tejing

The main reason I would post there is that I think (or at least thought) there's probably a slightly higher probability of someone from Blizzard seeing it there. You may be right about that though, perhaps I'm more likely to get it seen here than there. (It says a lot about the world today if you're right)

And yes... that guy putting down my +damage enchants was quite pathetic, I just laughed when I read it.

 

Wangmu

the thing is even though a druid has a pure DPS spec, the fact remains that you are still capable of several other things tanking and healing among them. what i want to know is how it is druids justify wanting to have the same dps capability s as say a rogue or a mage or a warlock. the idea is you can dps but to make you as good as a class that can Only damage does not make sense to me.. what your proposing is that druids should be able to heal(one of 4 classes) able to tank(one of 2, possibly 3 classes) and that you should have the ability to do as much damage as classes that can ONLY damage... i feel you arnt giving your class the respects it was built around... druids are the jack of trades in this game but because they can do so much i dont see how you can justify making them as good as classes that are built around the activity.. a spec is a spec but when a healer/tank/dps class can do it all as good as the core classes then why have other classes? why not just have a druid game

 

david0925

Waiting for one of these posts to come up, heh.

We're not looking for equal damage as Rogues. We're looking for a method that allow us to scale at an equal rate as Rogues, Warriors, and Enhancement Shamans. Some of us don't mind doing, say, 80%, dmg as a rogue, as a trade off to our utility. However, most of us do mind if we're doing 80% Rogue dmg when Gruul was end game, and now doing 50% in Black Temple (not actual numbers, just for the sake of the argument)

Right now, due to interaction between Procs, Haste, Combat Potentcy, and Windfury Totem (which has no cooldown), Rogue scale with gear at a much better rate than any other class, save for Warrior And Enh Shaman. Is this a druid only problem? Hardly, all other classes have the same issue. However, this is a druid discussion post, so we're not here to talk about mage/hunter/priest/whatever shortcoming

 

Dalamar

Quite frankly, I am looking for the same damage as a Fury/MS warrior or enhancement shaman which is only about 10-15% below a rogue that they share a group with. We are the exact same as either of them, a DPS class that can gear swap(shaman) into a sup par healer, or shift(shield swap for fury) into an emergency warrior. We are able to gear swap into a more capable tank then a Fury/MS warrior but then they don't need to spec to have shield wall which is a better emergency ability regardless of gear then we will ever have.

 

Wangmu

ok to summarize druids need a 4th tier set they have healing, balance, and "feral" but it should become tanking and then to create a new Tier for pure dps? because as it is currently its for all of feral and for that its quite good, seeing as how for one set of gear you get your damage and tanking set, not the best for either but the ability to do both. So the only real balance is for there to become a new Tier.

Blizzard tried to balance the two and came up short on both but for a tier set you still tank better than a warrior in dps tier or a rogue, and do more damage than a warrior in prot gear. So you got the weakness and strength of both. How ever if there was a new one created im sure the short comings would be lessened.

However maintaining with rogues would take a lot due to the sheer amount of percentages they receive from skills and talents, so for duids to maintain, their talents or skills will need to be slightly altered to include more maybe a less powerful slice and dice or a crit damage improvement because as it is, rogues will cover more ground logically due to the %s, than a druid which is flat damage based.

 

Coroder

Have you not considered the fact that blizzard might have intended for Druids damage to not scale as well due to the fact they need to balance raids so must have thought about the whole "but druids have 5% more crit to the other party members" "but a hemo rogue adds dps from all hits" "Misery will affect more than just that one player"

Considering a druid has party buffs and the Rogue doesnt it might well turn out that when you stick a Druid in a raid enviroment that their buffs actually contribute more DPS than they lost due to poor scaling.

People often forget that damage bonuses from things like mangle/lotp/misery/hemo all show up on the other characters entry in SWstats or whatever you use to parse the combat log BUT how much of that dps was due to the fact a Druid was there? Take an Example like lotp, that roughly 5% dps increase for a Rogue. Lets assume the Rogue does 1000dps, 5% of that is 50dps. What about mangle? take that damage off the Rogues rupture then add it to the druid.

I guess what im saying is..

If Druids damage scaled equally as well as a Rogue then the fact that their buffs/debuffs provide a % based increase it means that as the dps as a whole increases and gets further boosted by these % based buffs/debuffs the druids own dps would need to be scaled down somewhat to compensate, no?

