Bear Tank scaling issues?

[ad1337]

It seems that the current WotLK trend is to provide tank classes with a DPS stat -> Mitigation conversion in order to allow tanks to increase their threat (and see big numbers) while providing another means of scaling up their mitigation with gear progression. If you don't quite know what I'm talking about, Strength converts to shield block value for Paladins and Warriors and Death Knights get additional Parry rating equal to 25% of their strength.

With the current armor changes to Druids coming to the PTR, Bear tanks are scared of mitigation scaling issues once they have obtained a decent gear set due to the lack of large armor increases with gear improvements that previously existed and only having one other form of mitigation that diminishes quickly at these same gear levels (dodge).

Perhaps it's time to introduce an Attack Power or Strength -> mitigation stat conversion for Druids in a way such it will assist Bears in scaling appropriately in end game raid content and help them to regain some of their lost mitigation from previously high armor accessories (cloaks and rings in particular) that are now itemized more appropriately for the other three tanking classes due to their excessive amounts of strength.

I am currently at a loss of ideas for such an implementation; I am only able to imagine some sort of STR/AP -> Miss Chance or STR/AP -> Damage Reduction formula or talent as a solution to this concern.

Feel free to post your thoughts and/or implementation ideas.

[Solare]

Considering the fact that Blizzard removed crushing blows (from raid encounters, anyway) by increasing the level difference between your player and the mob from 3 to 4 to receive crushing blows, bears are currently at the front lines of tanking mitigation. Pre-expansion, the fact that Druids had enormous leads ahead of Paladins and Warriors in terms of armor and stamina was mostly balanced by the fact that it was impossible for Druids to become crushing blow immune (having at or over 102.4 combined avoidance). Paladins never got crushed (minus silences, stuns, or mana-issues concerning their Holy Shield upkeep), Warriors got crushed on occasion, and bears got crushed a lot. Keep in mind, however, that back in TBC, Blizzard never designed Paladins or Druids to be anything other than off or trash tanks; despite the many successes bears and tankadins had due to outstanding professionalism.

Today is different. Today Blizzard claims that all four tanking classes are capable of any tanking duty, be it boss, trash, or off. I would imagine the removal of the crushing blow mechanism from raids was part of this overall tanking decision on Blizzard's part. However, with crushing blows removed, bears now have quite a large lead ahead of paladins and warriors in terms of physical mitigation. And this strength was proven back during the Wrath beta testing with many commenting how little damage their bears took in comparision to the other tanks.

And the recent armor change for druid tanks? I believe it be along the same line of thinking as the absence of any +Strength enchantments in Wrath of the Lich King. Even Retribution Paladins, who have the most reason of any class in the game to stack their pure Strength statistic due to enormous scaling benefits, must enchant their equipment with +Attack Power or other similar dps stats.

It seems to me that Blizzard wishes to have better control scaling issues. As there are few abilites that directly multiply raw attack power. I can only think of Abomination's Might, Trueshot Aura, and Unleash Rage. So this is a good control for them to keep everyone stats roughly equal, as opposed to Retribution Paladin's constant +15% Strength from their Divine Strength talent.

So my point is that unless bear threat (which is arguably the most rapid of any tanking class) falls behind the other classes, I doubt we will see any threat -> mitigation stat conversion for bears. Bears are, in my opinion right now, the toughest tanks in the game. Paladins and Warriors are almost equal behind them, and Death Knights? Well... in my personal opinion, Death Knights need a lot of work.

But that's a story for another time.

[Shifthappend]

Real number from 25 naxx ...

I'm a 80 druid

Patchwork Hateful strike was hitting me for 19k

on the warrior .. he was getting hit for 22k

on the pal .. hes was getting hit for 26k

now those 2 tanks have an average of 30k health buffed ... which mean they die in 2 strikes

I have 43k health buffed ... I die in 3 strikes ...

Bear are overpowered ... I can hit cap armor with a shaman/priest 25% buff ...

I have 33k health unbuffed and am uncritsable by talent ...

What are you QQ'in for ?

[Deleted]

Raphi, i think we are worried that the scales will flip around T8 or T9. Whats your druids name, btw? I want to drool on gear

On the point of Damage stats to Mitigation, agility works quite nice. After all, we only have agility and armor for our mitigation, and i really dont think we're going to pass 50% dodge anytime soon. It would be interesting to hear what kind of armor/dodge/crit a Naxx geared druid has.

I totally get your point though, more shield block, less damage, where agility sorta diminishes as we get more dodge. We do, however, crit more, and thats a nice overall increase in damage.

[Shifthappend]

Raphi .. On Cenarius server .. If you re lucky you ll get my tank gear ...

