david0925

Shaman Warrior 3 rogue is the highest melee dps group possible right now. And due to the fact that rogues scale so well, and that for Hyjal and BT, only Illidan and Illdari council are very melee unfriendly, there's no reason not to bring 3 rogues. So no, warriors and rogues won't fight over druids.

To alleviate this issue, the simplest thing is to either convert feral attack power into "feral strength and agility" (Str and Agi that are only active in forms) so they can, at the very least, scale with Blessing of kings. However, its the mechanics that we need to look at. Shaman, Warriors, and Rogues scale better because of innate haste (30% from SnD and Flurry). That, along with weapon procs that increase with instant attacks and faster attack speed, as well as windfury (the biggest gimmick) totem that has no cooldown, unlike Windfury Weapon, scale them.

Giving us windfury and/or weapon procs will be a band-aid. Nerfing their haste is a band-aid that's not going to make ANYBODY happy. I feel that since we have a greater portion of dmg coming from our specials than our whites (versus rogues), a finishing move that gives a bonus to attack power (lets say 20% of AP for 30 seconds as finishing move. Cannot stack with itself) will be a plausible solution to scaling

 

Dejablue

What about [Idol of the White Stag]?

 

Valerian

I dont think its better than the Everbloom Idol. It would need significantly more AP to beat that one.

 

Dalamar

iotws is trash, even considering the proc lasts when the item is taken off (probably a bug) it is still such a marginal increase in dps, that it is hardly worth the addition into macros. If they fix the potential bug its a complete waste of an item.

 

david0925

it's a very bad raiding item, 2 situations

1.Use it by itself: the dmg you get overtime does not outweigh Everbloom under any circumstances

2.Use mangle to get buff, then swap out for another idol: since swapping idol triggers GCD, the white attack lost in the process outweights the AP gained in the process

 

• sadris

I am not expecting equal DPS to a fury warrior. I am expecting equal scaling. If the DPS of Kara->BT warrior increases by 35%, I expect to increase by 35% going Kara->BT. To make up some nonsense about "you scale less because you are needed more in Kara than in BT" is quite laughable. (You didn't say this, but others did).

Why don't Enh Shaman suffer the same fate as Druids? Oh yea, they get 100% of all their weapon upgrades. They get to benefit from haste+windfury, just like the Rogues/Warriors. FAP weapons are in their current state so god-awful bad its amazing. Not only are they horribly itemized (Pillar of Ferocity) but they have an ever-increasing amount of wasted potential. This will become an even bigger problem when the level cap is raised as base staff DPS will reach higher and higher numbers. (Yet the base paw DPS will stay at 55dps for some reason...)

 

david0925

Agreed completely

We're not looking at more dps than any of the other physical dps classes (Fury and Arms Warriors maybe) since we do have a lot more utility than they do. But not scaling as well is pretty dumb.

 

suicuique

While I see your point and agree that scaling across all classes should be similiar, you still seem to dodge the Kara bullet, that is that at that point of the game the druids were not balanced in respect to competing classes.

Yes, ferals at this point seem underpowered.
But this assertion does not imply that the balance was achieved at Karazhan. And that scaling has to be adjusted so we'd get feral druids at Kara level. Again.

In short: I'm saying that basing the druid scaling on kara level and extrapolating from there ... could be wrong.

And I'm still not sure why the ferals have fallen behind that much (in personal DPS) compared to the other classes. It surely cannot be the glancing change, haste effects, procs, WF or weapon DPS alone. But in your eyes which was the dominant factor? And which one would you change if you could make it happen (without cutting into tree defining abilities of other classes like SND and Flurry)?

 

dukes

It's primarily a ramp up effect of less than efficient itemisation - druids have fairly good itemisation at the pre-kara -> kara level, and then it starts to get diluted on even very good pieces with the introduction of intellect over splitting that ilvl on hit/crit/AP. Rogues split their DPS stats split primarily over haste, agility, hit, crit, AP and armour penetration, while druids mainly have it split over strength, agility and intellect. The more things you split ilvl over, the more direct stat-points you get in return.

