[General] Thoughts on normal modes of Ulduar

As of Friday Fire and Blood downed Yogg-Saron, a hordeside first and a server second.

Yes, our server is a bit backwater. :)

Yogg is probably my favorite fight of the entire instance so far, though it's also very easily the most frustrating. Mimiron is more fun, but Yogg is harder (and thus I enjoy it more). But to explain this, I need to break this up into smaller bits.

See, some fights aren't really pushing any one quality of raiders, one way or another. Flame Leviathan is the biggest extreme; it requires so little from raiders that they don't even need to know how to play their own class to down the boss. Other fights are basically this way - ultra-forgiving, mechanically simple, etc. Thankfully there aren't that many fights out there.

Other fights emphasize an aspect of the trinity of raiding. For example, XT emphasizes (or at least emphasized) DPS. The healing requirements were not huge and did not require a lot of coordination, and the tanking was 'stand still'. But DPS needed to be on the ball to beat the enrage, to focus fire certain things, to do both massive single and AoE target, etc. This is commonly known as a 'check'. And checks are interesting, but they're not all that challenging most of the time because even with them, there's a lot of room for really good players to boost up the mediocre ones.

Most of Ulduar are 'checks' in one form or another. Razorscale's a tank check. Ignis used to be a tank check. XT is DPS. Kologarn is primarily a DPS and healer check. Hodir's a DPS check. Thorim is largely a healing and tanking check. Vezax is a tanking and DPS check.

What about the others? That's when you get into the next level of difficulty - raidwide coordination. This requires a big dance and a lot of coordination to get down. Freya's all about coordination; focus firing adds in certain ways, moving around, etc. Mimiron is a great example of a coordination fight. Coordination fights are often characterized by multi-phase encounters and often with weird roles that classes normally don't play, such as a ranged DPS acting as a tank. Iron Council (really, any "council" or multi-boss fight), Mimiron, and Yogg are this way - and Mimiron's the best of the lot.

So what makes Yogg harder? Yogg has the final (and in easy-mode Ulduar, the only) aspect of raiding: personal accountability. AKA the Teron Gorefiend/Ledge boss issue. Most fights require a certain amount of raidwide output; raidwide damage, raid tanking, raid healing. If one person isn't as good or doesn't do exactly what they need, it's usually recoverable. Some roles are obviously more important, but even in that case you know that you can put your best X (tank, DPS, healer) in that role and you'll be fine.

But some fights require that every single person in your raid is at least not horrible and knows what to do and how to do it - and if they don't, it's a wipe. Teron was the bane of many guilds because of this mechanic, where anyone might be selected for death and the dreaded construct duty. And every guild seemed to have 'that guy'. The guy that just for whatever reason couldn't do constructs to save their life, or freaked out, or always DCed right when they were selected and stood in the middle of the raid drooling, or whatever.

Yogg is really the only fight that has this degree of difficulty. And honestly it's not that huge by comparison to Gorefiend; it's still recoverable a lot of the time. Nevertheless, lots of ways to mess things up in phase 1 alone:

• You could decide that clouds should not be avoided and should be hugged. Adds are fun! Worst part about this is that you can recover from this eventually...but you'll waste too much time to beat the enrage.
• Or you just kill the adds in Phase 1 too early and they don't explode on Sara, meaning you're 20-30 seconds behind.
• Or you don't interrupt a couple and kill off too many people (and make them stand still for too long)
  

In Phase 2, there are so many ways to mess up it's just an embarrassment of riches.

• You could go sit in the sanity well and do half dps for a while.
  
• You could just not kill crushers that appear on the other side of the raid
• You could be a melee that's going down the portals and miss your portal...
• ...or take someone else's...
• ...or get grabbed by a tentacle and not call for a BoP...
• ...or go into the portals and die because you couldn't turn around enough
• ...or stay too long in the brain and get MCed
• ...or not down the tentacles in the brain fast enough and wipe the outside raid

In Phase 3, there's less to mess up. You can not turn around fast enough on lunatic gaze and do mass damage to the raid. You can not kill the immortals fast enough, or not tank them well enough. Or simply your raid could just not do enough damage. Or your sanity could run out and you could get MCed.

For the record Friday was my first look at YS, but our guild had been working on him for a couple weeks. So they had worked out a lot of the kinks: positioning in Phase 1 and who does what, how to take the portals, how to keep melee from dying, etc. Each wipe does that, and that's why even when you don't have what it takes to down a boss right then that it's still valuable to practice. And yeah, I did n00b it up. I did take someone else's portal, I didn't call out for a BoP when I was constricted, I probably did too much damage to an add and made it blow up outside of a raid (pesky rip/rake dots are too damn good sometimes).

But I only made the same mistakes once.

From a cat perspective, YS is kind of annoying in that there's very little to backstab on YS. The way we did it there's nothing at all. I actually pulled out the bracers and boots from Sunwell and got ye olde 2pT6 bonus to do more manglespam, which wasn't so bad. Cats do have lots of advantages though - between being faster by default, having pounce and very good bursty AoE, they do a lot for the raid.

Anyway, YS is definitely the hardest fight because it requires such personal accountability. You can't carry people on it. People do have to perform at a reasonable level, but most importantly they can't screw up. It was nice to be able to do a fight like that again.

On a personal note, I got my second Ulduar piece of loot - Garona's Guise. None of the rogues wanted it, which I can understand; no armor pen, less AP, and a lot of unneeded stamina. But for a bear? Good times. I also got lucky on Emalon and got the Armwraps of Triumph. Three upgrades for tanking so far. Nothing for cat though. Although...honestly, cats don't need it. At least I don't. Even being a month behind on cat gear I'm still doing really strong DPS, 5k on any fight at least and often much higher. Cat DPS may need nerfing, honestly. Or at least better scaling.

Next up, hard modes for our guild. This should be interesting. Unlike T7, most hard modes in Naxx are gates. In other words, you can't just leave up a boss and go do the other stuff first, then go back and do the hard mode. FL, XT, all the Watchers, Vezax and YS are all this way. That leaves basically Iron Council as the only optional hardmode boss. So I'm curious - how are guilds out there planning on taking these guys on and making sure that you down the rest of the content? When do you give up on a hard mode for the week and go kill the rest of the stuff? I believe our plan is to spend our first raid night clearing up to the Watchers and killing the ones that we're not going to do hard modes on for a while (Mimiron for sure, Freya perhaps) and leave the optional bosses up. Then start work on the hard modes from then until night 3. On night 4, mop up everything we have left. It's a bit risky, but the alternative is to not kill the bosses we've already killed, and that means less improvement for the raid overall.

So how are y'all doing it?

[Druid] Ulduar loot weight, loot listing for bears (UPDATED 5/13)

UPDATED 5/13: Updated scores. Added all known hardmode gear. Added arena points and rating and honor costs to PvP gear. Only Algalon loot and some weapons remain to be discovered.

