Beyond bumping our HP back up a tad bit...we're fine.
IMO the HP is fine, its just more noticeable with the nerf to Savage Defense, which seemingly makes Mastery have alot less value. Our mastery is now *expletive deleted* compared to that of a warrior for instance. Stealing some numbers from other forums:
Previously a level 85 bear would absorb:
Absorb = Attack Power * 0.65 (Base SD level) * M (Mastery increase, anywhere from 1.32 to 1.90 (32% to 90% increase))
and this has been changed to:
Absorb = Attack Power * 0.35 (Base SD level) * M
Note that this also reduces the effectiveness of Bear Mastery, as that benefit is multiplicative ("Increases the amount absorbed by SD by X%").
This is a reduction in the strength of our absorbs of 46%. This is also a reduction in the value of Mastery rating by 46%.
Additionally, due to the removal of procs from periodic criticals, Mastery was further devalued, by virtue of less frequent shields.
Some Napkin Math: Previously at 10k AP, and 0% Vengeance bears would see absorbs start in the 9k range, and max out around 25k at full vengeance. We would likely average something around a 19k shield in a single target, single tank scenario. Less with more tanks or vengeance losses during multi target fights.
Post reduction, same stats would yield a beginning shield around 5k, with a max shield near 12.8k. Likely averaging around 10k.
The following assumes:
1) Bear hitpoints in the 150k range, giving a 15k AP bonus at full vengeance.
2) Warrior Mastery and Bear Mastery of 15. (Base 8 + 7 from gear)
3) Boss hits in the 75k range. (Taken from Beta testing on Maloriak and Chimaeron)
4) Bear AP near 10k, prior to Vengeance.
5) Full rage scenario, where a bear never misses a Maul.
The follwing ignores:
1) The negative effect of multiple targets on an absorb mechanism (as opposed to block, which is fine).
2) Critical Block, and its benefits.
3) Drops in vengeance from tank swaps or fight mechanics.
A warrior with 15 mastery has a 38.75% chance of block, with 37.5% of those being critical blocks.
This means a standard block occurs at least 38.75% of the time. (This is with no shield block ability) These blocks will mitigate at least 33% of the attack, or in this case 22.5k damage (33% of 75k). Critical blocks will stop 45k damage and occur frequently, but we are ignoring this for now.
Calculating Savage Defense proc rate can be a tad confusing.
Savage defense has a 50% chance to proc off of attacks that happen at a maximum rate of 4 attacks every 4.5 seconds (3 globals + Maul.) If we are generous and assume this is 4 attacks every 4 seconds, and assume a slow boss attack speed of 1 swing every 2 seconds (Slow swing timer benefits Savage Defense), we can assume the following:
1 swing gives a Savage Defense probability of 50% * crit rate. Crit rate for bears in beta right now is hovering around 35%. 1 swing then has a 17.5% chance of causing an absorb.
In a 2 second swing timer, you will typically have 2 swings that can proc a shield per attack (because of the assumed 4 attacks per 4 seconds). This means you have a 31.9% chance of shield. (Probability math is funny, trust me here.)
This means a 31.9% SD rate.
So now we are comparing a 38.75% Warrior block mitigating roughly 22.5k to a 32% Bear Savage Defense, mitigating roughly 12k.
Keep in mind, Bear health was nerfed to fall in line with other tanks. Bear Form went from a 25% stamina increase to 10%. Additionally, armor was removed from agility, and bears felt this impact the most, due to large amounts of agility from gear.
The reduction of the co-efficient from .65 to .35, in tandem with the reduction in frequency of procs seems overdone. It siginificantly reduces the value of Mastery, which compounds the reduction in shield strength. It seems to assume full vengeance, which is very unlikely.
Does this mean that bears in Cataclysm will remain on the sidelines as an off tank to warriors as they always have been? The stamina nerf is understandable (it used to be our only survival mechanism before SD). But why the extreme nerf of Savage Defense?
Perhaps later gear will feature gobs of agility to overcome that problem.
Perhaps.
Does this mean that bears in Cataclysm will remain on the sidelines as an off tank to warriors as they always have been? The stamina nerf is understandable (it used to be our only survival mechanism before SD). But why the extreme nerf of Savage Defense?
Perhaps later gear will feature gobs of agility to overcome that problem.
Perhaps.
Savage defense was nerfed because at 85 bears were absorbing so much damage from it that blizz couldnt properly calculate the damage bosses do in general. Bears would survive where other tanks would practically get 1 shotted.
Since the new vengeance passive buff savage defense was absorbing large amounts of damage.
Savage defense was nerfed because at 85 bears were absorbing so much damage from it that blizz couldnt properly calculate the damage bosses do in general. Bears would survive where other tanks would practically get 1 shotted.
Since the new vengeance passive buff savage defense was absorbing large amounts of damage.
I think we'll see a reduction in overall boss Melee damage as a result of this nerf. I don't believe Block (and by extension Critical Block) is intended to be far and away so much better than everything else.
Both Masteries "should" (ideally) be fairly similar at T11 for damage reduction. Since Block scales on incoming damage, whereas SD scales on outgoing damage, it only makes sense to nerf the incoming damage on the first raid tier such that mitigation values are similar. From there you can hope that they climb in paralell as boss damage and outgoing tank damage increase.
Reduction in boss Melee damage won't fix it. It will simply make it so that bears CAN tank, but warriors will still be FAR better.
