Shifting Perspectives: In which Allison makes a stupid prediction
by Allison Robert 
Nov 15th 2011 at 9:00AM
Well, I'm bushed. Post-BlizzCon, I reached that dreamy level of fatigue allowing me to hallucinate that I am on a Thai beach being served fizzy drinks by men in loincloths, and that was lovely while it lasted. But just as I had recovered from the delusion that this was ever going to happen, a freak snowstorm hit the American northeast and killed every tree and power line in sight. Folks, I spent a week without power or internet, and I am mad at the world.
Let's see. What did I have on the docket for this week? Responsibly and rationally evaluating what we learned at BlizzCon 2011? The hell with that. Let's start off by completely ignoring the new talents announced, and then getting into a quite possibly asinine prediction that I will try to pretend never happened if it doesn't come true.
The other cheek
Hey, wait a minute. Why are we ignoring the new talents?
Because they're pointless.
Whoa, whoa. Calm down there, slugger! The new talents are very interesting, don't get me wrong. However, they don't mean anything out of context, and right now, we're fresh out of context. Short of an information dump from Blizzard in the next several months, we won't be able to evaluate the new talents accurately until the Mists of Pandaria alpha goes live and information is inevitably leaked.
Let's take Tireless Pursuit from the first tier as an example. It "removes all roots and snares, and increases movement speed by 70% while in Cat Form for 15 seconds." Nice! It's always good to add a gap-closer for PvP, or something that'll help you catch up to a pesky mob in a raid. But we don't know if things like Dash or Stampeding Roar are baseline anymore.
So Tireless Pursuit is either:
- an additional Dash that helpfully picks up Stampeding Roar's root/snare clear, or
- meant to replace Dash/Stampeding Roar on druid specs that no longer have either skill, and the fact that it removes roots and snares means that all four druid specs have lost the ability to shapeshift out of them. No bueno.
So don't panic. Don't rejoice. We don't know what these talents really mean, and we won't until Blizzard starts dropping information on which skills are baseline and which ones aren't.
So now let's get to our quite possibly stupid prediction:
A comeback for tanking leather
Why will tanking leather make a comeback?
Because in order to get the Raid Finder to work -- or to use its loot system in the Dungeon Finder, as Blizzard's hinted at doing -- tanking and DPS leather can't be the same thing without being a complete nightmare for everyone concerned.
I've started to wonder if the final split between the bear and cat arrived not because Blizzard actually wanted to divide the specs but because there's no foolproof means of distinguishing between the two as long as they share the same spec. Back when a player named Zardoz collected statistics for Armory Data Mining, he tried his hardest to figure out a way to count which feral players were decisively bears and which were definitely cats. A guest blogger named Darush later revisited the issue using some advanced statistical techniques to try to cut through all the noise.
They arrived at the conclusion that, at least through the information available through the Armory (talents, glyphs, stat valuation, and so on), there wasn't a good way to do it. While there are a lot of players who are definitely playing one of the two specs over the other, there's also a huge population of players who could be either or both. I suspect the issue has become even more muddled now than it was two years ago, as the modern bear values stamina less than it did in Wrath of the Lich King.
So there's that. And then there's also a blue post from this past week, in response to Fasc's question over how the Raid Finder plans to classify agility leather:
LFR Loot Rules: Questions and quirks
What we are doing for 4.3 with the Raid Finder looting system (detailed here:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3608426) is an experiment in order to try and reduce loot drama without removing the chance to benefit from offspec gear completely. In fact, a lot of what we are trying with Raid Finder for 4.3 is our very first attempt at a design that is going to need a lot of iteration before we're happy with how it works. We'll use the information we gather on the new looting system (we can call it Need+, for simplicity's sake) and Raid Finder in 4.3 to make both features even better for Mists of Pandaria.
The game currently does not have a very robust notion of what your spec is, so for now we can't make the loot rules very stringent, other than checking your current role. In Mists of Pandaria, the game will have a well-developed "concept" of spec, and we can do things like let an Enhancement shaman roll need plus on an Agility axe without letting the Restoration shaman roll need plus. (The Resto shaman could still roll need though, since shaman can use axes and the player might presumably have an Enhancement offspec.)
