[MoP Guardian] Thoughts on Mastery

[exochaft]

The problem is +health won't save you from impale like a shield wall for example will. It's the same arguement for why Tranq is a worse raid CD than bubble, etc. If a skill is going to kill you, more health won't help, stopping the damage will.

I believe, for the most part, this problem will be avoided if those huge tank-killing hits cannot be blocked/dodged/parried/whatever brewmasters do to mitigate damage w/o using major cooldowns. The big hits that should kill the tanks if they do nothing (or come pretty close to one-shotting them) should require major tanking cooldowns and/or external raid cooldowns... it becomes a breakdown in design if one tank has a huge advantage in a fight over all the others because they don't need to use major cooldowns. This is one of the aspects of SD being just a 40% melee damage reduction while active being a bit too powerful (aka, it was basically a shield wall with no cooldown that would allow druids to not use SI while every other tank may need to use major tanking CDs to survive).

However, from an overall perspective of the direction of druid tanks thus far in MoP, a huge influx of heavy melee damage that can be blocked/absorbed would potentially make bears rely on RNG a bit more than the other tanks. Our armor amount will have to be significantly larger compared to other tanks so that if RNG is not in our favor and we eat every melee hit, we are not instantly roadkill (as you mentioned, generally stopping the damage is a better bet than trying to heal through the damage).

[NightZero88]

depents on hoe much damage it does, lets say you have 250k hp, then you can survive a 324K blow whit +30%, however whit a -50% dmg reduction you can survive up to 499K blow

but i realy dont see what this has todo whit our mastery. i think pally & monk are the only tanks that can cheat death tho.

@On Topic: i do this our armor mastery suffer a lot of sunder armor type bosses, such as morchok / warcheif blacktorn and such kinda fights

The reason is because our mastery reduces physical damage. The majority of big hits in Cata where magical. The ones that are not need some sort of CD to survive. We are losing our survival CDs and they are being replaced by +health. +health bonuses won't save you from that 400k hit while a 50% damage reduction will as you said. That's how we made the shift.

I am very anti-blizz in terms of balancing and doing what they say they will do. So I am very leery that they will get bears to be decent tanks compared to others. We've got a warrior who's tanked for the past 6 years basically saying he's done tanking because warriors were garbage against all the magical stuff going on DS. DKs are the best tank by far.

When we were first working on Yor heroic we had pally try and solo tank it, then warrior and pally tank together and were still having trouble 2 healing it. We tossed a DK in for a week and killed him on our next attempt even with a ton of screwups because they make the encounter so easy. But yet according to Blizz all tanks should be equal. Yes, all tanks can in theory do this fight on heroic, it is just far far far more forgiving to DKs. Same with Hagra (bears and DKs) make the assault much easier than pally's and warriors. This is what I am worried about.

[Kujako]

We are losing our survival CDs and they are being replaced by +health.

Not really, the only cool-down that effects non-physical attacks is Survival Instincts, which we still have. Our physical mitigation abilities are being reshuffled however.

[NightZero88]

Not really, the only cool-down that effects non-physical attacks is Survival Instincts, which we still have. Our physical mitigation abilities are being reshuffled however.

Barkskin says hi? o.O The Druid's skin becomes as tough as bark. All damage taken is reduced by 20%.

[Kujako]

Barkskin says hi? o.O The Druid's skin becomes as tough as bark. All damage taken is reduced by 20%.

Oh yea, always forget about that one...

[Elunedra]

yes we are not looksibng any cooldowns, infact we are getting new ones tru symbiosis

[NightZero88]

yes we are not looksibng any cooldowns, infact we are getting new ones tru symbiosis

We are in that mastery is providing a boost to armor instead of a shield and SD is being moved to a % chance to dodge instead of a shield. That's a big one. Far more RNG dependent, meaning far spikier damage which is what the thread is about.

[Noviskers]

We are in that mastery is providing a boost to armor instead of a shield and SD is being moved to a % chance to dodge instead of a shield. That's a big one. Far more RNG dependent, meaning far spikier damage which is what the thread is about.

