Originally Posted by Valerian
While this is a concern at first glance, there is a lot we don't know about yet. One of the biggest "problems" in our scaling compared to other melee is the fact they get a HUGE bonus from WF compared to us. Another is haste. A mechanic that translate haste into a faster energy regen (or somesuch) would alter the balance considerably. There's also the fact that the synergy between our new abilities may be superior to the synergy between abilities other classes get to "make up the slack" so to speak.
For example, the energy restore on TF at 60 energy every 30 seconds is already a 2 energy per second increase in regen. Thats roughly double the effect of our current 2T4 bonus. People asked for that as a talent and got a better version of it instead, though an indirect way.
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The scaling issues with regard to WF and haste are a problem, true, especially haste not affecting our energy regen. But given that haste is now widely available, we can be rebalanced around it. But will we?
If you check out toskks generator with 0 attack power on a fairly debuffed target, you see that our non gear base line starts already at a pretty impressive 300 dps (at 70), which comes mostly from these static modifiers. So our dps is basically a function f( gear) = 300 + gear * druid-gear-factor. Rogues start out lower, let us assume that g( gear) = 150 + gear * rogue-gear-factor. If your goal is to have rogues do 2.5K dps endgame and druids 2.1K, then this formula implies that at a gear level where rogues do 1K dps, druids will do 950 dps, and not 840 if you desire to keep their relative power.
Now rogues whine, Blizzard panics, and changes the scaling that feral do only 850 dps at the entry level. But that means that at the end game level, ferals will do 1820 dps now instead of 2100 dps, and become a useless choice compared to rogues. All of this is down just to the difference in base damage classes start of with, unless the base is balanced as well, you wont be able to keep classes scaling in a balanced manner.
So the two major balancing changes that we need to see in WotlK are:
- haste improving special attacks as well to give cats a chance to keep up with dual wielders
- base damage reduced so that our base line on the gear to dps function is not causing distortions. This could happen by giving us an excellent scaling attack with no base line damage that overtakes Shred after T7, for example, if you want to keep the base for other reasons.
Both have not been addressed so far in all the stuff I have seen, and they are the core test to see if feral dps has a chance to stay viable as gear progresses.