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For those who aren’t aware, the Season 3 armor sets for melee classes and specs will include Armor Penetration rating. Armor Penetration is a stat that allows the attacker to ignore that amount of their target’s armor. This stat is ostensibly being added to Season 3 armor to prevent PvE Tier 6 armor (which includes Armor Penetration) from being superior to PvP Season 3 armor. At this news, cloth-wearing casters were outraged, declaiming this addition to give an unfair advantage to melee players. Kalgan responded:
The Priest and Warlock season 2 armor sets already have +910 bonus armor on them. As of season 3, the Mage set will also have the +910 armor (all the armor pen on season 3 melee gear adds up to less than 910).
So basically, as long as Warriors, Rogues, Priests, Mages, and Warlocks all have their ducks in a row and are wearing suitable Season 3 armor, there should be little net difference. But what does this mean for Druids who are not included in those classes listed as receiving additional item budgeting toward armor?
If a Priest has her cloth armor buffed up to the level of Leather, she essentially becomes a Priest in Druid’s armor with the additional survivability tools (Blessed Resilience, Inner Fire, Power Word: Shield, Psychic Scream) intended to compensate for having to wear the “squishiest” armor type. The Priest is then better able to stand toe-to-toe against melee attackers for longer than the Druid. All other things being equal — which they are not based upon the bracket in which you compete — why would someone then choose a Restoration Druid over a Holy Priest?
Here is a breakdown of the Season 2 cloth sets vs. the sets for Rogues and Restoration Druids:
- Restoration Druid = 1964
- Rogue = 1740 (???)
- Priest = 1847
- Mage = 1837
- Warlock = 1837
In full PvP gear, Resto Druids have slightly higher armor than Warlocks and Priests, before any buffs are considered. Once Season 3 comes out, cloth sets will have close to the armor of the Resto Druid set and more armor than the Rogue set. Now add another 2k armor to Priests (Inner Fire), 645 armor to Mages (Frost Armor), and +26% healing to Warlocks (Fel Armor). Rogues and Druids (the only 2 leather wearers) will have the lowest armor in the game by a significant margin. What are they making these robes out of, Kevlar?
What is the point of distinctions among armor types if the armor values are the same? Leather is supposed to have more armor than cloth. Assuming Druids do not receive a similar stat allocation for additional armor (unlikely due to the nature of Bear Form), this change will only further emphasize the Druid’s need to kite and retreat to the safety (and inability to heal) of Bear Form. If the purpose of this change is to ensure that PvP armor is a better choice than PvE armor for melee players, then the armor bonuses must be applied to leather armor, as well. Otherwise the end result will be nothing more than a buff to melee against leather wearers.
While this change also hurts mail and plate wearers, the DPS boost will be much greater against lower armor targets due to the mechanics of damage mitigation. To be fair, however, +910 armor should probably be added to their gear, as well.
Druids aren’t the only ones with reason to be upset. Rogues have it even worse than we do. Read what Valenna has to say about it.
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Pallys are great trash tankers but might face problems with spellers due to OOM or just a lack of spell defend abilities. If your group is about to kill raid boss with some spell abilities, high constant melee damage and bleed/spell resistances better get decent warrior.
Mmm bad news indeed, let’s hope they’ll balance armor levels a bit.
By the way, I’ve noticed you’ve mentioned quite a few times already the importance of bear form in arena but, is it really a defensive tool?
(I’m relatively new to arena so I hope I’m not saying something stupid) Isn’t it often more useful to simply cast travel form and run away? Whenever I switch to bear is to either charge or bash someone to help my mate. I generally cast HoTs on the run, crowd control if possible, and run when things get ugly, and after getting some practice victories seem to come more often.
I guess with +15% speed one can actually run away in bear form (quite useful since one shouldn’t run too much against warriors or they charge), but do you use it that much?
Admittedly, I used Bear Form quite a bit more in 2v2 than I do in 3v3, but it’s a great tool. Shift to Bear Form, BASH your attacker in the face, shift out, and Cyclone. Or shift to Bear Form and Feral Charge to get away from an assailant or to interrupt a caster’s spell. Or shift to Bear Form and use Nature’s Grasp behind a pillar to root a Warrior out of line of sight of his Paladin so that the Roots can’t be cleansed (muhaha). Or shift to Bear Form while you wait from help from above, popping Frenzied Regeneration to give yourself a little lasting power while you wait for a cooldown to become available again.
Priests need the help–Druids don’t. The biggest problem with healers in Arenas are: MS, Interrupts, Snares. Priests are victims of all 3, whereas a Druid can escape any snare, and has the most instant-cast healing options available to any class (greatly decreasing the relevance of Interrupts vs. them). The Druid can also shift forms and gain a crapload of armor, stun targets/pounce targets, shift to cat and run away from anything (and if they get intercepted shift once then again to escape). Cyclone and roots are just icing on to of the cake.
