Bear form armourflation

[Tale]

They recently upped Dire Bear Form to have a 450% armour multiplier (used to be 360%) and I picked up some Burning Crusade upgrades on top of my tier 1-2 gear, giving me 9336 armour and 5996 hitpoints in unbuffed bear form at level 61.

With the benefit of the priest talent Inspiration (+25% armour for 15 sec), I just hit 15,688 armour and 8071 health (buffed by druid, pally, priest). I wear a Guardian Talisman (2% chance to add 350 armour for 15 sec) so it would break 16,000 if they co-incided.

There are players much better equipped than me - I don't even have a Cloak of Warding (214 armour). But I've got a Braxxis' Staff of Slumber (550 armour) in the bank for when I hit level 64.

Could be looking at numbers over 20,000 soon - might be some bears there already. Seems a bit mudflated and out of control?

[Triforcer]

They recently upped Dire Bear Form to have a 450% armour multiplier (used to be 360%) and I picked up some Burning Crusade upgrades on top of my tier 1-2 gear, giving me 9336 armour and 5996 hitpoints in unbuffed bear form at level 61.

With the benefit of the priest talent Inspiration (+25% armour for 15 sec), I just hit 15,688 armour and 8071 health (buffed by druid, pally, priest). I wear a Guardian Talisman (2% chance to add 350 armour for 15 sec) so it would break 16,000 if they co-incided.

There are players much better equipped than me - I don't even have a Cloak of Warding. But I've got a [ur=http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=31186&locale=enUS;source=livel]Braxxis' Staff of Slumber[/url] (550 armour) in the bank for when I hit level 64.

Could be looking at numbers over 20,000 soon - might be some bears there already. Seems a bit mudflated and out of control?

Er, isn't there a hard cap at 75% mitigation?  Some people were up against that even before BC.  This just increases the number of people that reach it.

[Tale]

Ah, I didn't know that. I'm an inexperienced tank - been a healer all my druid life.

Surely everyone will be at the cap - seems a bit crazy.

[sinij]

My SO talked me into re-sub, so I was running my old under-equipped 60 through expansion instance. At one point I was in a good group with 4 druids... and it worked. I think druid is better tank than warrior and I still don't think paladins can tank. Is there a reason not to play druid?

[Tale]

Is there a reason not to play druid?

None except to prevent the druids vendoring the plate/chain/cloth drops. ;)

Oh, and overwork. Druid tank goes bear and pulls. Tanks until it dies, then goes cat form to DPS behind the offtank's mob. Healer takes some hits, druid exits cat and starts healing, then back to cat to finish off the DPS. Adds arrive and druid switches to bear form and tanks again. It never stops and it takes some practice to think like a tank, healer and DPS all at the same time.

[Kitsune]

Okay, here's the deal:  Armor got nerfed, several armors have been shown to have had their AC dropped from their beta appearances.  Bear's armor multiplier got buffed.  This was to keep the bears at a high level of damage absorption, as they don't get block or parry; their AC is basically their sole defense, nerfing bear armor would fuck them.  So it's not that bears were buffed, it's that everyone else got nerfed.

As for playing druids, it's tricky.  For all the 'oh, druids can tank, heal, dps, blend smoothies, toast bread...' impressions, that's not really the case.  A druid's talents and gear heavily impact what they can do well.  A tanking druid will have on heavy AC gear, a DPS druid will have high-strength gear, etc.  A druid caught in the wrong gear will be kind of half-assed at the job, while a druid in the wrong gear and missing the talents for the role may as well not even bother.  Typically, a druid can be good at one thing, okay at another, and suck at the third.  For example, I'm feral specced, so I'm good at melee combat and tanking, okay at healing, and really suck at nuking.  I can and have been the main healer with groups, I can get the job done, but I'm not nearly as good at it as a full resto spec druid.  I don't even bother casting offensive spells except to pull a target or in special occasions like melee-immune monsters, the damage is just pathetic.

Some druids go all-out on one specialty, others like me try to spread out a bit with two, and I have never heard of any druid successfully covering all of their bases.  The 31 and 41 point talents are just too important to ignore; trying to spread out one's talents between all three trees will likely just result in a druid who is terrible at everything.

[Threash]

Also, keep in mind as you level up the same amount of armor will provide less and less actual mitigation.  At level 70 that 20k armor might protect you as much as the 12k did at 60.

[kaid]

Honestly the armorflation thing is not a huge issue it looked really silly pre 60 but post 60 in the bc it levels out well.

My druid in decent gear but not awesome had about 7k hp 11k ac and 22 percent dodge rate. My warrior at the time had about 5k hp 8k ac and 12 percent or so dodge parry or block.

After one week and a couple levels my warrior is sitting at around 9500 ac 7500hp 15percent block dodge parry and a freaking TON of defense and about 44 of the new resilance stat. My warrior mitigates a great deal better in practice than my druid but the 450 armor buff helped bring the druid up to a very effective level. My druid can tank just about anything my warrior can but the warrior needs less heals and has more OMFG cockroach abilities like last stand, my new trinket that gives 900 hp back and 900 to max hp for 15 seconds and healing potions and the ever popular shield block skill.

If I am really in the mix hitting shield block every single time it lights up can seriously drop the ammount of damage I take to a very managable level.

I have so far done hellfire ramparts/blood furnace and coilfang slavepens/underbog when we were at or below the recommended levels for the zones.

Bear form armor is fine, warrior tanking is fine would I love swipe for my warrior hell yes and my bear would love shield block.


kaid