[Lore]

Keeping this short to keep the guides listing near the front of the page -- Ghostcrawler's made another "Upcoming Feral Changes" post on the Tanking forums, with some details on how the Feral AP and Bear Armor changes are going to work. In particular, bonus armor on items will no longer benefit from the Bear scaler (it's not being removed, just won't be multiplied by 370%), with Survival of the Fittest being given, in addition to its current effects, a +66% armor scaler on Cloth and Leather items.

Feral AP is being removed, in favor of allowing Cat and Bear AP to scale with the DPS of the item. Feral staves will be reworked to also be attractive to Hunters (and Ferals may be interested in the occasional twohanded Mace).

More info (and Ghostcrawler's posts) are available here.

[Lore]

Source: Ghostcrawler This is an update to my previous post on Feral armor changes. ARMOR As previously announced, we are changing the way bear armor works so that bonus armor on items does not receive the bear armor multiplier. Specifically this means that weapons, trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks with bonus armor will not be multiplied by the bear bonus. Only cloth and leather will benefit from the Bear and Dire Bear multiplier. We are compensating Ferals for this armor loss by improving the Survival of the Fittest talent. In addition to its current effects (stats and crit prevention), it will now also increase armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 22/33/66%. That should be very close to your current armor bonus. This makes Survival of the Fittest rather over-budget by talent standards, but we figured it was one talent we can be pretty certain most tank-oriented druids will have (and to be honest nearly all Ferals). FERAL ATTACK POWER We are no longer going to have weapons in the game which improve feral attack power. Instead, your attack power will scale based on the dps of the item. Practically speaking this means almost no change for any gear you currently use -- you should not see your dps change. What it does mean is that we can create the occasional dps staff that could be used by druids or hunters (or very undergeared warriors), and that Ferals may occasionaly use two-handed dps maces. We are going to convert all existing Feral staves over to this new system (but again, you should not notice any change to your dps). We are also adjusting the UI so that when druids look at these weapons, you will see what the improvement will be to your damage in forms. This does not mean we are no longer going to create bear and cat weapons, just that those weapons will be slightly less niche than they are now. These changes will be in place in the next patch. This patch will ship sometime before the 3.1 major content patch featuring the Ulduar raid.

[Norrath]

All I can say (with regards to the Feral Attack Power change) is that it's ABOUT DAMN TIME.

They should have done it like this from the beginning.

[Tyriall]

I always thought it was a bit crummy that Feral weapon itemization was so pigeonholed. One of our druid friends ran Kara so many times for the "Face-sucker staff". This sounds like a good change.

[Hypatia]

I'm excited because I can't wait to have staves in the game again that are actually useful to a warrior. (I miss Nat Pagle's Fish Terminator.)

[Sparan]

Either I have something quite wrong here or druids are going to be totally screwed. I'm showing 3211 armor from the ilvl 200 leather combined, which comes out to a piddly 14,385 armor in bear form (with thick hide and the survival of the fittest bonus, so a 448% multiplier). Perhaps devo aura and mark will be effected by the multiplier as well? If that's the case then 3211 + 750 (mark) + 1807 (3/3 imp devo aura) will give you 25,840 armor which is just shy of what I have raid buffed now in a mixed set of 10/25 naxx gear and a couple 70 pieces. Either way, this change will either mean druids have painfully inadequate armor (which I doubt will be the case), or they'll be utterly dependent upon devo aura to have sufficient armor for tanking. Better not outrange your pallies or let em die!!

[TylBronto]

I'm 99% certain that Devo aura will not scale with the bear multiplier. It looks like the way they are trying to get it to work is that leather has plate+shield armor stats, and all other armor (buffs, rings/trinks/etc) affect bears the same way they affect warriors/paladins/DKs.

[Sparan]

Right, but there's nothing in GC's post about them raising the armor values on leather pieces to compensate, and unless I've got something radically wrong about the mulitplier or the armor values on their Naxx-level gear then they will have around the armor I had when I was in Kara when they're unbuffed.

[Starvationofmind]

Source: Sparan Either I have something quite wrong here or druids are going to be totally screwed. I'm showing 3211 armor from the ilvl 200 leather combined, which comes out to a piddly 14,385 armor in bear form (with thick hide and the survival of the fittest bonus, so a 448% multiplier). Perhaps devo aura and mark will be effected by the multiplier as well? If that's the case then 3211 + 750 (mark) + 1807 (3/3 imp devo aura) will give you 25,840 armor which is just shy of what I have raid buffed now in a mixed set of 10/25 naxx gear and a couple 70 pieces. Either way, this change will either mean druids have painfully inadequate armor (which I doubt will be the case), or they'll be utterly dependent upon devo aura to have sufficient armor for tanking. Better not outrange your pallies or let em die!!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your math is a little screwed up. It sounds like thick hide and the new SotF buff will stack with Bear form.

So take that (3211 armor) * (1.66 from SotF) * (1.1 from Thick Hide) * (4.7 from Bear form) = 27,558 armor unbuffed. Where are you getting that 448% number? I thought these were all multiplicative.

From my numbers, I have 4181 armor from items, with 2585 of that coming from leather. so my armor total as is (this includes my staff's 550 armor) is 21616. Post patch, from my calculations I will have:

(2585 leather armor *4.7 (bear form) * 1.1 (Thick Hide) * 1.66 (SotF)) + 1046 armor (non leather non staff items) = 23231 armor... a net increase

[phaze]

Source: Sparan Either I have something quite wrong here or druids are going to be totally screwed. I'm showing 3211 armor from the ilvl 200 leather combined, which comes out to a piddly 14,385 armor in bear form (with thick hide and the survival of the fittest bonus, so a 448% multiplier).

