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- Savage Defense now procs on Lacerate crits. It also procs on Rip crits. So if for whatever reason you have a rip up on a target then switch to Bear, SD will proc on those too.
- Savage Defense still only works on bear form.
- Savage Defense still has weird issues with timing. It can proc .5 seconds after an actual crit, and still appears to be overwriting itself now and then. I need to test this more conclusively.
- Swipe's radius has been greatly increased. It feels much more like the old swipe did in terms of radius. And yes, swipefarting still works great. In fact, with a bit of lag you can get really stupid looking chains of people taking damage and following you around.
- The T8 2p and 4p bonus is still the same as was listed before. This is still really awesome for cats and still really crap for bears.
- Swipe (cat) does not have a 360 radius.
- Thorns now uses your spellpower/bonuses instead of your target's. This means having a macro that switches you into your spellpower gear to cast thorns first will help some, though it's very annoying. It also makes a moonkin's thorns (assuming they have brambles) exceptionally potent - 420 damage/hit is pretty decent.
- Rake no longer crits with Primal Gore. Balancing for cat DPS, of course.
- The Glyph of Savage Roar is reduced to 3%. Again, cat DPS balance.
- Glyph of Survival Instincts is ass. Just an opinion, but getting 10% more health from SI is really not what bears need. 40% more health for 28 seconds sounds awesome, but how much does that actually help things when you have one healer on you who can't cast most of their spells? That's the hard modes for you, and that's where it fails. (sorry, just an opinion piece.)
Monday, March 30, 2009
[Druid, 3.1] the state of druid testing on the PTR, 03/30
While raiding is out, and while substantial play is out, I can at least do some small amount of PTR testing. So, this week's (well, two week's) testing results
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25 comments:
re: Glyph of SI -
Does it heal for 40% tho?
Thanks for the update. Nice to see ya again. Hope you're having fun with the baby!
Well, in the absence of a family, I had a lot of fun 360 swiping trash in ulduar. You know, the snakes that pop out of nowhere? What a blast, how easy is that?! And how lazy I have become already.
I too am annoyed about the whole SI thing. Why so much focus on an ability with such limited use? CD is still 5 mins (warrior last stand is 3 mins); we have a new glyph for it, and 4pt8 bonus for it. But whats the point? I'm not a whiner, and I never accuse blizzard of "not knowing my class" because I'm not 15 years old.... but I really cant see what they're trying to do with SI.
As I posted on another blog, I ranked this SI glyph not much higher than the aquatic form glyph. Such a waste. *sighs*
It would be a much better glyph if it at least reduced the CD on SI. Personally I would rather see a glyph for the new SD. Possibly boosting the amount of damage it mitigates by an additional percentage.
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=8523002582&sid=1
Figured you might be interested, Tun of Ensidia on druid tanking on the PTR.
my stance on SI glyph:
while it "could have been something better", i don't completely agree on the "it's crappish".
by it's effect, i find it comparable to the frienzed regeneration glyph, meaning it's biggest use is in solo farming of old contents and/or WCS scenario.
for "standard fight", 28 seconds of +30% health and 28 seconds of +40% health don't differ too much *if you are going to take an heal anyway*
the matter is completely different if you can expect *not* to receive significant healing for the incoming 28 seconds
if you combine ILOTP, 4t8, gliphed FI, you are comparing the following:
without SI gliph: 0.3+ (1.3*0.3*1.2)(FR)+(2*1.2*1.3*0.04 +2*1.3*0.04)(ILOTP)= over the SI duration, you get the equivalent of 82% of your HP,(meaning, the combined effect of SI+ gliphed FR+ ILOTP is +99.68%EH for 28seconds)
by analogy we can consider it that the attivation of SI+FR+ILOTP equals to doubling TTL on WCS.
let's apply SI gliph
it becomes 0.4+ (1.4*0.3*1.2)(FR)+(2*1.2*1.4*0.04 +2*1.4*0.04)(ILOTP)= 1.1504
the combined effect is now 115.04% extra EH
the neat total difference is +15% TTL compared to base, or + 7.5% TTL compared to ungliphed SI.
looking at straight numbers, SI gliph can be accounted for 15% of "real effect"( granted, it's to be decided what *value* goes to FR gliph )
No offense ciopo, but farming old world content solo should never be considered justification for a glyph.... We want progression not an easier time of retro week.
