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2008-10-28 06:13:46
Ghostcrawler - Any news?
We are still worried about these issues:

1. Feral Mana Pools are very limited, is there a planned fix for this?

2. Protector of the Pack limitation mechanic - not very fun, what was the thinking behind this and can the limitation be removed?

3. Feral talent point usage in resto tree, means we have to focus too many points on a non-feral tree, also very difficult to get all the "tanking" talents offered, no room for pvp choices in a tanking build - is this intended?

4. Swipe / Thorns combo (360') Aoe. Is it possible to get a 360' upgrade to our bear form aoe ability?

5. Feral Itemization issue 1: Too much Armor on some earlier tanking weapons compared to 25 man naxx gear is this intended?

6. Feral Itemization issue 2: Not enough "Armor" trinkets in game making them invaluable to druids, basically once you have these trinkets you will not grab anything else unless you reach armor cap. - Can more armor trinkets be added, with different usage stats?

7. Feral Itemization issue 3: Tanking gear - PVP gear seems to be better for tanking, more stam, why is this the case?

8. Kitty AOE - Kitty form basically has no aoe ability, which limits damage output in multiple mob situations - we would have to switch to bear / caster which would mean taking a chance on pulling aggro or doing minimal damage with hurricane. Are there plans to add kitty form aoe?

9. Cat charge being linked to Bear charge. - Why is this the intended mechanic for these two attacks?

10. Berserk - The current version of Berserk feels weak now that the immunity to all snares has been removed, and its cooldown is too long. - Is there any way the snares functionality of berserk can be restored?

11. Savage Roar - Is it possible to have it persist through shifting?

GC,

Visuals and fun factor are big issues for the druid community - these items have been discussed in the past and basically need to be addressed as soon as possible. As pointed out in other threads we are concerned with our overall character look, which needs a refresh, and we would like to have our gear progression show through forms, we should also not be limited in using costumes.

Please any info on any of these issues would be great.

Thanks.

Edited - 10/29/2008.

[ Post edited by Xaamau ]
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Xaamau
2008-10-29 14:30:16
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
Q u o t e:
1. Feral Mana Pools are very limited, is there a planned fix for this?


It's something we are still looking at. The way mana regens now when you're in a form feels like it's enough to let you occasionally use that mana for something. We think you will probably still go dry quickly if you're healing a lot (which ultimately isn't something we want Feral to do a lot) or if you're chain shapeshifting (which is also something we don't want you ideally doing a lot, but recognize sometimes you need to -- dealing with a Frost mage perhaps.)

Q u o t e:
2. Protector of the Pack limitation mechanic - not very fun, what was the thinking behind this and can the limitation be removed?


I've avoided this debate for a long time because it seems to really, really upset people that they can't do something they really, really want to do in a very niche case. Bear isn't designed to be something you run around solo to kill things in, and even if you want to do so anyway, your damage reduction shouldn't be a big deal. It's designed as a tanking talent and "solo tanking" is sort of nonsensical. Bear itself works fine without it, and in fact you can even tank just fine without it as long as you aren't doing progression raiding. (If it affected your dps or something, I'd be a lot more convinced.)

Q u o t e:
3. Feral talent point usage in resto tree, means we have to focus too many points on a non-feral tree, also very difficult to get all the "tanking" talents offered, no room for pvp choices in a tanking build - is this intended?


We designed the new Feral tree with Omen as a trade-off. If we ever moved Omen around, we would also juggle Feral talents. We don't want you to be able to get all Feral talents and OoC. You can be a good bear, good cat, get good PvP talents or get Omen. But you can't do it all with one build.

Q u o t e:
4. Swipe / Thorns combo (360') Aoe. Is it possible to get a 360' upgrade to our bear form aoe ability?


We don't think too many druids are having trouble using Swipe in its new form. A little difference among class abilities that are otherwise very similar is probably good for the game.