UPDATED 4/22: Added hardmode gear. Updated locations. Will update scores in the future.

UPDATED: added locations for tier tokens that are known. Added locations for a lot of loot that was known already.

At this point, all loot save what's on Algalon's table is known and well-documented. Almost all of it is in wowhead in its finished form. Go nuts, guys.

So first I'm going to teach you to fish. Or if you like, I'm going to set you on fire.

For starters, you need to know the gearing strategies for Ulduar tanking. And they're different than Naxx:

• Heart of the Wild nerfed to 10% stamina means you need stamina more. Don't go nuts on this, but you will need to have a good amount of stamina and you'll probably have to regem some of your gear or use certain choices.
• Things hit like a semi carrying a truck carrying small missiles. Seriously, most everything hits like Patchwerk's evil big brother on meth. You can reasonably expect to take 20k-25k hits from bosses, and there are plenty of special abilities that do far more than that.
• With the loss of armor, you need EVEN MORE stamina. Seriously.
• Also, with the loss of armor, more armor is a bit better. So armor as a stat improves greatly on a lot of these fights.
• Threat is actually important for druids. Other tanking classes have much better threat now, but druids are still a bit far behind. This means that you can't just ignore hit and expertise on your gear in Ulduar; there will be fights where your threat really matters.
• DPS stats matter a little bit for SD, but not insanely so. While Savage Defense is decent, it's not a substitute for armor. 100 AP means you prevent 25 damage, which would be (from the above boss) equivalent to .125% mitigation. So don't go nuts here. But do get some. And uptime is more important than raw mitigation most of the time, so go for crit if you're going for any specific DPS stat.
  

In general, this means that you should look for leather with a high amount of stamina but still some good amount of agility, good hit/expertise, sockets and good socket bonuses. Some AP and crit thrown in for good measure is also good.

Also note that for socketing, the Shifting Twilight Opal is finally here. This helps a lot. In general, my strategy for socketing gear will be the following:
Blue sockets will have straight Solid Sky Sapphires.
Red with have Shifting Twilight Opals.
Yellow will have Vivid Forest Emeralds or Enduring Forest Emeralds if I need the socket.
That's for straight tanking gear. For gear that I can use as a piece for DPS without having to regem/re-enchant, I'll go with straight agility gems. This would be the chest, feet, gloves, and belt for me; it might be different depending on your professions.

Just like before, I'll provide a weighing on wowhead that you can use to re-evaluate the gear. I'll also discuss them here so you can see them a bit.

Also note that the tier 8 bonuses for bears are basically pointless. There's no reason to go for the tier gear for the set bonuses. As you'll see, though, the main reason you'd want them is because the stats are just insanely good for bears.

Finally, I'll be updating this page as we get more information about what gear is out there. This will be the post for Ulduar loot analysis on a macro scale. If you know that more gear has been added, this is where you should find where I rank it.

Here's the comparison from wowhead. That's for armor only. Note that this does not do a good job with trinket weights based on procs or on on-use mechanics.

And here's the list for weapons.

Onto the analysis. Anything in italics is available in 3.0.8 and earlier. In general I tried to include as many reasonable items from Ulduar as I could. When (easy) or (hard) is listed, it means that that item drops from either an easy mode encounter or a hard-mode encounter if there is an option. If there is no option, it is not listed.

And yeah, for right now I have very little of an idea of where exactly things drop. I'll revise this in the coming days ahead and make it a bit more accurate.

Back:

1. Titanskin Cloak - 45.07. Heroic Freya (hard)
   
2. Drape of Icy Intent - 44.10. Heroic Hodir (hard)
3. Drape of the Faceless General - 41.35. Normal Vezax (hard)
   
4. Cloak of the Makers - 40.67 Heroic Auriaya
   
5. Cloak of the Shadowed Sun - 40.07. Heroic Naxxramas
6. Platinum Mesh Cloak - 36.56. Emblems of Valor.
7. Drape of the Lithe - 36.31. Heroic Iron Council (easy)
   
8. Gale-Proof Cloak - 35.59. Normal Sartharion.
9. Shawl of the Shattered Giant - 33.10. Normal Ulduar (easy)
10. Winter's Frigid Embrace - 32.63. Normal Hodir (easy)
11. Durable Nerubhide Cape - 31.25. Leatherworking
12. Drape of the Deadly Foe- 31.12. Heroic Kel'Thuzad.
13. Cloak of the Iron Council - 30.74. Normal Iron Council(easy)
14. Drape of the Drakerider - 27.00. Heroic Razorscale
    

No real updates to this, as we already knew the better in-slot pieces. Cloak of the Shadowed Sun will remain a situational piece because of the high armor, but either the Titanskin or the Drape of Icy Intent are good replacements. If you have the Shadowed Sun I wouldn't replace it until either one of those dropped.

Chest:

1. Embrace of the Gladiator - 88.42. Heroic Thorim (hard).
2. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes - 82.25. 1750 arena rating, 2150 arena points.
   
3. Conqueror's Nightsong Rainments - 78.69. Heroic Hodir(easy), emblems of Conquest.
4. Valorous Nightsong Rainments -74.40. Normal Yogg-Saron?(easy)
   
5. Tunic of the Limber Stalker -73.23. Normal Freya(easy)
   
6. Valorous Dreamwalker Rainments -70.77. Heroic 4 Horsemen.
7. Deadly Gladiator Dragonhide Robes -70.67. 58 Emblems of Conquest, 12000 honor/700 arena points
   
8. Titan-forged Leather Tunic of Triumph -69.83. 40 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor
   
9. Winter's Icy Embrace -65.82. Heroic Hodir(easy)
   
10. Tunic of Indulgence -65.38. Heroic Grobbulus.
    
11. Chestpiece of Suspicion -65.28. Heroic Razuvious.
    
12. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes -64.50. 49600 honor , 12000 honor/350 arena, 45 emblems of valor.
    
13. Polar Vest -63.26. Leatherworking
    
14. Heroes' Dreamwalker Rainments -64.31. Normal 4 Horsemen, emblems of heroism.
    
15. Tunic of Dislocation -63.63. Normal Gothik.
    
16. Chestguard of the Recluse -60.92
17. Blade-Scarred Tunic -59.26. Normal Sartharion (easy)

UPDATED 5/13: Predictably the hard mode item looks best, and a bit behind it is the pvp gear. Thorim is probably the easiest hard mode in Ulduar (note: I did not say it was easy, merely the easiest) which means that there's a decent chance at getting this chest at some point. Also, this isn't a huge upgrade by any means; valorous to conqueror gives 4 points of an upgrade. This shouldn't be as high a priority.