Karthis - not sure. The glyph vendor wasn't up when I went on. Heck, I'm not sure if it gives 40% health or 33% health (10% of 30%). I'll try and test it this next week. Still, it's pretty lackluster compared to a warrior's version.
Peter - I don't know what they're trying to do with ferals in general. :) That said, it's very bothersome that all they seem to be able to do for ferals on glyphs is give them improvements to their ohshit buttons. It's disappointing to see such an interesting mechanic used so boringly.
Willowbear - it ranks higher than the rip glyph I have on now, but not by much. And only because of dual specs.
Shamad - thanks for that link. I saw it on your blog as well, and crossposted it in the tanking forums of US. I don't know whether he's too much of an outlier though; this is Ensidia, not normal progression. But looking at the fights in Ulduar, it's easy to see that ferals are getting the short end of the stick compared to DKs and warriors - especially on the hardmodes.
Ciopo - I agree with anon. Having something created to make soloing old content easier is not a good justification for its existence. I don't really want to play the tank that gets to do old world content the best.
idd, but neither is endgame pve the sole aspect of the game.
i do have some regret on current rake gliph for istance, but this don't mean it's completely and always useless.
same apply to various other gliphs, some are aimed at leveling, some are strictily pvp, some strictly pve, etc etc.
besides, in the situation "healer die" that extra 10% may (or may not, as always) be the difference between making it on that last % of "quick zerg the boss before tank die" situations.
i even have an encounter example: loatheb.
if by UNKNOWN source all healers die here ( lol), that extra 10% may be the difference between living or dying while in cowform to ress an healer ( d'uh).
m basically having something NOT aimed to top-end pve is not enough a justification to NOT have it existence :), better than nothing it is
I have a quick question that I'm guessing is an easy answer, but I've never had a critting dot class before so I don't know . . . Will the crit rate on our rip depend on the crit we have when it ticks (I'm assuming) or the crit rate we have when we apply the rip?
Thanks in advance if you know the answer!
I can actually name an example where that glyph would have been useful in PvE endgame:
We were doing 8man naxx and we were on 4H and decided not to take on more people. 2 healers, one at the back with the range tanks, one at the front with the group zerging down thane. My job was to solo Baron long enough for the other group to come and take over. At this point, 10% extra hp is actually a decent boost to TTL. Then again, balancing around this kind of extreme optional scenario which was done more to see if it could be done than to be serious about it is...stupid.
And the reason I doubt you'll find anyone agreeing with you ciopo is that this glyph was specifically aimed at helping feral tanking in Ulduar. People are upset because it's value at it's implicit purpose is almost none at all.
Mitch; That's not such a stupid question as you'd think! I'm going to assume it's at the time of applying the dot, since at least for priests(for whom this has been an interesting subject because of SW:P refreshing through mind flay) buffs effecting crit or damage are not applied to a existing SW:P.
It's not terribly relevant at this time for ferals, but if we ever get a way to keep up a single rip throughout the fight then you'll want to check that all buffs that can affect it will be up when the dot is applied.
with the change to primal gore and rake not being affected anymore...do you forsee us dropping rake from our rotation and reverting back to our more simple BC rotation?
Ironhyde; I'd be very surprised, rake has been very high damage without crits so far, and all that's really changing is that rip now might be the better dot of the two, it's relation to shred/mangle shouldn't be upset in any way by this.
Sucks to lose some scaling though :(
I'm curious as to how good Blood Draining is as a bear enchant. Has it showed up in any testable manner?
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=46098
Brad;
I suspect it's not terribly great, as things either kill you, or they don't, and if they don't, your healers should have their next 10k heal waiting, so you'll either be safe in most cases, or you'll simply have more healers stacked on your to get your faster to a safe number. It might save your life once in a long while, and I suppose that's always reason enough to consider it, especially as there really isn't much else. Mostly, I expect it's a pvp buff for rogues and kittys.
depending on how often it can trigger, i consider it the equivalent of extra EH.
as long as it don't kill you, a selfheal on proc is the equivalent of some stamina.
using sarth3d as example, shadron + two accolytes up.
example breath do , with some fire res, 37k damage on our 40k hp pool.
example sartharion melee damage is 5k
in that situation, breath+melee swing kill us (37k+5k= 42k on 40k hp)
if we had blood draining, we would have barely survived.
this assuming the proc don't "lag behind".
on sarth3d, expecially 10man, your healer/healers not always can heal you the split second after the breath land
unlucky i can't find it on ptr, tbh it seems a drop formula from ulduar mroe than from the shard vendor by the look of it.
