Bear Druid's after Savage Defense / Stam Changes...

[Gortyo]

Was hoping I could get some feedback on druids after the upcoming nerf. eg. Savage defense nerf, and various stam nervous.

[Rakeer]

I'm no longer a feral tank. I'm a sad panda.

[Radux]

Blizzard was basing boss damage in Cataclysm off the idea of having a bear tank. Because of higher stam pools and great scaling on SD, other tanks just couldn't compete. Druids were too good.

Now that everyone is 'in line', bosses will hit a little less and all tanks will have about the same survivability.

At least this is how I understood the reasoning behind the changes.

[anesmith]

I have all 4 tanking classes and the druid is tied with my pally as my favorite to tank on, even after the nerf's... It's not so bad. I just tanked ICC 25 last night on the druid. Threat issues do not exist and I seemed to be mitigating damage well. Carry on!

Wait, just realized something, are the nerfs on live yet? or just beta? I'm a no beta guy...

[Vargarii]

I have all 4 tanking classes and the druid is tied with my pally as my favorite to tank on, even after the nerf's... It's not so bad. I just tanked ICC 25 last night on the druid. Threat issues do not exist and I seemed to be mitigating damage well. Carry on!

Wait, just realized something, are the nerfs on live yet? or just beta? I'm a no beta guy...

They are on beta, not yet live.

[anesmith]

They are on beta, not yet live.

Oh, well I'll shut up now, hope I'm not going to be a sad panda as well when these go live...

[Gortyo]

Yea they are on Beta... I can admit that bear was extremely overpowered tank with the 4.0.1 changes. Esp when reforging into mastery... But with the magnitude of nerf's.. I'm worried druids are now going to be the weakest tank (eeven though blizzard says we'll all be even).

Where are you beta people to fill in???!?

[sparks]

everyone equal in blizzards eyes.
ROFL

the empire state building compared to a grain of sand...close enough
if they spend over 5 minutes on any class its too much.
I really feel they spend more time lying to us than they do working on classes

[Mallachor]

I felt it was reasonable to take down SD a bit, but I also feel that reducing bear stam to be more in line with other tanks kind of takes away a lot from what the bear tank used to be. I feel like blizzard is just making all the tank much more uniform. maybe not so much in terms of how they are played, but certainly from a healing perspective, which seems like it is taking away from the flavor of the game.
my 2 cents

[Raugnaut]

heh. The stam changes wont have much effect in Cata, from what I see. if you die from the missing stam, then, chacnes are, you would have wiped with the stam. However, the SD change was relatively dramatic, although sorely needed. Heck, I was absorbing full damage from the bosses in ICC with SD up, my hit table was something like dodge-miss-absorb-dodge-dodge-absorb-hit

35% of 10000 is 3500, and I dont think they changed mastery at all. So, we are still absorbing a large chunk of damage.
However, with SD no longer proccing off bleed crits, the uptime on SD has dramtically decreased. Previously, one could have auto-attack every 2.5 secs, Thrash every 2 seconds, lacerate every 3 seconds, and yellow every 1.5 seconds. With all these chances for a crit happening so often, the proc rate of SD was far higher then the other tanks blocks. It was thus inevitable that Bears suffer a nerf.

Im ok with the decrease in how much SD absorbs, but not so much with the bleed changes. now, all a bear bleed is good for is the +20% damage to maul, and thats not a big difference. All i can see is, for threat, 3x lacerate-mangle-pulverize repeat. VERY boring.

[Gortyo]

I felt it was reasonable to take down SD a bit, but I also feel that reducing bear stam to be more in line with other tanks kind of takes away a lot from what the bear tank used to be. I feel like blizzard is just making all the tank much more uniform. maybe not so much in terms of how they are played, but certainly from a healing perspective, which seems like it is taking away from the flavor of the game.
my 2 cents

I also agree that something had to be done. With 16% mastery I would be 3rd or 4th on damage taken meter of various bosses in ICC10.

[iceberg265]

I don't have beta, but from what I have heard, some nerfs were needed. I am pretty worried that they took it too far though, especially adding in the stam nerf on top of the SD nerf. I would not be surprised at all if SD was brought back up a few %, but it is just unfortunate and unnecessary that they felt the need to lower our HP as well.

[wizdro]

sig

I apologize in advance, this is completely unrelated to the thread.

iceberg265, your sig makes me lol every time I read it.