Upcoming Feral Changes

rockhound29 — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:44:41 GMT

You say its not a nurf but in all honesty it will be.

Krykor — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:55:53 GMT

My gods... Why do C/R not work? Damn... no paragraphs!

Krykor — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:55:16 GMT

Personally, I've never had problems with Tanking in Bear... I don't personally play a cat very well - probably due to me not enjoying playing cat dps (prefer the range of moonkin), but as long as I have my correct dps gear on and my +hit is capped (a LOT of people stack Spell Power, Crit, Haste, or AP and crit and don't stack hit and miss 12~16% of their attacks), I do above average dps with my cat. Certainly not at the bottom of the dps ladder. I do believe that the druid tank is now adequately buffed and "fixed" and a really good tank now and ... I would like them to just leave my class alone now :) "don't nerf me bro" :) When's the last time you tanked? No offence intended, but back to my point regarding 1/2 WoW players don't read blue /or patch notes. I say this regarding swipe only hitting three targets at once? This was changed - and it's now AWESOME. Druids AOE tank with the best of them now. We hit everything in a 180 degree arc in front of us with swipe. Swipe no longer only hits 3 targets. With correct talents, I comfortably keep aggro on a pack of mob. With talents in feral, I do 30% more damage with swipe. With a few talents in resto, I do an addition 14% physical damage on top of this. Plenty of threat. And with an additional 10 points of talents, I think I already have a perfect PvE tank build figured out at lvl 80. Granted... I accept... I do, as a bear tank - and depending on talents, sometimes take a few seconds longer to get my rage bar up and then convert it into attacks/threat, but once I got the mobs... we're good to go. You just need "considerate" dps'ers. As for bear tanks being inferior, even prior to LoL-patch, I was comfortably tanking the whole of kara in T4 gear - even nightbane with his fear affect - just get fear-warded or have a tremor down... or make it clear to the dps to stop dps when I was feared. Communication is important. In fairness, Blizzard have fixed many things for us druids and it is easy for us to forget that they do sometimes listen to us. If this was not the case, then I wouldn't still be playing. However... in order for them to listen... we need to tell them constructively what we think they should consider changing and I am sure if it's a valid thing - they will do it. Some good things they did: Fear ward for ALL priests and also aggro does not get lost when tank is feared - It used to be a bit hard (if not impossible) for horde druids to main-tank nightbane. Had to use a stance-dancing warrior. With a druid, prior to the game mechanic change, one fear = instant aggro loss and boom... dead dps /or healer. After LoL-Patch, I was tanking Archimonde the other night... I was getting hit about 10~20% (about 5k per hit) less (with my combination of T4, T5 and badge gear) than apparently a T6 warrior gets hit (according to mmochampion). I was doing good Threat Per Second, and the healers weren't struggling to keep me up either. So, no - I can't say us druid tanks have been nerfed or are at a disadvantage at this moment. Now... if only the PuG we were in could learn to use the "slow-fall" tears BEFORE they hit the ground :P A lot of good things have happened to druids and I am thankful for them: No more defense needed (with talents), more dodge = more rage, more damage mitigation. Just getting a bit annoyed of Blizzard constantly trying to merge PvE/PvP and adjusting PvE and "PvP World Combat" to compensate / balance PvP "arena" and also putting PvP gear in PvE instances. It is incredibly frustrating downing a boss and getting inferior non-PvE specific loot from the boss. Please just leave the PvE side of things alone and keep PvE and PvP seperate. If you want to set another set of game physics for PvP arena, do it, but stop messing with PvE. Make the PvP Arena a seperate game / game dynamic if need be. Also screwing with old stats/attributes and changing them. Why? And please stop putting PvP beneficial things on Tier Set bonuses on PvE gear. Tier 5: (2) Set: When you shift out of Bear Form, Dire Bear Form, or Cat Form, your next Regrowth spell takes 2.0 fewer sec. to cast. The Tier 4 2-set bonus was better (rage). What bear tank is ever going to switch forms and heal himself during tanking? Maaaaaybe on some freak occurrence where the mob is at 0.005% health. An extra rage set bonus would be more appreciated or maybe more damage from thorns or something tank /or cat dps related for the feral set. More on the plus side... I have appreciated LoL-Patch and the lowering of gear requirements in the last few weeks prior to the expansion and the "invasion quests" have greatly helped my Mage get some levelling gear. With crafted items and these four pieces, I got a mage to 850 spell damage, 8% haste, hit-capped in a day and a half of /played play-time at 70. I run a semi-hardcore guild on Karazhan EU (we raid only twice per week - 3.5 hours per time) and prior to the patch had been running for about 3~4 months and we had done kara, Gruul, ZA, 4/4 SSC, 3/4TK, 3/9 BT. With a few PuGs helping us out, we cleared the first 7 bosses in BT this last wednesday, did Illidari Council last night (sunday) and are doing Illidan on Tuesday. It has been a pleasure to see this content with a group of members that have limited amount of time to play. Not all bad news... my other 5c :)