I doubt feral will be behind later ...

I'm pretty sure everyone will be equal at t9 content.

Bear just get good quick then slow down from upgrade to upgrade ...

Other tanks just start up slow ... and increase by alot from upgrade to upgrade until they hit best gear possible which will end up being the same as bear ...

They will remove armor on trinket and increase armor on leather ... which will help us scale alot more ...

And If that the case ... that Bear doesnt scale and are behind tank ... Blizzard will fix everything ... So I dont really care about t9 gear right now

[Strah]

Our druid tank has got 45k hp raidbuffed while warriors have got around 30-33k ;[

[Wyndrunner]

Druids can't get agility?

[sertu]

Real number from 25 naxx ...

I'm a 80 druid

Patchwork Hateful strike was hitting me for 19k

on the warrior .. he was getting hit for 22k

on the pal .. hes was getting hit for 26k

now those 2 tanks have an average of 30k health buffed ... which mean they die in 2 strikes

I have 43k health buffed ... I die in 3 strikes ...

Bear are overpowered ... I can hit cap armor with a shaman/priest 25% buff ...

I have 33k health unbuffed and am uncritsable by talent ...

What are you QQ'in for ?

thats nice.. but a decent geared warrior and/or pally will get hit about 50% less then a drood. Have to take that into account, the odds u get hit 3 time in a row is higher then the odds a warrior or pally will get hit twice in a short time span.

must agree thought that the removal of crushing blows has hurt warriors and pally's a lot more then droods. Blizz seems to want to reduce tanking into just dps'ing and taking every hit, instead of trying to avoid as much as possible. Hard to find decent dodge items these days. Seems like blizz just wants us (me beeing pally tank) to stack strength and stamina and just suck it all up like druids have been doing. Which is sad cuz it removes the differences between the different tanks.

Personally i feel blizz has gone to too much extend to allow DK to tank. It would've been impossible for them to get uncrushable (red. parry is a louzy stat to stack if u want uncrushability also due to parrygibbing most people during TBC tried to stay away from parry) and they cant suck up crushing blows like druids can. So blizz must've just decided to dump the whole thing and make tanking into just standing there and sucking it up.

I refuse to become a punchbag for mobs so im still wearing my lvl 70 avoidance gear. Low stamina, less strength but on melee mobs u outperform people with the new.. lets just suck it all up gear with ease.

[arel00]

thats nice.. but a decent geared warrior and/or pally will get hit about 50% less then a drood. Have to take that into account, the odds u get hit 3 time in a row is higher then the odds a warrior or pally will get hit twice in a short time span.

Uhm, yes and no. They certanly do have a higher chance not to receive a direct hit, but that is due to block on top of the rest. But their avoindance and ours (and by avoidance I mean *total avoidance*, thus not block) aren't on such a different level. Which we compensate with larger health pools and (hopefully) higher armor.

As far as I see it, tanks situation is currently: Druid>Warrior/Pala>DK. When T7-T8 will become the average gear, my guess would be Druid/Pala>Warrior/DK. While I may be terribly wrong on DKs, I don't know them well enoguh yet, the ones I fear the most now are paladins. WAY more than warriors.

[Shifthappend]

thats nice.. but a decent geared warrior and/or pally will get hit about 50% less then a drood. Have to take that into account, the odds u get hit 3 time in a row is higher then the odds a warrior or pally will get hit twice in a short time span.

Not really ... I Have about 36% dodge unbuffed ... which equal the amount of dodge/parry of the pal/war, But in raid buff, I get an increase to 42%, which is over the other tanks.... If we folow what you just said there .. DK are the best tank because they get hit for less ...

Now with block... Block is only good with low hitting monster ... Have you seen a boss hitting for low dmg ? not really .... Bear are the best tank right now ... stop QQ'in like noobs and learn to play.

[Dooudad]

in all honesty were not that bad off, as long as the other tanks dont boost their perry to much and dodge stays how it is for them, we wont be to horrable compared to them from a healers standpoint. (50% more hp is nice but haveing to heal you 2x as offten isnt)

our only problem there is unlike pallys and warriors we cant fall back and say bring me i can aoe tank! cuse yeah we can aoe dammage better then otehr tanks but we cant aoe threat better.

[Solare]

must agree thought that the removal of crushing blows has hurt warriors and pally's a lot more then droods. Blizz seems to want to reduce tanking into just dps'ing and taking every hit, instead of trying to avoid as much as possible. Hard to find decent dodge items these days. Seems like blizz just wants us (me beeing pally tank) to  stack strength and stamina and just suck it all up like druids have been doing. Which is sad cuz it removes the differences between the different tanks.

