◊ masanbol

Slight derail, but all our rogues have living action pots and have had to learn when to cloak of shadows/HS/pot. While phase 3 is easier for me in that sense, my DPS cycles aren't phenomenal while I'm shifting out and healing myself.

The fact is that even in SSC, which as you said is not endgame, the DPS difference is becoming apparent.

Not exactly. The real problem is how fast the gap is increasing the higher up the progression chain you go, and while itemization is definitely a factor (and I think it's fair to say that the int is wasted stat points), the far greater difference lies in that druids lack a major scaling point that every other melee class has: windfury, haste procs, weapon procs. Those three things work together so well that the scaling on them has accelerated the DPS potential of dual wielding classes to a point that leaves us much further behind than we should be.

I don't think that anyone in this thread wants to see any other classes nerfed. What we need as a class is an ability, or a change to existing abilities, so that we scale a bit more than we are now. There have been a few suggestions so far but the consensus seems to be that it has to be finely balanced so that bear remains in its current state (since it seems to be working just fine, balance-wise) and cat gets a boost that can push us back into the realm of doing about 75-80% of other melee classes' DPS.

I'm definitely not asking for weapon procs. WF might be nice, or something similar to flurry, but again, we aren't asking to be equal to rogues or warriors in terms of potential DPS output, since as you said, that's not our function. But if Blizzard's intention is for ferals to have a useful DPS role in raids, then something needs to change regarding our scaling.

 

Weidekuh

a gap to enh. shammies? a gap to offense warriors? they both buff the goup they are in better than we do. shammy does it triple as good if not even more (wf+str+ap-buff). the warrior can also offtank if needed. why should we scale worse than they do ?

 

Dejablue

Vashj was and still can be ultra high end if you are competing for server firsts and are not taking the time to reach the point where your raid handicap is overcome via gear rather than the use of skill and strategy. There is a big difference between killing Onyxia for a world or server first after running Molten Core for a month and killing Onyxia for the first time because everyone in your raid is in full Tier 1 gear after running Molten Core for six months. The same holds true for the expansion raids and whatever the ultra high end of your server may be at the time.

I would also like to note that sentences are a representation of ideas and concepts. The reason people frown upon using all capital letters in a sentence is because sentences, or ideas, seem to run together when one uses all capital letters in them because, you cannot see where a new sentence begins. Punctuation is there for the benefit of intent and logic not to show where sentences begin and end. The same holds true for using no capital letters in your sentences when trying to convey an idea or concept.

 

dukes

No, a gap to mages/rogues (although mages in their current state just aren't up to par, so it's mainly rogues).

 

Weidekuh

when you're at vashj your the gear gap is still ok because of itemisation. it has nothing to do with how hard the encounter is. a good geared feral will be competitive with good geared rogues at vashj lvl. well that's how it was for us. now getting into MH/BT the scaling gap starts really to hurt. that's why i said, that vashj-firstkill geared raids are not high endgame if you look at the scaling, not on the achievement. it has nothing to do with e-peen bragging.

ever thought about, that the internet is accessible worldwide? not everyone has english as his first language. i speak 4 different languages. each one of those has different capital usage so i just write everything small. much easier and i really don't care as long as the text is comprehensible.

no one is complaining about a gap to rogues. we are complaining, that the gap doesn't stay the same through itemisation. the gap is ok in SSC. it becomes worse in TE and awful bad in BT/MH.

 

dukes

I'm not entirely sure why you're arguing - that's exactly what I'm saying. Itemisation is the root cause of this entire problem, not procs or anything else. "Fix" itemisation so that feral druids have a perfect DPS set, and I really doubt there would be any problems.

 

Weidekuh

procs ARE important for scaling. Windfury is one reason why other classes scale so well. we would still scale worse than they do. windfury scales white attacks. we only do 30-35% white damage. so it would be perfectly balanced.

 

Boevis

Emphasis mine

There is no immutable law that says Blizzard can't just add a 45% SnD or a +30% Damage finisher to our class. We don't automatically need Procs in order to scale well, we need something equivalent.

 

suicuique

But isn't this at the core a perception problem?
One sees 1% wipes and the first realiziation would be: If we just had some little more DPS and everything went the same, he would be dead by now.

I question this kind of thought, because ... and Leotheras is a very good ecample for that ... Battle Rezzing a mage/rogue/... who got WWed (and this will happen in the tries to get the first kill on him) gives the raid in effect quite a lot of DPS.
The same stays true for Vashj where a stupid death in phase1 (come on, you cant tell me that you didn't have guildmates doing stupid things the first tries) will finish all your hope you could have had to keep control of phase2.

Yes, having subbed out a druid could give you more DPS ... but so is a perfectly placed BR.

We had our feral on our Vashj First Kill, Kael first kill, and every first kill since then except Bloodboil (which ironically really caters to the OT skills of a feral). Because our raid is supid sometimes, errors will happen and BR is an option to get back on track.
Not to mention that in some ecnounters deaths are not avoidable.

 

• Ryjaek

I'm not sure I can agree with you here. From my understanding, the reason why SnD/flurry and other haste effects are so effective in helping class scaling is (at least in part) due to the proc rate (including WF) being increased to such a massive degree from the increased attack speed.

I'm not saying that it wouldn't help because it truly would, but I think in the long run we would still be behind on the curve. Blizzard can only buff druids so much before they become overpowered in a single player scenario-Procs (mainly WF here) are important IMHO because it puts that extra damage boost in the hands of someone else for WF or from sacrificing item points on weapon procs for other items.

