Savage Defense

[Droih]

"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."


So what do you guys think about it(mainly druids)?

personally I feel that it's somewhat what we wanted, block ? excited to try it out ^^ if it reaches live that is :P

they are nerfing Survival of the Fittest, but im guessing that it wont be that much of an armor loss.

[Taelas]

Personally I love the idea. I understand if a lot of people will be a bit disappointed, though -- the net effect will most likely push druids off the pedestal as the best EH tanks.

It'll help the following:
-Magic damage. I see no reason not to assume the shield will work on magic, as druids currently have the worst magic defenses. Paladins have ~.86 reduction, warriors have ~.85, druids have .88. Both paladins and warriors have additional benefits, though... AD for paladins and Spell Reflection for warriors. Death knights have, what, .85 in Frost Presence, Anti-Magic Shell and Icebound Fortitude? Plus at least Unholy has some more I think (Magic Suppression, Anti-Magic Zone, Bone Shield?). I'm not very into DKs yet.
-Removing PvP gear from the top EH lists. Crit, hit, Expertise will increase this ability, and PvP gear has very little of this.
-Threat translates into mitigation.

That's just what I can think of off the top of my head.

[Steeltusk]

Most druids has 25% crit chance unbuffed while not in a form...Thats ~33% in raid enviroment. Theirs Attack Powers ,(in raid), is around 6000. The outcome is 30-33% to "block" 1500 dmg.

My warrior has 19% chance to block ~1000dmg plus a chance to critcally block ~2000dmg...

And now you will be able to get rage when absorbing dmg.

I would give it 6 second(?) cooldown.

[Taelas]

I see no need for a cooldown at all.

[Genova]

Im excited about it honestly, I play more of an OT role as it is as, it gives us at least something more to shoot for as far as stats, more reason to get a lot of AP. It might make itemizing things a little fun too.

[Steeltusk]

I see no reason why Druids would be pushed off the pedestal as the best EH tanks. That armor bonus from Survival was to compensate the loss for not having Armor trinkets... It was crazy, the druid with both armor trinkets had 6-7k armor more then the one without them. After they buffed Survival of the fittes with armor increase druids noticed that their armor actually increased despite the fact of not having +arm trinkets.

[Taelas]

Survival of the Fittest will have some of its armor multiplier removed as a result of the Savage Defense addition.

[gacktt]

Oh hey look druids can now have higher block chance than warriors.

Now give me an extra 7k armor and 14k hp.

[intolerantape]

Gogo invulnerable swipe spamming bears.

[Droih]

Gogo invulnerable swipe spamming bears.

Yes i thought of this as well; if it dont gets an internal CD it will be awsome for AoE tanking.

Reasons for them to give it an internal CD or not;

druid tanks will gain to much of migation if we stack critt.

the fact that it only proccs on critt might make them not giving them the internal CD.

[Harlan]

Most druids has 25% crit chance unbuffed while not in a form...Thats ~33% in raid enviroment. Theirs Attack Powers ,(in raid), is around 6000. The outcome is 30-33% to "block" 1500 dmg.

My warrior has 19% chance to block ~1000dmg plus a chance to critcally block ~2000dmg...

And now you will be able to get rage when absorbing dmg.

I would give it 6 second(?) cooldown.

In my regular tanking gear, I have 37.6% chance to crit (in form since while not in a form doesn't mean anything) and 4821 ap. That's in gear that gives me 34k hp. In my 41k hp gear crit drops to 30.99 and ap to 4440. (all unbuffed, no mark). And swipe spamming bears won't be invulnerable.

I'm excited for stats that scale, but disappointed no mention of new models.

[Stearns]

Very happy about this. Makes me laugh about the qq before wrath ("why do we have to tank in rogue gear while plate gear is perfectly optimized for plate tanks?"). Seems blizzard did a great job releasing content where tight gear tuning was not necessary, in preparation for more complex mechanics that will scale well and make bear gearing a lot more interesting. So we'll be able to keep wearing damage gear, do even more damage, and get mitigation thrown in for free. Cool! I think its a win-win-win change.

[Traffkor]

The armor and HP of a Dudu been the Warriors block and Parry.

Since both have block now we just have following major differences and what would you choose? ~10k Armor and ~10k Hp or 20% Parry?

I always thought block is the compensation of the lack of Armor the other classes have but seemingly not.

This patch will push druids off the pedestal as the best EH tanks (by far).

[Kelthion]

I expect Savage Combat + armor reduction to be a buff for small AoE groups (maybe 2-4), a nerf to large groups that don't hit hard (we lose armor and the hit negated every ~1.5 seconds by the shield will not make up for it), and no net change for single-target tanking.

I'm not sure what the design goal is, but I'd be ok with a change like that.


I'm a little hazier on the magic reduction thing. I'm guessing it will be nice but not really game-changing. Sarth breathes AND melees, so who cares which one you're absorbing? Maybe that a naive view.

