patch 2.0.10 notes on the PTR

[Roland]

Except each and every piece of extraordinary power and flexibility can be gotten in other, better ways. Replace the Feral druid with a rogue and the Protection paladin with a Holy paladin and push the Fury warriors forward to tank; voilá: More DPS, equal tanking and more healing.

In that case, why bother having Druids, Paladins, and Shamans in the game at all? Just eliminate them, and go back to the "core" classes: Tank, DPS, Heal. Problem solved.

[Concillian]

Prot warrior weakness at soloing and at doing damage in raids is almost always overstated. At 60 I was coming around the middle of the DPS pack with my 31 Prot warrior when raiding and that was before 12 rage uninterruptible slams. See some of the other threads in these forums for DPS of a deep prot build - it's surprisingly competitive.

This is something I believe as well. The thing is that for a Prot warrior to DPS, they need DPS gear. Prot warriors often take tanking gear and pass DPS gear to rogues, hunters, or "DPS warriors"

Prot DPS is viable provided they have the gear for it. The druid camp was getting both for free for a while.

As for my standpoint on the druid nerfs:
- I think it's good they removed the damage
- I think it's good to nerf swipe a bit on threat to make target switching while tanking more necessary
- I don't know enough about single taret threat to be able to make a judgement here. My gut feel is that they can handle the nerf, but I don't have the experience to know for sure
- I think the armor change was completely unnecessary, druids were below warrior mitigation even with extreme armor values, it made them more useful in highly physical fights where mana wasn't an issue.
- I think the health change should probably be changed to give +2-400 HP AND +25% stamina. This is because at 70 they should have more health than the static +1000 health they had in 1.x at 60... This helps lower geared druids, while not making much of a difference to higher geared druids.

My standpoint on the warrior buffs:
- The rage buff was somewhat un-necessary in my mind. But I haven't seen full raid DPS mode yet at 70. This change will significantly favor Fury for PvE DPS as was the case in 1.x, I liked seeing Arms with more PvE viability.
- The %crit buff made some sense. Completely naked with no talents any class should have ~5% crit. Warriors didn't, they will after the patch.
- The breaking snares on intercept / charge / intervene will help against mages and beastmaster hunters, Don't really see where else, maybe affliction locks? Shouldn't be overpowering, and should help 2v2 and 3v3 PvP viability.
- Victory Rush change is nice, I think not game breaking. 20 seconds means bandaging and keeping the ability to use it becomes a LOT more viable (right now it's doable, but you have to move a mob near the next one, and be quick with the buttons)
- Thunder Clap in defensive is a change I don't really like all that much. It makes tanking much less complex, which is good and bad. It removes a good reason to bring a DPS warrior along, since many prot specs will be able to maintain their own debuff

[Concillian]

Turning the question around, why would a raid leader bring a Feral druid if his tanking is less than/equal to the warriors', his DPS is less than the warriors' (a fact assuming his innervate, rebirths or healing is required at some point), and he would heal more as a Restoration druid and still provide both innervates and rebirths?

Because there are more raiding moments where the utility (innervate and rebirth) are significantly more advantageous than the DPS.

- an innervate + shifting to heal 3-4 heal spells may prolong the encounter substantially such that you can afford to lose the DPS
- a rebirth of a single dead DPS member more than makes up any DPS difference between the two.

Things go wrong.
When they do, a druid has a lot more tricks to help the raid recover from a mistake. Theoretically, if things go perfect, maybe a DPS warrior is better. In actuality an equally geared for DPS feral druid offers about as much as a DPS warrior plus some tricks in case something goes wrong (and something often does).

Lets pull a scenario from BWL:
Your guild is on it's 3rd attempt of Chrommie in the first night of serious attempts.
Things are going well and it is looking like a succesful attempt might happen...
A priest who hasn't fully learned the order of importance for debuffing has been consistently a little slow in debuffing the debuffers compared to the DPS in the DPS cubby and all the shaman and/or druids designated for poison removal are running low on mana.
An innervate here drastically increases your chance of success if your raid can manage getting one to be put on the proper person. Depending on the timing, it may even be able to be done with no interruption of DPS given the in-and-out nature of the fight.

