dukes

I'm wondering if Blizzard actually meant for feral druids to be as powerful as they were in karazhan/gruul. The "scaling issue" obviously shows that there's a big gap between where we are now, and where we were back then, but which way round is it supposed to be? Are we supposed to 5% behind all the way through, or 35% behind all the way through? Is it simply that we aren't supposed to scale properly?

If the issue was the other way round, with druids doing 35% less DPS at karazhan level, and 5% less DPS at the BT level you could imagine the amount of whine from other classes. We'd be outperforming pretty much everyone but rogues and the occasional DPS warrior, yet we can combat res, innervate, offtank, and provide LoTP.

In the current situation, druids whine because scalability seems "broken". Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe we aren't meant to scale? Maybe we were "broken" at the karazhan level, and the only reason Blizzard didn't fix it was because it didn't matter and druids were at the right point at the BT/Hyjal point? Same issue with Spriests because of the Frozen Shadowweave being entirely too powerful, meant that they ended up in a position on DPS meters early on in the raid game where they shouldn't have been. After the fiasco with trying to adjust the tailoring sets, it could be they decided against trying to nerf anything which had been in game for a long time, especially with the previous track record of feral druids being very defensive (and rightly so). I'm not entirely sure about it, but it's worth looking at the other side of the argument and wondering which one is actually applicable.

The lack of blue response to the post you made Sahrokh is intreguing. They probably don't want to spark anything off as previous posts have had comments taken out of context and quoted far beyond anything that was originally mentioned.

The main problem with druids is that all PPM effects are the base PPM with no attack speed on our base attacks. Rogues, warriors and shamans all have base attack speed increases (flurry, SnD) which means that PPM effects will always have a higher proc rate than their base PPM + instants. This is especially true once it gets to the BT level with the haste items around. The best geared rogues are approaching 20% haste, with SnD on top of that giving a 40%+ attack speed boost, which increases the value of items such as Dragonspine Trophy (itself increasing haste), Mongoose (again, haste), and Windfury (straight up proc but more attacks = more procs). The self-reinforcing effects of all these procs merely exacerbates the effect, giving melee oriented classes other than feral druids a good reason to just stack everything they can, to the point where the T3-BS-1h-Mace is actually the best fury DPS mainhand because the proc is so good. If PPM effects were actually PPM rather than being %age based from PPM, it would solve a lot of problems with the self-reinforcing proc effects. As druids can't take advantage of any of these effects, it makes the problem even worse for us.


Having said all of this, on most fights if I'm in a melee group, I outdps a lot of the casters anyway. I think it's more of a total issue about melee groups providing too many buffs to each other on top of proc scaling that really does it, along with the amount of small caster-unfriendly things (the majority of melee unfriendly fights don't make you stop DPSing, you just have to be careful, while the caster ones really screw over a significant portion of DPS because of movement such as bloodboil, interruptions such as teron and najentus, and other requirements made of them).

 

suicuique

Keep in mind though that "PPM" is a concept, not an implementation.
All procs have to be "%based" because of implementation issues (bluntly said: you can't see into the future ... and this is what real PPM would need), so you derive you proc% from a assumed PPM goal.

Sure you could reevaluate the % every time something has altered your weapon speed (such as mongoose proc, DST, dragonstrike, flurry ...) ... but it should be obvious that would add a new dimension of server strain. Hardly feasible.

I say: just give procs to druids.

 

Sahrokh

They do, in vanilla WoW druids were even higher DPS than rogues at start of MC.

Apparently, but intellectual honesty would hint at putting it written down somewhere in the class description pages, druids are meant to be the "road openers", the icebreakers for a guild.

As they ding to the max cap for the given expansion they are basically in pristine condition.
They can provide the performance the other classes miss while still "warming up" / gearing up.
Past that moment, druids "mission" is sort of over and they tag along at a reduced pace till the next expansion.


The fact is that, even if the economy and balance of the game are preserved, it's still a game. It has to be fun to play.
Maybe stopping scaling up to favor someone else is fair, but it's not fun at all.

