[Druid] Gearing in 3.2 - Epic gems and you

I was toying around with the old Ulduar loot weighing for bears when I realized that the old link actually pointed to the PTR data. Which was fine...until I checked the chest, and I realized we were comparing the new data from the PTR with the old.

Which...isn't that helpful. So I fixed that.

However, it brought up an interesting point - how do the tier pieces compare to the current tier pieces and hard modes? But more importantly - with epic gems, does that change anything right now? In other words, does anything get better or worse, and should you be on the lookout for anything really specific right this second?

With that all in mind, here's the current PTR comparison ranking for wowhead (for armor). Note that I haven't changed any of the specific rankings, though for 3.2 as it stands defense will slightly increase, agility and dodge will slightly decrease, and everything else should be about the same, give or take. Note also that this is in no way meant as a comprehensive list of gear and gear choices.

The most common question I've had so far is which tier piece to upgrade first - and this has been true for all gear lists ever. Well, it really depends a lot on what you have currently. Assuming you're decked out in all T8.25 gear, here's the ranking as well as the difference between T9.25 scores and T8.25 scores.

Head: 16.17
Chest: 9.4
Shoulders: 8.28
Legs: 8.25
Hands: 6.58

But that doesn't take into account how many emblems each costs. If you look at it as the difference divided by the emblem cost, you get a slightly different view:

Head: .2156
Shoulders: .184
Hands: .1462
Chest: .1253
Legs: .11

The head is still the best overall piece to upgrade (and this is going to almost certainly be true regardless of whatever hard mode gear you have) but the shoulders come in nicely in second place. The legs and chest really aren't great upgrades. Though keep the Clutch of Fortification in mind - at only 35 emblems of triumph it's likely a bigger upgrade than almost anything else you could get, unless you've been very lucky and doing very hard things in Ulduar (like Algalon questlines)

The TL:DR part of this post points out that for the most part, epic gems don't drastically change rankings - but with a couple notable exceptions. The long and short of it is that heroic drops in Ulduar hard modes are very, very competitive with what we've seen from the Coliseum - so prioritize getting these if you at all can, especially the shoulderpads of the Intruder.


Back:

1. Titanskin Cloak - 45.33. Heroic Freya (hard)
   
2. Drape of Icy Intent - 44.74. Heroic Hodir (hard)
3. Drape of the Faceless General - 43.47 Normal Vezax (hard)

About the only change here is that all three of these get even closer to each other than they did before. Otherwise nothing special happens. And currently, Wowhead doesn't have any of the new backs.

Chest:

1. Runetotem's Rainments of Triumph (Heroic) - 100.09. Heroic Coliseum 25-man token drop.
2. Knightbane Carapace - 95.00. Leatherworking.
   
3. Embrace of the Gladiator - 92.04 Heroic Thorim (hard).
4. Runetotem's Rainments of Triumph (normal) - 90.62. 75 Emblems of Triumph + 1 Token of the crusade.
   
5. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes - 84.89. 1750 arena rating, 2150 arena points.
6. Vest of Shifting Shadows - 81.98. Unknown location (likely 10-man normal)
7. Runetotem's Rainments of Conquest - 81.77. 50 Emblems of Triumph.
   
8. Conqueror's Nightsong Rainments - 81.22. Heroic Hodir(easy), 58 emblems of Conquest.
9. Valorous Nightsong Rainments -76.93. Normal Yogg-Saron?(easy)

Yes, that's right. Currently the hard mode Thorim drop is better than the next tier of content's 25-man gear, and it's almost entirely because of the extra socket. Knightbane carapace is also a surprisingly strong piece for the same reason. One thing to note, above all else - unless you really, truly want that set bonus, the T8.25 chest isn't that much worse than the T9.10 chest, and if you've got it you shouldn't upgrade.

I was really surprised by how weak the new chest pieces actually are. So work on Thorim hard mode!


