The Nerf Stick!

Here are a few recent blue posts:

• "Savage Defense is massively overpowered on beta and has been dealt with accordingly. Many of the reports of beta raid bosses two-shotting tanks were because that was how much damage the bosses needed to do in order to challenge Feral tanks. With less damage absorbed, the boss damage can be adjusted downwards. We've reduced the multiplier for attack power on the absorption effect (from 65% to 35%, still modified by mastery) and it no longer procs from periodic critical hits." 

• Survival Instincts -- Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Duration still 12 seconds. 

• Bear Form -- Stamina bonus lowered from 20% to 10% and Heart of the Wild health bonus from 10% to 6%. Bear health should be close to plate tank health with this change.

What does this mean? Probably nothing. I knew tanks would end up a lot more symmetrical before Cataclysm rolled around, but I was going to assume they would buff the other tanks to the level of where druids were. Instead it's the other way around and that just means we actually have a pretty hard job on our hands. I'll list a few ways I hope to be challenged by...

A boss enrages for 15 seconds and casts 3 fireballs that would normally do enough damage to kill us. We have to proc our "survival shield wall" right before the first one finishes casting or else we die and the raid wipes.

Some mechanic throws the tank in the air high enough to if he's not an engineer a mage/priest needs to save him with slow fall.

Less taunt back and forth bosses. Unless during the downtime the tank gets to do something interesting such a small gauntlet/debuff cleansing triathlon.

Giant ground stomps that we get to use stampeding roar for! - Literally going to be my favorite ability.

So yeah! I am very excited about cataclysm still and I have no worries about these nerfs and if you are a true druid at heart you'll be honest with yourself and know that we sort of needed it.

Reforge it like a boss

Alright I'm still new to this whole blogging thing, but I'm going to go ahead and lay down a quick post on what you should be doing with reforging.

If you're starting out you probably want to avoid reforging too much too quicky. I'd say for every piece of armor over 200 you should reforge all the haste into mastery. That will get you started. When you get up to the higher gear pieces like at least 4 set T10, then you might as well shift all your crit into mastery as well.

Mastery for bear druids is huge. Right now it works as improving Savage defense.

Savage Defense: Crits have a 50% chance to cause you to gain a bubble-like effect that absorbs damage equal to X% of your attack power. Mastery improves X. 

So what starts out being 65% of your base attack power can be turned into 100%+.

Well geez Claw that doesn't seem like it does too much

AHA! But here's another ability that all tanks got in patch 4.0.1

Vengeance: Everytime someone damages you, 5% of the damage will be turned into attack power for you.(Up to 10% of your maximum health pool)

Whaaaaaat that's crazy talk!

Exactly, So let's look at an example in ICC

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have 7k AP in bear form in ICC

115% savage defense through mastery

85k base health

ME(I'm a bear)   Angry mob(He gon kill me)

ME            Angry mob

85k health            40k swing

45k health                  ---               I just gained 2250 AP and the healers healed me up.

85k health            40k swing

45k health                  ---               I just gained another 2250 AP the healers healed me up and I crit!

85k health            40k swing      

62k health

The math behind it was: 11500 AP * 1.15  = 13225 * 0.30(ICC absorb buff) = 17193

So yes, that's not the highest it will go, but it's average. The max AP I can get is 16500 so if you'd like to do the math yourself just use this formula.

(Your AP + Vengence AP) * (Savage Defense in decimal form) = Y(savage defense bubble)

If you're in ICC then: Y * 0.30 = Z(New Savage defense bubble)

Now the neat thing about this, is that with Frenzied Regeneration you get 30% more health. That means more attack power through vengeance and thus more mitigation. Frenzied regeneration just gives so many different buffs it's crazy. You get 30% more health, more healing done to you, more attack power through vengeance, and more mitigation through Savage defense. 

Well as I look back on this post I can see that it was not short. I apologize and I'll try to make shorter posts from now on. If anyone has any suggestions for what they'd like me to talk about go ahead and leave a comment. I'll try my best to reply to everyone. 

P.S. I'm not using some hidden color key with all the colors, I just don't want the post to look bland and stupid. Although once in awhile I will match colors for certain things like the formula and the color of the health.