A thread full of druids. (Formerly "The point of Feral Attack power?") - Page 3

Rane · 11/14/06, 11:59 PM

Just to add, I've seen at least one item that had "Feral Combat Skill" rating as a stat. This might be a feral form of +weaponskill, so another (although now minor, with the new interpretation of weaponskill) feral buff on items at least.

No further details at the moment tho.

Tyvi · 11/15/06, 4:29 AM

Originally Posted by Rane

Just to add, I've seen at least one item that had "Feral Combat Skill" rating as a stat. This might be a feral form of +weaponskill, so another (although now minor, with the new interpretation of weaponskill) feral buff on items at least.

No further details at the moment tho.

That would be the Earthwarden I guess.

Zephro · 11/15/06, 5:42 AM

Originally Posted by Nixphoe

As far as lore goes, how is a druid supposed to get his pawns around a health pot? I suppose there are other pots you could take, but that kind of takes away from out healing ability if we're just going to chug pots rather the popping out for a heal.

According to Sir David Attenborough, bears are dextrous enough to prise open shellfish to eat.

Otherwise I guess you just throw the whole thing into your mouth and bite it. Bears are too tough to care about swallowing glass shards, anyway :P

TMYK!

• Hamlet · 11/15/06, 8:20 AM

Originally Posted by Dakous

I would suspect this is because feral attack power is a latecomer to the stat game (viz., "Hey, druid DPS needs a scaler here..."), so rather than "Hey, just add +DPS" which potentially could go off kilter on some items or result in some items being unintentionally overvaluated (see: q: why is it bad that barman's shanker, a blue from BRD, was superior to epics from MC?). So rather than open either a massive review of every weapon in game in a new paradigm OR a begging for the players to do so unfavorably in Live, it's vastly less labor intensive to just make some tailored weapons (feral AP weapons), as it's fair to presume they'll be balanced with feral scaling balance in mind.

This is basically it. The orignal game had everything needed to work from 1-60. When they started tackling endgame progression, this was just one of a number of scaling issues that had to be addressed.

Dakous · 11/15/06, 1:16 PM

Originally Posted by Zephro

Otherwise I guess you just throw the whole thing into your mouth and bite it. Bears are too tough to care about swallowing glass shards, anyway :P

http://www.geocities.com/nodotus/hbglass.html

I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me.

Tyvi · 11/26/06, 1:13 PM

/Resurrect

Just read this on the US Beta Forums:

Did you know that a druid's white DPS in cat form stops going up innately at level 60?

That's right, you still have a base DPS of ~55 at level 66, and I asked another druid at 68 and his was also 55...this is the same as it is at level 60.

Your damage goes up as you gain stats with level, just like every other class...but your white DPS doesn't scale with level like it did 10-60.

(If you still don't get what I mean, I'm saying that the base DPS- stripped of all attack power- is still the same, it's only your stats that go up, and they go up the exact same way everyone else's does)

Just letting you all know, as I'm seeing alot of druids say we "scale with level but don't scale with gear".

Admittedly, as you level you gain new ranks, but the scaling of Shred (feral talens of course) right now is about on par with a rogue w/Imp. Backstab, Opportunity, and Lethality. In fact, it's better as our "main hand" DPS is higher, but the rogue doesn't have to sacrifice energy (mangle) to keep his #'s up, and our white damage overall is less due to lack of dual weild.

But just thought I'd dispel a druid myth for you all =)

So he says that Cat DPS minus AP and talents stays at 55 DPS which is not what we calculated in this thread. I also talked to two Druids (70 and 67) and asked them about their DPS in Cat and substracted their AP from it and divided by 1.1 (due to Natural Weapons) and the base DPS of the level 70 was ~68 DPS.

So my question to those who can check it for themselves: Is the above poster only posting BS or am I wrong with my calculations?

Beyr · 11/26/06, 2:45 PM

The naked cat posted earlier had 474 attack power. Thats 33.857 additional DPS. The DPS of the cat, minus NW is 97.5/1.1 = 88.63. Subtracting the DPS from AP give us 88.63 - 33.857 = 54.77 DPS base.

Doing the same calculations with my druid on live I get a base paw DPS of 54.8. There seems to be no change is cat base DPS from 60-70, unless I did some calculations wrong.

Tyvi · 11/26/06, 3:02 PM

Originally Posted by Beyr

The naked cat posted earlier had 474 attack power. Thats 33.857 additional DPS. The DPS of the cat, minus NW is 97.5/1.1 = 88.63. Subtracting the DPS from AP give us 88.63 - 33.857 = 54.77 DPS base.

Doing the same calculations with my druid on live I get a base paw DPS of 54.8. There seems to be no change is cat base DPS from 60-70, unless I did some calculations wrong.

