Bear tanking, MoP beta changes so far.

[Tielyn]

Heh. Oh, believe me, I know. I usually try and stay hit and expertise capped the whole way, and I figured that out immediately when I saw the change from 'being hit gives you rage' to 'only hitting the boss gives you rage.' (see comment earlier from me back on 5/28

Also new data: you're going to need to get your hit and expertise capped again. Without it, you're not getting any rage (see again: getting hit does nothing for you). -Every- hit counts now -- I put on my caster gear and whacked on a target dummy. It took 32 seconds to get enough rage (tested a handful of times running with a stopwatch) for one Savage Defense with 0 hit and 0 expertise, as any attack that misses, gets parried, or dodged does not generate any rage at all. You'll also need to keep decent crit, because without it your Primal Fury won't proc as much -- and each crit is worth 15 rage.

I definitely do not expect to be able to kill bosses without a healer; it should be a rare, seat-of-the-pants, end-of-the-fight thing at best. But the tank should be able to survive for more than 10 seconds if the healer eats it for one of the battlerez-capable people to raise the healer, and I -have- soloed this particular boss down the last 15% in the past on the beta because the rest of the group died during the add phase. (I think it might have been during the time when SD was a 40% absorb All damage, though, so there ya go.) They buffed the damage that the AoE does, and it killed me in no time flat. And we needed to have our level 90 shaman go heals to help out the level 86 druid because he wasn't dispelling the shadow debuff when he was alive (he apparently didn't have the talent point for it), so was going OOM and we were dying from magic damage all around.

That being said: I've seen Paladins solo bosses from upwards of 35% health in live because they have a lot of tools to heal themselves and prevent damage.

Comparing apples to plate-wearing apples a moment from my beta characters:
Level 88 paladin: 9.60% dodge, 15.89% parry. (also, 26% block, that doesn't count as avoidance)
Level 87 druid, base: 13.92% dodge.

Essentially, my paladin has 11% more base complete avoidance than I do as my bear, and some function of block on top of it. My instant heals are faster in theory if I run a string of lucky crits to get a Frenzied Regen off, versus the consistent have-to-wait-for-three-charges-of-WoG, but they also have the GCD-based Holy Light to work with, whereas Druid healing touch pops you out of form, drops your Vengance stacks and the bonus stamina for being in bear form. Sure, arguably, we have a 20% Stamina buff by being a bear, but that's fluctuated up and down the line at points to be as low as 10%. And we do have a mastery-based passive armor buff (right now mine is at 8%), but it's the same armor as we have in live, while the Savage Defense of Live has been turned into the active defense thingy on the Beta, which isn't available at all if you're busy healing yourself trying to keep up.
(soapbox off).

All I was really saying is that in the latest build is that I definitely feel a LOT squishier than previous builds to date. Having been both a healer (druid/shaman) and tank (warrior/pally/druid) since Burning Crusade, you get a feeling of how well you soak up damage versus how hard your healer has to work to keep you upright while minding the rest of the party/raid. This definitely has the feel of Ulduar-style druid tanks now -- very, very, spiky health and quickly dead if something happens to the healer. We lost a lot of tank cred in those days, and it is shaping up to be that way again.

edited to add: Admittedly, warriors don't really have any castable heals or self-heals at all, so I can't exactly complain, can I...


-Tielyn

PS. You can still get Temple of the Jade Serpent by specific-queueing for it. My guild runs a meetup on Sunday evenings just to keep testing the latest patch changes, and one of our people that night was 85, so that's what we did to get in. If you die in there, there's a giant Tauren next to the spirit healer to get you back in when you talk to him.

[Tengenstein]

druid because he wasn't dispelling the shadow debuff when he was alive (he apparently didn't have the talent point for it), so was going OOM and we were dying from magic damage all around.

Then your Druids needs to read his spellbook, if you're resto spec you get your magic dispel at level 22

That being said: I've seen Paladins solo bosses from upwards of 35% health in live because they have a lot of tools to heal themselves and prevent damage.

On live you don't need healers for most 5 mans if people do the fights right. Mainly because everyone over gears them massively

Comparing apples to plate-wearing apples a moment from my beta characters:
Level 88 paladin: 9.60% dodge, 15.89% parry. (also, 26% block, that doesn't count as avoidance)
Level 87 druid, base: 13.92% dodge.

