Miststorm

Any updates on feral dps scaling available?

As it looks currently, we get improved Tiger's Fury which is a very nice talent (60 energy on 30 sec timer => 2 energy per second, so 20% more yellow attacks), but the current gap with rogue scaling is much larger, and it does not improve our scaling based on haste. We would need a larger buff to our energy regen to keep up, maybe we could get that if the mechanics of power shifting were changed so that if we enter cat form again within 0.5 seconds of leaving it, up to 20 energy from before leaving cat form would be preserved?

Or replace the extra combo point on crits in the talent to give 10 energy on a crit? That should raise our energy regen rate sufficiently to ensure proper scaling without making us dual-wielders in cat form

 

North101

Someone has said there was a blue post on the WotLK forums saying that they were going to allow weapon procs in forms because of the nerf to agility (Our crit and dodge per agi will be the same a rogues). However no one else has comfirmed it and there has been no screen so while hopeful, I won't be surprised if it turns out to be false.

 

Valerian

Allowing WF would be one way. As for scaling there are talents in already that are helping. The 60 energy every 30 seconds is huge, as already stated. Berserk reducing the energy cost of attacks by half is huge, though the cooldown is large so this is probably more burst then sustained dps. The extra % AP from our weapons is another scaling factor that is actually very large. 20% more AP from our weapons is almost the same as giving a warrior or rogues weapons 20% more dps

e.g., Stranglestaff is 829 AP which converts to 114.6 DPS two hander. With the new talent its a 125.5 dps two hander. Thats approximately 1 tier gain in DPS.

Finally there's the 10% more shred damage against bleeding targets. Again this is a perfectly scaling talent that makes shred a total of 3.54*weapon damage (including Mangle, Naturalist and this new talent) in terms of scaling.

 

• sadris

I think this has more to do with the fact that Enh Shaman are doing 2200dps at the Sunwell level whereas Druids cap out at 1800dps. Its the same old scaling problem with our 1.0 attack speed and lack of benefit from haste/armor pen/windfury as 25% of our damage is a bleed.

 

unitsinc

I was playing around with different PVE builds and I think this:

War Pirate :: Druid WotLK Alpha Talent Tree

Gives pretty much everything essential, without giving up too much that is terribly valuable.

You do lose Feral FF which is very nice, is by no means essential, especially if you have a moonkin. You also lose Imp LotP which again, is nice to have, but I can't ever really recall it saving my life, or anyone elses either.

Thoughts?

 

blackmatt

That's pretty much what i was thinking, except I'd hate not having faerie fire when tanking. Could probably get used to it though, just do more moonfire pulling. But I'm nervous about whether infected wounds works in pve. If it does, it's something that's going to be pretty much mandatory because it's borderline op, but I can't figure out where to find three points for it.

 

unitsinc

I completely agree with missing the FFF, but, just like you said I'd just end up doing a lot more moonfire pulls, which I suppose is better(for threat) just a little more work on our part.

And as far as infected wounds goes, I'd be incredibly surprised if they let that work on boss type mobs. Maybe on regular/instance mobs, but even then, while it'd be great for learning new dungeons, I don't think it'd be at all needed once you've learned them.

 

Nitz

Why Savage Fury ?

 

unitsinc

This one, while not as raid useful as other feral talents, still probably is more helpful than FFF or Imp LotP because Mangle is usually a decent % of damage done....not huge, but I do think 20% would be noticeable...that and it's invaluable for soloing. It also has a use in pvp. While this obviously isn't a PVP build, I think most people like to be able to hop into a BG and not be too gimped with a normal PVE spec.

But if I do take out the 2 points there, what would you suggest? FFF and 1 point into Imp LotP?

 

Baggles

I'm not sure why the hate on FFF. Resto druids can't keep FF up in raids with tree shifting, and many raids don't run a boomkin. I wish they'd give feral imp FF, though, as it seems boomkin is getting a wealth if raid-group-friendly talents. The +hit on imp FF would round out the feral dps role pretty perfectly imo.

 

blackmatt

I wouldn't say I hate on faerie fire, but it seemed like the most logical place to dump a point to me for 25 mans. My guild does run with a moonkin, and I have a feeling it's going to become almost required to have at least one in the expansion. 3% to both melee and spell hit is huge, the haste buff from imp moonkin aura is extremely good, and the debuff to increase arcane damage should also be very helpful if it stack with cos. Savage fury is the second talent I would take points out of, or where I would take them for 10 mans, 5 mans, or soloing, and it may end up being the better choice for 25 mans as well. Mangle is usually <10% of my damage, so losing 20% off each mangle shouldn't be terribly game breaking.

 

Demiah

I couldn't bear to lose FFF personally. If im in a tricky situation where im faced with two stationary unmoveable casters then i'll MT whichever is the dps target and use FFF whenever its off Cooldown on the other caster, the 210 threat manages to out threat healers. This is opposed to having to run between them. I'll admit this use is limited, very limited, but nevertheless FFF is an essential part of the druid pulling system unless you intend to run like hell with Enrage on after a moonfire.

 

Skippert

I've checked this topic but I haven't seen it being discussed so I'll just ask it here:

"Primal Aggression: Increases damage done by your Maul and Shred attacks on bleeding targets by 2/4/6/8/10%, and increases the critical strike chance of your Ferocious Bite ability on bleeding targets by 10/20/30/40/50%."

Rip versus Fero Bite getting a new twist isn't it?