Spending 120g per day while:

- everyone else got better gear with arena
- everyone else enjoys their tangible upgrades and scaling up

maybe it's fair and balanced but... not fun. This is a game (payed one as well), it's meant to be fun.


The fact in WoW is pretty easy to level up other classes makes comparing performance easy: I have a mage and a shaman (yes, alts so both "fun specced") and for both I see numbers rising up visibly when I change one gear piece. It's fun.
When I upgraded to greatstaff? Meh. Nothing. In fact I am grinding the S2 gladiator weapon now.

 

anathor

Thanks to Sahrokh and dukes for the thoughts. The impression that I get from all this is that warriors were supposed to be the "gear-dependant" class, but this role is actually devoted to druids. Indeed there are only 2 ways to progress (or, as we call it, scale): gear, and game mechanics. Most classes benefit from both aspects and therefore will scale better than a class that benefits only from one aspect. Feral forms are the "can't do anything" forms (no procs, no items, etc.) and therefore can only benefit from gear. Since itemization gives (globally) the same benefits for the same iLvL, it's pretty obvious that a class that can rely on gear upgrades only will be worse off than a class that can benefit from gear upgrades and game mechanics upgrade.

Adding to that the weird implementation choices (cap white dps base damage at lvl 60?), it's no wonder that the gap is widening. Maybe in the end Blizzard will have to give ferals 1 dps weapons with all the base dps spent on stats instead Or maybe they should just remove the weapon slot in feral forms and replace with another concept entirely.

I find it hard to believe that things are currently working as intended, it rather seems that Blizzard has dug itself into a hole with weird game mechanics for druids, and forgot that the first thing to do is to stop digging. I also do not see how another expansion is going to help. If our auto-attack base dps is still capped, then the AP gap will widen more and more (amongst other things).

 

Dalamar

I love hearing the "Anti-Scaling" Fanatics argue that it's fine that we do so much drastically less at tier 6 than tier 4 especially when you consider how closely Druid Tanks scale with Prot Warriors, arguably equal or in some circumstances better than the Warrior Alternative.

I can say that the ONLY time I have even beaten an equally geared(somewhere between t5 and t6) rogue on a tier 6 boss encounter is when they were kicking rotating on Essence of Desire, even then I barely beat them.

 

Liar

This isn't really a weird choice. If they didn't do that the AQ40 FAP mace would have been just as good at level 70 as it was at level 60. They got the idea right with adding more FAP weapons but apparently they didn't follow through it properly (i.e. less +FAP assigned than the ILVL would demand).

 

Floria

I apologize if this notion doesn't come as welcome, but: Perhaps feral DPS ought to be compared to how Protection Warriors DPS in their DPS gear? The feral tree combines a rogue-like mechanic for DPS, but it's also the tanking tree. By and large, if another tank wasn't needed for the raid at some point, the druid would be replaced with a rogue, no?

While I understand that the Feral AP system isn't really working too well, Feral druids have a wonderful thing going as equally viable tanks compared with Warriors, while also being able to pump out more damage when not tanking (compared to Prot). Are there guilds who are taking feral druids solely to DPS, and not for the bear form?

 

Dalamar

With the EXTENSIVE itemization for all warriors, 2hand DPS, dual wield DPS and tanking, even Prot Warriors are quickly scaling to be nearly equal to what a Druid can do DPS from being able to equip the solid tier 6 upgrades to Fury and MS. If we see another tier, or even a really well equipped tier 6 prot warrior, I wouldn't be surprised to see them pass us on the meters.

Doesn't that seem wrong to anyone else?

 

dukes

I'd be amazed if that were to happen, seeing as prot DPS is way worse than MS dps in a raid setting and I'm generally about the same or better than our MS warrior (they're doing 1200-1300 DPS generally, while I do 1250-1350 DPS generally).

