straight back about 2-3 yards, very helpful for perfecting his placement. Once there, the run/walk toggle will prevent him from moving at all, I had to move quite a bit last night and he didn't move once with this toggle.
I found that idea on another forum and it has been a boon to tanking that fight, thought I would pass it on.
4t8: +8 Seconds Survival Instincts Duration. Really not that good. Increased Health isn't that strong a cooldown when tanking because it just makes more for Healers to have to fill up. I can't think of a place where +8 sec is going to help you get past a particular damage phase.
One really good spot for this is Thorim, where SI will last for the entire duration of an Unbalancing cycle (and a 2-second overlap). Having 80k+ health for one of the later Thorim phases is very nice. Similarly, it lasts for almost an entire cycle on Steelbreaker Overwhelming, which can also be helpful.
It's not the best, and it's certainly not as good as the odd-numbered tiers, but it's not useless. The 2pT8 is, however.
As to the idea that druids are the weakest tanks...that doesn't seem to be shared by GC, by most guilds I've talked to or by the general math that's coming out. Right now druids still take less overall damage than any other tank ignoring cooldowns, and are only behind DKs when you factor them. After 3.2, they'll be better than any other tank unless AD is being triggered all the time, in which case they'll be behind paladins. Simply put, having the highest health by a good margin, having the highest base mitigation via armor both win when it comes to dealing with large amounts of physical damage.
I use the heal+overheal events to resync my hp value to the maximum, but at times weird things happen. An example from a log:
t = 7/1 23:30:33.421: heal event (433, Judgement of Light from Paladin 1)
health transition from 34664/46000 to 35097/46000
t = 7/1 23:30:33.437: heal+overheal event (2091/1123, Living Seed from Druid 3)
health transition from 35097/46000 to 37188/46000 Overheal reported, but health < maxhealth??
health adjusted 37188 to 46000 (8812 / 8812)
t = 7/1 23:30:33.562: heal+overheal event (8812/1173, Nourish from Druid 3)
health transition from 46000/46000 to 54812/46000 OVER MAX HEALTH??
health adjusted 54812 to 46000 (-8812 / 0)
t = 7/1 23:30:34.062: damage event (-1581, Flame Jets from Ignis the Furnace Master)
health transition from 46000/46000 to 44419/46000
As you can see there are two consecutive heals which report heal+overheal, which is nonsensical since they occurr at two different times. I have no idea if this is related to lag across the clients and the server, with events being generated on one not necessairly able to see the others. Of course this may mess with the hp dwell time graph.
One thing to consider in that example is that the first overheal is from the Living Seed which appears to have proc'd from the Nourish. The Seed is used entirely when the target takes any amount of damage, so taking say 20 damage from an angry Sea Bass would pop the entire Seed, and the extra "heal" (the unused portion of the Seed that is effectively a shield) will count as overheal. I think you're just seeing the mechanic of the spell at work. Would be similar to prayer of mending jumping due to minimal damage on an otherwise fully healed target, you would have overheal there as well.
The second entry certainly appears to be some bit of lag as it's counting the effective healing of the Nourish twice, and without knowing how lag is handled it would appear that the Seed is from the Nourish. But if that's the case, it's interesting that the critical effect of the heal not only is calculated first but that the talent proc would occur on the target prior to the related heal. It's all server side, so you don't know what the processing is at that end, with tcp/ip packets don't have to arrive in order so maybe they are fed to the client in a way that allows this tiny anomoly?
I've read about various health update tools that try to provide a faster refresh than the default UI provides, and I wonder if what you're seeing is part of the issue and Blizz errs on the side of caution when updating health, which has made it a little slower in the past.
I have a question about threat. I have recently been told by the group that I run Uld25 with that my long term threat is satisfactory but my 'front-loaded' threat could use some improvement. Apparently they are looking to see some kind of instant snap jump in threat on pulls. Have other bears received similar criticisms and does anyone have suggestions/experience with this so called 'front-loaded' threat?
I do run with a threat set when I feel it is necessary. Personally, I'm a little skeptical of this particular criticism.
Druid snap aggro isn't as stellar as paladin initial threat is, especially since maul benefits so greatly from having a bleed on the target and usually there won't be one on your first maul. You can do things like enrage to do more damage early on (provided you have KotJ), but aside from making sure you pull with FF, make sure maul is queued up (even with that FF), and make sure your first two threat moves are mangle and lacerate, there's not a lot you can optimize.
If worse comes to worse, simply taunt the mob for the first few seconds.
Druid snap aggro isn't as stellar as paladin initial threat is, especially since maul benefits so greatly from having a bleed on the target and usually there won't be one on your first maul. You can do things like enrage to do more damage early on (provided you have KotJ), but aside from making sure you pull with FF, make sure maul is queued up (even with that FF), and make sure your first two threat moves are mangle and lacerate, there's not a lot you can optimize.
If worse comes to worse, simply taunt the mob for the first few seconds.
If I'm not mistaken, Growl does nothing if the mob is already targeting you.
If I'm not mistaken, Growl does nothing if the mob is already targeting you.
Players can be higher than you on threat without actually pulling agro (110% melee, 130% ranged). It will always give you the same threat as the highest person.
Players can be higher than you on threat without actually pulling agro (110% melee, 130% ranged). It will always give you the same threat as the highest person.
