Feral Attack Power: When good intentions go dumb. - Page 21

angral · 08/20/07, 11:47 AM

I do not understand the whole 'druids are using a one handed weapon' thing people are going on about all over the shop here. Mangle was supposed to be the talent that would allow druids to scale in dps as cats and bears. By multiplying our weapon damages such that it effectively became normalised for daggers and 2handers in cat and bear respectively. They've since nerfed and then rebuffed (but not quite up to normalised levels) bear mangle, but that was the initial excuse given for the multipliers in mangle. (Ref: Some blue q&a post on the euro boards whose link I have lost)

So a reasonable assumption would be: feral attack power is meant to simulate a single dagger in cat and a 2hander in bear.

Now I just need to find the other classes in the game that use a single dagger for melee dps and a 2hander for tanking to compare what our damage should be. Unforunately I was unable to find any, so druids may be in a bit of a tight spot with one stat trying to simulate two very different weapons.

Originally Posted by sadris

Staff of Beasts: 55 + 298/14 = 76.7dps, 5.6% lower than Honed Voidaxe
Dreamer's Dragonstaff: 55 + 423/14 = 85.2dps, 8.5% lower than HW Claymore
Terestian's Stranglestaff: 55 + 647/14 = 101.2dps, 10.9% lower than Despair
Wildfury Greatstaff: 55 + 731/14 = 107.2dps, 11.8% lower than World Breaker
Pillar of Ferocity: 55 + 826/14 = 114dps, 12.6% lower than a 130.5dps weapon
Staff of Disintegration: 55 + 135.4dps, 14.4% lower than Devastation

Even taking into account a 10% buff to attack power from Unleashed Rage, Druids are already losing out at the karazhan level, and it is only getting worse.

Also, just how awesome would cat or bear form look with the Pheonix's Claws for our front 2 paws? :]

*Edit: Grammar fix.

Deliverance · 08/20/07, 2:24 PM

Originally Posted by angral

So a reasonable assumption would be: feral attack power is meant to simulate a single dagger in cat and a 2hander in bear.

A more reasonable assumption: feral attack power is meant to simulate a 1H in cat and in bear, since the other tank classes tank using 1H weapons, not 2H, and bear is primarily the "tank-form". While Blizzard did initially give a bigger coefficient on one single ability, bear Mangle, to give bears an "in your face, bears get an ability with real punch" ability, they didn't do it as a multiplier on bear white damage in general, which they'd have to do if the intention was to make feral attack power simulate a 2 hander in bear.

Even taking into account a 10% buff to attack power from Unleashed Rage, Druids are already losing out at the karazhan level, and it is only getting worse

Druids are only losing out in the table you have copied if they assume that their dps-contribution from the weapon before talents and abilities should scale as a 2H. I have not seen Blizzard state that this should be the case.

The entire design seems based on "druid's melee scaled with level until 60; we realised this was a mistake after more than a year of complaints and let them scale as if they were using one handed weapons starting from a zero-point set at a level 60 entry level blue 1H (iLvl 63)". While I would definitely like my base damage from weapon to scale 2 handed (who wouldn't?), there's no reason to assume that it ought to be the case or that I'm losing out because it is not.

ILvl 103 rare: [Staff of Beasts]: 298 FAP, [Ceremonial Warmaul Blood-blade]: 61.2 dps, which is 21.2 dps or 297 AP more than iLvl 63 rare 1H
iLvl 115 rare: [Dreamer's Dragonstaff] - 423 FAP, [Ced's Carver]: 71.7 dps, which is 30.3 dps or 424 AP more than iLvl 63 rare 1H
ILvl 100 epic: [Earthwarden]: 556 FAP, [Blinkstrike]: 81.2 dps, which is 39.8 dps or 557 AP more than iLvl 63 rare 1H.
ILvl 175 legendary: [Staff of Disintegration]: 1125 FAP, [Infinity Blade]: 122.3 dps, which is 80.9 dps or 1133AP more than iLvl 63 rare 1H
...And so on. The dps/AP equivalents aren't quite precise due to me taking the simple way out and just taking listed dps and subtracting listed dps from an iLvl 63 rare, and we know that the actual factors for FAP and 1H aren't identical but merely very close, but they are close enough for government work.