Q u o t e:
5. Feral Itemization issue 1: Too much Armor on some earlier tanking weapons compared to 25 man naxx gear is this intended?


Do you mean you're going to keep using the older weapon instead of the Naxx bear staff?

Q u o t e:
6. Feral Itemization issue 2: Not enough "Armor" trinkets in game making them invaluable to druids, basically once you have these trinkets you will not grab anything else unless you reach armor cap. - Can more armor trinkets be added, with different usage stats?


My suspicion is you are still over-valuing armor compared to other defensive stats. I realize you don't want block or parry but that doesn't mean it's armor or nothing.

Q u o t e:
7. Feral Itemization issue 3: Tanking gear - PVP gear seems to be better for tanking, more stam, why is this the case?


PvP gear pays a lot more of its item budget on resilience than it did in BC so you're going to be giving up something else (like Agi) to use it. Also make sure you are comparing PvP gear to PvE gear of the same item level.

Q u o t e:
8. Kitty AOE - Kitty form basically has no aoe ability, which limits damage output in multiple mob situations - we would have to switch to bear / caster which would mean taking a chance on pulling aggro or doing minimal damage with hurricane. Are there plans to add kitty form aoe?


Hurricane and Swipe do pretty good AE, certainly better than rogues have (on which cat was modeled).

Q u o t e:
9. Cat charge being linked to Bear charge. - Why is this the intended mechanic for these two attacks?


We think this would encourage quickly shifting from one form to another, which is something we have actually taken pains to discourage (RIP powershifting).

Q u o t e:
10. Berserk - The current version of Berserk feels weak now that the immunity to all snares has been removed, and its cooldown is too long. - Is there any way the snares functionality of berserk can be restored?


We thought it was too good if it broke all snares and granted such a great dps increase.

Q u o t e:
11. Savage Roar - Is it possible to have it persist through shifting?


Same answer. We don't want to add anything else to the class that encourages you to say go cat, use an ability, then go back to bear. Changing forms is cool. Changing forms to buff yourself in one form then going to another isn't what we're going for. If you're a cat and shift to humanoid to heal or decurse or bear to survive when being attacked -- that's cool and what the Feral design is all about. It's when you start to chain several shifts together that we get uncomfortable.
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Ghostcrawler
2008-10-29 14:52:52
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
Q u o t e:
I use cat in short bursts when I feel like the opportunity to survive is there, but this seems to indicate you want people staying in cat OR bear for extended periods.


No, that's not exactly it. Using cat in short bursts is awesome. Shifting out of feral to Innervate or Rebirth is cool, even if you immediately go feral again. Where it starts to cross the line is being a bear, going cat to hit a button, then going back to bear to benefit from the cat button. Doing feral charge bear, shifting and doing feral charge cat is not what we want. Anything that starts to feel like the old powershifting (changing just to generate mana) is what we're trying to avoid.

If it helps, think about it this way: shifting once in a small window is cool. Shifting several times in a small window is less cool.
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Ghostcrawler
2008-10-29 16:01:59
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
Q u o t e:
So we will pay a penalty for having versatility that we can only use to poor effect, occasionally. Nice!


We considered a model where the druid was the jack of all trades and master of all, but decided that might cause problems.

Q u o t e:
GC, this is simply not true. PvP gear at the same ilvl of PvE gear has at least as much and often more stamina and agility as that PvE gear. What it gives up is AP, armor pen, haste and crit rating - which is not all that special for tanking right now. I've done this comparison a number of times, but if you look at the same ilvl items in PvE and PvP for the belt/boots/bracer slots and include gems, the PvP gear comes out better for tanking than the PvE gear.


If you can give me a few specific examples, I can look into it.

Q u o t e:
The Beast Within is too good? The Beast Within is a raw increase of damage at about the same level with the changes to BM, 10 points lower in the tree, on a talented/glyphed cooldown of about 35% of Berserk's cooldown. How is that significantly less powerful than Berserk?