Feet:

1. Treads of the Icewalker (heroic) - 76.07. Heroic 25-man Coliseum.
2. Relentless Gladiator's Boots of Triumph - 66.85. Arena rating, honor.
3. Icewalker Treads - 64.72. 25-man coliseum (likely)
4. Runed Ironhide Boots -59.13. Heroic Iron Council(easy)
5. Acidmaw Treads - 58.96. 10-man coliseum (likely)
6. Footpads of Silence -57.54. Leatherworking BoE (from Heroic Ulduar pattern)
7. Furious Gladiator's Boots of Triumph - 57.48. Emalon, 62000 honor and 1500 arena rating
   

The main change here is that the Footpads of silence become slightly better than the PvP selection. And as before, the next best normal mode gear is PvP. Runed Ironhide boots are surprisingly durable.

Finger:

1. Clutch of Fortification - 50.53. 35 emblems of triumph.
2. Ring of Callous Aggression - 50.15. Heroic 25-man Coliseum (likely)
3. Fate's Clutch - 45.93. Heroic Thorim (hard)
4. Band of the Twin Valkyr - 44.26. 10-man Valkyr twins.
5. Mark of the Relentless - 41.68. 5-man heroic Coliseum.
   
6. The Leviathan's Coil -41.49. Heroic Flame Leviathan (easy)
7. band of the Traitor King - 41.30. 25-man Anub'arak.
8. Brann's Signet Ring - 40.71. Quest from Heroic Algalon.
9. Ring of Callous Aggression - 40.10. 25-man Coliseum.
10. Dextrous Brightstone Ring - 39.24. 35 emblems of triumph.
    
11. Platinum Band of the Aesir -37.76. Heroic Auriaya
12. Loop of the Agile -37.40. Normal Iron Council (hard)
13. Signet of Winter -37.19. Normal Hodir (easy)
    
14. Gatekeeper -35.76. Heroic Sapphiron.

Another awesome item from Heroic Thorim. And yes, how Leviathan's Coil has fallen makes me sad too. Mark of the Relentless is a pretty decent drop from the new 5-man as well. But really, the thing that shocked me is how good that Clutch of Fortification is, and how cheap it is. At 35 emblems that might be one of the highest bangs for your buck you can get for your emblems - it's 15 points higher than Gatekeeper, for instance.

Hands:

1. Runetotem's Handgrips of Triumph (Heroic) - 72.30. Heroic 25-man.
2. Runetotem's Handgrips of Triumph - 65.01. 45 emblems of triumph + 1 token of the crusade.
   
3. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves - 59.63 Emalon, 1600 arena ranking and 1300 arena points
   
4. Conqueror's Nightsong Handgrips -58.43. Heroic Mimiron(easy)
5. Runetotem's Handgrips of Conquest - 58.32. 30 emblems of triumph.
6. Gloves of the Endless Dark - 56.45. Normal Algalon
7. Gloves of the Stonereaper -55.26. Heroic Auriaya
   
8. Valorous Nightsong Handgrips -55.03 Normal Freya(easy)

Note that when the Relentless PvP gear pops up on wowhead, I'm sure it'll show up higher here. It's interesting that so far, there's no real reason to go from T8.25 to T9.10. Here on the glove side, it's actually a downgrade. The 25-man might be worth it as your first tier piece.

Head:

1. Runetotem's Headguard of Triumph (heroic) - 101.85. Heroic 25-man coliseum.
2. Runetotem's Headguard of Triumph - 92.02. 75 emblems of Triumph + Token of the crusade.
3. Hood of Lethal Intent - 89.30. emblems of triumph.
   
4. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm - 83.50. 1900 arena rating and 2150 arena points
5. Runetotem's Headguard of Conquest - 82.88. 50 emblems of triumph.
   
6. Garona's Guise - 77.21. Heroic Yogg-Saron
   
7. Conqueror's Nightsong Headguard -75.85. Heroic Thorim(easy), emblems of conquest

Finally, a T9.10 item that's worth upgrading from T8.25! And from a pure standpoint of points, the T9.25 is much better of an upgrade over anything in Ulduar compared to the chest or gloves - 15 points. Though part of that is simply a function of there being no hardmode heads.

