Upcoming Feral Changes III, Blue Posts

[Boubouille]

Upcoming Feral Changes, Part III

Here is a thread where you can continue your discussion on the previously mentioned Feral druid changes.

I do urge you to confine the discussion to the armor and FAP changes only. The threads fill up too quickly as it is, so this is not a great place to chime in with totally unrelated questions, even druid ones.

The changes should be a buff for any druid not in full Naxx 25 gear (and I'm pretty sure that means ALL druids for the moment). One of the reasons we are announcing this change early is so you can make your preparations accordingly. A druid with every possible item from Naxx 25-level content loses about 3700 armor, but to be honest, those armor trinkets and weapons were so insanely good that they were likely going to be nerfed anyway.

Also note this is a reasonable buff for PvP, since you typically don't wear a bunch of +armor trinkets in those situations.

We don't want to make any changes to the way Feral druids work at this point to make them more like warriors. Now we also don't want druids to be inferior tanks to warriors, but we see no evidence that is happening at the moment and only speculation that it might happen in the future, at which point we will make additional changes if needed. You can say you don't believe we will make changes, which sort of ends the conversation.

The goal was not to make you ignore +armor trinkets. The goal was that a bear lacking those trinkets wouldn't be at such a disadvantage. We would rather you use a new level 80 trinket with a little bit of wasted block on it than a blue trinket from level 62 or something with silly amounts of armor.

It is fine, helpful even, to alert us to situations where you think bears might not be competitive at surviving encounters compared to other tanks. Our goal is they are roughly similar and we will continue to make changes if they are not. While I understand some of you want more different tanking stats to focus on, that is not our goal for the moment. We think it is perfectly possible given the current design to make bears able to stand up to the damage they need to. In other words, the numbers may still need to be tweaked on occasion, but there is nothing inherent to the calculations that says a tank must have block and parry as tanking stats in order for the math to work.

Some more details to help answer some of the questions we've seen:

-- Cloaks do have base armor which gets multipled by the bear bonus.
-- There is no multiplier on any bonus armor. Not the bear bonus. Not the talent bonuses.
-- There is a 2% armor benefit you can get from a metagem.
-- The ultimate bear modifier should be 4.7 (Dire Bear form) x 1.66 (Survival of the Fittest) x 1.1 (Thick Hide) x 1.02 (meta gem).
-- The best bear we can create in current itemization has 35,907 armor, which is 68.34% mitigation vs. level 83 bosses or 70.21% mitigation versus level 80 mobs.
-- Before these changes, you might have been able to build a bear with nearly 40,000 armor, but that relies on using Defender's Code and Origin of Nightmares, items of such ridiculous power that we were going to nerf them anyway before this change. (Now they're fine.)
-- Note how close that 40,000 armor is to the cap already.
-- We do have concerns block may be too good a stat for future raids, and we'll keep an eye on it.
-- Equipping a weapon will still boost Savage Roar (and everything else) the way it does currently.

Bottom line: armor was too good for druids. That was a blessing if you could get the items and a curse if you could not.

The counterarguments we get are: 1) Well, I can't be competitive without that armor, or 2) Give me something else to focus on then.

We think number one is a concern, but we're not convinced it's a problem at the moment and totally solvable if it gets to be. Number two is just a different design. We designed Ferals with fewer mitigation stats than other classes. You still have tanking stats, and gear can still provide upgrades. That's not to say it will always be the case, but we have no plans to change it at the current time.

Blue posts

Free Character Moves for Oceanic PvP Realms 1
We will be offering free character moves from selected high population oceanic realms to a brand new PvP realm, Gundrak, to assist in population dispersal. The ability to move a character on the selected source realms will become available starting on Friday, November 21 at 11:00PM PST (6:00pm AEST), and is scheduled to run until Saturday, November 29 at 10:00AM PST (5:00am AEST). Gundrak is an Oceanic realm in the Vengeance battlegroup.