Feet:

1. Runed Ironhide Boots -57.48. Heroic Iron Council(easy)
2. Furious Gladiator's Boots of Triumph - 57.03. Emalon, 62000 honor and 1500 arena rating
   
3. Footpads of Silence -55.63. Leatherworking BoE (from Heroic Ulduar pattern)
   
4. Deadly Gladiator Boots of Triumph -51.42. 49600 honor
   
5. Footwraps of Vile Deceit -50.75. Heroic Loatheb.
   
6. Flamestalker Boots -49.28. Heroic Ignis (easy)
   
7. Polar Boots -47.24. Leatherworking BoE
8. Treads of the Invader - 46.58. Normal Razorscale
   

I had forgotten quite how bad the foot itemization really was. The leatherworking item really isn't that much stronger than the Vile Deceit, and it's going to be very expensive and rare to get early on. I'm very much hoping that there are better pieces than this. The PvP gear is very close in every way to the Runed Ironhide, and should be much easier to obtain - and even has the highest stamina possible save for the Polar gear.

Finger:

1. The Leviathan's Coil -48.65. Heroic Flame Leviathan (easy)
2. Fate's Clutch - 44.61. Heroic Thorim (hard)
   
3. Platinum Band of the Aesir -37.76. Heroic Auriaya
   
4. Signet of Winter -37.19. Normal Hodir (easy)
   
5. Loop of the Agile -36.08. Normal Iron Council (hard)
   
6. Gatekeeper -35.76. Heroic Sapphiron.
   
7. Keystone Great-Ring -35.04. Heroic Drak'Tharon
   
8. Metallic Loop of the Sufferer -33.05. Heroic Vezax (easy)
9. Cindershard Ring - 31.25. Heroic Ignis.
10. Band of Draconic Guile - 31.21. Normal Razorscale
11. Godbane Signet - 30.49. Heroic Yogg-Saron.
12. Signet of the Impregnable Fortress - 29.69. Emblems of Valor.
    
13. Signet of the Earthshaker - 27.72. Heroic XT-002 (easy)
    
14. Sif's Promise - 20.74. Heroic Thorim (easy)
15. Crazed Construct's Ring - 19.33. Heroic XT-002 (easy)
16. Power-Enhancing Ring - 17.74. Normal Ulduar (easy)

UPDATED 5/13: Fate's Clutch is a very nice second ring after the coil for anyone. And again - drops off of Hard-mode Thorim. You and him are going to be best of friends. Leviathan's Coil should make you drool quite a bit. It's crazy good for a bear. Platinum Band is also quite nice, but it's hard to beat that 882 armor. If you've already got Gatekeeper and Keystone I wouldn't upgrade until you get Leviathan's Coil or Platinum Band, depending on what your expertise is. Anything below Keystone Great Ring can be reasonably ignored for tanking purposes, though Metallic Loop is a good ring to pull double duty in tanking and DPS.

Hands:

1. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves - 58.25. Emalon, 1600 arena ranking and 1300 arena points
   
2. Conqueror's Nightsong Handgrips -57.93. Heroic Mimiron(easy)
   
3. Gloves of the Stonereaper -54.67. Heroic Auriaya
   
4. Valorous Nightsong Handgrips -54.47. Normal Freya(easy)
   
5. Gloves of the Blind Stalker -51.12 - Emblems of Conquest
   
6. Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves -50.72. Arena
   
7. Valorous Dreamwalker Gloves -47.73. Heroic Sartharion (easy)
   
8. Gloves of Fast Reactions -47.50. Heroic Sapphiron
9. Gloves of Smouldering Touch - 45.34. Normal Ignis.
   
10. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves -45.89. Honor, Arena
    
11. Rapid Attack Gloves -43.12. Normal Razuvious.
    
12. Dislocating Handguards -42.83. Heroic Faerlina.
    
13. Heroes' Dreamwalker Handgrips -42.76. Normal Sartharion (easy)

Even with the emphasis on agility in the weighings, the pvp gear comes out ahead. This is also one of the easier pvp pieces to obtain. Furthermore, gloves are far better optimized in T8 than T7 - this should be one of the earlier targets for you to obtain an upgrade in. For raw stats it's not really comparable. After that - many good choices this time before we hit the older content gear. The T8.25 piece is great for both cat and bear and is well itemized this time around. Most everything else just doesn't cut it, but if you have to I'd try and get the Gloves of the Stonereaper; they'll be close to best for cats if they don't work out perfectly for bears.

Head:

1. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm - 82.18. 1900 arena rating and 2150 arena points
   
2. Garona's Guise - 75.90. Heroic Yogg-Saron
   
3. Conqueror's Nightsong Headguard -74.64. Heroic Thorim(easy), emblems of conquest
   
4. Hood of the Exodus -72.06. Heroic Gothik.
   
5. Guise of the Midguard Serpent -70.79. Normal Thorim (easy)
6. Valorous Nightsong Headguard -70.38. Normal Mimiron(easy)
7. Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm -70.21. Arena.
   
8. Valorous Dreamwalker Headguard -65.98 Heroic Kel'Thuzad.
9. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm -64.07. Honor, Arena.
10. Titan-Forged Leather helm of Triumph -63.35. Wintergrasp.
    
11. Heroes' Dreamwalker Headguard -61.08. Normal Kel'Thuzad.
    

UPDATED 5/13: As expected, the Furious Gladiator helm hits the top spot here. And it's head and shoulders (ugh) over the competition. It's also the hardest pvp piece to get outside of the shoulders. If you can hit 1900 rating, this should be a top choice to get. It's amazing and annoying how high Hood of the Exodus is here, given that it's never, not once, dropped for our guild. Still, if you have it you don't have to look for much upgrades going forward, and chances are the T8.25 helm will be very good for a while given how much stamina it has. Garona's Guise is probably a sidegrade for the most part; the threat is stellar, but the lack of stamina puts it below the other options.

Legs:

1. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards - 82.24. Emalon, 1700 arena rating and 2150 arena points
   
2. Conqueror's Nightsong Legguards -80.75. Heroic Freya (easy)
   
3. Valorous Nightsong Legguards -76.48. Normal Hodir (easy)
   
4. Leggings of Wavering Shadow -75.59. Emblems of Conquest
5. Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards -70.69. Emalon (normal), 58 emblems of conquest, 12000 honor and 700 arena points
   
6. Proto-Hide Leggings -70.36. Heroic Razorscale
7. Leggings of the Honored -70.27. Heroic Sartharion (hard)
8. Valorous Dreamwalker Legguards -69.64. Heroic Thaddius.
9. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards -64.56. 49600 honor, 45 emblems of valor,
   
10. Heroes' Dreamwalker Legguards -63.00. Normal Thaddius.
11. Leggings of Swift Reflexes - 61.28. Normal Iron Council(easy)
12. Leggings of Fleeting Moments - 61.18. Heroic Gothik.

UPDATED 5/13: While the Furious legs are still the best, the T8.25 piece is remarkably close. It also shows how bad the T7 legs really were for what they were; even the deadly piece ends up beating the T7.25 legs. Legs should likely be one of the higher priorities for you to upgrade in Ulduar.

