• Bares mostly like the taste of fase!

Monday Roundup – June 17th, 2013

Hello Guardians!

I haven’t done one of these in a while…pretty much because there hasn’t been anything to talk about. That being said, the 5.4 PTR is out now and I wanted to give everyone a read on the changes.
 

Set Bonuses

Our new 2 piece bonus simply triggers Savage Defense and a 40 Rage Frenzied Regeneration when Barkskin expires. The heal portion will randomly be useful, but there are two more interesting pieces. The first is that it allow you to extend Savage Defense to a full 1 minute if you like. Obviously that means that neither of these require Rage nor a charge to be available. The second part is that it is also supposed to trigger the 4 piece bonus when it expires.

The 4 piece bonus is more interesting. It triggers a HoT on yourself for 10% of your max HP over 8 seconds (current value anyway), ticking 1/sec whenever you use Savage Defense or Frenzied Regeneration. For FR the heal amount is proportional to the amount of Rage consumed. The real question is what is this going to look like in T16 gear. Thankfully we can do that with simple math, thanks to Hamlet we know that each tier stats increase by about 13% or so. GC also provided us with an idea of where the item levels are going to end up last week. All that remains is to add up something that can be used as a baseline in order to find an estimate:

526: 23663
552: 23663 * (1.13^2) = ~30215 Stamina for 553 = ~725k without HotW = 9k hps per proc.
565: 23663 * (1.13^3) = ~34143 Stamina for 566 = ~802k without HotW = 10k hps per proc.

Something you may not know is that the proc rolls like Ignite. That means the heal itself will increase the more you use either SD or FR. It also gives us another outlet other than Maul if we’re capping Rage. Around 15 RPS (which is perfectly attainable in such gear) it’ll actually be 1.5x that, so 13.5k hps or 15k hps rolling. Obviously higher during burst phases (like Incarnation).

There are also some intersting reactions to other abilities:

  • The FR Glyph does multiply the healing. This doesn’t suddenly mean that it will be optimal to glyph FR for most people. However if we do get another fight like Stone Guard or where SD is useless, then definitely glyph FR for that.
  • Both sides of Nature’s Vigil trigger from this set bonus. So not only do you get an extra heal, but you also get the damage portion as well. I’m pretty convinced this is a bug, but have not heard anything further yet.
  • Might of Ursoc will increase the heal amount when it’s triggered.
  • The 2 piece effect (Savage Defense + Frenzied Regen) is supposed to trigger this bonus, but doesn’t seem to be doing that currently in the PTR.

 

Talents

There are three talents that received major changes on this PTR build.

Ysera’s Gift is our new Tier 2 talent. It’s simply a heal for 5% of your HP that will either land on yourself, or someone nearby if you are at full health. This happens every 5 seconds and is completely passive. I believe this is also multiplied by the FR glyph, although I didn’t get a chance to test that yet. However, like the FR glyph it’s not that useful unless you are dealing with an encounter that doesn’t really have any spike “tank killer” abilities. I expect most heroic raiding Guardians will simply swap over to Renewal or Cenarion Ward depending on their needs. However if we are able to handle spike damage just fine with Frenzied Regen, you might see people taking Ysera’s for the added group benefits.

Soul of the Forest has been changed to a percentage modifier on all Rage generated by Mangle. It’s currently at 8% on the PTR, but that’s a bug and it should actually be 30%. This puts it pretty much on par with Incarnation for average RPS, and will continue to scale with Crit instead of just Hit and Expertise. However it’s still a DPS loss to take the talent over Incarnation. I was talking to Buraan and we came up with the idea of “What if SotF instead increased the chance to reset the CD on Mangle?” So I ran some numbers on it. We’d have to double the chance for Mangle to reset in order to achieve an effect similar to Incarnation, but I think it would be really interesting.

Dream of Cenarius has also gotten a significant re-work. One of the most common themes throughout all of the feedback from every Druid spec (except Feral) was that DoC needs to have a different effect per specialization in order to have a chance of working. The Guardian version definitely has potential, however there are a couple shortcomings.

  • Buff only lasts 10 seconds.
  • Proc chance is too low to be reliable – especially for a combat-rez.
  • No damage bonus.

All of these problems are solved by a two-step solution: Convert it to a charge system – say 3 max – and grant a damage bonus to Mangle whenever a charge is expended. Then we have a pretty interesting talent that could definitely be useful.

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention the amount healed by a DoC Healing Touch scales with Vengeance.
 

Abilities

The only major change to an ability thus far (and one I almost forgot :X) is that you might as well unbind Innervate from your bars completely once 5.4 hits. It will only restore 940 mana in 5.4 (a bit more if you use the +stats chest enchant). Just don’t even bother.
 

