Now that 4.0.1 has settled

I title this a bit hesitantly because, really, this patch feels far from settled, despite countless server restarts and the fixes put out thus far. From the bug where druid battle-rez + warlock soulstone + shaman self-rez ankh can only be used once (out of all 3) per combat, when that is only supposed to apply to druid battle-rez (once per combat, regardless of individual druid 30minute cooldown availability). Let me squash down my unimaginable rage at the major druid change of destroying permanent-tree-form in exchange for a tree-uber-heal cooldown, despite the awesome threat that druid tanks are currently putting out.

Have I mentioned I was born a feral druid during The Burning Crusade that loves to tank whatever baddies are out there with her bear face? That I loved my awesome insta-threat, hellish mitigation, REAL hybrid “do everything” during raiding back in TBC? Oh, I have. I knew that. Well I’m loving the bear stuff, but it doesn’t outweigh the other druid changes that make me cry if I dwell on my lovely druid. I’m still tanking stuff as I wind down this expansion, still enjoying the game. My druid tank was carried through 4/12 Heroic ICC10 this week, to finish 6 more bosses on regular! And the leather loot gods loved her.

Well, after the saga that was re-installing the game, and the two days it took me to finally download the expansion and the updates and patches, I was glad to get in game and see some of the changes. Many good things, and many bugged-out-the-wazoo issues.

Good: Interface changes with party and raid frames being much less hell, Justice points (stop skipping bosses, puggers, you are making us miss out on justice points!), better stats information panel. Reforging useless junk into useful loot (as a bear tank, arpen MADE ME WANT TO HURT KITTENS) is kickass. Skull bash is the new feral druid spell interrupt/charge and it’s freaking beyond awesome.

Bad: I really don’t like re-learning the classes I’ve played for two years. But there’s more I don’t like.

Glyphs, need more glyphs. We can play with so many, yet there are so few REAL choices. I want glyphs that let me play how I want to play, not that pigeon hole me into a style the developers forced. Speaking of style, wtf healing options are all over the place. The best is reading paladins on twitter cry about wanting their old heal-bomb style back. As a healer, I loved knowing my tank and knowing what to expect from a fight because I could anticipate how to heal. Last minute stressful triage is NOT FUN so someone please tell me why the devs thought moving in that direction would make people WANT to heal. Then they also had to slip a buff to Vengeance in to beef up tank threat.

My video drivers now hates my guts. My favorite addon, Cellular, that manages to give me a tabbed window for every whisper I get makes my game crash when I’m trying to switch toons. (As someone on the same little RP server for going on 3 years with 6 80s and an assortment of little toons I like to hop around on, crashing EVERY TIME is a great way to MAKE ME QUIT THE GAME. ahem)

Things I don’t really like: the new spell queue thing going on. When you hit a button it gets queued, whether the GCD lets you use that ability now or not. That is taking some adjusting from this 50% clicker. :/

All in all, still not sure I’ll be around for Cataclysm. I don’t mind walking way from this. I’m kind of anxious for real life to improve. It just hasn’t yet and this is a pretty inexpensive way to enjoy my time until real life gets “better”. I’ve met amazing people here though from all over the country & world and that I will miss, if I really feel continuing to play won’t be much fun.

Checking myself, for the billionth time, with gear set XYZ

This post inspired by @GeekShui and @phineasdelgado I’m a bit worried, Phineas seemed a bit revved up to come to blows over what I may say!

Filed under: addicted, awesome, bears, general, rant, screenshot, warcraft

More reason not to tank

Let’s set the scene.

This week I was handed a very forceful, er, painful reminder of why I stopped tanking and that aside from heroics I should probably continue to avoid it. I tried to jump into a 25m pug for ToC that sort of fell apart and turned into two 10mans. They needed a tank. So instead of trying to get gear on my priest, I ended up bear tanking. Painful lessons, I tell you!

Aside from people not knowing fights and the problems that ensue from that, I realized that green goo is damn freaking hard to see when one is tanking Dreadmaw. Ugh! Needless to say, I had superb threat control, but went splat (sometimes before everyone else, sometimes not). Luckily I dodged getting saved, as I think my guild wants to do something different tonight with guild ten mans, a new development!