With diminishing returns bears will never reach the same amount of outright mit from dodge as warriors will from dodge + parry(assuming same gear level). SD was nerfed for the wrong reason. They needed to nerf druid HP but they nerfed them both because SD with crits was causing a massive shield buffer against damage, increasing bear EHP by 20k+, however since it was also our ace in the hole for damage mitigation that went out the window right along with it. The only way to fix it somewhat satisfactorily would be to increase proc rate drastically(double it in fact). However then they need to bump health pools back up a bit to give healers a bit more room on a bear since the bear getting hit 3-4x in a row is much more likely than on a warrior or even paladin, and the extra SD buffer is still halved. The bear hp boost doesn't need to go all the way back to 25% but 15 or 17.5% as a middle ground seems like it would be good to me.
EDIT: I should say that reducing boss melee damage wont' fix it unless they nerf damage a LOT. Which I don't think they should since it would be leaning toward making a lot of fights trivial again.
I think we're mixing an avoidance discussion with mitigation discussion.
Moreover, using the numbers quoted above by Opti, that incoming Melee damage is way high for the Tank HP quoted. That returns us to the days of ToC and ToGC which were utterly horrible. Actually worse since Healers will have to non-stop spam heal the tank, without the absurd mana regen they have now.
I don't know about you, but I think that not being able to take more than 1 unmitigated melee swing is a little absurd. I might agree with it if the boss has like a 4 second swing timer, but anything faster than that and you leave no room for any special damage abilities without outright instagibbing the tank (Hello Gormokk).
There are several things wrong with what they have done to bear, probably the worst of it is, it shows they are incapable of changing things from their side of the fence. To explain that let me put up this image for you, in game design there is a fence, on one side are the players and their powers, and on the other is the boss and the mobs powers. For those of you who have played games like dungeons and dragons and whitewolf you will follow this explanation best. If as a gamedesigner/master you find that things are not going the way you need them to you tweak your side, you dont take the character the player is using and warp his stats, thats just going to piss them off.
The reason I bring this up is because there is a ludicrously simply way to have fixed this problem and not have touched a stat on a single character. Double boss swing speed, cut boss damage in half, done, fixed, problem over. This because of the mechanics of savage defense a 1 point damage hit is enough to break it, so you double boss swing speed and you bypass super bear shields while still allowing it to be effective. It also does something they have been desperately, (with abysmal failure) trying to do sense the launch of lich king, create predictable steady damage. Their complete inability to modify their own game, even after warping it to their own design as radically as they have is what fills me with so much dread for the actual expansion. They say to us after every nerf, every breaking of our classes, every mechanic which makes no sense now, Dont worry we will fix it in cata, well so far they have proved only one thing consistently, if they declare one goal they will achieve the opposite.
This stamina nerf is going to hit bears really hard, because it drops our vengeance, which drops our savage defense value, and our healing from leader of the pack. Our leader of the pack is being cut in half in addition to loosing 20% of the value from our stam loss. And then our savage defense is being cut to about half its base value and loosing the ability to proc from our periodic criticals. So instead of making one tiny little change on their site they nerf every single mitigation mechanic bear has by basically taking it and cutting it in half, yes bears were supposedly strong, but what class can survive and across the board 50% reduction in all its mitigation's.
It is indeed the Apocalypse.
You mean Bearpocalypse.
I'm more comfortable with Bearpocalypses then Arachnapoclypses.
I dont think anyone knows anything post Cata.
Maybe Post WoTLK.
I honestly wouldn't worry about this too much. If bears are not the equals of other tanks then the stats can be tweaked upward again, particularly the Savage Defense nerf, which probably went too far.
I honestly wouldn't worry about this too much. If bears are not the equals of other tanks then the stats can be tweaked upward again, particularly the Savage Defense nerf, which probably went too far.
But when will they fix it? Starting from wotlk, there have been a few times when one of the tanks was broken in a bad way for quite a while. I remember at one point warriors were in a bad spot where their hp was too low as was their effective health and they could get one shot pretty easily. I remember a point when death knights were like that as well. I also remember when death knights threat was way too low where most dps could out threat them. I remember a pug I was when where the raid leader didn't invite a dk because he was concerned about threat. I have no doubt in my mind that blizzard will fix bears, but I'm not sure if they'll do it before people reach the first tier of raiding.
But when will they fix it? Starting from wotlk, there have been a few times when one of the tanks was broken in a bad way for quite a while. I remember at one point warriors were in a bad spot where their hp was too low as was their effective health and they could get one shot pretty easily. I remember a point when death knights were like that as well. I also remember when death knights threat was way too low where most dps could out threat them. I remember a pug I was when where the raid leader didn't invite a dk because he was concerned about threat. I have no doubt in my mind that blizzard will fix bears, but I'm not sure if they'll do it before people reach the first tier of raiding.
The Warrior part you reference was specifically caused by Gormokk, and nothing else. Fortunately for the Warriors they were required for H-Anub, so it didn't end up mattering much.
DK Threat was never really "too low". There were some specs (particularly Blood I think) that struggled with AoE threat. However that was just a byproduct of attempting to have 3 tanking specs in one class. That was just a terrible idea from the start.
DKs were nerfed to the ground about 1/3 the way into 3.1. They were admittedly over-nerfed, but the nerfs were justified. Same with Bears. DKs were fixed by the time 3.2 was out, so I expect if there is a problem with Bear tanks, it will be corrected by the 1st tier or shortly afterward.
I hadn't taken the time to consider how vast an impact these changes have had. The synergy between the bear tanking model, vengeance, and stamina are astonishing. It's distressing to see such changes implimented, while I am happy with normalized tanking CD's, the changes to ILotP and our health may have gone too far. Thank you for starting this thread.
I hadn't taken the time to consider how vast an impact these changes have had. The synergy between the bear tanking model, vengeance, and stamina are astonishing. It's distressing to see such changes implimented, while I am happy with normalized tanking CD's, the changes to ILotP and our health may have gone too far. Thank you for starting this thread.
ILotP nerf is in line with other self-healing nerfs. Savage Defense specifically was over nerfed, and they can always turn that back up later if need be (and they likely will).
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