So long for now...

There is too much going on and I have been neglecting my blog. Work is chewing me up and spitting me out on a daily basis and family concerns mean that my home time is spent with them, so, effective immediately, I'm afraid I am going to have to suspend this blog indefinitely.

Thanks for coming by and reading what I had to say and even more thanks to those of you that left messages. It's been a blast while it lasted. See you on the flip side.

Elk

Feral druid tanking II: tanking skills I

Last time, we looked at some basic tanking concepts, basic numbers, the attributes, spec and stats important to feral druids who choose to tank.

As promised, this blog entry is going to cover some of the abilities that beartanks have and how to use them most effectively in tanking situations. First, lets take a look at the bread-and-butter abilities that come with bear form:

Maul: As the tooltip suggests, this is a next strike ability, much like a warrior's heroic strike. What does this mean to a beartank? Well, two things: first of all, it will generate a lot of threat. A LOT more than its damage would indicate. Remember that bear form grants an inherent 30% increase in threat and, if you are spec'd for it, Feral Instinct will provide an additional 15% for a total of 45% increase in threat. Over and above that, each time Maul lands on a target, a flat 322 threat is applied to that target's threat table, relative to the beartank (threat table is the list in the head of the mob, telling it whom to attack. If a melee attacker passes 110% of the current target's threat the mob will switch to that attacker. If a ranged combatant (healer or ranged dps) passes 130%, the mob will move to them; so you can see, it is advantageous to be at a certain range from the mobs). The second thing to remember about Maul is that it costs more rage than its tooltip would indicate. As a next strike ability, it takes the place of your normal swing (sometimes called "white damage", indicating the color of the scrolling combat text on the screen) and in doing so prevents that swing from generating any rage. In high damage situations (raid bosses, for example) this is fine, since you will be generating a lot of rage from being hit. But you have to take 3 points of damage to generate as much rage as you would by dealing a single point of damage, so it is much less efficient. In other situations (e.g. single elite mobs or a couple of non-elites), the mitigation of a beartank may be so high that you cannot generate enough rage to use enough abilities to keep up enough threat on the mobs you are tanking and so you NEED the white damage to generate more rage. While using Maul depends on the situation you are in at any given time, it remains one of my favorite bear abilities.

Swipe: is what differentiates a druid from a warrior when tanking multiple targets. There are several things to remember about this ability. First of all, it doesn't do a whole lot of damage. Even though it is spammable (i.e. it doesn't have a cooldown other than the global cooldown, so it can be used over and over again in rapid succession) it costs a fair bit of rage and it won't generate enough threat by itself to hold a target that is taking damage from sources other than you. Unlike Maul and it's warrior somewhat-equivalent, Cleave, it is an instant ability (meaning its effects happen as soon as it is used), not a next strike ability. Also unlike Maul, Swipe does not have any inherent increase to the threat it generates (other than the usual 30% or 45%, depending on talents, that bear form applies to all damage done). However, its damage DOES scale with attack power, meaning the more AP a bear has the higher the damage swipe will do, though overall damage is still quite a bit lower than white damage (at level 70, it adds 7% of the bear's AP to damage). The other thing to remember about Swipe is that it is indiscriminate about whom it hits. If you use it while close enough and facing towards a crowd controlled (CC'd) mob (sheep, shackle, sap, freezing trap, etc.), swipe will strike that target and break whatever CC kept it out of combat. This will inevitably make the person who applied the CC yell at you; and with good reason. The best way to use Swipe is to manuever the group you are tanking backwards, making sure you are out of range of CC'd mobs before using it. How do you hold on to the mobs while you are doing that, you say? That is a very good question and one I will go into later on in this article.

Mangle: the flagship of feral druid abilities. Mangle is the reason a beartank needs rage. Although it starts off somewhat expensive at 20 rage, Ferocity, a staple in any feral druid build, reduces that cost to 15, a much more manageable figure. In addition to the considerable immediate damage that it does, mangle also provides three other advantages: first, like Maul, it has a flat threat modifier (the exact amount is somewhat nebulous right now, but it is in the neighborhood of 300-400 just like Maul). Second, it applies a debuff to the mob, that increases bleed damage by 30%. This applies to ALL bleeds on the target, whether caused by you or someone else. So if there is a rogue or a second feral druid in the group, the bleed damage they cause will be augmented by the mangle debuff. Thirdly, it is an instant attack so it can be used in between white damage. Mangle is the beartank's primary threat tool and should be used whenever possible, i.e. whenever its 6 second cooldown allows.

This is turning into a huge post, so I am going to break it up. We'll cover Lacerate, Faerie Fire, Demoralizing roar, Challenging roar, Growl and Enrage next time. I'll also go over some techniques that can be used in tanking and practicing. Peace out...