Ah well, what a shame. Since there are loads of weapons with +FAP it is no big deal the base paw DPS does not scale, but there is another thing that's bothering me:

Paw DPS + FAP DPS does not equal the original DPS of the Weapon it emulates. Going back to the Calculation done here with the Gladiator Mace, it falls 10% DPS short (114.6 DPS vs 46.7 FAP DPS +55 Paw DPS = 114.6 DPS vs 101.7 DPS), so Natural Weapons has to compensate for that.

So basically we look at something like this for Feral:

NW - Required to be on par, it is NOT a bonus.
HotW (+Sta) - Required to be on par with Bear due to Druid PvP gear having less Stamina than other classes. It is NOT a bonus.

Exactly where do we see the Druid buffs in mechanics and itemization if Blizz is designing items around talents to begin with?

Vhal · 11/26/06, 3:06 PM

Originally Posted by Miaxi

Feral AP gives a static DPS increase, just like a weapon would. There are advantages in the feral weapon system, as well - you need very little +hit on your gear. (Was it 9% like hunters? Compared to the 24% that DW classes need, that's nothing.)

Responding to a somewhat aged post, but still...

Shouldn't having a higher cap for +hit be considered a good thing? You don't really need a certain level of hit (speaking as a rogue, at least), but being able to get significant benefit from the stat up to 24% seems to be an advantage in itemization as opposed to being capped significantly lower. I gear myself primarily as a PvP rogue, so hit isn't really high on my list, and I've still got +15% hit. It just seems to me that if I only gained benefit up to +9%, my gear choices would, overall, be worse than they are now; as such, it seems to me that being able to gain benefit from 24% of hit is superior to only being able to gain benefit for 9%.

Motw · 11/26/06, 5:04 PM

Originally Posted by Vhal

Originally Posted by Miaxi

Feral AP gives a static DPS increase, just like a weapon would. There are advantages in the feral weapon system, as well - you need very little +hit on your gear. (Was it 9% like hunters? Compared to the 24% that DW classes need, that's nothing.)

Responding to a somewhat aged post, but still...

Shouldn't having a higher cap for +hit be considered a good thing? You don't really need a certain level of hit (speaking as a rogue, at least), but being able to get significant benefit from the stat up to 24% seems to be an advantage in itemization as opposed to being capped significantly lower. I gear myself primarily as a PvP rogue, so hit isn't really high on my list, and I've still got +15% hit. It just seems to me that if I only gained benefit up to +9%, my gear choices would, overall, be worse than they are now; as such, it seems to me that being able to gain benefit from 24% of hit is superior to only being able to gain benefit for 9%.

Well +to hit still takes up part of an items value. You would have to look at its cost and compare the DPS gains to the gains from straight AP. I can tell you with certainty though that dual wield is still an advantage over a single weapon as far as white dmg scaling.

Pane · 11/27/06, 3:06 AM

if the FAP on some items was 'normal' AP those items would be bizarly overpowered in the hands of hunters (staffs) or rogues/warriors (all those instants with that much AP). rather than having to balance for that they made a seperate stat.

edit: my argument would have made more sense had i been able to link a staff with feral AP but can't find one.

/chews on foot

Boevis · 11/27/06, 3:26 AM

Well, there's Atiesh ...
http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=22632
But that's the Druid Only version.

Here's one, dunno where it's from. http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=15706 . There's actually a good deal of staves with just FAP on them, do a search on Thottbot Beta for staves between ilevel 100 and 116

Anaram · 11/27/06, 3:44 AM

I think TBC cruids (in cat form) are the highest yellow DPS melee attacker currently in the common scenarios. I might be wrong and won't go into providing math here but I'm fairly convinced that's the case. A significant portion of a druid's yellow damage attacks do not factor in weapon damage, however, so it sort of makes sense that druid weapons should come with attack power rather than direct damage (where rogues use slice'n'dice which scales with weapon damage druids use rip which is fully attack power based).

Druid white damage, however, is largely the equivalent of someone wielding a twohander - generally far inferior to dual wielding.

I think feral attack power plays nicely to druid strengths and as such is a mechanic which has a proper place in gameplay. I think it's also justified that attack power does not fully compensate for the DPS difference from twohander to onehander as attack power does have slightly more utility than weapon damage (it scales with unleashed fury and affects finishers).

Tyvi · 11/27/06, 5:05 AM

So am I the only one bothered by the fact that +FAP weapons are 10% less effective by design compared to other melee weapons?

And to the above poster: Even IF (and that is a big IF) Druids can produce the highest yellow numbers currently, they won't do so for long. Druid scaling was always good upfront but lagged behind when everyone got geared (let's hope it changes in TBC; Mangle is a good start).

Pane · 11/27/06, 5:19 AM

hybrid gear tends to be weaker than 'pure class' gear so no major surprise there, tbh.

as far as I've read, feral druids will compete very nicely in dps with rogues and fury wars. However, there will ALWAYS be a penalty for the fact that you can pop out of form and heal.