tetracycloide

You stopped just short of the conclusion. Druids will never see such a large relative increase in DPS from a single item the way other DPS classes will. Since loot doesn't drop all at once this is a problem while a group is progressing because a single drop could change raid composition by temporarily skewing the the difference in relative DPS. This couldn't happen in reverse unless the druid enjoyed several armor upgrades in a row before the rogue got anything. Given the nature of discrete armor drops this is far far less likely. The fact that eventually, after every armor upgrade is made, both will be roughly equal is irrelevant while a group is progressing, which can be a significant amount of time.

 

• Aldriana

Sure - if the difference between doing 80% of a rogue's dps and 85% of a rogue's dps was the determining factor. But lets be honest: no one brings feral druids to raids because they match a rogue's dps. People bring feral druids to raids because they do pretty good dps and are great OTs. Which, regardless of temporary dips of itemization that might drop their dps relative to a rogue by 5 or 10%, is going to be true.

Besides which, it's not as if druids still don't benefit massively from weapons; not as much as other classes, perhaps, but they can still pick up 100+ AP in a shot, which is not to be underestimated - a druid that gets a weapon before the rogue does is going to experience a temporary boost as well - just a slightly smaller one.

 

Boevis

So what you're saying is "Druids don't scale as well as other classes when they get upgrades, but it's ok because they can tank and DPS with the same gear/spec"

I'm sorry, I can't accept that as a valid argument, it wasn't valid when feral became viable in 1.8 or buffed in 1.12 or "overpowered" in 2.0, it wasn't valid when guilds were taking warriors instead of rogues for melee DPS. For guilds that have the option of replacing people on a fight by fight basis, this scaling issue means that at some point on some fights, no one will take a feral druid when they can just bring another rogue/warrior. I really don't want to see the same thing happen going into BT/Hyjal that happened going into Naxx from AQ.

 

Lamaros

How many feral druids do you have in your raids? How many items go to feral druids before others? How many items are only between feral druids and rogues? How many between just feral druids, rogues, and other melee dps?

How many people in your raid, conversly, want that caster weapon when it drops? How many have a use for the DPS cloth?

I havn't got an item from SSC or TK while our feral druid has 3 in the last two weeks. He's had rather a few before that too. We've had healing druids pick up some leather for their feral sets too because there's no one else for it.

So, besides the fact that a temporary 'skewing' of the raid DPS meters doesn't really have any long term problems aside from some ego issues, it is in fact likely that "given the nature of discrete armor drops" it it actually reasonably common for a feral druid to recieve upgrades at a faster rate.

If at a general 'tier' dps classes are scaling as expected then blizzard seems to be happy. The fact that druids might get to that gear level slower or faster than other classes is a different issue and not as big a point as you think.

Besides, as they seem to get to this point faster than many other dps classes, the point is moot regardless.

 

• Aldriana

1) I don't recall ever asserting that druids don't scale as well. Nor have I seen any argument that says they did. I agree they get - perhaps - slightly less benefit from weapons than other classes do. However, as has been discussed repeatedly in the last several pages, they get more benefit on the other slots, so overall scaling remains comperable.

2) If you don't buy that argument, then what? You think druids need to either be able to out-tank prot warrriors or outdps rogues in order to get a raid spot? Sorry, I'm not buying it. Clearly it's an intended mechanic that a class that fills multiple raid spots is marginally inferior than the pure classes at any given role. Hence, I would argue that as long as a feral druid does good dps - not top, rogue level dps, but better than a prot warrior and not *too* far behind a fury warrior, and is a pretty good tank - not as good as a prot warrior, perhaps, but well ahead of a fury warrior - and gives leader of pack to a group, and can pop out of dps and throw a battle res - there will be a place for them in high end raiding. For World First kills where guilds are willing to rotate group composition between every pull and soulstone half the raid - they might be a bit less desirable. But for a typical raid guild, the convenience of one character that does a good if not top-notch job at multiple roles is not to be underestimated. It's sort of why hybrid classes exist.

 

Boevis

That's blatantly ignoring both my math and current itemization. Pick any ilevel and slot (slots if you want to talk weapons) and compare a "Feral item" and a "Rogue Item", under average conditions only a couple exemplary items (ex. Clefthoof Leggings) will outperform their rogue counterpart. Point for point, rogues get more DPS from AP than druids do from an equal ivalue of Str.
Did I say that they should anywhere? Please don't put words in my mouth, as I've clearly stated in this thread already that I agree with the "90% of rogues DPS" or whatever it is. The problem is, as I've shown, is that as we progress further in the game, Druids will be doing less DPS compared to Rogues than they were before. If Druids are doing 90% of Rogue DPS now, but are doing 80% of Rogue DPS in Hyjal, then something is wrong, if it's class mechanics or itemization or both, doesn't matter, having a class scaling downward relative to other classes as you increase progression is just poor design.

