Bear Tank Changes - Good? Bad? Indifferent?

[Perrian]

While I'm not happy about the changes I can live with them.... what do you folks think?

Druids

• Barkskin is no longer dispellable.
• Lacerate damage has been reduced by approximately 20%.
• Mangle (Bear Form) weapon damage (at level 80+) has been reduced to 235%, down from 300%.
• Mangle (Cat Form) weapon damage percent (at level 80+) has been increased to 460%, up from 360%.
• Maul damage has been reduced by approximately 20%.
• Mount Up: This guild perk now applies to Flight Form and Swift Flight Form as well.
• Rake damage has been reduced by 10%.
• Rip damage has been reduced by 10%.
• Shapeshifts: Entering or leaving a shapeshift no longer cancels root effects. It continues to cancel movement slowing effects.
• Shred weapon damage percent (at level 80+) has been increased to 450%, up from 350%.
• Skull Bash's lockout time has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 5.
• Talent Specializations
  • Feral
    • Berserk (instant Mangle proc) now has a new Spell Alert identifier. In addition, Berserk no longer breaks Fear or makes the druid immune to Fear.
    • Blood in the Water: Timing on this effect has been improved so that Ferocious Bite will immediately refresh Rip, rather than be slightly delayed (which gave a chance for the Rip to expire despite being refreshed).
    • Infected Wounds now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
    • Pulverize weapon damage percent has been reduced to 80%, down from 100%.
• Druid Bug Fixes
  • Druids can correctly cast Barkskin while silenced.
  • Feral Charge: Cat should always turn the druid around to face the back of the target.
  • Maul and other Feral druid ability tooltips should now show the correct damage.
  • Nature's Swiftness is no longer consumed when casting Entangling Roots that became instant cast via Glyph of Entangling Roots.
  • The Thick Hide tooltip should now reflect the new increased values.
  • The tooltip for Thrash's bleed effect listed the amount of damage per tick rather than the total damage for the effect. This has been corrected.
  • Using Track Humanoids while in Cat Form should no longer cause loot windows to automatically close the first time they are opened.
  • Glyph Fixes
    • Glyph of Ferocious Bite now correctly augments the Ferocious Bite tooltip.

[Suicideking666]

I've been following the changes and all i see is that bear threat is being reduced, cat bleeds getting nerfed but physical burst damage getting buffed, the physical burst increase makes up for the bleed nerf and at times is better.
Barkskin will finally be usable in pvp.
Now we have no means of breaking roots as feral, which after 6 years of this being a core mechanic of druid pvp seems just plain hurtful to the class.
Berserk is just a dps buff, which is kind of a waste IMO, I think the change should have been to make it so you're not immune to fears but keep the break of fear.
Mount up working in flight form is nice though.

[Kojiyama]

Well... pretty much universal nerfs for Bears, unless we actually got an armor buff. Very hard to tell if it was just a tooltip fix or an actual buff since I was unable to properly copy a character to PTR.

Think they went a bit over the top with the Bear DPS nerfs, realistically.

[feralminded]

Well... pretty much universal nerfs for Bears, unless we actually got an armor buff. Very hard to tell if it was just a tooltip fix or an actual buff since I was unable to properly copy a character to PTR.

Think they went a bit over the top with the Bear DPS nerfs, realistically.

I'll see how it turns out after a couple raids but prior to this my bear OT was WAY ahead of me in single target DPS and TPS. Probably a solid 30-35%. He was doing so much DPS that on the really tight DPS progression fights we'd always make him MT because he could make the DPS difference.

[Kojiyama]

The thing is, those numbers are not seen in high-level parses as a general rule.

To the contrary, Warriors are often matching or exceeding Bears on the competitive WoL parses with Paladins. Blood DKs seem to be a fair bit behind, but they are the erratic figure moreso than Bears.

See: http://stateofdps.com/index.php?raid...=200&spec=tank

In both 10 and 25-man, the Median Bear is only about 10% higher than Paladins and matching or slightly behind Warriors. I don't see what a 20% nerf is going to accomplish other than putting high-end Bears below high-end Paladins and Warriors for no good reason.

