[WOTLK 4.0] Cats - Page 29

a civilian · 10/21/10, 1:15 AM

Originally Posted by Monfalaris

I cannot think of any targets that live 30 seconds or less and at the same time are level 83. I would actually go for the lvl82 caps as I need to make sure I can reliably nuke these adds, while not giving up on too many raw DPS stats.

Raging Spirits and Val'kyr Shadowguards are boss level (83).

Monfalaris · 10/21/10, 1:35 AM

Sorry, yes, you are right, except that you forgot the Blazing Skeletons and the other add spawns at Valithria Dreamwalker who can also be lvl83 according to wowhead. Gas Clouds, Volatile Oozes, Cult Members, Gunship Soldiers etc. can't. Although this information doesn't really solve the hit/exp cap issue, we do have to pay attention to it in future encounters. Someone who has access to the beta might already have some information.

Furial · 10/21/10, 2:26 AM

Originally Posted by kalbear

Furial, it's much better to take blacksmithing as a profession for the extra bonus compared to engineering; while you do gain more agility via the gloves, you lose out on those extra sockets and only gain a haste proc (which isn't that great) in return. BS gives +40 agility straight up.

I used to have BS back when ArP was important but seeing that the cloak enchant and tinker stack, I much rather have the haste proc and nitro boots over +17 agility (40-23).I used JC/Engineering on the sim as it's mainly what I have myself. And besides, if you add 17 agility and remove the Hyperspeed Accelerators on Mew, you notice a 61,3 dps loss. Ikfirus + T10 Gloves beats using Aldriana + T10 chest regardless if you go JC/Engi, JC/BS or JC/Anything. And also with Ikfirus + T10 Gloves you'll be 16 hit undercapped (230/246) and 30 expertise undercapped (170/200) making the whole energy capping dps loss argument less and less relevant.

Also, despite the 61,3 dps gain from JC/Engineering over JC/BS, think about what's not on Mew. Think about the uses for Nitro Boots dps wise.

- Moving faster from spike to spike on Marrowgar during Bladestorm.
- Moving faster from add to add on Lady Deathwhisper or survivability-wise.
- Moving faster between putricide and its adds.
- Moving faster on Valithria Dreamwalker's adds.
- Making sure your defiles stay in a position that will be beneficial to the raid on LK HM. (Not a dps gain but the sole reason for me to have gone Engineering)

kalbear · 10/21/10, 2:29 AM

Don't get me wrong - I"m a huge fan of engineering and think it's hugely underrated (especially for ferals, since it's also a great tank profession - but I'm surprised it's that high of a dps upgrade over BS. I wouldn't have thought the nitro would be that much of a gain any more.

Slott · 10/21/10, 11:59 AM

Originally Posted by Furial

Enable the Endless Vengeance proc below.

If I replace Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance for Band of the Bone Colossus, the new stats are:

Weapon DPS: 347.8
Agility: 2461
Strength: 114
AP: 889
Crit: 1109
Haste: 505
Mastery: 519
Expertise: 170
Hit: 225

DPS: 17593.39

98.36 less dps.

I stared at this a while feeling confused, until I realized you're using the normal version of band of the bone collosus. While my setup isn't exactly your BIS, it's pretty close, and it yeilds a 76ish dps loss when using endless vengeance over heroic bone colossus

Your BIS stats should be somewhere along the lines of

Weapon DPS: 347.8
Agility: 2473
Strength: 114
AP: 889
Crit: 1109
Haste: 509
Mastery: 523
Expertise: 170
Hit: 233

Band of the bone colossus has 14 more agility, 59 less crit, 65 more haste, 3 more hit over ashen band, minus the proc. The 65 haste translates to more mastery than 59 crit would provide by roughly 3, as well as a static 14 agility (unbuffed) in caster form. Since I'm not home and can't access mew from here, would you mind recalculating using the heroic band instead of ashen band?

Furial · 10/21/10, 6:43 PM

You are correct. I've used the normal version instead of the heroic by mistake. I took the liberty to redo the math to double check the results and they match yours. With those results I'm getting 17690.98 dps, a 0.77 dps loss compared to Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance.

Seeing that the dps difference was so small, I've decided to rerun the numbers for Seal of Many Mouths reforging expertise and it gave me the following numbers:

Weapon DPS: 347.8
Agility: 2473
Strength: 114
AP: 889
Crit: 1177
Haste: 470
Mastery: 521
Expertise: 206
Hit: 171

Resulting in a dps of 17709.53, an actual 17.78 dps increase over Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance.