 

david0925

WoW, at this point, isn't about "you can heal X% more than this class, so you do y% less dmg" anymore. The argument has been "well if hybrids can do this kind of dmg, why bring the pure classes" when there are no pure classes anymore. There are always a delicate balance between tanking, dpsing, crowd controlling, and healing.

And justifying the horrible scaling of Druids (and other non-physical classes) on guildmate screwups? I cannot really accept that. For unavoidable deaths, such as Gorefiend and Azgalor, BR really shines. But right now, the dps discrepency is so large that utilty versus dps is questionable. Druids are probably not the one really suffering the most right now (mages have it worse imo), but to think that this widening gap in scaling between various classes is justified, is just laughable

 

• sadris

Druids can already win every duel against any other class. But I am not sure why any "single player scenario" is relevant to the potential DPS output of raiders. I am fairly certain duels don't get you epics or arena points.

 

• Ryjaek

My point was that these classes rely on each other for buffs in order to provide as much damage as they do. Blizzard wont buff us so that we can do that amount of damage (edit: even 80% of their raiding damage for example) without relying on those buffs from other classes (my main point here is WF). Single player scenarios are irrelevant to raiding, but raiding is only a part of WoW, and there is no way IMO that Blizzard can afford to have us scale as well out of raids as other classes can only do in dps centric groups.

Instead of linking a significant source of scaling to limited (mainly raiding) situations, it would be available under any condition.

 

Weidekuh

exactly my point. thats why WF would not be overpowered. because we only get it with a shaman in group. give us an equivalent self ability and it can be a problem. although a new finisher would be nice XD

 

• Ryjaek

I dont think anyone wants something that is equivalent to WF as a class ability. I do believe that we could be scaled well with a few itemization fixes, along with an increased use for haste in raiding situations (AKA WF). I'd personally love to see a finisher along the lines of the SnD that was suggested above-it would compound with the WF changes to make a scaling, raid oriented dps buff with limited buffing effects in the pre-end game raiding situation where we already have a solid presence.

 

Dalamar

You can see it for yourself, in WWS. It's not that our Yellow damage is crazy, or our white damage is super low. It is exactly that we do not have that finisher that is bringing our damage up to par with rogues, shreds/mangles account for almost the same amount, -5-10% as a rogues sinister strikes and the rare eviscerates. Just you look at the other end, we are spending our combo points mostly on rips(sometimes nothing at all) which account for 20% of our damage, instead of a near 50% speed increase on our white damage, which combined with WF and the occasional proc(trinket/weapon/set) and the use of haste pots are basically what is leaving our white damage so low while sky rocketing rogues to the ~70/~30 split they are seeing with white to yellow.

Windfury and a speed increase/damage increase finisher would see us reach these proper levels, hell they could even add in a mechanic that increases our white damage while bleeds or just rip is up that would probably see our damage reach closer to where it should be. The problem is that they aren't looking at this, no one is looking at what druids are putting our right now in tier 6 and we are gonna get shat on for it in the next set of raid instances. At least until the next expansion where we get to be a balanced class for 10 levels.

 

• sadris

Don't count on that, our base paw damage will sit at 55 dps, the same as it was at 60.

 

suicuique

I'm not justifying the gap.
I'm just saying (in response to a "i had to sit out a first kill, else we would not have the DPS" posting) that raid invites depend on a lot of things, and personal DPS should play a minor role in that. Because in the end the only thing that matters is raid dps. And you dismissing "guildmate screwups" as a non argument is contradictory to your whole point.
If no screwups would happen there is no encounter in game (up to RoS ... Shahrazz, Council and Illidan I have no experience with) where DPS (an subbing out a feral for a rogue) is an issue. YMMV.

 

Boevis

Once again, If you have ever had a 1% wipe, who do you blame? Likely the healers that let the MT die, or the Caster that pulled Aggro, or the CCer that didn't do his job. Why not blame the guy that did 200 less DPS than the rest of his class? I don't think it can be stressed enough, In WoW, a fight can always be made easier with more DPS. You cannot say the same for any other aspect of raiding, Healing, CC, Tanking all have caps for fights. DPS has no cap. More DPS means you're more likely to win in every way shape and form.

While it's true you can't discount "Covering for screwups". You can just simply replace bad players (assuming you're a guild that's in such a position) or change your raid makeup to fit the fight better (more cc, more healing). But at some point you will run into a problem where everyone is doing their job properly, and is able to do as much DPS as can be expected, and you're still wiping. The only thing to do then is make the raid makeup better. No one tries Magtheridon with only 1 warlock, it's just stupid unless you outgear it, likewise there are going to be fights where it's just not worth taking Class X when Class Y does their job better in every fashion. In this case, we're talking about strait DPS fights and Rogue/Warrior/Druid balance.

 

Dalamar

The simple point for the argument for windfury is this.

With Windfury a feral is perfectly viable in a melee dps group, appropriately buffing other melee, standing with the other melee and getting all the same buffs as the other melee.

Without Windfury as it is now, we are wasting that buff from which a second warrior or a third rogue is MUCH more appropriate in that group slot, we will never be a viable DPS without a proper group setup for us, which almost always runs Windfury and not GoA. (Twisting totems makes me giddy though)

 

• sadris

You can't discard battle res so easily. In some fights in the game, bosses want to kill someone, and they do it (esp in BT).