[Suicideking666]

The bear DPS nerf is more for the pvp side of the game from what I've seen, cats switching to bear for survivability and healing can still hit so hard in bear form. Most of the feral changes are more geared towards pvp, the bleeds have been huge there, the berserk change is clearly a pvp change, barkskin no longer useless in pvp.
And since threat isnt an issue as it is, a 20% reduction isnt going to effect tanking that much, yes the dps/tps will be lower but not enough where other dps is going to be pulling threat. Honestly the only bear change that really pisses me off is the 20% reduction on pulverize, being that it his like limp noodle as it is, if they left it where it was it might have been decent as something to use when everything else is on CD.

[Kojiyama]

Well, all they had to do was nerf Vengeance in PvP instead of taking the hammer to Feral tanks.

The loss of Fear and Root breaking is annoying enough.

The 20% flat change was simply lazy, if you ask me. Nerfing Lacerate and Pulverize is just a silly thing to do. They are already so poor that there is really little justification for it.

[feralminded]

The thing is, those numbers are not seen in high-level parses as a general rule.

To the contrary, Warriors are often matching or exceeding Bears on the competitive WoL parses with Paladins. Blood DKs seem to be a fair bit behind, but they are the erratic figure moreso than Bears.

See: http://stateofdps.com/index.php?raid...=200&spec=tank

Yeah but those parses are ignoring that Warriors are also totally OP in AoE fights (which was not nerfed but probably should be). Yeah I crush the meters when I'm add tanking on maloriak or when the whelps are up on Halfus or Magmaw or any fight that spawns adds that I can hit. That's a separate argument that has nothing to do with single target DPS. For an accurate representation of all out single target DPS of tanks you gotta look at Chimaeron or Algoloth. Warriors are still strong single target (pre-HS nerfs) but not at the same level as bears. We're both getting nerfed single target though (bears worse than warriors, admittedly), but for some reason warriors are not getting seriously nerfed AoE. I suspect that's coming though ... it has to ... warrior AoE DPS is out of hand and the cleave nerf I can't imagine will bring it in line. My shockwaves on maloriak crit for like 150k on each add during green phase ... it's insane.

[Kojiyama]

You can scroll down to look at the fight-by-fight.

Bears are only up on Warriors by around 10% on the single-target fights like Chimeraon and Atramedes and have nearly no advantage at all on fights like Valiona and Theralion, Omnitron, or Al'akir.

Either way, you'd be hard-pressed to claim that Druids were up on Warriors or Paladins by anywhere near 20% on a regular basis.

Basically Blizzard has decided to take Druids down to where Blood DKs are now and leave Warriors and Paladins pretty much where they were. It hardly makes sense.

I mean, sure, Bears look really impressive on trash or in 5-mans due to Berserk on trash, but it's not like my sustained DPS on single-targets is all that impressive. Big Mangles, sure, but that's about it. Given how pathetic Lacerate and Pulverize are, it's not like Bears have anything other than big Mangles in terms of damage.

[Reev]

You can scroll down to look at the fight-by-fight.

Bears are only up on Warriors by around 10% on the single-target fights like Chimeraon and Atramedes and have nearly no advantage at all on fights like Valiona and Theralion, Omnitron, or Al'akir.

Either way, you'd be hard-pressed to claim that Druids were up on Warriors or Paladins by anywhere near 20% on a regular basis.

Basically Blizzard has decided to take Druids down to where Blood DKs are now and leave Warriors and Paladins pretty much where they were. It hardly makes sense.

I mean, sure, Bears look really impressive on trash or in 5-mans due to Berserk on trash, but it's not like my sustained DPS on single-targets is all that impressive. Big Mangles, sure, but that's about it. Given how pathetic Lacerate and Pulverize are, it's not like Bears have anything other than big Mangles in terms of damage.

They aren't leaving warriors where we were. They just aren't nerfing us as much as bears. Unless the 15% devastate buff is going to make up for the 15% HS/Cleave loss from talents and 20% loss base.

[feralminded]

They aren't leaving warriors where we were. They just aren't nerfing us as much as bears. Unless the 15% devastate buff is going to make up for the 15% HS/Cleave loss from talents and 20% loss base.

