I know you're asking for tactics, but from a quick glance at your gear:
Replace the 8 stamina on your chest with +6 stats.
Replace 120 armor to cloak with 12 agility.
Replace all the gems in your helm.
Replace Savagery with 35 agility.
Replace Clefthoof Armor on legs with Cobrahide.
Replace boot enchant with Agility.
Run a marginal amount of heroics and get Badges for Everbloom Idol.
Obviously if there's a tactical problem, this won't help much, but you have some good gear with some silly enchants and gems.
I use my position on the damage meter to gauge player skill, as a very general and immediate superficial metric. Point blank: if you're below me, you better have a good reason.
You were on top before because you outgeared, outefforted, and possibly outskilled the competition. In my experience a feral won't top a damage meter in an even contest (i.e. similar pots, group composition, gear level). Your gear, as stated, has a few spots to improve, otherwise you're subject to the limitations of your class and circumstances.
JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?
There is significant room for improvement in damage cycles. Due to the information you supplied i assume you don't do cycle and just mash shred whenever possible while avoiding to drop mangle.
It's no big secret that mangle does way less damage per energy than shred, thus you want to minimize your mangle-usage. I suggest trying the following sheme:
(start combat)
Mangle
(FFF)
Shred to 5cp
Wait until you have 81+ energy (attack earlier if you get a clearcast)
Rip
Mangle
Shred to 4-5cp (whatever possible until mangle drops)
Repeat
This i obviously not needed when you got another feral druid applying mangle for you.
It's very possible (with pots/good gear/group buffs) to break 1000 dps sustained on bleedable mobs - i consider that competitve damage (especially since i also bring a group buff, battle rez and innervate).
I appreciate the feedback. I'm well aware of the horrible-ness of my "enchants". the chest and boots were un-enchanted prior to our first doomwalker kill, so I put the knothide kits on them to make it harder for me to die. The armor to cape was my friend leveling enchanting, and I haven't gotten around to farming the cloak from mech yet. 3 more badges for the idol ><
I certainly am a shred-masher. I'll play around with the proposed cycle in some heroics tonight, though I don't see it as particularly different from my shred-mashing approach =)
Do you guys power-shift with furor? I usually hop out and in between energy ticks (when my current energy is between 0-5/6), and from what I can tell, the staff pretty much always swings in that split second while i'm in cow form. I haven't done enough logged runs to tell if it really helps much.
I certainly am a shred-masher. I'll play around with the proposed cycle in some heroics tonight, though I don't see it as particularly different from my shred-mashing approach =)
The key is to make sure that you mangle immediatly ater you rip. That way Rip's whole duration gets the full benefit of Mangle, and you only have to apply mangle once per cycle. In the next 12 seconds, you should easily be able to get off the shreds you need to get max combo points again. If Rip is still applied, and you have max CP, just save your energy.
I personally havent played with powershifting much.
I recently moved from a fairly casual kara guild to a more hard-core guild. Prior to move, I was usually very near the top of any instance or raid I was a part of. This annoyed the hell out of some players, and naturally they called for more druid nerfing, but in reality it was just that I had farmed most of the best feral gear out there. I wasn't cocky about it, but I was confident that my dps was good, and that even when not tanking, I was making a worthy contribution to the raid.
After the move, I'm so so far down the charts it gives me pause. It made me wonder if there was something about my technique that needs correcting. In general, I make sure to keep mangle up at all times. The rest of the time, I spam shred to 5 points and then rip. All the while, power-shifting any time my energy meter drops below 5 or 6 points.
Is this the generally accepted way for a cat to dps? Any pointers would be appreciated. If anyone has a link to a good write up, that'd work too.
The key is to make sure that you mangle immediatly ater you rip. That way Rip's whole duration gets the full benefit of Mangle, and you only have to apply mangle once per cycle. In the next 12 seconds, you should easily be able to get off the shreds you need to get max combo points again. If Rip is still applied, and you have max CP, just save your energy.
I personally havent played with powershifting much.
