Feral Megathread - Page 146

Boevis · 05/14/08, 1:57 AM

[Ashtongue Talisman of Equilibrium] - Quite good, but not quite as good as some of the other trinkets. There's been a lot of discussion in the past about it, because it depends on how much/when you mangle as to how effective it is. Because of the standard DPS cycle meaning that it's not possible to have it active when you're about to rip, it loses some of it's effectiveness. It's still alright trinket though, but probably not one of the best.

My apologies for rehashing old discussion, but I had a decent idea a few months ago and finally got around to looking at the math.

I run 12 second rotations most of the time, around 20% of the time I have to add another shred just because of energy 81+. At this point, there's nothing forcing me to run a Rip-Mangle-Shred to 4/5 cycle anymore, I can put the Mangle anywhere in the cycle that I want to. In 8 seconds you have 80 energy recovery, if you time your powershift/regen time you can easily get 160 energy for those 8 seconds. Mangle 35 + Rip 30 + Shred 42 + Shred 42 = 149

Napkin math because I'm an idiot: (I'll leave crit probability to the professionals)
140*1.1*1.03 = 158.62 (round down to 158) = 316 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 382 AP (That's with Enh Shaman of course)
382/14*1.1 = 30 * 8 = 240 extra white damage
30 * 2.25 * 1.3 = 87.75 *2 = 175.5 extra shred damage
382*.24*1.1*1.1*1.3* = 144.21 extra rip damage (is that the right formula for rip? Memory fails me and search returns far too much crap)
added up it's 559.7 more damage * 40% = 224

Standard 12s cycle is 1x Rip 1x Mangle 2x Shred 12x Melee
This works out to require around 111.75 AP to get 224 more damage in a cycle.

I realize this is worse than running Bloodlust/Darkmoon Card or the other 5 Trinkets that you will see (maybe not win, but at least see) before you even get to BT. But it does put the ATE higher on the list than the Slayer's Crest.

Valerian · 05/14/08, 10:37 AM

If you're going to be killing bosses in sunwell I don't believe its worth it.

Your 5 slot setup (with sunwell boss kills) will look like:

Helm: T4
Shoulders: T4
Chest: Sunwell rogue chest
Legs: Sunwell rogue legs
Hands: T6 (to go along with bracers, belt and boots).

If you're NOT going to be killing sunwell bosses it would probably look something like:

Head: Cursed Vision/Eng helm
Shoulders: T4
Chest: T4
Legs: T6
Gloves: T6

And thats really the best you could hope for (though going 4T6 is also viable instead of 2T4 for a slight DPS loss). In that case it would be worth getting the helm (and also relies on you getting multiple T6 pieces since you want a set socketed and enchanted for DPS and tanking, at least for the legs). Really though if you're going to drop a profession and you're going to continue farming sunwell trash (and not the instance) its probably better to go LW for drums and for the sweet BoP LW chest [Carapace of Sun and Shadow].

Regen · 05/14/08, 12:35 PM

Originally Posted by Valerian

If you're going to be killing bosses in sunwell I don't believe its worth it.

Your 5 slot setup (with sunwell boss kills) will look like:

Helm: T4
Shoulders: T4
Chest: Sunwell rogue chest
Legs: Sunwell rogue legs
Hands: T6 (to go along with bracers, belt and boots).

Helm: [Duplicitous Guise] ( [Stag-Helm of Malorne] )
Neck: [Clutch of Demise] ( [Hard Khorium Choker] for JC )
Shoulders: [Thunderheart Pauldrons] use both Y and B socket here ([Pauldrons of Malorne])
Cloak: [Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape]
Chest: [Bladed Chaos Tunic]
Wrist: [Thunderheart Wristguards]
Gloves: [Gloves of Immortal Dusk] ([Thunderheart Gauntlets], Blue socket used)
Belt: [Thunderheart Waistguard]
Leggings: [Leggings of the Immortal Night]
Boots: [Thunderheart Treads]
Ring: [Angelista's Revenge]
Ring: [Signet of Primal Wrath]* ( [Hard Khorium Band] )
Trinket: [Dragonspine Trophy]
Trinket: [Shard of Contempt]
2H Weapon: [Stanchion of Primal Instinct]
Relic: [Idol of the Raven Goddess]**