In the event that these realms meet our transfer goals before the scheduled end date, the transfers to that realm will be disabled. We highly recommend that if you are planning to transfer that you do so at your earliest convenience. No characters will be eligible for these free moves once the transfers have been closed.

You can begin your transfer by visiting the Character Move page located here: https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/character-move.html

Source (PvP) - Dreadmaul, Barthilas, Thaurissan, Frostmourne, Jubei’thos
Destination (PvP) - Gundrak

Lake Wintergrasp balancing
It really feels like you're approaching Wintergrasp the way you approach battleground PvP. You can't because it's not. There is not a great focus on balancing around a fair fight in Wintergrasp because we rarely expect them on the micro scale. We're focusing on a macro scale of the whole siege taking place and balancing around that, because we can never count on even numbers. Again, it's not instanced and a controlled balancing act of virtually even teams and balanced abilities.

I think it's a mistake to say this means you're at a disadvantage. Yes, if you are in a 1v1 situation in Wintergrasp on the team with more members in the zone, you're at a disadvantage. This simply isn't a zone where the focus should be on 1v1 fighting. The strategies revolve entirely around siege vehicles and team work.

I think this will also make a little more sense when more and more players start entering the zone. If you're in a match and it's your 20 vs their 10 you may find yourself more frequently caught in situations where it's 1v1, in which case you'll have a disadvantage in that one encounter. Once we start seeing 40-50 players on each side the siege team work will become a much more obvious focus.

With all of this being said, we very recently toned down the tenacity buff and are watching to see how matches play out with this macro balancing technique. You're always welcome to try something a little new and see if it appeals to you when you've discovered a strategy for best dealing with this difference in game play.

I, for one, welcome with open arms the chance to have a less-controlled large-scale PvP objective with no instancing, and I hope you'll help us by showing your participation. This will better help us ensure the zone is finely-tuned and polished. (Source)

Questions Needed for BlizzCast Q&A
We are once again looking for fan-submitted questions to answer in future episodes of BlizzCast.

If you have a question you want to get to us, please send an email with the subject line "BlizzCast Q&A" to the email address BlizzCast@Blizzard.com and you can include a name/character along with a location/realm if you'd like for us to refer to you during the show if your question is picked.

You can also attach a recording of your question to this email if you want to hear your voice in the cast! If you send in a recording make sure it is very clear and easy to understand. We recommend including a typed out version of the question in the email as well to ensure it is properly interpreted.

While we won't be able to get to every one of them, we want to keep you updated on whatever aspects are most important to you.

Thanks for your help and be sure to tune into future BlizzCasts (http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcast/) to see if your question was answered!

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Changes to the Feral tree, nerf?
It is a buff to 90% of druids. It is a nerf to a theoretical maximum that nobody currently has, and in truth wasn’t going to be able to get anyway because the armor on those items was so good that we were going to nerf them. In retrospect, a sneaky way to have handled this issue would have been to tell you we were going to nerf those items, then when there was outcry responded that we decided to change the way bear armor was calculated and not nerfed those items. I didn't choose that approach though.

Feral mitigation and scaling
We haven't found Feral mitigation to be lacking, and my point is that even if we do, we can fix that by tweaking the numbers. Regardless of the outcome, it doesn't prove that the class needs more defensive stats on which to scale. If the bear mulitiplier is 700% (and there is no armor cap), then I promise you will scale very well with every piece of armor you pick up even if you have no other stats. You will be far and away the best tank and the easiest one to gear as well.

Like I said, you can argue that you would rather have lots of defensive stats because you just think it's more fun to pick up gear under that model. But now you're in the realm of wanting to change the class into something slightly different to suit your preferences. That still isn't off the table (almost nothing ever is), but it's a different sort of argument than saying "we *must* benefit from block and AP."