Neck:

1. Bronze Pendant of the Vanir -41.16. Heroic Freya(hard)
   
2. Mark of the Unyielding -40.82. Normal Ulduar (easy)
   
3. Titanstone Pendant -38.98. Heroic Trash
   
4. Shard of the Crystal Forest -38.20. Emblems of Conquest
   
5. Boundless Ambition -36.91. Heroic Kel'Thuzad.
6. Broach of the Wailing Night -34.69. Emblems of Conquest
7. Nexus War Champion Beads -34.19. Heroic Malygos quest reward
   
8. Heritage -33.90. Heroic Naxxramas
   
9. Nymph Heart Charm -33.84. Heroic Freya (easy)
   
10. Frigid Strength of Hodir -33.83. Heroic Hodir (hard)
    
11. Favor of the Dragon Queen -33.69. Heroic Malygos quest reward
    
12. Necklace of Unerring Mettle -29.96. Heroic Kologarn
    
13. Fervor of the Protectorate -28.76. Normal Trash
    
14. Spiked Battleguard Choker -25.10. Emblems of Conquest
15. Insurmountable Fervor -24.64. Heroic Iron Council(easy)

Note that I left a lot of pre 3.1 items off of this because there were so many. Anything under 30 points can safely be ignored for tanking. And no, you shouldn't roll on the Bronze Pendant of the Vanir unless all the other tanks have it. Honestly, if you already have Boundless Ambition I wouldn't roll on much of anything here. Note: Don't be an idiot and pass up on Mark of the Unyielding if it drops from normal and you can roll on it. It's very good, no matter how you measure it. (this is what I did earlier this week)

Shoulder:

1. Shoulderpads of the Intruder - 69.24. Heroic Iron Council (hard)
2. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders - 59.66. 2050 arena rating and 1750 arena points
   
3. Conqueror's Nightsong Shoulderpads -54.66. Heroic Yogg-Saron(easy)
   
4. Valorous Dreamwalker Shoulderpads -52.58. Heroic Loatheb.
   
5. Shoulderpads of the Monolith -52.45. Heroic Kologarn
   
6. Deadly Gladiator Dragonhide Spaulders -51.25. 46 emblems of conquest, 9600 honor and 550 arena points
7. Valorous Nightsong Shoulderpads -51.01. Normal Ulduar (easy)
   
8. Heroes' Dreamwalker Shoulderpads -47.70. Normal Loatheb.
   
9. Trollwoven Spaulders -46.91. BoE Leatherworking
   
10. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders -46.38. Arena, honor
    
11. Treacherous Shoulderpads -445.37. Normal XT-002(easy)

UPDATED 5/13: Wow. Those are some impressive shoulders for killing Steelbreaker. This is by far the biggest upgrade at any slot that I've seen; fully 17 points from T7.25 to this and 15 points over T8.25. The tier gear is horrible by comparison, but those off-spec items are stellar for bear and the best overall upgrade in Ulduar save perhaps for Idol of the Corrupter.

Well, all the tier gear can't be THAT good all the time, right? In this case, it's the odd looking shoulders that aren't that big of a deal. If for some reason you wanted to keep your T7 bonus, shoulders would be a really good option.

Trinket:

1. Heart of Iron -38.68. Heroic Ignis
2. Royal Seal of King Liane - 37.01. Normal Yogg-Saron.
   
3. Essence of Gossamer - 25.57. Heroic Azjol-Nerub.
   
4. Darkmoon Card: Greatness (agi) -24.39. Inscription BoE
   
5. The General's Heart -20.30. Heroic Vezax (easy)
   
6. Valor Medal of the First War -15.94. Emblems of Valor.
   
7. Defender's Code -13.82. Heroic Naxxramas

I didn't include the profession trinkets, though they rank between Heart and Essence. As always, trinkets are very encounter-heavy, but the Heart of Iron is an amazingly high-itemized piece that all tanks will covet. Sadly even though the parry is useless, the Royal Seal will still be one of the best trinkets for ferals. The General's Heart is a nicer version of Valor Medal and Essence. DM:G still remains one of the better avoidance trinkets, and adds armor. Defender's Code is still very strong in certain situations such as hard-hitting mobs - and trust me, there's plenty of those in Ulduar.

Waist:

1. Soul-Devouring Cinch - 60.84. Normal Yogg-Saron (hard).
2. Furious Gladiator's Belt of Triumph - 57.41. Emalon, 1450 rating and 62000 honor
   
3. Death-warmed belt -56.31. Leatherworking BoE from Heroic Ulduar.
   
4. Waistguard of the Creator -54.79. Heroic Mimiron(easy)
   
5. Belt of the Twilight Assassin -52.74. Emblems of Conquest
   
6. Deadly Gladiator's Belt of Triumph -51.32. Arena
   
7. Relic Hunter's Cord -50.66. Heroic Trash
   
8. Titan-forged Belt of Triumph -50.64. Wintergrasp
   
9. Hateful Gladiator's Belt of Triumph -46.47. Honor, Arena.
   
10. Polar Cord -46.06. Leatherworking BoE.
    
11. Nimble Climber's Belt -45.41. Normal Auriaya
    
12. Sharp-Barbed Leather belt -43.98. Heroic Utgarde Keep
13. Trollwoven Girdle -43.06. Leatherworking BoE.
14. Stalk-skin Belt -41.43 .Heroic Heigan.
15. Belt of the Tortured - 40.74. Heroic Patchwerk.

UPDATED 5/13: The belt slot for some reason got changed more than any other with the whole re-emphasis on stamina. And man, does this show how bad the itemization was for this slot before. That said, the soul-devouring cinch is one of the best itemized things in the whole game, especially for bears. The Furious PvP gear actually loses out here, though it being easy to obtain means that it might be worth it to go for. Given that the Soul devouring cinch comes from Yogg's hard mode, I'd say it might be a while before it's obtained.

I would still recommend considering something a bit more agi and DPS-friendly in this slot, and gemming accordingly. The craftable Death-Warmed belt does a really good job of everything save perhaps having any hit/expertise, but even without that it's very strong, and is a reasonable thing to spend those runed orbs on.

Wrist:

1. Fluxing Energy Coils - 40.72. Normal XT-002 (hard)
   
2. Furious Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph - 39.18. Heroic Emalon, 1400 arena rating and 39400 honor
   
3. Mechanist's Bindings -37.46. Heroic Leviathan (easy)
4. Thrusting Bands -35.59. Heroic Noth.
5. Deadly Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph -35.48. 31600 honor
   
6. Sinner's Bindings -34.98. Heroic Maexxna.
7. Bindings of the Tunneler - 29.43. Heroic Utgarde Keep.
   
8. Wristwraps of the Cutthroat -28.46. Emblems of Valor
   

UPDATED 5/13: The fluxing Energy coils are a decent thing, but because they're hard to obtain (XT hardmode on 10-man) and they're not that special as far as itemization goes, AND the PvP bracers are easy to obtain and almost as good...sorry, guys, you don't get the recommendation.

