Feral Druid DPS - Page 38

Valerian · 09/27/07, 2:47 PM

Originally Posted by Wings

I'm quite content with itemnization for the most part. Of course we need a T5/T6 DPS weapon, not just a tank weapon, and 4/5 T6 should be better than 2/4 T4, but mostly I'm satisfied.

Gotta heavily disagree here. Almost all the "best" pieces of DPS gear are rogue pieces of gear. None of it is itemized with Feral druids in mind. [Treads of the Den Mother] is the only item in BT/Hyjal that is properly itemized for Ferals. Everything else has AP instead of Str and tons of hit which is generally superfluous since we only need 6% and 20 FCS.

Daenerys · 09/27/07, 2:49 PM

Originally Posted by angral

Keeping up with the other hybrids is my idea of where we should be, given an equal level of gear and skill. That an extremely well played feral druid rorting every trick of gcd, powershifting and cycle timing can just keep up with an enhancement shaman who stands there and once every 6 seconds uses a Shock...

Le sigh at the fairness of the world I guess :]

I'm getting memories of my past life as a Hunter...giving 150% effort to my shot rotation to do the same (or worse) DPS as a Rogue spamming SS and SnD... =P

But more on the topic, I think it's silly to strive for top 5 DPS as a Druid. We have soooo much utility that the other DPS classes don't have. I feel incredibly useful in a raid when I hit 950-1000 DPS and still get an Innervate and Brez off, plus maybe a heal or a Tranq on the melee group. No, I'm not top-5 DPS with that, but it's pretty respectable and I don't see the Rogues, Hunters, Warlocks or Mages rezzing anyong in between their DPS rotations. Now, that's at my current progression, where a Rogue might "win the meters" with 1200 DPS on a typical boss. As we kill more bosses in BT and get more gear and I'm still doing 1k while Rogues are doing 1.4k, I'll start to feel inadequate.

Keeping pace with other hybrids should be the goal, and there is certainly a lot of merit in asking for itemization fixes and a look into scaling us better at end-game.

HaklePrime · 09/27/07, 2:51 PM

Originally Posted by angral

Well... so be it. I think you're selling everyone here striving to be the best dps they can be short. So I guess we'll have to agree to thinking the other is an idiot under our breath while we continue to be civil to each other :p

That said, top 5 dps, while fun, should not be our goal. There are rogues, mages, hunters and warlocks who are all pure dps classes with varying degrees of utility to the raid that in a world of equal gear and skill and with balanced class design should occupy the top dps slots. Then you have all of the hybrids, the dps warriors, the shamen, the druids, the priests and the paladins.

Keeping up with the other hybrids is my idea of where we should be, given an equal level of gear and skill. That an extremely well played feral druid rorting every trick of gcd, powershifting and cycle timing can just keep up with an enhancement shaman who stands there and once every 6 seconds uses a Shock...

Le sigh at the fairness of the world I guess :]

Sadly, powershifting is now impossible.

I really hope they look into restoring the functionality of it in some way.

Wings · 09/27/07, 2:58 PM

Well... so be it. I think you're selling everyone here striving to be the best dps they can be short. So I guess we'll have to agree to thinking the other is an idiot under our breath while we continue to be civil to each other :p

That said, top 5 dps, while fun, should not be our goal. There are rogues, mages, hunters and warlocks who are all pure dps classes with varying degrees of utility to the raid that in a world of equal gear and skill and with balanced class design should occupy the top dps slots. Then you have all of the hybrids, the dps warriors, the shamen, the druids, the priests and the paladins.

Keeping up with the other hybrids is my idea of where we should be, given an equal level of gear and skill. That an extremely well played feral druid rorting every trick of gcd, powershifting and cycle timing can just keep up with an enhancement shaman who stands there and once every 6 seconds uses a Shock...

Le sigh at the fairness of the world I guess :]

Well, the problem lies in the word Hybrid. I agree that a hybrid specced and geared for DPS should be good DPS. An enhancement shaman for example. However, as a feral, you're never specced and geared for DPS. You're specced and geared to serve as a DPS/Tank hybrid.