*This is only better than [Hard Khorium Band] when you have sufficient armor pen.
**Best for Group DPS**

Easier to read version: Pre-KJ: T4 helm+Shoulders, T6 Bracer, Belt, Boots, Gloves
farm status: T6 shoulders, Bracer, Belt, Boots

You are right in the other case, I'll personally enjoy having less competition on [Bladed Chaos Tunic] if all the rogues really are patient enough to wait for their Carapace.

Yilfin · 05/14/08, 1:55 PM

Thanks for your replies

So, to resume, there are near 0 chances for me to really use this helm, for dps or for tanking, and i'll surely keep the t4 helm and shoulders for dps and t6 (or the brutal gladiator helm for a high-threat generation gear) for tanking. We're beginning sunwell, with the goal to clean it of course, and not just farm trashs, so i hope that i'll loot other pieces of stuff there. It's really a hard choice, choose another profession and abandon one just for one item, even if its good, is a quite hard decision. But as i can see, the benefit of leatherworking (crafted chest and drums) is larger than engineering (just the helm). Jewelcrafting also seems to be good (second best neck in game, i have the exalted sso one, aldor side, so it's a 25 dps increase according to rawr, and a good dps trinket, a bit less amazing than the berseker's call than don't want to loot for me, it will be a good replacement to my crystalforged trinket).

If there are other advises, i'll take them, thanks a lot guys

Thaspraya · 05/14/08, 5:07 PM

Hey, another young feral here ^^

Very nice thread, loads of excellent information!

To the point - I'd like to know what kind of gear I'll need for tanking prince and nightbane. I've Main Tanked all bosses up to spite, and it worked well. Druid wikispaces says 25k armor, 14k hp and 30% dodge for a full kara run but that seemed a bit low too me , especialy for prince.

My armory is here - The World of Warcraft Armory

In bear form with MotW, I have:
24,4k armor
14,4k hp
28% dodge
430 Defense

Also, I've tried a bit of theorycrafting, but I can't seem to choose what to save badges for. Any advice on the best upgrade in terms of badge rewards? I've thought about the [Embrace of Everlasting Prowess], but [Brooch of Deftness] also seems great because of the hard-to-get expertise.

I did notice it's against the rules to post this since it's personalised advise. But I thought, hey, if you guys answer "What is the def cap", I thought that this wouldn't be that bad :o

lairpie · 05/14/08, 5:38 PM

1. You don't have to link your armory, its right there by your name in the post.
2. The answers vary greatly based on your group. Are your healers comparably geared? Do you have commanding shout? are your dpsers geared enough that threat is a major concern? There are scores of questions like this. People recommend against asking for personal advice because there's no way to get a good answer without someone knowing all of the details. Along with that, the whole give a man a fish vs teaching him to fish. We could answer if you gave us a whole page worth of details, but then you'd just have to come back when nightbane was down and ask the same questions for prince or ZA bosses, Mag channelers, Mag himself. One suggestion would be to look at WWSs for the lowest dps kills of some things, and armory the people tanking them.
3. In the first post of this thread there's a link to a thread discussing the best pre-raid gear. As all of that can be obtained within a day or two of hitting 70 (my GF's feral druid just hit 70 and was tanking karazhan with nearly the best pre kara gear possible a couple days later). I'd look at that post for an idea of what you should get. Everything in Kara can be tanked as a druid without any gear from kara or even heroic badge gear.