Ah, the wrist - the other bastard itemization son of Blizzard. One normal Ulduar, only one piece in general...chances are there's a lot more to find here. I wouldn't bother rolling on the Mechanist bindings. There's going to be something better.

Weapons:

1. Furious Gladiator's Greatstaff - 145.07. 4250 arena points and 2200 arena rating
   
2. Furious Gladiator's Staff - 140.09. 50000 honor and 1400 arena points and 1850 arena rating
   
3. Origin of Nightmares -132.84. Heroic Grobbulus.
   
4. Twisted Visage -130.06. Heroic XT-002 (easy)
5. Tortured Earth - 127.39. Normal General Vezax (hard)
   
6. Lotrafen, Spear of the Damned -124.98. Heroic Vezax (easy)
   
7. The Undeath Carrier -118.72. Heroic Heigan.
   
8. Staff of the Plague Beast - 118.10. Normal Heigan.
9. Hoperender - 115.88. Normal Thorim (easy)
10. Journey's End - 115.52. Heroic Kel'Thuzad.
11. Silvery Sylvan Stave/Staff of Feral Furies - 114.33. Argent Tourney Quartermaster.
12. Staff of the Plaguehound - 113.38. Normal Kel'Thuzad.
    
13. Inevitable Defeat - 110.05. Heroic Naxxramas
14. Black Ice - 107.38. Normal Malygos.
15. Relentless Edge - 105.05. Normal Ignis.
    
16. Staff of Trickery - 104.87. Heroic Violet Hold
17. Spire of Withering Dreams - 101.95. Normal Ulduar (easy)
18. Earthshaper - 101.90. Heroic Yogg-Saron (easy)
    
19. Ironsoul - 91.31. Flame Leviathan (easy)

UPDATED 5/13: The Furious staves have been nerfed from their original ridiculously high values - but even with that nerf they're better than Origin of Nightmares and still best in slot. If you're wondering where Dark Edge of Depravity or Dreambinder are - they're not in Wowhead yet, so they don't show up here. Dark Edge should be the better overall tanking weapon for ferals, though for pure mitigation/survival nothing is going to beat Origin. Dark Edge should likely be better for threat as well, given that nice amount of hit.

I am also likely going to revise this when those weapons hit wowhead, because the amount of armor that origin provides is simply not being counted well enough here.

If you're curious, it drops from Yogg-Saron's hard mode. Dreambinder drops from any hardmode, though it came originally from Algalon.

And finally...

Idol:

1. Idol of the Corrupter. Heroic Vezax (easy).
2. Idol of Terror. Badges of Justice.
   

That's it. If you have your old Terror, that's as good as it gets. It's a huge upgrade, mind you, but that's it. And yes, if you only do 10-mans you're out of luck. If you don't get lucky, you're out of luck. It's a very bothersome situation, but there it is.

Thanks again for reading, and I'll be updating this as the week goes on.

[Druid, 3.1] 5 reasons that ferals make the best offtank in 3.1

Karthis recently posted on the tanking requirements that will be found in Ulduar. This is pretty accurate and what I've found to be true, though it doesn't mention hard modes; they'll require slightly different requirements. What this doesn't say is who is best for what role, and where a feral druid fits in best. I'll get to that in a bit, but I need to cover some history.

Prior to 3.1, druids were the optimal offtank. This was because of a variety of reasons, but most notably because of two primary factors:
1. Their gear could be used for both DPS and tanking in some reasonable fashion
2. Their spec could be tailored to do both good tanking and good DPS at the same time without a respec

This meant that a feral could reasonably be expected to DPS and tank and know both roles well. This was a continuation of the BC model, and in fact actually improved on it due to how they nerfed armor in 3.0.8. Now you could not only just change gear and DPS or tank, you didn't have to change gear! You could just tank in whatever and be fine.

In 3.1, this changes a bit with the advent of dual specs. It's expected that all tanking classes will have at least one 'useful' other spec in my guild so that they can switch if necessary and not be a total gimp for an encounter while still having a chance at drops. That's the real key; if they didn't need anything from that boss, they'd simply sit out in favor of a better DPSer. I'll get to why this is in a second.

This entirely removes factor 2 from the equation above. If any warrior can spec to DPS before a fight, being able to tank and DPS in the same spec is functionally irrelevant. It might be convenient, and it might allow things like a feral's secondary spec to be resto - but it's not affecting anything in a raid, exactly.

Here's the thing though, and what I fully expect to get a lot of flak for: ferals are still going to be the best offtank. Here's the list why:

1. Any fight that has a tank requirement for only part of the fight. A feral will have significant advantages over other tanks. Even in full tanking gear and a full tanking spec a feral druid does significantly more damage than any other tank. Not as much as a full cat spec and good cat gear, but we're talking about a 1k difference in DPS between a feral and a prot warrior. This is slightly not as good as it was in 3.0.8 due to the higher stamina requirements on gear/enchants/trinkets, but at the same time a lot of dps and tanking gear is shared. It helps that the T8.25 gear is superior for bears, stat wise, but also has superior set bonuses for cats too - that's another set of gear that is almost certainly going to be shared.
   
   So fights like Thaddius or Malygos where a second tank is needed only some of the time? Druids win, hands down. That being said, there aren't that many opportunities for this sort of min-maxxing in Ulduar. Iron council could use the third tank to swap to dps. XT could use an offtank picking up adds on the phase change. And...that's about it, at least so far as we know. Not exactly stunning, right?
   
   
2. Ferals will have superior DPS gear over other tanks. Now, this might not be true going into Ulduar. Guilds which have had everything on farm for months may have all of their tanks totally outfitted in offspec DPS gear to the point where they're as well-geared as the next DPSer. I don't believe this will be true (betrayer of humanity doesn't drop nearly enough for us, for example), but even if it is, it won't matter. Because as soon as a feral gets their first tier drop, they're better geared for both tanking AND dps than any other tank. Any other tank must get two sets of tier gear, a separate weapon (or weapons), trinkets and sets of jewelry, etc. A feral can continue to double dip and get close to or best in slot for many slots and gem/enchant them optimally for either role. As it stands right now a druid can (for example) get T8.25 gloves and chest and gem/enchant them optimally for both bear and cat in one go. The best DPS trinket is also the best tanking trinket (or one of them at least). Favor of the Dragon Queen is still one of the best tanking necks. This isn't as true now as it was before due to the higher requirement of gemming/enchanting/gearing for stamina that the 3.1 HotW nerf does, but a smart bear will try and maximize as many shared pieces as possible and then get two sets of gear when the gems/enchants differ significantly to offer a clear advantage (the head and legs are two traditional options, and others can be depending on profession).
   