That enhancement shaman has his talents and gear focussed on one thing only, which is DPS.
We can DPS and Tank with the same tier set and the same talent tree. We don't even have a choice, as most feral talents are in fact hybrid in nature. That's where, in my opinion, the difference lies.

Originally Posted by Valerian

Gotta heavily disagree here. Almost all the "best" pieces of DPS gear are rogue pieces of gear. None of it is itemized with Feral druids in mind. [Treads of the Den Mother] is the only item in BT/Hyjal that is properly itemized for Ferals. Everything else has AP instead of Str and tons of hit which is generally superfluous since we only need 6% and 20 FCS.

Well, 5 of our armour slots can be filled with T5 or T6 which is pretty good for DPS. Boots are itemnized. Leaves Bracers, Belt and Jewelry. I don't mind using Rogue or Warrior oriented items myself, they do their job well. But yes, I see your point and in an ideal game there would be Str/Agi items for those slots beyond Karazhan.

Valerian · 09/27/07, 3:25 PM

Originally Posted by Wings

Well, 5 of our armour slots can be filled with T5 or T6 which is pretty good for DPS. Boots are itemnized. Leaves Bracers, Belt and Jewelry. I don't mind using Rogue or Warrior oriented items myself, they do their job well. But yes, I see your point and in an ideal game there would be Str/Agi items for those slots beyond Karazhan.

To be fair though, even though our tier sets are good the off set pieces are often better. Using Toskk's DPS calculator with my current stats and Lootzor the top items for each slot are:

Boots: [Shadowmaster's Boots]
Legs: T6
Belt: [Don Alejandro's Money Belt]
Hands: T6 (there's the 2 set bonus)
Bracers: [Insidious Bands]
Chest: [Nether Shadow Tunic] (note [Midnight Chestguard] also better than T6
Cloak: [Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape]
Neck: [Choker of Endless Nightmares]
Shoulders: T6 (though need to use T4 since the bonus is soo good)
Helm [Cursed Vision of Sargeras] (again use T4 since the bonus is needed)

So I see two pieces of T6 gear designed for us that are our "ultimate" gear pieces. And two of our gear pieces are T4 !! because the set bonus is better than any T5 or T6 bonus. There are definitely problems with our itemization.

edit: if all those pieces had analog pieces itemized for druids (eg Str instead of AP, some hit rating changed to Str etc) we'd gain approx 150 more AP from them than what we currently do.

Draugdae · 09/27/07, 6:17 PM

This may be a bit of a digression and it may have been discussed elsewhere in this thread (if so, feel free to direct me to a pre-existing discussion), but I'd like to consider the relative power of +weapon damage effects to equivalent level gear. Of primary interest would be the value of items like Crystalforged Trinket when compared to alternatives like Bloodlust Brooch.

With a 1.00 attack speed, the 7 weapon damage would translate to 98 AP on most attacks. I recognize that there would be losses with Rip compared to traditional AP sources, but with so much damage coming from shred/white damage I can see it maintaining a lot of its value.

I'd be interested to see what some of the more experienced number crunchers have to say about itemization like this.

SS_Keera · 09/27/07, 6:29 PM

Originally Posted by Draugdae

This may be a bit of a digression and it may have been discussed elsewhere in this thread (if so, feel free to direct me to a pre-existing discussion), but I'd like to consider the relative power of +weapon damage effects to equivalent level gear. Of primary interest would be the value of items like Crystalforged Trinket when compared to alternatives like Bloodlust Brooch.

With a 1.00 attack speed, the 7 weapon damage would translate to 98 AP on most attacks. I recognize that there would be losses with Rip compared to traditional AP sources, but with so much damage coming from shred/white damage I can see it maintaining a lot of its value.

I'd be interested to see what some of the more experienced number crunchers have to say about itemization like this.

You maybe want to read this and the following discussion for an impression about trinkets. Although it was some time ago the number are still valid i suppose.