You can’t just compare abilities between two different classes. I’m sure hunters would gladly trade Freezing Arrow for Cyclone or the ability to shapeshift to break CC (or heal, or Inneverate, or...).

Q u o t e:
Basically its a mechanic which hurts us in smaller, non-optimal parties doing heroics.


I get that, but you must admit that is a pretty niche situation – not that you’d be doing small heroics, but the fact that being a bear really hurt you when trying to do so. My take on it is that the people who hate the limitation on the talent just hate the idea of the limitation, not for how it actually limits them (which is still a totally valid way to feel). It would be similar if the talent said “You gain damage reduction but only while wearing a ridiculous green hat.” It is in there just for flavor, but it has been controversial enough that we have talked about removing it. I'm not sure if we will yet, but I believe we understand your concerns.
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Ghostcrawler
2008-10-29 17:19:58
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
Q u o t e:
One comment though .. on beta, it a niche situation. On live it is an almost every raid situation. Is it earth shattering? No, of course not. It is just an annoyance -- and you are right that it is perception (not restating issues, you know them).


I just want to understand - how is it almost every raid situation?

We have tried valiantly to give all 4 tanks very similar tools. They aren't identical, and we don't want players to have the expectation that they will be identical. I don't think this is necessarily the ability in which to put a stake in the ground, because we might end up changing this one, but you get my point.


Q u o t e:
Hateful Glad Robes vs. Heroes' DW Raiments - ilvl 200

73 Agi 74 Agi
103 Stam 90 Stam
44 Crit 54 Crit
90 AP 132 AP
35 Exp
59 Res

Again, Glad has -1 Agi, +13 Stam. Dreamwalker has +10 Crit, +42 AP, +35 Exp.


Okay, yes I have seen these examples before. If you are willing to give up 42 AP and 35 Exp (which is a nominal mitigation stat), then you can increase your health by 130 (plus modifiers). I don't predict many tanks will take that trade, but we'll see. I am sure there are other situations in which you could take an even lower item level that grants you more Stam than that. You are giving up an awful lot of threat stats though. If we start getting a lot of reports about how bears can't hold aggro, I'm going to immediately look to see if they are wearing resilience gear. :)
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Ghostcrawler
2008-10-30 10:51:24
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
On Savage Roar, if the issue is giving it the "Dash treatment" so that when you go back to cat it's still there if the duration hasn't expired, then that seems like something we can do.

On the armor trinkets, my answer was not that armor isn't an amazing stat for bears -- it is. The question was basically something like "I'm going to only look at armor on trinkets and never trade them out," and my answer was that I doubt many bears will take that approach. I understand the strategy in BC was to attempt to max out armor. That may still be desirable or it may not be, largely depending on the encounters. Stacking armor is smart. Stacking armor at the expense of all other stats is not smart. You're going to have to decide when to make those choices as all tanks do.

On the PvP mana issue at 80, I want to understand something. When you say the amount of mana you spend to shift and heal at 80 is proportionately more than at 70, is that because you have some Int on your gear now? We're not trying to be stubborn about this. One of the trickier parts of this job is discerning between when players are complaining because a mechanic legitimately (in our minds) doesn't work, or when they just don't like that we took their class in a different direction than they would have taken the class (or to be fair, when they are asking for buffs just because they want their character to be more powerful). (P.S. Getting snippy or exasperated, even if it's just to demonstrate your passion for the change, is never going to convince us as much as objective logic and cold, hard numbers.)

Heart of the Wild was designed in part so that you healing wasn't terrible when you threw on some healing gear to get through an encounter. It wasn't supposed to be the solution to Feral mana.

