Mists of Pandaria

[Malakili]

We already saw this exact same problem with druids at the beginning of Burning Crusade (I know, I was playing one!), you think they would have learned.

[Ingmar]

Well damn.  One of your tanks was effective and it help let you clear the dungeon more easily.  Better nerf it quick!

When Tank A is putting out 4x the overall Damage of Tank B simply because 90% of the stats he wants as a Tank are fully applicable as DPS stats on demand because all he has to do is shift to cat form whereby he can do dps compedative to actual DPS classes in DPS specs, something is a little off.

I play a druid as my main, and even I have no problem admitting that Feral Double Dipping needs some kind of fix.

I mean, if a Prot Warrior or Paladin could do compedative dps with regular DPS classes without changing gear, simply by switching Stances or Auras, the rage would be defening.  Why should druids be any different?

I played a prot warrior and had absolutely zero problem with druids working this way (outside of arena where it was admittedly really goddamn annoying.)

[Merusk]

The other problem is once a tank has such superior dps, even in tank form, you begin to wonder why you're bringing the other tank-types.   The meta game then says "well use druids as all tanks and your DPS will up by 2-3%" and that would be the end of it. 

At which point Blizzard needs do one of the following:
 1) Create mechanics that favor one class over another - breaking the 'bring who you want' mantra
 2) Up tank DPS  - which fucks arena up AND if your tanks are doing the dps of DPS.. why bring squishy melee dps
 3) Nerf Druids - which only pisses off one segment.

Guess which they did.

[Paelos]

I'm against them upping Tank DPS anyway, as I've said before. That's not our job. We have enough to worry about with positioning, leading, mitigation cooldowns, and taunt swaps to worry in addition about someone checking our meters. We bring 60-70% of group and raids as DPS. They need to hold up their end of the job, just as the healers need to heal, and the tanks tank.

I don't like crossing over those jobs. If we're doing the trinity, let's do it. I have no problem with SWAPPING roles, which is why we have dual specs. However, I don't want them bleeding into other things.

[Nevermore]

The other problem is once a tank has such superior dps, even in tank form, you begin to wonder why you're bringing the other tank-types.   The meta game then says "well use druids as all tanks and your DPS will up by 2-3%" and that would be the end of it. 

And yet that wasn't happening.  For all the anecdotal examples of Super BearCats, Druids weren't being taken to the exclusion of the other tanks.  Hell, for as long as I played Cata it was the Blood DKs who where doing the huge dps as tanks, and I don't recall them suddenly dominating all the raid tank spots either.

[Rokal]

And yet that wasn't happening.  For all the anecdotal examples of Super BearCats, Druids weren't being taken to the exclusion of the other tanks.  Hell, for as long as I played Cata it was the Blood DKs who where doing the huge dps as tanks, and I don't recall them suddenly dominating all the raid tank spots either.

In high-end raiding where larger rosters were available they were. Out of the three statistics I talked about earlier, you missed the detail where druids had a higher representation in heroic content than their population at 85 and in normal raids would suggest. The strength of Shaman healers at the end of TBC did not mean that every raid took mostly shaman. You bring what you've got. You would only start to see shaman stacking as you looked at larger raid guilds progressing through Sunwell that had a deep enough roster.  Just because the average raid used a larger variety of healers doesn't mean that there wasn't a large imbalance or that the nerfs shamans got going into Wrath weren't needed.

[caladein]

My favorite metric anytime class balance comes around is Spec Score.  From the site: "In a nutshell, each spec is scored on a curve for each fight. For each individual boss, the spec with the top DPS on a fight gets a score of 100 and then all other specs are scored according to that top spec. The average across all fights for a given spec is the Spec Score for the current tier."

In normal-mode raids, Blood DKs and Bears are pretty competitive this tier: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Score/10N/all/14/180/default/#1s0000/

In heroic content though, it's a laugher in favor of Bears.  They are almost always the top DPS on each fight and across the tier the other three tanks are well behind: Spec Score 10H - All Parses / Spec Score 25H - All Parses

Also, according to this post detailing the means World of Logs (and therefore RaidBots) uses to split up Cat/Bear parses these are just the Ferals that spent upwards of ~70% attack time as Bears.  It's pretty common for Feral Tanks to get kicked over to the Cat rankings on the latter fights in the tier from my reading.  Also something that won't show up in the overall data is getting a much stronger DPS on Spine's tendons, which is probably the hardest DPS check of the tier.

