To be fair i joined as boomkin since it was the only guild that could work for me on my server, with a promise of being in line for tanking, but so far the two opportunities i had, they took a "better tank" instead of me.. one was 25m ToT heroic which makes sense, but not being taking for SoO was really gay. Other reasons were that we didnt have enough ranged and my dps was too good (I hate that reason)... Hopefully i'll get another chance at being a tank before WoD, because guardian look like they are going to be amazing, and tanking sounds like it's going to be a lot more fun.
Been thinking about ursa major.. i really like it, i mean its the only ability outside of haste/crit that has a definite effect on our survival of tank-killer moves... however it doesnt reduce damage.
They should change it so when you multistrike, you gain 2% more armor and 3% more hp, so it's still a EH increase, but it also provides a bonus to our damage mitigation.. and doesnt make us absolutely overpowered against magical damage.
At any rate, i really hope haste/multistrike will become our best stat combo.. they synergize with eachother and the thought of a massive health pool makes me droll.
Celestalon specifically said that it will be tuned as DPS - here is his twitter quote
I will still be surprised if the DPS is "competitive" with arms or fury - which is to say competitive with other classes because *if* that is the case then all warriors will just go prot - one set of gear (and more importantly, only one set of weapons and/or trinkets) will be necessary making gearing up way easier.@JalopyWoW Gladiator Stance will be tuned as a DPS. It will not be able to tank much more than an Arms warrior can (ie, not much).
On one hand a +HP bonus goes perfectly with Guardians, the highest HP tank. On the other hand, it's random, uncontrollable, and potentially not super valuable if tank damage is set to be less bursty. I think Monk multistrike is great, sure Gift of the Ox is random, but you can control when you use the orbs.
Kind of hoping they change Ursa Major, but I could be totally wrong about it's value and maybe it will be powerful as it is.
Doubt it. People will still play the spec they want and Gladiator stat priority still could be different from Prot stat priority.
I don't think ursa major can be really called random, you can expect a bare minimum from it and just bathe in the power when it procs a lot... with a slight amount of multistrike it will never fall off. You can easily expect a 50% haste gcd cap and 100%~ multistrike for the final tier.. thats going to be an epic amount of health.
I just wanted to add a damage reduction component to make it more attractive, high armor/DR is also bear-ish, i thought it'd be a better design, as long as mastery is the superior overall damage reduction.
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I don't see why gladiator stat priority would be different. if a prot war is supposed to do, say 75% of the dps of a real dps, they'll adjust the damage buff on gladiator stance to add the remaining 25%.
Mastery looks like it will be very strong when combined with keeping a 100% up-time on pulverize which we can easily with lacerate giving rage and not having a CD.
On any non-magic fight, we will see lots of dodge and partial absorbs aka block but ours is better cause we will end up "blocking" a lot more often than a war/pally will.
With them nerfing Ursa Major down to 2% so far, i think we would be better off gearing for haste and mastery over multistrike (I'm sure people can math out how much we need to make sure it wont fall off). We can always swap in double stam trinkets if we need the HP boost for some reason. I would rather reduce my over all melee damage taken on all fights rather than to more or less stam stack for all fights. Ursa Major is more or less a way for us to stam stack during combat
Halving the effect but doubling the duration is a nerf? Mmmmmmk. You know it stacks too right (like 4T16 does)?With them nerfing Ursa Major down to 2% so far
It's just an EH stat yes, but making statements like this just makes my brain hurt.
Mastery can only ever occur on 50% of hits. The amount varies, but it starts at 16% of the hit at no mastery rating, so it won't increase as fast as, say, Prot. War's crit block chance.
Paladins, with perks/talents, will have something like over a baseline 50% chance to block, with more block chance as they get more mastery. They block for 30% of damage baseline. They also have SotR for reducing that damage further.
Warriors, while they will only have ~25% baseline chance to block, use their AM to boost it up to 100% chance to block with 33% uptime (or an extra 33% chance to block on average, meaning that warriors will block, on average, over 50% of the time). However, they also have crit block, which scales quickly with mastery and causes them to sometimes block for 60% of the damage. This means that warriors can use mastery to both boost their average block chance up, and their overall block amount up.
So, we will NOT end up "blocking" a lot more often then war/pallies, and will probs end up "blocking" less overall. However, we WILL "avoid" alot more often then war/pallies will, so it averages out to be the same.
Ursa Major change is actually a very significant buff, for 3 reasons. A) It lasts twice as long, so it will roll longer. Essentially, instead of keeping 5% health for 15 seconds, then loosing that 5% at the end of the 15 seconds, its 2% health for 30 seconds. This will make our HP more "steady". It also allows for a higher stacking potential. B) Lacerate TICK multistrikes can now proc it, giving us much more frequent procs. C) You can lacerate on multiple targets, allowing for even MORE proc chances. By my guesstimation, this will allow for about 30% more health on single target fights compared to previous version, with increasing amounts of health as you add more targets to the druid.