Essentially, my paladin has 11% more base complete avoidance than I do as my bear, and some function of block on top of it. My instant heals are faster in theory if I run a string of lucky crits to get a Frenzied Regen off, versus the consistent have-to-wait-for-three-charges-of-WoG, but they also have the GCD-based Holy Light to work with, whereas Druid healing touch pops you out of form, drops your Vengance stacks and the bonus stamina for being in bear form. Sure, arguably, we have a 20% Stamina buff by being a bear, but that's fluctuated up and down the line at points to be as low as 10%. And we do have a mastery-based passive armor buff (right now mine is at 8%), but it's the same armor as we have in live, while the Savage Defense of Live has been turned into the active defense thingy on the Beta, which isn't available at all if you're busy healing yourself trying to keep up.
(soapbox off).

Druids have more armour even with zero mastery. my level 86 Druid in the purchasable greens has 55k armour with 10% mastery, so 50k without. My level 90 warrior with a few rep epics and at least 60 ilvls higher has 44k armour. Druids just have more passive physical damage reduction (and magic too).

The X or Y active defense problem is shared by Prot warriors and paladinsIf paladins are healing they're not having there ShotR Damage reduction, If warriors are keeping barrier up they aren't keeping shield block up and for warriors thats a big deal as with out shield block you practically lose your enrage mechanic which is about 20% rage loss.

All I was really saying is that in the latest build is that I definitely feel a LOT squishier than previous builds to date. Having been both a healer (druid/shaman) and tank (warrior/pally/druid) since Burning Crusade, you get a feeling of how well you soak up damage versus how hard your healer has to work to keep you upright while minding the rest of the party/raid. This definitely has the feel of Ulduar-style druid tanks now -- very, very, spiky health and quickly dead if something happens to the healer. We lost a lot of tank cred in those days, and it is shaping up to be that way again.

edited to add: Admittedly, warriors don't really have any castable heals or self-heals at all, so I can't exactly complain, can I...

Well If you weren't a DK tank in ulduar you lost alot of cred. Warriors had to deal with Gormok insta-gibbing them a tier later as well. I dunno it's just like your playing a different game, when i jump on my druid the rage income is so smooth, the ability to recover is great.

[Tielyn]

Heh! I'm not saying you're wrong, Tengenstein. But I'm running tests right now on single versus multiple mobs, and it typically takes anywhere between 6-9 GCDs to generate 60 rage and I'm hitcapped and almost expertise-capped (damn you level scaling!). Pity the beta doesn't show Armory stats or anything, or I'd see if I'm doing anything different from ya.

My rotation is: Mangle, Lacerate, Thrash, Lacerate, Mangle, Lacerate, Swipe, while not moving with the mob in frot of me. The only time I get 60 rage faster is if I string a few crits back to back, or if my Starcatcher Compass procs (mmm... 1.86 swings). I did notice we get 50% bonus crit/haste now -- I have 31% crit, 10% haste at the moment. What are you showing as?

I had to reforge all of my gear out of Mastery, Haste, and Crit to get the hit cap. :P Iiick.

-Tielyn

[Tengenstein]

I'm Mangle>Lac>FFF>Lac on single targets weaving Thrash in place of FFF to keep the buff up or if i get a mangle proc after a FFF, On AoE its Mangle>Swipe>Thrash>Swipe, with FFF/Lac replacing THrash on 4.5second Mangle procs. I'm close to 35% crit and 10% haste and i think as I mathed it out i have ~5.3rage per second on average.

One thing i've noticed is that procs don't get scaled like gear does,

[Katarn]

Couple things:

1) Thrash > FFF at all times (unless you are using FS or the glyph or something). The amount of damage done by Thrash in the 6 second CD is more than the amount FFF does.

2) There was no nerf to Mangle as far as I know. I mean I'll test it when I get home today, but I don't think it's there.

[Tengenstein]

Not so sure about that; Napkin math here ANd i'm really unsure of the AP values.

Over the course of 18 seconds i get 1 thrash hit, 8 thrash ticks and 2 FFFs, you get 3 thrash hits and 9 thrash ticks excluding our mangles and lacerates which we'll take as being the same. A Thrash hit is 20% AP, a Thrash tick is 10% AP, and FFF hit is 35% (somone check this), So i get from the 3 GCDs 20% + (8x10%) + (2+35%), or 170% AP. You get (3x20%) + (9x10%). or 150% AP. Until they start letting Thrash roll its ticks I think FFF is better is Thrash if Thrash is already ticking. DPE you're right Thrash > FFF But if you clip thrash you really start tearing in to its DPE.