On wearing PvP gear to tank, I still don't find those arguments very strong. I just picked one piece at random but I think the same is true with many of them. If you are only looking at Stamina, yes, you can find PvP pieces with more. You could wear green "of the whale" or whatever to have huge amounts of Stamina too, but most players don't do that. I realize maintaining threat is trivial at level 70. I don't think it will be that easy at 80. Consider that we did just buff boss armor, which is a nerf to bear threat. We also designed Naxx to be pretty easy in part because early Karazhan was not. But that doesn't mean you'll waltz through all the Lich King raid content. As a secondary (or tertiary or whatever I'm on now) point, also remember that we did buff tank damage. Part of that is because we want tanks to contribute damage. The days of tanks stacking nothing but effective health and relying on the rest of the group for dps are over. You might find an enrage timer that you can't hit because your tank's dps is so paltry.

TLDR: Are there some PvP pieces that might be useful to wear in your tanking set? Sure. Are all bear tanks going to PvP to get that gear and ignore PvE drops? I kind of doubt that. You are giving up a lot of stats to get marginally better Stamina and in some cases Agi. Resilience is completely useless for bears outside of PvP (where it will help with mana drains etc.)

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Ghostcrawler
2008-10-30 11:10:23
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
Q u o t e:
While we're talking about savage roar, could we get the official word on why its not stacking with Unleashed Rage, Aboms Might, or TSA? Many of us have been reporting it as a bug forever in the beta, and without blue clarification its kind of hard to know.


Yes it should stack. I believe this is fixed, though I don't recall in which build.
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Ghostcrawler
2008-10-31 13:26:50
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
Q u o t e:
It's proportionally more because of no int on the gear, AND because the cost of our spells and shifts are almost double what they are now. If we were able to shift 16 times in a battle before, then if we kept the same mana at 80, but the cost was doubled, we'd only be able to shift 8 times. But since we lose 25% of our mana, we can only shift 6 times before we're completely out of mana. There's a huge difference between 6 and 16. Being unable to shfit much (particularly when the enemy is snaring you and doing other things to prevent you from actually doing damage and proccing ilotp) cripples our versatility, and turns us into a very gimp rogue. And since we're already a gimp warrior in 2v2 and 3v3 (because of our potp's party member limitation), this makes us gimp all around, and not desirable compared to any other melee dps class.


The counter-argument is that when you shift to bear you are regenerating mana in a fashion that totally protects it from drains and the like. It’s not just as simple as giving you more mana or making the shifting cost cheaper. But it is something we’ll take a look at.

Q u o t e:
Well said. It's a real slap in the face to druids because no other class has such a talent that is based on number of players in a party. If this is supposed to be a pvp balance thing for arena or to prevent druids from solo tanking then why are we the only class given this special treatment?


Ooh, busting out the slaps to the face. Well played. :)
I said it’s something we might change. Mostly I wanted to understand if it was an actual balance issue in cases other than niche situations or if it was just something that was just a thorn in your paw. I am pretty sure it’s the latter, but that still doesn’t mean it’s set in stone.

Q u o t e:
iLotP is total mana. This means I regenerate more mana at 70 than I do at 80. At 80 I spend ~35% more on EVERYTHING.

We could change that to base mana I imagine.

Q u o t e:
It makes no sense why a resto or balance druid are allowed to shift more than us when WE are supposed to be the masters of shapeshifting because we are the ones who specced to improve our animalistic side. All we want is to be pvp viable and not be so restricted on mana, I would be lucky if I could even manage an arena fight at this stage with the mana I have now, I wouldnt beable to do anything really.

I’m not sure I would use that line of reasoning. The casters could just as easily say that they are the most fragile so they need the means to escape or deal with melee more than a Feral. It doesn’t invalidate your whole argument, but I don’t think this particular point makes it stronger.

Q u o t e:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/

I didn’t write those and the classes have evolved way beyond what those bullets say. The druid ones say: Animal forms are not as powerful as their counterpart classes and the paladin ones say: No ranged capabilities, except to stop wounded opponents from fleeing and the warrior ones say: No healing ability available.