This is a massively complex thing to look into and without considering the FULL picture its impossible to make any judgements at all. If you want to prove that druids dps is lacking due to poor scaling then you will need to factor in total dps from everything, not just the druids own personal dps. Whats the point in arguing that because you only gained 3% dps and the Rogue or whatever dps class got 6% that you need more, didnt you contribute somewhat to the Rogues own personal DPS increase?

Or is it just that because they cant calculate the actual numbers (I dont think its possible anyway) they feel uncomfortable with it?

 

Pars

Leader of the Pack and Mangle are two reasons why we would not scale as well, I will give you that much. However, the benefits from Mangle are so amazingly small that it amounts to almost nothing (after checking WWS the largest amount of a rogue's damage that came from Rupture was 6%) and Leader of the Pack is not massive.

Many WWS have shown a 500 DPS difference in rogues and druids in BT, 1600 DPS for rogues and 1100 DPS for druids (which is being somewhat kind, more are probably below this mark than above it). Using those numbers, and assuming LotP amounts to 5% of their total damage done, the rogues would lose 80 DPS without it. If all of the LotP damage was attributed to the druid in a 4 rogue 1 druid group, the druid would reach 1420 DPS, while the rogues would still be at 1520. Not to mention a shaman would most likely be in the group to provide windfury at the very least, and they would most likely not be putting out the same 1600 DPS the rogues are.

All of the above math is horrendously simplified, and does not definitively prove anything, but I believe it is along the lines of what the previous posted was talking about. In reality, I'm not sure LotP would even provide a full 5% damage increase to a rogue, and the increased rupture damage is extremely miniscule. Even giving an ideal amount of damage attributed to the druid, it falls short of where the rogues are.

I'm sure one of the problems is itemization, given that the best feral DPS weapon is the season 2 maul, and our tier gear is for both tanking and DPSing. I would welcome a change to ferals that would increase our DPS viability, but I do not believe that we need a massive upgrade. Given that we can innervate, battle rez, and even tank reasonably well even in a cat gearset (non bosses of course) we should not ever touch rogues' DPS numbers. We should, however, be doing more than 60-70% of it.

 

Crowl

Expecting the same level of dps as a fury warrior seems a little excessive, your threat and mitigation in your dps gear are clearly better than his in dps gear and a shield, let alone if you swapped into your tanking gear.

Combine that with innervate, combat rez and a few spot heals, it would seem logical for your dps to be lower than that of a fury warrior, albeit closer than it is currently.

 

tejing

When we speak of "scaling as well as rogues" we don't mean we should do the same dps as a rogue. What we mean is that if we're doing about 80% (to pick a number out of the air) of a similarly geared/skilled rogue's dps in pre-kara gear, we should be doing about 80% of a similarly geared/skilled rogue's dps in BT gear. The way things currently stand though, and the subject of this thread, is that we're doing closer to 100% of a similarly geared/skilled rogue's dps in pre-kara, and that percentage decreases greatly as gear levels up, so the comparative dps changes as gear progresses. Our raid utility is certainly a reason for us to do less dps than a rogue, and I don't think any of us are complaining about that.

 

Coroder

Which brings us straight back to my post.

Say in Kara you have 600 dps and Rogue x has 800. Through buffs or whatever lets say 50dps from the Rogue was a result of your buffs/debuffs.

2 months later your in TK and your doing 1.2k dps but the rogue is now doing 1.8k, he has scaled better since the new gear etc. But this time instead of 50dps of his being down to you its now 100dps. thats 50 extra than what it was previously.

You need to think about that too when your talking about WHY the scaling isnt as good and that very well could be one of the reasons. Far too many people are just assuming the scaling wasnt intended by blizzard. You know what happens when you assume dont you?

 

Dejablue

I was doing a specific comparison of tier 4 versus tier 6. I state it is not including special abilities, as per the OP, nor does it include off set items., I.E. boots, rings, trinkets, idols.

The 24-27 DPS is roughly a 335 -375 AP increase. I am not talking total DPS, but the increase from tiers 4 to 6 specifically for rogues and druids. Now I am NOT a rogue so my weapon choices may be sub par, but the gist is there. Use any viable tier 4 Kara or equivalent weapons and upgrade them to tier 6 Hyjal weapons. The feral druid has 2, Terestians and PoF for pure DPS. Speaking of pure utility all around feral it is Wildfury to PoF, which I showed and is the 24 DPS upgrade from to PoF. One can easily argue that PoF is not a good DPS weapon but, this is about pure DPS no skills or abilities upgrades.