[Zetor]

Well, for my anecdotal example, my druid tank felt crazy OP in wotlk (swipe/maul macro for everything, except caster pulls. Eff joo halls of reflection!). Then they added some annoying shit in cata to 'keep the rotation from being swipe+maul spam' (see also: pulverize and - to a lesser extent - thrash) which suddenly made holding aoe aggro a pain. Then I found zin'rokh (druid's an archeologist) and decided to level my DK to 85. After tanking a few instances on mr. I-have-10-oh-shit-buttons-and-solo-instance-bosses, I don't feel like going back to my druid anymore. 'Course they may well have fucked blood DKs in MOP, so I'll wait and see.
e: I also went cat occasionally in 5mans for short periods (like for that one vampire boss), but I didn't feel that DPS was -that- much higher in cat. Then again, my tolerance for "refresh this self-buff every ~10 seconds or your dps will be gimped" mechanics is... not very high.

Sort of an aside (asked it a few pages ago when DURID IS FITE started), how do the "cross-server zones" work exactly? I play on a low-pop pvp server, and me/my guildies are not looking forward to getting constantly camped by bored 85s from high-pop pvp servers in our cluster while levelling alts (or just level 100% through instances, eh)

[Ingmar]

The core problem here is you're asking the masses to give two shits about what goes on in heroic raids/guilds. We don't.

[Merusk]

The core problem here is you're asking the masses to give two shits about what goes on in heroic raids/guilds. We don't.

Except Blizzard does and has to.  What the heroic raids & raid guilds do eventually trickles-down to the masses.   What they DON'T care about is 5-mans and heroic 5-man balance. They know it'll be trivialized.  Hardcores are a problem but they find the flaws and keep the hype going, despite the wannabes bitching about things being 'too easy.'   You need your HCs and you need your casuals.. it's that middle strata - like middle-management - we could all do without.

[Paelos]

The core problem here is you're asking the masses to give two shits about what goes on in heroic raids/guilds. We don't.

Except Blizzard does and has to.

They did in this Cataclysm xpac. They really really cared. It went poorly.

[Merusk]

No, they catered to them and designed exclusively around them.  There's a difference between using them to show where imbalances are in your systems and trying hard to keep them happy/ challenged.

[Nevermore]

Out of the three statistics I talked about earlier, you missed the detail where druids had a higher representation in heroic content than their population at 85 and in normal raids would suggest.

Was that the statistic that showed that Druids still weren't the most played class in raids despite being able to fill all 3 roles, and even being able to fill both ranged and melee dps, and with Feral being so 'overpowered'?  That stat?

[Rokal]

The core problem here is you're asking the masses to give two shits about what goes on in heroic raids/guilds. We don't.

The imbalance is evident at all levels of raiding even if non-heroic guilds don't take advantage of it. My guild didn't kill a single end-of-tier boss on heroic in Cata. We'd still have brought a druid tank for 80% of raid fights in the expansion if we had one consistently available. It's supposed to be "bring the player, not the class" at this point so any large imbalance that favors one class over others is counter to Blizzard's design goal. Especially when that imbalance is not for a small handful of fights, it was consistent across every tier of content in this expansion and would most likely have been for MoP too.

Was that the statistic that showed that Druids still weren't the most played class in raids despite being able to fill all 3 roles, and even being able to fill both ranged and melee dps, and with Feral being so 'overpowered'?  That stat?

It was the one where druids were the most played class for the last boss of each tier on heroic difficulty, despite being #2 (losing out to another class that could also fill all 3 roles) overall. Bleeding-edge guilds bring more druids because they can afford to bring the class instead of the player. You're either willfully ignoring the imbalance of druid tanks in Cata given Caladein's links (which he noted under-report the extent of the problem based on how the data is collected) or you don't care whether your class is balanced. That's fine if your stance is the later, but you can't expect Blizzard to be as apathetic about a large imbalance among classes in their game.

[Paelos]

I can understand why druids don't want to change. Nobody likes to go from OP to back into gen pop. I didn't like it when they let others than warriors tank, but I realized after it happened that it was probably for the best. There simply wasn't enough of a demand to constrain it by one class.

Before druids could effectively do all three jobs with two specs. They can still do all 3 jobs, just with 3 specs. That's how it's supposed to be.

[Ashamanchill]

I can understand why druids don't want to change. Nobody likes to go from OP to back into gen pop.

Fuck that. I'd much prefer the two be split up. Hopefully then all the dps wannabes will run back to cat and they can balance bears around tanking. From what I've seen of MoP beta so far, nope that's not the case. Bears are even MORE op in terms of damage. Maybe, what with the recent changes to threat making it irrelevant, it's time to do away with vengeance?

[Fordel]

Tanks doing lots of damage while actually tanking is perfectly fine.


Are they doing that damage all the time, or just while tanking?

[SurfD]

Tanks doing lots of damage while actually tanking is perfectly fine.


Are they doing that damage all the time, or just while tanking?

Well, thats the thing with bearcats vs other tanks.

