Excited to be a Feral Tank @ 3.0 Patch While 70... Not So Much 80.

[Bullshifter]

If FERAL druids will be a bigger pain in the behind for WotLK that will make me a happy camper indeed. We do fine in BG's currently, but have needed some love in Arenas for quite some time now.

[mgp84]

A few clarifications from other Blues I've heard out there:
Mother Bear stacks UPTO 15%. BUT It works like defensive stance. What does this mean? Through armor you can get Physical damage reduced to cap (35880 Armor for lvl 73 boss mobs) with a remaining 25%. Mother bear will take that remaining 25% and REDUCE it by 15%. While some may see this as a small thing, it is rather huge (Like a 4% Damage reduction huge or an extra ~10k armor over the cap which is allowed) AND it also affects spell damage.
As to the loss of dodge... Did blizzard lower the amount of dodge we get from agility in 3.0? I haven't red this but is it AS big as 6%?

[Merin]

The tank passes haven't even gone in yet, good lord I can't imagine what kind of a complete and total fucking retard you have to be to consider rerolling because of this.

[alt-ithist]

A few clarifications from other Blues I've heard out there:
Mother Bear stacks UPTO 15%. BUT It works like defensive stance. What does this mean? Through armor you can get Physical damage reduced to cap (35880 Armor for lvl 73 boss mobs) with a remaining 25%. Mother bear will take that remaining 25% and REDUCE it by 15%. While some may see this as a small thing, it is rather huge (Like a 4% Damage reduction huge or an extra ~10k armor over the cap which is allowed) AND it also affects spell damage.
As to the loss of dodge... Did blizzard lower the amount of dodge we get from agility in 3.0? I haven't red this but is it AS big as 6%?

However you forget the part of no more armor caping... Ferals are expected to have slightly less armor then warriors in the end so they can keep improving their mitigation with gear unlike TBC where you got near the cap with a few blues and break it with first tier set. Now feral will have more a bit more physical mitigation then warriors (down from having alot more), they will have magic mitigation on par with a war, wich they never had b4. The lack of block or parry and a decent aoe tanking ability... tab swiping hardly counts. That still leaves them several steps behind behind their counterparts :-\

On the upside they will have more stam from no longer needing to socket def while the other tanks will still need to. I on the other hand never liked the idea of being an HP tank... always prefered the mitigation/avoidance type more

[Oweena]

No, warrior avoidance is significantly higher than druid avoidance currently. We just make up for it in sheer mitigation.Their dodge +parry + block adds up to a significant advantage over our pure dodge. We'll just have to wait and see how it all stacks up for WotLK.

Block is mitigation not avoidance Avoidance is not getting hit you still get hit through a blocked attack

[Maenetus]

a fresh 70 warrior has better avoidance than a fresh 70 druid, but druids scale better.

it doesn't take long before druids have about the same avoidance as warrior in TBC

post 3.0 all the tanks will have the same base avoidance, and scale almost identically (though druids will still get less out of def)

[Bullshifter]

Block is mitigation not avoidance Avoidance is not getting hit you still get hit through a blocked attack

I didn't equate blocking to avoidance though I can see where you might think so on reread. I was just saying that it adds up to an advantage over druid dodge.

[Shuror]

The tank passes haven't even gone in yet, good lord I can't imagine what kind of a complete and total fucking retard you have to be to consider rerolling because of this.

A bit bluntly said, but I agree.

[kiljare]

Currently agi to dodge ratio is 1% dodge for every 14.7 agi...from what i understand this number is now going to be 1% dodge for 40+ agi. That is far greater than a 6% difference in druid mitigation. Also just wanted to point out that swipe is not like thunderclap and its only similarity is being able to hit multiple targets for about the same amount of rage. Mother bear effectively gives druids a defensive stance...which is huge, but druids used to make up ground in that agility scaled better for a druid tanking than all other classes...now its flat across the board which means we suck compared to a warrior. Blizzard must address this issue or it will be pointless to have a druid tanking period.

[Maenetus]

That is far greater than a 6% difference in druid mitigation.

it's more like a 9% difference, which is how much druid base dodge was buffed

Mother bear effectively gives druids a defensive stance...which is huge, but druids used to make up ground in that agility scaled better for a druid tanking than all other classes

mother bear has NOTHING to do with the agi change. It's a responce to the armor change.

The extra armor on feral gear was a crutch, if warriors or paladins had the option of getting bonus armor on their gear they would take it.

