Guardian Buff Inc

[Azshira]

Ghostcrawler:

I mentioned previously (though it very well could have been in another thread) that we have been looking a lot at tank balance. We think tanks surviving short windows of spike damage has been fairly balanced in beta for some time, and indeed we are seeing all tank classes used effectively in beta Challenge Modes and Heroic raid testing.

We have made a few changes to longer-term tank healing required, which will show up both on beta and live very soon. I mentioned that we were initially going to nerf monk and DK, but we now think they and paladins are fine. Instead, the rage tanks required too much healing, so we are causing them to take less damage and have more rage for active mitigation.

Druid
-- Auto attack rage generation increased by 75%.
-- Thick Hide now provides 12% physical damage reduction.

75% = 6.2 Rage currently. It will be 10.85 Rage


Your thoughts? Will this be extremely welcome?

[Deleted]

according to The Inc Bear™ rage from autoattack is 6.25, and therefore the boost will be to 10.9375... roughly 11... that is all fine to me BUT

crits from autoattacks and mangle rewards 15 rage I wonder if those 75% boost will also increase the autoattacks rage when crit, else I feel would be a neft to crit ratings as bear since:
ON live now:
> on a non proc situation before haste and assuming a base 50% critical chance, you autoattack "two and a half times" per mangle application.
>autoattack = 1 crit, 1 regular> 6.25+15 rage. totaling 21,25rage.
>1 mangle = 1 crit 15 rage or 1 regular 5 rage(assuming incarnation) averaging on 10 rage per mangle application.

Total pre-buff = 31.25 rage/6sec.

after buff: with no crit hit rage increase
>autoattack = 1 crit, 1 regular> 10.94+15 rage. totaling 25,94rage.
>1 mangle = 1 crit 15 rage or 1 regular 5 rage(assuming incarnation) averaging on 10 rage per mangle application.

Total after-buff = 35.94 rage/6sec.

after buff: with crit hit rage increase
>autoattack = 1 crit, 1 regular> 10.94+26.25 rage. totaling 37.19 rage.
>1 mangle = 1 crit 15 rage or 1 regular 5 rage(assuming incarnation) averaging on 10 rage per mangle application.


Total after-buff = 47.19 rage/6sec.


I am ofc not taking in account the "half attack" that should account for some extra rage on the long run nor the haste you can get from buffs/gear and any procs too.

From my point of view, crit boosting would be quite a blast but also quite overpowered as base 47.19 rage/6sec would allow us to use SD on CD (till the end of the charges regenerating power) WHILE keeping a nice fair amount of FR resources to heal ourselves, making SD/FR choice obsolete (well, from my experience SD is as mandatory as being in bear form LULZ) but if blizzard do not buff rage on crits, haste will gain a lot of value, as the more autoattacks, the best, since the diference rage-wise between a regular strike and a critical strike will be less than a regular mangle (4.06 rage).

Of course i know that we scale a lot better with crit than with haste but this would allow us to reach a point where crit would provide less RPS(rage per second) than haste way sooner than intended i think.

[Kujako]

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but auto attacks already give around 10 rage which works out to around 7 rage per second... I had assumed the announced change would be to push us to 10 rage per second, or around 15 rage per auto attack hit.

[Deleted]

Although I never tested it myself on live (never went to check the rage from a regular autoattack) i trust The Inc Bear with numbers as the guy went ages on beta testing lots of things, sadly its late and Ill test it tomorrow after im back from work and post the feedback here.

[Hinalover]

In reality this lowered the value of crit, hit, and exp. Once you reach the 6.66 RPS threshold; which has been made A LOT EASIER NOW; the value of these three stats go way down and Mastery and Dodge go up. Basically, what I am saying is the stat values are not changing, just the point in which you switch over from Crit > Hit/Exp > Mastery to Mastery > Crit > Hit / Exp is a lot sooner.

The Thick Hide change though is nice and increases our EH nicely.

[Emenius]

I've been looking for a while. But what exactly is the amount of crit/haste hit and expertise we need for the 6.66 rps?

[exochaft]

I've been looking for a while. But what exactly is the amount of crit/haste hit and expertise we need for the 6.66 rps?

There is no exact magic number for each stat to achieve 6.66 RPS. Each stat increases our RPS in its own way and through various mechanics, so you could have a multitude of combinations to achieve the same goal.

More along the lines of the 12% physical damage reduction, does anyone else find it slightly disturbing that Blizz is almost making it so the tanking classes are looking more similar in terms of their passives? My only concern is that everyone's passives are trending towards Guardian levels, and the reason our passives are the way they are is because our "active mitigation" doesn't guarantee anything. I did get the laugh out of GC's explanation for the paladin buffs... although the risk that Paladins run are the same as any tank would if you don't manage your cooldowns correctly.

[Emenius]

Are there any formula(s) to calculate the amount of rage we get?