   Any other tank does not remotely have this flexibility. Even a death knight using DPS 2-handers as their weapon still must enchant for tanking or DPS. Because of the stamina and defense requirements for plate gear, virtually no shared gear exists for plate wearers. The long and short of it is that even if a feral's DPS gear is on par with a tank's DPS gear now, they'll quickly have an advantage when getting more gear in Ulduar. A good raid leader will maximize this advantage. Furthermore, even if the gear can't be shared most of the gear is still DPS-centric. A helm enchanted with Stalwart Protector and gemmed with Austere isn't as good as a DPS-centric helm, but it's still a leather helm with tons of agility and AP. Plate tanks have virtually nothing that can double in this way. Thus, it will take significantly longer for the plate wearers to get comparable DPS gear to the ferals - and by the time they do, chances are the encounters will be on farm.
   
   
3. Ferals will tend to have more experience DPSing. This one I admit is very subjective, but I think it's realistic. The amount of people that roll ferals and know nothing about DPS is I think quite small. The ferals I've encountered have known quite a bit about both how to tank and how to DPS. BC ferals had a lot of experience DPSing as a feral while being expected to offtank here and there, if not tanking the whole way. That was the BC way: if you as a feral weren't willing to tank and DPS, you weren't really pulling your weight.
   
   Plate tanks are not necessarily so inclined. Some will have been DPSers for a while at some point, or even prefer it. Others will have rolled that warrior to tank first and foremost, and have no interest or inclination to DPS. Others will have simply never dabbled in it at all; as an example, one of our tanks went from a prot paladin to ret for the first time on Brutallus.
   
   I realize that this is entirely anecdotal, and there exist no hard numbers to compute that show how many ferals prefer only doing bear, only doing cat, or doing both in some fashion. I still suspect that this is so. I'm curious what others out there think.
   
   
4. No other tank can tank as well in DPS gear if you really need to. This is more of the 'hero' thing that you see now and then. Because of Survival of the Fittest and how armor works, and even with the HotW nerf, ferals will still be able to switch to bear and tank adequately in some situations while wearing DPS gear. They won't have as high of stamina as another tank, but they'll have far higher stamina than a DPS of another class will. They won't take crits either, and their avoidance and threat numbers should be significantly higher. Whereas if you ask a ret paladin to tank in a pinch, they'll have significantly less armor, avoidance, and huge gulfs in stamina as well as not being able to avoid taking critical hits.
5. Innervate and battle res are huge raid buffs that are impractical often when tanking 100% of the time. This speaks to the scenario where you have two or more tanks and you're trying to figure out which to have swap spec. Do you have the prot paladin go ret (so you have two ret) or do you have the feral go cat? All the other raidwide buffs can be covered by another feral or other classes entirely, but single abilities are not. Another battle res and innervate for a progression encounter can mean the difference between a wipe and a win. At the same time, there are plenty of fights where if you are tanking, you can simply not reasonably do this. Ulduar has these in spades: Ignis, Vezax, Hodir practically, Freya, Auriyaya - none of these fights have significant breaks where you could reasonably expect to res someone if you're in the middle of tanking. Other fights like XT or Iron Council have breaks where you can, but you might not be able to when you need to.
   
   Does any other tank bring this kind of class utility? Not particularly. The closest might be a paladin, but most of that utility is in raid buffs which they would bring anyway while tanking.
   

Now, what this does not mean is that I am saying that ferals are only good for offtanking in Ulduar. Make sure you understand that. For the record I don't think ferals are significantly disadvantaged in fights in Ulduar as they stand and as we know about them - though I also think that other tanks bring significant advantages to tanking encounters that druids really don't. The only fight where a feral may make it easier is on normal-mode Hodir, where they can wear FR gear and still tank significantly. Pretty much everything else favors another tank, primarily because of cooldowns and avoidance. Still, there's nothing that says a feral can't tank anything in there, so if that's what your raid feels is best for whatever reason (skill, gear, experience, social reasons) that should be fine.

I personally am a bit saddened by this, as I don't like the notion that because other tanks can't do DPS that ferals are basically forced to. This was the model for BT, and it wasn't fun at all. Some solutions I've seen have been to enforce specific gearing requirements for tanking similar to how they were in BC (with armor and defense/resilience) and allowing innervate/brez in bear form with a talent (but only in bear, so cats wouldn't want it). And personally it doesn't really matter a ton; my raiding time is much constrained for the future, and I'll likely be doing it only part-time if that (and often, raiding on my wife's toon, a holy priest). Still, I'd like to see more fights advantage druids or at least level the playing field a bit, and I'd like to see other tanks get more incentive to do DPS (or possibly disincentivize druids a bit).

[Druid, 3.1] It's not even my birthday (3.1)

First off, I want to say congratulations and a fond farewell to Phae at Resto4Life. Her blog has been a pinnacle of the druid community for a long time - both as a healer and as someone who has been critical in making others aware of more blogs in the world. Her posts were always well-written, entertaining, and hugely useful. I'll miss ya but I'm very happy that you're leaving on such good news. :)

Sorry I've not been blogging as much recently. Part of it is my work schedule is limiting the time I have to write. Part is that...there really hasn't been much inspiration. I've gotten a couple emails that I'd like to write about - like my terribad UI and preliminary weightings and rankings of gear with SD - but it'll be in the future. I'll also try and respond to the comments a bit more.

As you've heard by now the patch notes and PTR are now available for 3.1 and Ulduar. Karthis has started to do some good analysis of what this is going to mean for folks, and I'm going to try and not step on his toes too much. Instead, I want to point out some basic things that are...well, more relevant to some of the things I brought up, like the antitank strategy. '

First off, the change to Savage Roar. This is going to be a buff - 30% more physical damage beats 40% more AP given how druids scale with AP. A corrolary is that strength is no longer going to be the best stat to stack - it's going to be agility. Which...is exactly the gearing strategy used in the antitank set. Hmm. Oh, blizzard, you shouldn't have! That makes the antitank strategy go from being slightly lower DPS than normal to being actually close to ideal.

And I didn't even have to change one gem. Aww, thanks, blizzard!

Second, the addition of Primal Gore. The crits from bleeds are currently only 150% of damage, not 200% like melee crits, but even so it's a big buff to cat damage. And if they can crit...that makes agility even more useful for overall damage, both for cat form and for bear form. Which...is exactly what the antitank set emphasizes. Aww, thanks Blizzard - that's so sweet. That's like another crit every 3 seconds for SD, making it even better (if, hopefully, it actually procs SD; not sure if it will yet since SD doesn't actually work right now).

Third, the change to improved Mark of the Wild - 2% more stats for 2 talent points. Some people liked furor, but I've gone with iMotW for a while now since Furor really isn't that much of a requirement. And now I get 2% more stats for my trouble without respeccing? Oh, blizzard, you're too nice!