Slayer's Handguards - Items - World of Warcraft
in comparison to
Thunderheart Gauntlets - Items - World of Warcraft

You can see that theres a 4 DPS-stat split over the Rogue ones, while a 4 DPS-stat split (of which two are useless in a pure-dps role) on the druid one. This lack of "perfect" itemisation on druid pieces and sets makes a significant difference in the total benefit from a full set of tier 6 quality gear, and there aren't the random pieces to replace tier set gear for druids which fill the role well either. This major gap in itemisation is holding us back from seeing what our DPS in a perfect world would actually be like (which I'm willing to say is likely to be very close to if not better than other "hybrid" classes such as enhshaman and fury warriors). Armour is a necessary stat for tanking, and splitting feral sets into DPS and Tanking separately would be quite annoying. It's a hard line to walk, but I do wish they'd remove intellect as it's basically a wasted statistic, as even in a situation where we're DPSing to the fullest and using powershifting effectively super mana pots will cover the void, and the extra stats will give us a lot more DPS than using haste/insane str pots.

There are other effects such as haste and their effects on procs, and although they have a significant scaling effect I believe things like Mangle and it's effect on Rip/Shred along with OoC match that fairly well (although not perfectly).

 

• Crowl

You might not be expecting equal level of dps, but the person I replied to was asking for just that, expecting equal levels of damage despite your undeniably higher utility.

As far as going Kara->BT, theres no reason why all classes should scale equally, if some were relatively underpwered (or overpowered) at a certain point in their progression then obviously those classes should increase at a faster (or slower) rate than everyone else, shadowpriests with the tailored set would seem to be an obvious example of that.

 

dukes

The tailored set has already been admitted as a mistake by Blizzard. Itemisation being at the wrong point =! scaling being wrong.

 

◊ masanbol

That argument would make sense in this discussion if the kind of scaling that was taking place was more about "realigning" classes as guilds progressed through instances to correct earlier imbalances. While that may be true as far as tailoring goes for casters, it's not a good analogy for feral druids. We're seeing the opposite: our relative DPS is decreasing at a very fast rate (and it wasn't overpowered to begin with, although I guess we could quibble over that point all day).

I'll say this again: speaking as both a raid leader and a feral druid, I would have a hard time justifying my own raid slot if the amount of DPS a warrior, rogue or shaman does vastly outweighs the utility I provide. Given the numbers that BT and Hyjal guilds are seeing, besides being an offtank, the DPS contribution a feral provides to a raid under current scaling conditions is starting to be questionable (again). In many cases and given equal gear values you'd be better off with another rogue.

 

• Crowl

I guess it comes down to how blizzard sees the role of a feral in raids, while some of you see them as a rogue alternative, blizzard may simply see them as a tank that can do more dps than a prot warrior and tank better than a dps warrior and then scale your gear within that frame of reference.

 

◊ masanbol

The sad thing then is that we're only vaguely useful for fights that don't require OTs. Again, if that's the case then you might as well slot out your feral for half the raid and pick up another DPSer.

 

Trazhenko

Do you often find yourself in the situation where the difference between the DPS of *one* of your hybrids and the DPS of the *one* [insert "DPS class" here] available to replace them is the deciding factor in beating an encounter?

I don't know about you, but the people in queue for our raids are typically not the top DPSers, unless one of them swapped out intentionally because they didn't need any gear. Maybe if you had an army of highly skilled and highly geared out rogues waiting in the wings to go in for a melee friendly fight with a short enrage timer, swapping out your druids might make sense, but if you need the tanks at some point during the raid, just take them.

 

david0925

scaling is still what we're looking for, and this is not just a problem with Druids.

What im trying to accomplish here (and most others) is to get some help, bandaid or permanent, so that druids can scale at a reasonable rate

Would you prefer that, or do you prefer the effect of physical haste, PPM proc, and windfury interaction be nerfed? Why bring growth rate of rogue/war/sha down (makes more people unhappy) when you can bring up other classes growth rate instead? If they apply internal cooldown to Dragonspine, Moongose, WF, etc etc, relative class growth rate will be in line, but that's not what we're looking for

 

david0925

due to the nature of no internal cooldown on some of the popular haste effect items, as well as windfury totem, physical haste creates a self cascading effect of being longer. PPM procs are affected by instant attacks as well as increased attack speed. As a result, hast-ed attacked makes it easier to maintain haste effect due to increased attack speed. This is especially true for Rogues. Due to combat potentcy, increased haste means more energy, which means more instant attacks, which means more chances to proc stuff and maintain haste effect.

 

Dejablue

Exactly.

Our weapons and gear do provide us with massive upgrades. The problem is that these upgrades and stats simply do not equate to competitiveness or viability as we attempt to scale on the high end. It is MUCH like pre BC bears and their ability to tank. We had great aggro, awesome, massive armor class, massive, awesome stamina. But, we didn't have any avoidance or uncrittable status and this simply made us not viable on anything ultra high end.