curuTH — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:39:35 GMT

Hmmm I have also noted that GC has recently stated that he would like to see Paladin's the "dps of choice for raids" and then we saw them get buffed through the roof with a minor sop nerf last patch... Whatever the devs keep coming up with, they don't like bear tanks, my kit is better than T5 and yet I get put in the shade by a Kara level armoured Pally tank who just consecrates and swings... Its taken me the best part of a year to assemble several armour sets to be shown up by a blue itemed player who only reached 70 last week, this is NOT balanced play, this is NOT GC and others keeping their promises to put the three tanks on an equal footing. I mean C'mon GC, I got 4k plus on cat AP so why can't I do the same dps as a rogue or shammy with a half that number? It seems that us druids have to make superhuman efforts just to be on the same table.... 4068ap in cat form with a stable 50% crit and I can't pull 2k crits? Its total balls as far as I am concerned. Back to the bear though, how can it be balanced when a warrior or pally can tank 6 mobs effectively whilst we can only hit three effectively? Not only is this leaving us in the shade somewhat on spawn tanking but has the devs realised also the effect on classes used for crowd control? Whats the point of taking a mage or hunter in for crowd control... call up a Pally or Warrior and just zap from the back, get a bear in and OMG its "how slow you are..." "This warrior I know just aggros the whole lot..." It seems to me that Blizzard devs would rather have it that we all went moonkin or healy and leave the tanking to the plate wearers because until Blizzard give bears the same AoE tanking characteristics as the other two tank classes, bear tanking remains a novel oddity rather than a viable raid participant.

Skyrender — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:10:42 GMT

Actually Zen, with the change of Survival of the Fitest to 2/4/6% from 1/2/3, druids no longer need additional defence from items to be crit immune. Not that defence isn't nice to have, it does give dodge, but I guess it won't be as saught after as before. It does clear the issues of gemming defence and resilience, which warriors and paladins typically don't have to worry about with the defence stat usually taken care of by gear alone.