[Katarn]

Thrash Damage in a 6 second window: 20.3% AP + 3(9.36%) AP = 48.38% AP
FFF Damage: 37.8% AP

If you can guarantee that you will refresh Thrash every time you hit it, then yes it's better to refresh it later as opposed to earlier and replace those GCDs with FFF. However once you lose 2 ticks of Thrash because it missed when you were trying to refresh it, it becomes a DPS loss to use FFF instead.

You could probably usually get away with dropping the first Thrash in a 16 second window and replacing it with FFF. But I'd probably keep the 2nd and 3rd until you are Hit + Exp capped.

And just checked. Mangle (Bear) is still 4.7*Weapon Damage. No nerf.

[Tengenstein]

Thrash Damage in a 6 second window: 20.3% AP + 3(9.36%) AP = 48.38% AP
FFF Damage: 37.8% AP

If you can guarantee that you will refresh Thrash every time you hit it, then yes it's better to refresh it later as opposed to earlier and replace those GCDs with FFF. However once you lose 2 ticks of Thrash because it missed when you were trying to refresh it, it becomes a DPS loss to use FFF instead.

You could probably usually get away with dropping the first Thrash in a 16 second window and replacing it with FFF. But I'd probably keep the 2nd and 3rd until you are Hit + Exp capped.

Why aren't you hit expertise soft capped? as improtant Rage gen is for active defences, not having those caps kinda makes you rather squishy, almost like not having the defcap made you kinda squishy pre-cata

I'm fairly sure I wrote something about strict DPE values, you can't straight compare them becuase If thrash was put up in the previous cycle or two it will still be ticking, And whilst yes, mine does lose more DPS if my attacks fail to connect, the vast majority of the time I will connect. Even with 0hit/expertise 75% of the time my rotation is higher DPS. yes if you miss you lose a thrash hit, if i miss i lose three thrash ticks and have to replace an FFF with a Thrash Hit. so what does that mean? some really baad maths, if 75% of the time i connect and do 170.78% AP and the other 25% I do 104.9% ap i would on average do 154.31% AP, assuming your rotation suffers one miss in an 18 second cycle 75% of the time you would do 145.14%AP damage and 25% of the time you would do 124.84%AP, so on average 140.065% AP. Even if my Thrash fails to connect first time round my rotation still does more damage than your if your Thrash always connects.

The Thrash DOT only has a 16second duration so you can't fit 3 FFFs before having to refresh it, I have no clue where you get the 3rd FFF from, asuming the best mangle procs you might be able to weave a Thrash in every 15.5 seconds (as how GCD falls) But that still will only let you get in 2 FFFs

[Tielyn]

Ah well. I play this game for the people in my guild, and for the interesting stuff the devs throw in. I'm just reporting stuff as I find/see it, but sometimes I'm not right either. I admit it.

Turns out 12% Mangle nerf went into play in the http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...ta-Build-15739 patch, in the first week of June, but I only really noticed it this last week when I was looking at the numbers.

Usually I bear tank in live Sunday during the day, and then do it again in the Beta in the evening; that's where I get my 'feel' from in terms of squishyness/power, because I'm comparing apples to apples, except one apple is a level 88. And we missed two weeks in a row in June because the time we were intending to meet up was met with the servers not letting us on, which is the right timeframe for me not to notice it until this past weekend. :}. Just that there have been a couple of beta patches since then. And without a working damage meter, it's a perception thing and seeing comparable numbers from memory week after week. (Turns out the Mangle nerf only seems to apply to the Cat version, not the Bear version. So I'm still probably wrong and I admit it, unless the Bear tooltip hasn't been updated.)

The new bear tank dynamic, whether it's 5.3 rage/second --> ~11 seconds between SD capability (60 rage/5.3) or 6-9 GCD (9-12 seconds assuming no movement or extraneous non-rage generating stuff) leaves 3-6 second windows of high vulnerability (as in, you're going to get hit), more so if you choose Frenzied Regeneration over Savage Defense, because now it's 12-18 seconds at 14% dodge (and yes, slightly "higher" armor due to mastery (currently 6% higher due to having to reforge all of my gear out of mastery to be hitcapped) and slightly "higher" health; my level 88 paladin has 219K health and the druid has 226K, which isn't that much of a difference as bosses hit...). And unless the healer is keeping up, any boss that mixes magic (which can't be dodged, rendering SD useless) and melee hits spells bad news for the bears.