Malthoreniel · 05/14/08, 7:49 PM

Given the amount of macros flying around these days, I'm surprised to not have seen something like this before (might be selective or faulty perception, though):

/run local f="Cat Form";f=GetSpellCooldown(f)>0 or UnitMana('player')>XXX or not IsUsableSpell(f) or CancelPlayerBuff(f)
/stopmacro [form]
/cast Cat Form

This will only powershift when you have XXX or fewer energy and enough mana to return to cat.

For even more powershifting yumminess, I inlined the mechanism in my main attacks:

#showtooltip
/run if pwx then local f="Cat Form";f=GetSpellCooldown(f)>0 or UnitMana('player')>pws or not IsUsableSpell(f) or CancelPlayerBuff(f) end
/cast [form] YourAttackHere
/stopmacro [form]
/cast Cat Form

Powershift mode is then toggled by this macro:

/run local c=DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME if  pwx then pwx=false c:AddMessage("Powershift disabled",1,1,1) else pwx=true pws=8 c:AddMessage("Powershift enabled, 8 energy threshold",1,1,1)end

I'm sure there is a more elegant or "proper" way to handle this (especially the nonlocal variables), suggestions or improvements are appreciated.

I haven't tested the energy thresholds extensively yet. So far I haven't run out of mana on any kitty fights, so 8 might be too conservative. If you use this, share your findings with your fellow kittens!

On a semi related note, the cancelform mechanics should also allow a stun-safe pot macro, but this will require an addon that determines wether you are able to act or not. Does anybody know one that does this?

Deltronzero · 05/14/08, 9:23 PM

This seems incredibly useful and crafty, but I must admit macros more advanced than

/use Haste Potion
/cast !Cat Form

are utter sorcery to me. So I have some questions:

1. You just replace your mangle or shred button (or both?) with the middle example, with the appropriate attack name substituted? Or is there more to it
2. The third example you give is just another button you put on your bars and clicking it will enable or disable the energy-check and powershift aspects of the prior example, hence making it a simple Mangle/Shred button -- T/F?
3. Would adding "/use Haste Potion" above the "/cast Cat Form" line mess it up? Or would it also use a haste potion if its not on cooldown?

Thanks in advance, I'm currently flying home from Europe and won't have a chance to test this for another 48 hours or so, but it seems pretty amazing (in the sense that it allows me to be lazy and still possibly more efficient than doing it manually).

edit- would there also be any way of adding a caster form mana cut-off to the macro, such that you can ensure you'll never go below the mana required for a battle rez and shift back to cat form, for example? Or is that a job for the disable switch along with manually watching your mana?

Deltronzero · 05/14/08, 9:44 PM

Excuse the double post, but there's something that has been in the back of my mind for a while now and I'm curious to hear more about it. A couple dozen pages back there was discussion of the magical "super-rips" that seemed to tick for extra high amounts (by double-counting the mangle buff iirc?) if you refreshed the rip and mangle in the appropriate order at the right time... whatever happened to this? Was anyone able to consistently reproduce the results, or was it deemed kind of random? I was trying to get it to work and didnt have any luck. I'd be curious to hear if anyone does it in raids, and how they're able to produce the effect.

• Astrylian · 05/14/08, 10:30 PM

SuperRips... Yeah, it still works, but not in a fashion that is really helpful.

There's a delay between when you mangle between when the damage is applied, and when the "Mangle (Cat)" debuff is applied, of a little under 1sec. If you time your mangle so that the previous mangle's debuff wears off during that delay, it'll instead apply a different debuff, just "Mangle". Instead of increasing all bleed damage done while the debuff is up, like "Mangle (Cat)", "Mangle" just increases all bleed damage *started* while the debuff is up. So if you rip right before "Mangle" wears off, let it wear off, then apply "Mangle (Cat)", you get 1.69x normal rip damage. Of course, to get to that point, your previous Rip had to go its full duration under "Mangle", but started under "Mangle (Cat)", so it was at 1x normal damage. So for every 1.69 rip you do, you have to have a 1.0 rip before it, give or take 1 either way, depending on when the fight ends. Theoretically, you could alternate between "Mangle" and "Mangle (Cat)", but that's an awful lot of perfectly timed Mangles, for an average rip multiplier of 1.345 instead of 1.3, aka 3.4% dmg increase to rip, at best. So basically, it's not worth doing...