Spirit and mana regen in 2.4

The first thing I did upon logging in as Elk last night was to check my character sheet and look at the mana regeneration stats. According to armory (which I checked before I logged in), my mana regen before the patch stood at 391 mana per 5 seconds (mp5) while casting and 167 while not casting. The only buff on me at this time was Arcane Intellect, giving a total Int of 486 and total Spi of 506.

When my character FINALLY loaded and I was able to see through the lag-generated haze, I checked out that same stat: mana regeneration of 570 mp5 while not casting and 221 while casting. That is without AI present (INT: 446, SPI: 506). Later on that evening, I was able to get a friendly mage and priest to bless me with a divine spirit and arcane intellect. Mana regeneration jumped to 651 mp5 while not casting and 245 while casting.

With that much mana regeneration, I think it is unlikely that Elk will ever run out of mana even during the longest, most heal-intensive boss fights. This, of course, begs the question: Why does Blizzard feel that this change is necessary and what impact will it have on the balance of the game as it stands? Are they planning boss fights that are going to last fifteen and twenty minutes? Are mana draining abilities like viper sting and drain mana going to become less effective PvP tools? Time will tell, I guess...

The Shattered Sun Offensive in Outland

Well, patch 2.4 went live yesterday and I dutifully took Elk and Loeria out to Sunwell Isle to check out the new zone and quests. I have not, as yet, ventured into Magister's Terrace, but should be able to do that tonight or tomorrow. There is more to the Shattered Sun Offensive than the operations on Sunwell Isle itself. Shattrath, as is appropriate, is a major center for new quests and dailies to support the newly formed union of the Aldor and the Scryers.

A couple things to notice: There is a new NPC standing just below A'dal in the middle of Shattrath, gives you a quest to head to the newly established Shattered Sun Staging area on Sunwell Isle. Then there are three new NPCs in Shattrath City (in the open circle outside A'dal's chamber) who give you daily quests that can be completed in Outland. One is only available to crafters: gaining the advantage. Wow Insider has a nice little writeup on that quest to get us started on it. The second quest is called Sunfury attack plans. All you have to do for this one is head to Netherstorm and kill some Sunfury blood elves. Any of them. Anywhere in the zone. Eventually, one of them will drop a set of attack plans, which you return for 10g and 250 Shattered Sun rep. My experience on this was that the plans don't drop easily. I took Loeria and killed dozens of elves for about 45 minutes and didn't get anything resembling attack plans from them. Five stacks of netherweave cloth, two arcane tomes and thirty sunfury signets later, I quit. The third quest you get in Shattrath is a lot easier: The Multiphase Survey has you don a set of goggles and go to the Spirit Fields around Oshu'gun, look for multiphase disturbances and zap them with your goggles. The disturbances look like big round transluscent orange globes that are just laying on the ground.

Once phase 2 opens (which happened last night on Feathermoon), a fourth quest will be available: Intercepting the mana cells. It involves flying up to the northern plateau in Blade's Edge Mountains and killing the Bash'ir ethereals there. They drop a device that allows you to see the mana cells. Collect a bunch, return to Shattrath for your bag of supplies and hope for a badge!

Returning to Outland from Sunwell Isle, I got a quest to find a missing magistrix. The quest itself was simple enough and unlocked two more dailies: Blast the Gateway and Blood for Blood. Both were easy enough and could be completed right there by the magistrix at the Throne of Kil'jaeden in the northern part of Hellfire Peninsula. The spawn rate for the elven quest target for the second of the two quests was hot-fixed this morning and it shouldn't be nearly as camped tonight. The question I have is: what did they do with the original inhabitants of the plateau, including the raid encounter?

All in all, there are tons of new quests to do, lots and lots of rep to aquire and more money to get than you can shake a stick at (how's that for mixing metaphors? *grin*)

Feral druid tanking

I am not currently a feral druid, but I levelled Elk as feral (60-70) and subsequently built a reputation as a half-way decent tank and pretty good cat DPSer. This blog article is going to contain some of my thoughts concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the feral druid, a single feral talent build that will serve both a cat and bear druid, some discussion of the attributes and stats most important to ferals; so be prepared for a relatively lengthy read.

Feral druids are comfortable in cat form or (dire) bear form. The former, acquired at level 20, will be the major DPS form the druid will find himself in while levelling all the way until he (or she) gets to the level cap. It has an incredibly fast attack speed, 1.0 sec, faster than any weapon available in game, and is limited only by the regeneration speed of his energy (20 energy every 2 seconds), much like a rogue. Bear and dire bear forms increase the armor and stamina (and hence the health) of the druid by a fixed percentage modifier. One thing not reflected in the tooltip is a 30% inherent increase in the threat generated by the bear's attacks (this means that every 100 points of damage a bear does will be perceived as 130 by mobs). These changes make the bear a very capable tank.

Threat is a very important concept to understand as a tank (or as a DPSer or healer, for that matter). Any action taken by any character in game generates threat. How much threat a character has determines whether or not a mob will attack him. A tank's job is to build threat on one or more mobs, so that they will continue attacking him while ignoring the rest of the members of his group. There are excellent write-ups on the subject elsewhere on the web (Wowwiki), so I won't go into it any more than I already have.

