Just wondering every body was in on the fact that defence is a garbage stats for bear
Garbage? Nah. Worth the itemization cost? Also nah.
If its incidentally on gear thats already good, then its just added bonus. But don’t go out of your way to seek it.
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I just use Core Leather Kits and call it a day.
Defense isn’t garbage, it’s just so incredibly low and poorly itemized that it’s difficult to warrant it over other stats. Avoiding 100% extra damage is quite strong on paper, just like resistance it’s just too expensive unless a specific boss punishes you for not stacking it. Like resistences, it is multiple stats in one stat, in the case of resists it’s chance to fully resist/25/50/75/effect only. And defense is dodge,parry,block,miss,avoid crit as a single stat.
It’s not a bad stat, but you don’t go for it specifically. Defense prevents crushing blows, the main weakness for bear druids so in that regard it’s not bad. It just offers such a small percentage and other stats like shield block that do nothing for bears. It will get defensive by default with your Bis ring from MC and warden staff in particular.
not a bad stat but you can get enough defense from rings, neck and weapons
This was difficult for me, even as a warrior, to comprehend after sooo many years of thinking the other way. We staaacked defense back in Vanilla. It was huge.
if your chance to be critically stricken vs. a mob isn’t 0%, then the component of +defense that reduces your chance to be critically stricken by said mob can be treated as chance to be missed
if your chance to be critically stricken is 0%, however, then the component of the +defense that you already have is suddenly alot more meaningful because you can rely on not being critically stricken
also, defense does not help any more against crushing blows than +dodge, parry, or block do; the only way to get rid of crushing blows is by having 100% avoidance vs. the npc, which in the case of raid bosses would, iirc, be 102.4% combined avoidance
on a related note, warriors could realistically hit the defense cap in P1, provided some browsing of the auction house for green shoulders and a cloak of defense
Who still uses bears? Jk I love me some big bear offtanks, so easy to heal.
An unfortunate situation in many many many versions of WoW for numerous classes in most content be that pve or pvp.
Blizzard has dropped the ball on keeping itemization options interesting time and time again. Even in retail its a mess.
For Bear +Def is +.04% to Base Miss + Dodge + Crit Reduction.
Reducing a Boss’s +Crit down from 5.6% reduces crit bunching…and therefore reduces conjunctive spike mechanics that can occur with back to back crits.
Its not a priority…but as Dot said its still not bad.
Defense isn’t a garbage stat for anyone that’s looking to reduce incoming damage. Druids lack access to it and if we could get enough to eliminate Boss Critical Hits entirely, we absolutely would if it wasn’t going to utterly drop our other stats.
This is why Bears are the only Tanks with additional scaling on our Health (Heart of the Wild) and Armor (Dire Bear Form). Get yourself enough Health/Armor to soak whatever the worst-case burst scenario will be and then stack offensive stats.
5 defense is .4% avoidance and .2% less chance to be crit. Really not worth seeking out when 8 agility gives the same avoidance, armor and boosts threat and rage gen with +crit too.
Worth mentioning that druids can’t parry and block which defense boosts as well. Warriors get +.6% avoidance and +.2% block and crit reduction from the same stat.
It’s probably not a bad idea to get defence cap for a few bosses in Naxxramas that can basically one or two shot you with a crit or two.
Frenzied Maexxna can land 5k melees on the upper end on a geared warrior tank, with a 1s swing timer. If she crits you, then you get parried and she hits you again in 0.4 seconds you’re dead.
Guardians of Icecrown on Kel’Thuzad hit for 5-6k with blood tap, which can crit.
Sapphiron’s base melee damage is around 3x Nefarian.
Patchwerk conveniently is coded to be unable to crit.
Defense does nothing for crushing blows directly. The only interactions are indirect through skills like Shield Block, Redoubt and Holy Shield. Bears don’t have that, so defense does exactly 0 for them in terms of crushing blows.
It’s a technicality, but the 102.4% figure only holds true for classes that can dodge, parry, block and be missed. It’s truly 0.6% extra per active category. Since bears can only dodge and be missed, their combined percentage is 101.2%.
NPC specials haven’t been able to crit in a while. It was a change Blizzard made in early Vanilla, well before the 1.12 patch that WoW Classic is based on. The only thing from NPCs that can crit are their auto attacks. Patchwerk’s Hateful Strikes can’t crit because they’re specials, not because Patchwerk is specifically coded to not crit. At least, I’m not aware that he’s specifically coded to not crit; it would only affect his auto attacks either way, and those are rather insignificant when talking tank damage.
These don’t really exist.
The hardest hitting nonsense is Patchwerk’s Hateful Strike, which cannot critically strike. In fact, special attacks cannot critically hit, hence why Broodlord’s MS, Vek’nilash’s Unbalancing Strike, etc, all cannot critically hit.
The problem with defense on druids is that they don’t have block or parry. So all they get out of the stat is miss/crit/crush/dodge, and none of them are increased to compensate for the missing block/parry. This means that defense is usually less valuable than dodge. It’s also far less common on leather than dodge. Druids are basically dodge tanks. You’re hoping that you dodge enough attacks to survive the ones you don’t dodge. Furthermore, a warrior has more tank talents, 5 block, 10 defense, 5 parry. A druid has none of these. A warrior also has shield block, which is +50% block for 2 swings, a skill he can use regularly. What does a druid have? Higher armor… but armor has diminishing returns and a cap.
Backlog cleared. You’d expect it to be far bigger from 30 days but I only typed things for a week. Not surprised if I get hit again right away tomorrow morning now… but I’m expiring in a few days, I no longer have to care about their abusive mods.
These don’t really exist.
Looking at wowhead, Maexxna’s base melee damage is ~10,000 unmitigated on the high end. At 30% she gains Enrage which is 100% more damage and 50% attack speed.
Warriors don’t generally quite reach armour cap, so probably about 5k melees on a 1s swing timer, possibly 0.4 seconds when the tank gets parried.
I don’t think tanks generally have 15,000 HP, so one crit and a melee and you’re dead.
What are you talking about? Seriously, if you’re crawling the ancient Thottbot posts, that’s not good info.
Second, 10k unmitigated would be roughly the equivalent of eating normal melees at the same strength as Emperor Vek’nilash’s Unbalancing Strike… every hit. So I highly, highly doubt this.
On top of this, even with critical immunity, parry-haste would gib any Warrior during such damage during her Enrage, and the Enrage is healable provided everyone isn’t stunned from wraps. So again, I can’t believe Maexxna lands between a third to a half of a Patchwerk Hateful Strike as the default melee damage incoming.
9700 is the high end of the swings. If you hit armor cap, the average melee swing would be around 3800, max 4365, min 3300. Which is about exactly what this guy is getting hit for in this vanilla video.
Yes, it is approximately an unbalancing strike every second. A 5800 crushing blow kills him at the end.