You actually have 2 seconds after applying a Rip to Mangle. It might seem a minor thing, but waiting for 81 energy is 2-4 seconds that I don't have the patience for
Also, 2 seconds is a perfect window for a powershift, so, technically, latency permitting, you could Rip->Powershift->Mangle, starting with 30 energy.
The screen shot linked is a recap log from a recent BM run. I currently have 125 hit rating (7.9% +hit), coupled with [Earthwarden] (+24 feral combat skill) and [Clefthoof Hide Leggings] (+18 feral combat skill) , I should have more than enough +hit to pass the supposed 8.6% cap. 7.9% + (0.04% * (18+24)) = 9.58% (feral combat skill should give me 0.04 +hit per skill). However as you can see from the log, I still missed quite a few during the run. Can anyone come up any explanation as to how did that happen? Is the 8.6% just an urban myth and I should raise my +hit even higher? or perhaps feral combat skill works differently from other combat skill? Thanks in advance.
24 feral combat rating. Not skill. Divide by 2.4 to get skill - Earthwarden is 10 feral combat skill, for 0.4 hit % 0.4 parry strike trough, 0.4 % "dodge this!" 0.4 % "learn to block?" and 0.4% crit, and the extra crit against higher level mobs.
so you are at 8.3 % hit.
Slightly off-topic; did Mag last night. I went bear facing a Channeler's back on the pull and slapped a Mangle when we opened up. I had 5% hit and my Earthwarden. He parried. From behind. I guess I'm just not understanding combat mechanics, because I figured that to not happen. Either they're not supposed to parry someone behind them or I got unlucky with the 0.6% not-hit gap.
JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?
There's a pretty common latency or client/server sort of issue where you'll get parried while behind the mob. I've definitely had shreds parried on my druid and backstabs on my rogue. If I weren't behind the mob, I shouldn't even be able to do those attacks.
It's not common enough to put into a model of the mechanics, but it's certainly common enough that almost everyone who plays a positional melee character will have seen it at least once.
Recently I came across the Braided Eternium Chain pattern and sent it to a jewelcrafter. Gurgleblaster has given this item a Kitty point raiting of 23.78, which seems way off.
Wouldn't this item (+5 Weapon damage; 21 hit rating) be slightly better than Natasha's; ~70 AP or am I missing something here?
Great forums here and thanks in advance for any reply.
Recently I came across the Braided Eternium Chain pattern and sent it to a jewelcrafter. Gurgleblaster has given this item a Kitty point raiting of 23.78, which seems way off.
Wouldn't this item (+5 Weapon damage; 21 hit rating) be slightly better than Natasha's; ~70 AP or am I missing something here?
Great forums here and thanks in advance for any reply.
5 weapon damage is worth slightly less than the apparent 14*5=70 AP due to the fact that the extra damage from AP works into the scaling in Rip/FP while the +5 weapon damage does not.
I value Natasha's slightly higher due to the crit you get from 15 Agi on top of the 70 AP vice the +hit from braided eternium. In addtion, Natasha's gives 15 stamina.
You're forgetting the 28 crit rating it's "use:" ability gives. When that's active, this neck is better than anything else in the game. Lets face it, Blizzard is pulling the same crap they did in MC, BWL, and Naxx, real upgrades for our "off-specs" don't exist past Karazhan.
Malazaar, what cycle do you use on Aran ? Since he is so hard to position for Shred, I usually Mangle then Rip at 5 CP. Seems like an obvious question, but I haven't been on enough kills to get good data.
Actually, shred positioning isn't that bad. It takes more work than a stationary boss, and sometimes, aka flame wreath, you simply can't reposition before it hits and/or he is constantly changing his targets, sometimes even you! That said, mangle if you would otherwise waste energy, otherwise, just wait til you can get in position to shred again. Also, as his armor is fairly low, FB might work better if you have gotten the hang of power shifting.
It's really not that easy to keep the cycle running on aran - positioning is hard, especially if you happen to hold aggro. If i can't shred and can't move behind him (due to flame wreath, explosion or aggro) i just save energy up to 81, at which point i just use mangle (less damage is obviously better than no damage).