Druids got the bonus armor to make up for the lack of defensive stance/RF

With Mother bear ferals can be treated like any other tank, the same amount of armor on their gear as anyone else. (check any warrior or paladin gear in TBC, besides the fel steel set it doesn't have higher armor than DPS or healer plate)

[kiljare]

You are partially correct. Its certainly true that the mother bear stat was added to compensate for the lack of armor on our items, agree 100%. What i'm bluntly stating is that now we are even in that respect yet fall far behing in terms of our dodge rating vs. other tanks dodge/parry/shield block ratings. With their damage being buffed to effectively match ours, i believe that our avoidance should be equal to theirs. I don't believe this is asking for too much. I don't like the idea of our "niche" being that we have a higher health pool...it effectively backs ferals into a corner much the same way high armor did. If you are going to make all the tanks homogenous...then they should have very similar numbers across the board and just differ in raid utility.

[Maenetus]

dodge rating vs. other tanks dodge/parry/shield block ratings

NEVER compare miss/dodge/parry to block% block% is NOT avoidance.


now that we're playing fair warrior/paladin/druid base miss/dodge/parry is 25% warriors and paladins have 10% more parry but 10% less dodge.


As for scaling, the agi on physical leather will scale druid dodge about as fast as defense rating on tanking plate will. And in all cases it scales faster than parry rating.

If you are going to make all the tanks homogenous...then they should have very similar numbers across the board and just differ in raid utility.

that's EXACTLY what they're doing. All tanks will have about the same EH avoidance and TPS

[Bullshifter]

It's a scary new world isn't it Maenetus? Sometimes we just have to close our eyes and take that first step into it.

[Maenetus]

honestly it's not that scary.
it's mostly just normalizing the scaling.

currently I see fresh feral tanks with only ~28% avoidance.

on live a warrior/paladin with 490 defense and no other source of avoidance has 36.8% avoidance.

Sure the high agi coefficient is nice, but only if you like to play catchup. In WotLK fresh feral tanks will have the same avoidance as warrior/paladin/DK tanks no catch up required.

[Mazus]

now that we're playing fair warrior/paladin/druid base miss/dodge/parry is 25% warriors and paladins have 10% more parry but 10% less dodge.

A well-geared warrior,talking about T4/badges, will have arround 25% dodge, probably more ( i have arround 27-28%) but we have much more parrry than only 10% its 18-20% . And you have to add the avoidance that defense gives, with 516 defense it means 6,64 more avoidance.

;D

[Bullshifter]

honestly it's not that scary.
it's mostly just normalizing the scaling.

Oh, I agree 100%, I just continue to see so much (mostly) unwarranted fear of what we will look like. It just seems like it never ends.

[Maenetus]

A well-geared warrior,talking about T4/badges, will have arround 25% dodge, probably more ( i have arround 27-28%) but we have much more parrry than only 10% its 18-20% . And you have to add the avoidance that defense gives, with 516 defense it means 6,64 more avoidance.

;D

that's scaling (harder to comment on since it there are more numbers involved) but my t4/badge paladin is ~50% avoidance which is well the middle

25% is the base
40% is the minimum to start raiding, and I suspect the aim is for avoidance to not get much past 60% even in the top raids.

avoidance has increasing returns (to the point where the last bit that makes you unhittable is infinite return) so it needs to be carefully treated.

Rogue tanks are not intended

[Mazus]

avoidance has increasing returns (to the point where the last bit that makes you unhittable is infinite return) so it needs to be carefully treated.

Of course you can not put all you have in avoidance, its only an example of what you can get, in some situations its usefull maximize it depending of expertise/hit in warriors, but it dont means it will get used allways.

But thats not what i was talking about, i was only saying we dont have only 10% parry + 25% dodge.

[Maenetus]

I popped over to the druid forum to pick out a fairly equivalent druid to my paladin
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...furion&n=Xarak
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...052&n=Maenetus

both have around 50% avoidance

[kiljare]

that's scaling (harder to comment on since it there are more numbers involved) but my t4/badge paladin is ~50% avoidance which is well the middle

25% is the base
40% is the minimum to start raiding, and I suspect the aim is for avoidance to not get much past 60% even in the top raids.

avoidance has increasing returns (to the point where the last bit that makes you unhittable is infinite return) so it needs to be carefully treated.

Rogue tanks are not intended

Maybe this is where i take issue with your posts, you are a t4/badge paladin and i'm a t6.5 sunwell feral. There is a huge difference between t4 and endgame and that is where the scaling comes in. As i put in another post there is more than just defense rating on those items...they get dodge/parry rating in ADDITION to defense which is where ferals fall behind. I'm not panicking too much right now because i'm trying to trust the devs and their claims to actually balance it all out in the end. The only things i take issue with are the other classes coming in and saying that everyone is equal right now without having all the facts. Also you are right that shield block is not avoidance, its mitigation..but at the same time it raises a plate wearers EH by a significant amount and these numbers are supposedly going to insanely increase according to blue posts. I also have a t4/badge warrior so i try to keep an eye on what they do also.