According to a video I saw Manual Crowd Pummeler is better for feral druids than Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian. This is something which I sincerely think that they should fix. Stuff like this, which was discovered on private servers and theorycrafted to death, is not vanilla or nochanges for me. If this was discovered during vanilla I'm pretty sure it would get fixed by Blizzard.
There is something wrong if a lv29 item is better than a Legendary, don't you think?
The same can be said about Wolfshead Helm I suppose. Perhaps other stuff aswell, suggestions?
So I'm not sure I'm a fan of changing this. But, I will say that you raise an interesting point.
What's important to remember is that 1.12 was not a finished product. WoW has never been a finished product. Vanilla class designer Kevin Jordan has said several things would have been changed for vanilla if Burning Crusade wasn't around the corner. For example, he said a Patch 1.13 back in the day would have nerfed fury warrior dps and buffed Paladin & Druid tanking (those changes were added to BC). You have to remember contingency. 1.12 was not the destined, finished product destiny for the game, it was just where the game happened to be before BC came.
So I'm not sure about changing this. Kevin Jordan said in a podcast a week or two ago was talking about the Wolf'shead Helm and Crowd Pummeler, and said that the solution was probably going to be to buff cat dps and find ways to make Wolfshead/Crowd Pummeler less powerful, with either talent changes or alternative items to boost cats back to where they were using the items. Cat dps would have likely been buffed on its own anyway because, per Jordan, hybrid class non-healing roles were never intended to be as weak as they were, but again this all was held off until BC because it was just around the corner.
I'm not a #nochanges purist, but I'd worry that this change is unncessary for one chief reason: even with Crowd Pummeler and Wolfshead, it's not that cat dps is competing with rogues/warriors. I'm pretty sure they still lag behind. I think it's not great that these two items are mandatory to make cat dps remotely viable, especially when Atiesh is (allegedly) is less powerful than the Crowd Pummeler. But I'm not sure I can justify the change. Cat dps is still not super great even with the gimmicks.
Now let's not act like the items aren't problematic. These items would have been nerfed back in the day, but it's not clear that saying that they would have been nerfed had the game gone longer until BC or if players discovered the items and starting widely using them back then is enough justification to make changes to the game for Classic.
According to a video I saw Manual Crowd Pummeler is better for feral druids than Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian. This is something which I sincerely think that they should fix. Stuff like this, which was discovered on private servers and theorycrafted to death, is not vanilla or nochanges for me. If this was discovered during vanilla I'm pretty sure it would get fixed by Blizzard.
There is something wrong if a lv29 item is better than a Legendary, don't you think?
The same can be said about Wolfshead Helm I suppose. Perhaps other stuff aswell, suggestions?
You mean regarding dps or tanking?
According to a video I saw Manual Crowd Pummeler is better for feral druids than Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian. This is something which I sincerely think that they should fix. Stuff like this, which was discovered on private servers and theorycrafted to death, is not vanilla or nochanges for me. If this was discovered during vanilla I'm pretty sure it would get fixed by Blizzard.
There is something wrong if a lv29 item is better than a Legendary, don't you think?
The same can be said about Wolfshead Helm I suppose. Perhaps other stuff aswell, suggestions?
You mean regarding dps or tanking?
DPS.
Could you link the video you were talking about?
Could you link the video you were talking about?
Quaria HW wasn't saying it is bis for feral dps but rather feral druid but he should ve specified that the crowd pummeler is bis just for tanking. I don't see why would attack speed boost alone be better then attack power increase from the other weapons. Wolfshead helm however is bis for feral dps.
Crowd pummeler is good for the increase of maul hits per sec for higher threat generation it is not that impactful on dps feral.
Its speed increase is insane for druids, this is correct. But its just unfeasible to use this regularly. The 50% attack speed is for a very small amount of time and it only gets 3 charges. Its great to farm up a few to keep as an ace in your sleeve, however farming it until you have bags of pummelers is not realistics.
It is not even a guaranteed drop. You would be better off with Bone crusher or The Unstoppable Force and spending the time you would spend on farming pummeler's on farming gold or herbs for consumables.
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Wolfshead is different. You have to have the right build for it, learn how to powershift effectively and get the timing right. If you cant learn how to use the mechanics that make it BiS you may as well just use regular stat appropriate helms
@Quaria HW wasn't saying it is bis for feral dps but rather feral druid but he should ve specified that the crowd pummeler is bis just for tanking. I don't see why would attack speed boost alone be better then attack power increase from the other weapons. Wolfshead helm however is bis for feral dps.
Crowd pummeler is good for the increase of maul hits per sec for higher threat generation it is not that impactful on dps feral.
Actually he said for ”cat” but it doesn’t matter. Even if its bis for bear, not cat, my point still stands.
however farming it until you have bags of pummelers is not realistics.
I agree, do a degree, that’s what I dislike about it. Its 1: a lv29 that’s better than a Naxx leg, and 2: it demands the ferals to no-life in order to be competative. Both points being stupid and very bad itemization.
Perhaps other stuff aswell, suggestions?
Since Vanilla, the experience of the players has evolved and so has the meta.
Back then, caming across mages in full T1 was quite a common thing. Same for pals, heal shams or warlocks. At this time, we thought, because it was epic stuff, it was better than blue.
However, on private servers, mages in full T1 are a rare thing. At such point that, to stick with the T1 mage, the https://classic.wowhead.com/item=16802/arcanist-belt is near an automatic sold, https://classic.wowhead.com/item=16800/arcanist-boots are keepen and everything else is desenchanted on private servers.
Every damn dps casters has the https://classic.wowhead.com/item=12930/briarwood-reed just like every healer has https://classic.wowhead.com/item=18371/mindtap-talisman .
Another good example are the heal shams and heal pals, who want to be optimized, being full or nearly full in cloths. I don't remember seeing many shams in cloths back then.
So yeah, a lot of stuff will be far more valuable than they were in Vanilla (hello https://classic.wowhead.com/item=11684/ironfoe , if private servers haven't screwed the proc rate).
In the most recent episode of Countdown To Classic they talk about druids with one of the vanilla designers, and they talk about the https://classic.wowhead.com/item=9449/manual-crowd-pummeler and the https://classic.wowhead.com/item=8345/wolfshead-helm specifically. It's an interesting listen, I recommend checking it out.
The druid part starts at around 40 mins, and the part about items start at arond 51 mins:
https://countdowntoclassic.com/2019/03/27/episode-97-mute-speaks-kevin-jordan-on-druids-loot-trading-rp-pvp-av/
To the question: I agree that it is silly for a low level blue item to be stronger than legendaries etc, and I find it hard to believe it being anything else but an unintended flaw. However - I don't think they should, nor do I want it to be fixed. It's a reason why it wasn't discovered during vanilla (or at least not common knowledge), it's such a weird and specific case that doesn't make much of an impact.
All it really does is allow an underrepresented, underperforming class to compete with the rest. It has a really high maintenance requirement so it's only going to be used by the top few % of druid players that have the time for it.
Also, personally I adore this type of emergent gameplay. And find it fitting in neatly with all of vanilla's quirky consumables and special items.
If anyone is interested in what Blizzard ended up doing to combat the abuse of them, in TBC they just took away its charges and gave it a one hour cooldown
Of the two I'd rather see Wolfshead Helm and powershifting addressed since the way it changes your playstyle is so meta. It makes zero sense that a druid should constantly shift in and out of cat form in the middle of battle.
Of the two I'd rather see Wolfshead Helm and powershifting addressed since the way it changes your playstyle is so meta. It makes zero sense that a druid should constantly shift in and out of cat form in the middle of battle.
I agree that it makes no sense.