 

• Aldriana

1) Your math, to the extent it's correct (which I'll touch on in a minute) doesn't prove anything about scaling. You gain somewhat less dps per point of AP than a rogue does. However, you also do less damage than a rogue, so while the absolute difference in damage will increase, the percentage of a rogue's damage you will hold steady; in particular, it will converge to the percentage by which your scaling is inferior to a rogue's. So, for instance, if 13.67% number you cited as the difference between druid scaling in Str vs Rogue scaling in AP holds across all matters of druid scaling (which it may or may not), you will converge on doing 86.33% the damage of a rogue. In order to prove a true scaling problem you need to prove not only that the druid receives less benefit per item budget than a primary dpser does, but also that the ratio of druid dps to primary DPS class dps decreases as gear improves. Which you haven't.

2) The basis of your comparison was the rogue DPS spreadsheet version 2.2.4, which overestimates my damage output by roughly 20%. You'll pardon me if I'm slightly skeptical about damage numbers drawn from it. Using, for instance, the Rogue Gear spreadsheet, which, in my (admittedly biased) opinion gives a better assessment of real DPS, we find that in order to increase my unbuffed dps by 47.75, I would need to upgrade both my weapons by 15.6 dps, 30% more than your numbers indicated. Which, when plugged through the rest of your calculations, makes druids come off somewhat less poorly.

3) Now, even neglecting the above problems for a moment, lets posit that your numbers are correct, and that a 12 dps upgrade to each hand of a rogue is equal DPS to 231 Feral Attack Power. This would mean that to scale as well, you'd need about 19 FAP for each 1 dps a rogue could increase his weapons to stay at 100% damage, and 17 FAP for each rogue weapon dps to stay at 90% damage.

So, lets take a minute and compare some items; say a early-to-mid SSC drop to a good Mount Hyjal drop. In particular, lets take a look at, say, Talon of Azshara (Tidewalker), Blade of Infamy (Anatheron, Mount Hyjal), Wildfury Greatstaff (SSC Trash), and Pillar of Ferocity (Anatheron, Mount Hyjal). Well, lets see.. the swords differ by 6.5 dps, and mods are comperable... and Talon is slower. So all you're really gaining is the 6.5 dps, and arguably not even that much. Meanwhile, the staff picks up 95 FAP, plus 47 Str which coverts to another 103 FAP, for a total of 198 AP upgrade, which works out to roughly... 30 AP per point of dps upgrade for the rogue, meaning that you would scale, by these calculations, roughly 160% as well as rogues based on your estimates of the conversions.

Now, explain to me how Druids aren't scaling as well? I think I'm missing something. Maybe I'm just dumb or something.

Well, see, I was operating under the assumption that you were disagreeing with something I actually said, which had nothing to do with scaling; my comments were purely based off druids doing some portion of a rogue's dps, with no regards to scaling. Apparently you weren't responding to anything I actually said, but rather to something you thought I said, in which case I sincerely apologize for assuming that your argument actually made sense, and responding accordingly.

If that were actually the case, yes, that would be a problem. However, I maintain that there hasn't been any evidence to date that this is actually the case. And even if there is: great. That's a problem. But it has nothing to do with what I was actually talking about, which was about the "all eggs in one basket" argument.

 

suicuique

@Boevis:
Assuming your calculations are correct, you just showed that MH DPS increases are showing better benefit for a rogue than stat-budget-equivalent FAP increases for a druid.

From this it does NOT follow that a druid scales worse. Because to prove this you would still have to take into account how the other stats on all the other slots (STR, AGI, Crit, Hit, AP, ...) compare. How much effective DPS increase does a STR/AP/AGI bring for a druid/rogue?

That the weapon slot is way more prominent for the rogue/warrior that for the druid goes without saying. This is evident by the simple fact that the weapon slot defines HOW a warrior/rogue deals the damage (dagger vs sword, weapons specs for warrior, weapon speed, procs, ...)

Of course weapons are more important for these melee classes. But that's nothing new.

 

SavoryBeetle

For 1), Sadris showed that the feral attack power + kitty dps to weapon dps ratio is decreasing, which indicates that we will drop farther and farther back from pure dps classes. The stat comparison was intended to refute the belief that druids made up for this dps difference by gaining more from stat increases than other melee classes. Since no items will just have strength or attack power, however, we should to compare the effect of the other offensive stats on cat/rogue dps. For those who don't read the druid dps theorycraft, strength and agility have an almost equivalent effect on cat dps, with agility pulling ahead slightly. How does agility compare to pure attack power for rogues?

