beta survival of the fittest talentFollow

that is exactly its intent; give druids uncrittability without using defense or resilience. coupled with the change to crushing blows, a druid is crit immune out of the box if specced correctly, as well as receiving a 12% reduction in all forms of incoming damage and lots of dodge (and the most hp out of any tank in game currently).

How do you get that tanks are losing 30% threat? The change to Blessing of Salv is so that paladins aren't required in aids any more; no class is supposed to be required in any size raid. Tanks are having a lot of extra threat "baked in" to bear form/defensive stance/I forget the paly ability.

Basically, the idea is that since defense rating is such a gimpy stat to a class that can't parry or block, Druids shouldn't need it. Also, it makes itemization easier, since leather tanking gear is only good for one half of one spec of one class. Leather melee DPS gear is at least good for one whole class, one spec of another class, and any other melee that doesn't have better mail/plate gear.

But we will still have it on our neck, back, rings x2 and trinkets x2. Also since we will be sharing these items with tanking classes that can parry and block, except death knights, we will also have that on our gear as these items will be needed for the added stamina and armor.

Maybe not the block as only 2/4 tanking classes use it but definitely parry and defense. And a ton of strength which provides us with... some AP but gives warriors and paladins increased block and death knights increased parry via a passive class skill. Plus the AP we will get. We just get AP. They get AP and mitigation. This shared gear also wont have much in the way agility as that is only a tanking stat for us.

The defense gives us minimal dodge and miss; daze reduction also but if I recall they are giving that to us via talents. So we gain the least to nothing from that stat out of all the tank classes. The parry and block give us nothing at all and just waste item points for druid purposes.

We could use shared rogue items but then we will be competing with all the melee DPS classes and wasting points on AP, hit and expertise. None of which we neither scale with or desire as the rogue gear should cap our expertise and hit just about.

So ya we are uncrittable with talents. We also don't have talents set up to scale with the gear we are supposed to be using. We scale with only a few stats compared to other tanks. We also get stats on out gear that we don't want and don't get our green armor anymore; they have all ready removed it in beta from what I hear on existing pieces. No more early armor cap but that was our niche.

Threat for all tanks is getting baked into abilities and going to be more based on that and damage. So we will only scale off Strength as opposed to the other tanks who have abilities that scale with Strength and/or AP/Spell Damage in addition to crit, as everyone likes to crit. We scale off of Strength, and AP to the extent that it is on our weapon and the few times it scales it does so based on the dire bear AP bonus which is level based so it caps fast.

So are we reduced to stacking agility again?

Blizz still has quite a way to go before this expansion is ready IMHO. I am cautiously optimistic but have great reservations about the viability of druid melee, whether tanking or DPS, PvP or PvE.

It is not just druids QQing about the expansion, it is a bunch of the or even just some specs of a class. The main reason is the new itemization. The talents haven't been fully adjusted for synergy with the new itemization. They have a lot of work to do as the progress of toons beyond level 80 is all item based and most people spend more time on a toon at the cap then getting there....

Stats that have to do with mitigation for various tank classes. Bold also for threat. Errors and ommisions are do to me being at work and having to do this faster than I would like.

 
Warrior/Paladin:      Death Knight:        Druid:  
   Strength              Strength              
   Armor                 Armor               Armor 
   Stamina               Stamina             Stamina  
   Parry                 Parry                 
   Dodge                 Dodge               Dodge 
   Defense               Defense              
   Expertise             Expertise           Expertise    
   Agility               Agility             Agility   
   Block  
     9 stats               8 stats           5 stats      

The difficulty that I'm having right now (just getting into T6 content) is that my threat comes from AP. I get modifiers to threat based on the damage that I do, but it's all based around my AP. Our guild's main pally tank builds threat twice as fast as I do because he can stack +spell damage way easier than I can stack AP. I've got sockets with defense gems in them because I need it. I've got defense enchants on my chest, cloak, and bracers because I need it. While swapping those gems and enchants for things like stamina, agility/strength are still going to grant a mediocre boost to threat/survivability, it's a boost nonetheless.

I've got the Wildfury Greatstaff from SSC with a +35 agility enchant on it because a) Mongoose is useless to me until the patch and b) it's currently listed as the top feral tank mitigation weapon in the game. The Staff of the Forest Lord from badges, if I were to get it, would be for my dps set. The Piller of Ferocity from Anetheron would be...for my dps set. It says a lot about feral itemization that the best tanking weapon you can get in terms of overall mitigation is a drop from SSC trash. If I could...say...free up some augment slots for agility to up my dodge, I could use a weapon like the badge staff or the Pillar of Ferocity for the added threat generation. Just a shame that it took until the end of TBC's "life cycle" for Blizzard to make it feasible.

Trinkets...meh...right now I'm using a Badge of Tenacity and my Violet Signet. If I could log in tomorrow and pick one trinket to replace my Violet Signet, it would be the Shard from H. MagT. There's no defense on that. It's Stamina, dodge, and conditional dodge. In terms of rings, the one thing that kept me from picking up the badge ring was that there's no defense on it. It's armor, stamina, and dodge rating. Guess what my Sharmanar Great Ring is getting replaced with when the patch goes live?

There are plenty of cloak/ring/trinket options that don't have defense on them. If they have good stamina and dodge and just so happen to also have defense, bonus. But really, I have no problem whatsoever with no longer being required to sacrifice augment slots or make gear choices with a focus on remaining crit immune for defense. And no more crushing blows make me all the more happier. If existing feral tanking epics have already been adjusted on the beta to do away with the green armor contribution, awesome...because iLevel is iLevel and it will leave more in the stat budget for other things. Like Stamina or Agility.

T6 content from patch -> expansion should be fun.