Prediction: Swipe/Primal Fury NerfFollow

All of the tanks now have some AoE ability with out a target limit; Consecrate, Thunder Clap, Swipe,etc. So Swipe change would be hard to take away as it would gimp us too much compared to other tanks with regards to AoE pulls. So if this is changed I would see it coming with a change to Primal Fury. It really depends on if the other tanks 'rage' generation keeps up with ours.

If we are alone in the infinite 'rage' scenario then they will have to nerf PF I would think. Maybe putting a rage gained cap or making it a DPS only talent. The DPS only sounds bad as that would go the other way and gimp rage generation. A hidden rage gained cap could easily be a common sense solution if this does in fact become an issue.

The question is will this get nerfed and more so will it be nerfed in a reasonable way like my idea or blasted into the ground and stomped on by an over-reactive dev team?

I think it would be the 2nd one unfortunately. So lets just hope the other classes are on par with this change as I really like the idea of nearly infinite rage.

NOTE: 'rage' is whatever that tank classes use to generate threat

Swipe crit works like normal crit chance. So each mob has the same chance to be crit. Assuming a 33% crit rate and say 30 mobs hit by Swipe, you crit on 10 of them getting you 50 rage from PF. Thus infinite rage or at least a good source of rage when ever there are a decent number of mobs.

Crit caps at 100%. But I have never heard of anyone getting much above 50% due to diminishing returns on crit rating and Agility.

Ret pallies don't tank but their prot cousins who do have had an infinite target AoE tanking for a while now. It is Consecrate and does damage to all mobs near the pally. It scales with spell damage which protadins typically have as a weapon enchant at the very least and gain more from talents if I recall.

Warriors also now have an infinite target AoE with the changes to Thunder Clap. Death Knights have Death and Decay which is also an AoE threat move without a target limit. This will let more mobs hit the warriors thus giving them an escalted rage generation also. Not sure how it works for Death Knights but hopefully these all balance out so as to not need another druid nerf.

These changes are all in line with the new tanking philosophy that Blizz is working up. They are making it so that gaining and maintaining threat is more a matter of player skill than tools. This is to make all tanks roughly equally desired for all content. The tanks will have niches but they will not be nearly a pronounced as in tBC. Should be good if they can pull it off but that remains to be seen.

edit: had to switch stations at work and wasn't done posting



Edited, Oct 2nd 2008 6:39pm by Horsemouth

There's a post in a thread on the rogue forums that describes the crit cap...it's nowhere near 100%. It's somwhere around 50% (sorry I can't be more specific) and anything you add after that is basically wasted...kind of like stacking defense beyond a certain point to reduce crits. (Not a perfect analogy since defense offers a token amount of avoidance even after you're crit immune, but you get the idea.)

If there is a nerf to Swipe/PF, I'd expect it to be a limit on the rage returned from PF. That being the case, as long as it can still return up to 15% it won't be so bad.

Seems I was mistaken...it can go a little higher...something like 57% or something. It has to do with the way the hit tables work, but 57% is still a pretty obscene crit%. From what I read, it's impossible to force non-crits off the table.

What you forgot to add in to that RareBeast is that Rogues count only dodge, miss, and glancing blows since they're always attacking a raid boss from behind. When we're tanking, we're attacking from the front and have to deal with Block and Parry. I'm pretty sure Glancing only affects white damage, so we can ignore that for Swipe/Mangle/Lacerate.

Miss - 9.0%
Dodge - 6.5%
Parry - 9.0%
Block - 6.5%

31% total, or a 69% crit cap with no hit rating or expertise. Since we'll be tanking in mostly DPS leather that's loaded with hit rating and expertise rating, our crit cap in WotLK will be much higher I'm sure.

I was just talking about Swipe spam, I know our white attacks will have a crit cap 25% lower (44%, before hit and expertise).

Maybe if you overgear the place rage is an issue (ie: T5 feral in kara where you're not taking any damage to get rage). But I think when you go in at the recommended level you pretty much have a non stop rage bar going anyways (from taking hits and getting rage back on the handful of crits). I know when I was tanking opera trash in blues my rage bar always seemed to be full. Same thing if I'm tanking 3 mobs that I don't overgear by a huge amount.


I think casters will still be the "go to" AOE. Sure they have mana bars, but they just do so much more damage. Usually trash designed for AOE is light on hit points, and scaled knowing the real AOE classes have finite mana bars. I've done lots of Hyjal on my mage, and mana can be an issue, but with careful management I always seem to go OOM just as the trash is falling over dead. I can't recall off the top of my head what stuff crits for, but I think it's in the range of 650-1300 depending if I'm AOE capped or not, and of course which spells I'm using.

It would also be difficult to position 15 mobs in a nice tight conal shape in front of you. Stuff you don't really worry about on a mage spamming arcane explosion and blast wave.

Edited, Oct 4th 2008 1:58am by mikelolol