ALL tanks put out some pretty good dps when they have something beating on them to feed them vengence (and for wars / druids, Rage).  However, in phazes where you dont have stuff beating on you, a druid still has the option of shifting to cat and using his DPS cooldowns to pump out highly compedative dps.  For druid tanks, unless you are doing hardmode content, it is completely viable to largely ignore our only pure Tank stat (ldodge), and reforge just for the mitigation (Mastery).  Since druids get dodge+crit+ap from Agility, you simply stack agility and reforge mastery.  And since Agi, and mastery both directly translate to DPS gains in cat, it's win win.
Conversely, it's not like a plate tank with no one beating on him can simply throw on a 2 hander and do similar levels of dps, because Block / Parry (which plate tanks NEED to devote a lot of stat allocation to) have absolutely 0 conversion rate to DPS increases.

As to doing compedative damage all the time, I could use myself as an example.  My druid is geared for Bear / Boomkin play.  Average Ilevel for both sets is just around the 400 mark (ie, pretty much full normal DS stuff).  I will fully admit to being effectively medeocre at cat dps, since i usually end up main tanking for most of the raids i do with pug friends, so i dont have much chance to actually cat it up as an offtank.  That being said, about a month back, I did a DS pug where I was bored, and decided to cat it up in my bear gear, without changing any glyphs.  We only did about 5 bosses, and generally, I was pulling about on par dps with the last actual DPS in the raid (a slightly undergeared rogue i think).  That being said, as a cat in my bear gear (which includes a tank meta in the hat), I was still easily pulling double the dps of either of the other tanks.  And as i said, I am fairly medeocre at cat.

[Nevermore]

It was the one where druids were the most played class for the last boss of each tier on heroic difficulty, despite being #2 (losing out to another class that could also fill all 3 roles) overall.

Actually, I had discounted that because in the very next sentence "those numbers say more about resto and balance druids than feral druids."  If even you didn't think it was important, why should I?

Before druids could effectively do all three jobs with two specs.

Here's the thing, in Wrath the way they had the tree set up you could spec full Tank and be passable dps, you could spec full DPS and be a passable tank, or there were some ways you could spec as a hybrid and fall someplace in between the two.  I can tell you first-hand that you couldn't be completely effective at both roles at the same time until you started to overgear the instance, at which point who cares?

In Cata they shrunk the trees, and after the redesign it was easier to be more effective at both roles at the same time.  By all accounts this only mattered to the top 1% of the hardcore raiders, and we see how well catering to the hardcore raiders worked for Cata so I don't think it's smart to make sweeping, widespread changes based on them.

No, I think the real reason they split Feral isn't because it was 'overpowered' nor because of PvP.  I think it was because they ditched the old talent trees entirely.  While they could have made it work somewhat with the new talent tiers, they moved too many abilities off of talents and made them part of choosing your sub-spec.  So instead of 10 classes they decided to go with 34 classes and I think I'm already on record for not liking that decision as well, independent of the impact on Druids.

[Paelos]

Well I think the real point is that with the dual spec system in place, having one class that can perform two jobs of the trinity in one spec had to be remedied. I don't really see a way to make it "work" within a shortened talent tree system. Hell, it never should have existed in the first place.

[luckton]

Tanks doing lots of damage while actually tanking is perfectly fine.


Are they doing that damage all the time, or just while tanking?

While tanking, because of Vengeance, which was designed to counter-balance the extreme DPS that dedicated DPS classes could achieve, and I'm totally fine with it.  Even it was also applying solo (which theoretically could happen if they wrangled together enough mobs in open PvE because of how vengeance works), who cares?  It's solo.  God forbid they try to make tanking more fun in an effort to try and get more people to do it so that queue times might drop for non-hybrid DPS.

As far as Druid tanks go, it because they only get DPS-oriented gear drops, save for the token ring/trinket item that just has Dodge and/or Mastery on it.  This could easily be addressed by debuffing Haste/Crit gains from gear while in Bear-form by a percentage, but I'd steer clear of the forums the day that they announce that

[luckton]

FarmVille is now live in beta.

[Simond]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6246996371?page=1

So MoP's release date is set for September 25th.  In the past, the X.0 content patches have came out around two weeks prior to the expansion's release.  So this means that we are looking at 5.0 releasing on September 11th.  That means you're gonna bomb a city and blow up a tower on the anniversary of one of the most tragic events in American history?

[luckton]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6246996371?page=1

So MoP's release date is set for September 25th.  In the past, the X.0 content patches have came out around two weeks prior to the expansion's release.  So this means that we are looking at 5.0 releasing on September 11th.  That means you're gonna bomb a city and blow up a tower on the anniversary of one of the most tragic events in American history?

Please, if people are gonna bitch about this, I can't wait for the drama in about 25-50 years when I start seeing used car dealers having "9/11 Patriots Day" sales.  Sadly, I and most of you will see that in our natural lifetimes. 

