Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[exochaft]

There is a balance to be had. I've had tons of scenarios where it'S completly safe to spam maul/heroic strike on progression content, and i'Ve never died, never got told i required too much healing... there are just fights with less tank damage where you can squeeze every bit of damage possible.

Unfortunately this is never the case. Ever.

Tanks that emphasize DPS die more often. My most frustrating nights in MoP were progression nights where a DPS focused tank kept dying.

Also tank DPS was far less important in 25 man. 20 man will probably be much closer to 25 man in this regard than it will 10 man.

To be fair, it depended upon the tank class and the encounter. For Guardians, you could pick a DPS build and not have to worry about dying, unlike DK's for example... so as long as you had enough survivability for your group, bears could just go DPS-mode with gearing. There were also some fights where tank damage was nuts, especially in the early weeks of progression when compared to DPSers, and gearing choices to could make a huge difference in damage output with negligible effect on survivability. There were also fights where damage was not important, just execution and survival.

Out of all the SoO encounters, I'd say Siegecrafter Blackfuse was the fight where there was a conscious decision about what damage a tank could do regardless of how survivable they were. I suppose technically the last bosses in SoO had a similar feel for tanks, since maximizing damage was insanely important early in progression, forcing tanks into playing like a DPSer. While proportionally to raid size, the amount of damage a tank does overall is smaller in a 25man compared to the rest of the roster, it was still very important to the execution of the encounters where occasionally seconds count (such as heroic Garrosh).

Moving into WoD, where *hopefully* tank damage is fairly even across the board in most situations, the amount of damage a tank does will still have some impact. Since we'll have less customization with our gear, the gap between gearing for survivability and gearing for DPS should get smaller if designed properly. As a long-time tank, I've rather missed gearing for survivability since MoP made that mostly pointless, but I don't fancy returning to where tank damage is nonexistent and trivial at best. We also have to keep in mind that tank survivability and damage is likely balanced around the average player, so skilled players can take advantage of any wiggle room in the survivability or DPS department.

[Arielle]

Gearing for survivability and damage is basically the same thing - except for Weapons. Higher item level weapons will always beat lower level for DPS, it doesn't matter what stats are on it.

Similarly, a single stat item with Bonus Armor (say, a trinket) will beat a higher item level item that doesn't have Bonus Armor - for both Survivability and Damage. But both of those are by design.

Otherwise, pretty much all stats seem to provide a remarkably similar survivability and DPS boost with the noticeable exception of Crit. Crit is even with the other 4 secondaries for DPS (Mastery, Versatility, Haste, Multistrike) but goddamn terrible for survival, at least right now. Which means you outright avoid Crit if at all humanly possible.

Overall though, the concept of gearing for either DPS or Survivability is pretty much dead in Warlords.

[Dreyen]

honestly, gearing for dps never appealed to me, it was too gimmicky. I'd rather do my high dps by doing my rotation flawlessly and executing mechanics as efficiently as possible. I was really happy about bear bis stats being bis dps stats at the same time in MoP...

[exochaft]

Gearing for survivability and damage is basically the same thing - except for Weapons. Higher item level weapons will always beat lower level for DPS, it doesn't matter what stats are on it.

Similarly, a single stat item with Bonus Armor (say, a trinket) will beat a higher item level item that doesn't have Bonus Armor - for both Survivability and Damage. But both of those are by design.

Otherwise, pretty much all stats seem to provide a remarkably similar survivability and DPS boost with the noticeable exception of Crit. Crit is even with the other 4 secondaries for DPS (Mastery, Versatility, Haste, Multistrike) but goddamn terrible for survival, at least right now. Which means you outright avoid Crit if at all humanly possible.

Overall though, the concept of gearing for either DPS or Survivability is pretty much dead in Warlords.

The other exception is trinkets, as I've seen some stamina ones floating around during the questing process. Don't know if there would be raid-level trinkets of that ilk as I haven't even cared to look (likely answer is yes), but there will be some adjustments that are possibly made. Not much, though.

That all being said, it's both good and bad if all the secondary stats provide similar survivability and DPS benefits. The good part is that anything that drops, regardless of secondary stats, is useful. The bad part is that if there's no real difference regardless of how I gear myself, that's not really fun. As I've been mentioning in several posts about my fear of there being a "wrong" way to gear, that doesn't necessarily mean it's okay that every way to gear is pretty much equal in terms of outcome. I understand that there will be varying results depending upon the stats allocations and the situation finds oneself in, however I'd prefer that our choices have a sizable amount of meaning to them. I suppose that's pretty hard in practice.

[Dreyen]

There will definitely be a king dps stat and a way to gear dps, same with survival. Could happen that best survival stats are the same as dps though

- - - Updated - - -

Guessing it's a tooltip bug... but when i was raid testing tonight, both me and my warrior co-tank were at 85% damage reduction from armor.

[Arielle]

That all being said, it's both good and bad if all the secondary stats provide similar survivability and DPS benefits. The good part is that anything that drops, regardless of secondary stats, is useful. The bad part is that if there's no real difference regardless of how I gear myself, that's not really fun.