For 3), the Pillar of Ferocity gains 47 strength over Wildfury Greatstaff because we are going from a purely tanking weapon to more of a tanking/dps hybrid weapon that Blizzard seems to be converting all feral gear into. A dps comparison from Terestian's Stranglestaff to Pillar of Ferocity would be equally invalid. Itemization will cause a lot of fluctuation to the exact value of dps upgrade, and we shouldn't take that into account when looking at overall scaling.

EDIT: oops...name of poster, and wording was wrong :P.

 

snape

(and -10% damage coefficient from the invisible coefficient decrease on Fireball from Improved Fireball)

 

suicuique

Where did he show that? (bolding mine)

By going from spreadsheets he calculated the DPS equivalence of FAP to MH DPS increase.

To quote him:
Could be I missed it, but nowhere did I find where Boevis showed that the disparity is growing.

Aldriana hinted at the exact opposite in fact.

 

tetracycloide

First of all, a 5% difference could be a determining factor quite easily. If the utility of an extra OT is lower than the utility of 20% more damage then the druid absolutely looses his slot to a rogue or some other primary DPS class. If the breakpoint between OT utility and extra damage utility is anywhere near the damage difference a DPS class can get from a single item upgrade this is an issue. You cannot simultaneously argue that the utility and DPS scaling are balanced in the end and that changes to relative DPS and utility through itemization are negligible. If they're balanced in the end and itemization can create 5 to 10% shifts in their realtive differences temporarily then you must conclude that there are temporary points where they are not balanced.

 

• Aldriana

About the same - arguably a bit behind. Pulling up ye olde spreadsheet, we find that 1 agi generally adds about 2.1 AP of benefit. If Agi is slightly better than Str for a druid, and Str gives, what, 2.4 AP? Seems to me that the benefit of agi for druids is competitive with the benefit for rogues.

Sure, but the underlying point remains. Rogues are using 1H weapons, which means
a) They don't increase in damage as quickly as 2Hers, so saying that druid weapons scale more slowly than 2Hers does not meant that aren't at a reasonable place relative to rogue 1Hers, and
b) 2Hers tend to have vastly more stats than their 1H counterparts, which helps compensate for a raw gap in weapon DPS.

I mean, even if you neglect the stats on the items in question and compare straight weapon damage to FAP (which ignores the details of itemization and tracks ilevel pretty well), they're still gaining 15 FAP on the weapon damage, and hence scaling at ~80% of rogues, which isn't too far out of the realm of the reasonable. And when you consider that in reality the sword in question is more like a 4.5 DPS upgrade due to the change in weapon speed... again, I see no evidence of a scaling problem for druids.

 

SavoryBeetle

I suck at posting. Edited my previous post, but the Sadris, in the OP, showed that for the weapon slot alone, in feral attack power on a weapon + base cat dps < weapon dps, which is pretty obvious since feral attack power bridges the gap between actual feral weapon dps (which grows) with the equivalent 2 handed weapon dps, but base cat dps does not change. Since we get less from attack power than other classes, then it may seem that the disparity grows even more. Throw in buffs from other classes (mostly kings and unleashed rage) and it becomes more muddled.

I'm basically trying to say that I don't believe that a complete comparison has been made, and that someone should do it, or someone with less theorycraft experience (me) will try to do it later.

 

• Aldriana

See, I don't buy this. There are a number of fights where you need offtanks for various reasons; for instance, the clear to Tidewalker really wants to have 4 tanks, whereas Tidewalker himself can theoretically be done with 1 (in practice my guild uses 3, but the point remains...) While a world first guild might be willing to bring 4 prot warriors in to clear trash and then swap them out for rogues when you get to the boss, in practice most guilds will clear the trash and the boss with the same group; in this situation, the question is not "should I bring a feral druid or a rogue" but "should I bring a druid, a fury warrior, a prot warrior, or a prot pally?" And while a slight dip in itemization might make the druid a bit less tempting, he's still going to be a better OT than a fury warrior and better dps than a prot warrior or pally and thus worthy of consideration.

Moreover, even if pure dps situations a raw 5% drop in damage tends not to skew raid invites, otherwise as soon as a rogue picked up a weapon upgrade or Dragonspine Trophy, the other rogues would stop getting invited, becaue both can provide a 5% damage upgrade with reasonable ease.