Compared to a SD absorb shield that was constantly being refreshed every 3-5 seconds last night before its 10 second duration ran out while tanking in Dragon Soul on Heroic Morchok, it's definitely a noticeable downside change.


-T.

[Tielyn]

Followup thought, 'aha' moment: Build up to 100 rage and stay there, wait for period of heavy incoming melee damage (such as Hagara's Frenzied Strikes attack or when Zon'ozz is up to lots of stacks of anger) and string together multiple SDs in a row, since 12+ seconds of high dodge is going to outlast any boss flurry style attack. You could burn off a few Mauls just to not waste the extra Rage, since it takes one crit (15 Rage award) or 1 Mangle (7) + any one non Maul attack to stay at a high level of Rage.

Trick is to recognize when the big hits are coming and plan ahead until then to have that full Rage bar, but at the cost of being squishy for an extended period of time at the start. The paladin equivalent is to sit at 5 Holy Power so you can string two ShotRs back to back for... 6 seconds of high damage absorb. I'd been operating in the thinkspace of 'build up enough to get off a SD, start again from zero to try and build another one before the first one falls off', which is not really possible and probably what the devs really wanted in terms of 'now you need to choose when to be highly tank-capable instead of being a passive meat shield'.

I dunno. I feel that the hardest point of any fight for a healer and tank is the first few seconds, while everyone is charging in and not casting any heals, and placing a boss, so that I want my better survivability moments available up front (which, arguably, is what Barkskin is for...) instead of having the double whammy of both ramping up threat and my defenses simultaneously. DPS just need to get all their combo points and DoTs up, and they're good to go on rotation/refresh/follow the boss/stay out of fire (snicker) mode for the rest of the fight. I guess tanks having the cooldown on boss-special/taunt on cue/maneuver boss/add control wasn't enough for us to do? :} It's like having the healers have to play a minigame with something other than mana conservation while saving everyone's tail. (One of the jokes we had in last weekend's raid: "What would happen if healing required hit rating?" 'I tried healing you but you parried it.' )

I don't know that I like the idea of being only somewhat less squishy than a DPS as a default state, and having to stress my healer any other time than when I choose to be high-dodge or help them out by healing myself being the new 'tank' playstyle for bear tanks. It'd be great for Baelroc-style fights if you're the dodge tank, not as much if you're the regular tank...

-T.

[Tengenstein]

Compared to a SD absorb shield that was constantly being refreshed every 3-5 seconds last night before its 10 second duration ran out while tanking in Dragon Soul on Heroic Morchok, it's definitely a noticeable downside change.


-T.

HC Morchock was tuned for a 391 ilvl and has had a 25% damage and health nerf, so now the appropriate ilvl for him would be about 378. I highly doubt you don't over gear it, and you really can't compare end of expansion over geared expiereices against nerfed bosses to appropriately geared beginning of expansion dungeons. Of course your gonna feel squishy by comparison.

I could have made the same comparison about the start of Cata I'd just come out of ICC HC, I had nearly 70k HP and the armour cap and expertise cap, going into Cata dungeons i had my arse handed to me.

[Tielyn]

You have a point there - I remember trying to do the Hour of Twilight dungeons the first day they came out and it was painful as all heck to do. I've got a 396 ilvl right now and we're doing full clears of the instance on Normal, while still getting our tails handed to us on any given day on heroics. But that's another problem for another time.

I guess what I'm saying here is that I have my rotation and gear tuned for maximum uptime on Savage Defense, (35.5% uptime last night on our best heroic Morchok attempt, remembering that there are periods where it drops off because we can't hit the boss at all, 1.2 million damage absorbed) and trading that absorb shield in for a flat dodge bonus that you can't keep up because of the new mechanics of our class isn't a fair deal. I remember when we didn't have it in Ulduar and we were way squishy/spiky, so really we're just going back to that again, only reforging to dodge isn't going to work near as well as it did in Cata.

Maybe it'll improve when I hit 90 and get geared properly, and this is just the level scaling nerf in action. Hard to say.

-T.