We’ll get them fixed eventually, but I don’t think players make their arguments any stronger by trying to force us to live up to those old descriptions.

Q u o t e:
I think you need to spend more time on the EJ forums.

If there was a trinket with -100 Stamina and +1000 armor, Druids would wear it. White +Armor items are that overpowered.

Regarding PVP gear for tanking, we're not giving up "a lot of stats to get marginally better Stamina." We're giving up stats which are irrelevant for tanking (AP, strength, expertise past the cap) for Stamina. Tanks generate 7000tps; threat generation is an invalid concern. Therefore, unless the PVE gear provides superior mitigation (like the +armor T6 did) or increased Stamina, then bears will be forced to wear PVP gear in order to have the best survivability while tanking.


We do follow those forums. They have very smart people posting there, but of course they are not right about everything either. You can find many excellent as well as a few mediocre suggestions there. Their best aspect is the signal to noise ratio is very strong. :)

Since you point it out though, one thing I wish our posters could learn from those forums is how to communicate with each other. Our forums have far too many threads where dissenting opinions are ignored instead of addressed.

On the armor thing, I still feel like you are trying to turn this into “GC doesn’t understand Feral itemization.” I realize that line of thinking might make it easier to dismiss our point of view when you disagree with it, but it's not true and not really the issue.

Xaamau’s original concern was “Not enough "Armor" trinkets in game making them invaluable to druids, basically once you have these trinkets you will not grab anything else unless you reach armor cap.” I just don’t think the second part is an issue. Depending on your existing armor and other stats and what other pieces you can upgrade, you are not going to only look at armor on trinkets and ignore everything else they can do. The first part is of more concern if bears have trouble getting the trinkets they need.

Q u o t e:
I think the PvP issue is pretty confusing... at least, I, as a feral druid, am confused as to what your intentions are for feral PvP. It does really seem like we're sort of destined to be a half-baked PvP spec.


That is your conclusion, not what I said. I said that you should not assume that shifting should be a non-decision. Yes, it is very powerful and gives you lots of options. That is in part why we don't want it to be a non-decision. I suspect if asked, most druids would say that shifting should be free and have no cooldown. (To be fair, nobody in this thread has asked for it IIRC.) That would be a good thing for druids (maybe) but a bad thing for the game.
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Ghostcrawler
2008-10-31 14:26:59
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
Q u o t e:
Personally, I'd be much happier if armor was removed from trinkets/necks/rings/staves altogether, and druids were given a talent to convert DPS stats to tanking stats (maybe bump the armor conversion from agi, or turn AP into a bit of dodge). That way we wouldn't have to "steal" necks/rings from plate tanks, and we could use similar accessories for both cat and bear. And if someone in the itemization team slips and lets a 1k armor blue staff through, it isn't immediately heralded as a better tanking staff than any epic in the game. It also gives a smoother progression though the tiers of raiding, since you won't need a separate DPS and tanking staff and only have access to 1 staff per tier.


We have discussed this before, and I do think removing armor completely as a stat has a lot of merit. I do think it would cause a lot of complaints from druids who didn't understand why we were doing it.

I have already expressed my distaste for feral-specific weapons (though I own plenty of them). They are some of the last vestiges of the antiquated system where certain characters are very dependent on relatively uncommon items that cause frustration among other players when they drop. That situation in turn makes the items even rarer, and therefore even more of a big deal when they drop.
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Ghostcrawler
2008-10-31 15:37:22
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
Q u o t e:
+armor items were the solution to not having a shield, and not having +block OR +parry. Without being able to increase our armor, the only way to scale defensively is with dodge. If you take away our ability to scale with +armor, you have to replace it with block or parry, otherwise tanking as a feral after intro-level raids will be nearly impossible (unless you hand us a piece of gear with tons of stam agi & +dodge rating, even though +dodge isn't a great stat for us, and I doubt you'd put dodge rating on stuff we'd replace in those slots, anyway, because then you get evasion tanking rogues. We barely have any scaling defensive talents at level 80 as it is...).