Not all boss fights are fights where DPS are 100% of the time on the primary target DPSing.

[Taelas]

Except I'd have the innervate as a Restoration druid as well, which I stated in the part you quoted.

[Taelas]

In that case, why bother having Druids, Paladins, and Shamans in the game at all? Just eliminate them, and go back to the "core" classes: Tank, DPS, Heal. Problem solved.

Precisely.

[Brista]

In that case, why bother having Druids, Paladins, and Shamans in the game at all? Just eliminate them, and go back to the "core" classes: Tank, DPS, Heal. Problem solved.

It may be bitterness but that's how I feel now

I think hybridicity in a raid environment is something of a myth

Let me use a cat druid as example. On the face of it it's a "Rogue" who can go healer if needed - wonderful! The cost is he only does about 80% of Rogue damage given comparably geared and skilled players

However to do damage the druid with be in Strength, Crit and AP gear. When he shifts he can get off about 4 heals then is out of mana without the Spirit to ever get mana back any time soon. He is worth maybe a tenth of a real healer if that

Alternatively he can use some of the gear that is aimed at hybrid role. This has approximately 2/3 of the dps stats of real dps gear and about 2/3 of the healing stats of real healing gear

Because he's now not in dps gear he now does about 60% of the dps of a real dpser with the option to be about 25% of a healer

Just take one dps and one healer instead of 2 hybrids. You get 100% dps + 100% healer instead of 120% dps or 50% healer. In situations where you have an excess of healing you can simply move faster as a raid

The other often touted value of a hybrid is being able to turn into a tank in a crisis. Between high armour, parry block dodge and crit and crushing blow negation a good raid tank is probably at about 85% physical mitigation. If one of your healers, in healing gear, turns into a bear he will have about 40% mitigation. So you go from a tank which only takes 15% damage to a tank which takes 60% damage, 4 times as much. This isn't going to save the raid more than one in a million times. In fact there will be just as many times when the player might save the raid by staying healer and throwing out some heals as by changing into a pretty awful tank

As for combat ress and innervate, well. Soulstone is functionally the same as combat ress if you can anticipate who is likely to die (main tank usually) and innervate is just a mana potion

I'm very disillusioned with my druid. Regardless of whether it's fair for us to do something and not be crap at it, it's been the case for the last 3 months that we could tank as well as warriors. It now seems pointless to play a hybrid. How long will cats continue to do decent damage before they decide it's unfair on Rogues and nerf us? Are trees going to get hit with the nerfbat to cheer Priests up?

I really think that this kind of class-adversarial whine-driven game development is a poor way to manage a project like WoW. Who cares if someone can grind mobs solo better than the next guy? Is it really worth killing off raid tanks and healers just to placate the Warriors who want raid spots without putting any work in on their gear?

You see not only does this kill off the desire of a lot of druids to tank. Paladins will be looking at this and thinking we're next. So will dps hybrids

And if you take away everything except healbotting from the four heal-capable classes you don't force them all to become healers you force them all to re-roll dps

Anyway my Druid is now retired, I'll gquit her later on today and never trouble any Warriors by taking a raid tanking spot again. I'm going to play my Rogue instead for two reasons. 1) 20% of players play Rogues so we have tons of forum whiners fighting our corner 2) it's unlikely they will remove dps from rogues as a class feature

[Warlock]

I don't like using all-stats gear on my druid, even when in a group as a Cat.

If I'm playing DPS when something goes wrong and I need to shift out and heal, base mana is enough for the big guns - Innervate, Rebirth and Tranquility. If those won't save the day it's pretty rare for one extra regrowth to matter. I don't select Cat gear purely for offensive stats though - I prefer "Bandit" to "Tiger" for Cat. I lose a little damage output, but far less than I do in all-stats gear and I'm much more effective if needed to tank in a pinch.

