Druid discussion thread - 3 roles, 5 stages of grief - Page 24

Lord BEEF · 04/05/07, 4:01 PM

At 1950ish rating in 5v5, I definitely feel we need some boosts in the arena, but not drastic changes.

I don't really see how feral can be that great in 5v5, but with respecs being so relatively cheap I don't mind being resto for arena.

Resto just needs more survivability so that you actually stay alive long enough to get into bear. Change natural perfection to 15%, reduce improved regrowth to a 3 point talent instead of 5, make barkskin a 1 minute cooldown, compress a couple of other talents to make it easier to pick up the bulk of the resto tree, and we'd be much more in line.

Regarding innervate in arenas, I've really had no difficulties using this. Honestly I haven't encountered nearly as much offensive dispelling as I would have expected. Shamans and priests are often just too busy doing other things to really be able to focus on stripping your buffs.

Wings · 04/05/07, 5:05 PM

I wasn't sure if this deserved its own thread, so I figured I'd put it here. Sorry for derailing.

I currently feel druid DPS in a PvE enviroment is excessive. I'm a feral druid myself, and in all fairness I think cat form DPS in raids should go down. I'm fairly well geared. (Domo on Argent Dawn EU, for profile) and seem to have little trouble outDPSing other melee and sometimes casters, depending on the encounter of course. During a potted try without flasks at Kazzak, with a Shaman in my party for totems, I reached well over 4000 AP and 43.61% crit. These are ridiculous numbers, even when considering the fact we don't get weapon damage.

How do you feel about cat DPS? Think it will be nerfed, and perhaps more importantly, do you think it deserves it?

Bret · 04/05/07, 5:14 PM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF

At 1950ish rating in 5v5, I definitely feel we need some boosts in the arena, but not drastic changes.

I don't really see how feral can be that great in 5v5, but with respecs being so relatively cheap I don't mind being resto for arena.

Resto just needs more survivability so that you actually stay alive long enough to get into bear. Change natural perfection to 15%, reduce improved regrowth to a 3 point talent instead of 5, make barkskin a 1 minute cooldown, compress a couple of other talents to make it easier to pick up the bulk of the resto tree, and we'd be much more in line.

Regarding innervate in arenas, I've really had no difficulties using this. Honestly I haven't encountered nearly as much offensive dispelling as I would have expected. Shamans and priests are often just too busy doing other things to really be able to focus on stripping your buffs.

I have noticed the same thing about innervate. Only time I have seen it dispelled is when a priest is purposely trying to rid our pld of mana with mana burn and the likes, typically he is ready for the innervate. Then its usually cyclone -> innervate

I will say I hold my own in feral but like I have said ... could do much better with another class or as resto if we didnt have 2 healers. I have 2k+ish AP(getting glad weapon next week) 30ish % crit and such and at times I can burst down someone decently.

Typically I either start off cyclone healer -> assist train dps or assist train dps (hope we kill if we dont kill and I dont think 4/5 cp will kill I save those, pop out cyclone healer, then we go back at it) We have been working on some nice split dps strats depending on what we are facing that have worked very well with our makeup. (which I havnt seen or heard many teams doing)

barkskin -> tranquility is very nice in arena and typically when I use it, it helps.

I think the only reason we are at 2k and rising is some of the unique strats we come up with and the ability to play a team, win/lose and come back and do better each time. But that really doesnt have anything to do with how well druids preform in 5v5. I am hopeful.

Cryect · 04/05/07, 7:03 PM

Originally Posted by Wings

I currently feel druid DPS in a PvE enviroment is excessive. I'm a feral druid myself, and in all fairness I think cat form DPS in raids should go down. I'm fairly well geared. (Domo on Argent Dawn EU, for profile) and seem to have little trouble outDPSing other melee and sometimes casters, depending on the encounter of course. During a potted try without flasks at Kazzak, with a Shaman in my party for totems, I reached well over 4000 AP and 43.61% crit. These are ridiculous numbers, even when considering the fact we don't get weapon damage.

How do you feel about cat DPS? Think it will be nerfed, and perhaps more importantly, do you think it deserves it?

I think it sounds like your guild needs to have players to compare to before saying catform DPS needs nerfing. Rogues in your group with same buffs should outdps you easily enough. Catform DPS is nice but its not top 5 DPS unless your raid doesn't run with shadow priests or your players aren't trying or confused about maximizing DPS.