Assume the new SotF bonus is additive:
370% (Dire Bear) + 66% (3/3 SotF) = 436% boost, so 5.36x armor multiplier. With 3/3 Thick Hide, that comes out to be 5.896x multiplier.

3211 armor from gear --> 18932 armor after modifiers. Plus armor from agility, and other slots that don't gain these boosts, and armor buffs, etc.


Assume the new SotF bonus is multiplicative:
(1 + 3.7) * 1.66 * 1.1 = 8.58x multiplier. 3211 armor from gear --> 27550 armor after modifiers (and before the other contributions).


The multiplicative value seems excessive, so I'm guessing it'll be additive (like a lot of other similar effects), and leather gear will most likely see some changes to its armor number to keep the armor roughly the same as before any change.

[phaze]

Source: phaze The multiplicative value seems excessive, so I'm guessing it'll be additive (like a lot of other similar effects), and leather gear will most likely see some changes to its armor number to keep the armor roughly the same as before any change.

Actually, I wasn't thinking it through; that's probably about right for iLvl200 armor now, so it may be multiplicative after all, and the armor on leather gear won't need updating. Since this is simpler to implement, that makes it more attractive.

[Squashed]

I was thinking by the wording, that this increase will be additive before bear form...So in caster you'd have 1.76 times the armor listed on your leather items.

After bear form, you'd have 1.76 + 3.7*1.76 = 8.272 * 3211 = 26561

[Sparan]

Ah! Right on Phaze! I knew I had something way off. BUT, 27k armor is pretty high. I have all but cape/boots/trinkets/helm swapped out to naxx gear (all but 1 are from 25-man?) and I only have 24k AFTER factoring in armor from enchants/cape/agi/etc. If your numbers are the right ones then it's looking like warriors will outclass druids pretty thoroughly in terms of avoidance (I think I have about 55% fully buffed, in comparison to the 30-something that I think I recall Dark saying he has atm) and oh-shi! buttons but are losing the health and armor war pretty thoroughly (Dark has 40k hp and apparently will have over 27k armor in comparison to my 33k hp and 24-25k armor). These are interesting times.

[phaze]

Source: Sparan Dark has 40k hp and apparently will have over 27k armor in comparison to my 33k hp and 24-25k armor

Sounds like you're comparing a pure-EH druid setup with a balanced Warrior setup. I'm sure a Druid focusing more on avoidance (or a balanced set) won't be 7k hp ahead of a similarly focused Warrior (or Paladin, or DK).

Also, don't forget that Warriors will be blocking, which is probably in the range of 10% mitigation now after the 3.0 improvements? Rough guess there.

[Mirumara]

I think these changes are going to work out very well for us ferals. The removal of the +Feral AP from items is going to open us up even further in our itemization, which we've desperately needed help on for a long time. I'm really happy with all the changes so far, and this is only helping further.

Even though Ghostcrawler mentioned Hunters being interested in our weapons, I seriously doubt that any Hunter would go for them considering that the majority of the staves are going to have a lot of + Strength on the item.

[Sparan]

Oh for sure. I imagine the numbers will even out a bit more once I can stop worrying about d-cap so much, and put on some of the high-stam trinkets that are available now. I anticipate a gap of 3-5k nonetheless. As for shield block, I did a little number crunching and assuming you are using BiS block value gear for every slot currently in game (barring having to go back to blue BC-items and other retarded things like that) and using shield block on cd with the block meta, shield mastery, and critical block against a boss that attacks every 2s for 10k post-mitigation damage you'll net about an 8% mitigation increase if you have 50% avoidance. I'd estimate that under normal circumstances (spell/aoe/yellow damage factored back in, not using shield block on cd, and somewhat more modest and balanced gear) that it's closer to a 4-5% mitigation bump. It definitely more than compensates for the armor difference, but I'd take the sure thing 2% mitigation over the 4% spikey mitigation in most progression scenarios.

[Darksend]

3227 armor right now sparan from my 8 items.

that gives me 3227x1.1x1.66x4.7=27695


now before they said they are completely removing armor from all staves, is this still happening ?

if not i then have another 700+346+700 from weapon cape and rings (thick hide however still affects these) so thats another 1746x1.1

that totals 29616 which is 2K more armor than i have.

all in all this is a HUGEEEEEEEEEEEEEE buff because now you can use better trinkets instead of defenders code, the badge cape with no armor, necks without armor, rings without armor

yea, im happy right now because THEY FIXED FERAL DRUIDS WITHOUT MAKING RESTO TO OP FOR PVP AND THUS FORCING THEM TO NERF IT LATER!!!!


/dance of joy


/slap sparan

FERAL AP!!!!!!!!

omg sorry for cap spam im a happy druid ! even more so because this is happeneing before the new instance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



WOWOWOWOW edit: savage roar just became useless again....

[Kazeyonoma]

lol dark.

[Manßearpig]

Yeah, im a feared of what will happen to savage roar. It was kind of silly for them to put in an ability so integral to the dps cycle that depended on what was obviously a bandaid to feral weapon itemization.

On the other hand, they did say they wanted to adjust feral kitty dps down.

[Lore]

It depends on how the weapon dps -> form dps conversion works. The impression I got was that you'd still be getting a huge AP bonus, it would just come from a scaler on the weapon's DPS and not the feral AP stat.