Dalamar

My personal standards for lacerate and swipe back when it seemed to be nearly comparable in threat -

Bleed immune I will swipe at 180 damage.

Non-Bleed immune I will swipe at 200 damage.

I used these numbers and not the 225 from Dukes stats simply because I feel I tank with a higher crit rate than most other bears.

Since I have gotten 4pt6 and my swipes often push 250 to 300 I will only ever Lacerate on mobs that are taking ridiculously low damage from melee attacks, the only one I can think of at the moment is the Bloodboil trash during shield wall phases. I use Lacerate so rarely at this point that it is quite near Rake is usefulness, preventing rogues from restealthing or vanishing in the arenas or world pvp.

Lacerate seems to be more of a spam tanking ability for non-ferals that hop into bear to hold aggro on something, and not an ability that we (ferals) are supposed to use for raiding.

 

seminarca

One thing to keep in mind for Lacerate is the damage it does. After building up a 5 stack, one could conceivably spam Swipe and only use Lacerate to refresh the stack to keep the damage rolling.

WWS says I got:
23,442 dmg over an ~8 minute Lurker (worst case example because of having to refresh the stack after each submerge)
40,582 dmg over an ~8 minute Morogrim (better, the stack never falls)
46,494 dmg over a ~10 minute Magtheridon

It's a nontrivial amount of damage imo. I've been following the 225 figure, I believe it was calculated for a 30% crit rate.

 

Kink

This is what I do. Simply stack the stack and then use swipe, only lacerating whenever the stack is about to fall. I think it is by far the best threat for your time you can get. This is of course in unlimited threat situations.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.
The only problem is, it's often an incoming train.

 

Filmnio

is it possible to macro two seperate on use trinkets to a single rip macro?

Ive tried

/use 13
/use 14
/cast rip

but it only works when 13 is on CD

 

◊ Farstrider

Most on-use trinkets have some sort of shared cooldown. Check if you can activate them both seperately immediately one after the other, and still hit rip straight away. If you can, I'm not sure why that macro wouldn't work.

 

The Grog

I don't go into the non-set items because they tend to drastically complicate the discussion. It was intended strictly to illustrate the best T4 pieces to wear as compared to T5&6. Besides, those are all not 5 piece slots and not what I was talking about. While you can shuffle some gems off into those pieces, and you should, the primary effect of wearing those on the analysis is shifting the hit differences on the helms and shoulders into agility differences. Or str/crit differences in the case of the T4 helm, but that's the only place I'd voluntarily put a str/crit gem.

As for hit, I believe very strongly that you should always be hit capped when possible. Even for ferals, my spreadsheet shows better returns point for point than anything else even though hit doesn't have the overwhelming lead that it does for rogues. Yes, you can use agi/hit gems if you want to cut some hit, but that doesn't really change the comparisons a whole lot except in helm/shoulder differences and those aren't exactly major. Yes, str/crit gems can be used instead if you already happen to be hit capped but they're pretty bad as opposed to the other yellow options. I've always had to struggle to get to the hit cap, but my raid runs 4 rogues, 2 dps warriors, a enh shaman, and 4 hunters in the roster so getting hit jewelry was not easy.

 

The Grog

The common double use trinkets for druids are a bloodlust/crystalforged combo, and those do have a lockout timer on them. Er, you may also need stopcasting commands in there.

 

Weidekuh

My trinket macro:

/stopcasting
/use Crystalforged Trinket
/stopcasting
/use Bloodlust Brooch
/stopcasting
/cast Rip(Rank 7)


works perfectly

 

Ducimus

I finally decided to try this macro yesterday and I have to say I love it. However, if you don't have those trinkets equipped or if they're on cooldown, the macro will generate errors. To get rid of those errors, you can use the following script line. Just add it after each instance of the /use command.

 

monstor

That seems like a nice macro, I might try that without the Crystalforged Trinket because I am using hourglass.

 

exarkun

Anyone have any idea how this new expertise skill will translate to our feral combat skill? Is shapeshifters signet going to be garbage now?

http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t16967-2_3_patch_notes/

• Expertise: We have added a new stat and associated rating called expertise and expertise rating. Expertise rating converts to expertise at the same rate that weapon skill rating formerly converted at. Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried by 0.25%

• Weapon Skill: All items and abilities that granted weapon skill have been changed. In most cases, they were converted to expertise or expertise rating. Ranged attacks do not benefit from expertise, so ranged weapon skill has generally been replaced by critical strike bonuses or hit bonuses. In a few cases, talents have been changed to other effects to avoid granting players excessive amounts of expertise.

 

david0925

Yes, that pretty much murdered the needs for any skill rating, 5 points of expertise will now reduce dodge by 1.25%, 2.5% total avoidance if you include parry.