Legs:

1. Runetotem's Legguards of Triumph (Heroic) - 100.88. Heroic 25-man Coliseum.
2. Runetotem's Legguards of Triumph - 91.28. 75 emblems of Triumph + 1 token of the crusade.
3. Legguards of Cunning Deception - 90.62. Heroic Yogg-Saron (hard)
   
4. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards - 84.77. Emalon, 1700 arena rating and 2150 arena points
5. Titan-forged leather legguards of Triumph - 84.65. Koralon, 40 WG marks.
   
6. Conqueror's Nightsong Legguards -83.03. Heroic Freya (easy)
7. Runetotem's Legguards of Conquest - 82.33. 50 emblems of triumph.
   
8. Valorous Nightsong Legguards -78.76. Normal Hodir (easy)

And the trend yet again continues in the T8.25 > T9.10 gear. The T9.25 gear isn't that much of an upgrade over T8.25 either - only 8 points. The heroic hard mode legs from yogg are very competitive again thanks to having more gem slots.

Neck:

1. Legionaire's Gorget - 50.30. 25-man Valkyr.
2. Pendulum of Infinity - 42.86. Heroic Vezax (hard)
   
3. Bronze Pendant of the Vanir -41.39. Heroic Freya(hard)
   
4. Mark of the Unyielding -40.17. Normal Kologarn (easy)
   
5. Titanstone Pendant -38.22. Heroic Trash
   
6. Shard of the Crystal Forest -37.43. Emblems of Conquest

So far, no vendor necks, so no great deals to report...yet. It's interesting to see how meh most of the necks are for bears - especially compared to the differentials in the rings.

Shoulder:

1. Shoulderpads of the Intruder - 71.77. Heroic Iron Council (hard)
2. Runetotem's Shoulderpads of Triumph (Heroic) - 71.32. 25-man heroic Coliseum.
3. Duskstalker Shoulderpads - 65.00. emblems of triumph.
   
4. Runetotem's Shoulderpads of Triumph - 64.26. 45 emblems of triumph + Token of the crusade.
   
5. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders - 60.98. 2050 arena rating and 1750 arena points
6. Runetotem's Shoulderpads of Conquest - 57.74. 30 emblems of triumph.
   
7. Conqueror's Nightsong Shoulderpads -55.98. Heroic Yogg-Saron(easy)
8. Valorous Nightsong Shoulderpads -52.23. Normal Ulduar (easy)

Yes, that's right. The hardmode Iron Council item is better than the highest-ranked shoulders that can only drop from the hard mode of the next tier. And the reason? Entirely because of the gem sockets. Well, that, and the fact that the T9 shoulders have haste, AP and armor pen. Not exactly the most exciting stats for a bear; by comparison the Intruder have hit and expertise. Now, if you're not lucky enough to own those, upgrading the shoulder slot from T8.25 is a good thing (8.28 difference) - but you should beg your raid leader to do hard mode Iron Council until you die or until you get those.


Waist:

1. Relentless Gladiator's Belt of Triumph - 66.66. Arena rating, honor.
2. Belt of the Merciless Killer - 63.63. 25-man coliseum (likely)
   
3. Soul-Devouring Cinch - 61.21. Normal Yogg-Saron (hard).
4. Death-warmed belt -58.12. Leatherworking BoE from Heroic Ulduar
5. Furious Gladiator's Belt of Triumph - 57.38. Emalon, 1450 rating and 62000 honor
   
6. Waistguard of the Creator -55.38. Heroic Mimiron(easy)

Not a lot of belt info from the PTR so far - I expect this to change soon, and I know of a couple items that aren't on here. As expected, the hard mode belt from Yogg makes out somewhat well because of the 2 gem slots, as does the crafted Death-warmed belt. Note that the Death Warmed belt will become reasonably cheap to make given that runed orbs will be like frozen orbs to buy (15 conquest badges is basically three heroics), so consider this if you're not getting lucky. But do so after 3.2 hits.