This. I mean I freely acknowledge that bears are eating a hell of a nerfbat but you don't exist in a vacuum and the acrimony is unnecessary and comes across as sour grapes. Bears do OP single target damage as far as blizzard is concerned and they nerfed them, end of story. A lot of classes were changed in a lot of ways too. As I said warrior tanks ate some DPS nerfs as well. I believe blood DKs got relatively buffed. I do not know anything about paladins so I won't comment.

At this point there's only two rational choices: Either do an objective analysis of the new relative DPS levels of all tanks or wait two week and do an analysis of logs. I believe blizzard at least did a cursory amount of A but if history is any indication are going to lean heavily on B.

[Kojiyama]

The Heroic Strike change was not all that significant in terms of overall single-target DPS. The Devastate buff provides 300-400 DPS in compensation--which, while not all of the gap, is enough to reduce the net change due to the Heroic Strike nerf to a fairly marginal amount.

At worst, it's going to be a 6-8% drop...and probably a lot less in many cases due to DPR considerations.

The 'sour grapes' is because it was done in a totally silly manner. Nerfing Lacerate and Pulverize when they are already viewed as weak and mostly there as busy-work GCD-fillers? (This was even after many Druid tanks laughed at the idea of making Lacerate scale with Haste as a way to make Haste more attractive...considering the DoT only does about 2-3% of our damage in many cases.)

And if Druid AoE is viewed as only so-so compared to Warriors, why did the AoE not recieve upward adjustments?

The thing really does come across as fairly clumsy.

[Reev]

The Heroic Strike change was not all that significant in terms of overall single-target DPS. The Devastate buff provides 300-400 DPS in compensation--which, while not all of the gap, is enough to reduce the net change due to the Heroic Strike nerf to a fairly marginal amount.

At worst, it's going to be a 6-8% drop...and probably a lot less in many cases due to DPR considerations.

So if it's a 6-8% drop, and druids get a 20% drop, and druids are currently 10% ahead, that puts warriors and druids pretty close, neh?

[Katarn]

You can scroll down to look at the fight-by-fight.

Bears are only up on Warriors by around 10% on the single-target fights like Chimeraon and Atramedes and have nearly no advantage at all on fights like Valiona and Theralion, Omnitron, or Al'akir.

Either way, you'd be hard-pressed to claim that Druids were up on Warriors or Paladins by anywhere near 20% on a regular basis.

Basically Blizzard has decided to take Druids down to where Blood DKs are now and leave Warriors and Paladins pretty much where they were. It hardly makes sense.

I mean, sure, Bears look really impressive on trash or in 5-mans due to Berserk on trash, but it's not like my sustained DPS on single-targets is all that impressive. Big Mangles, sure, but that's about it. Given how pathetic Lacerate and Pulverize are, it's not like Bears have anything other than big Mangles in terms of damage.

I would like to point out that very few Bears are going out of their way to generate as much DPS/TPS as possible. Most are just spamming Lacerate every global and refreshing Pulverize when its up.

Further as far as I remember the Warrior tank population is nearly double that of Ferals, which means the results will be skewed in favour of Warriors.

I agree that there was no real point in nerfing Pulverize or Lacerate. However Mangle definitely needed a reduction, and I'm not surprised Maul got one either given how massive its AP modifer was.

The Armor "buff" is supposed to counteract a bug that was leftover from 4.0, or so it appears. I haven't had the opportunity to test and see if my physical damage intake has gone down or up since the change.

For details: http://theincbear.com/thick-hide-theorycraft/

[Kojiyama]

So if it's a 6-8% drop, and druids get a 20% drop, and druids are currently 10% ahead, that puts warriors and druids pretty close, neh?

Ok... but what about all the fights where Druids are below or equal to Warriors?

(It's also worth noting that Cats are mixed in with Bears on some fights where Cats go Bearform for survival phases. e.g. a majority of the top 25 on Chimearon in World of Logs are actually Cats who simply go Bear for Feuds and pop off a few Mangles/Mauls. Realistically World of Logs should be checking for Pulverize usage or something instead of other Bear abilities.)