Eh Toi?

What do you think about the changes so far? Comment below!

Keep in mind though, that there is definitely more coming ;)

Hello Guardians!

Sorry this week is a little late. It’ll become clear later in the post, but I had to finish up a bit of content before I could put this up.
 

Thrash Bugged

For 2 days after the patch launched last week Thrash was bugged and not critting on the DoT ticks. This was incredibly frustrating for people and even cost Buraan a rank 1 on Jin’rokh. It’s all fixed now though, so no more worries.
 

Developer Interviews

Icy Veins posted an interview they did with the WoW design team. There isn’t anything really tank-specific “per-se”, but there is some interesting discussion on the “utility arms race” which Guardians are certainly losing at this point. I’ll certainly be keeping an interested eye on what happens in 5.4, and I definitely encourage you to read the entire interview.

WoW Insider also posted an interview with GC regarding a wide range of topics. He also covered the topic of capping Vengeance in 5.4 which I’ll cover below.
 

Vengeance Capping

As I mentioned above GC further explained his tweet about capping Vengeance in 5.4:

Oh you’re talking about that tweet I made the other night! The main problem we’re trying to solve is situations where tanks do silly things in order to get their dps and survivability very high. One example is standing in a fire. Because hey you’re taking more damage, that’s going to increase your Vengeance, and makes your healers mad. We’re actually solving that one in a different way, we’re just going to flag certain types of damage as not causing Vengeance. But another thing players can do is single-tank a boss that was really intended for two tanks, because the Vengeance provided is so massive it can actually help that tank’s survivability.

Sometimes it’s fun to single tank, particularly when you’re outgearing the content a little bit — we’re not trying to remove the fun factor, we’re just trying to remove the pressure to tell the off-tank that hey dude, we really just need to single tank this because it’ll actually be easier for us. So by putting some kind of cap on Vengeance, we hope to keep it from getting out of control that way.

And in retrospect, I realized I didn’t provide any context to my tweet — it’s something we’d been talking a lot about, and I’d kind of assumed players would understand right away what our goal was — but of course that wasn’t a fair assumption on my part. Really the goal was to stop any aberrant or silly behavior to artificially inflate Vengeance. People who are just playing normally shouldn’t notice a big difference — and if the numbers we picked are too low, we can certainly increase them a little bit.

I’ve mentioned in several places that this won’t have a significant impact on our survivability, if any at all. At worse our Frenzied Regeneration will cap out at ~75% max HP for a full FR, and it will still take 2 T&C procs to cover a full melee swing. The change is definitely meant to discourage one tanking by capping the amount of extra DPS you can get as s single tank. That’s perfectly fine. Also don’t rule out additional Guardian-specific changes in 5.4 that will reduce the impact this change will have, even though it’s already pretty much nil.
 

Challenge Mode Guides

I was inspired by Hamlet to do my own series of Guardian-specific Challenge Mode guides. You can see the first two below:

TiB Presents: Scarlet Monastery – Gold Challenge Mode

 

TiB Presents: Mogu'shan Palace – Gold Challenge Mode

The video source is my Twitch VOD, so it’s only 720p, and there is some stuttering. I’m not sure how I can fix that without using local recording which I can’t really do simultaneously with streaming. This works well enough for me, and I hope it does for you.

That’s all for this week. I hope you all have fun killing new things!

Hello Guardians!

Here’s this week’s pre-5.3 patch roundup. Not really that much to go over but I wanted to cover a few things anyway.
 

5.3 Survival Guide

I wrote a short article to let you know what changes you should be aware of in 5.3. Go ahead and check it out in order to be prepared!
 

Guardian Guide

The Guardian Guide has been updated for 5.3! Go ahead and check it out to make sure you are up to date :)
 

Guardian Resources

I’ve updated the Guardian SS with the changes in 5.3. Not much has changed, but it’s up-to-date now.

I mentioned before that I’m doing QA for Simcraft, helping them get their Guardian module up to snuff. A new version should be out soon with a bunch of bug fixes.
 

Force of Nature

Force of Nature is getting some interesting changes in 5.3 that haven’t yet been documented in the patch notes:

  • Health increased to 40% of the Guardian’s Health.
  • Armor set to 4x the Guardian’s Armor.
  • Stats dynamically update.

This is definitely a welcome change to their ability to stay alive. This will make sure they definitely don’t die in 1 hit anymore. The only problem is their DPS still remains extremely terrible, so it’s not clear if they’re going to be able to hold threat on something after taunting it. In any case, I can certainly see a reason to take these for things like Challenge Mode trash. Whether or not we’ll see them on any boss fights reamins to be seen.
 