Wrist:

1. Bracers of Swift Death - 49.22. Leatherworking
2. Relentless Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph - 46.15.
3. Armbands of Dark Determination - 45.38. 25-man Coliseum Valkyr.
   
4. Fluxing Energy Coils - 42.04. Normal XT-002 (hard)
   
5. Furious Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph - 39.18. Heroic Emalon, 1400 arena rating and 39400 honor
   
6. Mechanist's Bindings -37.46. Heroic Leviathan (easy)

Also not a lot of revealed items so far here. While the bracers of swift death look neat, they're a bit expensive to make and likely won't be available to you for a while. Plus they're just not that big of an upgrade. Wait a bit on them.

[Druid, Offtopic] Oh HELL YES

From today's latest PTR notes:

Swift Flight Form: Druids who have acquired a mount able to go 310% flight speed will now also go that speed while in this form.

Damn, I've missed you, Idol of Flying fast. And while I enjoy my Plagued Proto-drake and the giant trail of farts it leaves behind, the only reason I use it is because it's 10% faster.

Awesome. This patch is full of love for the druid. Sure, there's a nerf to cat DPS. And a nerf to bear avoidance. But between new tauren cat forms, new tauren bear forms, and speedier flight forms? Good times.

Also, I'd strongly recommend any and all druids that haven't done so to get the PTR and check out their forms. Even in video it really doesn't do the things justice.

[3.2] Tier rewards part the second - don't do this, please!

This is a followup to an earlier post about tier rewards. And it's based on the PTR currently.

Right now, instead of what was listed before, each ilvl 245 item requires a Trophy of the Crusader token. This is in addition to the Emblems of Triumph tokens that they require, so items that cost 75 triumph emblems before also cost 1 Crusader token. These are soulbound, and as far as I can tell only one drops per boss on 25-man. 10-man does not drop this token.

ilvl 232 items are unchanged from prior prices, and are 33% less than their 245-ilvl counterpart.

And finally, each boss drops 3 emblems of triumph.

I know this is preliminary, and things can change. I also know that communication is good for actually getting things changed if they suck.

I'm...not thrilled with this idea of progression. For starters, it means that heroics and 10-man content have exactly the same access to gear, save that 10-man content rewards more badges so you'll get more gear quickly. But the actual gear? It's the same. This doesn't strike me as reasonable, but it's the same deal as it was in Naxxramas. If you liked that, you'll love this.

Second, it means that anyone who does 10-man content and 25-man content will gear up at about twice the rate that anyone who does only 25-man content will. Even if you get the tokens in 25-man, you still need those emblems - which means the token is worthless until you get enough tokens. That's not necessarily bad; it's essentially rewarding those people who do more to get more, and they get more of what they want. They can run 10-mans and instead of getting 'useless' tier tokens, they'll be getting closer to actual tier drops. That's kind of nice, actually.

Third, it means that doing daily heroics is (on a weekly basis) worth as much as doing all of the Argent Coliseum. There are 6-7 encounters that we know of (depending on how you count them) and if they all drop 3 emblems, that means 21 for a full clear. Which so happens to be exactly the amount of emblems you get from doing the dailies.

To put this in perspective, it costs 75 emblems + a trophy of the crusader token to get the high-end items like a tier chest piece. Someone who does nothing but 25-man content (assuming they clear it AND assuming they are in for every fight) will get that piece after 4 weeks.

Someone who does 10 and 25 man will get it after 2 weeks.
Someone who does 10, 25, and every heroic they can will get it just a bit after one week.

Fourth, this absolutely fucks over guilds with people on backup, in terms of their loot. Because emblems are tied innately to actual gear they care about, sitting on backup means you're getting further and further behind on getting that tier gear. Even if you get the trophy of the crusader token, you'll have either saved for longer or have to wait for longer every time you sit on backup. DKP, EP/GP? None of that matters.

Blizzard has basically instituted a DKP system that is entirely based on attended amount of time in the raid. For some guilds that will be fine. For others that will seriously mess things up.

