Bear armor woes in Wrath to be addressed
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Aug 19th 2008 at 3:00PM
You may recall a while back that we covered the problem with bear tanks in Wrath of the Lich King. In short, the new shared gear itemization between Rogues and Feral Druids is leaving bear Druids incredibly starved for armor and stamina. Extra stamina and armor is wasted on rogues, but is mandatory for Bears. Bears, therefore, have suffered.
Ghostcrawler has now let us know that the dev team has noticed the problem. The justification, of course, is as usual: They want less useless stuff to drop. Ideally, itemization should be tight enough that there is a high chance of people getting stuff they can use off a boss, even if that means 12 other people in the raid can use it as well.
Filed under: Druid, Items, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Instances, Expansions, Leveling, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
forthepie Aug 19th 2008 3:08PM
I have an idea. Quit making stupid drops!!
For example:
If none of your mail wearing builds can use +Str and +Spirit, quit making that stuff.
Mad Cow Aug 19th 2008 3:12PM
The better idea would be to link party composition to loot.
ie - no pally, no warrior, no DK = no plate drops.
I personally love running a daily heroic with 3 of 4 bosses dropping a type of armor none of the 5 people can wear, let alone use ... and to top it off with an epic drop that gets sharded because, once again, no one can wear the damn thing.
Anenome Aug 19th 2008 3:18PM
There will always be many uneeded drops, something has to be disenchanted, yo? Who cares if green random suffix items drop that are just disenchant fodder? That's free money, not actually meant to be worn. They're meant to supply enchanting mats. It's not until Epics, and to some degree blues that Blizz starts caring about who's gonna wear this and proper itemization.
Barth Aug 19th 2008 3:31PM
That's true, but it would be best for them to customize the loot table to match the group/raid composition in the instance. That way they could cut down on sharded gear while keeping feral druids from looking like rogues, and enhancement shammies from looking like hunters with no pets, etc.
Mark Aug 19th 2008 3:33PM
I agree 100% with what MadCow said. Drops should be related to party.
DE fodder is ultimately disappointing.
Saelorn Aug 19th 2008 3:47PM
Personally, I would have to say that customizing the loot to be only what is usable by the party is going way too far. It does seem kind of like cheating, but it's equally cheating (from a story perspective) that you can kill a boss multiple times and that a boss doesn't drop everything it owns when you do kill it.
From a practical standpoint, it will lead to a rogue rejecting warrior/paladin/DK tanks and priest/shaman healers just so they can shrink the drop list as much as possible to get the one item they actually need (or if someone needs a particular sword, then only bringing sword-using classes). They're trying to make tanks or healers mostly interchangeable (especially in regular instances), not give people even more reasons to reject certain classes.
grab Aug 19th 2008 3:57PM
As if a rogue will ever be the one to reject any tank or healer in a group.
Breck Aug 20th 2008 3:40AM
@Saelorn
That doesn't even make sense. By taking a Druid tank you would increase your chances for the item you want to drop, but since Druid tanks now desire the same gear as Rogues, you've decreased your chance of winning the roll for it. In essence, the odds of you getting the item you want hasn't increase. Mostly likely, it has gotten worse. However, the odds that SOMEONE in the group will get something they can use has increased greatly.
Saelorn Aug 20th 2008 12:40PM
@Breck
I meant getting your guildies together to farm an item for you. At least now in Burning Crusade, every heroic final boss is guaranteed to drop one epic; if you wanted the sword off of Pathaleon, because you're bringing up a new tank for the guild, then you would now be able to guarantee the drop.
I used the rogue and druid example because, even though they can all use leather with agility and attack power (thus ensuring it would drop), the tanks/trees/moonkin don't actually want it (thus ensuring the rogue would get it).
Anenome Aug 19th 2008 3:15PM
With crushing blows being dropped from the combat table of course bears were gonna take a hit in the armor and hp department because they would be ridiculously overpowered tanks if you didn't.
I don't see any problem here. Blizz should just make them use normal rogue leather with enough of a multiplier in bear form to make them viable tanks, rogues don't really care how much armor is on their gear anyway. Then give them parry rating perhaps and reduce their hp to one or two thousand above the other tanks to makeup for loss of block mechanics and there you go. Problem solved, why is this so hard for Blizz?
fian Aug 19th 2008 3:22PM
Why is this so hard for blizz? because if they dont make bonus armour gear for level 80 bears will just continue to wear the existing stuff, especially if they compensate by giving us a higher multiplier. As matters stand bears take bonus armour gear above all else (practically) until thye hit the armour cap. If i have > 30k armour at 70 with existing multipliers what makes you think i would tank with 20k at 80, with better multipliers, when i have high armour gear in my bank?
resonance Aug 19th 2008 4:38PM
Armor has to make up for the damage reduction from defensive stance/righteous fury as well. If bears don't have armor vastly superior than plate or a similar modifier added to them, they will fail as WotLK tanks.
onetrueping Aug 20th 2008 10:54AM
The problem here is you are using a current standing to extrapolate a future result, when the situation will have changed. For all you know, within three levels, leather gear will have armor levels equal to Season Three or Tier Five gear, but with better stats, making replacing it a no-brainer for the druid tank. This is Beta, the only people who know where things are going are the designers, and no changes are guaranteed to remain.