Since the FAP mechanism works excellently for what it appears to be designed for for both cat and bear, there's no particular reason to assume that the FAP mechanism will be overhauled just because us druids feel that our total damageout does not scale right at high gearlevels once all other talent/ability factors and raidbuffs are added to it. Since it is the latter that is the real problem and not the former, the natural place to look for changes is in talents/abilities/raidbuffs, since they are what modify the base performance.

• sadris · 08/20/07, 8:58 PM

Originally Posted by Deliverance

Druids are only losing out in the table you have copied if they assume that their dps-contribution from the weapon before talents and abilities should scale as a 2H. I have not seen Blizzard state that this should be the case.

I have not heard them state otherwise.

And are you seriously suggesting Druid weapon balance should be based around a Rogue using only one dagger?

Lord BEEF · 08/20/07, 9:19 PM

Originally Posted by sadris

I have not heard them state otherwise.

And are you seriously suggesting Druid weapon balance should be based around a Rogue using only one dagger?

What he's suggesting is that druid damage is based around the damage range of a one hander.

What you don't get, and haven't been able to grasp from the beginning of the thread is that the feral attack power on a weapon cannot be compared to other classes weapons because that's just one variable. The amount of feral ap on the weapon slot isn't necessarily what needs to be tweaked to make druids scale as quickly as the other classes. There are a billion ways they could do this. They could give us dual weild, they could make strength give 8 attack power, they could make tiger's fury into a finisher that gives armor penetration, they could decrease the flat damage on shred and increase the multiplier.

All that feral attack power really has to do is increase as itemlevel increases to provide some scaling from the weapon slot, and it does so. Yeah I want there to be a high itemlevel pure dps staff and I'm sure they'll add one, but comparing feral ap to weapon dps and complaining does nobody any good whatsoever.

suicuique · 08/21/07, 4:55 AM

Originally Posted by sadris

Why would Blizzard balance the game around 1.27% of the population (BT raiders) and not the other 98% ?

You know .. this argument goes both ways:
I do not see druids complaining at the "casual level".
Why should Blizzard bother to change them then?

Vandermonde · 08/21/07, 5:23 AM

Originally Posted by Dalamar

**** 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.

Fwiw, maces can be FAP weapons too, which there is of course a profession for. So the lack of woodcarving is not an actual impediment to the existence of a craftable FAP epic, they just arbitrarily didn't put one in.

Vaccine · 08/21/07, 8:50 AM

I've always wondered why Druids couldn't DW claws, would be a really nice idea and as you said its also relatively easy to trasnfer them to forms graphics to finally give druids some differentiation between each other whilst in forms.

But alas, I fear its too late in the game for such a massive overhaul to the class.

I'm gonna reserve my final judgement on itemisation till I've seen the goodies 2.3 brings but I'm getting a little down about it now, the lack of upgrades making me less and less motivated to even raid for the upgrades I have left at my level (4/6 ssc, 2/4 tk).

• sordee · 08/21/07, 2:09 PM

Originally Posted by Deliverance

Very informative analysis

From Deliverance's post (after numerous pages of back and forth) the math finally shows that FAP is working exactly as intended. (Thus the original basis of this entire thread is wrong)

Druids have a 1-Handed weapon with a 1.0 speed, which gives a cat druid almost the same amount of autoattacks as an unhasted rogue/dw warrior with a 2.6/1.5 wpn combination. (with no off-hand lowered hit chance mind you)

As Lord Beef points out (and the entire proc/WF debate), its the other aspects of Cat Druids that are lacking.