I would like to point out that very few Bears are going out of their way to generate as much DPS/TPS as possible. Most are just spamming Lacerate every global and refreshing Pulverize when its up.

What exactly would you suggest Bears do better to generate more DPS/TPS? Mangle on cooldown, use Lacerate, Pulverize to refresh the buff... maybe work Thrash in there instead of Lacerates for a tiny TPS increase? (I do it, but it makes little difference.)

I mean, there's not a whole lot to work with in the Bear rotation.

I would offer the other argument. I'd say there are a lot of Warriors that don't optimize the Warrior rotation, don't use Rend/Shockwave when appropriate, mishandle Sword and Board opportunities, and spec in strange ways that lower their TPS significantly. They are more likely to make Warriors look bad than Mangle+Lacerate-spamming Druids. You can drop tons of damage as a Warrior simply by a few spec decisions and/or mishandling your GCD priorities.

Edit: I'm also not arguing that some slight adjustments wouldn't be fine for Bears. I just feel that a flat 20% nerf is a poor way of doing it. Bringing Mangle down by 15% or so and leaving everything else the same would be a lot more understandable.

[Kojiyama]

Also, as a related note that the patch notes (and Armor debate) brought back to my attention: it's worth considering that some Bears were affected by the 'ghosted' Protector of the Patch talent. Not only was this decreasing the damage they took, but it was also increasing their attack power by 6%.

This is a very non-trivial amount with Vengeance and the fairly decent Attack Power scaler on Mangle.

So, I'm a bit wary about the concept that many Druids are being compared to Warriors when they were running around with 6% 'free' Attack Power. As the bug was fixed in today's patch, they will be losing that Attack Power in addition to the 20% reduction on single-target abilities. This means that a number of Druids will probably lose upwards of 25%-30% of their single-target damage, rather than the intended 20%.

It probably would have been best to fix this bug before implementing any major reductions to our damage.

(I did not ever have this bug as my Druid was created after Cataclysm launch. Existing Bear-spec'd Druids, however, may have had it until today's patch.)

[Katarn]

Also, as a related note that the patch notes (and Armor debate) brought back to my attention: it's worth considering that some Bears were affected by the 'ghosted' Protector of the Patch talent. Not only was this decreasing the damage they took, but it was also increasing their attack power by 6%.

This is a very non-trivial amount with Vengeance and the fairly decent Attack Power scaler on Mangle.

So, I'm a bit wary about the concept that many Druids are being compared to Warriors when they were running around with 6% 'free' Attack Power. As the bug was fixed in today's patch, they will be losing that Attack Power in addition to the 20% reduction on single-target abilities. This means that a number of Druids will probably lose upwards of 25%-30% of their single-target damage, rather than the intended 20%.

It probably would have been best to fix this bug before implementing any major reductions to our damage.

(I did not ever have this bug as my Druid was created after Cataclysm launch. Existing Bear-spec'd Druids, however, may have had it until today's patch.)

The 6% AP isn't enough to account for the problems we're seeing though. It's only about 1-1.5k TPS (ignoring Crits) per 10kAP.

People are reporting reductions in the area of 10-12k TPS. Something is very, very off and I won't have a chance to investigate why until I get home.

[Kojiyama]

6% AP is still a big chunk of the visible advantage for high-end raiding Bears on single target fights, though. Considering it was basically a bug which is fixed as of today, it's worth considering that it was AP Bears were never intended to have.

Not going to comment on any severe or bugged reductions due to the patch (I'm on EU servers, so haven't played yet), but just the theory of a flat 20% nerf on top of a 6-8% bugfix nerf for many long-term raiding Bears seems like a bad combo.

I would have thought they would wait to see the results of the Protector of the Pack bugfix before making any major changes.

10k TPS sounds about right to me, though, for a 25-30% compound DPS nerf. (In raids at least, if you were affected by the bug.) But it's certainly possible there are some bugs there too.

[Katarn]

Found some issues, most notably with Lacerate and Beserk:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2046567194

[Kojiyama]

Ouch. Those are some big issues with Lacerate.