If the plan for a boss or hard trash pull includes me healing, I'll put on my heal gear beforehand.

[Brista]

Things go wrong.
When they do, a druid has a lot more tricks to help the raid recover from a mistake. Theoretically, if things go perfect, maybe a DPS warrior is better. In actuality an equally geared for DPS feral druid offers about as much as a DPS warrior plus some tricks in case something goes wrong (and something often does).

This is why this patch is so frustrating

Any Prot Warrior who wants to be a raid tank and puts in the effort and plays with a modicum of skill has an assured place in raids. They've buffed this aspect unnecessarily

DPS Warriors do less damage than Rogues without the aggro management and utility. They do comparable damage to some hybrids (Moonkin and Cats). They do less damage than other hybrids (shadow priests and shamans) while providing less utility and needing more healing

Now that Warriors are the only viable raid tanks AND that they can apply Thunder Clap while tanking raid bosses DPS Warriors' utility has shrunk to zero. The main tank can keep up Demo Shout, Battle Shout, Thunderclap and probably should in most encounters since those moves generate AOE aggro. The main tank is the guy to put the Sunders on

So essentially this patch has destroyed feral tank druids in raids while failing to address Warriors' genuine issues regarding dps role and pvp

The only Warriors who benefit are half-assed Prot Warriors who didn't want to put the effort in to compete with Druids for the raid tank spots.

In guilds like mine we'll be back to sitting outside the instances hoping one of our Warriors decides to log on like we were before Druids were given raid tank viability

[Taelas]

I don't like using all-stats gear on my druid, even when in a group as a Cat.

If I'm playing DPS when something goes wrong and I need to shift out and heal, base mana is enough for the big guns - Innervate, Rebirth and Tranquility. If those won't save the day it's pretty rare for one extra regrowth to matter. I don't select Cat gear purely for offensive stats though - I prefer "Bandit" to "Tiger" for Cat. I lose a little damage output, but far less than I do in all-stats gear and I'm much more effective if needed to tank in a pinch.

If the plan for a boss or hard trash pull includes me healing, I'll put on my heal gear beforehand.

I prefer "Beast". Same stats as "Bandit", only for druids (Str, Agi, Sta instead of AP, Agi, Sta).

EDIT:

A thread on the US forums regarding bear tanking (post 134, specifically). The OP is generally being disregarded due to not bringing numbers to the table.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...=1&pageNo=7#134

Yeah, that worries me.

[Artega]

Warriors in PvP are pretty much fine now.

[Concillian]

Except I'd have the innervate as a Restoration druid as well, which I stated in the part you quoted.

Then you wouldn't be under consideration for a DPS spot, would you? I think you missed the original point if you're comparing taking a resto druid vs. a DPS warrior.

[Taelas]

Then you wouldn't be under consideration for a DPS spot, would you? I think you missed the original point if you're comparing taking a resto druid vs. a DPS warrior.

Of course not. I wasn't talking about replacing a druid with a warrior, I was talking about moving a warrior from DPS to tank and replacing a Feral druid with a Restoration druid.

[TheDragoon]

Some random responses:

Innervates (and Rebirths) do not happen while the druid is tanking. Innervating the priest is a good way to wipe a raid if you're the tank.

They CAN happen, you just have to be smart about it. Realize that Bolty is used to playing with my Druid and that I have often been known to pop out of bear, battle res/innervate him and then pop back into bear. Of course, this doesn't work out in all situations, but whenever something can distract a boss, causing it to stop attacking the tank for a second, the opportunity is there to do this sort of thing. It is somewhat reckless, but if you do it right it ususally isn't a problem.:)

A cat druid who keeps pace with you isn't spot healing, he isn't innervating, and he isn't rebirthing.