Larisroth · 09/27/07, 7:48 PM

Part of the problem is indeed itemisation, but you can't separate that from the mechanics that guide the itemisation. The funny thing is that in a lot of ways our mechanics are setup up really well for the hybrid tanking / melee role. There's just very few fights that really need that.

We're a hybrid so yes we should be doing hybrid damage, I don't think anyone is asking for more, however other than rogues all the other melee classes are hybrids too. Now warriors in good gear have always been somewhat overpowered for dps. The fact that at the top end a dps warrior makes a better off-tank is a little bit disturbing, but kind of tangential to the dps discussion.

Some would claim we have a lot more utility than other hybrids, and while that may be true, it's all pretty one of utility. Yes I can combat res someone maybe once per fight (if I'm not tanking), and throw innervate (which needs to be buffed to make it truely useful) on a spirit user, but it takes time to do those things. Furthermore a resto druid isn't expected to be less of a healer because he can combat res. Other than the occasional tranquility our healing is too weak to much in feral gear.

The buffs we bring to the table are at the moment the weakest of all the melee hybrids and due to the fact we can't use windfury we're the last class to be put in the melee group. Moving imp faerie fire to the feral tree and giving all druids feral faerie fire would go someway to fixing that.

I'm pretty sure that our yellow damage actually scales pretty well (with correct itemisation). Our white damage is pretty weak mainly due it being based around a 1.0 speed 1H attack. Dual-wielding that attack (or a similar haste boost) would go someway to fixing that.

Monsanto · 09/27/07, 7:54 PM

As far as itemization goes, every single druid weapon they add to the game should have at least 20 feral combat skill rating on it. The Earthwarden was probably the perfect weapon for its time, although pure cat dpsers wouldn't want the armor taking up the budget.

Feral Combat Skill Rating is even better for tanking than it is for DPS. The bosses ability to parry is affected by FCSR more than any other stat, and so FCSR increases your aggro generation significantly. 20 FCSR would be something like a 6% reduction in parries alone, not even to mention more hit %, less dodges, and more crit%.

Blizzard seemed to learn that lesson for warrior tanking, with weapons like [The Brutalizer] and [Mallet of the Tides] (the last one doesn't have enough skill, unless you're human, but it's better than nothing).

I left out talk about FCSR and dps, because I talked about that a few pages ago, as did others. It's just an amazing stat all around, and I'd like to see it on every single druid weapon that they come out with, whether it's for tanking or for dps.

Dalamar · 09/27/07, 8:52 PM

Originally Posted by angral

That a feral druid can do 'other stuff' should not mean that a feral druid dedicated in spec and gear for the role of melee dps is not capable of fulfilling that role fully.

Well said.

I don't know. I guess it is just a completely different world we live in than some of the others in this thread. I just believe that the best dps should be more weighted on the player's skill rotation, preparation and execution rather than this wonderful entitlement of only being able to do one thing. We will do less damage in most encounters simply because we are required to tank, heal, decurse or many of the other things that we have to do during and encounter. Full out in DPS gear though we should be about our kara levels against other dps, 90ish%, close enough where skill and preparation can make the difference between #1 and #10 instead of simply rolling the right class.

Much the same a rogue should do less damage than I, or other full out DPS, when they are required to use some of that "utility" I always hear about them not having, such as kick rotations or stun locks.

Personally I would like to see them have a strong nonstacking group buff that would lend itself to breaking up rogues more, but I guess that is more a topic for a "Rogue DPS" thread and not ours.

I guess I am pushing this topic to a derail into feral bitching at this point and I will leave it at this.

schmurfy · 09/27/07, 10:01 PM

First I am only speaking there about pure dps, it means fights where my only role is to dps, nobody die and everything works fine, there are not a lot of fights like that but there are some like grull.

