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  1. #61
    I always though they'd change our active mitigation to include some damage reduction... but i guess i was wrong.

    However, i can't help but see the new way they want to go looks very similar to the death knight model that was overpowered back in wrath: high hp armor and tons of cooldowns... Although i guess other classes didnt ahve as many cooldowns as they did back then either..

  2. #62
    high hp armor and tons of cooldowns
    DKs at launch were really squishy without the CDs though, we're not. We have lots of ways to handle nasty specials, while our AM tools work well against melee attacks. The two together are a solid package.

  3. #63
    I'd like our version of multistrike to be an armor buff rather than a hp one -- it'd feel more meaningful and less awkward than a small hp gain coming and going. I also like the "feel" of being a high armor tank and I worry that will be going away with it no longer being our mastery (although it'll appear on items now too ofc).

  4. #64
    A really good thing about the new mastery is that armor debuffs wont punish us a lot harder than other tanks anymore.

  5. #65
    As many already said, the new mastery is a better version of the same goal, with much more improvements. But the prob is over its reliability, as it kinda adds RNG to an already RNG Guardian. It is still flawed. Although I like how unique druids are

  6. #66
    The Lightbringer Elunedra's Avatar
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    i like the passive shield, feels like the good old days of SD
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  7. #67
    Quote Originally Posted by Mandibleclaw View Post
    As many already said, the new mastery is a better version of the same goal, with much more improvements. But the prob is over its reliability, as it kinda adds RNG to an already RNG Guardian. It is still flawed. Although I like how unique druids are
    I don't know why people keep saying this. It will always be active after you take physical damage where you don't have an existing Mastery shield up (and therefore wouldn't need one). So it will always be there when you need it to be.

  8. #68
    Quote Originally Posted by Arielle View Post
    I don't know why people keep saying this. It will always be active after you take physical damage where you don't have an existing Mastery shield up (and therefore wouldn't need one). So it will always be there when you need it to be.
    He probably means cases like:
    *Boss does white hit*
    *Shield drops off*
    *Nazgrim Executes you*
    *Shield triggers after you're dead*

  9. #69
    Quote Originally Posted by stormgust View Post
    He probably means cases like:
    *Boss does white hit*
    *Shield drops off*
    *Nazgrim Executes you*
    *Shield triggers after you're dead*
    Exactly.

    Except that to be honest it won't probably kill you in most cases but sometimes it won't help either. What I mean is u can't build ur defense strategy around having this absorb shield cz u can't predict how big it will be, when it will help u, and what will drop it off.. It's just there and u will only hope it helps u. You want to pray that with scenarios like snapping bite, u have a shield worth it enough, and not a shield of like 10k (pre squish calculations, cz I dont know how small the numbers will be after the squish).

  10. #70
    He probably means cases like:
    *Boss does white hit*
    *Shield drops off*
    *Nazgrim Executes you*
    *Shield triggers after you're dead*
    ......

    And you don't use a CD because......? It's not supposed to supplant CD usage, nor is it supposed to "lolezmode" everything. It's only purpose is to ensure that you never take 2 full back-to-back physical hits. That's it.

    It's not meant to be an excuse to not pay attention to how much EH you have. Stop making it out to be something it's not.

  11. #71
    The Patient Grum88's Avatar
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    The changes make guardian look to be alot of fun and alot better as tanks overall imo.

  12. #72
    Quote Originally Posted by Arielle View Post
    ......

    And you don't use a CD because......? It's not supposed to supplant CD usage, nor is it supposed to "lolezmode" everything. It's only purpose is to ensure that you never take 2 full back-to-back physical hits. That's it.

    It's not meant to be an excuse to not pay attention to how much EH you have. Stop making it out to be something it's not.
    Yea, i mean i guess bears will be balanced around using a CD, seeing our cooldown buffs and health buffs, but other masteries would work in such a situation: Blood shield for dks, stagger for monks, shield of the righteous for paladins... warriors are in the same boat with rng on shield block, although they have shield barrier.

    In our case we're supposed to heal back the damage, so if our hp does indeed become massive, and that we're well-armed with good cooldowns, we'll be fine.

  13. #73
    Quote Originally Posted by Arielle View Post
    ......

    And you don't use a CD because......? It's not supposed to supplant CD usage, nor is it supposed to "lolezmode" everything. It's only purpose is to ensure that you never take 2 full back-to-back physical hits. That's it.

    It's not meant to be an excuse to not pay attention to how much EH you have. Stop making it out to be something it's not.
    Because if I have to use a CD anyway, what's the point in the mastery shield? I already have a CD up for the next hit, T&C is free so there's very little reason not to have it absorb the next hit anyway if it's just a melee swing, and FR still exists so I can just heal back afterwards. The mastery shield in that case would just be overkill after the danger has passed. It would be like all those times on Nazgrim where execute does ~90% of my health, one or both of the healers freak out, and I casually heal it back up and continue on with my life; that specific attack either instant-kills or is trivial, the mastery shield after wouldn't matter to me at all.

    It mostly just depends on the attack. Triple puncture? It was hardly any more threatening than a melee swing, so it's not going to 1-shot; can easily have mastery absorb it or the melees after and be happy either way. Snapping bite (assuming a non-dodgeable version)? It destroyed a typical shield in one shot, you'd definitely want to have mastery up for it and it only, absorbing after would be ok while you're rushing a shield back on, but nowhere near as helpful.

    Mastery wouldn't be terrible for those attacks, in fact that's far from the worst of my concerns with it. Still, it's not perfect for them, and it won't "always be up when you need it". Unless you run with a /cancelaura macro and a /sit macro, that is.