[Tengenstein]

I don't think its really fair to compare this to ulduar. Wrath had very different healing and tanking models. in Wrath a boss did hit you for 50-90% of your HP, Healers didn't care about efficiency they just pumped there highest HPS heal into you, and we as tanks didn't care for avoidance, we stacked stam becuase when a boss could kill you in three hits buying that 4th hits worth of HP was a 25% increase in Time to live. Cata bosses don't hit that hard. Mana isn't infinite and stamina is not the one and only stat that defines your worth a s tank Morchok's melee hits struggle to take more than a 20% of my health off in a single blow. MoP bosses don't hit that hard either, the sha of doubt does not level you in 3 GCDs.

There are problems with savage defense on live that unlike every other tanks mastery it does not scale with damage taken (unless you running at under 100% vengeance which only happens on trivial content) which is why druids stack agility rather than mastery as the other tanks do. Zonozz is a great example of the problem.at 0 stack he doens't hit that hard SD procks can easily shave 40% off each melee hit. at later stacks becuase SD is a fixed amount what starst off as a 40% absorb is only a 20% absorb. Block doesn't work like that. Blood shield doesn't work like that Block is a fixed % damage reduction if he hits for 30k my block reduces that by 9K, if he hits for 300K my block rips 90K. Blood shield scales off damage taken, think my dk gets 200% of 20% of the damage taken over the last 5 seconds as an absorb, up to 100% of her HP. SD's static absorb shield sucks in comparison. Druid saren't spikey becuase they got SD, druids aren't spikey becuase the bosses just don't hit for as much of your HP anymore. Marrowgar used to hit tanks for 27k each, Morchok hits for about that much now.

Anway rage, lets talk some numbers lets assume mangle give you 5 rage per hit, Mangle has a 4.875second CD (25% of 3sec CD, 25% chance of 4.5%, and 50% chance of having a 6 second CD) however Berserk means that 1/18th of the time it has a CD of 1.5seconds so it actually has an average CD of 4.6875. Everytime you crit with a mangle you get 15 rage extra or 300% extra rage, hit and expertise will likewise increase RSP i think we have 22.5% to fail to connect. so 5*(1+(3*crit chance)*(0.775+Hit+expertise)/4.6875.

You could talent Soul of the Forestso you generate 7 rage per mangle so then you'd gain 1.4359RPS and crits would only gain you 214.28% extra so you'd gain 7*(1+(0.21428*crit%)*(0.775+Hit%+expertise%)/4.6875

You could otherwise talent Incarnation so that Mangle has a 1.5%s CD a further1/6th of the time in which case on mangle would have an average CD of 3.9792s so 5*(1+(0.3*crit*)*(0.775+Hit+expertise)/3.9792

Bears aslo gain 6 rage per melee swing, with a base swing time of 2.5seconds and also gain an extra 15 rage every time they crit, or 25% extra rage so 6*(1+(0.25*crit%)*(0.775+Hit%+expertise%)/(2.5/(1+haste%))

EDIT: Enrage adds 0.5 RPS to all builds


EDIT2: okay think i've done, the general gearing priority i'd suggest for maximum rage would be Hit=Exp>Haste>Crit, with 40% Crit 16% haste and hit/exptise caps i'm mathing to 4.8rps with the SoF, 4.6rps with Incarnation and 4.4rps with FoN.

[Tielyn]

Mmm. Tasty...crunchy... math numbers. :9

Thank you for doing the math work on that, Tengenstein. I think a part of the damage nerf I saw in Jade Temple was because of the gear downscaling that happened; I don't remember seeing that until recently, so I (incorrectly) attributed it to a Mangle nerf.

You kinda have to talent for the 7 point Mangle, since Soul of the Forest is on the same tier as Incarnation, and I hadn't thought about Incarnation being used to build up emergency Mangle points - I use Berserk for that. Which is why I took Soul of the Forest instead -- it's a lot like choosing between Holy Avenger, Sanctified Wrath, or Divine Purpose for paladins, in my head. Soul of the Forest looks better according to the numbers you put up, if I read them right.

Meanwhile...

I had the fortune(?) to wander into Shadopan Monastery because a quest chain led me there. This time, they scaled all of my gear _up_ to 419 for testing purposes, and if there was an invisible GM watching, they got to see me barrel into trash packs all by my lonesome and put the test of This Or That into play without the benefit of a healer.

Short form: I put a new rotation into play. Build a full rage bar. Monitor your health carefully, and know how much a Vengance-buffed FR heals for. If your health is fine and the boss is a melee boss, hit SD. If your health is around 1 FR and the boss is a melee boss, hit SD, then FR, and start building up to another. If the boss is a magic boss, hit FR and wait for your bar to refill.