[Hinalover]

Right now for the spreadsheets and Rawr, this is the general idea:

Auto Attack = ((10.9375 / (2.5 / (1 + haste %)) + (Crit % * 15)) * (1 - (hit % + exp %))
Mangle = ((0.23701331018518 (estimated MPS) * 5 (7 if SotF)) + (Crit % * 15)) * (1 - (hit % + exp %))
Enrage = 0.5
Life Tap (Symbiosis; though not really recommended) = 2 (30 / 15)

RPS = Auto Attack + Mangle + Enrage + Life Tap

I really need to set up a better rotation for evaluating exactly how many mangles are generated, just I'm not the best at making a Markov process to generate that number.

[Elunedra]

I created an addon about it so I can confirm rage from mangle is rather low, by buffing auto attack rage I think haste becomes a lot more importen not just to reach 6.66 but far beyond with a lot of self healing

[Deleted]

Although the "magic" 6.66 rage per second is something very pretty to account for, I rather have at least 12rps... That way you can glyph FR, and keep FR and SD up all the time (until charges on SD expire) and be something very very powerful with 40% extra healing received( those metter-hog healzords will love you!!!!) and 70% dodge baseline (ofc all this at 85... we gonna suffer so much when mop hits /cry)

My personal experience with active mitigation model was:
I was a bear used to sleep through encounters after the 10th second ( was my OS so i dint used that often) fully agi gemmed with dodge/mastery reforges

Now that my MS is back to guardian, I found myself being one-shooted if i let SD down... switched gemming to pure STA (F%&$" socket bonus!!!!) and reforged to crit/hit
Now im taking all the bosses almost sleeping again :P Agi, for me is not for bears anymore... I just lost 2.ish %dodge and 1.7ish% crit from full agi to full stam and attack power form agi this days count for noting really, since our FR heal comes from vengeance alone and vengeance alone is the big bulk on our tps generator so... full stamina!!!

Right now... I don't see mastery dodge ratings to be that attractive vs the sheer power of stamina as stam grants EH and all the others grant a chance of increased EH... and for that I have SD...
/correct me if I'm wrong :P

[Grubjuice]

too much math
bears are not good at math, bears are much better at knocking over trash cans and breaking into mini-vans to find hot dogs.

regardless, a buff is, in general, a buff. even if it reduces the relative value of crit rating in a rating ranking system it does overall increase the viability of bear tanking, so I am all for it.

[Deleted]

too much math
bears are not good at math, bears are much better at knocking over trash cans and breaking into mini-vans to find hot dogs.

regardless, a buff is, in general, a buff. even if it reduces the relative value of crit rating in a rating ranking system it does overall increase the viability of bear tanking, so I am all for it.

AHAHAHAH!!!! lovely!!! really a nice nice comeout! ahahaha!

Now on the right track, bears NEED math and I came to the conclusion that right now, mangle and mangle procs need to be used ASAP as the rage a mangle accounts for range about to 46%~47% of total rage generated (more with procs, less with haste) , with this autoattack buff, mangle will account for about 28% total rage (again, more with procs, less with haste) so... seems that eventually we can reach a nice model that we only NEED to push SD/FR as mandatory and just faceroll all the other buttons for mashing power effect since the bulk of our rage generation will come from a "passive method" AKA autoattack. Anyway, right now if you need extra rage you can pop enrage, berserk and incarnation, and those CD's used wisely will be way more powerful than the mangle used on CD.
This really gives Grubjuice's quote a really new meaning... math? no! we only need to go and trump trash cans because our faceroll nature is backed up by math! BARE DROOD LOL!

[Kujako]

For what ever reason, I get 10+ rage per auto attack, non crit hit on live right now (shrug).

[uzumati]

For what ever reason, I get 10+ rage per auto attack, non crit hit on live right now (shrug).

Both buffs were added to live with Tuesdays restart.

Tooltip fixes for Thick Hide coming in next client update.

[rated]

For what ever reason, I get 10+ rage per auto attack, non crit hit on live right now (shrug).

I guess soon ended up being true hahah

[Kujako]

I guess soon ended up being true hahah

Well... I dont FEEL buffed, and 10 rage per hit works out to the same RPS I thought I used to have. Cant think of a good way to confirm that the 12% damage reduction is in place, but the tool tip is not updated.

[Azshira]

My druid bear alt does feel somewhat buffed I'm pleased /hug smelly bear butt

[Hinalover]

Well... I dont FEEL buffed, and 10 rage per hit works out to the same RPS I thought I used to have. Cant think of a good way to confirm that the 12% damage reduction is in place, but the tool tip is not updated.

First the buffs where implemented a few hours after Ghost made the announcement on Tuesday afternoon. Secondly the tooltip update requires a patch. I'm just surprised the tooltip wasn't added to the latest build that is being sent to the PTR and Beta, considering the updated the tooltips for the Warrior changes in that one.

[Azshira]

First the buffs where implemented a few hours after Ghost made the announcement on Tuesday afternoon. Secondly the tooltip update requires a patch. I'm just surprised the tooltip wasn't added to the latest build that is being sent to the PTR and Beta, considering the updated the tooltips for the Warrior changes in that one.

Most likely an over-sight on the notes.