  14. #74
    Mastery doesn't help warriors against Execute either. It's not necessary that it help druids. Its purpose seems to be to smooth your damage intake against melee swings (or other consistent attacks) -- which, incidentally, is the same purpose it has for warriors.

    Your observations about cancelaura and sit are good points though, and they should not become part of gameplay.
    Last edited by Aseyhe; 2014-04-07 at 06:52 PM.

  15. #75
    I'm really liking the changes to Bears. It's long been my biggest complaint that rage specs are stuck at a 1.5 second GCD which feels so slow compared to Monk/DK/Rogue, combined with the 'Sanctity of Battle' treatment for Mangle.... It sounds amazing.

    Bear CDs look too strong atm though. Of course this is me looking at the game from a MoP perspective, maybe in the WoD environment it will be more balanced. But Barkskin on 30s, 2 Survival Charges at 2 minute recharge and it's a 70% CD for 12 seconds? Plus Bear's Last Stand and the Bristling Fur talent, it seems a bit insane.

    I'm really liking the idea of stacking haste as a bear for fast paced gameplay with rage. I've always loved the 'kit' of being a bear tank, but I never liked the mechanics enough to main it. Maybe WoD will be the time. And the changes to gear make it a lot easier to play any druid offspec with main spec gear.

  16. #76
    Quote Originally Posted by Rioo View Post
    A really good thing about the new mastery is that armor debuffs wont punish us a lot harder than other tanks anymore.
    Or raid mechanics that ignore armor. Really looking forward to not feeling extremely squishy to the blood rages/deafening screeches of WoD.

    - - - Updated - - -

    It still is odd that our mastery is something we won't have control over and also won't be up all the time. Instead our T100 talents fill that gap. Seems backwards.

    Re: the multistrike benefit, I'm not particularly excited about the hp increase still, although an armor buff doesn't seem the solution either. The other tanks get -- increased healing (prot pally), GotO orbs (brm), a hot (prot warr), scent of blood (blood dks), while we get more hp? Something doesn't fit there :-p. Maybe something tied to and buffing LotP healing instead?

    Not that there's anything inherently wrong with being different from other tanks, it's just harder to balance even from the beginning.
    Last edited by Kitmajere; 2014-04-07 at 08:06 PM.

  17. #77
    The only problem scenario that I can some up with is where you have one really tiny source of physical damage (be it a DoT, another mob, whatever) and one really large one both impacting you at the same time, and they happen to be off-center such that the small one is the one always proccing the shield instead of the large one.

    If the Mastery effectively prevents deaths from horrible 1-shot combos (TP/Melee/Call or Breath/Melee/Screech), makes our lives easier with armor piercing mechanics, and improves nasty AoE situations (Windlord, Empress) then I think it has done its job.

  18. #78
    If all of these changes go live, then the only weak spot I can see for bears is threat gen versus multiple adds at range (same as now). As far as boss-tanking goes, all of this is looking like it's adding up to bears being nigh-invincible.

    - Keeping SD and FR mechanics
    - Tier 100 gives additional [active] mitigation abilities
    - Spam Thrash (remember, it's 360 degrees) ad infinitum, for AoE aggro
    - Resolve gives bonus self-healing AND bonus shielding
    - Mastery gives shielding
    - Survival Instincts DR is boosted by 70% AND CD reduced to 2 minutes
    - Haste remains a rage-gen (i.e. active mitigation) stat

    Me likey.
    Last edited by Embermoon; 2014-04-07 at 08:29 PM.

  19. #79
    The more i think about it.. the more pulverize should be baseline, otherwise the rotation will feel boring with just mangle lacerate refresh thrash.. plus not sure how i feel its the only dps increase in the lvl100 talents.

  20. #80
    Quote Originally Posted by Arielle View Post
    The only problem scenario that I can some up with is where you have one really tiny source of physical damage (be it a DoT, another mob, whatever) and one really large one both impacting you at the same time, and they happen to be off-center such that the small one is the one always proccing the shield instead of the large one.

    If the Mastery effectively prevents deaths from horrible 1-shot combos (TP/Melee/Call or Breath/Melee/Screech), makes our lives easier with armor piercing mechanics, and improves nasty AoE situations (Windlord, Empress) then I think it has done its job.
    Well, the alternate scenario is any melee attack w/o a shield and magic sources of damage. While it probably won't be an issue, it's something to investigate when the time comes, as it may matter for progression purposes. The burning question I have is whether the burst damage will be designed assuming there is no mastery bubble up, because the simple assumption would be a 50/50 chance... depending upon mastery levels, that could be huge parity. Since the mastery appears to be designed to smooth out sustained damage, it would make more sense if it's not assumed to be present for burst. Basically, will we be tuned so that we'll be fine with burst damage regardless of mastery, but if a mastery bubble is up it's just icing on the cake.

    The other concern, as you touched on it with reference to EH, is whether there will be a need (or rather the general population will feel there is a need) to track the size of the mastery bubbles and make judgement calls surrounding it. Would be it an ability that adds a "skill cap" to Guardians, where you'll be pro to make judgement calls based on the size/presence of the bubble and just mediocre if you don't bother to look at it? It probably wouldn't matter much with lower levels of mastery, but later tiers could see an explosion in the power of mastery as stats increase. It all goes back to whether Blizz would design burst assuming the mastery bubble is up.

    Braindwen beat me to it, as I thought of the whole sit-to-crit could be abusive (although flagging it not to work on crits would make PvP troublesome, unless there would be a built-in PvE/PvP flag on top of it), however it could make Guardians the EH soakers by purposefully getting hit once to eat the big "tank-killer" physical mechanic with a mastery bubble. I just can't believe Blizz would allow the bubble to be subject to a /cancelaura macro, as it would exacerbate my previous query about whether Guardians would need (or feel they need) to monitor the size of the mastery bubble
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