The game currently does not have a very robust notion of what your spec is, so for now we can't make the loot rules very stringent, other than checking your current role. In Mists of Pandaria, the game will have a well-developed "concept" of spec, and we can do things like let an Enhancement shaman roll need plus on an Agility axe without letting the Restoration shaman roll need plus. (The Resto shaman could still roll need though, since shaman can use axes and the player might presumably have an Enhancement offspec.)
First observation Blizzard's saying right off the bat that the Raid Finder's loot system is a work-in-progress, and it's going to take some fiddling once it hits the live servers.
Second observation "The game currently does not have a very robust notion of what your spec is, so for now we can't make the loot rules very stringent, other than checking your current role." Uh-oh.
In other words, bears are not going to have priority on agility leather when this system goes live. To be fair, they shouldn't have priority, because it's not really tank gear. Automatically having a need+ roll on agility leather screws over every cat and rogue in the raid, and that's not right. However, the lack of a need+ roll on their own gear leaves bears in a pretty horrible position relative to plate tanks, who (even if they don't get priority on strength plate either) have always wanted defensive stats that DPSers tend to avoid. If your co-tank in a raid wears plate, then by definition he or she has almost no loot competition of any kind.
This is a problem that will only be realistically solved by the reintroduction of tanking leather. Otherwise, the guardian druid and the brewmaster monk will find themselves rolling against feral druids and all three rogue specs for gear. In addition to these folks, competition for agility rings, necklaces, cloaks, and trinkets will also arrive from all three hunter specs and the enhancement shaman. Plate tanks will have a massive gearing advantage over their leather tank colleagues, because they're only ever rolling against two or three specs at most (the protection warrior, the protection paladin, and the blood death knight).
Solution? Split the specs. Give the game a foolproof method of distinguishing between bears and cats, and give each their own gear. That's my guess, anyway.
Sub-prediction The Raid Finder's present inability to distinguish between the bear and cat specs and the inability to give the game's present agility-based tank a need+ roll on its gear is going to be a huge issue in patch 4.3.
Shifting Perspectives helps you gear your bear druid, breaks down the facts about haste for trees, and then digs into the restoration mastery. You might also enjoy our look at the disappearance of the bear.
Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Hal Nov 15th 2011 9:13AM
If tanking leather happens, can we please finally end the griping about spell plate?
I'm wondering how rings/cloaks/necks/trinkets would be handled in a world with tank-leather, though. DPS gear presents the problems you listed above, plate-tank pieces have strength on them (and sometimes parry, a dead stat for bears). Think they'll make specific agility-tank gear? Make bears and brewmasters use strength? Let them double dip, either with strength pieces or with DPS pieces?
Allison Robert Nov 15th 2011 9:32AM
I've wondered about that too. If I had to put money on it, I would say Blizzard's likely to handle agility tanks the same way it handles strength tanks right now. While there are a few "hybrid" plate drops out there with stats that both a tank and DPS might want, tanking plate is largely distinguished by defensive stats that DPSers avoid, and this is true for accessories in addition to gear.
This actually solves an additional problem, which is that bears just don't really care very much about secondary stats right now. Agility is such a lopsidedly huge contribution to both survivability and threat production that it takes priority over everything else, and the lack of tanking leather also means that the bear really *can't* care much about secondary stats. All the secondary stats that it really wants aren't going to be on its gear natively with the exception of mastery.
And the other part of me points out -- if tanking leather with bonus armor makes a comeback, that also allows Blizzard to weaken the bear's native armor bonus, giving cats less innate survivability in PvP.
Intellect plate's probably going to be an issue for forever and a day. I think everyone concerned can agree that only one spec's in the game use of it is kind of a waste, but there's really no solution for holy paladin gear issues that wouldn't cause its own set of problems. Ten to one any solution would actually be worse.
staffan.johansson Nov 15th 2011 9:33AM
Tanking leather would at least be used by two specs: guardians and brewmasters. Spell plate is only used by one: holy paladin. Two specs sharing one set of gear is nothing new - it's actually pretty standard.