I nearly soloed the first boss in there, since it was all positional based magic damage for phase 1, gimmick based light magic damage for phase 2, and only phase 3 'he hits harder the less health he has' was what stopped me. Got him down to 15K health each time, but the last bit would whomp me. Need to save my SI for that, I think. Had to stop to repair, and will probably come back with a little better gear (and maybe a healer) to try again.

The Phase 2 mechanic: 'everyone gets a bubble on them that goes away once you heal the person of 50K damage.' Considering Vengance-based FR heals for 50-90K... I just waited for the bubble to go up and then popped it immediately. Occasionally I'd have to double dip to heal back up, but for the most part the healer wouldn't have to pay attention to me until phase 3, which considering he/she would have their hands full healing everyone else who didn't have a big heal would be a lot of the fight there.

I guess the reason I compare it to Ulduar-style bears is because it's simply a race between the healer trying to fill your health bar before the boss runs it dry. I've had healers who were struggling to keep up, because some of their GCDs are going to other party members, and some healers who had lots of decent AoE heals having no problem at all. The other part is that in Cata, you went for Dodge reforges and got Agi gems, because the less you got hit, the less your healers had to work to keep you up, and this new version only allows you to dodge actively rather than passively. Bear tank players who don't _get_ that will be Squishy because they won't be trying to work up to a dodge buff.

If you are having to burn your Rage bar spells as soon as you get it to 60, you will feel like you are struggling to keep up, and if you are moving around and not hitting Rage generating abilities, the time between viability gets longer, but the game makes you move just as much. The lightning boss kept throwing lightning circles on the floor all through phase 1, and a tank that does not know how to do a fighting retreat will be fighting a losing battle. On the other hand, the Storm Serpent thingy breathes on everyone, but after getting eaten by trying to hide behind a pole, I just tried standing toe to... well, snout with it and used my FR to keep up. Way nicer than original bear long cooldown version, in a way, I have to grudgingly admit. Staying calm and plugging through the rotation, using FR when it was going to be fully used instead of pressing it when the bar filled up, and not needing to dodge a fully magic-hitting boss made for very smooth, timely rage bar management. There were only a few spots where I got into trouble, and then hitting Barkskin or Renewal caught me right up if I was at 0 rage.

It does seem like FR is designed to be used with magic heavy bosses, as long as you can dish out enough Rage income to sustain it. SD is more for hard-fast melee hitters, or high-number trash packs.

Tonight or tomorrow I'll try the same experiment with the pally and report back. :}

-T.

TL-DR: Bear tanking seems to be not so bad with new 'don't start hitting defensives as soon as they're available' strategy when hit + expertise capped.

[Tielyn]

Also! Tried out Symbiosis for the first time.

Synced with elemental shaman: I get Lightning Shield. They get Solar Beam. Never mind that Solar Beam is a Balance talent and I wasn't having threat issues, though now I have the idea of eating some Stormchops and pretending that the Lightning Shield lets me zap small critters as a joke. :3

Synced with ret paladin: I get Consecrate. They get ... Wrath. Might be interesting for kiting if they took the talent that slows mobs by 50% with a hit, as a ranged kiting attack, though don't Ret pallies retain Holy Wrath anyway...? And it might be nice to have an AoE attack that sits somewhere I'm not, but again, see: no threat issues.

Synced with dps monk: I get the monk tank ability that gives me 10% dodge every minute. Not sure what he got - he was a pug and probably didn't notice I stole one of his skills. But that was a -very- nice skill to have - an extra semi-defensive cooldown. Didn't get to see if it stacked with SD or not, because I was too busy fighting the Sha of Doubt with said non-dispelling druid healer to really run experiments.

-T.

[Tengenstein]

No, Ret Pallies no longer have Holy Wrath, and Holy Wrath functions totally differently to Wrath. AFAIK wrath is a casted direct damage nature spell with a 40 yard ranged and no CD, Holy Wrath is an instant cast AoE meteor (damage divided by the number of mobs hit) affect with a stun with a 20s CD. But then again the symbiotic abilities tend to fuction slightly differently to regular prot warriors get SD, but it has a 1 minute CD.