So, after that disaster I spent most of the week agonizing over bear upgrades which are few and far between. I hate fucking armor penetration. I don’t want to play cat. I want to be a bear tank. I would give all the gold on my level 35alt (heh) for gdamn freaking TANK GEAR. In fact, the tier pieces piss me the fuck off with their green stats, while I stare longingly at the (2) and (4) bonuses. I ended up keeping my godforsaken trollwoven shoulders, with mental notes to upgrade belt for sure with crafted gear. Some day. When I’m rolling in crusader orbs and my main raiding gear has already been upgraded.

But, all this was really just lead in. Kalon has been my go-to druid-tank blogger since I stumbled across his blog. I throw his addy at would-be bears in every guild I’ve been in. It’s good stuff.

Right now he’s working on a series of posts to contradict, calm, or explain in depth some of the theory, worry, fear, and possibilities for bears in Icecrown.

Me, I’m a big yellow belly bear. I hate change. I grew roots and brownish leaves and went tree when I spent my entire TBC career swearing I’d never every NO NEVER heal because of the armor/stamina changes that happened when Wrath came out. Threw in the towel on tanking. Eventually I remembered how useful it is to have an offspec when the server seemed to suddenly swim in healers (not all good). Plus, it helps me and @xparanormalityx run the daily heroic on all our toons when we can heal/tank 2 of them together.

Why do these changes from “Chill of the Throne” terrify me? Let me tell you. I’m a versatile druid. I had the most fun in TBC in Zul Aman because I was required to use every single trick in my bag, constantly, on almost every boss fight. From battle rezes to innervates to add tanking to dpsing when the other tank had the boss. It was superb fun. But now there’s this debuff.

For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets. So if a raid’s main tank had 30% dodge normally, in Icecrown Citadel they will effectively have 10%.

That blows. I started this by saying that I’m not a theorycrafter and I’m not a main-tank in a raiding guild. I tank heroics. So take all my thoughts with my limitations in mind, please.

I understand druids could tank naked. We don’t need defense. Our only mitigation is dodge. Dodge and the silly crit bubbles we have now. Both of which hinge on agility. So, when it comes to bear tanking, primary stats are STAMINA, AGILITY, and then the green bonuses of MORE DODGE, EXPERTISE, HIT, ATTACK POWER, CRIT. That’s how I would rank the green stats. Pretty simple compared to warrior tanks, pally tanks, deathknugget tanks. They get crap like Defense that actually does something, parry, block if you’re not a DK, these other mitigation forces.

I see it like this. Druids need a lot of dodge because it’s really our only mitigation. Stacking stamina is not mitigation, btw. Other tanks get the dodge inherent on their gear, but they also get those other mitigation stats.

Let’s compare @xparanormalityx‘s prot paladin and my bear druid, shall we?

Armor:	24189 (61.36%)	Resilience:	0.00
Defense:	540 (-+5.60%)	Def Rating:	690 (+140)
Dodge %:	25.89	Dodge Rating:	561 (+12.40%)
Parry %:	18.38	Parry Rating:	188 (+4.15%)
Block %:	16.88	Block Rating:	103 (+6.28%)

Armor:	7324 (32.47%) 28127(64.87%)	Resilience:	0.00
Defense:	417 (-+0.68%)	Def Rating:	86 (+17)
Dodge %:	29.86 / 38.86	Dodge Rating:	285 (+6.30%)
Parry %:	0.00	Parry Rating:	0 (+0.00%)
Block %:	0.00	Block Rating:	0 (+0.00%)

(I had to edit this because the in game bear numbers were different)

prot pally stats vs. my druid’s 40% dodge in bear form.

So, with “Chill of the Throne” my bear will drop to 20% dodge. Pyh’s dodge will drop to 5% but he’ll still have those other mitigation factors.

Armorylite is being a pain and not catching my druid’s tank gear, so I’ll update this soon once the changes happen.

Needless to say, I don’t like having zero options to be a decent tank unless I do nothing but stack stamina. And this change will force druids to do that yet again, while as we geared up we were able to play with expertise, hit and arpen for threat generation.

I did say I was resistant to change, right? I like what Jacemora said.

All I know is I am glad I am not tanking anymore and I don’t have to worry about it

Filed under: bears, druid, tank, tanking