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To be really, really clear: These are almost certainly not the final versions. They might not even be correct. Some of the bonuses make zero sense, like adding .01 seconds to the damage of immolate. So take these with a grain of salt and don't get too attached to them.
But let's take a look at all of them, starting with the druid:
- Druid T9 Feral 2P Bonus (Class: Druid) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Growl ability by 2 sec and increases the duration of your Rake ability by 3 sec.
- Druid T9 Feral 4P Bonus (Class: Druid) -- Increases the damage reduction granted by Barkskin by 10% and increases the critical strike chance of Rip and Ferocious Bite by 5%.
This is an interesting change for bears. The 2p bonus is decidedly lame unless we're facing huge amounts of random dorks or something (more on that in a bit).
The 4 piece, to me, reads "We're very sorry about your bad cooldowns. We're very sorry about your bad cooldowns". A 30% barkskin every minute is approaching IBF-levels of awesome. If they wanted Druids to be the next DKs, this is a good way to do it. Between a druid's innate damage soaking ability and this set bonus, they'll be in pretty good shape. A really excellent ability.
Blizzard got a bit lazy with the set bonuses in general though. For instance, here's the DK version:
- Death Knight T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Dark Command ability by 2 sec.
- Death Knight T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood, and Boneshield abilities by 20 sec.
Dark Command, shockingly, is the DK taunt. Hmm. The 4P bonus improves each tree's 2-minute cooldown to 1 min 40, which doesn't sound awe-inspiring. Helpful, sure - it's basically a 16% improvement in the cooldown if you're using it every time - but that's over a long duration. On a lot of fights that'll mean you might get to use it once more than you would have.
The Paladin one is awfully familiar...
- Paladin T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Class: Paladin) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Righteous Defense ability by 2 sec.
- Paladin T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Class: Paladin) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Divine Protection ability by 30 sec.
Wow...another 2 seconds off of taunt. Thrilling. The 4p bonus is similar to the DK one; cutting it from 2 minutes to 1.5 is good, but does it actually do much? It's not nearly as game-defining as the barkskin one. I also bet they forgot about forbearance stopping this from working at all, but I bet that's at least their intent.
Finally, warriors! And I bet you can guess what the 2p bonus is:
- Warrior T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Intervene) (Class: Warrior) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Intervene ability by 5 sec.
- Warrior T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Shield Block) (Class: Warrior) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Shield Block ability by 20 sec.
Oh, those tricksy Blizzard people. Intervene with a shorter cooldown - that might be actually more useless than growl having a shorter cooldown. Though at least it doesn't run into the stupid diminishing returns that the taunts do.
The 4-piece for shield block, however, is really intriguing. This would cut shield block down to 20 seconds, which basically means shield block is active fully half of the time. While this isn't as game-changing as the 4pT8 bonus in the sense that you can't plan on stopping special attacks with it, the amount of threat and damage mitigation this should stop should be decent. This effectively allows for a much higher block rate overall (half of all attacks will be blocked for sure, and they'll be blocked at the 200% block value) as well as a much higher amount of damage blocked. Depending on gear, this'll be close to a 2% mitigation boost by itself.
I'll have to figure out more on what the cat bonus is, by the way, but for now it doesn't look that impressive to me. Rake's duration increased is nice and should add another shred in the cycle, but 5% more rip crit and FB crit just seems not all that hot.
Oh yeah, one last tidbit: the tanking T9 idol:
- Druid T9 Feral Relic (Lacerate, Swipe, Mangle, and Shred) (Class: Druid) -- While in Bear Form, your Lacerate and Swipe abilities have a chance to grant 200 dodge rating for 9 sec, and your Mangle and Shred abilities have a chance to grant 200 agility for 16 sec.
Before you go gaga, I'm assuming that the mangle only applies to cat, not bear. If it didn't, it would be one amazing idol. As it stands it's going to be a nice way to combine the best of two idols without having to go crazy to get both. 200 dodge rating is a bit higher on avoidance than Corruptor, and 200 agility is a much better boost than Ravenous Beast or Worship.
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12 comments:
well good for blizzard! re the setbonus I'm sure they do it deliberately - give us bad bonuses then good bonuses, as the tiers rotate. It also helps smooth out the love for people who dont have everything, all the time. Now, they could give us good bonuses all the time, but that would force people to want to keep old gear for the bonus - which is counterintuitive, and rather a pain to do, I'd say.
Re the idol, woot! They do listen to the community. Many people suggested a single idol for cat & bear. Good for them.
The 4pc is not going live if blizzard has any sense at all.