Its definetly a concern that Idiot tanks won't get jsut how important their active defences are, but then again should tanks be any different to DPS or healers don't use abilities that increase their ability to DPS or Heal. I mean would you be a decent kitty if you didn't use your finishers?

I did not actually mean to infer that you should take incarnation as a potenial source of Burst rage, I just wanted to make sure i had it modelled adequately. I made a rage calculator rage numbers 15799.3.xls it should help you to math out stuff about deciding how to gear if you're go for an active defence style. Guardians are on the second page.

[Tielyn]

Okay, latest build has this change:

Frenzied Regeneration

now converts up to 60 Rage into up to (((AP * AP) * 186) / 10,000,000 + 47000% of AP / 10,000) health.

What this translates to, if this is the 'working as intended' version, is that Frenzied Regeneration is now pretty much useless. It -used- to start at a base heal of 32K, and with Vengance proc'd heal for 50 K and crit for 90K. Now I agree that healing for 30% of your health (mine is 262K right now) every 12 seconds or so is a bit overpowered, but there are nerfs, and there are 'why do I even have this skill' nerfs. Current version shows a tooltip of: "Heals for up to 2,279 with 60 rage." Not a typo. Hopefully a bug. Because when you get your max stack of Vengance, it heals for 21,763. In other words, 'it starts by healing 1% of my health and gets up to healing less than 10 % of my health. That's LESS than casting Healing Touch (30,838) on myself. Except I can't cast it on myself without popping out of bear form.

I didn't notice it until after I ran the same dungeon with a full five man that I ran before this patch and was able to heal through the second part of the first boss mechanic and was wondering why the healer was having trouble keeping me up from so much magic damage flying around. If it wasn't for the fact I had a monk healing me, I don't know that I could have gotten through the instance, because -he- was having trouble. I've been used to using it as a 'hm, healer's falling behind, here, I'll help top myself off', but pretty much at this point it's pointless - when outdoor, non-elite quest packs can hit me faster than I can heal myself (Leader of the Pack heals for 10K, by the way) while soloing a normal quest chain, something is Very Off.

Also, Vengance seems to have gone back to its old formula of '5% of damage as AP', because now that I'm watching it with my spellbook open as mobs hit me, it ticks up -very- slowly (and my FR heals go up very slowly as a result). After chainpulling 12 mobs across a field, I had half of a Vengance stack (11K AP bonus) so I was healing myself for 10K and change health, and then doing the 'let's fight the big bad at the end of the quest line with the name NPC, the mob was hitting me for 9.6 K every 2.5 seconds and I could only heal myself for 20K every time I got up to 60 Rage. So it was slooowly whittling me down -- and this was a solo quest mob. :|

Other observations: applying Mark of the Wild increases the value, but putting on +609 and +510 stamina trinkets does not increase the heals. However, taking off gear with stam decreases the value -- I'm not sure if I'm needing to break a threshold of some sort to increase the value or if only Pandaria gear increases your FR value. I haven't found stam trinket yet in MoP to prove this one way or another.

-Tielyn

[Katarn]

Also, Vengance seems to have gone back to its old formula of '5% of damage as AP'

I'm confused. That has always been the formula. The only change was to give it a floor of 30% of the damage taken in the last 3 seconds. This meant that in most raid situations tanks were instantly Vengeance capped when actually tanking something.

You have to remember that beyond that floor additional Vengeance gained has to be greater than the decay in order for the value to change. For things that don't hit very hard (normal 5mans) it won't go up very fast.

That being said FR and Barrier are now both far too weak to fill their intended role: helping to deal with unavoidable/unblockable damage. It remains to be seen whether or not they are changed. Alternatively people may just start glyphing FR which would introduce a survivability hardcap to Rage generation of between 15.55 and 18.66 RPS (depending on how often swaps are).

Edit: Fixed the number because it was wrong and I was having a total brain fart.

[Tengenstein]

12RPS is quite hard to get up to. sure you can spike it with crits but over a protracted time12rps is gonna be apin to get to. FR and SBar do feel like they've moved from being anti-caster to being excess rage burners once SD/SB are up.

[Katarn]

12RPS is quite hard to get up to. sure you can spike it with crits but over a protracted time12rps is gonna be apin to get to. FR and SBar do feel like they've moved from being anti-caster to being excess rage burners once SD/SB are up.

Well they were always like that to begin with, and they were definitely too strong. The decision to move them to an exponential formula is the right one. The problem is they're just too darn weak right now.