Mitch - that's a really interesting question. I'll see if I can do some testing on it. I can't promise that'll be authoritative, but I think that if you hit a lacerate, watch its procs while in bear form for a few minutes, then do a hit a lacerate and shift out immediately (losing iLotP and a lot of basic crit) that you should be able to see whether or not it works like that. I'll try and test that this week.
Ironhyde - I don't see rake being dropped any time soon. Before 3.1 rake was the best generator of combo points per energy that druids have. That really hasn't changed at all.
Brad and others - I would LOVE to test Blood Draining, but so far I've found zero people who actually have the damn enchant on the PTR. The very limited information I've seen has been datamined, and it still looks fairly subpar to me. However, things in Ulduar hit HARD. Getting below 35% might be fairly common - similar to how Commendation was always up on Brutallus.
And ciopo - you can figure out tons of ways to justify that being an awesome enchant that saved you, but you can do that with almost anything. Imp LotP could be the same way there in that specific situation. Does that mean it's a really stellar enchant? Not necessarily. The easier way to solve that specific situation is to make sure that your healers are actually having HoTs on you and healing you as a breath lands.
So primal gore now just affects rip in kitty form... seems there might have been an easier and more interesting way to give us some extra single target damage than this.
It also means we'll see little dps increase over 3.09 before we get at least 7 combo points up on a mob. (savage roar at 2, rip at 5.) Talk about disappointing.
I dunno. SI itself I have had little use for. That is a small amount of health for a bear tank. A drop in teh bucket really. Almost every time I have used it I wind up dead anyway. It's one of those emergency buttons but in such an emergency it's too little too late.
I don't think my current spec even has it right now
as of secondlast build SI have 3 min cd, and the glyph is for 15% more health.
i can't really say that "i don't like it", since i'm one using SI .. *often*
as for relative power, it's basically +50% SI effect, if you find it poor, maybe, lyke sylvanwing, you find SI poor to begin with :)
or perhabs it's just me being overobsessed with going for as most self sustainability as possible, will see if i'll replace lifeward with blood draining.
the glyph is trickier, i don't want to ditch neither maul, growl and Frienzed Regeneration ones, might end up dropping the maul one since it serve no purpose on single target fights, and on more-than-two i will be swiping anyway :3
@@@@you can figure out tons of ways to justify that being an awesome enchant that saved you, but you can do that with almost anything. Imp LotP could be the same way there in that specific situation. Does that mean it's a really stellar enchant? Not necessarily. The easier way to solve that specific situation is to make sure that your healers are actually having HoTs on you and healing you as a breath lands.@@@@
of course ^^
the only difference, whinch i find nice, is that blood draining is guaranteed to heal when you actually need an heal, while lifeward/ ilotp often go as overheal.
i put blood draining more on " like extra EH" effect because it's trigger is conditional on our health pool unlike Ilotp/lifeward whinch are nice but are not something you can rely on
The problem with the SI glyph from a PvE tanking prespective is the same as with stamina in general. If you have enough, anything more is worth 0. And SI without the glyph was enough for what it is used for, and essentially if it's +30% or +300% it's value as a tanking tool is almost exactly the same.
It doesn't fix our problems, it doesn't even come close.
Meh, that was me posting on gf's comp btw.
what problem are you referring too, may i ask?
if it's not about survivability/TTL, then what's the point on complaining about it if your concern is on, for istance, AOE TPS?
it sound to me like clinging on " they changed sinister calling for rogues, why they didn't look at feral savage fury?" (<--- this is just an example)
dismissing a change as a bad change just because there is something else that could have been changed is not contestualizing the change and considering it for what IT is useful/nonuseful for.
i could say primal gore is a shitty addition because it don't affect pvp almost at all.
here, i made a silly statement, see what i did here?
ciopo, the problem with SI (and stamina boosts in general) is that either you have enough stamina to deal with current healing requirements or you don't. It's not something that has gains, really. If you don't have enough EH for a given encounter, you will have big problems. If you do, more doesn't matter.
In the same vein, having a health pool of 65k or 70k isn't that different. The biggest benefit to 15% more SI is as Karthis hinted at in post 1 - that it'll heal for 15% more, which is the real 'win'. But that's not that big a win.
I'll still take it, because it's far better than growl or rip for tanking. But it's not particularly good and doesn't make bears any more viable as main tanks.
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