The +feral attack power is on our weapons because we gain ZERO benefit from the DPS/Speed of the weapon. So, as people got better weapons at level 60, they blew feral DPS out of the water completely, because a rogue would equip a new weapon and their DPS would go up by like 100, and ours would go up by 10. You would have to redesign the entire feral DPS mechanic (scaling with weapons), and take away Feral claw attacks (just turn us into a rogue when we shift to cat? lol).


In the case of defensive stats, you would still have stamina, dodge and agility. That is pretty much what you have now except for the armor on jewelry and staves (which as this thread has pointed out cause a lot of problems too). You'd still want armor as a stat -- you'd just get it from the leather you already desire. You would want, for example, heroic leather before going into Naxx.

On the FAP, as others are pointing out, we wouldn't just yank the FAP in a vacuum. Converting weapon damage is the logical choice.

Q u o t e:
We are changing Weapons to automatically adjust feral paw dmg to the appropriate dps number based on the equiped weapon dps. Then we are changing x talent and this Y talent to adjust the scaling of feral dps based on the weapon stats to adjust your feral paw dps for scaling purposes . Theses stats get a conversion percent to armor automatically due to z and a talent. (see further places to speciallize bear vs cat. if you must do that ) Now these percents and these talents may change in the future due to further expansions or scaling issues, this should allow you to equip a broder range of items, thus eliminating the hated feral staff.


Yes, this is the right approach. We tried it when we pulled armor from leather and it still caused many heated discussions for months and one of the reasons I first jumped on these forums. :)

Changing armor would be work, but possible to do within the confines of Lich King (though probably not before it shipped). If we decide to do it, we will make sure you know ASAP so that nobody is struggling to get Defender's Code. Changing feral attack power is more work, but in that case the weapon would still be just as good for you as it is now, so it affects what items you collect less.
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Ghostcrawler
2008-11-03 09:56:32
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
Q u o t e:
If you can make it so those items have less value for us, like armor enchants, while boosting our general armor as someone stated - to make up for the loss - then we basically can ignore high armor rings/necklaces/trinkets, just as we do armor enchants, we would still like to be able to reach cap levels since again that is part of the druid flavor or difference between tanks.

If this change does happen its very important we get equivalent armor values from our modifier or as you stated heroic leather items as we level.

If these items are removed from us, don't leave us weaker, that is the main issue here - removing an item leaving us weaker will force us to use older items.


Yes, we would probably implement it similarly to how you propose it here. I think the net effect would be positive because bears wouldn't be so dependent on the relatively rare, but very powerful for them, armor on jewelry.

Our concerns are that some players inevitably would not like the change. They would either not understand it and consider it a nerf, or they would understand it just fine, but dislike that they couldn't choose to try and gear up as a tank the same way the plate-wearing tanks do. Improving the feral power of non Feral specs is a concern, but since Ferals do need a lot of talents in order to really be survivable, it shouldn't be that big a deal.

Obviously that's not our only consideration, but it is a consideration.
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Ghostcrawler
2008-11-03 21:24:11
Re: Ghostcrawler - Any news?
In case you missed this post on the live forums:

We are probably going to add an additional shapeshifting cost break somewhere in deep Feral. It would be 50% off cat and bear form (probably not travel) and would stack with Natural Shapeshifter, for 80% off total. This would allow a Feral druid, especially a PvP-focused one, to be able to reduce shifting costs down quite a bit for an appropriate talent cost.

While you still wouldn't have a ton of mana available for healing, you would be able to shift a lot more often than you're doing now, and of course your mana will still regen in cat or bear form.

I'll announce it for sure when we've thought a little bit more about where we'll put the talent, but I wouldn't tease you with this unless we were fairly positive that we're going to do it.
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Ghostcrawler