Tank tools are split into two categories: threat and mitigation. We have already discussed a bit about what threat is. Mitigation is equally (if not more) important to the tank. The more damage you mitigate, the less damage you take and the easier it is for your healer to keep you alive. Conversely, as you take less damage, you generate less rage and so are unable to generate as much threat since most abilities that build threat use up rage. So it's a delicate balance. When compared to warriors, beartanks have some advantages and disadvantages. Bears have higher armor and more health than equivalently geared warriors, but the warriors can parry and block so they have slightly higher overall mitigation. This, of course, is a gross oversimplification, and I may go into it in more depth in the future, but is enough for this current project.

Concepts a beartank should become comfortable with include threat and mitigation, discussed above, but one should also be aware of the numbers that feed into those concepts: attack power and crit % for threat and armor, defense/resilience and dodge for mitigation. Balancing these numbers on the character info pane is a delicate process. Here are how the numbers stack up:

2.36 defense rating = 1 defense

25 defense = -1% chance to be crit by level 70 opponent,

25 defense = +1% dodge

39.4 resilience = -1% chance to be crit by level 70 opponent,

39.4 resilience = -2% damage from crits

39.4 resilience = -1% damage from DoTs

1 agility = 2 armor

14.7 agility = 1% dodge

1 agility = 0.1% chance to crit

1 strength = 2 attack power

14 attack power = 1 dps

So what are good numbers to shoot for? 11,000-13,000 health unbuffed is not an unreasonable starting point. 24-26,000 armor is also relatively easily doable. The only magic number for a feral druid is, in my opinion, the most important one: 415 defense. Mark that one down. 415 defense. At that point, in conjunction with the talent "Survival of the Fittest", a druid tank becomes uncrittable. And because beartanks can neither block nor parry, being uncrittable becomes the single most important milestone for a newly minted 70 beartank.

The typical talent spec for beartanks is a 0/47/14. This contains all the talents necessary to tank well and many that cross over to make cat form a powerful dpser. Some time in the future, we'll talk about how to use all the tools at the disposal of the bear to grab and hold aggro.

Worker Woes

Just a brief note to explain my absence: work has been cutting into my blogging time lately. As a small update on the raiding scene: we managed to get Vashj down to 16% last Sunday with a solid effort to get through Phase 2. It was difficult, but things seem to be gelling nicely. As always, stay focused and keep in touch

Cyclone nerfed

From the latest patch notes for the upcoming 2.4 patch:

Druid The range of Cyclone has been reduced to 20 yards. (was 30 yards before)

While this is not a huge change to anyone that plays a druid primarily in PvE , it comes as a major blow to the many druids that make their living in arenas and, to a somewhat lesser extent, battlegrounds. Along with the nerf to the "bloom" part of Lifebloom, it serves as a reminder from Blizzard that they are trying to balance PvP so that no one class has an overwhelming advantage. A few days ago, Kalgan (WoW lead developer) posted in the Warlock forums suggesting that in 2v2 and 3v3 arena teams that had a score over 2200, druids were overrepresented to the tune of 276% and 184% respectively (100% being what they would expect representation to be given the information they have regarding the class). By comparison, druids were *under*represented in the 5v5 category, coming in at only 80.5% (source). I don't claim to be anything resembling a PvP guru when it comes to druids. In fact, my own arena rating is extremely poor. Which is why I am rather offended when people suggest that it takes no skill to PvP as a resto druid. If it took no skill then those of us who are primarily PvE spec'd and geared, should be relatively successful in arenas, while I know from experience that this is not the case. Having stated my credentials (see last paragraph) I can still make some speculations as to why resto druids are overrepresented in some successful arena brakets and underrepresented in others:

1. Powerful HoTs like Lifebloom and Rejuvenation can be cast on the run from 40 yards away and continue to tick for 7 to 12 seconds. This is pretty much an eternity in PvP, especially when there is not enough damage being concentrated on a single target to overcome those HoTs, like in smaller arena teams.
2. Cyclone is a powerful, but short crowd control method that can only be broken by bubbling (paladins only) or trinketing out of it. At 30 yards, it's range is outside rogue's shadowstep or any number of other class abilities so can often be cast with impunity.
3. Entangling Roots does not share diminishing returns with cyclone and is very effective at removing melee DPS from any given fight unless they can remove it somehow.
4. Druids can effectively kite melee classes by switching to travel form and casting HoTs on themselves while moving.
5. Druids are generally unable to stand up to focused fire from several characters at once, since their HoTs are unable to overcome the massive amounts of damage which they are subjected to, hence the underrepresentation in the 5v5 arena category.

Of course these are the speculations of a druid who does not often find himself in PvP situations. If anyone else has any insights, I would be glad to hear them and even include them in this article.