All in all, the dps gain from Seal of Many Mouths vs Ashen Band vs Band of the Bone Colossus is susceptible to change depending if you reforge some crit to mastery on some items like the belt for example and will also change on a simulation (these values were obtained with the formulation) as the dps difference is too small. The one granted thing is that Ikfirus and the Tier 10 Gloves are a gain over Aldriana and Tier10 Chest and the dps difference despite being small, is big enough not to change depending on a little different reforging.

minekomineko · 10/22/10, 6:07 PM

Going off topic for a second, has anyone else noticed that the frontal cone area of effect has been removed from cat swipe? I noticed recently that stuff behind me was getting damaged, making me believe it's now a 360 degree area of effect more similar to bear swipe or rogues' fan of knives. I did still require to have an enemy targeted, however, and that target needed to be in front of me and in melee range, which of course is different from bear swipe and fan of knives. Is this a bug, or intended? I don't remember seeing it notated anywhere.

Odas · 10/22/10, 6:18 PM

I just tested it out on some mobs outside Dalaran. Still has a 180 degree arc.

Cluey · 10/23/10, 2:27 PM

Originally Posted by minekomineko

Going off topic for a second, has anyone else noticed that the frontal cone area of effect has been removed from cat swipe? I noticed recently that stuff behind me was getting damaged, making me believe it's now a 360 degree area of effect more similar to bear swipe or rogues' fan of knives. I did still require to have an enemy targeted, however, and that target needed to be in front of me and in melee range, which of course is different from bear swipe and fan of knives. Is this a bug, or intended? I don't remember seeing it notated anywhere.

Interesting, I just tested it on the target dummies in Darnassus and I could hit the one directly behind me.
It doesn't have the bonus range of the bear swipe but it was hitting dummies in range behind me.

Thessaly · 10/24/10, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by Odas

I just tested it out on some mobs outside Dalaran. Still has a 180 degree arc.

You need to be targeting a mob within the 180 degree arc to use it or you get the "target must be in front of you" error, but it hits anything in a 360 degree arc.

Odas · 10/24/10, 7:12 PM

Yea, it does look like swipe is cleaving behind you, but the range is really small. I'd wager that it cleaves to mobs farther that are in front of you than those that are behind you.

Forestlord · 10/26/10, 11:15 AM

Another off topic post if I may. In general, how is everyone dealing with aggro now? Specifically how are you working cower into the rotation?
I've been runnning with the same tanks for months now and seem to be pulling substancial aggro recently even with cower being used often. I'm not blaming the tanks or asking for hand holding, but I'm curious to see if others are having this problem and what their solution/rotation is.
Since it does use 20 energy points it has an impact pure damage output with gcd and energy loss.

kalbear · 10/26/10, 11:37 AM

Depends on the fight, but I use cower and back off on berserk quite often in the first 30 seconds. With the changes to MD/ToT (the threat they give goes away completely after 30 seconds) I find that going all out early is a death sentence. If I cower a few times in that 30 seconds I'm usually able to go all out afterwards. With berserk being such a huge energy win currently and with haste regenerating energy so quickly, cower isn't much of a DPS loss.

Cower is substantially more effective later in the fight in terms of losing overall threat - but 10% threat loss early is still enough when done on CD to affect aggro positively.

Achnom · 10/26/10, 12:38 PM

Try to get your rogues/hunters to offset their MD/Tricks by 15 seconds, so you don't run into a situation where your tank's threat lead completely disappears. After 30 seconds, I've seen the tank showing -4k TPS on omen, yeah, that's a negative 4k.

Tricks and MD are on 30 second cooldowns, so having your hunter/rogue MD/Tricks on cooldown will help.

Not sure if this is feasible, but you could make a custom timer that shows time remaining on Tricks/MD, then cower a few seconds before the timer expires.

Now that some threat is only temporary, it would be nice if Omen could distinguish between the tank's actual threat and threat from Tricks/MD, maybe with a different color bar or shown like some unit frames show incoming heals. /heads over to the Omen site to make a feature request

alarge · 10/26/10, 1:45 PM

On some fights, I end up using a combination of four things:

* Thorns on the tank. Both at the beginning of the pull and on the first couple cooldowns

* Cower on the first 3-4 CDs after I hit 90% threat

* Hold off on Berserk

* Back away for a bit

There seems to be a particularly dangerous time about 15-45 secs in after I've eaten through the tank's initial lead (and before Vengeance really kicks in?) where I'm close to pulling aggro and generating quite a bit more threat than the tank (MD decay probably contributes to the issue, but I doubt it is the only culprit). The first phase of LK is particularly challenging in this respect. Once past that danger zone, most of the issues seem to go away.

On a related note, this is one of the reasons why I've stayed away from Ravage. It seems particularly dangerous in an era where threat management is as tricky as it is.