zenzohar — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:50:29 GMT

Well, yes ... having it so bear form doesn't require every piece to have armor to get your armor up high enough to adequately tank will help druids lvling. Druids will still need items with defense on them (rings, necklaces, trinket's, etc) to achieve a critless (cap 415 in most cases) state. Here's a plain fact about Druid tanks: Healers will flat tell you you're harder to heal than a full on warrior tank..for instance. This is where the problem for druids exists. Now, it looks like the talent tree has been changed so: Druids can be either: be better tanks, but suffer losses in dps, or, Be a truly effective dps'er, but not be an effective tank. Frankly, I LOVE this. Since the talent tree change, I can not only dps better in instances, but I can actually use cat form in the bg's and not die all the time....but instead be a true threat when defending or attacking in bg's, as well as being an outstanding dps'er. (I will miss going around, and looking at all the gear I can get to make a better tank...on the other hand...I'll still want items with defense on them, so perhaps it will work out...as LONG as Druid tanks total dmg resistance does not go down due to the accessory item change. I'll believe it when I see it. If it works as we're told, items with armor on them not related to "leather" will now be a bonus to armor...even though the multiplier is no longer applied to these items. Make sense? This is a Highly complex game to achieve a fair balance across all players, and I do not envy their Jobs! No doubt adjustment's will continue to be made as people discover the true nature of the talent tree changes. Beta testing just can't give the information on the true effects of talent tree changes (but millions of peeps can!). So...expect adustments to characters as people actually start playing (as "Patch" changes are made on a regular basis...apparently to attempt to achieve balance for all players. Personally, I'm very happy with the talent tree changes. I only wish they did these feral changes long ago! People, start trembling, 'cause Zen is going into the bg's now in cat form, and now, I will truly Kill you dead...FIRST! :-)

Derekw — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:19:59 GMT

It's extremely simple. Your current armor blocks x% physical damage under the current modifiers. After the change your armor number may decrease but will still block the same x% of physical damage. Bear tanks are too reliant on armor for the devs not to keep their word. Especially when they use language such as, 'Let me repeat: this is not a nerf to Feral armor.' Maybe I'm being naive in taking GC at his word but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until we see otherwise. The change will be up on the test realm before it goes live so I guess it's wait and see time.

behemoth1979 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 04:43:42 GMT

oops, disregard other comment, miss read protector change

behemoth1979 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 04:31:31 GMT

But if the whole "Doesn't affect net mitigation" comment is taking into account the Protector of the Pack change, then it pretty much bones us for soloing. As it stands I can shift into bear form, switch gear and have x survivabiliy (without the talen) take away even more of my armour and now I have X minus lots. My Prot Warrior or a pally don't need to be in a group to get thier survivability. Screw this around too much and WOW risks losing many subscribers to Warhammer etc.

Kody — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:26:36 GMT

It would be quite simple, actually. Items are technically "effects" just like spells. You have base armor, which is based on item level; there's then "bonus armor" applied to that. Modifiers can be changed for bears so that the overall armor values remain the same, while not multiplying bonus armor.

myria — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:17:58 GMT

No one missed it, Derekw, we just know better then to believe it. L2commonsense. There is no way to implement that massive a nerf and not either buff lower geared bears through the roof, or nerf better geared players into the ground. Anyone who's been playing for any amount of time knows which is more likely and just how big a grain of salt you have to take any dev promises at all, let alone ones promising massive changes the day after beta closes.

Derekw — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:45:27 GMT

Good grief...did everyone miss the following: "We will adjust the bear armor modifiers so that your net mitigation does NOT go down with these changes. Let me repeat: this is not a nerf to Feral armor. It is a change to the amount of armor you get from gear with bonus armor." FFS...GC could be any clearer. L2Read

2drunk2funk — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 11:48:33 GMT

Glad I saw this post. I have recently levelled to 70 and have been trying to grab items for tanking, knowing I can get items without armour bonuses which will be effective in LK (albeit not from 13th) will change my strategy a little. I guess we will still have to explain to the casuals who do not read posts like this of the change when they complain I am rolling need on an item Also agree with alot Krykor says, my main priest is suffering from the spell dmg itemisation change. At least before it was obvious what a healing item was, now we have classes ninja'ing drops based purely on x spell damage.

gruntboy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:24:30 GMT

On the plus side, people are less likely to eyeball your gear and decide you're under-geared for tanking because you don't have THAT stave or THAT trinket, or whatever. It has been a real barrier in TBC. I agree with Krykor below though, in that the change notification in a blue post is going to bypass many of those it will help, i.e. more casual players.

Krykor — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:12:20 GMT

Damn... non of my lines have >CR< Sorry - wall of text crits you for 15000