I suppose the $62.37 question (my last grocery bill, don't ask) is whether Ursa Major will actually matter in the end. Granted I concur that if Blizz does what they typically do towards the end of the expansion, it could potentially have crazy uptime... but the journey to the last tier is what interests me.
There are two sides to how Ursa Major could be balanced for Guardians. One side is that we will not be balanced around the assumption of having any +hp% rolling... the other side is that we are balanced around having +hp% up. If we are balanced assuming no uptime, it's really just eye candy and not necessary for our survival (for early tiers, this makes the most sense). If we are balanced assuming some level of uptime, Ursa Major could have a profound impact on our gameplay (for the last tier, this may be feasible... horrid for the early ones).
I had this quirky idea the more I thought about Ursa Major and potential scaling through an expansion, and I could *almost* see how Blizz could use the ability to allow raids to scale faster as the expansion rolls out... more of an exponential curse versus a linear one. Some of the reasons why this raid design methodology hasn't been feasible in the past is because Guardians' active mitigation has had an artificial upper cap on survival: our passive effective health. Since our active mitigation hasn't reduced X% of incoming damage, we've relied upon our major CD's and our EH where other tanks just use active mitigation in many cases (hence the typical rebalancing of tanks every major raid release). If Blizz can safely assume a baseline amount of +hp% increase on a Guardian for an encounter, they've successfully found another method to have our EH increase dynamically in an encounter, allowing Guardians to scale better with content. Granted it's still passive and not guaranteed, it still has potential (I would've killed for it on some heroic SoO content).
All in all, I'm sort of torn whether I want Guardians to be balanced around a certain amount of uptime on Ursa Major or not. The "OP Bear!" side of me doesn't want to be balanced around it, the "Let's make this exciting!" does. It's probably safer to go the route of the former, though. My thoughts parallel somewhat with the proposed Guardian mastery, as well.
Last edited by exochaft; 2014-05-22 at 03:52 PM.
“Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”
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― Alexis de Tocqueville
I'm glad for the rage changes to Mangle, Lacerate, and Pulverize. It means Pulverize > Mangle > Thrash DoT > Lacerate always.
From what I understand, it fits in with the new healing meta-game - Slow, steady damage that healers have to pace themselves around, or they will wipe due to being oom. No more scary burst damage, but steady amounts of damage that gets healed up slowly, even for tanks. I think that the example most recently used by a tweet was that if a tank currently goes from 100%-60%, and then gets topped back up in 2 heals, next expansion it'll be more like 100%-85%, and gets topped back up with several heals. Steady loss of health, with good tanks requiring less healing due to smart usage of AM. So, yea, if the next expansion is full of super scary burst, then we probs WILL be balanced around MS. However, if the next expansion is full of a steady drain of health, then we won't be balanced around MS, as it only provides more EH, and absolutly no mitigation. (It does provide additional healing, however, with LotP and Gift).
Also, you have to consider the other tanks. ATM, only BrM and DKs are getting a health boost next expansion- BrM gets 20% additional stamina, and DKs are getting something similar to our Ursa Major- Death Coil provides 5% extra health for 30 seconds, rolling (its a new perk replacing the old Rune Strike perk). So if we ARE balanced around scary bursts, WArriors/Paladins are currently screwed. Judging from the MS component of the other 4 tanks, though, tank damage is going to be steady, not bursty, as all other MS components help healers.
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Yea, it was pretty much predicted, numbers WAY to high. Haste's value should fall as well (Haste was way too good for bears next expansion). Pitty that nothing was done to help boost Crit up though.
Mangle and Pulverize we're definitely way too high, but with the nerf to Lacerate also, makes it obvious. Back in this thread, I found that it was possible, although less likely, to have a Thrash-less rotation, but the changes make it so that it will never happen. This also makes Thrash the highest rage generation ability for one GCD.
I think they are fine with crit having a lower priority that other stats. It's not a bad stat, but it's not as good as other stats, which is the idea they are going after.
You don't have any free GCDs to use Thrash if you take Pulverize.
It's still hands-down better than Crit, which is the only stat comparison you can make really.Yea, it was pretty much predicted, numbers WAY to high. Haste's value should fall as well (Haste was way too good for bears next expansion). Pitty that nothing was done to help boost Crit up though.
Yeah. Yeah it is.It's not a bad stat
You have 7 GCDs every 10 seconds completely naked.Why wouldn't you? Seems to be plenty of GCDs to me.
4 of those are taken up by Lacerate / Pulverize. ~2.5 of them are taken up by Mangle (give or take). That last fractional GCD is better spent on Lacerate since it (a) can proc a new Mangle, and (b) pushes the next Pulverize forward which increases RPS.
If you have more than 1 target, maintaining Thrash should totally be prioritized above Mangle though.
Yes, with no haste in the system, Thrash shouldn't be used, but when we start introducing haste into the system and get more GCDs every 10 sec from it, Thrash will have its place. (Although I wouldn't be surprised if Thrash is used for its damage output and not its rage generation at that point.)
You're severely over-estimating the amount of Haste we're going to have.but when we start introducing haste into the system and get more GCDs every 10 sec from it, Thrash will have its place.