Okay bear questions....Re: 3.1

[vayron]

Okay so HOTW downed from 20-10% stam boost = 10% TOTAL loss in stam? Yes or no?

SOF armor down by 1/2....Can live with that really.

Savage Defense...No numbers yet that I've seen anyways but this looks promising. Nice damage reduction without affecting rage generation too much.

Bear consecrate...er....360 degree swipe sorry....I like this, especially once you factor in not having to target now.

Finally (and this is minor) FFF putting out more damage (translate: threat) in bear form. Nice for initial pulling/more threat/whatever.

Am I wrong/missing anything here?

[Koumaru]

Okay so HOTW downed from 20-10% stam boost = 10% TOTAL loss in stam? Yes or no?

No. It's an 8.333% loss in stamina, or 6.5% if you take both ranks of the revamped ImpMotW talent in the Resto tree.

SOF armor down by 1/2....Can live with that really.

It's a ~20% overall reduction in armor from gear, but SD seems to be more than making up for it in all but the most extreme situations. Tanking Patchwerk 25 hatefuls or very large AoE packs (small AoE packs, it can still be a buff), it's a nerf, but only in the realm of a few hundred incoming dps. And to be fair, tanking hatefuls was a role in which bears were a little too good. Can't say the same for the AoE packs (real blocking rules there), but that's a very minor issue -- do you die much on AoE trash?

Savage Defense...No numbers yet that I've seen anyways but this looks promising. Nice damage reduction without affecting rage generation too much.

Bear consecrate...er....360 degree swipe sorry....I like this, especially once you factor in not having to target now.

Let's just hope they don't feel the need to increase its rage cost or give it a cooldown, or I'd rather have the old one back. I think a separate 360-degree threat move would have been preferable, but this change was the quickest fix the devs could push through while trying to get 3.1 ready to go live.

Finally (and this is minor) FFF putting out more damage (translate: threat) in bear form. Nice for initial pulling/more threat/whatever.

Am I wrong/missing anything here?

Can't think of much else at the moment.

[Deleted]

Its not at all as bad as many, many, many (many many) think. If you look around in other threads, the math have been done.

In another thread i tried to calculate how the loss in armor and gaining SD effected us on the two types of fights that we worry about: AoE packs and fast hitting mobs. Ill give you the rundown of the numbers. The stats are my own, on a 10 man fight (because really, thats all i care about).

40% dodge, 40% crit, 10 mobs hitting for 5000 before mitigation: BUFF
We dodge four of the attacks, and savage defense is enough to almost nullify a full attack from one more mob. My armor from live > PTR went 69% > 64%, and on a 5000 mob, that is 220 additional damage (also calculating POTP). A shield with 6000 AP absorbs 1500 damage, and with 64% armor, a mob will hit slightly higher than that. However:

69%: 6 mobs hits me for 1364 each = 8184 damage
64%: 6 mobs hits me for 1584 each - 1500 SD = 7920 damage
Damage reduction on PTR: 264 damage.

That makes SD look like a better alternative than armor. Ofcourse, some mobs might hit harder, and you may have bad luck with dodging, but that applies to our current state aswell:

69%: 9 mobs hits me for 1364 each = 12.276 damage
64%: 9 mobs hits me for 1584 each - 1500 SD = 12.756 damage

We only 480 damage more in a case where we only dodge one of the 10 mobs.

It becomes a problem if the mobs hit us for more, ofcourse. If they have a swing for 10.000 damage, the calculations would look like:

69%: 6 mobs: 16368 damage. 9 mobs: 24.552 damage
64%: 6 mobs: 17508 damage. 9 mobs: 27.012 damage

Full calculations here

As for fast hitting bosses like Patchwerk, my calculations found that we will take a staggering 27 more DPS on the PTR than on live. Gasp, 27 DPS! Nothing ravaging.

Full calculations here

[Koumaru]

Yeah, I for one am quite looking forward to it. The obvious buff to Swipe is the only 3.1 bear change leaving a bitter taste in my mouth at the moment, ironically. ;D

Savage Defense looks zomgamazing. Also looking forward to 2k Lacerate ticks.

[Gilthoniel]

And to be fair, tanking hatefuls was a role in which bears were a little too good.

I can confirm that. We did it yesterday with two tanks (25 man naxx), dk Maintank and me taking all the hatefuls. With no problem at all... I think thats a little OP

[Koumaru]

I can confirm that. We did it yesterday with two tanks (25 man naxx), dk Maintank and me taking all the hatefuls. With no problem at all... I think thats a little OP

Nah, unless your OT or healers are undergeared, it's nothing unusual to do Patchwerk 25 with only two tanks (of any class). An extra OT just helps starting out. Where we stand now, a few weeks from the next tier of content, an extra OT is just loss dps.

[baseball]

Huh. A thread that is not "sky is falling." I almost pooped.


I think the best parts of SD is that it scales wonderfully with our gear, gives us two more tanking stats to look for, and is a "buff" to things like inspiration. Hitting the armor cap effectively made Inspiration and its kin a useless talent for bears, so putting our mitigation into Savage Defense to give some breathing room to our armor cap is also a good thing.

[Koumaru]

For some reason I'm slightly amused that the Savage Defense skill makes the 6% AP boost in Dire Bear Form from 3/3 Protector of the Pack look like it was always intended to be an additional mitigation boost from the talent rather than a tacked-on threat booster.

Now, without any changes to the talent itself, PotP increases the effectiveness of SD by 1.5% as well as giving its 12% flat mitigation and increased threat.