Personally i feel blizz has gone to too much extend to allow DK to tank. It would've been impossible for them to get uncrushable (red. parry is a louzy stat to stack if u want uncrushability also due to parrygibbing most people during TBC tried to stay away from parry) and they cant suck up crushing blows like druids can. So blizz must've just decided to dump the whole thing and make tanking into just standing there and sucking it up.

That's an excellent point.  One that might explain the rather ease of tanking right now in Wrath.  (The gather all the mobs up and AoE tank'em strategy)  Excluding super-hard hitting bosses in 25-mans, my tanking friends and I have found that tanking is a bore.  Even warriors in heroics are passing on the use of cc to get their jobs done.

But the additon of DKs into the tanking mix has thrown the tanking senario for a loop.  It does seem like Blizz made things weaker to compensate for the unusual mechanics of DK tanking.  Dodge tanking works for bears because they have huge armor and stamina, scaling issues aside... especially with diminishing returns.   =(  But parry tanking?  DKs would need even more armor and stamina than a bear just to deal with parry gibbing issues with that system.  Time will tell, but in my opinion, DKs have thrown a monkey wrench into what was becoming a solid tanking system.

BTW, Paladin scaling seems to be a little too good right now to me, too.

[Razac]

Real number from 25 naxx ...

I'm a 80 druid

Patchwork Hateful strike was hitting me for 19k

on the warrior .. he was getting hit for 22k

on the pal .. hes was getting hit for 26k

now those 2 tanks have an average of 30k health buffed ... which mean they die in 2 strikes

I have 43k health buffed ... I die in 3 strikes ...

Bear are overpowered ... I can hit cap armor with a shaman/priest 25% buff ...

I have 33k health unbuffed and am uncritsable by talent ...

What are you QQ'in for ?

what gear are you in?

[Koumaru]

It would've been impossible for them to get uncrushable (red. parry is a louzy stat to stack if u want uncrushability also due to parrygibbing most people during TBC tried to stay away from parry)

But parry tanking? DKs would need even more armor and stamina than a bear just to deal with parry gibbing issues with that system.

I think you have it a bit backwards: parry gibbing happens when the boss parries you, not when you parry the boss. Parry is the best avoidance stat after chance to be missed (which is why it's an expensive stat). Stacking it won't get you gibbed more often. If you want to avoid being parry gibbed, stack Expertise Rating, don't avoid Parry Rating.

[ajthebest1]

Real number from 25 naxx ...

I'm a 80 druid

Patchwork Hateful strike was hitting me for 19k

on the warrior .. he was getting hit for 22k

on the pal .. hes was getting hit for 26k

now those 2 tanks have an average of 30k health buffed ... which mean they die in 2 strikes

I have 43k health buffed ... I die in 3 strikes ...

Bear are overpowered ... I can hit cap armor with a shaman/priest 25% buff ...

I have 33k health unbuffed and am uncritsable by talent ...

What are you QQ'in for ?

Armor cap you say? 50k armor in T7? Lol.. nice joke. Even if you say that you have a staff with armor on it, that would still not put you up for 50k armor. Even if you had around 8000 armor in caster form (which you do not with the gear you have on), you would hit around 38k armor with inspiration (25%.. as you stated above).

If Patchwerk hits you for 19k... 19k X2 = 38. 43 - 38 = 5k
If Patchwerk hits warrio for 22k... 22k x1 = 22k. 30-22 = 8k

Even if you have your melee dps slime themselves they will get hit by the next hateful strike, so it will not matter. You are only supposed to be taking one hateful strike before you get healed back to full (point 1). Your warrior is really undergeared if you are trying to tell me they only have 30k hp while you are at 43k (point 2). If your paladin is taking 26k hits then s/he should not be in 25 man naxx because thats way too undergeared (point 3).

Druids are not OP, nor are they underpowered. It has been proven on many occasions that druids will not scale, but the devs choose to not bother with that right now and want to just buff them once they start to lag behind. My opinion on the matter is that that is very poor design and a horrible business rule, but I don't have any power to change this matter.

must agree thought that the removal of crushing blows has hurt warriors and pally's a lot more then droods. Blizz seems to want to reduce tanking into just dps'ing and taking every hit, instead of trying to avoid as much as possible. Hard to find decent dodge items these days. Seems like blizz just wants us (me beeing pally tank) to stack strength and stamina and just suck it all up like druids have been doing. Which is sad cuz it removes the differences between the different tanks.

You are mistaken, my friend. Removing crushing blows provides a larger benefit to warriors and paladins than it does to druids. Druids can eat crushing blows because of their high armor and high stm. Warriors and paladins can not, and most of the fights in WotLK have stuns, silences etc etc, which would disable warriors and pallies to put up their shield block abilities.