A) No meaningful haste option (Slice and Dice or Flurry)

B) If haste was given, the only meaningful way to take advantage of it would be to always wear 2pT4 to generate more energy. (almost like a ShadowPriest, cat druids get locked into a set for a long time)

It will interesting in seeing the next 10 points in the feral tree for WotLK will be. I.e. since Mangle was to play catchup to Imp Sinister Strike, will the feral tree get Combat Potency or Slice and Dice (or both)?

Larisroth · 08/21/07, 6:56 PM

Being firmly in the camp of the its by design stupid on the equivalent of 1H AP, one could still ask the question is how much do we scale with our weapon upgrades on the whole. Will switching from my [Staff of Beasts] to a [Terestian's Stranglestaff] give me approximately the same percentage upgrade on my personal dps as a rogue (or some other melee) upgrading from level 93 Rare weapons to level 115 epic? The calculation for the druid is easier because we can ignore weapon speed. If the advantage of upgrading our weapons is worse than other melee then you could make a case for increasing the FAP multiplier.

A better argument for FAP being wrong would be that it pigeon-holes us into using weapons that are itemised for us alone, Although having the FAP scale implicitly with weapon DPS wouldn't entirely solve the issue as we still need specially itemised tanking weapons.

As it stands, if I can get a good group (not that easy due to the WF issue) then I can do comparable special damage to our rogues, and with 2 piece T4, and power-shifting that's from a comparable energy use.

As other have said the big problem is the white damage is about 1.5-2 times lower. If you fix that then haste becomes more useful. Although increased proc rates provide a more subtle advantage of haste which we largely miss out on.

Boevis · 08/22/07, 1:51 AM

One issue I have about the constant statement that "white damage is lower" is quite simply, remove SnD/Flurry from someone else (ie. drop their white by 30%) and you'll see comparable numbers to our white. Higher yes (the benefit of unarguably better itemization) but comparable enough that a flurry effect would do wonders.

Larisroth · 08/22/07, 2:40 AM

Yeah but the difference is often quite a bit more than a mere factor of 1.3. Thinking about it a bit more, a source of a lot of the difference becomes fairly clear. We're the only melee that tries to do dps with a 1H and the equivalent of a stats offhand. Looking at highend items we see that 2H do a listed dps of about 130% of that of a 1H. Dual wield probably has a similiar boost over the 1H and offhand arrangement. Giving us the 2H AP boost would clearly overpower specials in cat form (although you could rebalance them), so perhaps the solution is for white damage in cat form to in effect be dual wielding our claws

LokE · 08/22/07, 7:51 AM

Ive semi read through this thread and i realy dont see that the big deal is, i mean your a diferent class, if you wanted your 2hander's ilevel to be exponential to your dps then you should have been a warrior, you cant compare the 2, it doesn't work that way, different classes scale differently to stats and gain ap differently from stats,
all in all i dont realy feel druids aren't compareable dps, my guild currently only has 1 feral druid that raids regulary, when he's not tanking he's very competetive on damage done, sure you could complain about it, but its not realy going to get you that much,
look at hunters were down to getting 1 ap per agi and nothing from str, you could think we would want 2ap over 1agi, but mostly we still dont, and what about our weapons? sure we've complained some that we "waste" ilevel points on the weapon dps instead of getting "caster" type weapons with more stats,
i dont think it'll ever happen though, and to be honest im not realy that bothered about it, i mean i cant complain about my dps in tier5 zones, i do quite well,
so your weapon doesn't scale aswell as other classes, maybe its not intended to ?
maybe you scale better in other areas ?
i dont realy think these kinds or disscussions lead anywhere, you can rant all you want but in the end you have to make the best of what you have got.

dukes · 08/22/07, 8:20 AM

I love it when people use zero full stops, then have an edit line that has "grammar" in it (I understand english may not be your first language, but that post is horrible).

