Feral Attack Power: When good intentions go dumb. - Page 27

Allev · 10/08/07, 11:49 AM

Originally Posted by 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

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 · 10/08/07, 11:55 AM

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 · 10/08/07, 12:03 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

dukes · 10/08/07, 12:05 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 10/08/07, 12:18 PM

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?

Grizlock · 10/08/07, 12:37 PM

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 · 10/08/07, 12:48 PM

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 · 10/08/07, 12:57 PM

Am I right with the weightening of the stats?:

EDIT! : lootzor.com - World of Warcraft search and rate items - profile your wow character

Lord BEEF · 10/08/07, 1:00 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

The +8 strength gem will provide 17.6 ap in the new patch, same as the +16 ap gem. There's still no reason to use an attack power gem.

Plus I think everyone socketed with agility anyway and that's only getting more powerful.

Malazaar · 10/08/07, 1:10 PM

I wonder if they will increase the FAP on the weapons to exactly match their counterparts (55 + FAP/14 = DPS on a regular weapon). That, coupled with the HotW buff, will be a pretty significant dps boost (i'd say in the scale of 100-150 dps).

Jini · 10/08/07, 1:29 PM

Originally Posted by 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?

For the gear my druid has, 5/5 tier 4 plus kara stuff, I'm looking at a nearly 6% dps increase without any change calculated in for the Stranglestaff.

Originally Posted by 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.

8 str = 2*8*1.03*1.1 = 18.1 AP

Strength will be modified by Kings while AP will not. So 16 AP gem = 17.6 AP while 8 str gem = 18.1*1.1 = 19.94 AP.

Deliverance · 10/08/07, 5:13 PM

Originally Posted by Malazaar

I wonder if they will increase the FAP on the weapons to exactly match their counterparts (55 + FAP/14 = DPS on a regular weapon). That, coupled with the HotW buff, will be a pretty significant dps boost (i'd say in the scale of 100-150 dps).

Why would they do that when a simpler solution would be to change the current scaling multiplier by (iLvl, rarity) from its current value (pretty close to the 1H scaling) to some value in the interval between 1H scaling and 2H scaling used on normal weapons?

I'm as happy as anybody for any boost to feral dps, even something like this which is unlikely to have significant impact at any gear level (due to how druids are very poor at transforming raw AP into actual damage after raidbuffs are taken into account when compared to other classes), but I'd be surprised if they did anything more complicated than just tweaking the one value that currently governs scaling.

I'll hope for 1.3*1H scaling, expect 1.1*1H scaling, whimper at 1.05*1H scaling, and be overjoyed with anything better than this.

Larisroth · 10/08/07, 5:43 PM

It might not have much effect, but then in many ways the feral AP system wasn't actually broken, just misunderstood.

I imagine they'll change it to the 2H equivalent, at least on 2Hers. That plus the new HotW will have quite a considerable effect on our dps, but it'll still be the case that our yellow damage will be most of our damage, and we won't scale that well with haste rating, so they'll still have some issues with rogue gear. Looking at a lootzor for the new stats there's already a bit of a problem with rogue gear that has large amounts of crit on it.

• sadris · 10/13/07, 4:49 AM

New ZA loots:
(feral) Primal Man-catcher: 973 FAP
--- 973/14 + 55 = 124
(sword) Trollbane: 124dps

S3 gear:
(feral) Staff: 1110 FAP
--- 1110/14 + 55 = 134
(axe) Decapitator: 134dps

Seems like Blizzard changed FAP weapons to match exactly like I said they should/would. This thread could probably be closed/moved at this point.

♦ Regen · 10/13/07, 5:06 AM

Originally Posted by sadris

New ZA loots:
(feral) Primal Man-catcher: 973 FAP
--- 973/14 + 55 = 124
(sword) Trollbane: 124dps

S3 gear:
(feral) Staff: 1110 FAP
--- 1110/14 + 55 = 134
(axe) Decapitator: 134dps

Seems like Blizzard changed FAP weapons to match exactly like I said they should/would. This thread could probably be closed/moved at this point.

Indeed first thing I checked out, s2/pillar match exactly according to the right formula as well.