It’s that wonderful time of year, when Child’s Play is once more rolling into action.

And of course, I will be exhorting you to do your part.

/exhort
/exhort
/whipsmack!

Okay, I better stop. Some of you are starting to get excited.

This year, Cassie and I will be donating as usual, but I’m also going to do something a bit more ‘reader involving’.

This year, I will be holding some kind of charity drive, where I will have prizes, and you can donate money for a chance to win.

I think it should go without saying that 100% of the money collected will go to Child’s Play. But nah, I better say it.

100% of the money brought in will go to Child’s Play.

There will be more about that very soon, after Cassie and I figure out what form it should take. A raffle seems obvious, but there must be certain limitations on some types of events based on legal rules from various countries. Quebec, I understand, hates for it’s citizens to win prizes. So we will have to investigate.

If you happen to HAVE a prize you would like to donate, feel free to contact me at “tigerlordgm AT yahoo DOT com” to work out the details. Title of email - Bear Blog Childs Play.

In the meantime, remember… a donation to Child’s Play serves two wonderful purposes…

It provides some measure of comfort, joy and distraction to children all over the world who are sick and suffering in Children’s Hospitals…

And it provides a wonderful /facepalm to all those ignorant asshats that think all gamers are selfish anti-social basement-dwelling geeks that live at mommy’s house and plan Columbine-style massacres to make up for feelings of inadequacy.

Just think, every time you donate a dollar to Child’s Play, you make Jack Thompson cry.

Cry painful, bitter tears.

How can you possibly resist?

HOW?!?!

Now that our pets are permanently part of our characters, we can take them everywhere we go.

But some of us have lots of pets, and limited bar space for putting them at easy button press to call them out.

What can we do?

I know that on my characters, each has no more than one or two favorite pets that get the button bar treatment for easy access, and the rest?

The rest languish, all alone, in my pet tab.

Well, that’s silly, isn’t it?

The great and powerful Tekkub has graciously provided us with a means for those pets to see the light of day once more!

Tekkub has updated his Kennel addon, so that whenever you zone or mount or in any way do something that normally puts your pet away, it automatically pulls a different random pet back out when appropriate.

I’ve been playing with Kennel, since I have quite a few pets (49 as of right now… I’ll be getting number 50 with the advent of Darkmoon Faire in Shatt on Monday), and I can tell you, it’s a lot of fun.

It is an ‘install and forget’ addon. There are no commands or configurable settings. It simply tries to pull out a pet at random when possible, and changes the pet each time.

The only error I have had with it is when it tries to pull out a Snowman or Red Helper Box, and fails because I have no Snowballs in my inventory.

I could easily fix this by putting some of my many Snowball stacks in my bags. I’ve had Snowballs in the bank untouched since last Christmas, isn’t about time I used some?

I really enjoy this addon…

…but you know I’m going to quibble, right?

I would love to have the ability to check or uncheck which pets it will be allowed to choose from.

For Christmas, I could choose to limit myself to only the winter pets.

For a Hunter with a flying combat pet, I could select only Owls and other avian pets.

For a cat person, I could set it for only the many, many kitty pets in the game. Shit, I could make an alt called “Scarycatlady”, and make a female human Mage with the scowly face and have lots and lots of cat pets to come out at random.

I suppose I could do that by making a new alt and choosing to never learn any pet other than a cat.

It would just be fun, that’s all, and give us a little more control over the random selection.

Or, for the cheap among us, we could just lock out pets that require Snowballs for activation.

Regardless of what additions I mght like someone else to do the work of coding, I want to thank Tekkub for creating this addon, and giving my pets the chance to see the light of day…

And for causing someone like Nasirah to say, “What kind of frog is THAT?”, in response to my cute little Jubling.

EDIT!

So far, I’ve had suggestions for two mroe awesome pet summoning addons, Nugminipet and Livestock. I’m trying them all.

If you have more suggestions on pet (or mount!) addons, feel free to mention them in the comments, and I’ll check them all out and then revise the post.

Ah, one last blast from the past.

We scheduled a Karazhan last night, a mid-week run since Friday is another Zul’Aman clear, and then it’s expansion time.

To my surprise, the Karazhan run filled up on the calander fairly quick.

Perhaps it was due to our stated intention to, oh, I dunno… have a Moonkin for main tank.