The reason warriors were prefered over druids in TBc was not because of crushes (imo)... it was because the fights were created to benefit warriors (shield wall, last stand, spell reflect etc). Making fights like Kael, and Illidan just enforce the point that your MT should have spell reflect and shield block respectively or they can not tank the final encounters.

It would've been impossible for them to get uncrushable (red. parry is a louzy stat to stack if u want uncrushability also due to parrygibbing most people during TBC tried to stay away from parry)

Parry is the best avoidance stat in the game (period). IT was not stacked in TBC because there was no gear for it. Its like stacking haste once you have access to gear which gives some +equip.

thats nice.. but a decent geared warrior and/or pally will get hit about 50% less then a drood. Have to take that into account, the odds u get hit 3 time in a row is higher then the odds a warrior or pally will get hit twice in a short time span.

At the Naxx gear level, thats a horrible exaggeration.

Currently, I am the best tank in the guild even though our warrior has maybe 3-4k hp under me and many many more epixs. The simple fact is that me switching from 70 epics to 80 epics doesn't give me a big enough armor buff for it to truly matter. It is true that 80 gear has much more stamina on it, but a lot of druids out there don't really switch anything out of sunwell until they start doing Naxx 25.

I'm hoping that something is added to make the feral spec a bit more fun (mainly from an itemizatin point of view).

[arel00]

Armor cap has been stated to be 44k, not 50k. While it doesdn't negate your assumption, it is surely a huge difference when it comes to hit that.

So GC said, I kinda guess he's an informed guy

[ajthebest1]

Armor cap has been stated to be 44k, not 50k. While it doesdn't negate your assumption, it is surely a huge difference when it comes to hit that.

So GC said, I kinda guess he's an informed guy

Against a level 83 mob? You are mistaken.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Armor

http://rehfeld.us/wow/damage-reducti...83&armor=49999

45k might be the cap against level 80 mobs, but Patchwerk isn't one ^^

I'm amazed GC gave a number. He is known to not give those out.

[rohendar]

Now with block... Block is only good with low hitting monster ... Have you seen a boss hitting for low dmg ? not really .... Bear are the best tank right now ... stop QQ'in like noobs and learn to play.

I can only agree with this. It's a lot easier to gear as a druid, just because of the defence for all the other tanks. With way more armor and HP, atm feral druids in our guild are the only suitable tanks for Patchwerk. I'm feeling the love for feral druids and I must say atm, we are the best tank.

In time we might scale less, because of the other tanks getting mitigation from Strength, but that's the future and I'm sure it will get fixed. Especially with the amount of QQ that goes on already now.

[Avermra]

The issue that Druids MAY (which means that it can, but not necessarily will, happen, is the fact that we scale with only 2 stats, which is Armor and Dodge (may it be through agility, defense, or dodge rating). Stamina does NOT scale a tank. For better or for worse, stamina is the single stat that scales the best with bears. This leaves 2 kind of options for feral tanks.

1.Take advantage of the huge hp we receive from just default stat of gear, and completely gem for avoidance.
2.Gem for stamina and then be very happy when you look at your lol unbuffed 300k life (minor exaggeration, right?).

Which one is going to save your healer mana (now that mana actually matters?). And which one will actually save you from dying? (while 300k life may guarantee you that never die in this expansion, 40k hp won't)

Basically this means that after getting sufficient stamina, druids have only one way to go for mitigation : Agility (it is still better than dodge rating, point of point, after taken into considering of SoTF and BoK). This used to not be a problem because agility scaled very well. Now, with the nerfed agility, as well as diminshed return on avoidance, the scaling can (again, just can, not necessarily will) be problematic.

Going to the case for Warrior and Paladin, they gain avoidance with both parry and dodge. In addition, Block is becoming a very important stat. With 1000 Block Value, and assuming a boss hits for 10k per swing after armor mitigation. 1000 damage blocked is a flat 10% damage reduction on top of all the existing things (armor, defensive stance, etc). On bosses that swings very fast, but doesn't hit as hard, Block becomes even more valuable.

Another fundamental problem with scaling with fewer stat is the fact that with the exception of sockets, items will have increased cost on attributes if the attribute is abnormally high, in terms of item budget (for example, 60 agility vs 40 agility 40 strength may have the same item budget), that limitation may hurt druids as now we share gear with Rogue, which has only 1 mitigation stat (agility).

Can scaling become a problem? Definitely. Will it definitely become a problem? not necessarily. Although personally I don't like the cries of "the sky is falling", this one is a valid concern and should be monitored carefully.