I do not quite agree since innervate and rebirth are practically instant. It is not a problem at all to shift out and do these in the middle of a fight without losing much. Spot healing is more problematic, but if you take the chance to throw around some lifeblooms/rejuvs while you are shifted, that can work ok.

Prot DPS is viable provided they have the gear for it. The druid camp was getting both for free for a while.

This is not quite accurate. This was true while leveling up (where good cat gear could work perfectly fine as tank gear), but when I hit level 70, it quickly became apparent that the cat gear while tanking wasn't going to cut it. Fortunately, there are quests out there to get some pretty darn good tanking greens/blues so you can gear up that way. However, at this point my Druid has completely separate gear sets for cat DPS, bear tanking and healing. Druids need gear just as much (if not more) than other classes who hope to fit into multiple roles. :)

Let me use a cat druid as example. On the face of it it's a "Rogue" who can go healer if needed - wonderful! The cost is he only does about 80% of Rogue damage given comparably geared and skilled players

However to do damage the druid with be in Strength, Crit and AP gear. When he shifts he can get off about 4 heals then is out of mana without the Spirit to ever get mana back any time soon. He is worth maybe a tenth of a real healer if that

Alternatively he can use some of the gear that is aimed at hybrid role. This has approximately 2/3 of the dps stats of real dps gear and about 2/3 of the healing stats of real healing gear

Because he's now not in dps gear he now does about 60% of the dps of a real dpser with the option to be about 25% of a healer

Just take one dps and one healer instead of 2 hybrids. You get 100% dps + 100% healer instead of 120% dps or 50% healer. In situations where you have an excess of healing you can simply move faster as a raid

The other often touted value of a hybrid is being able to turn into a tank in a crisis. Between high armour, parry block dodge and crit and crushing blow negation a good raid tank is probably at about 85% physical mitigation. If one of your healers, in healing gear, turns into a bear he will have about 40% mitigation. So you go from a tank which only takes 15% damage to a tank which takes 60% damage, 4 times as much. This isn't going to save the raid more than one in a million times. In fact there will be just as many times when the player might save the raid by staying healer and throwing out some heals as by changing into a pretty awful tank

I don't have any particular response to this, but this is a very good summary of the way things actually work. The idea that a Druid can do several roles well by only changing forms is a major misconception by many people. Mid-fight, Druids are fairly well locked into whatever role they are in with only a fraction of the ability to switch to something else unless they are wearing hybrid gear (at which point they are ok but not as good at everything).

[Tal]

No, I haven't.

Is this where we start going "nuh uh" "uh huh"? If so let me know so I can ignore you and move on.

Like I said, the ability to tank a 5-man instance is negligible. I can't comment on Heroic instances, as I haven't set foot in one yet. I can only say I would not go into one with a Restoration druid as the main tank, knowing just how weak a Restoration druid is as a tank.

We're a braver sort on Stormrage Alliance then.

Are you certain the druid wasn't a Feral/Restoration hybrid?

His primary spec is restoration and I didn't ask him the rest of his spec. Its the same kind of ignorant bs I deal with when someone asks me to tank and then grills me on my spec ultimately wanting to recruit someone else because I'm 31/13/17 spec. You ask me to tank I tank.

Assuming equal level gear, the Retribution spec is currently the weakest DPS spec of all classes. I've never seen a Retribution paladin on even top-15 in a 40-man raid on the DPS meter, and I've raided with a damn well skilled Retribution paladin. Of course, my raid group has always looked down on off-specs.

My experience would belie that assertation as I've already stated. So where do we go from here?

Why? Higher DPS than the Feral druid.

While conviently ignoring the other positives that I've already mentioned.

A cat druid who keeps pace with you isn't spot healing, he isn't innervating, and he isn't rebirthing. He can't do those AND keep pace; it ain't happening--unless he plains out-damages you, which I'm NOT seeing as possible. As soon as he's forced to do any of that, his DPS drops.

And as soon as I start tanking MY dps drops. Funny ol' world innit? Doesn't change the fact that he brings that level of flexibility to the raid group.

