Itemization and the plight of the bear tank in Wrath of the Lich King
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Aug 5th 2008 at 4:00PM
One of the biggest concepts coming with Wrath of the Lich King is gear consolidation. Stat are being folded into each other and classes are being changed even on very basic levels so that fewer gear types can work for more classes and specs. Feral Druids have seen this happen as well, with talents such as Survival of the Fittest and Heart of the Wild tweaked so that they can get more benefits from Rogue gear.
Unfortunately, this hasn't worked out that well for bear tanks.
Specifically, the biggest problem is armor. Bear Tanks found their niche in BC through massive amounts of AC, as gear with lots of extra armor allowed them to weather massive physical blows handily. However, since most non-tier gear will now be shared with Rogues, we won't be seeing that extra armor, since no Rogue would want gear that wasted too many points on extra AC. Thus, If this itemization trend stays, bear armor will drop drastically.
Similarly, since bears don't get the same AP and agility bonuses that cats do, nor the same strength bonuses (to block and parry) that other tank classes get, there's some concern that they'll fall behind in threat generation and mitigation in other areas as well. Quite simply, Bears either need their own unique itemization, or they need talents or baseline abilities that make up for the weaknesses of Rogue gear for bear tanking.
If there is one bright spot, it is that Ghostcrawler has specifically said that they want bears to viable end-game tanks and cats to be viable end-game DPS, and that they aren't quite there yet. So at this point, it might be best to wait and see what knobs they turn (turning knobs seems to be the new term for class balancing) to put bears where they need to be.
On the more optimistic side, we can drink potions (now that you can only drink one potion per battle) and use Windfury (now that Windfury Totem's mechanic has been completely changed) in feral forms now, so that's something.
Filed under: Druid, Rogue, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Classes, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
jaybarti Aug 5th 2008 4:21PM
Maybe they will give Feral tanks a +armor coefficient while in Dire Bear form or something. Granted with no crushing blows in the game come WotLK, we might not need such huge amounts of Armor, and can instead focus more on Dodge, Stamina and other things like AP and hit.
Jack Spicer Aug 5th 2008 4:21PM
I have noticed that with all this talk about stat normalization there are definitely some classes that potentially will still be left out in the cold.
Bear Druids are definitely one of them, since they value different stats from Cats and Rogues.
Holy and Protection Paladins are another, especially with the addition of Death Knights and Retribution Paladins getting a lot of benefit from +attack power, I believe that spell power will be difficult to find on Plate.
vlad Aug 5th 2008 4:32PM
"Bear Druids are definitely one of them, since they value different stats from Cats and Rogues."
yup, but as daniel and the blue post state, this is going to be addressed. you may want to read the entire post before you reply :)
Manatank Aug 5th 2008 4:44PM
All prot paladin relevant talents and spells have been changed to scale with AP and SP, so they will be stacking strength for threat and wearing warrior/DK gear.
madshado Aug 5th 2008 8:46PM
Warlocks also seem to be losing out on the itemization as the class is built so heavily around stamina. Cant really see blizz making priest and mage gear that heavy in Stam, wonder how they plan to balance that out as well? Locks are supposed to be able to withstand the unescapable melee beatings through having a lot of health. Also with less stamina on gear life tap starts to look less and less attractive as a means of mana regen.
Djinn Aug 6th 2008 1:16PM
The only real problem I see with Pallies using the same gear as warriors and Death Knights is that unlike those classes INT will still be somewhat relevant for sizing their mana pools.
I am not worried about Prot because of all the healing that they get in raids with stacking stamina will mean they have large health pools to heal back and as such will be getting plenty of mana back for tanking
Ret is a bit of a different story because they won't have as much stamina so less healing on them doesn't grant the benefit of healing for mana, but as I recall in ret there is a talent that returns mana after you judge a seal so depending on how the mechanics of that turn out mana could cease to be an issue for Ret Pallies as well.
Holy paladins will be the only plate class that has their own gear as it will certainly have to key spellpower as a raw stat on the gear. Mana stats like INT and SPI will also be needed on said gear making the Holy Pally a niche with little to no overlap and usefulness to any other class.
That being said I am really happy that I have chosen to quit holy and respec to ret when the expansion comes out.
Gimia Aug 6th 2008 6:31PM
To Djinn,
Currently prot pallies are getting reductions in mana cost of their tanking abilities from talents up to about 30% reduced cost and also prot pallies shouldn't have too much trouble keeping their mana up unless they completely outgear the place.
For ret pallies there's currently Judgement of the Wise which with 3/3 it will restore 60% of the damage caused by the judgement as mana to the 3 party/raid members that have the lowest mana which can help as well as alliance pallies getting their own version of seal of blood.
Lastly for holy pallies I don't know much yet for how they're going to be getting spell power from their gear and whatnot but as a side note holy pallies (as well as resto shammies) don't need spirit on their gear considering they get nothing out of it unless outside of the 5SR.
Avarius Aug 5th 2008 4:24PM
There actually is the same problem for paladins. While gear for warriors have strength and stamina, strength contrary to your comment only affects melee attack power, and +block value(how much is blocked) not +block rating(how often you block) and doesn't affect parry at all (agility). Since the conversion from str to block is something around 20:1, for paladins strength is utterly useless.
Saryel Aug 5th 2008 4:36PM
In the expansion they've changed the str:BV from 20:1 to 2:1 so the str does help protection paladins.
Angus Aug 5th 2008 4:47PM
Go look at the info on seals and realize how off you are.
