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Phaelia already provided the links below, so I won’t regurgitate them, but the Thunderheart belt, boots, and bracers have been posted and none of them have Stamina on them. In fact, the only Tier 6 sets that retain Stamina at all are the Protection Warrior set and the Protection Paladin set.
Druid tanks are particularly hard-hit by this. While you can argue that most sets don’t need Stamina as they shouldn’t be getting hit as it is, most encounters include damage you cannot avoid (we used to call this stupidity “wandering damage” in the old tabletop days — a sure sign of lazy design) and sometimes, situations being what they are, people draw aggro, make mistakes… you know the drill. Gear needs Stamina on it. After all, Blizzard made it clear how important Stamina is when they reduced its item budget cost to enable more of it to go on all gear for all classes. Survivability is paramount.
But let’s run with the idea that if you’re healing or doing damage, you can get by with less, which is generally true in spite of certain mechanics designed to ensure we all place at least some value on Stamina.
In this case, a lack of Stamina on DPS and healing gear isn’t game-breaking and, by many measures, for some pieces this is desirable in order to make more room in the budget for healing and damaging statistics.
For tanks, though, Stamina is more important than for any other class in the game. Granted, we use avoidance and mitigation statistics such as armor and dodge (and block and parry for Warrior and Paladin tanks), but Stamina and the resulting health pool is a critical factor that gives a healer the cushion they need to keep us alive.
So why is it that Druid tanks are the only ones with a Tier set that neglects Stamina?
Some have claimed it’s the multipurpose nature of our Feral Tier sets. While I can see why they might say this, it is obvious that they have not considered the ramifications of their own observation: if it is multipurpose, one of those purposes is tanking and as tanking gear it needs Stamina. Item budgets already deny Druid tanks Defense on PvE leather gear beyond the Heavy Clefthoof set, presumably on the basis of a single talent. This means that Druids have to itemize their trinkets, weapons and rings to make up the difference while missing the default uncrittability on ten other equipment slots (head, shoulder, chest, wrist, hand, waist, legs, feet, offhand, and ranged slot).
We tend to fill that itemization gap with PvP gear. Ideal? I’ll let you decide for yourself.
When I stand right by Warrior tanks geared about the same level I am, they have approximately equal health, sometimes more. Looking over the gear at Tier 6, this trend seems to continue unabated. The [Thunderheart Chestguard], in point of fact, sports 18 less Stamina than the [Onslaught Chestguard].
There are a lot of reasons for this: multipurpose usage and hence stat-spread, our shifting bonus (though is it truly valid to arbitrarily reduce the budget spent on a stat a class is inherently designed to exploit?), and perhaps some things I haven’t considered. The net result, however, is that equally geared tanks at all levels have roughly equivalent health pools in spite of common wisdom. The much vaunted gigantic health pool bonus Druids supposedly enjoy is as much fairy tale as reality; the truth lies in the gearing levels.
This leaves us with Armor to make up the difference. I enjoy sporting 30k armor. I’m not the best-geared Druid tank out there, and I never will be, but I enjoy that Crushing Blows aren’t a big deal to me, and that I can get by without a shield or the ability to Parry. I may not have much more actual survivability than any other tank, but the predictable damage trend when I tank is a feature I enjoy. No gigantic spikes equal no surprise deaths.
So along comes Tier 6. Both the Warrior and Paladin tanking rigs include Stamina (the Paladin set a bit less than the Warrior set, though). The set used by Druid tanks and yes, by Druid Cats, has none. This is an inherent 177 less Stamina available to a Druid tank using Tier gear than is available to a Warrior, not counting the general Stamina discrepancy.
So if you’re a Druid tank looking forward to the new Tier 6 itemization, maybe you’d be better off buying these pieces for DPS or your healing set. You’ll probably find yourself headed back to the Battlegrounds to fill these item slots for the Stamina if not the Resilience (some of us manage with just jewelry and weapons, perhaps a few select PvP items), or trading your heroic badges for them since the Tier 6 equivalents are apparently not intended for those of us who tank.
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It is, in my mind at least, based on pvp reasoning. The idea of having two four piece bonuses is overpowered in some cases, depending on the actual bonus for whatever class/spec is in question. By removing stamina from the new pieces, and the fact that there is no resilience at all, makes this highly undesired for pvp.