And then there's a glyph for Savage Roar that just says 'get 6% more DPS, period'? Oh, Blizzard. I don't even have to theorycraft that to show how awesome it is. Really sweet of you.

Really, all they need to do is make the DPS gear even better for tanking than it is already, and I'll start thinking that Blizzard is trying to woo me. Though if they were, they could've had that stupid Peddlefeet drop.

[Druid] Savage Defense guesses (with math!)

an example of a savage defense: the 1985 Chicago Bears

So...Savage Defense. Blizzard has got to work on better names. Protector of the Pack, when bears don't have packs? King of the Jungle working on bear form? Hmm.

In the wonderful tradition of 'guessing what blizzard will do without knowing what it's going to be', I'll walk through some of the bad, napkin math that I love so much. We're trying to figure out two things here:

1. What is the likely change to survival of the fittest going to be?
2. When the actual change to survival of the fittest goes forward, will it be a buff or a nerf overall?

The awesome part is that we already have the information we need to figure this stuff out. We know what the actual effect is going to be (a shield based on AP/4) and how often it happens (100% on a crit). So we need to figure out how much damage we'll be taking from a boss, typically, how much damage we currently prevent, how much damage a Savage Defense system would prevent, and based on all of this figure out what our armor would have to be reduced to in order to prevent the same kind of damage + shield that our prior armor dealt with by itself.

Simple, right?

Oh, yeah, we also need some data points with armor, crit, AP and avoidance.

Not a problem :)

First off, we'll take 3 different sets of gear. The first is my current antitank set, which uses a lot of damage-related gear. The second is my generic tanking set that emphasizes avoidance. The third is the OMG max stam set that I don't actually like and can't personally use, since it requires JC.

We'll then make some assumptions about the boss. This boss does 50k damage physically every 1.5 seconds. This isn't quite patchwerk level; we'll get to him in a minute. This is more inline with something like Sartharion.

Shield is the 25% of AP, straight up. Uptime is what we would expect the uptime to be for a fight given an attack every GCD and a maul, based on the crit rate.

Reduction is the armor reduction against an 83 mob. Damage is what damage you take from one hit after armor and protector of the pack are factored in.

Shielded is what damage you would shield on average after 15 seconds, assuming your current crit rate. This assumes a 90% hit rate.

15sec damage is the amount of damage that you would expect to take every 15 seconds, assuming the listed avoidance value is correct. Why 15 seconds? Easy to figure out how many mauls and GCD attacks you'll put in with that.

Damage + shield is simply the 15sec damage + the shield. It represents what would happen if you took the same damage as before, but had a shield in it. In other words, what extra damage you would need to take to make a shield awesome.

new reduction is the % damage reduced from armor using the damage + shield. Or, how much damage you would need to reduce to keep the same amount of mitigation you had previously.

Finally, new armor is what the armor would have to be with a shield to keep basically the same incoming damage. And the ratio is how much of a nerf the armor would be.

	Antitank	normal	stam
armor	35421	38505	36915
AP	7800	6846	6233
crit	0.4	0.35	0.3
avoidance	0.526	0.558	0.46
shield	1950	1711.5	1558.25
uptime	6.4	5.6	4.8
boss speed	1.5	1.5	1.5
boss damage	50000	50000	50000
reduction	68.04402951	69.83133841	68.93557423
damage	14060.62702	13274.2111	13668.34734
shielded	11232	8625.96	6731.64
15secdmg	66647.37206	58672.01306	73809.07563
damage+shield	77879.37206	67297.97306	80540.71563
new reduction	0.626585289	0.653959415	0.661023924
new armor	27913.32529	31437.39584	32439.25976
ratio	0.78804453	0.816449704	0.878755513

Predictably, the antitank set shines here; with the high crit rate and very high AP, the amount of damage that will be prevented over time is quite high. The armor can be reduced more than 20% and you'd still be taking about the same damage. The typical set takes a harder hit, which is no surprise, though it's still close to 20% - and the actual armor reduction is about the same, 7k. The stam set suffers the greatest, with no surprise. The poor AP and crit values make it much weaker for shields, and its lower armor means that it would need to have a small nerf only to stay the same.

Another example of a savage defense. OH YEAH!

Okay, what about Patchwerk offtanking? Patch hits for 80k damage every second. Yikes! Let's see how the shields fare there:

	Antitank	normal	stam
armor	35421	38505	36915
AP	7800	6846	6233
crit	0.4	0.35	0.3
avoidance	0.526	0.558	0.46
shield	1950	1711.5	1558.25
uptime	6.4	5.6	4.8
boss speed	1	1	1
boss damage	80000	80000	80000
reduction	68.04402951	69.83133841	68.93557423
damage	22497.00323	21238.73776	21869.35574
shielded	11232	8625.96	6731.64
15secdmg	159953.6929	140812.8313	177141.7815
damage+shield	171185.6929	149438.7913	183873.4215
new reduction	0.658000709	0.679832563	0.677550818
new armor	32005.45176	35322.18896	34954.52459
ratio	0.903572789	0.917340318	0.946892174
armor loss	3415.548239	3182.811037	1960.475413

Big, big difference. The AT set still is best, but now the nerf must be very small. And on the stam set the nerf is basically wearing armor jewelry vs not. (this, by the way, should illustrate how big a difference the defender's code trinket can make). Lose anything more than 3k armor, and it'll be a nerf against the effectiveness we've had on Patchwerk.

Now, let's look at some nice, round numbers for Survival of the Fittest and make some guesses. Currently it provides 22/44/66% more armor on leather. Blizzard loves round numbers, so let's assume them.

A base ilvl 213 armor set provides 3480 armor from leather and cloth. This multiplies to 29866 armor with the current SotF bonus.

With a 16/33/50% boost, that changes to 26987, or a loss of 2878 armor. Hmm. That's still pretty decent, and with that value we'd still get a very slight buff for Patchwerk.

With a 11/22/33% boost, we'll have 23928 armor, or a loss of 5937 armor. Ouch. Well, if we're going against Patch we'll be hurting a bit more, but we're still pretty good if we went for a balanced tanking set. If we're stamina snobs we'll be hurting a bit more.

With a 10/20/30% change, we'll have only 23389 armor - or a 6476 loss. Really ouch.

Which is more likely? I suspect that it'll be the 11/22/33% change to start with. This would result in about a 20% loss to most people's armor and hurt bears deal with the max physical damage mobs a bit - but that's probably for the best. Patchwerk is exactly the sort of fight that blizzard likes to use as a gating fight, and if one class has a huge advantage over another (as druids really do here) it's not good for designing fights. Reducing armor quite a bit allows for inspiration to help bears for a while instead of butting them up against the armor cap.

