One of the primary reasons behind the 3.0.8 armour nerf was that we were getting very close to hitting the cap. Now with 3.1 we're being told we'll get a new shield-mechanic working off offensive stats, but they want to nerf our armour further. Natural reaction is probably to think that maybe Blizz sees us closing in on the cap again in further tiers, so let's check if that's the case, or if a further armour nerf combined with a potentially weakened block-mechanic(can only mitigate one hit after a crit) is wholly unjustified.
First some quick examples of gear at the current iLvls:
Chest:
iLvl 200 564
iLvl 213 578 (+2.48%)
iLvl 226 591 (+2.19%)
Legs:
iLvl 200 494
iLvl 213 506 (+2.44%)
iLvl 226 517 (+2.17%)
Now the numbers for all 8 slots of leather gear + the cloak slot(assuming no bonus armour as it's not multiplied anymore):
At iLvl 200 armour from gear is 3394
At iLvl 213 armour from gear is 3480 (+2.53)
Projections for the next tiers:
T8.25: iLvl 226, total armour from gear 3567 (+2.5%)
T9.25: iLvl 239, total armour from gear 3656 (+2.5%)
T10.25: iLvl 252, total armour from gear 3747 (+2.5%)
After applying current armour modifiers(8.58) we get:
T7.10: iLvl 200, total armour from gear 29120
T7.25: iLvl 213, total armour from gear 29858
T8.25: iLvl 226, total armour from gear 30604
T9.25: iLvl 239, total armour from gear 31368
T10.25: iLvl 252, total armour from gear 32149
Conclusion? With the current modifier and assuming no bonus armour items we'd still be short of our pre-3.0.8 potential numbers even at a theorethical T10.25 gearlevel. Barring some pretty crazy bonus armour items we can all but kiss hitting the cap(49.905 vs. lvl83 mobs) goodbye.
So then what does that mean? It means we're getting a sub-par block for tanking trash whilst losing out on the best scaling stat against hard hitting physical bosses. 3.1 doesn't make us any more healable, and as such doesn't enable us to scale with stamina as we could. There's not relief for our single avoidance mechanic which is allready hitting the DR. In short? At current time, unless the effectiveness of this new shield is truely insane we're looking at a nerf.
6 comments:
Shamad, you forgot about agility's armor contribution, the armor contribution from other items, devotion aura and if you want pots et al. Without really trying for a ton of armor I have 39k right now, which just barely misses the cap. If I wanted to get more - using things like defender's code - I would be able to reach it right this second. With more agility I'll be able to get even closer.
Those sources don't get multiplied though do they? With bonus armour from staff/cloak/neck/rings/code/motw/aura/agi I currently add about 10k armour on top of what my leather gear gives me, which sets me at around 40k armour. Now, assuming these will scale at about the same rate(2.5%), let's say that climbes to around 43k total at T10.25 levels. Stacking a bit more agi we might get to 45k total. That's still 4k away from the cap vs. lvl83 mobs.
Your math on the shield does suggest it might cover a loss of armour, but if we now see bosses hitting for 80k, how much more will we see by the time wotlk's sunwell equivalent rolls out? 200k? Assuming we bye that time without current mechanics would be mitigating something in the range of 85% or more damage, that doesn't seem the least impossible. If we lose 1% of armour based mitigation at that level, we'd be looking at an extra 2k damage taken per hit. If we lose more...needless to say allowing the shield to soak up 4-6k magical damage every GCD is not gonna happen. So the shield is going to have to be weaker than that.
I've a hard time seeing how this is going to fix our current prospect of falling behind other tanks by the end of Ulduar. To me, this would have to be implemented without a armour nerf. Otherwise it's +-0 at best.
Erm, what I ment to say was "assuming we by that time with current mechanics would be mitigating something in the range of 85% or more physical damage".
They don't get multiplied by the bear multiplier, but they do get multiplied by inspiration. If you're at 40k armor, an inspiration proc will put you at or over the cap. And these happen all the time now; on Patchwerk I had over 40 inspiration procs and another 20 ancestral healing procs.
So we're not going to hit the armor cap natively, but with the excessive proc rate of inspiration you'll see us have that virtually all the time that we'll be facing a hard-hitting mob. And we definitely want to factor that in.
I do agree that against truly hard-hitting mobs - the Brutallus of this expansion - the shield and any armor reduction will be a nerf. At the same time though - can you imagine how much more effective a druid would be against a new version of Brutallus vs. a warrior? Druids would take on the order of 10-15k less damage per hit than any other tank, and they'd have more stamina to soak it. That's ridiculously unbalanced. This way makes bears much less insane against truly hard hitting mobs while still retaining a good amount of mitigation and allowing bears to use more stats to mitigate damage.
I wasn't factoring in inspiration since it's quite random, and relying on a random proc from a healer to help mitigate as much as 3-4% of the incoming damage may lead to huge spikes when that proc doesn't happen. Further more it's only holy priests and shamans, two raid healers, who actually get these talents. Patchwerk is easy, there's no random damage to be healed, so you've got raidhealers healing you as well granting you procs. I wouldn't be so sure we'll have that luxury in Ulduar any more.
I do hope you turn out to be right and this does work out in our favour, but I'm not quite so confident if the armour nerf is much more than a token one.
"I wasn't factoring in inspiration since it's quite random" - hmmmmmmm.... not sure how random it is, but in 25 mans, my armor is aroung 49k most of the times I bother to look. It seems to be up *a lot of* the time.
Thanks for the analyis btw - I dont agree with a word of it, but I'm always interested in what other ppl are thinking. Have fun with your nerfed bear in 3.1!!!!
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