Also, I think I pointed out this irony a couple pages ago 

[Merusk]

They deleted the topic.

[luckton]

Tanks doing lots of damage while actually tanking is perfectly fine.


Are they doing that damage all the time, or just while tanking?

While tanking, because of Vengeance, which was designed to counter-balance the extreme DPS that dedicated DPS classes could achieve, and I'm totally fine with it.  Even it was also applying solo (which theoretically could happen if they wrangled together enough mobs in open PvE because of how vengeance works), who cares?  It's solo.  God forbid they try to make tanking more fun in an effort to try and get more people to do it so that queue times might drop for non-hybrid DPS.

Update on this, per GC:

tl;dr:

We are changing Vengeance to increase AP equal to 5% of the damage you take for 20 sec. This buff will "roll" so that as it gets refreshed the unused part is added to the new buff, similar to how Ignite or Stagger work. The net result will be that Vengeance stacks by the amount of DPS being thrown at you over 20 sec. There is no cap.

In other words, you won't be seeing tanks topping damage meters anymore in 5-mans, but you will start to see them on-par with regular DPS and not appearing to be scrapping at the bottom of the barrel in raids.  Also, both the abilities that bosses use on players and the active mitigation skills that tanks use to stop/mitigate those abilities can be balanced in a more fair and consistent way.

[caladein]

The main thing that comes to mind is that rolling buffs (read: Ignite) haven't ever really worked correctly and against lots of mobs or very high attack speed bosses, this would push it right to where it doesn't work.  Not sure if they're doing/have done anything that would make it behave better.

Another thing that comes to mind is that straight -damage CDs will now reduce tank damage, but I don't think that will prove to be a serious consideration.

[cmlancas]

A few things from this last page:

Bear tanks aren't the be-all, end all of tanks.  DKs are.  If you think bear tanks are better than DK tanks for tanking, you're doing it wrong.  DKs trivialize a number of magic-damage-based mechanics with AMS.  Their mitigation outpaces druids by a longshot.

The imbalance with bears lies in their ridiculous amount of utility they have -- tranquility, innervate, raid frenzied regen, cat form for dps when not actively tanking (think yor'sahj and madness) and whatnot.

Also, that's what makes them so fun.  Girlfriend plays a bear tank and it's nice to feel like you can contribute in a way that's not rawreatdamage or pewpew.

I like that tanks are being designed so that sword and board tanks aren't only a couple notches up from an atonement priest.  I think it'd be exciting to contribute in different parts of the trinity in bossfights.

[Merusk]

That was the argument.. their versatility was out of place as a tank.  It wasn't that they were the be-all-end-all of tanking.

[Nevermore]

tranquility, innervate

 

[cmlancas]

tranquility, innervate

 

If there's a chasm here, I'm missing it.  Both of these are useful on multiple fights.

[cmlancas]

That was the argument.. their versatility was out of place as a tank.  It wasn't that they were the be-all-end-all of tanking.

Fair enough...some folks were citing druids as one of the most represented classes in 85 heroics, and I naturally assumed folks were playing beartank or restoration.  My apologies.

But, I'm saying tanks should get more utility across the board, not less.  It's fun to be able to contribute in other ways.  This is the same reason I'm disappointed divine hymn is disappearing from shadow.

[Merusk]

That was folks trying to illustrate the nerf was warranted using hard data.  It's ultimately a design decision, which means no data needs to back it.  Blizzard said "Hm.. too much utility, we don't want tanks able to DPS this hard in tank spec.  Split the trees."  End of Story. You can disagree - as Nevermore does - but that won't change their minds unless someone figures out a way for ALL tanks to be on the same footing there.

[cmlancas]

Design discussions strike me analogus to political debates -- folks rarely say good point, let me incorporate that into my position.

DPS increases for sword and board tanks is a big step in the right direction for adding more utility to tanks, so I personally applaud devs for moving this way.  It's been especially frustrating in Cataclysm to watch warriors and paladins do half (if not a third) of the dps of DK and druid tanks.

And, hurr durr, what I was I thinking for not thoroughly reading more pages before jumping back into f13.  :D

[Nevermore]

tranquility, innervate

 

If there's a chasm here, I'm missing it.  Both of these are useful on multiple fights.

Innervate had long since changed to only provide such a tiny amount of mana when a Feral used it as to be nigh useless.  It was really, really small.  Tranquility was slightly more useful, but only if you got the talent that improved your healing based on your agility.  Even then heals as a Feral were really, really small.  Also, it would be a very rare circumstance when a Bear would be able to shift and use a channeled heal.  Both spells were better at various points in Wrath, but by the time Cata rolled around neither one was worth much for a Feral.