Currently the game has these gear categories for non-tier armor pieces:
Caster-DPS cloth (all mages and warlocks, shadow priests)
Healer cloth (holy/discipline priests)
Caster leather (as I understand it, resto and balance druids use mostly the same gear with Spirit translating into Hit for balance)
Physical-DPS leather (feral, all rogues)
Caster mail (same deal for elemental/resto shamans)
Physical-DPS mail
Melee plate (frost/unholy DK, arms/fury warrior, retribution paladin)
Tank plate (protection warrior, protection paladin, blood DK)
Spell plate (holy paladin)
The only category with only one spec wanting it is spell plate.
Hal Nov 15th 2011 9:49AM
To be fair, the spec thing was a throw-away comment. I've just disenchanted so much leather in my raids in the last month or so (no rogues or druids) that everytime I see a comment about spell-plate, I think about all of the agility daggers and spell-leather that I see drop.
In any case, the major wild card still to be played in all of this is the "active mitigation" model Blizzard plans on rolling out. Since tanks are supposed to care about threat stats again, it might be that bears will want to stick with DPS gear for that reason. If Savage Defense remains as is, for example, you'll still want crit and hit.
The further difficulty is that there may be a lot of changes that are going to be baked into the specs and not part of the talent trees. I continue to suspect that the tanking classes are going to look fundamentally different from their current iterations.
gewalt Nov 15th 2011 9:55AM
Allison, I don't see how making ret viable with intellect plate is causing problems. No, I don't mean forcing ret to use it. I just mean make a baseline passive for ret spec that converts intellect into strength. BAM! now int plate is just as viable to ret as str plate. obviously they couldnt stack every slot with it, as there is no int plate with hit/expertise, but all haste/crit/mastery gear would be fair game.
Caylynn Nov 15th 2011 10:23AM
@staffan.johansson - Generally Shadow Priests want what you have called "healer cloth" as well. Although I play a boomkin/resto druid, my main is a shadow priest. Spirit for us is slightly more valuable than hit. At least that's what all the theorycrafters say. So I have a lot of spirit pieces, and only a very few hit pieces. It helps that the ten man raiding group I am part of has a mage and a warlock in it, but no healing priests, so the spirit cloth is mine!
I do pass on spirit rings and necks, unless none of the other healers need them, but that's just me.
loop_not_defined Nov 15th 2011 10:39AM
I'm still of the opinion that Plate-specific tanking gear should be removed, with tanks looking to "off pieces" (Cloaks, Jewelry, Trinkets) for their tanking stats, sans Agility/Strength.
The current system isn't very fair, considering Healers are not expected to carry two entire sets of gear (Spirit-to-Hit conversion, Spirit becoming progressively less important, Spirit being Reforgeable, Spirit being the only "healer stat").
With Tanks using Leather/Plate DPS gear, their damage would scale better with progressing content, and mechanics like Vengeance might become redundant.
Nyold Nov 15th 2011 11:02AM
@Allison,
Maybe this is another idea for a one-off wow insider column: how to solve holy paladin gear issue?
On the top of my mind, I have 2 solutions:
1. Make ret benefit from intellect like the other poster points out above
2. Make holy benefit from strength on a 1:1 conversion. The other set of problems (balance for holy's melee damage in pvp) can be solved via spec bonus or spec penalty. If you choose Holy, your melee damage is slashed in half but you get strength -> intellect conversion, and expertise+hit -> spirit conversion.
I'm sure there are other ideas, but I'm aware that they might have their own problems too. If you expound on this in the column, and even if your list of ideas and problems that arise from them isn't complete, I'm sure the commenters can fill out the rest. It would benefit some of us just to see the bigger picture and stop wondering "why isn't Blizzard doing this already"
Adam Nov 15th 2011 11:07AM
The griping about spell plate will never end. It's a one spec armor type.
Blizzard won't introduce leather with tanking stats on it this late in the expansion. It'll likely be MoP when that happens, when there are TWO specs that can use it. Two specs. Not one.
Spell plate makes me cry at night.
vocenoctum Nov 15th 2011 11:10AM
Actually, if you're going for another article, how about this:
Currently, druids have 4 specs with various abilities that are tied to their specific spec with little overlap. Even when cat/bear share an ability (charge for instance) it's different and faerie fire works different for all three specs. Cataclysm improved the model greatly, but it still seems like a Bear just doesn't have as "much" specifically Bear as say, a prot pal or warrior. I never minded on my feral since I'd switch back and forth between bear/cat and it was quite fun, but since they're sort of hitting the spec hard by splitting them to two different trees, will we see more abilities added to each tree rather than worry about this "master class list of abilities" that has sort of bound us?