The entirety of the issue being discussed (at least at the beginning) is that feral attack power doesn't scale as other weapons scale. Coming into the thread as a different class and saying "LOL IF YOU WANT TO SCALE BE A WARRIOR" doesn't exactly add anything to the discussion, especially when it comes from a hunter which is the only class that actually has a chance of competing with rogue damage right now.

If everyone accepted everything in the game at face value and no-one questioned anything, we'd be sitting with the original talent trees, feral druids would be neglected beyond belief, there would be no viable off-specs for any of the hybrid classes, and shamans would be dropping GoA instead of WF for their groups (I would put in a comment about using a 1.5 speed offhand with frostbrand, but they aren't enhancement, right?).

Equating a hunters 2h weapon to a druids is madness - a hunters weapon is closer to using a ranged weapon on a rogue/warrior - it's a boost to stats, not a major piece of your gear. You may not use it much, but it is still of use to you, and hunters do have melee abilities, even if little used. A feral druid has zero use of anything but the stats on the weapon, which is exactly what feral AP is supposed to be making up for. The basis is that a druid in cat form has a 55 DPS base weapon, and the feral AP is supposed to boost that to the point which it compares to a equal ilvl weapon of that the feral weapon is (i.e. [Pillar of Ferocity] adding 826 AP = 59 DPS, giving a total DPS of 55+59 = 114, compared to 1h weapons this is very high, compared to 2h weapons this is very low ([Stormherald] for example is slightly lower in ilvl)). The confusion comes from not being a dual wield class, but not seeming to count for having the same total DPS as a 2h weapon. Where did the extra 13 DPS go? Why is this not scaling correctly, and should it scale in a 2h'er fashion or a 1h'er fashion? These are the kind of questions that sum up this thread, or where this thread should have gone if it didn't go slightly off the tracks (and seems to have been at least partially answered in Deliverances thread a few posts back).

angral · 08/22/07, 11:09 AM

Recapping for my own enlightenment:

FAP manages to scales as a 1h when compared to the actuall weapon we use. FAP also manages to quite nicely add up to the difference in 2h dps when expressed as AP. Ok, let's assume Blizzard did this deliberatley in an attempt to throw us off. Like say; God putting all those dinosaur bones in the rocks to make us think the planet is millions of years old.

Why then is our 1h weapon scaling going onto 2h weapons? All other classes in the game get's the benefit of 2 weapon slots. As a caster with staves / 1h+shield / 1h+offhand. As melee, with a 2h / dual wield.

And then there are druids: Using a 2h weapon for a 1h benefit?

Whether we are or not, or whether that is relevant or not, I agree that FAP is a bad design idea. Mostly because of the previously, and often, mentioned issue of only 'one weapon' per raid tier that is for 'feral druids'. That the weapons in question are for one role, and largely unsuited to the other, is merely the icing on the QQ cake.

I am content to leave the missing 13 dps as one of lifes great unsolved mysteries. Where is the thread where I can make suggestions and theorycraft solutions to the druid scaling problem?

While we're at it, we should sort out World Peace.

• sordee · 08/22/07, 3:03 PM

Originally Posted by angral

Why then is our 1h weapon scaling going onto 2h weapons? All other classes in the game get's the benefit of 2 weapon slots. As a caster with staves / 1h+shield / 1h+offhand. As melee, with a 2h / dual wield.

....
While we're at it, we should sort out World Peace.

(complete conjecture here)

My guess here is to make it easier for the item designers. Seeing how in pre-BC there was only one marginally good feral offhand (a blue drop from Strat), I don't thin they wanted to have to add a few more items littered throughout to game make up good off-hand pieces just for Feral Druids.

Other theory here is that Caster staves usually give higher base stats, while 1H+offhand generally give better non-base stats (+healing/+crit/+dmg&healing). So since Feral druids scale with base stats so well, might as well stick with all base stats on staves(and the occasional mace)

And yes world peace would be good too.