Manatank Aug 19th 2008 3:17PM
Maybe they just don't like the idea of Bears at the armor cap. Perhaps it wont be necessary to be there without crushing blows. Perhaps they will increase the armor bonus of dire bear. Perhaps they WILL have bonus armor on level 80 tier items. Perhaps a lot of things.
When they say they are addressing the issue, maybe we should let them try before attacking them?
Anenome Aug 19th 2008 3:24PM
Bears being at armor cap was always a band-aid. Bear armor values were out of control in BC. There's no way they should've been hitting the armor cap unbuffed, it also meant they were missing out on all the armor procs from healing classes, etc. I have a SS on my paladin of me with 31,000 armor from various armor procs, ancestral fortitude, etc. With enough healers on you those procs are up for a significant portion of the fight. With stoneshield potion / elixir that would put me at 34,000 armor which is 1,000 away from the armor cap and with basically the same armor as a bear tank. Bears were missing out on all that scaling due to starting at the armor cap.
Robert M Aug 19th 2008 4:19PM
you mean in the way that we are now 2 expansions into wow and blizzard is finally addressing the paladin? or are you talking about the way that mages are just the glass in the "glass cannon" they are supposed to be?
now don't get me wrong, i didnt start playing a druid til tbc, and im convinced they are the lovechild of the developers, and that at the end of the day blizzard will do everything it's power to keep their little baby the best class in the game, but there are sweeping changes for druids in lich.
1. they intend to make them just as viable a maintank as any other class. this will mean that their mechanics will have to change somewhat. someone else already pointed out that the lack of crushing blows would make their current armor a little overpowered, but lets not forget that shield wearers are going to have increased block, so this may tranlate into leaving a druids armor insanely high.
2. as a resto druid, i'm scared to death of the dk in arena. disc priests are going to be better healers, particularly for single targets, and all their shields are going to present problems. i still think that the dk/disc priest is going to replace the ms warrior/resto druid as the best arena team since a druid wont be able to get rid of those forsaken diseases.
3. i dont care what anyone says, boomkin and kittens should NEVER dps on the same lvl as an equally geared rogue or mage. they should come close, but that expectation that they should be equal is insane. druid bring tons more utility than their primary counterparts and as such, no raid leader should expect them to have to contribute all they do and put out the dps of a pure dps class.
jaybarti Aug 19th 2008 3:17PM
The easy fix is just change the armour/stamina multipliers in Bearform. However it will mean that there is no practical difference between Leather for bears and cats just how the multipliers are used. Which is fine by me. I would rather have talents separate Bear tanks from cat rogues. I am all for making a choice about being a tank or being a DPS. That said they need to then bring a Properly Talented Catform druid closer to Rogue DPS levels, which is a job because our weapon (kitty Paw v1) never scales, they should add another talent that takes another sort of item bonus (ie strength) into account, or change the way feral attack power scales.
Anenome Aug 19th 2008 3:26PM
Nah, having tanking and dps in the same tree is a ripoff for the other tanks >: The prot pally tanking tree has EIGHT 5 point talents, only one of which is skipped for tanking. The feral druid tree has only THREE 5 point talents, one of which is skipped for tanking. How is that fair? If I'm spending all those talent points on JUST tanking, I'd better be a far more awesome tank that a bear tank, but that's not how it is.
zappo Aug 19th 2008 3:29PM
If cats start going for strength, then this would defeat the entire gear consolidation thing they seem to be trying to do. While I have faith that Blizzard will figure something out, you have to admit that they've painted themselves into a corner with that one. Rogues are weapon dependent and druids use none - so how do you share gear between them without nerfing or overpowering one or the other?
Blayed Aug 19th 2008 3:37PM
"Anenome said...
Nah, having tanking and dps in the same tree is a ripoff for the other tanks >: The prot pally tanking tree has EIGHT 5 point talents, only one of which is skipped for tanking. The feral druid tree has only THREE 5 point talents, one of which is skipped for tanking. How is that fair? If I'm spending all those talent points on JUST tanking, I'd better be a far more awesome tank that a bear tank, but that's not how it is."
LOL @ Prot pally QQ. What about warriors? Prot warriors are next to useless outside of tanking unless we have a fully enchanted and gemmed DPS set with item levels comparable to the content being done, and even then our DPS is still barely viable. At least you can throw on some healing gear and spam FoL or go to Blades edge or SMV and kill 20,000 demons at once.