That’s right, as discussed on the WoW Insider radio show last weekend (at least I think we discussed it on the show, I’m pretty sure we did) I asked Nasirah if she felt like trying something new, main tanking as a Moonkin.

She had made a forum post a while back saying she wanted to give Moonkin tanking a try, so what better time than now?

Well, last night we enjoyed the frantic fun of a Moonkin main tanking abnd solo pulling whenever possible.

We did the trash to Attumen, Attumen himself, the trash to Moroes, Moroes himself (with a Feral Druid off-tank), and Prince whatsisface the Blood Elf fashion plate with Nasirah Main Tanking.

It was a lot of fun, and a lot of craziness.

I’ll be honest, we had quite a few deaths along the way, but I have to say; I think our deaths were more due to people leaving their comfort zone and having to react to familiar situations in unfamiliar ways than anything else.

I think I’ve got some support on that, from the fact that after Mirkblood, who was still available to be pounded on last night, we changed over to two Feral Druids as tanks, Elysse and Coralin, and they tanked the rest of the night, and we were still acting goofy and pulling early and sending pets off into the unknown like we had never seen the inside of a Raid before.

It wasn’t until we got to Maiden that folks calmed down.

Oh yeah, and we did do a full clear of Karazhan. Nightbane, Netherspite, Prince, seasonal boss, the whole shebang.

I was sad to do it, because we were having fun, but after the seasonal boss went down I looked at the clock, and decided that if we were going to see Prince before midnight, we needed to change up tankage to a chain pull situation. So I asked Nasirah to let Elysse take over as Main Tank.

She was doing so well, too. Our only obstacle was time.

We didn’t have a single Priest on the run, in fact we didn’t change our lineup all night so there wasn’t a Shackle thrown down at all. It didn’t matter. And from the sounds of things, people enjoyed having there be a big element of risk to the reward.

Okay, we did have three Hunters. It wasn’t like we were lacking for Misdirects or firepower last night.

It wasn’t as badas it could have been, having someone else tank instead of Nas. If we had one of our more experienced Karazhan tanks, it would have been a harder decision, but instead Elysse got her first chance to main tank Nightbane, to once again be the first main tank leading the way on Netherspite, and enjoyed her first shot (and a successful one!) as main tank on Prince.

And may I say that both Nasirah and Elysse did a wonderful job.

It was definitely fun to shake things up. Nasirah put out some awesome threat doing straight DPS, and on Moroes she just kicked butt.

On Moroes, I kept a close eye on the threat meter, and it was clear that she was having no trouble whatsoever establishing and holding threat on Moroes with a Feral Tank as off tank on him.

If there were any real issues, it would have to be my assumption that folks would, at this point in the raid game, just automagically know that, unlike a Paladin tank, you actually have to let the person tanking get in some shots before you just open up and unload your big crits.

We had quite a few single person deaths along the way from prematurely pulling aggro… but at the same time, we had a lot of ‘Hey, we lived’ moments when aggro was pulled, and people just hunkered down and tanked harder, shot faster, and healed more frenetically.

So, many congratulations to Nasirah for successfully main tanking the seasonal boss… not too many tanks can claim that honor before he’s gone.

I’m very sure Nas gained a new perspective on the joys of tanking last night.

Who knows, maybe she’ll respec Feral and start competing with the others to lead the raids?

Yeah… yeah, I didn’t think so either.

Oh, and the award for best “Famous Last Words” moment has to go to Squirrelz on his Hunter… who, minutes after stating in Ventrilo “At least I never pulled an Elite group”… pulled an Elite group.

I had to hold my sides, I was laughing so hard.

Grats folks! A heck of a fun time. Next time, I’d say we give Nasirah more time and tank a lot more… but at this point, there might not be a ‘next time’, so we’ll see, won’t we?

Let’s talk about some of the possible ramifications of this armor stuff, shall we?

Just some idle, waiting for Wrath speculation.

Ghostcrawler said;

ARMOR
We are changing the way bear armor works so that bonus armor on items does not receive the bear armor multiplier. Specifically this means that trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks with bonus armor will not be multiplied by the bear bonus. The normal armor on leather will still be multiplied by this bonus. We are also going to remove bonus armor from Feral staves. You’ll get your bonus armor from the leather you acquire.Examples:
1) A ring that grants 100 bonus armor will now grant a bear 100 armor (not ~470 armor).
2) Leather legs with 253 armor will still grant a bear ~1190 armor (not 253 armor).
3) A feral staff will now grant 0 armor.