Heh, if this is your comments about cat form DPS I like to see your comments on Shadow Priests who with everything setup can top the damage meters against the best plus give way more than a catform druid (who do decent damage and give decent group buffs).

Solstice · 04/05/07, 8:30 PM

Originally Posted by Wings

I wasn't sure if this deserved its own thread, so I figured I'd put it here. Sorry for derailing.

I currently feel druid DPS in a PvE enviroment is excessive. I'm a feral druid myself, and in all fairness I think cat form DPS in raids should go down. I'm fairly well geared. (Domo on Argent Dawn EU, for profile) and seem to have little trouble outDPSing other melee and sometimes casters, depending on the encounter of course. During a potted try without flasks at Kazzak, with a Shaman in my party for totems, I reached well over 4000 AP and 43.61% crit. These are ridiculous numbers, even when considering the fact we don't get weapon damage.

How do you feel about cat DPS? Think it will be nerfed, and perhaps more importantly, do you think it deserves it?

Our dps was nerfed in the last patch, albeit by only 5% crit damage which i guess i around 2% total damage.

I dont think our cat dps should or will be reduced. I'm also fairly well geared, (armory link arena mace with agi enchant not showing for some reason) and although i rarely get to dps as the guild is a little short of tanks atm, when I do I find that comparably geared rogues and arms\fury warrs out dps me without too much of a problem in most encounters. Hunters leave me waaay behind, and everyone else for that matter. I use the usual dps cycle of mangle -> shred to 5 cp -> powershift -> 100en -> rip and still I'm usually a good 10% behind rogues.

I'd wager that consumables and buffs benefit all melee classes more or less equally and considering the disparity in base weapon damage I don't really see the value in comparing stats to gain any insight into relative dps output. It's different in every guild ofc, in mine the hunters pretty much pwn all but this is because it so happens that they're the most skilled players. If you're consistently topping the dps meters then I'd venture a guess that it's because you either outgear your guildies or (more likely) just outplay them. On a level playing field any pure dps class will outdps a feral.

Boevis · 04/05/07, 11:01 PM

I'd actually say that druids gain the least from buffs. We get advantage from stats, rogues get advantage from AP, warriors and hunters are pretty much midway. TSA, BS, and BoM are extreme amounts of AP, and then there's Windfury....

Kazanir · 04/06/07, 12:19 AM

If I can DPS for the entire fight I usually top our guilds damage meters without any problems, especially when potted with Kings up. It's even more ridiculous when I make a different druid put up Mangle, tee hee. This is mostly due to suckage on the part of others, but clearly our DPS is very respectable, although I wouldn't say overpowered.

Exewut · 04/06/07, 6:00 AM

Originally Posted by Boevis

I'd actually say that druids gain the least from buffs. We get advantage from stats, rogues get advantage from AP, warriors and hunters are pretty much midway. TSA, BS, and BoM are extreme amounts of AP, and then there's Windfury....

Wel, unleashed rage is godly for druids, in essence it's almoust a 10% weapondamage buff.

[e] Overpowered? Let's not kid ourselves really. Would you be a benefit to the guild if you couldn't go to an encounter and do great dps to compensate for the soso tanking? I'm sure that I would have given up feral quite a while ago if I couldn't perform almoust as good as pure dps classes.

Lord BEEF · 04/06/07, 10:54 AM

While I don't remember the group makeup, we had a grull kill where our top rogues were doing around 850 dps, and our cat was doing about 730 dps. That doesn't seem overpowered or underpowered to me really.

Boevis · 04/07/07, 10:17 PM

Well, I can say with fairly high certainty that the hit cap for druids is not 8.6%. Wearing 108 hit rating (that's 6.85%) with 0 +skill, I missed 0 out of 4,000 attacks on Haalu. I'll do tests later at ~6%, ~5%, and assuming I see misses at some point, I'll box it down by as small increments as I can to get our number.

Please note this is auto-attacks only, there may very well be different hit% required for specials. Wouldn't it suck if we needed 5.6% for white, but 8.6% for specials...

After I get the hit worked out, I'm going to figure out the whole weapon skill thing if I can. Initial tests in PvP with +15 feral attack skill (Ring, Pants, Mace) against a warrior with 10% Parry had him parrying 8.5% (34/400) attacks with another 12% dodged/missed. Even though it was a fairly small sample size, I think this pretty much confirms Crezax had no clue what he was talking about in his post about +weapon skill. +15 skill should have netted me -9 parry rate, nowhere near the -1.5% I got.

