Savage Defense = Nerf disguised as a buff

#0 - Feb. 7, 2009, 4:06 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Sorry blizzard but as it stands now your current "Savage Defense" is actually a nerf to feral mitigation and not a buff to it.

The 25% damage reduction would only proc off our crits which limits our ability to mitigate by our attack speed so if you lowered our armor to compensate for it like I have heard you plan to do, you will actually be nerfing our mitigation against anything that attacks faster than we do or any AoE pulls as they are hitting many times faster than we are.

If you really plan to help feral avoidance out without nerfing us on the overall, just make it scale off our existing stats in a much more straight forward fashion.

How are these idea?

1) Allow ferals dodge rate in bear to increase by a percentage of our attack power. And as an added bonus, it would help ferals since we are now forced to stack strength for kitty and agility for bear. This change would effectively allow us to socket strength and still have a benefit when we spec for bear so we can tank and dps without spending 4,000g in new enchants and gems to do it right. Or.....

2) Give bear specced druids the ability to reduce damage of an incoming attack by a potion of our attackpower and the chance to proc it is our crit rate. So if the bear has a 35% crit rate, then there is a 35% chance on any incoming attack to have it reduced by a percentage of their attack power, effectively giving bear form the ability to block without gimping us on the overall. And you can always change the percentages so our avoidance and mitigation are equal to other tanks.
#127 - Feb. 11, 2009, 2:32 a.m.
Blizzard Post
It isn't intended as a buff or nerf per se.

As many players have surmised, we want to make gearing as a bear tank more interesting, yet we don't have a lot of room to expand on stamina, dodge or armor. In this case the specific numbers are not as important as the general idea, though we also think the specific numbers are a really good place to start.
#296 - Feb. 13, 2009, 1:28 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Assume SotF would lose about half its current armor, putting it at 11/22/33% if I recall correctly and subject to additional testing.