There are advantages and disadvantages to having a lot or a few stats to focus on. One of the disadvantages of fewer stats is diminishing returns on avoidance, but bears don't diminish on Dodge as fast as warriors in order to compensate for this. Part of the implementation of diminishing returns was to discourage warriors from stacking one stat, but that isn't an issue for druids.

I don't mean to sound argumentative in any of this. I just want to make sure I understand the issues. We were prompted to take a look at this by all of the discussions (and not just on this forum) about how few neck and trinket choices bears really had in all of WoW. By which I mean they helped us to understand the issue. We knew the situation felt a little off, but it was more off than we imagined, and we took steps to fix it. (Source)

Priest (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Divine Hymn / Hymn of Hope
We have some plans to tweak the Hymn spells a little, but they are not at the top of the list. When things settle down a little, we'll try some new ideas. (Source)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Spirit Wolves scaling bugged
We found the bug with the Spirit Wolves and are planning to hotfix it. (Source)

[LavaDuck]

We have some plans to tweak the Hymn spells a little, but they are not at the top of the list

It should be on top. Hymn of Hope is rather crap to cast in a PvE encounter. As a healer, a person might die in those seconds you spent restoring mana. As shadow you spend the mana getting back into shadow form.

And Divine Hymn, 6min cooldown >_>

[velourea]

Spirit Wolves scaling bugged
We found the bug with the Spirit Wolves and are planning to hotfix it

lol and I thought shamans were balanced for lvl 80 when people whined about not being as good as other classes
I suppose developers just don't want to waste their time

[Mahtamori]

It should be on top. Hymn of Hope is rather crap to cast in a PvE encounter. As a healer, a person might die in those seconds you spent restoring mana. As shadow you spend the mana getting back into shadow form.

And Divine Hymn, 6min cooldown >_>

"As a healer, a person might die in those seconds you spent restoring mana." Most likely entirely intended.

"As shadow you spend the mana getting back into shadow form." A minor issue, not exactly game breaking.

Seriously, how are any of these remotely a priority? There are far worse issues elsewhere among the classes. The basic Priest spell line up is rather good, these two only enhance it, some classes are struggling with so many different roles that the space for new neat spells is still too tight. I'm talking mainly Druid, Shaman, Paladin here.

[Elementium]

wait a sec..so they're just now saying "oh crap the wolves aren't scaling!" I thought that was one of the many issues all through beta..

At least I know my warrior won't get screwed.

[stupid11]

nerf druids.

[Clausm]

orly? mb they should nerf ur class?

[stupid11]

orly? mb they should nerf ur class?

nope. just druids, mages, hunters, rogues, death knights, and ret pallies.....


and warriors in pvp.

[Shakrah]

Most I have seen them write about shamans in a while.

It's usually along the lines of "we are addressing this issue", or "it will be hotfixed".

Blizzard stop ignoring shamans!

[hybridwyrm]

nope. just druids, mages, hunters, rogues, death knights, and ret pallies.....


and warriors in pvp.

In case you haven't realised, Rogues can now do fuck all anywhere.

P.S: Nerf resto druids in arena all you like... BUT FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET GAMING JAHEBUS, DO NOT NERF FERAL DRUIDS! Feral cats are useless in pve raids and well everywhere... severely lacking in dps. Bears weren't ever OP, just your average tanking class with no "i win" button. So plz no nerfs!
P.S.S: Removing feral AP from weapons is stupid. This means i have to fight over other fucking classes for tanking and dps weapons and you just know, that the bastard rogue or hunter will ninja it.

[blahblahnameblah]

[quote=hybridwyrm ]

lol... a rogue is never going to ninja a two handed staff or a two handed mace.
hunter maybe (not maces), rogue, never.

I am personally looking forward to having more choices than a trash drop out of SSC and (the craptasm) one raid-boss drop known as Pillar of Ferocity.

Outside of the tanking staves, there were two post kara dps options from raid drops (one from a ten man, one from a zone that very few ever got into in the first place).