I agree that Druids need to do more damage in the high end, appearing to need to scale better. I think it is ability wise not stat allocation or fairness in item levels. But, we cant go there as per the OP. I showed, I believe, that you HAVE to go there and look at the overall picture. The Druid gets a LOT of its DPS from off set items and massive AP due to 35-40% of a cats damage is white.

And yes the same ole same ole song and dance is still around. Druids cannot effectively tank and cat DPS and heal all in the same gear. Most feral druids have less than 6K mana. That is literally 4 or 5 heals, unless you want to stand around in biped form waiting to regen mana at 25-30m/5 for a minute or so before you can shift back to a useful feral form.

I really do believe we should be comparable to a well geared DPS warrior in his DPS gear when we are in our cat gear. We wont have the survivability but should be close to them in DPS. I think we should be a bit better than a DPS warrior in tanking gear when we are in our tanking gear.

I do NOT think we should ever be on par with rogues DPS wise. I think we should, and I believe the devs intend us, to buff the abilities of rogues and other melee and ranged DPS and provide the small boost to survivability via ILoTP while performing, ourselves, at acceptable levels to justify the use of a feral.

I see no reason to ever have more than 2 ferals in any raid due to the above mentioned utility and group dynamic a Druid is intended to provide.

 

◊ masanbol

The issue is that since Rogues scale so well, at what point does the insane DPS they put out negate the utility a feral brings to a raid? I think the worry that many of us are expressing is that we are already there.

 

Dejablue

This is the gist of what I was showing. You have to, and I beleive the devs DO, take this into account. There are so few of us that it is very difficult to corroberate. If 3 rogues in your group do 500K damage, 25K is from ILotP, thus giving your buff contribution 100K. So if you do 375K damge you are on par with rogues. I really think the devs look at this.

WWS

Shows 2 druids coming pretty damn close to the above calculations.

 

Hovsa

then what is their excuse for shadowpriests being able to be no. 1 on dmg meters while regenerating that much mana and health to their group?

(i realize this might be abit offtopic)

 

Dejablue

I think currently my above calculations are in play and the devs can use FAP weapons to arbitrarily boost cat DPS to the point of being at the point they intend them to be at via a FAP weapon at each tier.

So when Rogues are pulling down 750K damage the devs would provide us with a FAP tier specific weapon that boosts us up to 600K, thus maintaining the sanctity of the ILoTP and a place for ferals.

 

Dejablue

It is 2 fold. The health is to provide utility so a priest can heal more than casters. It is pretty similar to the heal ILotP provides, in function. The mana is to provide a DPS boost to the casters via more spells being cast. It is a utility more than anything. Just as a feral there is no reason to have more than 2 ina raid as the benefit is the priest provides group utility. Fights are different as well. Some are melee heavy some magic.. There can be issues with schools of magic as well.

As far as being No. 1. I don't know. We have not had SP No. 1 we usually have Smog, a warlock, No. 1 about 5% over the rogues and then SP being mixed in with the DPS warriors etc.

 

dukes

Shadow priests at lower levels are in gear that is a lot more powerful than intended (frozen shadoweave/spellstrike). If you check out some of the WWS parses from guilds later in Black Temple, Shadowpriests aren't topping the meters on the majority of fights.

 

Valerian

This is only correct if those rogues have 0% crit. As their crit increases you'll find the contribution of LotP decreases.

Suppose a rogue that does 500k damage has 40% crit with LotP

Thus:

500k/1.4 = 357142.8 base damage.
357142.8 * 1.35 (crit without Lotp) = 482142.8

500000 - 482142 = 17857 damage added from LotP a far cry from the 25k that a flat 5% would indicate. A lot of people make this error so I think it needed to be shown.

 

dukes

Rogues also do a significant amount of damage with Rupture and Deadly poison, both of which cannot crit. Including these effects and the crit damage bonuses from Lethality and meta-gems or similar, it averages out to around 4% total damage rather than the 5% that is normally assumed.

 

Dejablue

It also scales up as class crit goes down. So it may be better to place a feral in a group with DPS warriors and Hunters, assuming the same total damge.

500k/1.35 = 370370.370
370370.370 * 1.3 = 481481.481
500000 - 481481.481 = 18518.5 still a ways from 25 K but still 74074 total.

The best rogues I see are running around 30% crit and the hunters are just under with 28ish with the dps warriors slightly above with 32ish.