Fifth, I really hope more than one trophy of the crusader token drops per boss. Otherwise you're looking at 6-7 tier tokens possible per week. Compare to now, where you can get at least 10 tokens per week, and it's clearly a step back.

My biggest complaints about this are simply that it really rewards doing as much raiding as humanly possible, and somewhat punishes not doing so. It also does something that was never done before in raiding: it converts all tier loot into something like the Valanyr/Sulfuras questline, where instead of getting your gear immediately or getting your gear as a trade-in, you instead get your gear at some indeterminate time in the future depending on how many bosses you get in for and how many heroics you run.

Does this make sense? Is it fun? Does it help with progression when your tier tokens won't be obtainable for at least a couple weeks until you've received the token? If you're trying to gear up new people, does this help?

I do like that it gives the flexibility of getting whatever slot you want. The cost seems far too high.

So, suggestions on how to fix this? Let triumph tokens drop as they do now. Let the 232 ilvl stuff be the stuff that you can get from just running heroics. Let the 245 stuff be token-based only, similar to the 258 stuff, and have the tokens drop from both 10 and 25 man. Because like I said before, I don't care about whether or not 10-man loot and 25-man loot is differentiated at the tier level. But that's off the top of my head - I'm sure smarter folks are figuring this out now.

[Druid, 3.2] The effects of agility/dodge change

I wanted to see if any other blogs would pick this up first - but so far I've seen nothing.

One of the documented changes to the PTR is a change to avoidance in general. Here's the overall text:

• Agility: The amount of agility required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This change required recalibrating the amount of dodge a player has with 0 agility by a slight amount as well, so all players will see their dodge percentage vary a small amount.
  
• Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.
  
• Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.

15%? Wow, that sounds like a lot, right? And since druids are the only tank without parry, it's a pure nerf! It's time to freak out!

Don't freak out.

Here's the thing about being a tank that's based around talents primarily: nerfing stats doesn't hurt nearly as much. As an example, let's take...well, me. I'm not totally Ulduar-geared yet, but I have a good chunk of pieces and have mostly gone for stamina, only using agility when I had a shared piece of gear. I have minimal PvP gear.

Here are my stats currently, raid buffed (courtesy of Rawr):

Health: 47931
Agility: 1787.513
Armor: 32645.03
Stamina: 3640
Dodge Rating: 194
Defense Rating: 91
Resilience: 105
Dodge: 50.271%
Miss: 8.145%
Avoidance PreDR: 71.102%
Avoidance PostDR: 58.416%

So what will I lose? Effectively I'll lose 15% of that agility and 15% of that dodge rating. That means I lose 268 agility and another 29 dodge rating on average*.

That would mean pre-DR, my avoidance would go down by:
dodge/agility * agility + dodge%/dodge rating * dodge rating
1/41.67 * 268 + 1/39.3 * 29 =
6.43 + .737 = 7.16%.

So a 7.16% dodge rating reduction before diminishing returns. Or a total, Pre-DR value of 63.93% avoidance overall.

What does that mean after diminishing returns? Well, this is 7% dodge at the top, not the bottom - meaning it's getting hit the 'hardest' by DR. But in practice this means all we need to do is in Rawr reduce our stats by the above and see our post-DR results.

And if you do that...the post-DR results are a mighty 46.1% dodge.

So it's about a 4% loss for me, give or take.

Except...Rawr does things like average out procs for an overall dodge value. Which means things like DM:G are counted as having 100 agility instead of 0 some of the times, and 300 other times. Same with Heart of Iron and Mongoose. The long and short of it is that overall dodge rating is going to not decrease quite as much, but the procs are going to be slightly worse than they were before overall.

In any case, 4% dodge is not really wonderful to lose, but it's definitely not a huge deal. It should bring druid overall damage closer to inline with paladins and warriors, though druids will still take the least amount of damage per hit without cooldowns coming into play. And for the most part, you'll not notice it.