We are making this change because armor is such a good stat for bears that it makes taking pieces with bonus armor a non-decision and we don’t want acquiring these pieces, which tend to not be common, to be so much of a barrier to a druid who wants to tank a raid.

This change will NOT be in effect when Lich King ships. We are letting you know this now so that you don’t go through heroic efforts to acquire items like the Badge of Tenacity, or Defender’s Code. Defender’s Code, with 850 armor, will still be a good trinket. But it won’t be an insanely good trinket for a bear.

We will adjust the bear armor modifiers so that your net mitigation does NOT go down with these changes. Let me repeat: this is not a nerf to Feral armor. It is a change to the amount of armor you get from gear with bonus armor.

I’d like to call your attention to that last line.

We will adjust the bear armor modifiers so that your net mitigation does NOT go down with these changes.

Let’s start by thinking about what is implied there… and then realistically think about what will have to happen.

As of right now, the armor modifier for mitigation is built into the core Dire Bear form ability.

Regardless of your spec, whether Balance or Resto or Feral or cross-specced, if you shift into Dire Bear form, you get 370% increased armor contribution from items applied to physical damage mitigation.

This used to be 400%, and provided the core of our damage mitigation. With Patch 3.0.2, we received the dual changes of Bear armor mod reduced to 370%, and Protector of the Pack adding 12% damage mitigation.

All other things being equal, this was a net improvement, because armor only provides damage mitigation to physical attacks. Protector of the Pack applies to all damage types.

If you are specced 8 points into the Feral talent tree, you can get 3/3 Thick Hide, which increases your armor contribution from items futher by 10%. Noted? Okay, let’s ignore that going forward.

All of this is just to nail down the point that, previous to the patch, you got the vast majority of your damage reduction just from wearing high base armor and shifting to Dire Bear.

After the patch, part of our mitigation was moved much deeper into the Feral tree, armor on leather itself (except for PvP gear) was reduced, and Dire Bear armor reduction was also reduced, so just as an example, Resto Druids in PvP became significantly squishier in Bear.

But what would happen if, as has been implied by GC, the armor we lose from Rings, Trinkets, Necklaces and Cloaks were made up by once more increasing the Dire Bear form armor multiplier?

If that were to happen, then every Druid regardless of spec would gain the increased armor modifier benefit of Dire Bear form as soon as they shift.

Now, you may say to me, “So what? Say we had 5k armor from all our gear multiplied to 23.5k, and now we get 2500 armor boosted to 23.5k. What’s the difference?” (It’s just an example, ok, please don’t quibble about the math).

The difference is, Resto-specced Druids are not now generally wearing the high armor value Rings, Trinkets, Necklaces and Cloaks that the change would be intended to compensate for.

So in PvP, Resto druids would be able to shift into Dire Bear and get much higher damage mitigation than they are seeing right now, without losing the effects on Items they would prefer.

Does anyone really think that, in an effort to improve itemization for Feral Bear tanks, they are going to make changes that are going to severely improve Resto Druid PvP survivability in Arenas?

Yeah, me neither.

So I’m curious to see how this really gets implemented.

I would not be surprised to see Thick Hide buffed a great deal, but moved much deeper into the Feral tree.

Or even the creation of a new talent, deeper into the tree, that would serve the same function.

Or even a special version of the Dire Bear form, like Grumpy Bear or Arctic Terror Bear deep in the Feral tree that has an increased armor modifier that other specs won’t get. Who the heck knows?

I just have a real hard time seeing Dire Bear form’s armor multiplied to the extent that it would have to be, to compensate for losing those spots, while staying open to all Druids regardless of spec.

Let’s use some real math here.

My Druid is still using the following items;

• Exalted Violet Eye ring (392 armor)
• Ring of the Stalwart Protector (392 armor)
• Slikk’s Cloak of Placation (346 armor)
• Badge of Tenacity (308 armor)
• Earthwarden (500 armor)

I’m getting a total of 1938 armor from those pieces. We’ll ignore Thick Hide right now, and just look at the 370% armor modifier.

So that 1938 armor from Items is currently worth 1938* 3.7+1938=9108 armor in Dire Bear form.

After the proposed change, those items would be worth a flat 1438 armor, with Earthwarden being worth zero. A net loss of 7670 armor.

