• sadris

What exactly is wrong with T6? It is the best itemized gear in the game for Druids.

 

Allev

If I were a powershifter, I'd want spirit or mp5 rather than INT for catform.
If I weren't a powershifter, I'd rather want crit rating, haste, armor penetration rather than INT for catform.
I'd want just about anything rather than INT for bear form.

Other DPS classes get 3 DPS stats on their gear. We only get that on pants. If we did in other places, maybe our DPS would properly scale. I'm most familiar with rogue spreadsheets from other classes, and they get a HUGE AEP buff from gear level to gear level even on tier sets.

It's easy to say "best" when everything below it has similar stat allocation. If it weren't for 2t4, we'd mostly wear Karazahn DPS gear to DPS.

Remember [Clefthoof Hide Leggings]? I want itemization as effective as that, every once in a while.

 

• sadris

Then I think you don't understand the role of a Druid in a raid environment. You aren't in the raid because you can out damage Rogues, you are in there due to your utility. Sometimes (more often than not) you need a large mana pool to perform the operations required for said utility.

 

Boevis

Would be nice if there was a couple +bleed mobs out there to make up for the 4? bosses that are bleed immune. Just because "Druids aren't brought to raids for their DPS" doesn't mean there can't be a "OMG Feral DPS" Boss like there is for various types of healers.

 

Allev

Spirit or mana/5 would allow us to be a "utility" more frequently. I have never, ever, ever come close to running out of mana using my rebirth, innervate, and tranquility whenever necessary, keeping myself and those around me alive with some small heals, and so on. Not to mention that the "utility" of LOTP.

A mage's arcane intellect buff gives us more than enough mana than we'd ever need.

Do you prioritize kings over salv/might on DPS fights? Do you ask for wisdom instead of might, for the "utility"? Because I find myself having too much mana to even bother with the shifting talent (I don't powershift). Similarly, I'd rather have a different stat on my feral tier set to help my two primary roles, tanking and DPS, rather than the once-per-fight "utility". It's a wasted stat on 95% of fights.

You started this thread about lack of scaling, Sadris. You're the one who said our staff items weren't giving enough AP to scale. But note that we never had INT, the "utility" stat, on any items before we got to raid-level content, before we stopped "scaling." It's wasted itemization for many, just as much as that base staff DPS is.

 

onkl

Blue on the german forums

Translation:

"At first it's planned to improve FAP items by adding more AP to them. After further investigation these items turned out to have less AP then comparable items other classes have.

Furthermore there will be changes to the HotW talent. Instead of granting 20% strength in catform, this bonus will be changed to 10% more AP."

 

dukes

Well, that's interesting, and certainly downgrades the importance of strength massively while making agility even more ridiculous to stack.

The gist of the rest of that post is that there's too little attack power on the feral weapons (and other items) when compared to what other classes get, right? (that's the impression the google translation gave me, at least).

According to armour I have 471 strength in caster form in my DPS gear. Add 10% from BoK for 518 strength. This means HoTW would give me ~103 extra strength in a raid environment, or ~210 AP more.

My unbuffed AP is ~3000 (taking off the 200 for hotw=str). In a raid environment fully buffed it's approaching 5000 AP. Even in an unbuffed situation, the gains from that change are around the value of a flask of relentless assault, and with raid buffs it's almost 300 AP gain.

I'm happy with that. The only bastard is that now we need to re-evaluate all the items, and probably find out that all the rogue-based items are better for DPS than our tier sets (although I'm not sure about that when you factor in the bonuses).

It's a double edged sword though. Now this makes itemisation easier for Blizzard to deal with, but it also increases competition on those items (which before we didn't have as much - ancestral ring of conquest and razor scale battlecloak as good examples).

 

onkl

...

 

seminarca

That it certainly is. If I'm reading it right, it's going to reduce tier set dps potential due to them being very Strength heavy, as well as the few properly itemized items we've got (Razorscale Battlecloak, Ring of Ancestral Conquest etc). Will probably balance out with the extra AP on weapons, HotW scaling the AP on weapons, and us being able to cannibalize Rogue loot.

 

panny

On the plus side, Shaman get less competition for Strength jewelry!

 

Allev

All the more likely that they'll at least tweak our tier sets. Otherwise, Blizzard will hear a cacaphony of "they nerfed our tier sets!" posts.