So what about another example - multiple mob tanking? There's a lot of wrong information on how this will be a nerf to AoE mitigation, and really...they just don't understand how weak armor is when dealing with multiple small mobs. This is a bit different in the assumptions. In a 15-second period, when dealing with 4 or more mobs you can assume you're going to have a shield up every swipe and every other maul pretty much regardless of crit rate - so 13 shields in 15 seconds. You'll also be attacked a lot more than once every second. Let's take a 5-mob pull. These guys hit for 10k each - a decent value for elite mobs in raids and slightly more than most mobs in heroics. They each swing every 1.5 seconds, so their effective swing time is .3 seconds. And of course, they're lower level, so the armor reduction value is better ( we'll assume level 81). What kind of armor loss are we looking at there?

	Antitank	normal	stam
armor	35421	38505	36915
AP	7800	6846	6233
crit	0.4	0.35	0.3
avoidance	0.526	0.558	0.46
shield	1950	1711.5	1558.25
uptime	13	13	13
boss speed	0.3	0.3	0.3
boss damage	10000	10000	10000
reduction	69.28855069	71.0358823	70.16060059
damage	2702.607539	2548.842358	2625.867148
shielded	25350	22249.5	20257.25
15secdmg	64051.79867	56329.41611	70898.413
damage+shield	89401.79867	78578.91611	91155.663
new reduction	0.571337751	0.595953743	0.61634822
new armor	20925.57184	23156.93709	25222.52612
ratio	0.590767393	0.601400782	0.683259545
armor loss	14495.42816	15348.06291	11692.47388

That's right - in order to do the same thing with a shield that you do currently on lower level mobs, if you're in the antitank gear, you'd need to be hit with a 14.5k armor nerfstick. That's how good those shields are against multiple targets. Now, 4 or 5 mobs is the sweet spot. What about 10? That makes the effective swing rate .15. That can't be that good, can it? I mean, shields have to give out some time, and you'll be taking a lot of unblocked hits...

	Antitank	normal	stam
armor	35421	38505	36915
AP	7800	6846	6233
crit	0.4	0.35	0.3
avoidance	0.526	0.558	0.46
shield	1950	1711.5	1558.25
uptime	13	13	13
boss speed	0.15	0.15	0.15
boss damage	10000	10000	10000
reduction	69.28855069	71.0358823	70.16060059
damage	2702.607539	2548.842358	2625.867148
shielded	25350	22249.5	20257.25
15secdmg	128103.5973	112658.8322	141796.826
damage+shield	153453.5973	134908.3322	162054.076
new reduction	0.632111629	0.653156283	0.658977113
new armor	26975.98879	29565.34351	30337.96575
ratio	0.761581796	0.767831282	0.821833015
armor loss	8445.011211	8939.656489	6577.034253

Nope. Armor just isn't that good compared to a static reduction against multiple mobs. In case you were ever told that you were harder to heal in a heroic compared to a warrior or paladin, here's why: block is really, really strong against multiple targets that hit softly.

Fred Savage wants you to hit him softly.

So unless the armor nerf to SotF is huge, the benefit for mitigation against a lot of targets is going to be really good and an overall buff.

As I've said before, I was all for this change and seeing it makes me pretty excited. Especially for the antitank set; the antitank set basically transformed from a max damage offtank set that was a bit squishy to a really great set against multiple targets and quite decent against bigger mobs. I love that AP and crit will actually matter, and that the ilvl of gear may matter a bit less. I also love the notion that druids can value different sets for different purposes. And if it works against magical damage too? Oh, that's 6 kinds of awesome.

The only thing I'd really like is for this ability to be under user control. My wife doesn't like the randomness of the mitigation, and she's got a point; there's no way to predict whether you'll have a good string of crits or not. If instead savage defense gave you a shield charge when you got a crit, which you could use to put up an absorption shield at a later time at your command (off the GCD, of course), this would give the same overall functionality but allow druids to be less squishy when they wanted to be. It would also give some interactivity back to the bear, which would be stellar. It could be macroed to always be used if you didn't care, or you could use it when it really mattered for that extra oomph. But that would be significantly harder to code. :)

[Druid, Warrior] Upcoming changes in 3.1

Some of you have seen the news on the changes to priests, shamans and warlocks. That's cool and all.

But they're not tanks.

They released the info on druids and warriors today over in Euroland. Let's take a look:

As many of you know the next major content patch will include some very exciting things, such as Ulduar, a new epic raid dungeon, a wealth of new items, and much more. We thought players would especially enjoy reading just a few of the class changes we're currently planning. Please keep in mind, that this list is not at all comprehensive, and more importantly subject to change.

• Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.


• Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.


• Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.


• Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.


• Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.


• Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.


• We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

There's no math here; there's no way to tell what kind of mitigation numbers we'll be looking at for savage defense. If it's based on buffed attack power, however, it's going to be close to 1.5k static absorbing, and doing that once every 3 attacks on average. That's pretty nice. What I'm really curious about is how it's going to work with swipe and multiple mobs. With multiple mobs you can assume you're going to have one up per swipe, but will you get multiples if you get multiple crits? Will it stack? That's what's going to make it or break it as a defensive tool against adds. Still, this is a great conceptual ability: a defensive ability that scales with two different offensive stats that are common everywhere.

Wonder what the drop in armor is going to be, though.

Feral cats are getting buffed, which is kind of amusing to me since I've not topped the meters in a long while...yet I am doing so now in that anti-tank set. I suspect that melee across the board is going to be getting buffs; it's not quite reasonable that ranged gets to do predominantly so much more damage.

Onto warriors!

As many of you know the next major content patch will include some very exciting things, such as Ulduar, a new epic raid dungeon, a wealth of new items, and much more. We thought players would especially enjoy reading just a few of the class changes we're currently planning. Please keep in mind, that this list is not at all comprehensive, and more importantly subject to change.

• Changing stances now has a much reduced cost: you lose a maximum of 20 rage (10 with Tactical Mastery). For example, if you have 100 rage and change stances, you will have 80 rage remaining. If you have 10 rage and change stances, all of your rage is lost. In addition, we may change the penalties associated with some stances.


• You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed, such as through a Power Word: Shield.


• Blood Frenzy now causes 2/4% physical damage done.


• Sunder Armor (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 4% per application, and is now a single rank. Creature armor has been globally reduced so that debuffed targets should take about the same damage from physical attacks that they did before this change. The net effect should be that this debuff is slightly less mandatory in PvE and is not disproportionately more powerful against cloth targets in PvP.


• We are also adding increased damage to Arms, possibly through Overpower or Slam.


• We are also looking at granting rage when the warrior blocks, dodges or parries.

The rage generation and ease of rage makes a lot of sense; reading in the tanking forums and talking with warriors that appears to be their #1 concern, and they don't like being so dependent on BoSanc to operate reasonably. I would hope that they'll be getting more of a buff for their threat too. I also hope that the shield allowing rage generation via absorbing is also given to bears; it's damned annoying otherwise.