If you're curious about the other tanks, because of the parry change DKs almost are unchanged in terms of raw avoidance (they gain parry and lose dodge), and warriors and paladins lose a small amount (about 1-2 % depending on how they geared).

[3.2] Tier rewards, etc.

Two big changes in the last 24 hours to how raiding will work in 3.2. Okay, three, but I'm not talking about the whole raid lockout extension thing.

The first is that there will be no slot-specific tokens for tier gear. This means that instead of dropping the shoulderpads of the hobo vanquisher, or whatever, it'll be 'regalia' - and with regalia you can buy any piece of tier gear at the appropriate level.

The second bit is that only the top level (ilvl 258) gear is purchasable this way; all other gear can be bought via Emblems of Triumph.

I was going to post something about this, but Graylo beat me to it, saying almost precisely what I was going to say and my reaction.

I have a couple of reactions to this. On the positive side the token change is a good idea. It will make the tokens more useful, and few of them will go to off specs or shards soon after the patch.

On the flip side, I have a big problem with the lower to levels of tier sets being purchase able with emblems. First of all whats the incentive to buy the 232 iLevel tier set when the 245 ilevel tier set costs just 50% more? When you get enough Emblems to buy the first level of gear you will have a choice. To I spend all the badges now and wait 3 weeks to upgrade, or do I wait a week and get even better gear?
Obviously we don't complete know how the system will work, but there are a lot of potential problems. If the Tier tokens are to easy to get, the emblem tiers will be almost completely ignored. If the tier tokes are to hard to get then it will take a really long time to build a set. Finally as I said above there is no real incentive to go for the 232 iLevel set.
I think they need to scale it back to a little more like the current system. Have the top level tokes drop off of 25 man raids. Have a lower level token drop off of 10 man raids, and I think it would be a great idea to have the lowest level tier be purchasable with emblems. That way all three levels have some level of desirability.

I really couldn't agree more. I don't understand why having a piece of gear 33% cheaper would make you want it at all if it's 13 levels below what you have. I don't like the pressure that this puts on raiders to make them almost universally have to do 10-man and 25-man content as much as they can early on in order to get more tokens for their tier gear. Will loot drops be like Sarth, where there's a satchel of gemsEmblems instead of a token drop, and people will fight over those?

Mostly, I really don't like the pressure this would put on hardcore raiders to do as much content in one reset (10 and 25) as humanly possible. I don't mind that for basically 3-4 weeks worth of grinding anyone can get tier 9 gear (3 triumph tokens from daily heroics * 7 days), but it really bothers me that the 232 items are essentially pointless and that there's such a huge incentive to run as much content as you possibly can.

I think that 3.2 is something of an experimental playground for Blizzard. There are a lot of changes to the fundamental raiding paradigms (week resets, gear availability, armor design, trash vs. bosses, 10 vs. 25, BoP trading) that I can't help but think Blizzard's throwing a lot of stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks.

And just so it's clear - there's absolutely no reason to get the lowest tier gear at this price level. None. It is always going to be better to get the higher tier whenever you can, even if it takes you another week of heroics. There are no bonuses for cats or bears that are so essential you must have them now now nao.

[General]Well, that was fast

Another PTR, and bam! T9 changes for all tanks.

Paladin 2p is going for Hand of Reckoning instead of Righteous Defense, which is good; RD is almost never used by comparison any more.
Paladin 4p explicitly reduces the forbearance penalty.

Druid 4P is now reducing the cooldown of Barkskin by 12 seconds (was 10% more barkskinny goodness)
Warrior 4P is now reducing the cooldown of shield block by 10 seconds (was 20).

While I miss the thought of being ridiculously OP, it was pretty clear with some basic math that 30% barkskin wasn't going to see the light of day. Though I'll be surprised if 90-second divine protection for paladins lasts.

[General] Tier9 bonuses for all tanks

MMO champion has the procs for the various T9 abilities for all the gear. And...well, let's just say that apparently the even-numbered sets will be 4 fite, the odd will be 4 bear.

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.