But my concern is, feral weapon buff and HOTW change WRU =(

 

mandella

Yea, could anyone check the numbers on weapons with FAP? I think it interests us all

 

Larisroth

The expertise change needed to go through. It was getting ridiculous as to how much difference 5 points of weapon skill made, and the different lengths people had to go to to get it.

It's still probably worth getting some as a tank if there's anything we can get it on, but only really worth getting on dps gear if it otherwise good.

Anyone on the ptr and able to check if there's any reitemisation in light of the HotW changes?

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

 

david0925

Yes, 2.5% mitigation to total avoidance is pretty big, assuming that it is a very threat intensive fight

 

david0925

The FAP and HoTW changes are now up on the patch notes

 

dukes

I've updated the feral combat skill post-2.3 section. I've assumed that it will be marginally less desirable for a hit-capped player due to not giving critical strike % any more, while for a non-hit-capped player it's a lot less desirable because of not giving any hit % any more.

The test server isn't up as far as I could see (just checked - europe though) so I can't check the weapons. If anyone does manage to get on and get decent shots of all the weapons, post it here and I'll backlink to the post to make it easy.

 

Kieran

The PTR in the US is also not up as of now (Hortus' post), so we have to wait a while while those are being prepared.

I just wonder how much more FAP our staves (and maces) will bring.

As an aside, the Patch Notes state something about Warriors' Charge getting its pathing fixed, perhaps our Feral Charge will also be affected.

 

Grizlock

Has anyone been able to download the PTR client? I keep getting "The service youre trying to access is too busy right now, please check back another time." This makes it seem like it is available, just getting too many request. They also forgot their apostrophe.

 

Athinira

Hey Dukes.

You might probably want to include my article about Strength versus Agility in your post if you like. Its theorycrafting, but provides decent arguments to compare Strength and Agility for Raid DPS.

Given, its written pre-2.3 HotW change, but my conclusion was Agility >> Strength in terms of raid DPS for the average geared druid. Since the AP value of agility increases by 10% and the AP value of strength decreases by 1/12th, the graph should still hold true, only favoring agility even more.

You can read my article here:
The Druid Wiki » AthinirasCorner

...as well as you can read Tossk DPS gear methodology here:
The Druid Wiki » ToskksDPSGearMethod

To sum up however, the general conclusion is that because that attack power scales much faster than critical strike chance when you achieve new upgrades (Feral AP weapons etc.), as well as raid buffs, the value of agility compared to strength drastically increases in the favor of agility since druids generally take a great bunch of Attack Power in, making agility overall more valuable for DPS.

Excellent post overall, keep up the good work. Once you feel the thread is finished, ill add it to the Druid Wiki.

Reading from the information you provided, you already stated agility as the best DPS stat. But if you want to link the two articles above feel free to do so.

In addition, i would heavily recommend you introduce people to Rawr as well. Its a program for calculating the value of druid tanking items.
The Druid Wiki » Rawr

Moderator and Organizer on The Druid Wiki
The ultimate source for Druid Info and Guides
http://druid.wikispaces.com

 

◊ Zeln

Someone turned me onto Rawr last night, and I have to say, its a wonderful program. It allows you to create your own profile, or just download straight from the armory. One of the greatest things is not only does it rate the gear based on just "points", but further separates those points as survival and avoidance, and updates based upon how all of your gear stacks up.

 

dukes

I've added links to both your blog and Rawr, Athinira, thanks. Toskk's was already on there (end of the Cat DPS post) but I've added a note to say what it actually is as it was unclear before.

I'm not sure the thread will ever be 'finished' as such. It's one of those things to just keep adding to. I don't mind if you add it to the wiki when it's more fully fleshed out though.

 

seminarca

Right, so I'm reading that PTRs are apparently available now. Is anyone in a position to log on yet?

Mainly I'm interested in:

FAP changes on Feral weapons. How much extra FAP are the common ones getting?

The /cancelform change is missing from patch notes, but usually they don't put UI/Macro related stuff in there. So, is it in the PTR build yet? Can you try powershifting using /cancelform macros?

Can you try /cancelform + potion/healthstone macros while being attacked? While being attacked by a fast hitting mob? While being attacked by multiple fast hitting mobs? Take a /combatlog so we can see if there are any hits in caster form.

Is season 3 arena gear up yet? Season 3 honor stuff (bracers, belt, boots)?

 

Melthar

WoW Forums -> Feral Weapon Buffs Post here Supposedly has some of the changes to the FAP weapons.

From there:
Earthwarden: 712 AP
S2 Mace: 1010 AP (but not changed to agi/str)
Terestian's stranglestaff = 829 AP
Essentially they basically match an equivalent level 2H'r now

 

Zadnak