HaklePrime

I don't know, I was kind of holding out hope that we'd get a "Captain N."-esque Nintendo Belt with a world-stopping pause button

In all seriousness, they could conceivably drop more than just gems, just so long as the corpse despawn was much longer than most instances currently are.

I'm not holding my breath for another feral stave, however, as that instance already has one.

 

Dalamar

Windfury nerfed. (yay for being buffed in proxy)

Now there is literally no reason to not give it to ferals, bear would only get 3 potential procs every 7.5 seconds instead of 8. That is a rather drastic reduction in potential and therefore significantly closer to balanced.

I like how GoA and Flametongue totem are still not better than Windfury alone:/

 

suicuique

(I'm assuming you are talking about warriors in context - if not, disregard this post)

It's more like (BoK included) 22*1.1/31.5 = 0.77% vs 1% crit for warriors.
Agi is not a lost stat on warriors by any means, but it's just suboptimal ... like crit rating is for ferals.

 

Umph

This is what I hope for the most, but I do still think it would be too powerful on bears - our threat generation is already excellent. I hope we can get it for cat though, at the very least (I certainly wouldn't complain about having it for bear).

Although now that I think about it, how hard would it be to have it affect bears differently? I can't see it being impossible to code.

 

Dominus

IMO, if it's that easy to have it affect different attacks in different ways, we wouldn't be seeing an across the board nerf. I think it's more likely they would've taken it away from hamstring, and left it in for slam (which has a cast time), sinister strike, etc.

 

Boevis

I really don't approve of nerfing other classes as means to 'buff' others.

Right now, there's little reason to bring rogues to 5 mans or kara. Even in SSC/TK I will usually opt for more AoE (even warriors) over rogues simply because of the added control over spawns, with little lost single target DPS. If indeed WF will no longer proc off any specials, I'd never bring a rogue to a multi-target fight except Solarian (where you're in a DPS race against the wraths)

This also makes Warrior threat a potentially big issue depending on what they remove WF procs from. Potentially losing losing the procs from devastate, revenge, and even heroic strike would be a terrible blow to rage generation.

 

frdrk

For the guy that wanted data from high end Cat DPS and hit rating, here's a WWS of our Gorefiend kill today: Wow Web Stats

I'm running at 5,52% hit and using Shapeshifter's Signet.

 

Dalamar

Buff by proxy, as in we received a buff simply because 2hand warriors will have lower DPS now and we may be justifiable in that slot over them even while burning the WF buff.

They said it wouldn't affect "next attack" attacks, so heroic strike/maul will still proc.
Our Tanks don't get WF and they can hold against most everything.

 

Solstice

I dont think this is really true, every class has their uses and assuming all raids go with at least one melee dps group there's no reason not to bring at least 3 rogues. Rogues scale extremely well compared to other classes, to the point where once you reach BT they should be topping dps meters on pretty much every encounter - even the aoe-centric ones such as Morogrim etc. The only class that really rivals them at the moment are BM hunters (who definitely need tuning in my opinion). I can't see the WF change making a huge difference to their desirability in raids, perhaps the gap between rogues and other dps classes will narrow slightly but this wouldn't be unjustifiable.

We very rarely use WF for the MT as it seems that shamans have more utility in pure dps groups and unless the boss has some deaggro ability (Gurtgott , Void Reaver are the only ones that spring to mind) threat is a non-issue for all except dps warriors.

Kabi, looking at that WWS I suppose it's safe to say that the 20 FCSR from shapeshifters adds more than 2% hit, it's hard to put an exact figure on it without a huge sample size but 2.6% seems quite likely. Not to mention some -dodge% and +crit%. If that's the case the shapeshifters is by far the best druid dps ring available unless for some reason you've stacked +hit above 6%. Would be nice to see some FCSR on tier5/6 instead though, or even on Belt of 100 deaths, rather than on a low ilevel faction reward.

 

david0925

That's really not true. For us, our MT only use Windfury Totem on 2 boss targets: Essence of Desire/Anger for Reliquary, and Teron Gorefiend, when we decide to use Curse of Recklessness. However, none of our dps really had aggro issue even when going all out.

We only raided one night after the hotfix, one of which can fairly accurately look at melee dps performance (mother Shahraz, and we didn't get a lot of melee ported). Our Rogues were not pulling very significantly lower dps, same with Fury Warrior. the 33/28 Warrior was hit pretty hard, however.

 

david0925

Windfury proc for bear form's damage/ threat modifier in full tanking gear can be very....interesting to say the least

Cat form doesn't scale with Windfury totem too well, old or new. However with 2p T4 bonus that will scale better.

With that said, we still won't get windfury because blizzard still thinks Druids are overpowered with procs and potions in forms, which is still mind baffling

 

Verdan

I wish I were allowed to DPS more. But, in SSC/TK I'm almost always a MT or OT. I do pretty well on old content, though.

Wow Web Stats

 

Dalamar

I miss the days that skill and "luck" (dodging fears) decided who would be the top of the DM. Those days are long lost now....

 

Umph

I think it would boost us to the level of damage we should be doing in lieu of a proper buff, so I'd like to see us get it.

 

Bag

Here's a question: is the tier gear worth it? Right now I am using 4-piece t5 and I was considering the Shady Dealer's Pantaloons. It got me thinking, should I just pick up rogue offset? As it stands, our most valuable stat has become agility. Our damage seems to scale much better given more crit, and even gemming/enchanting purely for agility, I find getting crit past 45% to be very difficult (I am at 43% with kings currently). Ideally, I'd like about 50% crit and 3500 ap buffed. Thoughts? Currently, considering the scaling of other classes compared to us, I do pretty well on damage, and maybe topping is just a pipe dream, but I'd like to think I can break that third place barrier.

