Clarification on Druid Changes

Ghostcrawler dropped us a rather lengthy post about the 66% SotF change. I really needn't say much more on the matter. It's clear, to the point, and it looks like us bears will be just fine.

Here is a thread where you can continue your discussion on the previously mentioned Feral druid changes.

I do urge you to confine the discussion to the armor and FAP changes only. The threads fill up too quickly as it is, so this is not a great place to chime in with totally unrelated questions, even druid ones.

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.

Also note this is a reasonable buff for PvP, since you typically don't wear a bunch of +armor trinkets in those situations.

We don't want to make any changes to the way Feral druids work at this point to make them more like warriors. Now we also don't want druids to be inferior tanks to warriors, but we see no evidence that is happening at the moment and only speculation that it might happen in the future, at which point we will make additional changes if needed. You can say you don't believe we will make changes, which sort of ends the conversation.

The goal was not to make you ignore +armor trinkets. The goal was that a bear lacking those trinkets wouldn't be at such a disadvantage. We would rather you use a new level 80 trinket with a little bit of wasted block on it than a blue trinket from level 62 or something with silly amounts of armor.

It is fine, helpful even, to alert us to situations where you think bears might not be competitive at surviving encounters compared to other tanks. Our goal is they are roughly similar and we will continue to make changes if they are not. While I understand some of you want more different tanking stats to focus on, that is not our goal for the moment. We think it is perfectly possible given the current design to make bears able to stand up to the damage they need to. In other words, the numbers may still need to be tweaked on occasion, but there is nothing inherent to the calculations that says a tank must have block and parry as tanking stats in order for the math to work.

Some more details to help answer some of the questions we've seen:

-- Cloaks do have base armor which gets multipled by the bear bonus.
-- There is no multiplier on any bonus armor. Not the bear bonus. Not the talent bonuses.
-- There is a 2% armor benefit you can get from a metagem.
-- The ultimate bear modifier should be 4.7 (Dire Bear form) x 1.66 (Survival of the Fittest) x 1.1 (Thick Hide) x 1.02 (meta gem).
-- The best bear we can create in current itemization has 35,907 armor, which is 68.34% mitigation vs. level 83 bosses or 70.21% mitigation versus level 80 mobs.
-- Before these changes, you might have been able to build a bear with nearly 40,000 armor, but that relies on using Defender's Code and Origin of Nightmares, items of such ridiculous power that we were going to nerf them anyway before this change. (Now they're fine.)
-- Note how close that 40,000 armor is to the cap already.
-- We do have concerns block may be too good a stat for future raids, and we'll keep an eye on it.
-- Equipping a weapon will still boost Savage Roar (and everything else) the way it does currently.

Bottom line: armor was too good for druids. That was a blessing if you could get the items and a curse if you could not.

The counterarguments we get are: 1) Well, I can't be competitive without that armor, or 2) Give me something else to focus on then.

We think number one is a concern, but we're not convinced it's a problem at the moment and totally solvable if it gets to be. Number two is just a different design. We designed Ferals with fewer mitigation stats than other classes. You still have tanking stats, and gear can still provide upgrades. That's not to say it will always be the case, but we have no plans to change it at the current time.

The sky is, after all, not falling.

Until the next Faerie Fire pull...

-Lushious