Spell power will be gotten through stamina, which tanking plate has plenty.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557297750&sid=2003
Read up to see how they dealt with the warrior plate change.
Here's what's scaling based on AP as well as SP:
Consecration (huge deal)
Judgements light heals and wis mana are based on it too
Seal of Blood/martyr, seal of vengeance/corruption (the dot), Seal of retribution.
So basically, all the paladin's threat moves are now working with both SP and AP to increase their threat. This means the tankadins will likely see incredible threat numbers, which means they keep up with the DPS.
All while wearing the exact same plate as warriors and having similar tanking abilities.
Daniel Whitcomb Aug 5th 2008 5:53PM
Actually, strength does affect Parry for Death Knights. They get +25% of their strength to parry rating from a Blood talent which will be going baseline in the next major Beta build.
Angus Aug 5th 2008 4:37PM
Prot paladins will now have seals using AP to get more damage and spell power. Since they have a talent giving spell power based on Stamina, they will be good to go there and can concentrate on survival.
Holy Paladins will need spell power plate, and it will just have to be done. Mail will have 2 version, plate will have 3, leather 2, and cloth 1 (essentially).
Looks like the smart move for bears is to increase the armor bonus from 430% to a much higher number. Additionally making stamina bonus for bear form a higher number helps them out. Yes, that means redoing the current gear, but they have to do that with some specs anyway (enhance) so they might as well make feral work better.
This makes rogue leather a much better bargain as the stats are all based on maximum dps, which translates to threat. Being able to DPS efficiently in the same gear without having to change to another set would help them as well.
Crushing blows being removed doesn't change their weaknesses. Bears are vulnerable to spell damage (armor means nothing) and just mass damage, where armor helps but they still take a ton of damage. Other tanks block or parry and dodge it. They just have to hope to dodge it or soak it. With plate getting where it is, the other tanks will be able to get close to the armor cap soon. That means bears need a boost to keep their niche as the best "general" tank. Not the most panic buttons, not the best avoidance, not the best AoE tank,not the best to soak damage, but able to do all of them well, and able to switch to reliable DPS.
I hope they get it right, my wife plays a bear and likes them.
Jack Spicer Aug 5th 2008 4:44PM
The only problem I see that would prevent Blizzard from simply increasing the bonus armor % given to Dire Bear form are necklaces, trinkets, cloaks, rings, and weapons that have armor on them. They'd give insane amounts to Druids in Bear form.
Angus Aug 5th 2008 4:51PM
They already do.
Those pieces already give bonus armor in bear form past their stated armor.
Heck, you just have to lower the ones that spent item budget on it. It improves them and they get used by more tanks.
Ask a tank about thoriumweave cape. If they aren't bear, it's not as good as the MH one. If they are a bear, it is one of the best, much better than MH one. (defense plays a big part of this though)
Mediator Aug 5th 2008 5:16PM
"Mail will have 2 version, plate will have 3, leather 2, and cloth 1"
Plate will have 2, the spellpower verison for holy paladins, and the strength/stamina verison for ret/prot pallies, deathknights, and warriors
Adam Aug 6th 2008 12:44AM
@Mediator: Plate will probably still have three types; Spellpower, Str/Dps, and Tanking.
Andris Aug 5th 2008 5:17PM
Note that the armor cap is rising at level 80 (the same way it rose at level 70). Also, with crushing blows out the picture on raid-bosses, and presuming that crits aren't an issue for tanks, the entire tanking scene will be changed.
Yes, bears take full damage from spells (bypasses armor). Spells still bypass plate armor, too, leaving only a few talents in the Paladin/Warrior protection trees to reduce this by 10% or less.
It seems like Bears will need to be able to get armor and stamina roughly equal to Warriors and Paladins in WotLK, depending on how their agility-to-avoidance works out. In TBC, Bears had massively larger armor to compensate for the fact that they would take crushing blows -- a regular hit on a Warrior for 6k would hit a druid for 5k or so. (Assuming 62% armor mitigation on the warrior and 75% mitigation on the druid). But occasionally (15% of attacks), the druid would take a crush for 7.5k. Overall, this ends up being the same level of damage, though the Druid has to absorb a few more spikes.
One positive side-effect of this change is that it may end up being more difficult for Druids to reach the armor cap -- a significant scaling problem in TBC.
I could see a Feral talent that increased your armor by your current AP if the developers discover that the current armor level of bears isn't sufficient for the new content.
One final point of comparison. Assume that a level-80 warrior or paladin (with shield) has about 24 thousand armor. A Feral would need about 5580 armor from gear to get the same effect. Assuming about 800 armor from rings, and 800 from a staff, that leaves about 4000 armor to be gained from helm, shoulders, etc. Looking at the current amount of armor on level 71-78 blues, it looks like Feral druids would be about 500 armor short at level-80, assuming level 77-80 blues.
Matthew Rossi Aug 5th 2008 6:57PM
Yeah, without crushing blows, why do druids need higher armor than paladins and warriors tanking? They don't, so it's not a problem.
Trepalium Aug 6th 2008 3:00AM
Crushing blows isn't the only thing that differs between a druid tank and a warrior or pally. While a warrior or pally can dodge, parry and block, a druid can only dodge, which means they're taking more hits in general. Bear tanks currently work because the additional health and armor makes up for the fact they take crushing blows and avoid fewer hits.
velutina Aug 6th 2008 10:15AM
My bear hit the armor cap in tier 4 gear.