New Feral changes!

[Tolwen]

[blizzard]This is an update to my previous post on Feral armor changes.

ARMOR
As previously announced, we are changing the way bear armor works so that bonus armor on items does not receive the bear armor multiplier. Specifically this means that weapons, trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks with bonus armor will not be multiplied by the bear bonus. Only cloth and leather will benefit from the Bear and Dire Bear multiplier.

We are compensating Ferals for this armor loss by improving the Survival of the Fittest talent. In addition to its current effects (stats and crit prevention), it will now also increase armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 22/33/66%. That should be very close to your current armor bonus. This makes Survival of the Fittest rather over-budget by talent standards, but we figured it was one talent we can be pretty certain most tank-oriented druids will have (and to be honest nearly all Ferals).

FERAL ATTACK POWER
We are no longer going to have weapons in the game which improve feral attack power. Instead, your attack power will scale based on the dps of the item. Practically speaking this means almost no change for any gear you currently use -- you should not see your dps change. What it does mean is that we can create the occasional dps staff that could be used by druids or hunters (or very undergeared warriors), and that Ferals may occasionaly use two-handed dps maces. We are going to convert all existing Feral staves over to this new system (but again, you should not notice any change to your dps). We are also adjusting the UI so that when druids look at these weapons, you will see what the improvement will be to your damage in forms. This does not mean we are no longer going to create bear and cat weapons, just that those weapons will be slightly less niche than they are now.

These changes will be in place in the next patch. This patch will ship sometime before the 3.1 major content patch featuring the Ulduar raid. (Source)[/blizzard]

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[blizzard]Upcoming Feral changes, Part II
On the subject of weapons, this change should be transparent to most druids. You will end up having a few more items that you can use, but your feral staves will continue to do the damage they do now. If it makes it clearer, imagine that feral attack power is not going away as a concept, but weapon dps will instead translate to their current FAP values. This is also not license for us to never again add weapons which are optimized for druids. It should just provide more options in between major upgrades.

On the subject of armor, the intent of the change is to give you more options in which trinkets and other jewelry you use, instead of always having to rely on the (relatively rare) bonus armor pieces. (We don't think the solution of just dropping bonus armor pieces everywhere is a great one either -- no single stat should trump the others by that much.) The change isn't intended to be a nerf at all. A lot of numbers have been thrown around in this thread. Give me some time to review them and see where any discrepancies lie.

Our design remains to have fewer specialized items drop so that more loot is actually valued by someone in the group. A lot of the druid itemization was a relic of the older system and we have been wanting to convert it over. But with any change like this, it may take some time before all of the rough edges are smoothed over. To use a tired cliche, the designers tend to take the stance that the design of WoW is a journey not a destination.

On the myriad of other topics...

I realize some players have made some passionate and intelligent arguments for other ways in which bears can scale from gear. That isn't something we are going to do at the moment, but something we may investigate in the future. I understand that it's fun to improve tanking gear, and while we don't want it to be such a burden to get the +armor pieces, we also don't want the choices to be so meaningless that you aren't gearing for tanking at all. Let's see how things stand after these changes go live.

We are not adding additional weapons that druids can use at the moment, but we may consider it in the future.

Block is a very good stat now, and we have read a lot about the notion that "unblocked hits are the new crushing blows." We don't want the block mechanic to mean that death knights and druids (and possibly even paladins) are left behind. Again the goal is to have four viable tank classes. That doesn't mean identical, but it also doesn't mean that druids get swapped out for some fights or relegated to permanent off-tank status. (Source)[/blizzard]

[Tolwen]

[blizzard]Here is a thread where you can continue your discussion on the previously mentioned Feral druid changes.

I do urge you to confine the discussion to the armor and FAP changes only. The threads fill up too quickly as it is, so this is not a great place to chime in with totally unrelated questions, even druid ones.

The changes should be a buff for any druid not in full Naxx 25 gear (and I'm pretty sure that means ALL druids for the moment). One of the reasons we are announcing this change early is so you can make your preparations accordingly. A druid with every possible item from Naxx 25-level content loses about 3700 armor, but to be honest, those armor trinkets and weapons were so insanely good that they were likely going to be nerfed anyway.

Also note this is a reasonable buff for PvP, since you typically don't wear a bunch of +armor trinkets in those situations.

We don't want to make any changes to the way Feral druids work at this point to make them more like warriors. Now we also don't want druids to be inferior tanks to warriors, but we see no evidence that is happening at the moment and only speculation that it might happen in the future, at which point we will make additional changes if needed. You can say you don't believe we will make changes, which sort of ends the conversation.

The goal was not to make you ignore +armor trinkets. The goal was that a bear lacking those trinkets wouldn't be at such a disadvantage. We would rather you use a new level 80 trinket with a little bit of wasted block on it than a blue trinket from level 62 or something with silly amounts of armor.