So, the Dire Bear armor modifier would have to somehow take my leather gear and boost it up to add 7670 armor to break even. Hmm…

I’m wearing, as leather gear;

• Malorne Head (308)
• Malorne Gloves (237 armor)
• Tameless Breeches (388 armor)
• Vestments of Hibernation (404 armor)
• Belt of Natural Power (227 armor)
• Footwraps of Wild Encroachment (278 armor)
• Band of the Swift Paw (177 armor)
• Merciless Gladiator’s Dragonhide Spaulders (377 armor)

So from leather I’m getting 2396 armor, which comes out to 2396*3.7+2396= 11261 armor.

So before changes, I’ve got 9108 armor from Items, and 11261 from Leather, for a total of 20369.

After the proposed change, at 370% armor modifier, I’d go from 20369 to 12699 armor.

So what Ghostcrawler is proposing is to increase the Dire Bear armor modifier so that the 11261 armor from Leather would make up for the 7670 armor I lost from items. Right? 

So we need 2396 base armor*new armor modifier+2396+1438 base Item value to = 20369.

Well, it turns out that an armor modifier of 690% would result in a grand total of 20366 armor.

(Edit: There was a small mistake in my math that I have corrected. The first pass I forgot to remove the 500 armor value from Earthwarden as an existing post-fix armor value. I’m glad I re-read that. Sorry.)

Again, just using my own gear, it would have to go from 370% to 690% for me to break even.

Think about that. How likely is that? And I’m still using all the armor items that supposedly they want me to get away from. If we were to remove the 1438 item armor, we’re talking an armor modifier of 700%.

No, I think I’m going to go out on a limb and state that I do not believe that Dire Bear form is going to get a flat armor modifier boost applying to all specs that brings it from 370% to 690%.

Feel free to disagree. Hell, maybe we’ll get all get a 700% or 800% buff. It’s a crazy world, after all, and it’s just a game. I wouldn’t complain at all, that’s for sure. It would make my survivability as a tank a lot easier, so sure. Go for it!

But I still doubt it, simply from a cross-spec PvP aspect.

It’s also interesting to speculate on what standard they will be using when it comes to what they think we would have equipped at 80 to raid as tanks.

After all, we haven’t seen level 80 equipped Bear tanks yet outside of Beta. The game is supposed to be balanced around level 80 raiding, and Bears are supposed to be comparable to other tanks.

So they are going to have to determine where our armor is supposed to be at those levels of play as Bear tanks to compare to other tank classes, and then determine how close to that value we could get with 370% armor modifier with only the existing leather armor that is properly adjusted for Rogues.

And then they will have to increase our armor modifier or play with our talents in some way to make up for the shortfall, without making us weaker than otehr tanks, or stronger.

…….

Look, I know that sooner or later this will all get worked out, but let’s be honest. This is going to be a huge amount of work, and it’s not going to happen overnight.

And you know the game of yo-yo Blizzard is playing with Retribution Paladins right now?

Yeah, we’ve got our turn coming. Bet on it.

What I’m hoping is, we’re either going to see it happen early enough that everyone will be able to plan for 80 with the changed stat values in mind… or it will happen late enough that we’ll be able to tank effectively through 5 mans and quests until everyone hits 80 and starts raiding and gets comfortable, and only THEN will they change up on us, before we get much past Naxxramas and we will be able to adjust our expectations with everything we need already in place before we pass on too many drops.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The Developers go through Hell trying to balance things out fairly, don’t they.

In this case, all of this and the inevitable QQ is going to come from a Developer desire to make it easier for us to get a drop we can roll on, without endlessly passing in the hopes of seeing that one item with Armor… that the Warrior will ninja, damn him.

Not that I’m still bitter over that Iron Band of the Unbreakable that bastard Fury Warrior rolled on in Old Hillsbrad because he ‘might want to tank someday’.

No, not at all.

That prick.

Ghostcrawler made what, to me, was a surprise announcement yesterday detailing upcoming Feral changes that are going to have a drastic impact on how we approach our itemization. 

Here is his post in it’s entirety; 

ARMOR
We are changing the way bear armor works so that bonus armor on items does not receive the bear armor multiplier. Specifically this means that trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks with bonus armor will not be multiplied by the bear bonus. The normal armor on leather will still be multiplied by this bonus. We are also going to remove bonus armor from Feral staves. You’ll get your bonus armor from the leather you acquire.