There are differences in play though, which is what makes it interesting. Want to push buttons faster? Get Haste. Want a slower, more methodical playstyle? Go for Mastery and versatility. Want pure survival? MS and Mastery. All are empirically of similar effectiveness, but play vastly differently.

There will definitely be a king dps stat and a way to gear dps, same with survival. Could happen that best survival stats are the same as dps though

Best DPS stat is Weapon Damage, followed by Agility, followed by Bonus Armor. Everything else is so close together you won't notice the difference.

[teddabear]

There is a balance to be had. I've had tons of scenarios where it'S completly safe to spam maul/heroic strike on progression content, and i'Ve never died, never got told i required too much healing... there are just fights with less tank damage where you can squeeze every bit of damage possible.

I think everybody needs to specify 10man or 25man for this kind of discussion because they are completely different in respect to tank damage. Tank damage is very important in 10 man and not important at all in 25. Squandering puills on a progression night to tank deaths is just wasteful. If you can put out good DPS without dying more power to you but only if you are not dying. If you are concerned about how you ranked on a boss you are playing the wrong role.

Personally I prefer to be able to tell the healers don't worry about me, always heal the raid first.

[Dreyen]

I think everybody needs to specify 10man or 25man for this kind of discussion because they are completely different in respect to tank damage. Tank damage is very important in 10 man and not important at all in 25. Squandering puills on a progression night to tank deaths is just wasteful. If you can put out good DPS without dying more power to you but only if you are not dying. If you are concerned about how you ranked on a boss you are playing the wrong role.

Personally I prefer to be able to tell the healers don't worry about me, always heal the raid first.

I played both, never had healers complain about my damage taken ever either... Never said I died, I honestly very rarely felt that tank damage was ever a concern in most cases, unless you cheese things like heroic garrosh or do something wrong like taking extra stacks on iron juggernaut.

I was not trying to rank either, I was trying to be optimal, a tank is not just about survival, even if the role might lead you to think so, it's about the overall package you bring. It's the same for dps, they aren't just there to deal dps, but they are also expected to reduce the damage they take. Believe me, when I felt threatened in terms of damage, i definitely slacked back on the DPS part. One thing I can say though, I've never cheesed vengeance... I've never had a chance to actually try and rank to do that.

[exochaft]

There are differences in play though, which is what makes it interesting. Want to push buttons faster? Get Haste. Want a slower, more methodical playstyle? Go for Mastery and versatility. Want pure survival? MS and Mastery. All are empirically of similar effectiveness, but play vastly differently

In theory, it should work that way, but in practice with what we have available the play style is not really different. With the reduced customization of individual stats (via sockets/reforging we've had in MoP), going for that one or even two stats in abundance won't necessarily change the feel of the rotation or play style since we're going to likely have a good amount of other secondaries we don't want taking up the budget along with the increased number of actual secondary stats and combinations found on gear. It's not like MoP where we only had 3 secondary stats (ignoring hit/exp) and we could stack one insanely well, which made noticeable differences in game play. Chances are if you aim for a stats pair, you'll end up with a pretty even spread of all secondary stats regardless of making a conscious decision to aim for two stats.

From a balance perspective, it all works out in the end and we'll be less of a slave to gear drops in order to be effective, but to have that one individual play style and stat allocation will likely take much more work, assuming it will be even feasible. Best bet for bears in terms of altering play style will likely be haste, since it pairs well with any stat and literally changes the pace of the rotation... and it's only one stat versus two.

[Gemini Soul]

With how Flasks/Food are now, I wonder if enc/gem MS and then use Haste food/flask for magic fights or mastery for physical fights would be a good balanced way to handle them or enc wep with MS and other slots with versatility while using the same Haste/Mastery food/flask based on the fight. Hard Core Progression wise we will obviously swap enchants around a lot.

[Braindwen]

Guardian of Elune:

Shouldn't this reduce the rage cost of SD too? Making SD available more often was a step in the right direction, but it doesn't fully fix the issue that higher dodge makes the talent worse. You go from spending 60 rage for 100% dodge for 3s to spending 60 rage for 80-90% dodge for 3s, and simply making SD available more often doesn't fix it getting less rage-efficient as dodge goes up. Not exactly a big deal (it's like 5-10 rage off the ability), but something I was thinking of today.

[Arielle]

I started out in my head saying that it didn't need that, but you're right that it totally does.

Adding the recharge time reduction fixed the problem of it being a DTPS loss, but it caused another problem: Net Rage Loss.

At 9 seconds, SD costs ~6.6666 RPS to maintain. At just 15% Dodge, this amount increases to ~7.66666 RPS. In order to offset that net loss, you would need to add 1200 Haste or Crit rating just to break even for picking the talent in the first place for the first tier of raiding. Good luck trying to actually gain any Rage over the course of the expansion after that.

[Dreyen]

I made some napkin math.. might be totally wrong, but felt like guardian of elune was barely better than non-guardian in terms of overall damage reduction... kinda sad.