Sorry but they finally fixed IBF. But what they just did with the set bonus was give the most OP cooldown to the soon to be most OP tank.
Why are they shifting the problem from one class to another. Because thats exactly what they did
I dunno man, given their comments on popularity of classes, I wouldnt be surprised if they're trying to encourage more druids to try tanking. There are hardly any decent druid tanks in the game as far as I can tell. I get whispers from random people telling me I'm the best druid tank they've met even. Its crazy. Just go to any tanking forum like the official forums, or tankspot. There are really no druid leader tanks out there. A couple of blogs like this one, sure, but at the high end, I bet, as GC suggested, its all warriors. We just havent been in the game that long for many druids to get excited by tanking, and learn how to do it well.
Anyway, as we all know, an OP set bonus comes... and then it goes.
Yeah, when reading over the bonuses on vent we just had laughter over the fact each class (besides warrior) had the reduced cooldown on taunt.
The cat ones look great, specially how with ulduar level gear, it can be possible to get in there and get t9, plus slowly getting triump badges for it as well.
Even if the mangle effect on that amazing idoll is just bear, its still an insane idol, anything for bear is appreciated at this point.
With the stats shown on t9, the 4piece bonus looks great alongside it, but even with diminishing Returns, who needs any more crit for FB? :P
The extra 10% seems like it is definitely straying away from the nerfs that DKs have been getting and doesn't make much sense at all. Whatev.
The DPS bonuses . . . I just don't know if it's enough to take over a clearcasting state you can get from 2T8.
What the 2pc bonus says to me (with the rumors about the coliseum) is that there's going to be a lot of adds (maybe similar to Thorim?) which are going to be hard to round up. 2 seconds off of taunt will help in that aspect, but please oh please give me that 4pc as is.
p.s. did you see the idol also posted there? 200 dodge+200 agility? CAN YOU SAY OP? /drool
Maybe when they say an additional 10%, they meant and additional 10% of 20%?
The last thing he posted was the idol, so I think Kalon did.
I can see some fights where the growl can be useful, but it really depends on these new fights.
I have the impression the Cat "bonuses" are the real nerf to Kitty DPS in 3.2
T8 is awesome, if T9 works out as I expect it will then using 2T8/2T9 might be "standard".
Rauxis, chosen of CAT
Anon - thanks for coming by. The idol does look really sweet. Hopefully it won't cost too much, but even with it costing emblems of triumph it'll be within reach of any bear after only 10-15 days of doing daily heroics.
Darksend - I honestly don't know. I thought that was true with the warrior 4p as well, but they went live with it too. I think they don't particularly care whether a tank's bonuses are insanely broken or not. That being said, it might not be particularly relevant for T9 content anyway. We'll see.
And to be clear, the problem wasn't just IBF. It was IBF + the tank taking predictable, large hits every minute.
Anon2 - they can try and encourage more druids to tank, but honestly? It's likely not to happen in any large numbers. The druids that have been playing for a while are mostly resto and liking that. The ones that aren't are being discouraged from tanking because DPS is so high. I really don't want some kind of affirmative action system that makes more people flock to the FotM class.
Sanctuari, the 4p bonus isn't all that special for cats, and the real question right now is whether the 2pT8 bonus is worth the loss of stats compared to the best 4 pieces of T9 you can get. And it's looking...close.
Mitch - 2pT9 + 2pT8 looks very, very good. We'll see.
Michael - the coliseum has literally no trash. It's like Hyjal, but without waves. The bonuses to me say that tier 10 is where you're going to possibly have lots of adds. But T9? Likely not.
Tyyr - that's a possibility - that's what they did with Paladins back in the day. And it sucked.
Rauxis - that's my suspicion as well, but that was before seeing the heroic 25-man loot level. Which was...crazy.
(anon2) I'm sure you're right, its a pretty bad way to make the game. Im sure I'm not alone in misunderstanding GCs words on the popularity question.
They've often said they thought bear CDs were a bit weak. They've also said there should be less focus on CD usage in t9. I hope our set bonus is just a passing phenomenon; we'll enjoy it while we have it, but it wont be so game breaking as to cause guilds to frantically recruit 4pt9 druids.
Im sure that until players actually get the 4p tier9 25 man (reg or heroic) set, that most would just stick with the clear-casting from t8 without a doubt.
Not sure why, but the whole clear-casting bonus just feels like t4 all over again. Both help either damage and rotation considerably, which is always wanted.
We will just have to see if the stats stay as they are on the t9 gear, which seems like it would.
I think I have found out blizz's secret conspiracy that in each tier of content, they want either bears or cats to shine. In this case, its Bear.
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