Also, what was the final consensus on Shapeshifter's Signet? Is it worth it for the large AP loss?

 

dukes

Shapeshifters is worth it if you're missing 2% or more +hit (from the ~8.6%ish hit cap which is the current theory, afaik), and possibly even if you're less than that away but I'm not sure on that.

The tier bonuses (2t4+2t6 or 4t6) are a significant DPS increase, and I don't think the random pieces can make them up even if they may be slightly better for pure DPS. The other thing is that items like the Shady Dealers legs have stats such as Armour Penetration, which isn't as effective as straight DPS stats.

It's perfectly possible to get the stats you listed raid buffed while still gaining one of the useful set bonus(es). I'm currently on ~41% crit and ~3100 AP unbuffed (which is ~47% crit and something like 3700AP with kings/improved Might) while using 2t4 still, which I intend to replace with 4t6+nether shadow tunic, of which I'm only missing the legs for that setup and I'd gain ~40 hit rating along with all the stats that making that switch entails.

Also, I think topping the damage meters is rather ambitious with the current talents/itemisation/etc. I'm also not sure you should ever push to be top of the DM and ignore the other aspects you can do (switching out to innervate or CR will always drop DPS by a small amount). If the other classes are playing to the top of their game, it should always (not including AoE fights, although it's still the same sometimes) be rogues -> DPS warriors -> Everyone else (where the everyone else is generally dependent on fight). DPS warriors are occaisionally lumped into everyone else, but only because of threat issues. The best you can do is push out as much DPS as you can, and if you can beat the rogues and make them look bad because they're slacking, you should always take the opportunity (although I'm sure you don't need to be told that :> ).

 

frdrk

Wouldn't WWS reflect that in only showing your active DPS time and thus letting you compare raw DPS numbers to those of your fellow raiders?

 

dukes

Normally I wait until I dump a 5cp rip->mangle on a target until I switch form to do whatever it is. I'm pretty sure WWS counts all the 12 seconds of rip plus the 5 seconds after the end as DPS time, so generally theres no "downtime" counted for in WWS, or very very little.

 

Dalamar

Windfury is a two pronged win for us, if we get it of course. First off it is upping our DPS to levels that is should be at, and it is also giving us argument why we should be in an enhancement shaman, fury warrior, 3 rogue group over one of the rogues. Currently there isn't any reason to put us there as we burn the Windfury and we put out completely lackluster DPS.

I use it more and more these days, there is hardly a boss I DPS on that I wouldn't throw it on over garona's signet(yay for crappy ring luck).

I really hope they add to Feral Weapon skill in future itemization patches, Zul'aman or the Heroic Badge additions before WotLK, as I love seeing WWS reports of total Dodge rate from bosses for my attacks dip under 3%.


On fights where I can concentrate on it, I try to hit the double mangle damage as often as I can at the cost of tagging a 5cp Rip, as a 4cp Rip wiith an extra 30% will do more than a 5cp with 1 Mangle.

 

• Voldin

I realize that this is virtually the same as the rogue DPS spreadsheet, but having not seen anything similar for druids, I did some overhaul on the rogue sheet and produced a feral DPS spreadsheet. It is still fairly rough, but it appears to model fairly accurately for most of my testing. Feel free to check it out and let me know of any errors or suggestions to improve it.

Many thanks to all the people who put in a lot of time and effort to make the rogue spreadsheet that I utilized to make this.

Druid DPS.xls

 

tr33hugger

Has anyone done the math on [Madness of the Betrayer] as an endgame feral dps trinket? If you had the choice between this, and [Tsunami Talisman], which would you choose, given the fact i could use the 20 hit rating to it's full potential?
The reason i ask is we'll do council tonight and i consider picking this up.

 

dukes

The hit rating isn't valuable due to its prevalence on other types of gear - even if you can use it to its full effect now, it's not worth it because you'll almost certainly replace the hit rating later (in which case the bloodlust brooch is better i think, armour penetration just isn't worth it for a druid). I would certainly take the tsunami if I got the chance though, as it's basically just a better Hourglass, and that thing is too damn good.

 

◊ masanbol

I'm interested in this. Why exactly does armor penetration benefit a druid less than a rogue or warrior?

 

Kaber

I believe the answer is white hits. More of a rogue/warriors DPS is coming from their white damage, while more of a druids DPS is coming from specials. It is quite possibly the same reason that haste is such a bad stat for druids.

 

dukes

Because ~18% of our DPS comes from Rip, which means no armour penetration effects it. That's almost 20% of the effect straight down the drain right there. Compare that to maybe 3-4% of a rogues DPS (rupture) or the 1-2% that deep wounds contributes, and for enhancement shamans the 3-4% of shock damage. (all figures taken from yesterdays WWS of teron). It's also part of the reason why I swapped out the [Choker of Serrated Blades] for [Haramad's Bargain]. Armour penetration also gets most gain if you stack a lot of it, and there aren't many "random" items with armour penetration while rogues and warriors both get it on their T6 sets.

White hits has nothing to do with armour penetration, but it is the reason Haste is a poor stat comparitively.

Although the Madness is nice, I would still take Tsunami/Bloodlust combo over it, mainly because as soon as I get the T6 legs, I'm hit capped. Without being hit capped, Madness is nice but still not better than Tsunami comparitively (especially if you can get a rip off every time it procs, which you should aim to do if at all possible).