Turning the question around, why would a raid leader bring a Feral druid if his tanking is less than/equal to the warriors', his DPS is less than the warriors' (a fact assuming his innervate, rebirths or healing is required at some point), and he would heal more as a Restoration druid and still provide both innervates and rebirths?

*sigh* I hate verbal merry go 'rounds. I'll state again what I've already said so many times that you've not listened to before. Because of their powerful flexibility of roles in a raid.

Except each and every piece of extraordinary power and flexibility can be gotten in other, better ways. Replace the Feral druid with a rogue and the Protection paladin with a Holy paladin and push the Fury warriors forward to tank; voilá: More DPS, equal tanking and more healing.

Can that rogue tank or heal on the next boss fight? How about that holy paladin? Can he dps or tank on the next fight?

The answer is exactly what I said in my first post. A smart raid leader isn't going to ignore either of those two classes in raid composition. Just like they're not going to ignore a dps warrior's utility. And that DPS warriors should tank on par with a feral druid or a protection paladin BECAUSE of the things the other classes can bring to a raid. Believe me or not it makes no difference to me. Of the two of us I would be the one that is not reducing hybrids roles in a raid and I'm done repeating myself.

[Tal]

I don't have any particular response to this, but this is a very good summary of the way things actually work. The idea that a Druid can do several roles well by only changing forms is a major misconception by many people. Mid-fight, Druids are fairly well locked into whatever role they are in with only a fraction of the ability to switch to something else unless they are wearing hybrid gear (at which point they are ok but not as good at everything).

One could argue that dps warriors are in the same boat. If we're in tank gear than our DPS is only ok. If we're in DPS gear we don't generally last long when called upon to tank. Its the flexibility between fights that impresses me - or am I putting too much credit on druids after running with you, Arshes and company?

[Lissa]

I have a lot of good RL friends (not to mention quite a bit of family) in my current raid group... One which I'm quite close to quitting regardless. It's not a bad raid group by any means, it's just the direction it's being taken in is ... urgh. Frustrating.

The server I play on is old and very established. It really is not easy to find a new raid group.

Stormrage was openned the first day and I can tell you for a fact that the most successful raiding groups (we have alliances as well as just guilds that raid) on our server do not think in the way that your guild thinks. These guilds are also big min-maxers as well and even they have come around to seeing the value of alternate builds to up the overall effectiveness of the raid as a whole. Pigeonholing your classes into specific roles will lower your overall effectiveness, getting a few alternate builds in there will increase you effectiveness.

[ima_nerd]

I don't have any particular response to this, but this is a very good summary of the way things actually work. The idea that a Druid can do several roles well by only changing forms is a major misconception by many people. Mid-fight, Druids are fairly well locked into whatever role they are in with only a fraction of the ability to switch to something else unless they are wearing hybrid gear (at which point they are ok but not as good at everything).

A Feral Druid brought as an OT starting the fight as DPS can DPS, tank, throw an Innervate/Rebirth all in one fight. A Warrior brought as an OT starting the fight as DPS can DPS, tank poorly and... yeah, that's it.

If your tanking gear is radically different than your DPS gear, then please ignore the above statement and forgive my ignorance:)My Druid friend had maybe 3-4 pieces he would change back in the 1.X world when we ran things. I changed everything except my cloak. And that was only because I only had one cloak:P

Turning the question around, why would a raid leader bring a Feral druid if his tanking is less than/equal to the warriors', his DPS is less than the warriors' (a fact assuming his innervate, rebirths or healing is required at some point), and he would heal more as a Restoration druid and still provide both innervates and rebirths?

You're missing something vital. If the Druid's Innervates/Rebirths are required at some point, they are definitely worth more than DPS. The Druid can save the raid in an "Oh shi-" type situation while the DPS Warrior continues doing what he's been doing - DPS. How can you compare a Feral Druid to a DPS Warrior and then bring in a Resto Druid to the discussion? When competing for an OT position, a Feral Druid seems the clear choice. Imp LotP, Innervates/Rebirths in a pinch and FF far outweigh BS/CS and marginally more DPS from someone who isn't even in a true DPS position (OT position not being a DPS spot is what I mean.)

