Javan mentioned this in a comment, and I wanted to make sure folks had a chance to see it, I never really talked about it, I just equipped it and moved on.

Yes, the meta gem Austere Earthsiege Diamond DOES, in fact, affect all armor for bears after the multiplier.

That is not a bug, that is working as intended.

According to a post a while back by Ghostcrawler, this is working as intended. Really.

He makes it feel that this is actually the MUST HAVE feral bear gem.

Ghostcrawler’s post says the following;

Some more details to help answer some of the questions we’ve seen:

– Cloaks do have base armor which gets multipled by the bear bonus.
– There is no multiplier on any bonus armor. Not the bear bonus. Not the talent bonuses.
– There is a 2% armor benefit you can get from a metagem.
– The ultimate bear modifier should be 4.7 (Dire Bear form) x 1.66 (Survival of the Fittest) x 1.1 (Thick Hide) x 1.02 (meta gem).
– The best bear we can create in current itemization has 35,907 armor, which is 68.34% mitigation vs. level 83 bosses or 70.21% mitigation versus level 80 mobs.
– Before these changes, you might have been able to build a bear with nearly 40,000 armor, but that relies on using Defender’s Code and Origin of Nightmares, items of such ridiculous power that we were going to nerf them anyway before this change. (Now they’re fine.)
– Note how close that 40,000 armor is to the cap already. :(
– We do have concerns block may be too good a stat for future raids, and we’ll keep an eye on it.
– Equipping a weapon will still boost Savage Roar (and everything else) the way it does currently.

Bottom line: armor was too good for druids. That was a blessing if you could get the items and a curse if you could not.

Now, you may ask yourself, “Bear, if Ghostcrawler said all this, why didn’t you mention it yesterday? Why are you just now bringing it up? It says RIGHT THERE that base armor on cloaks was going to get multiplied. Are you stupid or what?”

Well, see the thing is… I remembered this as the post where GC said that the Meta Gem affected bear form multipliers, and the discussion about our armor multiplying in general. It was only in looking it up again now for the meta gem quote that I went “Oh hey, lookie there. Cloak armor all spelled out in blue. Well, screw me.”

For the word firect from the crabs mouth, go read the post “Upcoming Hunter changes part III”. 

Okay, so it was changed after to say feral changes. It started out as Hunter, so sue me.

Ghostcrawler answer to comments from the thread include; 

---

Q u o t e:
defenders code has 850 armor. Is that considered bonus armor? if so than it does not get modified by thick hide and will continue to be 850 armor no matter what.

---

Defender’s Code will grant 850 armor unless you have the meta-gem.

---

Q u o t e:
if the wording you posted in your previous post holds true, than obviously only the 8 item slots will be affected by SOTF, but what thick hide affects even with your new post is still ambiguous.

---

Thick Hide, Dire Bear and Survival of the Fittest only affect base armor. This is the armor on all the base armor on your gear. Leather never has bonus armor, so it’s not complicated. Rings, necks, trinkets and weapons can have bonus armor. This is usually shown with the armor number in green, but confusingly, not always. Cloaks are complicated because they have base armor (which is multiplied) and sometimes bonus armor (which is not).

---

Q u o t e:
requesting further clarification of what exactly thick hide will and will not multiply.

---

Thick hide multiplies the base armor on leather and cloaks.

---

Q u o t e:
also, what exactly does the meta effect, from your wording it looks like it will affect everything.

---

The meta gem increases all your armor so it’s just a 2% bonus to everything. You want this gem. Fortunately it is not a rare drop like some of the other gear so we know you can get it.

---

Q u o t e:
finally, in a previous post, you stated that all armor item budget would be reallocated on staves. For example my staff from heroic halls of lightning has 700 armor. Will it continue to have 700 armor that just no longer gets multiplied by anything, or will those item budgets be spent and the staff will gain (purely random here) say 20 agi and 30 stam?

---

It will get 700 armor that is not multiplied by anything (except the meta).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 11:23 am and is filed under Bear Tank Gear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.