Savage Defense, the tanking feral druid`s absorption mechanic, is undergoing some changes in patch 4.1 to ramp up its strength to be on par with the mitigation mechanics of other tanks. Forum blue Daxxarri responded to one player`s fear that the new implementation of Savage Defense isn`t working out so hot. The response discusses client latency, the appearing of shields working or not, and how the combat log displays certain types of information.
Re: Support for Savage Defense issues One is that the combat log is saying "refresh" in a confusing way when it`s actually just applying damage to the shield (i.e. a new harbor has not been created). We`re looking at some ways that power be fixed.
The second event has to do with our combat log (or 3rd party logs) apparently disagreeing about what happened. Remember, our combat calculations are done on the land side and then reported to the client, but the node only gets those reports periodically. The content has to go a potentially long distance between your customer and our realms. It`s important that the calculations are done realm-side though, to maintain gameplay integrity.
Because of the latency inherent in client - realm communication, it can look that a hit lands before the shield procs, yet still applies to the shield, leading to the mistaken impression that the proc isn`t occurring properly. In reality, the host is (probably) performing the steps correctly, but the client sometimes lags behind. For example, there`s a cause where what actually happened is this sequence: 1) shield proc, 2) hit, 3) absorb, but the customer is slightly behind and instead (incorrectly) shows 1) hit, 2) shield proc, 3) absorb in the combat log. Or it could appear that you lost shield points without really taking less damage, when in reality either the screen or your health pool weren`t affected. Or it could appear that if you take multiple hits almost simultaneously that the shield did naught to the later hits, but in reality the shell was asleep on the first hit and your customer just hasn`t been notified of that fact yet. We will investigate this number only to make sure, but we`re pretty convinced that Savage Defense and Blood Shield are running correctly and are just sometimes getting misreported. With Savage Defense lasting longer in 4.1, you may see this form of thing more often.
The takeaway is that latency can in some cases cause combat log display issues like the one we`re seeing here. We infer that a lot of you use the combat log as a reporting tool to analyze a struggle after the press has concluded. The combat log as currently implemented is alleged to make you a data flow in real time. We`d like to redesign the combat log to fill that post-combat analysis role better (as Ghostcrawler alluded to in a recent Q&A) but that is a Really Big Task. Just delaying the current combat log so that it was in 100% parity with the server could have serious issues with 3rd party mods among other things, so we get to be measured not to become a single love and end up dismantling the unit machine, so to speak. Despite its limitations, it remains an exact and useful instrument in the huge bulk of circumstances.
For reference, here is the new implementation of Savage Defense:
March 30 Patch 4.1 PTR Patch notes
Feral tanks have been awaiting a modification to Savage Defense for most of Cataclysm, and the new implementation seems like it should fix the issue. While we look for a fix on the actual ability on the PTR, we should be timid about jumping to conclusions about whether an ability is passing is as implemented - it is a public test realm, after all. The blue response is detailed enough that Blizzard is assuring us, most likely, that it`s an effect it understands internally and is fixing, rather than having to get a statement about a have not fully implemented on the test realm. 
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