As far as prot pally and warriors having stamina? They may get a slight advantage with their tanking 4 piece and pvp 4 piece, but they are protection so who cares.~
Am I reading this correctly? Zero stam on the druid’s T6 set? None? No stam on any of the pieces? As a druid off-tank for my guild’s SSC/TK runs, I gotta pray that’s an error. I currently do not pvp on my druid, so I can’t speak to the pvp balance/imba of stam on these pieces. But for pve purposes, I say again: NO STAM? On TANKING gear? That’s incomprehensible.
And I gotta call BS on the argument “but these pieces are multi-purpose, for bear-tanking and kitty-dps”. No such thing. My tanking set and cat set share 2 or 3 items in common (gotta keep that sweet, sweet T4 2-pc bonus at all costs). And even the common pieces, I try to get 2 of, for different gems and enchants. For pve content beyond Kara, any gear that tries to be middle-ground (useful for both cat and bear forms), becomes nigh-useless for either.
Since the T4 set bonus is so good, T5 gear is already “meh” for ferals. If I’m reading this right and the T6 stuff actually has no stam, well I guess I better learn to love the look of T4… since I’ll be wearing it until WotLK. :-/
@Psyanide: Perhaps it is OP to have 2 4-piece bonuses in Arena, but it certainly wouldn’t be for Feral Druids (who fare worst among Druids in Arenas). It’s unfair to arbitrarily cut off PvE progression for Druid tanks for fear of the Arena consequences. They already have enough issues finding gear that’s appropriate to them. Ironically, several items that are favored come from PvP. It seems contradictory to provide such a limited avenue of gear progression for Ferals that they are forced to PvP but then exacerbate the problem by further limiting new PvE additions so they can’t be used in PvP. >.<
@MCM: It’s only the new additions to T6 (Belt, Bracers, Boots) who have had all their Stamina removed. The other five pieces remain the same.
Ah, ok – I strongly suspected I was reading something wrong. Yikes, you gave me a scare!
So it’s just the 3 *new* pieces of T6 which will be utterly useless for bear form – not the entire ensemble. And if they waste a fair bit of their item budget on bear-oriented stats, they’ll be useless for cat form too. Hopefully they’ll have badge rewards that are purely tank-oriented for those slots. I see a lot of YAKR in my future (Yet Another Kara Run).
Woops! Sorry Mcm, I was a little careless in my referent. I’ll be more diligent about making sure I’m clearer in the future.
And as for the gear specific to form, you’re right, my dps and tank sets only have 4 items in common, but should only share 2 right now, I’m just not to the point of replacing them yet.
The two forms value different itemization making a universal set impractical at best, and detrimental at worst.
The Problem i see with the “redesign” of the three new T6 parts is that they are just misdesigned…
When the Version 1 appeared i was really looking forward to Boots that finally carry Expertise – a much neglected stat as a Druid – for there are far too few Items with this.
Yet now we have misdesigned Items that have Haste on them… i generally like Haste, but as a cat druid with somewhat of 40% white dmg i dont see it to be a valuable increase – e.g. Rogues tend to be somewhere above 60%…
the second problem i see with the new setitems is the wasted item-budget on increased armor – i dont really need increased armor on cat-designed items – i cant tank in these anyway – crit immunity an the likes…
In general i hope those changes will be reversed.
While personally I see no issue with less stamina for other pieces due to the huge modifier bears already get, this does highlight one of the bigger mechanic issues that the designers must face when it comes to feral druid itemization.
You can’t design a feral piece that only affects bears because the cat druids would complain and vice versa. That leaves either a complete tree redesign (more outcry), mechanics change (big programming nightmare) or having 4 seperate sets for druids to play with. While I would personally prefer a overhaul on class mechanics to create better synergy on stat usage (Melee mana is.. well.. silly, in my opinion) between 3-4 stats (agil/stam/str and maybe int), I forsee more of the status quo OR perhaps a 4th tier set for druids.
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2008/february/t6v3_druid.jpg
stamina returns to the Druids…
YES – we do have a huge Stamina modifier in Bearform and in our skilltree –
yet if you look at our set items we tend to get less stamina per item anyway than the average Plate Item – so we have something to make up there – and items without stamina are generally not the right choice –
BUT – Right now we do have it back, hopefully til this goes live ^^
Surabear over at The Rambling Bear reckons Stamina is for Warlocks http://ramblingbear.blogspot.com/2008/02/stamina-is-for-warlocks.html
And Karthis from Of Teeth and Claws is tanking T5 content with an unbuffed healt pool of 14K.
Which is actually about the same as my unbuffed health. But yeah, I still expect my gear to have a good pile of stamina on it to support my gemming and enchanting habits. If tanking gear didnt’ have any stamina, I would have a very, VERY different gear enhancement priority.