I also don't think feral druids should be limited to similar DPS as a prot warrior, given the extensive advantages a (prot) warrior has over a bear when main tanking (last stand, shield wall, 10 (or 16) % less spell damage taken, shield block to get past crushings/reduce damage). The position ferals are in at the moment is amazing trash tanks who can switch to DPS gear and still put out some decent damage, while prot warriors are great all around tanks who are basically needed for some encounters due to anti fear or spell reflect. Although there are a couple of bosses which using a druid gives a minimal advantage (archi if you have fear ward, shahraz) there are some which you pretty much can't do with a druid tank (RoS p2, illidan).

 

Darkkazul

I mean this is a bad example but...

Wow Web Stats

Natural is prot during this fight doing 954 dps where as I'm sitting there in full dps gear shredding away... This is also with him not having devastate (he forgot to put a point into it when respecing...) so its just with heroic strikes and melee attacks. He does have some of the best fury dps items in the game but still its kinda depressing.


EDIT: As another random tangent, Anyone done the math about armor reducing items and/or end game trinkets (Tsunami Talisman, DST, Madness) ? I have picked up the armor trash necklace and might pick up the pants from Azgalor (DE status now) but haven't really had a chance to figure out how useful they would be (they give up so much stats for what seems to be a small reduction in armor, Yes I know duel wielders get a lot more from armor reduction etc...).

 

dukes

A bad example? That example shows the DPS prot warriors can do (950 is pretty terrible on winterchill, but he was lacking devastate as you said), it's a terrible example of feral DPS.

As an aside:
a) He got windfury
b) He used recklessness
c) He got bloodlust, you didn't (in fact it looks like he was in a melee group, while you were in a hunter group with just trueshot).

Wow Web Stats

That's our last winterchill (and it's worth noting that I didn't even get bloodlust in that).

As for armour reduction items, I've said before that 18%+ of our damage (rip) gains no benefit. When you consider that armour reduction works best if you stack a lot of it, and theres few random items (compared to rogues/warriors with it on their tier sets) it just isn't worth it imo. I prefer to stack "standard" stats.

 

Darkkazul

Yea thats what i assumed but still... Also my other problem that I'm having right now; In reality I have become the OT pretty much permanently which means every t6 upgrade that I get I gem it up for tanking because thats what I do. Is t6 gemmed for tanking (I prefer to use agi/stam as the majority of my gems) better than t5 gemmed for dps? Obviously this dependent on my other gear but armory isnt working for US...

 

dukes

It depends on what you count as tanking gems. I generally use pure agi gems so that it's fine for both (off)tanking and DPS. The problem comes in that the 12 agi/3% crit bonus meta needs 2xblue/2xyellow/2xred. Obviously the red isn't a problem, and the yellow I just use 2 hit/agi gems, but we haven't had the agi/stam gem pattern drop yet.

If you compare the full set of Thunderheart Harness to the Nordrassil Harness, you end up with agility values of 184 and 161 respectively. Assuming epic gems in Thunderheart and rare in Nordrassil (there's 7 gem slots total in Nordrassil and 8 in Thunderheart) so using 5agi/7stam (as you said you prefer agi/stam for tanking) and 8agi (best pure DPS gem), you end up with Thunderheart at 184+(8*5) and Nordrassil at 161+(7*8) or 224 and 217 for the two sets respectively, so T6 wins even ignoring the other benefits of more strength, stam and the extra hit on legs. It generally depends on the slot really, and until you get 4t6, it's best to keep 2t4 anyway. I'd go with using T6 pieces, especially as the 2 piece is decent in comparison to the (basically worthless) 2t5.

 

Deliverance

As far as I can see the FAP is exactly what the iLvl would demand for every FAP weapon in the game, so long as we assume that whoever designed the FAP system very deliberately decided that FAP weapons should scale in damage like 1 handed melee weapons. As far as I can see, they followed through properly, as the current setup has many benefits from a design point of view:

• Using 1H scaling makes it easier to balance threat gained from the equipped weapon vs. warriors that typically tank 1H. Same iLvl increase leads to the same base white dps increase, which leads to the same base tps increase.
• Using 1H scaling makes it easy to maintain equivalent scaling of shared-type energy-based moves with rogues such as shred/backstab, ravage/ambush. Nobody gets to backstab with a weapon with 2H scaling.
• Pre-TBC FAP weapons were, with the exception of Atiesh, all 1H weapons; It seems likely that the sole reason for switching to all TBC FAP weapons being 2H was to avoid the "feral offhand" issue.