Fasc Joins CFT

In case you didn’t catch it before, well-known Guardian theorycrafter Fasc has joined CFT. This means you can tune in to my stream for double-Guardian action in H10 Throne of Thunder!

That’s all for this week. I hope you all have fun killing new things!

Introduction

5.3 is almost upon us! As with every path I’m here to analyze the upcoming changes so you don’t have to. What should you care about? What should you ignore? Let’s find out!
 

Class Changes

We’ll start out with the class changes in the 5.3 patch which affect Guardians:

Mark of the Wild had its mana cost reduced to 5%, down from 10%.

Slightly easier to buff. Ok.

Tranquility now targets 12 raid members (up from 5) each time it heals when used in a 25-player instance. This change also applies to players using the Symbiosis version of Tranquility.

Great change for 25m Guardians, and all Druids really. Long overdue if you ask me, but definitely glad it’s here now.

Force of Nature is no longer on global cooldown and summons a single Treant. The Treant no longer has a control bar, immediately uses its special abilities on the Druid’s current target, and accumulates 1 charge every 20 seconds up to a maximum of 3 charges.

This is a great design change for FoN, but unfortunately it still remains pretty useless. Having to compete against Incarnation makes it incredibly difficult for anything to be as good. It’s a step in the right direction, but you can still safely ignore it.

Mastery: Nature’s Guardian is now 33% stronger (2% per point instead of 1.5%).

This doesn’t really change anything. All it does is decrease the amount of Mastery you need to meet a given EH threshold. The value of Mastery relative to Stamina for EH is still quite terrible. For more information, check out my previous post about EH.
 

General Changes

There’s a few general changes that are happening as well.

Players can now choose to receive loot for specializations other than the one that’s currently active. This feature can be accessed by right-clicking on the character portrait and selecting the option from the drop-down list. Loot specialization is available for bonus rolls, Raid Finder, and Pandarian quest rewards. Please check out the blog: Patch 5.3 Adds Off-Spec Loot and Rewards for an in-depth explanation of how the Loot Specialization system will work.

This is pretty neat for LFR anyways. Simply pick “Feral” instead of “Guardian” for most bosses, as all “Guardian” does is add a bunch of quasi-useless tank trinkets to the loot table.

Protection for bad luck streaks have been added to bonus rolls. Each bonus roll that does not provide loot has a progressively better chance to award loot to the player.

How many times have you used a bonus coin and not gotten anything? The idea behind this is to make those bonus rolls feel more good, and less like a waste of time.

Items upgradable by Valor now require 250 Valor to upgrade per 4 item levels, for a total of 500 Valor for 8 item levels per item. This is retroactive to all items that use Valor.

Item upgrades are back! The question everyone will promptly ask is “What do I upgrade first?” The answer is as always “Whatever you won’t replace any time soon.” If it’s a tie certain slots like weapons, chest, legs, helm, and trinkets go first. After that you obviously pick thunderforged pieces, and then regular pieces.
 

Other Changes

The only thing that I can think of that isn’t covered in the patch notes is that the bug where Rune of Re-Origination wouldn’t give Guardians the correct amount of stats when in Bear form will now be fixed. This doesn’t change anything in terms of what items you want, but it’s still a bug fix.

Thanks everyone! Enjoy patch 5.3!

Hello Guardians!

I’m sorry I haven’t done these in a while. I’ve been busy doing things that I …. well …. can’t talk about. In any case it’s time again for anothe roundup.
 

5.3 PTR

There’s been a few changes on the 5.3 PTR.

Mastery: Nature’s Guardian now increases your armor by 16%, up from 12%.

This buff is almost explicitly targetted at 25h where the damage intake is much, much higher. I’ve mentioned here and other places that it won’t really change anything for 10m or normals. However it’s worth noting that depending on itemization it will probably be worth pursuing Mastery at some point in T16.

Tranquility now heals 12 players in in 25 player instances.

This is a welcome change for 25m Guardians. I don’t know if it’s enough in terms of utility, but only time will tell that.
 

Hotfixes

There’s been a simple hotfix in the last few days.

Growl should now properly transfer Vengeance to the casting Druid when taunting off of another tank character.

I didn’t even know this was a problem. Slash mentioned that this was a recent bug they just fixed. It’s good that it was quashed in any case.
 

Working with SimC

I wanted to let you all know that I’ve started working with SimC to finish up their Guardian module. It might take some time but I plan to help them get it in working order as soon as possible.

That’s all for this week. I hope you all have fun killing new things!