I am sure that with proper items we could do much better dps without outdpsing rogue (rogue will always dps more and I consider this as normal), it is not only a problem of who got the biggest *** but to simply be as useful as possible in a raid. As a feral I find myself more and more fully dpsing and I want to maximize it, maybe you are happy knowing you were taken in the raid only for your brez and innerv but I am not, that's all...
As said by someone else a resto druid is as good as the other healers even better in some way so the speach about being hybrid is just stupid, even the word hybrid is to consider, what are you considering an hybrid class ?
The first choice is a class able to fullfill mutilple role with a different spec, if it is that then it include a lot of class: priests, druids, warriors, shamans.

The second choice is any class able to do multiple role with the same spec and in this I only see druids (we can tank and dps with same spec and also be a bad healer), if we include enh shaman (they can dps and and are bad healer too) here we have to include priests too (shadow priest dps and are also bad healers), I do not have an enhanced shaman in our raid but from what i read they can also do a lot of damage like the warrior and for shadow priest there is not much to say... And if we consider we are the only one in this category then there is not much to compare xD

So whether you were thinking hybrid as the choice 1 or 2 we still do not match the dps of the respective class.

My guild killed Vashj and we are currently trying Kael thas and (except t6) I know I already have most of the druid dps gear that drop in all BC instances, really frustrating (I don't consider rogue gear here since we only take them for lack of real gear).

Last thing: do you think normal that the dexterous manipulation gloves are better than our t4 gloves ?(without considering the set bonus)

seminarca · 09/27/07, 11:47 PM

Gloves of Dextrous Manipulation are even better than T5 for pure DPS, due to the two sockets which you can fill with 8 Agility, compared to the higher Strength (relative to Agility), Intellect and bonus Armor on the tier ones.

Originally Posted by Monsanto

20 FCSR would be something like a 6% reduction in parries alone

Where are you getting this from? As far as I know, [Rogue/Warrior] Weapon Skill Adjustment Discussion has the latest research and results on weapon skill, and they have not reached conclusions anywhere near your quoted level for parry (or any at all for parry, for that matter).

Originally Posted by Malazaar

I did some more BL tests this morning WITH the meta gem as you requested

Thanks for taking the time to do that. So who's up for starting a bug thread on the Blizzard forums ? (I'll do it later today if it hasn't been done by the time I get out of work)

The Grog · 09/28/07, 3:47 AM

Sigh, silly me for not properly investigating the T4 bonus.

When looking at having access to T6 pieces, which are the best T4 options to use? My spreadsheet is showing Helm and Shoulders at the moment. I've got a fair amount of confidence in it when it doesn't have to do haste effects.

I expect that I'm right, seeing as the only two pieces of T6 I have happen to be helm and shoudlers.

Circledruid · 09/28/07, 4:55 AM

I am also concerned how my relative dps compared to others seem to get worse and worse. I used to be at 90% of our best rogue, now that has dropped to like 70%. The latest nerfs may have helped on that but it's too early to tell.

I don't mind staying lower than rogues on pure dps, they should beat me. But for me the balance lies in how you would want your melee group to be. I would define balance to be achieved when the LotP aura is enough to prefer 2 rogues and 1 feral instead of 3 rogues in the melee group. For that to be the case we need to stay within 85-90% of the rogues in personal dps.

If we don't deserve a slot in the melee group, there are fights where a raid shouldn't have any feral druids whatsoever.

Malazaar · 09/28/07, 5:26 AM

Originally Posted by seminarca

Gloves of Dextrous Manipulation are even better than T5 for pure DPS, due to the two sockets which you can fill with 8 Agility, compared to the higher Strength (relative to Agility), Intellect and bonus Armor on the tier ones.

Where are you getting this from? As far as I know, [Rogue/Warrior] Weapon Skill Adjustment Discussion has the latest research and results on weapon skill, and they have not reached conclusions anywhere near your quoted level for parry (or any at all for parry, for that matter).

Thanks for taking the time to do that. So who's up for starting a bug thread on the Blizzard forums ? (I'll do it later today if it hasn't been done by the time I get out of work)

I already did report it via european forums and tickets. Though i'm not really sure it gets through from there. A post in the US bug report forums might help, i don't know.