To bring it to the Plate discussion, Holy Priests using Strength Plate would be unbalanced because of a list of Base Paladin powers that they use. With Mists, the Base List is becoming smaller and the Spec List is becoming bigger (without trees to map out), so it seems a perfect oppurtunity to redesign the holy paladins offensive set with Strength Plate in mind. They'd still use mana though, so it'd take some programming.
Wickedsage Nov 18th 2011 1:24AM
A very simple solution to spell plate that seems perfectly viable with the current route that Blizzard has got rolling on spec. design with MoP is to remove plate specialisation form holy paladins (Plate would be Prot an Ret only talent) forcing them into the same spell mail shamans roll on, I see no problem with the one spec of the paladins tier gear saying mail rather than plate in its description window. After all armour really is not the healer’s stat of choice to begin with.
DeathPaladin Nov 15th 2011 12:38PM
All the talk about having Holy use Strength plate or Ret use Intellect plate don't work. It is not at all comparable to the Spirit as Hit scenario with Elemental Shaman and Balance Druids, either.
Spirit has long been a stat without a whole lot of purpose outside regen and a brief stint in Wrath where mages and warlocks had buffs like Glyph of Life Tap tied to it. So Spirit as Hit counts the most minor of primary stats as a secondary dps stat that happens to have a hard cap.
What people are proposing for Paladins here involves counting the single most important primary plate dps stat as the single most important caster dps/healer stat or vice versa. There is no point where Strength stops being useful for Ret, or Intellect stops being useful for Holy. The only thing that would possibly keep a Holy Paladin hitting as hard as a Ret Paladin or Ret Paladin healing as effectively as Holy are passives that are tied into the spec.
Druids are getting a bit of this hybridization. According to some blues, Ferals and Guardians will have Agility as Spellpower and Balance and Resto will have Intellect as Attack Power. The major difference here, though, is that what a Druid can do is locked into form. A Resto druid won't be able to melee unless they go into Cat form, which will lock them out of most of their healing spells. A Cat won't be able to heal unless they go into Caster form, which locks them out of their melee abilities. One of the level 90 talents will make them better at being out of form, but only temporarily.
Paladins are not locked into forms. They can do everything in their spellbook from the word go, and they have been enough of a pain in the ass to balance in PvP without having Ret's damage output and Holy's healing output start to converge.
Oh, and as much as people complain about Paladin plate, they are not the only offenders. Agility daggers can be used by more than Rogues, but only Rogues ever use them because Enhancement Shaman want slow weapons and Ferals want Staves and Polearms. Agility throwing weapons and Strength ranged weapons (which, granted, are both going away) are only used by Rogues and Warriors, respectively. And after MoP launches, all ranged weapons will be usable only by Hunters.
Jyotai Nov 15th 2011 1:56PM
@staffan.johansson:
Actually there is a slightly largey set of gearsets out there.
There is spell-mail and spell-plate with and without spirit.
With spirit: the healer specs.
Mail without spirit: elemental shamans.
Plate int gear lacking spirit: I have no idea what spec wants this, but its a very common drop that I see get sharded all the time and end up passing over whenever on my paladin (prot/holy specs).
- For most iLevel ranges, there is a plate set that has spirit, and one that lacks it. I've never played a ret paladin, having leveled as prot in BC, but I can't imagine them wanting it either, unless I'm completely wrong in my understanding of what they do. To me this gear seems to have been made obsolete with the launch of patch 3.0 in 2008... so why its still in game I don't know.
Snuzzle Nov 15th 2011 2:49PM
I think the only real solution if they're planning on making "tanking leather" and "dps leather" is to make bears and brewmasters strength based again, and the dps specs (cats and rogues) agility based.
Then they could give bears tanking leather with stats we want like mastery and dodge. We could share trinkets and jewelry with other tanks, instead of having what, five classes who all want agility jewelry? That's pretty terrible.