Priests just sit there and get raped.
Your argument is weak.
Well, priests do seem to have a problem when playing as pure healers, and their defensive arsenal is not that direct (mana burn, sta buffs, etc), but I don’t know priests well enough to tell. Probably in 2vs2 they’re not the best choice.
What I’ve noticed is that, at least in my server (EU Shadowsong), people prefer a paladin over any other healing class, and priests are generally shadow.
Whatever the case, what were discussing is not whether a class has been improved over others, but the whole point of armor categories. If there’s unbalance between classes in certain roles (which I don’t know, but wouldn’t surprise me either), it should be fixed some other way.
Please don’t ask me to stop whining, I wasn’t!
Let’s do a quick comparison of Priest defensive abilities vs. Druid defensive abilities (since defensive abilities are intended to offset armor differences between the two classes).
Heals:
Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Swiftmend. Power Word Shield, Prayer of Mending, Renew. Hmmm … that looks like 3 instant cast heals for each class. PWS also eats Warrior Rage and isn’t affected by Mortal Strike (!). To be fair, once every 3 minutes (once a match, maybe twice), a Druid can Nature’s Swiftness a Healing Touch.
Further, Priests’ Flash Heal is 1.5 seconds. With Martyrdom, any time they’re crit, their spells can’t be interrupted for 6 seconds. During that time they also have a 20% base resistance to Pummel, Kick, Silence, Counterspell, etc. Our quickest non-instant heal is 2.0 seconds and only becomes uninterruptible if we use Barkskin, an ability on a minute-long cooldown.
Damage Reduction:
In addition to these superior “healing under fire” abilities, Blessed Resilience is far better than the Druid equivalent, Natural Perfection. It actually scales past the Resilience cap. Blessed Recovery, a 3rd Tier Holy talent, reduces the damage from crits by 25% (by healing it immediately afterward). That’s basically an extra 490 Resilience!
Priests also get Inner Fire, an ability that brings their cloth armor on par with leather without needing to have the AC of their cloth artificially inflated. Not to mention AOE Fear for dispersing multiple melee assailants (albeit temporarily). While Druids do have the ability to turtle up in Bear Form, I’m not doing my job if I’m a Bear. I’m also less useful than a Prot Warrior. Not that Bear Form doesn’t have its uses, but Priests can continue to do their job while being attacked. Druids can’t.
Crowd Control Prevention/Removal:
Priests have a passive 15% resistance to Stun, Fear, and Silence through Unbreakable Will, a 1st Tier Discipline talent. A Druid can spend mana to break out of snares and Polymorph. A Priest can spend mana to dispel Roots and Frost Nova, but that still leaves them susceptible to Wing Clip, Hamstring, and Crippling Poison. With the momentary immunity to snares after shifting removed from Druids, however, a Druid is often re-Hamstrung (of the three, our gravest threat) immediately after shifting to remove it.
Crowd Control as a Defensive Measure:
Cyclone and Root (you might also include Bash despite its short duration since it can buy you time to Cyclone) vs. insta-cast AOE Fear. Cyclone and Roots are great CC, but in most situations, Roots are not a useful defensive measure because they break early and — if you’re stunned — the assailant can still attack you (unlike Cyclone, Polymorph, Fear, Stun). Cyclone’s heavy DR relative to its long cast time and its resulting susceptibility to Pummel/Kick helps to offset its strengths. Nonetheless, I would say that Druids win in this category.
The Arena stats speak from themselves. Priests do far better than Druids in the 5v5 setting where a Druid’s options for mobility are severely limited (no kiting - armor matters more). Do you honestly believe that it makes sense for Cloth to have the equivalent armor value of Leather?
Lovely discussion. Though I agree on the “leather should have more armor than cloth” line, (cause it does not make sense at all at this moment with their values this close together) I do not agree on your survivability-comparison.
The most important thing a druid has, is the ability to keep the enemy away. Rooting/cycloning a rogue/warrior/lock/spriest etc. all gives time to get away and PREVENT having to be on defense.
This is imo a major point in this discussion which i miss in all the responses.
This situation made Blizz buff casterarmor (cloth) and creates a ’strange’ situation where cloth and leather are closer together than we would expect them to be.
Hopefully i get my point across.
– Zhero
This is rather strange.. didn’t they already nerf the AC contribution from Bear form lately too?
@Megan: I’m not aware of any such reduction, although I think I remember hearing that the armor values of several key pieces routinely selected by Feral-specced Druids were reduced (around the same time that they revisted a lot of BC-items).