I saw someboby quote my numbers in the US druid forums, but the threat's long gone by now.

seminarca · 09/28/07, 6:49 AM

I'll go post in the US bug report forums now then.

For completeness sake, I've just gone and tested in Bear form as well, same problem.

edit: Posteded.

WoW Forums -> [BUG] Druid Talent: Predatory Instincts

Hopefully this can be hotfixed, though I suppose the Brewfest patch isn't too far away.

Formoll · 09/28/07, 9:31 AM

Hi,

Thanks all it's a very interesting topic

While reading it, I wondered whether I were the only one to have problems with aggro. You talk about not wasting energy and max the dps but never have of problem with aggro ?

Sometimes i need to do pause and use Cower, so I wonder whether the Subtlety enchant (-2% threat) were not better than the Greater agility enchant (+12 agi) ?

PS : sorry for my poor english

-

dukes · 09/28/07, 9:34 AM

If you don't have salvation then it's possible to have agro problems (and in this case you should get it if threat capped instead of something else - should be no problems with the new extra-length blessings).

If you do have it, you need a new MT.

Malazaar · 09/28/07, 9:44 AM

With highend gear and buffs i expect not to exceed 1500 dps - that would be 745.5 TPS in catform with salvation. Your tank should be able to pull that off on any major encounter.

It hurts to loose might and get salvation (if you only have two paladins) but on most encounters it's well worth it (especially as omen tends to bug out sometimes).

schmurfy · 09/28/07, 10:06 AM

With salvation I never have aggro problem except on specific encounters like Void Reaver where I just wait a moment before starting dps and can go all out after this.

Windchilla · 09/28/07, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by Wings

I'm quite content with itemnization for the most part. Of course we need a T5/T6 DPS weapon, not just a tank weapon, and 4/5 T6 should be better than 2/4 T4, but mostly I'm satisfied.

A T6 tanking weapon would be nice as well.

schmurfy · 09/28/07, 11:06 AM

I am still wondering what is the use of the hyjal feral weapon, I am currently using the season 2 mace for dps and the ssc staff for tanking and I don't see the hyjal staff as an upgrade for any of those...

frdrk · 09/28/07, 11:09 AM

I use it for when mitigation is not top priority and I want to squeeze that bit more TPS. Having a trash tanking gear set can actually help your poor DPS'ers clear trash faster as you won't spend as much time ressing people that overaggroed due to no rage on the tank. Yesterday in Hyjal I spiked as much as 2000 TPS at times on trash, it was a welcome sight in Omen. ^^

HaklePrime · 09/28/07, 1:34 PM

Originally Posted by seminarca

I'll go post in the US bug report forums now then.

For completeness sake, I've just gone and tested in Bear form as well, same problem.

edit: Posteded.

WoW Forums -> [BUG] Druid Talent: Predatory Instincts

Hopefully this can be hotfixed, though I suppose the Brewfest patch isn't too far away.

Thanks for this. I was completely boggled by my lowered DPS this week, and was going to write it off to not being able to powershift, and the bugged RED.

sasugaa · 09/29/07, 3:10 AM

I've been reading through the posts and found that there are a few different rotations that people use. I currently use Shred till 5cp > Rip > Mangle, is there a more optimal setup for this?

Also my gear seems lacking in comparison to some of the people in here, I'll log off with my dps gear tonight but generally I'm feeling a lack of AP but I'm not sure where i can fix this. However there are things that I probably wont be able to obtain due to the guild not doing the instances anymore, such as gruul's lair for T4 shoulders.

My role in my guild is one of an OT, we have another feral that usually tanks bosses while i OT adds or dps. I have a few pieces of T6 as well as T5 but I've always gemmed/enchanted the gear with tanking gems. Would it be plausible for me to gem some of my gear, in particular the tier pieces, for dps rather then tanking? The major problem I see in this is a drop in stam but an increase in dodge to compensate, however my defense will be lacking and during fight that i actually may tank a boss such as gurtogg or reliquary, I've seen a few ferals with this kind of setup but their role may be different from my own.