Kinda wish it was 4sec, 3 is awfully short. Even if i wanted to use it reverse, prioritizing FR over SD, it feels werid because FR drops you to 40 rage, unable to SD. I think it def needs to lower SD's rage cost though.

Pulverize forcing me to choose between aoe and pulverize uptime on beastmaster darmac was sadface today in raid testing You could dodge the armor debuffs from the elekk beast though!

[Braindwen]

It's still bugged on beta, so you can keep it going for ~21-27s at a time. Try it on any sort of AoE pack, it's fun.

But yes, it's not really that great. It was, before the change, already a loss to use. Even when it's fully fixed to play nice with passive dodge, it's still not *that* much stronger than regular SD (100% for 3s vs. 45% for 6s, literally like adding 5% dodge to SD from an overall PoV). Its main draw is the guarantee, though, and of course Pulverize should really be brought down quite a bit below 20% one of these days.

[Yxiomel]

I aws thinking that Guardian of Elune should give a fixed number of "dodge seconds", and so the more base dodge you have, the longer its uptime should be (rather than the less its CD becomes). Currently, SD gives 45*6=270 dodge seconds; GoE gives 3*100=300 dodge seconds if you have 0 base dodge, but only gives 270 dodge seconds at 10% base dodge 240 at 20% base etc etc.

What I propose would increase GoE's duration as that base dodge goes up: at 10% base dodge it would last 3.33 seconds [90*3.33=300], at 20% base dodge it would last 3.75s [80*3.75=300] and so on. Duration = 300 / (100 - base dodge%).

This would keep the rage per dodge second constant.

[l2p4]

Personal opinion.
SD & DoE useless atm comparing to FR.

beastmaster darmac for example:
78,233.6 DTPS(a), btw 25% absorbed and its 660 pvp gear for multistrike, not even mastery
34,477.0 HPS(a)
as mentioned above its aoe encounter so Pulverize uptime was 19.56% only for me, coz we had problem dpsing the adds.
GoE would be reasonble only after we get DBM timers to mitigate huge nukes, as for SD i dont see any advantages on tank's dummy testing while FR gives you 220-250k heals with resolve. Mastery build + Pulverize + FR rage dumping give you so must sustained damage mitigation while healers gonna love you for making there's life so much easy rather then make a wish for RNG god and pray for dodge to proc when ur hp drops low.

Sry for my english.

[Dreyen]

Frenzied regen is definitely getting nerfed though. Every boss i tested so far, i can live for so long without anyone healing me.

The dodge second formula is what i made up with my napkin math, which is why it felt like it did so little.. Yes it does avoid with a 100% chance, but i thought the talent should have an increase in damage reduction that is significant if there is no timings to match.. Right now, it seems like the only point in taking it is if you can cheese a fight, otherwise it's pulverize or go home, even if pulverize gets nerfed to 10-5%

[Arielle]

Frenzied regen is definitely getting nerfed though. Every boss i tested so far, i can live for so long without anyone healing me.

Wouldn't be surprised if Resolve gets nerfed to post-DR damage, rather than pre-DR damage.

[Braindwen]

I aws thinking that Guardian of Elune should give a fixed number of "dodge seconds", and so the more base dodge you have, the longer its uptime should be (rather than the less its CD becomes). Currently, SD gives 45*6=270 dodge seconds; GoE gives 3*100=300 dodge seconds if you have 0 base dodge, but only gives 270 dodge seconds at 10% base dodge 240 at 20% base etc etc.

What I propose would increase GoE's duration as that base dodge goes up: at 10% base dodge it would last 3.33 seconds [90*3.33=300], at 20% base dodge it would last 3.75s [80*3.75=300] and so on. Duration = 300 / (100 - base dodge%).

This would keep the rage per dodge second constant.

Main problem with that is something that was a problem with 4s GoE. 1.5s boss swing timers are (somewhat) standard, and hopefully remain that way. 3s is guaranteed to cover 2 swings and no more than 2, something like that would cover 2-3 based on fraction-of-a-second timing on the bear's part. Annoying as all heck, I assure you.


Also, yeah, I'm worried about FR being worth using above SD always when just tanking a boss. Resolve isn't even that much of a culprit, it's doing its job of scaling much more poorly than vengeance (SD catches up as boss damage goes up), the main culprit is gear scaling. The only stat that favors SD is stamina, and that's because it nerfs resolve, everything else is at best neutral (dodge, crit, haste, multistrike) or heavily weighted toward FR (AP, armor, Mastery, Versatility). Pulv and Mastery getting nerfed would help that cause, and we know at least one of those has to be nerfed and the other more than likely should, but once our gear starts scaling, SD looks like something you use for AoE/fast hitting single target purely because those dodges help cover its cost.
One reason I wouldn't mind Crit boosting SD's effect as opposed to just passive dodge (with some extra stuff added to GoE's tooltip if needed).

[Dreyen]

Wouldn't be surprised if Resolve gets nerfed to post-DR damage, rather than pre-DR damage.

That wouldn't make sense. Would mean we'd be the only one to work like that. They need to nerf the conversion of resolve to bonus healing/T&C. It doesn't make sense for our active mitigation becoming weaker when we shieldwall and such.