It is fine, helpful even, to alert us to situations where you think bears might not be competitive at surviving encounters compared to other tanks. Our goal is they are roughly similar and we will continue to make changes if they are not. While I understand some of you want more different tanking stats to focus on, that is not our goal for the moment. We think it is perfectly possible given the current design to make bears able to stand up to the damage they need to. In other words, the numbers may still need to be tweaked on occasion, but there is nothing inherent to the calculations that says a tank must have block and parry as tanking stats in order for the math to work.

Some more details to help answer some of the questions we've seen:

-- Cloaks do have base armor which gets multipled by the bear bonus.
-- There is no multiplier on any bonus armor. Not the bear bonus. Not the talent bonuses.
-- There is a 2% armor benefit you can get from a metagem.
-- The ultimate bear modifier should be 4.7 (Dire Bear form) x 1.66 (Survival of the Fittest) x 1.1 (Thick Hide) x 1.02 (meta gem).
-- The best bear we can create in current itemization has 35,907 armor, which is 68.34% mitigation vs. level 83 bosses or 70.21% mitigation versus level 80 mobs.
-- Before these changes, you might have been able to build a bear with nearly 40,000 armor, but that relies on using Defender's Code and Origin of Nightmares, items of such ridiculous power that we were going to nerf them anyway before this change. (Now they're fine.)
-- Note how close that 40,000 armor is to the cap already.
-- We do have concerns block may be too good a stat for future raids, and we'll keep an eye on it.
-- Equipping a weapon will still boost Savage Roar (and everything else) the way it does currently.

Bottom line: armor was too good for druids. That was a blessing if you could get the items and a curse if you could not.

The counterarguments we get are: 1) Well, I can't be competitive without that armor, or 2) Give me something else to focus on then.

We think number one is a concern, but we're not convinced it's a problem at the moment and totally solvable if it gets to be. Number two is just a different design. We designed Ferals with fewer mitigation stats than other classes. You still have tanking stats, and gear can still provide upgrades. That's not to say it will always be the case, but we have no plans to change it at the current time.[/blizzard]

[Tolwen]

Some more blue posts:
[blizzard]Loot distribution
We view loot distribution at least in part as a social issue. You are always going to run into situations where someone wants to roll against you on an item that is of questionable value to them. As far as two classes legitimately needing the same item, we view that as a good thing. It's a better place to be than when items always drop that nobody can use. (Source)

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Are there plans to make Savage Roar persist through shapeshifting, but only affect cat form?
Yes, we are making this change. (Source)

The new Feral mana talent
It will probably be something like Primal Tenacity reducing the cost of Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear Form by 17/33/50% in addition to its current effects. (Source)

Upcoming Feral changes clarifications (Source)
Defenders code has 850 armor. Is that considered bonus armor? if so than it does not get modified by thick hide and will continue to be 850 armor no matter what.
Defender's Code will grant 850 armor unless you have the meta-gem.

if the wording you posted in your previous post holds true, than obviously only the 8 item slots will be affected by SOTF, but what thick hide affects even with your new post is still ambiguous.
Thick Hide, Dire Bear and Survival of the Fittest only affect base armor. This is the armor on all the base armor on your gear. Leather never has bonus armor, so it's not complicated. Rings, necks, trinkets and weapons can have bonus armor. This is usually shown with the armor number in green, but confusingly, not always. Cloaks are complicated because they have base armor (which is multiplied) and sometimes bonus armor (which is not).

requesting further clarification of what exactly thick hide will and will not multiply.
Thick hide multiplies the base armor on leather and cloaks.

also, what exactly does the meta effect, from your wording it looks like it will affect everything.
The meta gem increases all your armor so it's just a 2% bonus to everything. You want this gem. Fortunately it is not a rare drop like some of the other gear so we know you can get it.

finally, in a previous post, you stated that all armor item budget would be reallocated on staves. For example my staff from heroic halls of lightning has 700 armor. Will it continue to have 700 armor that just no longer gets multiplied by anything, or will those item budgets be spent and the staff will gain (purely random here) say 20 agi and 30 stam?
It will get 700 armor that is not multiplied by anything (except the meta).

I just don't understand one thing. You said this won't effect any items value, rather just open up druids to using other weapons. Well, take these two staves: [1] [2]. They both have 2084 feral AP attached to them, but they both have different DPS. How are you going to calculate feralAP from the dps and expect to get the same number from each? One is going to be higher/lower, and will consequently gain/lose value. Are you going to adjust the DPS on all staves or something?
We'll change the dps to be the appropriate FAP. This change won't affect anyone but druids who currently don't care about the dps at the moment. And to answer another question, yes, if you really want to you can use fishing poles. Generally their stats are not great though[/blizzard]