I guess it depends on the whether or not the "has no effect if the target is already attacking you" portion of the tooltip applies to the threat equalization. Anyone know if this is the case?
You don't get any threat unless somebody has pulled aggro.
The only benefit from growling first is that the mob will stick to you as long as the growl debuff lasts, which is for 3 seconds.
I have a question about threat. I have recently been told by the group that I run Uld25 with that my long term threat is satisfactory but my 'front-loaded' threat could use some improvement. Apparently they are looking to see some kind of instant snap jump in threat on pulls. Have other bears received similar criticisms and does anyone have suggestions/experience with this so called 'front-loaded' threat?
I do run with a threat set when I feel it is necessary. Personally, I'm a little skeptical of this particular criticism.
Three answers on this one.
First, is how you pull. My initial pull usually goes like this:
Drop to bear, hit enrage. Once rage hits 20 or so, move to engage. This guarantees rage for an initial maul.
Growl to pull, immediately followed by FF. The growl guarantees I have my target's attention for 3 seconds, and the FF smacks it with enough threat that if the mob isn't on me before growl expires, I still have them unless someone is being an absolute idiot and nuking full bore from the second I pull. Remember - FF has a huge threat multiplier, and I think it hits about as hard as a Mangle (I'd have to check rawr to be sure).
Once growl is off followed by FF, have maul qued up and move in to hit with Mangle/Lacerate. Provided I move in to meet the target after I growl and FF, I can get in the hits required to control the target. Also, remember to hit the target again with FF as soon as the CD is up. FF generates more threat than lacerate or swipe, which is why you want to do it as part of your regular tanking rotation. Early on, using FF can make a noticeable difference.
I don't mind using growl to pull because, quite frankly, if someone pulls agro that darn early and growl is still on CD... I let them die. It's their fault for full out nuking before I have things under control. Which leads to the second answer to the question...
Second (and more relavant) answer:
Tell the dps to learn how to control agro. Ever since LK hit and agro generation got much easier, far too many players have become lazy about agro control (particularly on initial pulls). Waiting 5-10 seconds for the tank to get threat and position a boss is not an unreasonable request. Good players understand this. Impatient ones blame the tank for not getting enough agro at the pull. Don't even get me started on AoE pulls...
This is particularly relavent to bears since, as noted above, our "snap" agro isn't as strong as other classes.
Third answer:
Initial snap agro isn't just the tank's job.
Have your dps learn how to misdirect. When I'm on my rogue, I have a macro for Tricks of the Trade that targets the MT and casts Tricks. I use this macro on virtually every pull - trash or boss. I have a great ability to help a tank with initial agro, and I use it. On a boss, I go in with Tricks on the tank, drop Killing Spree on the target followed by a few Sinister Strikes... and BAM. No dps will have a chance to pull off the tank. Hunters still have Misdirect - tell them to use it.
Virtually every good raid will use MD or Tricks on every boss pull because it gives dps the ability to open up immediately, which is essential on speed kills. This is why I pop Tricks on my rogue. This is why I love my Uld 25 raid's rogue, who likewise uses Tricks to boost my bear's intitial threat.
From your post, I suspect answers 2 and 3 are a bit more relavent to your situation.
I see no point in pulling with Growl, just pull with Faerie Fire the resulting threat amount will be the same but you will still have Growl available for covering lazy DPS.
Sure you would rather your DPS not be lazy gits but people make mistakes or run on auto pilot more than is ideal.
For the more mathematically inclined what do the numbers look like between Mangle/Maul or Lacerate/Maul first?
If you do Lacerate/Maul will the bleed debuff be up in time for the first Maul to get the bleed bonus or not? As I play with Australian latency I have no idea about this or any reliable way of knowing.
I can't say I have had problems with initial aggro on anything short of Sarth3D in a resist set but I just make sure I remind people on the pull not to go nuts, it isn't like you win that fight at the start anyway.
Since Maul is tied to your swing timer, that maul will not land till ~2.5s later. It is better if you que it up before the target reaches you so that it will hit immediately.
"Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage-over-time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion."
Many of the feral PvP pieces are already very strong for tanking because of their high Stamina and Agility values, despite itemization value wasted on resilience. Once this change goes through, it's hard to imagine them not being best-in-slot.
"Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage-over-time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion."
Many of the feral PvP pieces are already very strong for tanking because of their high Stamina and Agility values, despite itemization value wasted on resilience. Once this change goes through, it's hard to imagine them not being best-in-slot.
Depends on how it actually works; note that it specifies damage done by PLAYERS. Not many players hurting other players in raids. Now, they could very easily screw it up and have it reduce all damage, but I doubt it.
That would honestly be a nice change that would allow feral tanks to catch up to the other tanks in terms of overall mitigation, though it would most assuredly turn PvP gear into BiS for every slot (maybe not neck, back, fingers, trinket) instead of just 2 slots.
I am afraid that the word "players" is referring to only PvP, not bosses (NPCs) from instances. If I remember correctly (and if nothing has changed), Blizzard doesn't want Resilience to be used in PvE. It was their intention of taking off the benefit of resilience for instances. If this change to resilience will now only target PvP, it follows on what they were saying.
07/08/09, 12:08 PM
2xt8 is pretty nice in 5 mans too where you're typically a bit rage starved. Not really here or there for this discussion but there you go. 
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