Ragrrr · 04/08/07, 1:52 AM

Originally Posted by Boevis

Please note this is auto-attacks only, there may very well be different hit% required for specials. Wouldn't it suck if we needed 5.6% for white, but 8.6% for specials...

Bingo!

Feythe · 04/08/07, 3:36 AM

Originally Posted by Boevis

Well, I can say with fairly high certainty that the hit cap for druids is not 8.6%. Wearing 108 hit rating (that's 6.85%) with 0 +skill, I missed 0 out of 4,000 attacks on Haalu. I'll do tests later at ~6%, ~5%, and assuming I see misses at some point, I'll box it down by as small increments as I can to get our number.

I'm curious about the Haalu you tested on (Wowhead/Thottbot and an armory search turned up no results) because I believe the mob should be 73 for you to have an 8.6% base chance to miss, so if you've been testing on a 70 mob your miss rate is going to be significantly lower (5% flat for an equal level mob IIRC)

Boevis · 04/08/07, 3:52 AM

Haalum (Corruptor of Air) 70 http://www.thottbot.com/?n=1058115

Several hours and a few aching fingers later ...

Mashing the hell out of mangle for 15 minutes at 5.01% Hit - 0 Misses.

I got tired, so I dropped to 4.57% and stopped as soon as I saw a miss. I could test inbetween, but I'm pretty satisfied. 5% is ridiculously easy to get.

Morghus · 04/08/07, 1:44 PM

Originally Posted by Wings

I wasn't sure if this deserved its own thread, so I figured I'd put it here. Sorry for derailing.

I currently feel druid DPS in a PvE enviroment is excessive. I'm a feral druid myself, and in all fairness I think cat form DPS in raids should go down. I'm fairly well geared. (Domo on Argent Dawn EU, for profile) and seem to have little trouble outDPSing other melee and sometimes casters, depending on the encounter of course. During a potted try without flasks at Kazzak, with a Shaman in my party for totems, I reached well over 4000 AP and 43.61% crit. These are ridiculous numbers, even when considering the fact we don't get weapon damage.

How do you feel about cat DPS? Think it will be nerfed, and perhaps more importantly, do you think it deserves it?

With several years behind you as a rogue, decent know-how on what to do as a melee and a spec that is nearly pure +damage, you will be closing in on the top of the metres.
There's alot of interesting encounters where a cat-druid tends to do almost nothing but hammer the mob, and most other classes have some specific role they need to do besides just doing damage.
A druid has the option to burn immense amounts of mana to do more damage for a bit as well.
To use an old term off of myself; there's alot of effort involved when you want to prove something, and hybrids tend to do that alot ( like your worth and how much damage you can do ).
The numbers you're presenting there aren't all that high considering the mechanics of a druid; how much you gain, and how much you need. So no, I don't think we'll be nerfed, and if we do I think it'll be too soon.

Originally Posted by Boevis

I'd actually say that druids gain the least from buffs. We get advantage from stats, rogues get advantage from AP, warriors and hunters are pretty much midway. TSA, BS, and BoM are extreme amounts of AP, and then there's Windfury....

I haven't done any testing, but I had the impression that our abilities scaled extremely well.

I'm ok with the druid as it is right now; we have our strengths and our weaknesses ( which are drastically smaller than they used to be atleast). Things need to sink in and we need to find our places, seeing as Blizzard refuses to give us any clear directions to them, and go from there.

Daboran · 04/08/07, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by Boevis

Haalum (Corruptor of Air) 70 http://www.thottbot.com/?n=1058115

Several hours and a few aching fingers later ...

Mashing the hell out of mangle for 15 minutes at 5.01% Hit - 0 Misses.

I got tired, so I dropped to 4.57% and stopped as soon as I saw a miss. I could test inbetween, but I'm pretty satisfied. 5% is ridiculously easy to get.

If that's the case, the relative lack of +hit on Feral gear isn't as much of an issue as I was assuming. Just carry a few alternatives of +hit items for slots and go for str/agi to maximize dps - sweet. I have to say though, the Clefthoof Hide legs and Earthwarden combo will be hard to replace when the time comes.