Rip has always been the PVE choice cus it scales better with AP and it ignores armor. Fero bite crit scaling wasn't enough to make it a good substitute. However now with +50% crit (lets assume bleed effects are always up with a warrior/rogue) to ferocious bite, the critchance can get higher than 90%, even with the possible changes to agility scaling. Won't that change the balance between rip and ferobite, making the difference in dmg between the two pretty small? (ofcourse assuming you specced 15% fero bite dmg as well)

I guess in WOTLK it's going to depend on the armor of the boss whether you wanna use rip or ferocious bite, instead of currently: always rip (except if the mob dies in a few sec). Damage cycles will be way easier to keep up by only using fero bite. I really wonder what the dmg difference will be.
Lets say rip ticks for 700dmg, that's 700*6=4200dmg. In the same situation ferobite would prolly do around the same average dmg with a 90% critchance, on an average bossfight? Just a guess.

 

kalbear

The biggest problem with ferocious bite is the loss of all energy combined with a poor conversion of that energy to AP. That makes it worse for cycles, as effective you've got 4 seconds (depending on 2pt4 proc) of deadtime without an attack. That can be cut to 1.5 seconds with powershifting, but that's pretty expensive, mana wise, to do a powershift every 12 seconds in addition to whatever you're doing with shred shifting. Also, ferocious bite effectively needs to have 5 CP to compete with rip, even at the 4cp level.

 

Vair

While FB will be better than it is now it still cost more energy base and drains all your remaining energy. Also Arms warriors will be getting a talent that increases a targets bleed damage.

 

Skippert

Definately true, but

Even though prolly still significant, the disavantage will be smaller with the upcomming change:
"Ferocious Bite: Damage for extra energy now scales with attack power." Druid - Wotlkwiki
And I'm also eager to get more detail on "Ferocious Bite, Rip: Damage values changed." from the same page.
I just hope it's at least Blizzard's INTENTION to make Fero Bite a 'reasonable' subsistute for rip again in long PVE fights.

-edit-
Arms warrior talent Trauma increases bleeddmg on the target by 30% indeed. Didn't see that one yet.
That will definately keep rip superior, but the big question is if you're getting these warriors in your raids. When I read the warrior topics there's no clear "yes" answer and even arms warriors dunno if they're gonna spec as deep as trauma cus the extra fury talents they can spec from getting 10 extra CP's are pretty powerful.

 

Moof

With the news of the new Dire Cat form, what could possibly be changed or augmented with this new form other than simply adding more AP?

As for the added 50% crit on FB with Primal Aggression, I mainly see it as a very nice pvp buff which almost guarantees a FB crit to finish off near dead opponents.

 

kalbear

Changing the base attack speed from 1.0 to 2.0 would massively help the cat's DPS given windfury and PPM mechanics will now be working with cat form. My suspicion is that they will introduce some kind of scaling mechanism to make the AP on weapons not quite so insane or give extra AP based on agility & strength. Not much, in other words.

 

Pitbuller

WF totem dps is same no matter of weapon speed.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Polyamorous

I can't imagine them doing that, it would involve rebalancing shred, mangle, and ravage. I was imagining something along the lines of more AP per agi/str, and maybe a small armor modifier or dodge buff since kittehs are so squishy in pvp.

 

kalbear

It is more likely to trigger based on slower weapons, was my understanding. Maybe I was thinking of the windfury weapon buff and not the totem. If that's the case, I apologize. Regardless, PPM mechanics definitely favor slower weapons (depending on the enchant, of course), and that's likely a bigger boost.

Why? Changing the base speed of the white attacks doesn't change any of the special attacks; in theory it would do no special damage by itself. Shred, mangle and ravage are not based on the base attack speed in any way. It would also nerf the 2pt4 bonus, which they probably want to do to some degree.

 

Polyamorous

They are definitely based on attack speed. If you have the same dps, but make the swing take twice as long, your base damage doubles. Shred, mangle, and ravage give % modifiers to base damage. 2.0 swing speed would make for huge specials unless the modifiers were changed.

 

Fflewt

I was curious if anyone had an explanation concerning lacerate's comparatively high miss rating. We're a T4-ish guild and were running Shattered Halls on normal mode last night for rep. Our feral tank has decent expertise (21 rating) and finished the run with only one swing dodged, 100% of his mangles landing, 1 swipe parried, but 9 of his lacerates were blocked, 1 was parried and 1 was dodged. Is there something special about lacerate that permits it to be more easily avoided or mitigated? (All of the blocks were done by trash mobs. Bladefist got the parry and the dodge) This wasn't a fluke run, lacerate always seems to have a higher proportion of mitigation/avoidance in all of our runs. Has anyone come up with an explanation or was there an announcement from blizzard regarding this design feature that I missed?

The WWS for the run is: Gamay - WWS
Any feedback on this feature of lacerate would be greatly appreciated.

 

Vair

Lacerate does low damage so it's easier to fully block. And one parry and one dodge over the course of an instance is called luck not an increased mitigation factor.

 

Chojee

Both Windfury Totem and Windfury Weapon are straight 20% procs. Windfury weapon has a hidden 3s internal cooldown, so slower weapons are strictly better. With the AP bonus applied, added on hit ppm proc effects, as well as Omen of Clarity, a slower cat weapon would certainly boost cat dps. The 2pT4 bonus is a straight 4% on hit without an internal cooldown, so a faster cat weapon would be better for that, but the loss in stats should be scaled past quickly in WotLK(seeing as how it's already detrimental in Sunwell gear).