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Feral changes, Part II
On the subject of weapons, this change should be transparent to most druids. You will end up having a few more items that you can use, but your feral staves will continue to do the damage they do now. If it makes it clearer, imagine that feral attack power is not going away as a concept, but weapon dps will instead translate to their current FAP values. This is also not license for us to never again add weapons which are optimized for druids. It should just provide more options in between major upgrades.
On the subject of armor, the intent of the change is to give you more options in which trinkets and other jewelry you use, instead of always having to rely on the (relatively rare) bonus armor pieces. (We don't think the solution of just dropping bonus armor pieces everywhere is a great one either -- no single stat should trump the others by that much.) The change isn't intended to be a nerf at all. A lot of numbers have been thrown around in this thread. Give me some time to review them and see where any discrepancies lie.
Our design remains to have fewer specialized items drop so that more loot is actually valued by someone in the group. A lot of the druid itemization was a relic of the older system and we have been wanting to convert it over. But with any change like this, it may take some time before all of the rough edges are smoothed over. To use a tired cliche, the designers tend to take the stance that the design of WoW is a journey not a destination.
Block is a very good stat now, and we have read a lot about the notion that "unblocked hits are the new crushing blows." We don't want the block mechanic to mean that death knights and druids (and possibly even paladins) are left behind. Again the goal is to have four viable tank classes. That doesn't mean identical, but it also doesn't mean that druids get swapped out for some fights or relegated to permanent off-tank status.