On the other hand - aran's total lack of any armor (or so it seems) makes more than up for it. I just recently got to dps in karazhan (i usually have to tank) so my experience in that instance is limited as dps.
On that subject - has anyone worked out the point at which a shred is better than an untalented bite ? I usually just go on shredding til mangle wears off before biting - it just seems to be a total waste of energy (sometimes 5cp noncrits around 1000 damage).
Edit: @Maratai: Actually, you'd have to have around 70% crit for FB to surpass Rip (even on a zero armor target and exlusively using 35 energy FBs).
Do you guys power-shift with furor? I usually hop out and in between energy ticks (when my current energy is between 0-5/6), and from what I can tell, the staff pretty much always swings in that split second while i'm in cow form. I haven't done enough logged runs to tell if it really helps much.
Depends I think. While a white hit in caster form should add more dps (assuming you've maxed out weapon skill) than a white hit in cat, sometimes you might have gotten 2 hits in cat depending on the swing timer. Plus you miss the chance to proc 20% energy from 2 piece Malorne. Not to mention that a slight drop in fps could cause you to lose an energy tick. I think the important thing is to only powershift when the GCD is up - this way the shift in -> out is pretty much instantaneous and I'm fairly sure you don't even lose an auto attack in cat.
i don't have my numbers on me, but i sat in 2 classes one day and did rough theorycraft on comparing hourglass vs dragonspine for a feral druid.
assumed 2600 Ap 33% crit ( 35% w/ hourglass ), T4 2pc bonus, OOC; I found that dragonspine would be about equal with 2ppm, 1-2% dps increase with 2.5ppm , and 5%+ increase with 3ppm ...
the benefits assume that more white hits with haste allow more chances for OOC and T4 to proc, since they both seemingly have no internal cooldown. Also, since Hourglass does have internal cooldown, our high crit is "wasted".
As well, I'd like to comment that I use abacus along with dragonspine, so I attempt to stack +energy / +free attacks, and in my experience it works well. There are times when I have "unlimited energy" and am more or less waiting on global cooldown, or get to throw an extra shred out while waiting for my last 5/5 Rip to drop.
Using this bias, I stack agility over AP, and hang betwen 90-110 +hit.
I have been #1 dps on prince kills over a flasked hunter, a flasked shadow priest ( only +900ish shadow though ), and assuming I don't die, can be top 5 on Gruul effortlessly. I understand these numbers can be meaningless without considering the rest of my raid, but I do not understand for a second why people have beliefs that druids can't top dps meters.
EDIT: I'd like to add that even with Abacus + Dragonspine + Bloodlust up, Tiger's Fury still blows.
Perhaps I'm just more of an excel n00b than I thought I was, but is there a way to take Emmerald's spreadsheet and update it to include higher base stats? I'm way off from the stats he uses.
Unbuffed: 2500ap 34 crit 5.7% hit
Also, I am still a bit confused on the relative usefullness of feral weapon skill. I have 91 hit rating as well as 18 feral weapon skill from Clefthoof Hide Leggings. I'm trying to determine if the Lower City ring would be better than Band of Ursol (23str 12agi 22sta).
So the Lower City ring with 20 FWS rating would give you 5 FWS resulting in: + 1 hit, + 1 crit, -1 mob_dodge, -3 mob_parry. -Mob_parry should only come up while tanking, and I'm not sure how the -mob_dodge works, but at the minimum you could consider 1 FWS rating = .8 hit rating + 1.1 crit rating for item comparison purposes.
I plugged your stats into Emmerald's spreadsheet and with the FWS rating conversion:
Shapeshifter's Signet = 111.4 Kity points
Band of Ursol =83.9
Weapon Skill is still valuable, but it's really a Tank Stat more than anything else. If they switched the Sta and Agi on the signet, it would be my tanking ring of choice after the Violet Signet.
04/23/07, 4:34 PM
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