Also, Dukes-- I think the issue was, mainly, that those two items listed were T5 items. They don't have a corresponding item on T6. This change lets them not have to itemize specifically for one half of one form, WITHOUT dethroning strength as the second-best druid stat.

 

• sadris

This implies that they are indeed fixing FAP weapons, rather than just adding a constant number to all weapons (so the formula will be changed).

WoW-Europe.com Forums -> HotW change for 2.3

 

◊ Lord BEEF

All they would have to do for the tier sets is a straight swap of agility and strength. That in itself would be a huge dodge buff though, so we'll see if they do it.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

• Playered

This will be interesting, not only will AP buffs (Hyjal, BShout, UR, TSA...) scale better for Ferals, you also have the weapons which:
A) get boosted themselves (more FAP..?)
B) they also scale 10% better on their AP

Meaning the boost to feral AP is going to be quite significant.

 

◊ Vaccine

Edit: NM, 10 replies in time it took me to "break the news"

 

Allev

If the change being made is EXACTLY what is in the OP and we get our weapons scaled "properly", it ups our damage by 3.3% (50/1500) using the Pillar in the way suggested, and it will receive the most benefit of all our current weapons (not including the legendary in the Kael fight). It will be less with other current weapons (PVP/Terestian's/Wildfury).

The HOTW AP change will be much more of a deciding factor, as it opens us up to rogue itemization as viable alternatives to our current gear, while simultaneously adding more damage on the staves.

 

Holo

Definitely this is a buff for "raiding druids" but it is a short way to fix your decrease of DPS... Instead devs making a better itemisation they are making us get only rogue loot.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

It's a good thing overall as it opens up a lot more of current itemization to druids. Having to itemize fully for one fourth of one class is a pain in the ass.

I would have changed rogues to get two attack power per strength, and then replace ap with strength on leather personally, but changing heart of the wild also makes the assorted cloaks, jewelry, and trinkets with attack power more attractive to druids.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

dukes

You realise that with this change it makes the "rogue loot" now "dps loot"? Enhancement shamans have already been nabbing some of the "rogue" loot, and the same with hunters. It's really Leather Physical DPS loot than it is rogue loot, even more so now.

It also fixes some of the problems with druids needing 4 different sets (moonkin, healing, feral-DPS and feral-tank) "clogging" up loot tables. By changing this it reduces one of the sub-specs to being shared with other classes.

It's a good move, and to say that it's a "short way" to fix DPS might be right (as long as you mean that it's a cheap way, not that it's only going to last a short time as this affects scaling at all levels).

Edit: Damn you beef, damn you!

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Hey your post was much more eloquent!

Some are calculating that this change and the boost to FAP are going to be in the ballpark of a 5% overall dps increase.

How much of an increase would it be if cat form could get weapon procs and take advantage of windfury and mongoose? Would it be near enhancement shamans?

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

Grizlock

I for one am happy with the change. Some might say, 'It's not enough', but I think the devs are playing it safe. An overbuff followed by a nerf is going to create more animosity than an under buff.

When I first started gearing up for feral dps I was under the impression that kings + HotW + Unleashed would allow me to scale at ridiculous rates. However that is not the case mainly due to itemization and the benefits of haste/procs. This change might do a little bit to remedy our scaling. I can deal with no pots if we can 'insta-pot' with the new macros, but I'd really like to see procs, to open up some doors for weapons and enchants.

Before today I decided that the itemization in ZA and Sunwell would make our break feral for me. A class without improvement is not a fun class to play. This alleviates the itemization issue (at least from the dps side which was the worst of the two fronts). Our offset items can now be filled with three spread hit/ap/agi items. It will be easier to be hit capped so we may be switching to two STR/Crit gems to activate our meta.

I'm, for one, am very excited about this change, and would like to thank everyone here for bringing the feral weapon scaling issue to light in this thread.

 

anathor

This change is going to have a serious impact on gear choices. To take a simple example, the +8 str gem provided > 19.2 AP (i.e. that's a minimum, it's more with raid buffs such as BoK), and was therefore a better choice than the +16 AP gem. Now the situation is reversed with the +16 AP gem providing 17.6 AP, and the +8 str providing 16 AP. It would be interesting to produce new versions of lists like Emmerald's to see which items are affected the most by this change.

 

Schnigges

Am I right with the weightening of the stats?:

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