Is it really that much more RNG though? I mean think about it, with current SD you have a 50% chance to get SD on a crit. In bear form on my druid (who is mostly in 378 gear except a few pieces) I have about 40% crit chance with pulverize up, so that is about 20% chance to proc SD which would absorb a full hit or at least a good portion. With the new SD we can keep it up for 6 out of every 8 or 9 seconds giving us a 40% chance to avoid a full hit.

So if you think about it, it really isn't that much more RNG than we are at right now.

[NightZero88]

Is it really that much more RNG though? I mean think about it, with current SD you have a 40% chance to get SD on a crit. In bear form on my druid (who is mostly in 378 gear except a few pieces) I have about 50% crit chance with pulverize up, so that is about 20% chance to proc SD which would absorb a full hit or at least a good portion. With the new SD we can keep it up for 6 out of every 8 or 9 seconds giving us a 40% chance to avoid a full hit.

So if you think about it, it really isn't that much more RNG than we are at right now.

Except when RNG isn't on your side and you take every hit to the face. Then get lucky right after that and dodge every attack and your healers want to punch you. Yes, it is a lot worse imo (speaking from a resto standpoint).

[Keiyra]

Except when RNG isn't on your side and you take every hit to the face. Then get lucky right after that and dodge every attack and your healers want to punch you. Yes, it is a lot worse imo (speaking from a resto standpoint).

That doesn't make any sense, because the RNG argument can be made for the current SD.
Assuming the previous posters numbers are correct, SD procs 20% of the time absorbing a melee hit in full or partially based on size of the shield/hit. You still have RNG now that you may get a string of no crits and/or no sd procs in a row. Forcing you to rely on armor, health, avoidance, cd's to take the full hits. Followed by a string of SD procs absorbing lots/all of the melee hits which apparently makes your "healers want to punch you" (I can stop casting when i see the bar not dropping - give it a try, or healer another target )

In MoP, your shield is instead 40% avoidance for lets say 2/3 of the time, which works out to 27% of the time avoiding a hit. That's a 7% improvement in uptime and another improvement since you can't "partially" avoid a hit (its like having a shield at full hit strength always, when it "procs"). Now where things may be worse off in MoP is what happened to your other stats for when you don't proc your SD "shield/avoid": if your armor, health, other avoidance, cd's are drastically worse, that could make unfavorable rng more punishing, but i don't know if that's the case currently.

Just looking at SD now versus SD MoP they seem to provide similar protection (again assuming the numbers given by the poster, ie 50% crit, and 6 out 9 sec uptime for mop SD.) Where the MoP SD is "weaker" perhaps is in terms of scaling, since more crit now is more chances to proc, while in MoP is just always the same.

[Elunedra]

Yes change to sd will give more spiking damage but armor is useually good for more stable dmg and the spikes we het we kust tot to zelf heal

[Zenko]

Mastery increasing Armor is genius. Even though the damage reduction percentage from armor has diminishing returns, the effective time to live is linear up until the cap. Don't let percentages confuse you.

We have 3 cooldowns to deal with any huge magical attacks. Unless there's a tier full of caster bosses I wouldn't worry about it.

[Noviskers]

Mastery increasing Armor is genius. Even though the damage reduction percentage from armor has diminishing returns, the effective time to live is linear up until the cap. Don't let percentages confuse you.

We have 3 cooldowns to deal with any huge magical attacks. Unless there's a tier full of caster bosses I wouldn't worry about it.

We can also get 3 more cool downs for other situations too from talents and symbiosis. And even though its only 10% from the bone shield we get from symbiosis it still plays nicely with the new SD and mastery.

[Elunedra]

dont forget monk tank will be the best in this expansion anyway, just like Dk's where in WotLK and the end game boss will drop a monk legendary

[Noviskers]

I dunno Elunedra, so far Monks aren't over powered like DKs were in beta. Blizz could have learned from their mistakes with DKs

[zoefschildpad]

the prooblem with your suggestion is that having more mastery will make mastery more valuable, which is why people stacked armor penetration in TBC. you'll either want no mastery, or boatloads of it, middle ground wouldn't be viable at all

[Themessiah]

That doesn't make any sense, because the RNG argument can be made for the current SD.