BUT! Someone did ask me to implement a slider in Rawr to choose what % of rips were double rips like that. He said he had a method to get double rips without getting mangleless rips. And he backed up his claim with a WWS of him being the only feral in a Maulgar fight, in T4 guild, with average rips of like 890 or something. So, anyone know how to do that? I told him I'd implement it if he could show me how to do it, he never responded.

Nandini · 05/14/08, 10:54 PM

Deleted my comments, I was way off-base.

Deltronzero · 05/14/08, 11:38 PM

Astrylian, thanks for the explanation it makes a lot more sense. Gotta hunt down the mystery man (er, cat)

Nandini, it seems even if your theory worked it would still be kind of a crapshoot because it would be something like 30 percent more total rip damage versus 35 energy opportunity cost per cycle... with no math done, my intuition tells me that wouldn't outweigh the energy loss. That is, assuming that powershifting is employed to the max and its practical limit is mana (or mana versus haste pot trade-offs)... so working clever powershifts into the cycle would still be an opportunity cost for that energy spent on the extra mangle.

On a different but related train of thought, if you're choosing a guardian elixir with mana regen for powershifting in mind rather than survival, would you prefer Mageblood (16 mp5) or Draenic Wisdom (30 Int/Spir)? I think Mageblood would be more regen, but 30 Int is nothing shabby given how little of the stat we have to begin with. I havent looked at resto theorycrafting since the relatively recent spirit changes, but my understanding is you get increasing returns with more spirit-- so even though we'd be getting past the FSR for some time the mp5 is probably more regen. Thoughts?

Nandini · 05/15/08, 3:37 AM

Originally Posted by Deltronzero

Draenic Wisdom (30 Int/Spir)?

Don't neglect the extra mana you get from the 30 Int (*1.2 with HotW *1.03 with SotF). This should give you around 371 additional mana (remember your cat shapeshift cost is a constant 35% of your base mana, not your mana improved by extra Int). Depending on how many points you have invested in Natural Shapeshifter, you might get close to enough mana for an extra shift just from that.

Also, I heard (but have not confirmed) the extra boost to regen from Spi scales up as Int goes up.

You might be best off setting yourself a timer, trying out one of each elixir, and seeing how many times you can shift on a constant schedule. Perhaps find a holy pally, duel him, mangle him once, wait for the debuff to wear off, powershift, and repeat to do it once every 12 seconds until you are oom. (This was the easiest way I could think of to set a constant timer. For an 18 second timer, you could try pouncing then running off to restealth.)

Odas · 05/15/08, 3:56 AM

Astrylian,

A thousand apologies, I haven't been frequenting this board for some time. It was I who asked for the double rip slidder, and yes I do have a method of successfully getting double rips relatively consistently and not by changing the typical attack cycle.

Basically it goes like this:

There is a small gap in time between when an ability is used and it reaches its target, similar to flight time of say a fireball spell. When you press rip if you watch carefully you can see a delay between when the energy and combo points are consumed compared to when the rip effect is applied to the target.

The damage calculation for rip is done both as the energy is consumed, and again when the debuff ticks on the mob. Basically, if you wait until mangle has less than one second left, and you "release" rip while the mangle debuff is up, damage is calculated as if rip has mangle. Half a second later, mangle wears off, then rip reaches the target and is applied. The rip damage has already been calculated with mangle up, so it continues to tick for an extra 30%. If now you were to mangle again, the rip damage is increased again.