Examples:
1) A ring that grants 100 bonus armor will now grant a bear 100 armor (not ~470 armor).
2) Leather legs with 253 armor will still grant a bear ~1190 armor (not 253 armor).
3) A feral staff will now grant 0 armor.

We are making this change because armor is such a good stat for bears that it makes taking pieces with bonus armor a non-decision and we don’t want acquiring these pieces, which tend to not be common, to be so much of a barrier to a druid who wants to tank a raid.

This change will NOT be in effect when Lich King ships. We are letting you know this now so that you don’t go through heroic efforts to acquire items like the Badge of Tenacity, or Defender’s Code. Defender’s Code, with 850 armor, will still be a good trinket. But it won’t be an insanely good trinket for a bear.

We will adjust the bear armor modifiers so that your net mitigation does NOT go down with these changes. Let me repeat: this is not a nerf to Feral armor. It is a change to the amount of armor you get from gear with bonus armor.

MANA
We are adding an effect to a deep Feral talent (something like Primal Tenacity) to further reduce the cost of shapeshifting into cat or bear by 50%. This talent will stack with Natural Shapeshifter for a total cost reduction of 80%. PvP-focused druids can get both talents to shift easily and often despite, no longer having Int on gear at level 80.

PROTECTOR OF THE PACK
We are removing the group requirements from this talent. The new tooltip will say: “Increases your attack power by X and reduces the damage you take in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by Y.” The values of X and Y themselves are not changing.

Again, these changes will NOT be in Nov 13 for Lich King’s launch. We will add them in a patch that will come out sometime before the major Ulduar content patch. We’re letting you know now so that you can choose quest rewards and loot drops accordingly.

As you can see, Ghostcrawler had three main points.

In no particular order;

1) Protector of the Pack will no longer be affected by how many folks are in your party, but retains it’s stats. Win!

2) More shifting for less Mana cost in the deep Feral tree.

Now, this one I think will be a buff, but I’d like to know a little more about what Talent they are going to add the effect to. Right now, there are a lot of Talents in the deep Feral tree that I simply don’t take due to a lack of points at 70. At 80, it eases a lot, but depending on what they tack this onto, and whether or not they modify an existing Talent to more properly fit with the ‘PvP’ utilization of this might make it a PvP only Talent. Only time will really tell.

That we will have the choice to take it if we’re all that worried about Mana, should effectively shut at least some of us up. So win?

3) Bear Armor will come from equipped Leather. Period.

Okay, he has promised that our Bear form armor multiplier will be increased so that our mitigation from armor will stay the same with less actual armor to counteract the removal of Rings, Necklaces, Trinkets, Cloaks and Staves. 

In other posts, Ghostcrawler has said they are also looking at removing the concept of bonus ‘Green’ armor from gear entirely, meaning that PvP gear would not be quite as much of a no-brainer as it is right now for tanking.

So what we might be looking at would be gear that would have a set armor value according to it’s item level, and the variance in gear would be in how the stats play out.

Will there still be ‘best of class’ drops for Bear tanking?

Always.

But a change like this should mean that the difference in Bear tanking capability and mitigation should be a lot closer between tanks of various progression levels.

Pre-patch and Wrath, there was a massive difference between the mitigation and survivability of a tank dinging 70 equipped with AH greens and blues and quest rewards, and a tank that had made repeated runs into specific instances looking for that one perfect drop.

How many Feral Druids out there ground out their Cenarion Expedition rep to Exalted for that one, ‘must have’ Earthwarden weapon?

Would the answer be “All of us”?

Yes, we had Braxxis’ Staff of Slumber as an easily obtained alternative, but the fact remains, grind grnid grind to get one item that was considered darn near required pre-SSC.

There were so many items like that. Some you could AH, but others you just had to keep running and running and hope for a drop… and have to put up with there not really being that many alternatives.

Well, this is all about having more alternatives while you hunt that one perfect drop.

YES, there will still be items that are best in class. Yes, we will still have items that we desire over the rest for an equipment slot.

But, we should be able to have a vast assortment of viable alternatives to choose from to help us tank effectively in 5 mans while leveling along the way.

And that I think is pretty awesome.

But this whole thing? The changes and uncertainty?

THIS is why I have not done a single guide since all this went into production. I am waiting for a reasonable moment when WotLK has been out, and we have done at least a little leveling, before I start doing gear analysis and upgrade planning for level 80 raiding.

Because you just never know, and we don’t need it yet.

I’m liking these planned changes… so far. I hope you do too.