I read this whole thread up to this point in one sitting so if I stated something already said or completely missed some huge point, sorry:D

[Taelas]

His primary spec is restoration and I didn't ask him the rest of his spec. Its the same kind of ignorant bs I deal with when someone asks me to tank and then grills me on my spec ultimately wanting to recruit someone else because I'm 31/13/17 spec. You ask me to tank I tank.

...

I said, pretty darn clearly, a druid can't tank unless he's Feral. You stated you've seen a Restoration druid tank, yet now you admit you don't know if he HAD points in Feral? There is a TON of difference between asking a warrior his spec before he tanks than asking a druid, since a warrior can tank REGARDLESS of spec, and a druid CANNOT. Not effectively, not for any long period of time (and again, 5-mans are negligible; PETS tank 5-mans).

A Feral druid specs to tank, a warrior with points only in Arms/Fury does not. For that reason ALONE, I should be allowed to be better at tanking than those Arms/Fury warriors.

And a warrior with 15 points in Protection isn't exactly just an Arms/Fury warrior, as he has taken the "essential" tanking talents in the lower tiers (the single-most important talent being Defiance). While I still feel I should be somewhat better, I have no problem with the difference being negligible or non-existant from a warrior with those 15 points. But I damn well want to be better at tanking (disregarding skill) than a warrior who expects to get to tank even though he has a total and complete focus on DPS with his talents, just as you would want to be better by speccing 15 points into Protection.

How can you call yourself an Arms/Fury warrior when you have more points in Protection than in Fury?

[Taelas]

You're missing something vital. If the Druid's Innervates/Rebirths are required at some point, they are definitely worth more than DPS. The Druid can save the raid in an "Oh shi-" type situation while the DPS Warrior continues doing what he's been doing - DPS. How can you compare a Feral Druid to a DPS Warrior and then bring in a Resto Druid to the discussion? When competing for an OT position, a Feral Druid seems the clear choice. Imp LotP, Innervates/Rebirths in a pinch and FF far outweigh BS/CS and marginally more DPS from someone who isn't even in a true DPS position (OT position not being a DPS spot is what I mean.)

Except you'll still bring a DPS warrior. I haven't seen any indication anywhere that DPS warriors' raid spots are in danger due to Feral druids. They more than merit a DPS spot, plus they bring their own versatility.

If the DPS warrior tanks as well as the Feral druid (without having any points in Protection), there's no need to bring the Feral druid--especially if you can replace two support healers by having him spec a full Restoration spec, and replace the second support-healer with a DPS class. It covers just about any flexibility the Feral druid would bring.

[Falomin]

Updated 2.0.10 Patch Notes

http://a.wirebrain.de/wow/notes/enUS/6442?diff=1

Red is removed, green is added at the link, here I will just bold the changes since I'm not good at making words in a post be pretty colors:)

Of particular note:

Priests

* The base healing percent from "Vampiric Embrace" has been reduced to 15% from 20%. In addition, this ability can no longer get critical heals.
* "Silent Resolve" no longer reduces threat generated by Shadow spells.
* Prayer of Mending now has a 20 10 second cooldown.
* If a targeted enemy has a magic effect granting immunity to spell or physical damage, “Mass Dispel” will now always pick that effect as its target. Circle of Healing mana cost reduced by 33%.
* The effectiveness of "Fade:Rank 7" has been increased by approximately 25%.
* The damage absorption of "Power Word: Shield" added by the caster's bonus healing has been increased to 20%.

My thoughts:

10 second cooldown is much better for PvE.

It will be interesting to see if PW:S has use again.

Circle of Healing just needs to be scrapped or at least not be our 41 point talent that we have to give up Divine Spirit to get.