So 30% is

500k/1.30 = 384615.38
384615.38 * 1.25 = 480769.23
500000 - 480769.23 = 19230.77 still a ways from 25 K but still 76923 total.

So 710000 - 760000 or 3.75 % probably closer to 3% average as everyone isnt going to pull those numbers.

So put your ferals in groups with the highest damage dealing classes that have the lowest crit?

Thank you for the correction. Thanks for the mature discussion as well, nice to see that

 

Valerian

It would make sense to lump ferals with BM hunters in your raids. Of course giving the BM hunters a shadow priest is even better, but I guess if you're low on SPs it can work.

 

Dejablue

Yea thats cool group set up, if the rogues and warriors dont fight over us

I just don't think we are intended to scale per se, at least in implementation. I think the weapons are arbitrarily itemized to reach the intended goal after the fact rather than a natural progression.

So, back on topic, what should be changed to alleviate this issue? The mathematics shows clearly that as crit, DPS, goes up with each class the Druids group utility and contribution goes down.

The easiest fix is to adjust the stats of PoF or have a Specialized Cat weapon.

 

• Vykromond

Adjusting the Pillar seems like the easiest option to me, which brings us right back to why Sadris started the thread.

 

Dalamar

How grim a fate, 3rd string group buffers for hunters.... Potentially even 4th string now that I think about it.

We get to tank wonderful useless garbage like Hurtful strike mechanics, and trash. Passed over for a real dps spot because "you can tank" then left to wallow in some trash SP, 3BM group with next to nothing gained from, that is assuming we don't get swapped for a real DPS or real party buffer, such as a Fury Warrior, Enhancement Shaman, Rogue, or Hunter. Hell even a Warlock, Mage, Elemental Shaman, Retadin, Moonkin or another Shadow Priest gets more out of that group spot then us. A grim fate it is...

 

Dejablue

To a degree:

"
So my question to EJ is: Why do you think our weapons are reverse-scaling? Do you think Blizzard is aware of this issue? Do you think that FAP, overall, is a band-aid over a gushing wound and should be scraped altogether for true weapon scaling?
"

Blizzard is very aware, since 1.8, and FAP IS a band aid that they chose to not change when they had a great chance with the introduction of Mangle and new talents in BC. I do not think it has anything to do with equal level weapons and ilevel stat allocation.

Currently they could make each point of Spirit provide 1 point of AP, providing about 200 AP, plus raid buffs, to help close the gap. But that doesn't solve the problem as these weapons were also introduced to prevent Warriors from becoming staff warriors and any synergy that is significant will have warlocks fighting for staves with high stamina were we to get AP for intellect or any other stat really, you see the issue. This is what they did without putting Class: Druid on it to prevent other classes taking the items intended for druids and to prevent other classes from feeling like they didn't get a class weapon, especially after the huge debacle with the Benediction and Lok'dalar weapons.

But,


Tier 6 Feral Talent:

Feral Synergy

Rank1

While in Cat, Bear or Dire Bear Form, increases your attack power by your Spirit.

Rank 2

While in Cat, Bear and Dire Bear Form, increases your attack power by your Intellect.

With this talent they could get rid of the FAP weapons and go back to the initial multi stat hybridish itemization reminiscent of AQ, assuming we could get the weapons from the warriors and warlocks. But then we will have more spirit and stamina and be able to heal and regen more...

I think a best solution is high DPS staves straight from the listed DPS translated over to AP. I.E. you could let Wildfury provide 52.2 DPS as it does currently for Cat and Bear, via 731 FAP. But then the Moonkins that would use it.......would not do as much damage and it would be labeled as being too low of a ilevel item. This is the perfect solution as Moonkin don't use the FAP weapons, in the failed Meleekin experiment. It would also let them scale us with a not so obvious amount of correctional AP. Think about it, soon we will be sporting 1000+ FAP weapons. It will need to be changed to a rating just as many stats were with BC to keep the calculations and display something reasonable.

So give us the base damage of whatever weapon we have equipped as AP converted from DPS. Give us some strength and agility on the current FAP weapons to make up for any lack of damage utilized to make warriors not want it and maybe even provide a modicum of Intellect and Spirit along with the Feral Synergy talent to synergise the Druid. You could even increase shifting costs to reflect the increase in intellect and spirit that this would entail. This could also provide a more hybrid build for those that wish to go that route as currently one isn't very feasible.
edit: Lots of spelling ><.