That's true - both require a degree of luck in getting the right dodge, or the right absorb at the right time. But if for instance, you tank a boss like Cho'gall on heroic, back at T11 which used to hit with swings of 80-100k, then missing an absorb will cost you in the region of 30k extra damage. Missing a dodge costs you the whole lot - And I know how nasty a chain of hits from him was. Sure, our mastery has been buffed to increase our armour, but is it an effective 30k's worth of boost, and if it is, won't we be OP? If it isn't, then how can we not be the victims of rng?

Edit: The point here is that balancing the new dodge, and the old absorb will be, I think, remarkably tough, in that one smooths damage and the other causes it too spike. In this sense, there is a tangible difference between dodging and absorbing, because the amount dodged and amount absorbed are radically different. If we're balanced around absorbing, we're designed to concede large hits (50k in this case). If we're balanced to dodge, then we're not designed to conceede large hits. But if we are still in MoP still able to take large hits (balanced to take large hits), but nonetheless possess a base 40% dodge as well, then we'll be OP. Not that I mind being OP

What I'm getting at here is that I'm not sure that there's a middle ground which is viable. With a high chance to dodge, hits will need to be hard to actually threaten us, so that when they land they're costly. However, if too many land (rng), like with Cho'gall, you're a dead bear! You might say use a cd - but are we really going to be using a cd every time we actually get hit (they will always be hard remember) just in case the next one isn't dodged? Even with 8 cd's we wouldn't have enough! And if we did have enough, we would be OP again!

There is another way around this problem though - Blizzard could have only in the expansion bosses like Algalon, mediocre damage, but excessively fast hits (think rogue fast but boss damage). Bosses like that wouldn't be a problem for this model of bear - but only this style of boss is unlikely.

However, anything which hits hard but slow, a bear with have rng issues.

Edit: Going to try and make this post a bit clearer.

[huth]

Impale can't be dodged, impale damage can be reduced by block though I think. Could be wrong. But even if I am, we have one CD, barkskin. All other tanks have a lot more after these changes. Assuming changes came and we were doing say, Madness in MoP, we'd be the worst tank on that fight for reducing damage.

You're wrong. It can't be blocked, dodged, parried or miss. It is, however, affected by armor.

[Keiyra]

That's true - both require a degree of luck in getting the right dodge, or the right absorb at the right time. But if for instance, you tank a boss like Cho'gall on heroic, back at T11 which used to hit with swings of 80-100k, then missing an absorb will cost you in the region of 30k extra damage. Missing a dodge costs you the whole lot - And I know how nasty a chain of hits from him was.

You have it backwards. Missing the dodge or missing the absorb is the exact same thing, you take a full hit. Assuming the uptime is similar between current SD and MoP SD then there is no difference in RNG. If either does not "proc" then you take a full hit, its not only 30k extra for missing the absorb, its you take the full hit.

Its 30 k less when the absorb succeeds, that's the only difference: when the proc succeeds, current SD absorbs some/all of the hit, MoP would dodge all of the hit. Now you could say then when they are succeeding, with the current SD you still are taking damage and therefore from a healing profile, you would still need small/moderate amounts of healing when SD works, and more healing when it doesn't. Whereas in MoP when SD succeeds you are taking NO damage, which for a healing profile means you need no healing and then you need more when it fails (spikier healing requirements in that sense, even though your total damage taken may be less with MoP SD than current SD)

(again assuming uptime will be on par between current and MoP SD)

[Elunedra]

You have it backwards. Missing the dodge or missing the absorb is the exact same thing, you take a full hit. Assuming the uptime is similar between current SD and MoP SD then there is no difference in RNG. If either does not "proc" then you take a full hit, its not only 30k extra for missing the absorb, its you take the full hit.

Its 30 k less when the absorb succeeds, that's the only difference: when the proc succeeds, current SD absorbs some/all of the hit, MoP would dodge all of the hit. Now you could say then when they are succeeding, with the current SD you still are taking damage and therefore from a healing profile, you would still need small/moderate amounts of healing when SD works, and more healing when it doesn't. Whereas in MoP when SD succeeds you are taking NO damage, which for a healing profile means you need no healing and then you need more when it fails (spikier healing requirements in that sense, even though your total damage taken may be less with MoP SD than current SD)

(again assuming uptime will be on par between current and MoP SD)

MoP SD will stay up 100% of the time as its a passive armor boost as far as i understand
Absorbs are verry strong when overgearing places armor does not help a lot there