12.15.06
Kick us while we are down
Well, apologies for not having any updates for the past 2 weeks, but really there was not much to put up. Very little has been said by blues on any of the druid forums. The patch notes for WoW 2.0 was borked, and instead we were given a crappy version of the 2.0.1 beta pushed into the live realms. TBC Beta 2.0.3 has been pushed, and, what do you know… more druid nerfs!
First the druid changes in TBC Beta 2.0.3
- Tree of Life changed, now +25% Spirit conversion to healing is provided to heals received to party members, instead of heals cast by party members
- Tranquility now heals 1518 every 2 seconds for 8 seconds (around 4-5x more healing done), but has the cooldown doubled to 10 mins
- Rune of Metamorphosis changed from 100% cost reduction to flat 550 mana reduction
- Idol of Ferocity changed from -3 energy to +20 dmg, no longer affects mangle
- Idol of Brutality changed from -3 rage to +50 dmg
- 3/8 Stormrage Set now provides 20 mana/5 seconds instead of 15% mana regen
- Bear form HP bonus nerfed from +40% to +25%
The first compilation of druid questions on the European Druid forums was a pretty good success, with many of the questions answered. There is now a second compilation, and the blues hope to get answers for those as soon as possible. Here’s to hoping!
We are indeed all cheering.
We will try to get replies, but don’t hold your breath (I can’t promise a reply unfortunately, but I’ll see what I can do).
Tier 5 Armor sets are out, you can check out their stats from this huge image, or from the Thottbot links. You can also compare them with the Tier 4 Malorne sets.
- [Nordrassil Chestplate]
- [Nordrassil Feral-Kilt]
- [Nordrassil Feral-Mantle]
- [Nordrassil Handgrips]
- [Nordrassil Headdress]
- [Nordrassil Wrath-Mantle]
- [Nordrassil Chestpiece]
- [Nordrassil Gauntlets]
- [Nordrassil Headpiece]
- [Nordrassil Wrath-Kilt]
Also, the last piece of the Moonglade set has be found
Zag24 said,
December 15, 2006 at 11:58 am
Thanks for the blog. I have found it useful.
You missed, however, the single worst nerf that we got in the latest beta patch. They changed the bonus health due to bear form from +40% down to +25%. Since all of our gear has 1/3 to 1/2 less stamina than equivalent warrior gear, this means that we don’t even have as much health as a warrior!
Let’s keep score:
Warrior damage mitigation: Block, Parry, defensive stance, potions, healthstones, weapon procs, weapon enchant procs, shield wall. (I know there’s more that I’m not thinking of.)
Bear damage mitigation: More armor, Frenzied Regen, (and no longer) more health
kieran said,
December 17, 2006 at 3:24 pm
The T5 stat link was for the thumbnail, here’s the corrected one: http://worldofraids.free.fr/bc/T5/druid/t5druid.jpg
Groove said,
December 19, 2006 at 6:33 am
Do you have any plans to update the Cat DPS Calculator with the new Talents?
tangedyn said,
December 19, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Thanks Zag, added in that part about the HP% nerf, forgot I left that out. Thanks kieran, also.
Groove: I’m waiting for TBC to finalize the talents before I do the full Cat DPS Calculator update
Dyrusa said,
December 22, 2006 at 4:00 pm
To me it looks like they’re just trying to make bear tanks more like warrior tanks.
Before, our advantage was high HP, and their advantage was parry/block/etc.
Now, they nerf our HP (it is apparently designed so that with the +25% and the stam on our feral sets, we should have the same amount of HP as a warrior in the same quality of gear), and increase our dodge by a ton with the supposed new AGI:Dodge formula, seems like a means to make up for our lack of parry and block. Plus, lacerate looks like some kind of copy of sunder armor (though apparently, thanks to its high damage Mangle(Bear) generates more threat/rage [not confirmed so don’t quote me on this])
However, the man difference remains in that we can have more overall physical damage reduction, and warrior’s have all the goodies in last stand, shield block, lifegiving gem, etc, and the flat 10% reduction to magic. And the fact remains that in full tanking gear, we should be doing a lot more damage than a prot specced warrior in tanking gear.
Zag24 said,
January 3, 2007 at 11:01 am
You’ve got the Nordrassil Harness (Feral set) and the Nordrassil Regalia (Nuker set) but you skipped Nordrassil Rainment (Healer Set) http://www.thottbot.com/beta?set=643 (Perhaps this was intentional?
) It actually has some interesting set bonuses: At two pieces it adds two more ticks for regrowth (which becomes usably efficient for trees). At 4 pieces, it boosts the final bloom portion of the lifebloom.
I am curious on your thoughts on lifebloom. I’ve seen a lot of hatred for it, but it does one thing that I think might be important for boss fights: If you just keep recasting it every 6 seconds, then you keep the HoT triple stacked forever, at a reasonable efficiency (for trees, at least). However, when the healers all get stunned, feared, knocked back, whatever, (which, IMO, is the most common cause of wipes), and you can’t maintain it, then it will bloom for 1000ish points (depending on your +healing) — right when it is most needed. It seems like quite a plus.
Finally, I’ve been thinking a lot more about bear tanking and dodge. I agree that the new dodge formula will help us a lot in tanking, but won’t it get us killed in PvP? Rogues and warriors both have special attacks that they can only do after you dodge, which are much worse than the attack you avoided. Not that I ever lose to warriors anymore, nor to rogues who don’t get the drop on me.
Zag24 said,
January 9, 2007 at 3:21 pm
And yet more. They’ve changed our threat generation to be the same lousy way the warriors are. But, of course, we don’t have half the tools they have, neither to generate threat nor to generate rage to apply the few tools we do have.
By the way, I do have to disagree about the change to Idol of Brutality to be a nerf. Quite the opposite — any time I am doing any serious tanking, I have more rage than I can get rid of, anyway. But adding 50 points to swipe actually means adding 150 points total against my 3 targets. Of course, they just reduced the threat generated by swipe, so it’s a wash.
For soloing and PvP, I agree that the change is a nerf.
tangedyn said,
January 11, 2007 at 12:53 am
The stats for the Nordrassil Raiment were not available at the time of my posting, so I left those out.
I have not tested Lifebloom myself, but I’m not very keen on it. The healing efficiency numbers do not look good, and I don’t like the idea of a direct heal where I don’t have control over when it lands (i.e. I’ll be praying it doesn’t land when the tank is full health) and I generally don’t like HoTs in general. However I realise I do need to adapt my healing style when TBC comes, but this will take some time to get used to.
Dodge will be bad against warriors in PvP yes, but I’m not too concerned about that. I don’t PvP all that much, and our added mitigation should hopefully make up for it somewhat. The extra dodge we get is very much needed to make up for our lack of Parry, however it does not make up for our lack of Block, unfortunately.
I’ll discuss a bit more on the latest threat generation nerf on a new topic, but I have to say that the nerf to our Idol of Brutality is brutal for 5 mans. It may not be so bad if we are tanking a raid boss and should not be out of rage, however it is pretty bad in 5 man situation where rage is scarce.
ehtsrrxm said,
November 12, 2007 at 1:59 pm
ehtsrrxm…
ehtsrrxm…