Cycle:
0.0: Mangle
.
.
Generate combo points
.
.
11.5: Rip "cast", energy and combo points consumed
12.0: Mangle wears off
12.1: Rip debuff appears on target
12.5: Mangle before first rip tick for double effect

Something to keep in mind is that the last mangle at 12.5 seconds does not need to be there for the phantom rip to take place. So if you were out of energy at 12 seconds, the first tick of the rip will tick as if only 1 mangle were on, and you can apply the "second" mangle any time in the future, or not at all. This method requires that no one else is mangling, because it will make timing very very difficult.

Through much practice I have been able to become quite successful at getting double rips varying on different bosses. For example, something to do with the hit box of Anetheron makes it extremely difficult to get double rips. While Rage Winterchill is a much easier target. Although I originally experimented on the servants in the Blasted Lands, I found that they also are more difficult to time double rips on.

I hope this clears some stuff up.

• Astrylian · 05/15/08, 4:35 AM

Confirmed. That does work. Wow. First the above macro (which is frelling amazing, btw), now this...

Acowgoesmoo · 05/15/08, 4:56 AM

This explains the obscene ticks i had on rips sometimes which i was never able to reproduce

But since we almost always have 2-3 ferals in raids its almost impossible to achieve. Last time i saw this rips was a 960 something tick on rip at vashj a couple month ago, now with better gear and 4p t6 i can get that high :P

I have been using a macro like that with gcd-check and nrg-check together with use of haste pot. Mine is set at 18 atm, seems like i cant go any lower than that because of lag. My first setting was 12 and it worked when i had a better connection, but now i can rarely get a shift off using that macro with 12. So it seems like the energycheck is affected by latency atleast.

◊ Farstrider · 05/15/08, 4:58 AM

Sorry, I'm a macro muppet, what does that macro do? It basically means you'll auto power shift anytime it's worth doing, you're off GCD, and you have enough mana to shift back?

• Astrylian · 05/15/08, 5:03 AM

I was using the in-mangle-macro powershift all night (1-4Hyjal, 7-9BT tonight), and other than on some hyjal trash, I never went OOM, with it set at 12. I bumped it up to 15 for council and Illidan, and still never ran OOM. (This was with no spr buff, but did have wisdom, a chromatic flask, stam food, and no regen from group). Don't know how long our Council kill was, prolly like 8min or so, but I ended with 6200/8000 mana, even including battle rezzing. Same with Illidan, lots of downtime in that fight, could have shifted alot more. Starting tomorrow I'm going to try an even more aggressive version, with a different threshold for each attack: 15 for Mangle, 10 for Rip, 22 for Shred (aka, powershift if I won't be able to cast it after the next energy tick/2T4proc).

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Farstrider

Sorry, I'm a macro muppet, what does that macro do? It basically means you'll auto power shift anytime it's worth doing, you're off GCD, and you have enough mana to shift back?

Correct.

Rannasha · 05/15/08, 5:07 AM

Originally Posted by Farstrider

Sorry, I'm a macro muppet, what does that macro do? It basically means you'll auto power shift anytime it's worth doing, you're off GCD, and you have enough mana to shift back?

Yes. Couple it with your favorite attack (probably Shred) and start the button-bashing.

Inaiwae · 05/15/08, 5:14 AM

I will test that asap, it seems really useful and removes the pain of wasted 2t4 procs from powershifting.

What i'd like to know is how often do you guys powershift using this macro with given treshold? When shifting manually, i was once per cycle on average, and with natural shapeshifter that was maintainable without mana potions.

I also see one thing to consider regarding to 2t6. Shifting after mangle negates the 2t6 bonus, so you need to time your mangle so that you wont auto-shift after it, or keep that in mind when evaluating gear. For me 2t6 is the best-in-slot for now even when tank gemmed, but thats mainly due to the bonus ...

• Astrylian · 05/15/08, 5:23 AM

2T6 isn't wasted if you follow it with a powershift if you have between 35 and 39 energy when you mangle.