Sure, things start getting funky in comparison to other melee classes for any number of reasons already stated in this thread at high gear levels in TBC once you take talents, haste effects both passive and active and their awesome influence on PPM procs, windfury, procs in general, dualwielding, and all sorts of other raid buffs into account and in the long run, the feral druid loses out as it is currently, but the base decision to make FAP weapons 2H while scaling their FAP as 1H makes excellent sense: It gives the right base weapon scaling and avoids having to itemize for two items unique to feral druids (1h+offhand).

Any changes from the status quo should be via talents or abilities, not changing the FAP scaling, since the FAP scaling is the one thing that actually works out right at the moment.

 

◊ masanbol

Ignore this post, repeating what someone else said.

 

Boevis

For me at least, the problem is in that it's very very clear we aren't scaling at an acceptable rate, even in bear, and there are 4 possible ways to fix it from what I see.

Itemization: Agi/Hit/Crit/AP items are terrible. Yes, we love Agi, but previously stated everywhere, point for point Crit rating and AP are terrible compared to Str and even simply adding more Agi (even with the exponential item cost scaling) and we don't need Hit in the amounts we get on items. PvP/Badge/Rep rewards shouldn't be the best items for anything but Weapons (which is poorly itemized with Crit and no Agi anyway)

FAP: We don't use a shield, we don't get an offhand attack, we don't use a 1h so why our DPS scales like one is something I don't get. The only reason I could see having it scale like one is if our attacks worked exactly like everyone else's, and abilities scaled based on us having only one 1h, which leads me to:

Haste, Procs, consumables: Not even looking at Windfury (which alone would be amazing), We don't get any procs except for a few that are horribly sub-par, this makes Haste not as enticing to begin with, added to the lack of any base haste abilities (keep in mind, that like armor pen, haste gets better the more sources you have of it) and this is yet another area of itemization that is crap for druids. Lacking Dual Wield also hurts both of these areas. There's also various consumables, Insane Str potions, Haste Potions, Drums of Battle/War require shifting in addition to their own cast/cooldown which always means lost hits and energy/rage.

Entire Mechanics: As feral, I have 5 extremities that end in sharp objects, yet I'm only capable of using 1. Show me a bear or cat that only uses one claw and never bites anything (except after clawing 5 times!). While it would make more sense for us to "Tri-wield" with different modifiers on all our attacks, I think everyone here would settle for Dual Wielding. There's also an issue of number of abilities, warriors have something like 12 abilities that are worth using when DPSing, admittedly several are talents and others are situational or don't have to be refreshed often (shouts, thunderclap, sunders), Rogues (our most often compared class) have 5 CP generators to chose from (admittedly only 2 are worth discussing from a pure Raid DPS perspective but the others have PvP/5 man/solo use) compared to our 2, 3 Finishers compared to our 1, 2 additional cooldowns, and then there's Vanish, CloS, Evasion, and a better -threat that allow the Rogue to go harder for longer and avoid nasty things like Static Charge. When DPSing I hit 4 Buttons, when tanking I hit 5 buttons (both of those are counting keeping FF up even though I'll never use it in Bear if there's a non-tree druid in the raid)

About Bear: in a MT position we are only scaling equal with warriors because 1/4 of their instant abilities generates 0 threat (shield block) If warriors were to take those crushings, that extra devastate would put them far above bearform in terms of TPS.

 

Krag

First point: I really hope 2.2 is out next week and we can get 2.3 on the PTR soon to get a look at the Zul'Aman stuff and the announced multitude of new badge rewards. I know they most likely won't fix anything at the T6 level for those of you already there, but at least we might see if we can get some actual cat gear or if we have to settle for rogue itemization still.