Plus, how would you distinguish tanking agility leather from dps agility leather? They can't do agility and dodge as agility already gives dodge so we'd double dip. Cats and rogues like mastery too. And bears can't block or parry (but it would be nice if we could!)
Giving strength back to bears is the most sensible solution. Plus then I could tank with maces again! Bears and DKs could share weapons. That'd be cool.
Metric Nov 15th 2011 5:04PM
@loop
Actually many of the hybrid heals/caster classes do carry 2 separate sets of gear. My restore/balance has two completely separate sets of gear. The secondary stat priorities can be very different, not to mention Meta gems in helms. Example of resto v. Balance, resto stacks haste to breakpoints then mastery. Balance stacks and prays for never limited amounts of haste. Also many shadow priests and moonkin are swimming in spirit/hit and reforge out of spirit. I want more spirit on my resto druid than the hit cap and holy priests want way more. If you are a raiding hybrid who is expected to swing between heals and dps, you need two sets of gear.
loop_not_defined Nov 15th 2011 5:21PM
@Metric
In a min/max scenario sure, but my suggestion wouldn't be any different in that regard. If my Blood DK used DPS Plate and Tank off pieces, I would still itemize/reforge/gem in favor of Mastery, and for Unholy I would still itemize/reforge/gem in favor of Strength/Haste.
However, to tank AT ALL requires completely separate gear, at a very base level. Forget nuances that only really exist in max-level end-game content. Healer/Caster DPS specs just don't have this dichotomy. And I'm speaking as someone with a Boomkin/Resto Druid and Holy/Shadow Priest, in addition to a Fury/Prot Warrior and Unholy/Blood DK.
Teaspoon Nov 15th 2011 8:55PM
Somebody mentioned getting Retribution Paladins to use spell-plate. Maybe they should be able to choose between two sub-specs where they either use spell plate for large spell damage attached to small melee attacks or small spell augmentations on large melee attacks... Clerics in 4th Edition D&D can choose between "lasers" (melee-to-mid-range spells dealing "radiant" damage) and melee attacks, and the two types of abilities use different core stats so if you try to include things from both sides you'll end up fairly weak. It's a decent model there that the cleric I used to play with seemed to enjoy, so Blizzard could pull some ideas for that if they're considering something similar for Ret.
Anyhow, I think making Unholy DKs int-based would probably be the best fit if they're looking to get more spell-plate wearers. They're probably the most caster-themed plate-wearers outside of the Holy Paladin; the Necromancer-in-plate equivalent to the Holy Paladin's Priest-in-plate. Magically animated pet, death coils, heavy on the disease use, etc.
wow Nov 15th 2011 9:14AM
Your sub prediction's gonna be HUGE. Blizzard's gonna need to either reinvent looting or do something to gear to make it easier to 'give' to the specs that need it most. Need/Greed/Need + should be scrapped.
Don't ask me what to replace it with though, not got a clue here.
Caylynn Nov 15th 2011 9:30AM
Yep. I foresee lots and lots of drama. There is already plenty of drama over the fact that moonkin, spriests and ele shaman can need on items with spirit, which upsets some healers.
Allison Robert Nov 15th 2011 9:39AM
Right now I pretty much see the Raid Finder and its loot system as exactly what the devs say it is -- an experiment. But I'm not sure that that's going to make a big impression on the first restoration shaman who loses +spirit mail to an elemental player, or a bear who has to roll against half the raid for gear. That, no bones about it, is gonna suck.
My guess would be that the MoP new talent and spec system is designed to help the Raid Finder "realize" exactly what you are and adjust need+ rolls accordingly (e.g., now the game will have an ironclad way to distinguish between a bear and cat). Before that happens, all sorts of drama is going to occur. Which itself raises kind of an interesting question: Is it better to have the nascent Raid Finder go live with the inevitable loot problems, still accomplishing its goal of letting as many players as possible see the content? Or to shelve it until the loot system rules are ironed out?
I think the former's ultimately the better decision, and Blizz is probably going to keep tinkering with it to iron out problems as the game advances, much as it's continued to tinker with the dungeon finder. The need+ system has the potential to work really well, but it may ONLY work really well within the context of how the game understands specs in MoP.