[Muffin Man]

My guess on the design goal is the Dev's are having a hard time fine tuning encounters when druids are working so differently than the other tanks.

There are some encounters were druids are perfect because they can absorb many big blows best. That's fully a function of a class having being so much farther on the EH scale than the others. This change lets them scale druid back a little in terms of their EH advantage. Sadly this makes them more like the other tanks, but how else are you going to make tightly tuned encounters with tank parity.

I don't think this needs an internal cooldown either. Because even with swiping it can only proc based on your swing speed (built in cooldown), while block can still happen as fast as the hits come in.

I also don't see this as game breaking on trash. The next hit completely removes the shield. Meaning if there are 5 mobs, you can only shield 1 of their blows at a time unless you think you can proc the shield 5 times before you take 5 hits.

[Pul]

I like this change it makes feral tanking look more interesting eventho it's a passive ability.

The armor reduction I guess it's required but currently I use barskin+enrage every cd possible and I have King of the Jungle talent (+15%dmg for 9sec, 1min cd on enrage). However enrage reduces 16% armor in Dire bear form I'm hoping it won't make it a bad choisse to use enrage in some encounters because since I saw Xav's video with 3.2k dps at patchwerk I've been driving nuts

[Resilan]

What are you guys seeing about Savage Defense that I am missing? I do not like the description of this ability! It seems like yet another awkward implementation of a warrior ability with situational (at best) usefulness.

The damage shield will absorb 1 hit up to a certain amount modified by our attack power. I am willing to bet it will have an internal cooldown of some type making it pretty useless IMO. Will it mitigate some damage? Yes. Will it mitigate as much as the armor loss? Maybe. But so what? It isn't a useful block. It doesn't make me care about a different stat. Bleh! It's another gimmick ability which I don't need.

A warrior or paladin has a chance to block on every incoming hit. That means with 5 mobs they have the chance to block all attempted hits. Odds are that will not happen, but the chance does exist however small. Best case scenario, the druid can block (absorb) 1 incoming hit of the 5.

Now if you wanted to make it interesting, make it a stacking buff (up to 3) and then have a triggered ability which is available that consumes that buff and absorbs the next X amount of damage. Now that would allow me to acquire a reactive ability which can be used to block incoming damage. That would add interest to the gameplay and could make a pretty neat interactive ability.

As the skill is described, I do not see the appeal.

[Pul]

I don't understand your idea I understand what you mean about AoEing but I'm not really bothered with that. About armor atm I'm sitting on 34983armor 69.97% DR. I have no idea how Ulduar gear will be and how much it will improve on armor for druids, nor the upcoming items after that, so I don't think it would make any sense to have 75% DR with Ulduar gear leaving nothing else to improve except dodge/miss as defensive stats.

Like I said I'm not sure what you mean about stacking. So assuming you crit a boss 3 times and avoid his hits in mean time, the next hit he lands you absorve 25%x3 of your AP? Or the next 3 sucessfull hits on you you'll absorve 25% of your AP each? I think that would leave up to having that 'bubble' up almost all the time during MT'ing. Or you mean you can stack to 3 and choose when to use the stacks and it having a cd like Barkskin?

[Harlan]

What are you guys seeing about Savage Defense that I am missing? I do not like the description of this ability! It seems like yet another awkward implementation of a warrior ability with situational (at best) usefulness.

The damage shield will absorb 1 hit up to a certain amount modified by our attack power. I am willing to bet it will have an internal cooldown of some type making it pretty useless IMO.

I highly doubt that there will be an internal cooldown because of the way it will work (from what they say). It only lasts for one attack even if all the bubble isn't used. If it stacked or if the bubble lasted even if it wasn't used, I would expect there to be an internal cooldown. On a boss fight I would expect this to be up all the time since you can get 1 attack per sec (granted a maul/melee will land at the same time as a gcd ability).

I don't know what your gear looks like, but I only have 6% or so until I'm armor capped. By taking away armor and giving us this ability we will scale better in the long run. Armor hits some pretty nast dr's when reaching the cap, so this will get rid of some of that. But then again it depends on how much armor they take away.

[Resilan]

I highly doubt that there will be an internal cooldown because of the way it will work (from what they say). It only lasts for one attack even if all the bubble isn't used. If it stacked or if the bubble lasted even if it wasn't used, I would expect there to be an internal cooldown. On a boss fight I would expect this to be up all the time since you can get 1 attack per sec (granted a maul/melee will land at the same time as a gcd ability).

I don't know what your gear looks like, but I only have 6% or so until I'm armor capped. By taking away armor and giving us this ability we will scale better in the long run. Armor hits some pretty nast dr's when reaching the cap, so this will get rid of some of that. But then again it depends on how much armor they take away.

Even if you forget the GCD, you can only get 1 bubble every 1.5 secs as described since it is based on your hit and you can only have 1 bubble active. That is going to scale inversely with the number of mobs hitting you as you only remove the damage from 1 mob out of the pack. Small trash pulls are probably going to be Ok. Large packs may prove problematic.