Buff for druids not in 25 Naxx Gear? Wrong.

#0 - Dec. 11, 2008, 9:15 p.m.

Per GC:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12891372479&sid=1

Q u o t e:
The changes should be a buff for any druid not in full Naxx 25 gear (and I'm pretty sure that means ALL druids for the moment). One of the reasons we are announcing this change early is so you can make your preparations accordingly. A druid with every possible item from Naxx 25-level content loses about 3700 armor, but to be honest, those armor trinkets and weapons were so insanely good that they were likely going to be nerfed anyway.

Q u o t e:
The change isn't intended to be a nerf at all. A lot of numbers have been thrown around in this thread. Give me some time to review them and see where any discrepancies lie.

This never happened by the way.

Q u o t e:
We will adjust the bear armor modifiers so that your net mitigation does NOT go down with these changes. Let me repeat: this is not a nerf to Feral armor. It is a change to the amount of armor you get from gear with bonus armor.

Let me repeat, I have been nerfed.

Alot of druids are finding their mitigation has in fact been nerfed. Do we just roll with this now? You gave your word MULTIPLE times this was not a nerf. If it was, it would take full 25 Naxx gear to feel it. This is simply NOT the case. Do we get an explanation?

Here is the forumla to determine if you're getting nerfed or buffed:
(SUM(EA) * 4.7 * 1.66 * 1.1 * 1.02) + (BA * 1.02) + AA

EA = Equipped armor, base values only (Head, Shoulders, Back, Chest, Wrist, Hands, Belt, Legs, Boots)
AA = Armor from AGI
BA = Bonus Armor (green number less base value) + Trinkets, Rings, and Weapon armor

Multipliers are:
4.7 (Dire Bear form)
1.66 (Survival of the Fittest)
1.1 (Thick Hide)
1.02 (Meta Gem)

Ghostcrawler

#59 - Dec. 12, 2008, 5:09 p.m.

Q u o t e:
The pieces with armor are still good, they just arent mandatory...

It will be easier for druids to get into tanking, i remember when i just started out i had like 18k armor... it was bad, i got owned.

Then two drops later (enraged feral staff, keystone great ring) and im up to ~25k. Armor stuff was mandatory to have to tank. Now if you had the equivalent of a naxx 25 druid in those slots, your getting nerfed, but anyone who dosent have those arent penalized to the point where they can't tank for @#*%.

I'll still definatley be wearing my keystone ring, probably gonna replace the enraged feral staff with the undeath carrier, gonna find a replacement for the nerubian shield ring mebbe, probably gonna keep defenders code in there somewhere... i dunno between gossamer, first war, and code.

So outta the 4 armor pieces i have that are getting nerfed, im probably keeping 2. Now its a choice instead of nothing else is worthwhile.

This is why we made the change.

If you go back and look at the history of this discussion, you'll see that several Feral druids were saying it was kind of awkward that:

A) They went from weak to godly with just a couple of the right +armor trinket drops.
B) They were very dependent on getting those items to drop to be excellent tanks.
C) Armor was still so important that almost no other stat mattered. Druids in some cases were wearing BC or even level-60 items because of the +armor.

Now to be totally fair, I initially didn't think the situation was that bad. I thought there were plenty of armor trinkets, necks and rings in the game, and that enough stamina or other stats would make up for the armor. But players showed (on this and other forums) that the math heavily favored a few, relatively rare +armor pieces. And we ended up changing our minds on the issue.

Is the gameplay of gearing up a Bear perfect now? No. We think it is a good change that armor doesn't trump all other defensive stats by so much. However, we do think there should be a more interesting way for bears to gear up though without just wanting the leather pieces at each tier. It is something we are working on, but it's complicated. Players have made some good suggestions, but we don't quite have a model that clicks yet. We don't want to give druids parry or blocks, or they lose one of the features that makes them unique. We don't want to let them scale defensively because of AP, because AP can get to really high levels when fully buffed and much lower levels in 5-player dungeons.

Ghostcrawler

#253 - Dec. 13, 2008, 9:07 p.m.

This thread is touching on a couple of different points:

A) Are bears competitive with other tanks at similar gear levels?
B) Is there another way to design bear defensive gear?

They are both issues worthy of discussion, but they are different issues and blurring them together just confuses the discussion. B is not necessary for A. We could slap a "you are at the armor cap" bonus on to Survival of the Fittest and, boom, you're the best tank in the game. Now we wouldn't do that for a couple of reasons, but my point is that it is easy to get druid numbers to where they need to be with this new system.