Second point: It seems that the FAP system has just gotten more and more like a patch solution and wasn't really thought through. I hope it can be changed and fixed at some point but right now I've given up a little on it.

Third point: I can live without consumables in forms though I still can't see how it would be too powerful, but procs and windfury would really help a lot since they are things that scale very well (apart from also being plain fun).

Fourth point: I fear it's too late for actual mechanic changes at that scale - though one can always hope. But something like a new finisher for cat would be really great.

 

seminarca

Shield Block isn't on the GCD as far as I'm aware, so they can activate it and use another skill that does invoke the GCD simultaneously.

 

Rurik

Hm. Hold your horses.

I know you're far ahead of me progression wise (Vashj, Al'ar, lootreaver killed), but I MT quite some fights (Morogrim, shaman on Karathress, Maggy, Leo... ) and I never had any TPS problems. Our rogues usually are happier with me tanking then when our warriors tank (and our 2 prots are very good).

I probably need to get back to you with numbers, but from my PoV for a pure TPS fight a druid is the better choice then the warrior (especially fights with limited rage, but that's another story).

And as mentioned before, SB does not invoke gcd, it does however require rage, but for rage-starved fights you wouldnt use it I suppose since you won't take much damage.

What do you base our TPS beeing worse then warriors on? I don't post here alot, but I read here from time to time and found your posts good, so I'd like to see where you get it from, because (based on experience) I disagree.

 

Carlos

Please consider the shield specilization talent, that gives for each Block 1 Rage. This reduces the real cost of 5 Rage per activated shield block to minimum 4 if not 3. If the warrior goes the avoidance way he receives even less rage from that talent.

 

Dalamar

There are so many problems with the whole implementation of druid forms right now, it is beyond stupid. I will be pushing for a complete revamp of the whole shifting mechanic come Wrath of the Lich King, as it is a clunky failure of a system that has too many limitations and restrictions for a game where anyone else is able to do anything else at any time. But that is for another thread at another time.

FAP is a catastrophic failure, from the first time it was announce by Caydium(/bitter) up until now, it has been limited to so few weapons and completely botched for synergy with other features of our class.

**** FAP is only itemized on what, 3 raid epic weapons in the game. That is the same number as in AQ20, 40 and Naxx. Yes there is something wrong with that few weapons for us, considering that most other classes get that many weapon choices each instance. And yes, i am considering different specs of weapons, why? because 2 of our raid weapons are tanking and only 1 is DPS that one being from the ever so endgame Illhoof.

**** There is not a single crafted FAP weapon in the game, there isn't even a staff crafting skill in the game. While there is a near endgame weapon for every other melee class including most specs per each class.

**** FAP does absolutely nothing while outside of a form, it doesn't scale with any of our talents and it isn't affected by any buff in the game. Strength was given scaling through heart of the wild and kings, and alternate usage through nurturing instinct although another failure in its own right and neither affect each other. Agility is a wonderful stat that provides everything needed offensively, including damage increase, crit increase and scaling through kings, as well as defensively adding small amounts of armor and impressive amounts of dodge. Why isn't it just a flat out strength or agility boost?

Simply looking into FAP weapons and the failure that is the whole "Melee Moonkin" experiment has me at a wonder, why do we even need FAP in the game. What reason is there to limit a Feral Druid's list of weapons to such an extreme requirement such as nearly 1000FAP now, why not just directly scale either the 1hand or 2hand DPS, Topend, or even just Ilvl to whatever the equivalent damage a druid should be doing with that item. We are already restricted enough without the ability to use Swords, Axes, Polearms, or Ranged weapons, why does a weapon for us need to be so extremely restricted to the point where it is completely useless of anyone other than us. Just this change to allow us to use the actual weapon Damage, Ilvl or whatever would give us a drastically wider range of REAL endgame weapons. But, "OH NOES" a feral might take that next tier of 2hand legendaries from the Warriors already staggering list of "just for me" orange.