What happened was our pre 70 itemization due to quests and plentiful drops in dungeons made us overpowered. The warriors complained, and rightfully so, in my opinion. I believe they should have buffed the warriors and left the Druids alone, as many, many warriors and druids asked repeatedly on the class forums for, while slightly nerfing all of the quest and simple dungeon items to make us scale along side other classes. This was their SECOND opportunity, simplifying all the opportunities in beta into a culmination of release where this issue still existed, to fix our scaling. They didn't.

"To make up some nonsense about "you scale less because you are needed more in Kara than in BT" is quite laughable." This exact sentiment was made a point over and over again when discussing being extremely viable in Heroics yet knowing that we scale faster initially and level out later, as experience in BC beta and WoW classic. This lead to a focus on Bear and the subsequent Mangle nerf and slight warrior buff.

And, here we are. EXACTLY where we said we would be. Falling behind the other classes in major large raids where itemization is MUCH more specific and we aren't able to extrapolate a large enough gain in stats to compete. At lower levels there are a LOT of generic green and blue quality drops that we can utilize to stack stats because there are a LOT of "of the bear" and "of the wolf" items which are there in able to cover a WIDE range of specs and classes. In raids and tiered sets there is pretty much what we are given. So we cant slip by because they can't nerf this or that item because it would severely nerf some other class that needs it much more than we do at a lower level of play.

Then there is our high end and raid itemization. Horrible, as you state. Pillar of Ferocity is completely ridiculous. We do not need a hybrid feral weapon. We can swap out weapons. Many will still use Wilfury, Earthwarden and Terrestian's because they are weapons we can swap out. I have these macroed to my mangle/shred rotations macros.

Some of our other items are even worse. It is utterly....The fact that as a tank I STILL use a quest reward, green quality Idol is ludicrous. The fact that most consider an Idol that drops in Black Temple, what is probably the pinnacle of BC raiding and difficulty, to be inferior to the Heroic Badge Idol accessible outside of high end raiding, is just as ridiculous.

As far as procs are concerned, I feel we should get them. They are on a per minute basis, and thus I believe that we will still not benefit as greatly from them as other classes with slower attack speeds. I will admit I am ignorant of windfury and most other proc mechanics and I have not investigated them mathematically or on alt characters. I would greatly appreciate serious calculations of them to see if this may solve or at least alleviate our problem. Using those pots and procs in beta for those 2 weeks was, in my experience, not overpowered and would not be now since we have lost armor contributions and Mangle damage. I do not think we should have to pop pots to become viable, however. Just as the consumables buffs have now been limited, this should not be a bandaid, should we aquire the use of pots in forms. I DO feel we should benefit from enchantments and class buffs such as windfury, as explained above.

I do not think it is simply a base weapon scaling issue. I think it is a class design issue which causes the appearance of odd scaling. There are many solutions, pots and procs, specific feral weapons for cat and bear, synergy of stats such as intellect and spirit providing AP in forms, use of the listed DPS on equipped weapons that is converted into AP in forms, etc.

Sorry for the long post. I wanted to try and give an overview of the escalation of this problem for the uninitiated, and because I feel it is a much larger issue than simple weapon scaling.

I don't want to hijack this thread. I think we are pretty much in agreement here about this issue. Imperical data shows conclusively we are falling behind. So lets come up with a solution.

Here is the gist of my proposed solution as previously stated:

If this is inappropriate for this thread, I apologize and I will continue to go with the flow of this thread, as it were. I think we should try to solve this, however, instead of rehashing the same sentiments and beliefs that have been substantiated. So here is a summary above. Let us move on to the solution

P.S. I left positive feedback for a couple of you guys. I didn't realize it links to the exact post made. I am not trying to be a smartass, I do appreciate your contributions.

 

Boevis

How many <5% wipes have you seen in your WoW career? More importantly, how many wipes have been caused because an add got off his special ability one last time and killed someone (likely the OT, a Healer, or an AoE caster)

Unlike healing or tanking, DPS potential never caps for any encounter (not counting threat caps), no matter how much you increase the DPS, more will always make the fight easier.

 

• Daboran

Vashj phase 2 is exactly such a situation for many guilds when learning the fight. We are at the point where we know that even if we had just one more dps class phase two would be a walkover instead of a real challenge. Unfortunately we can't sacrifice any healing or tanking utility to get there