And finally, I don't think the actual damage difference between a rogue weapon upgrade and a druid weapon upgrade is on the order of 5%; as mentioned, while druid weapons might not grant *quite* as much benefit as rogue weapons, they still give significant boosts.

 

• Aldriana

Sadris did show that by some reasonable defenition, druid weapons don't scale as well as 2Hers for other classes. What has not been proved by anyone in that this actually corresponds to inferior dps scaling once all weapon + armor upgrades are considered and processed through all the talents and abilities of the relevant classes. It may or may not be true (although personally I'm inclined to doubt it), but there hasn't been any numerical proof of it.

 

tetracycloide

I would have to agree that the primise of the OP, that druid DPS is a significant portion of their utility vs. other DPS classes, is silly.

I would have to dissagree, however, that damage differences don't change raid invites. Maybe your guild is more family style than mine but my guild certainly doesn't waste there raid slots on 5% damage losses if they can help it.

I do not know the exact percentage a new DPS weapon adds to overall damage vs a new feral DPS weapon. I used the qualifier 'if' for this express reason.

 

• Aldriana

My current guild is somewhat, as you put it, "family style" (annoying so, honestly), but I maintain that there are very few guilds that kick people out of the rotation because they got outbid for the Dragonspine Trophy. I could be wrong, of course, but my sense is that most guilds wait for you to fall behind across the board before taking action, rather than just booting you as soon as you get behind by one item. If you're guild is different, by all means, let me know.

 

• sadris

The amount of DPS gained upgrading from T4 to T6 (for example) could be calculated from warriors in this spreadsheet: DPS Warrior Spreadsheet

And Druids here: http://hosted.filefront.com/Lolaan/

I will probably make the comparison in a few days, but patch 2.1 is keeping me busy.

There is a difference between a guild removal and simply not being invited into raids.

 

SavoryBeetle

There's also a difference between not inviting someone to the raid because they didn't win an item (which, of course, is pretty ridiculous) to not inviting one because, even if they do get all their upgrades, they won't be able to contribute as much as the guild requires.

(and yes, I'm also in more of a "family" type guild )

 

• Aldriana

True. But if soon as you fall behind you stop getting raid invites, how are you ever going to catch up?

 

• Aldriana

Yes, but Dragonspine Trophy by itself makes a 5% difference in dps, which is the scale of difference we've been discussing for druids. So if a 5% dps drop seriously imperils a druid's raid spot, wouldn't it also imperil a rogue's spot? And if it would then we literally would be talking about losing raid spots over one item - which is clearly silly. As I say: I don't think a 5% dps change is going to skew raid invites in the majority of guilds.

 

• Vulajin

I think this a fairly telling result, but there's still one more leap to be made. Is the relative amount of the druid scaling relative to the rogue consistent across gear levels, or does the druid fall relatively further behind as the gear level increases? I would like to quote Werebeef's post on the first page of this thread...

Can we repeat the same analysis with a higher (or lower) gear level and figure out whether this is the case?

 

SavoryBeetle

Um...the difference is the rogue may later get a Dragonspine Trophy (or some other upgrade) and will no longer be behind. A druid may or may not have that option.

 

Boevis

The point isn't that we don't scale, when I get DPS upgrades, they are DPS upgrades.

The point is that the first time a rogue goes up by 50 dps from upgrades, a druid goes up 45, however the second time the rogue goes up 50, the druid only goes up 40 then 35 then 30 then 25 etc. By the time a rogue is doing 2000 dps (not likely to occur but I'm already exaggerating) instead of doing 1800 the druid is doing 1500. On any fight that doesn't involve me tanking, I will be sitting out for a better DPS class.
(note: not the actual numbers)

It's not "Feral druids will not be invited to raids", I don't think anyone is worried about our warrior-like stranglehold on being OT, it's "We already make other prot warriors sit out on fights they're not needed, as a class that can do melee DPS+caster utility+group buffs eventually I will be sitting out on fights because my utility and buffs don't make up for the glaring difference in DPS"

As for your argument that the spreadsheet isn't accurate from your experience, that's usually due to armor not being factored on spreadsheets as well as a boss that is stationary with no adds, aoe, deaggro, or other gimmicks that would require a rogue to stop attacking ever.

I challenge anyone to find 2 items from raiding for the same slot (or slots in the case of weapons) that favor druid DPS over rogue DPS. Rogues get more from weapons and equal or more from gear because the mythical "catform gear with lol Str/Agi and a hint of AP" doesn't exist, everything I'm using and everything I will upgrade to is just non-set rogue items (I'm sorry, there *is* a cloak from morogrim, forgive me)