[Feral] Cataclysm Simple Q & A - Page 8

Petitourson · 01/25/11, 7:06 AM

Unless you are under Berserk or Bloodlust/Heroism you are unlikely to have such a long time left on both Rip and SR that often. Building combo points takes time and you want to account for potiental misses and dodges by pooling your energy and making sure you refresh Rip/Rake right before their last tick (2 sec for Rip, 3 sec for Rake). Also make sure you refresh Mangle 2 sec before it expires if you have 4 parts T11 so you don't have to rebuild the 3 stacks. There are situations though that a simulator cannot account for and currently, given FB's DPE, you still want to FB outside the execute range if the situation you described arises. I understand you also want to FB once during Berserk and then keep shredding till Berserk wears off. However Leafkiller's suggestion was in the context of patch 4.0.6 when Shred DPE will go up significantly. At that point FB will just not be worth it in the situation you described and you'll want to keep Shredding away.

Originally Posted by Rhy

Should I just refresh both SR and Rip regardless of the duration left? Or should I refresh SR and just Shred even after 5 CPs until Rip is about to fall off or until I get TF and/or trinket procs to refresh Rip then?

You don't want to refresh Rip sooner than 2 sec unless you have to switch adds. You generally want to avoid clipping SR too, though you may want to if you have 5CP, less than 5 sec left on SR and some 10 sec or so left on Rip. If Tiger's Fury is coming off cooldown then you can play it even closer to the edge.

kalbear · 01/25/11, 10:56 AM

You don't ever want to clip Rip unless you have to switch adds. You generally want to avoid clipping SR too, though you may want to if you have 5CP, less than 5 sec left on SR and some 10 sec or so left on Rip. If Tiger's Fury is coming off cooldown then you can play it even closer to the edge.

You almost always want to clip rip. In WotLK clipping rip was a DPS loss because you lost the last ticks of the original (especially the last one). In Cataclysm this is no longer the case and all clipping rip does is the following:

1: reset the timer on rip
2: refresh the rip with any odd buffs you have (like Tiger's Fury)
3: reset the shred counter so that you can use [Glyph of Shred]

Now, it is a slight DPS loss to refresh rip super early simply because you are going to have to spend more energy to keep it up tthroughout the fight, making it less DPE. But that's only a slight loss. Most of the time it's much better to clip a rip (especially around the 3 second mark) ensuring that rip never has a drop off.

efroese · 01/29/11, 2:51 PM

Just how good is the 4p t11 bonus? Is it worth sacrificing better itemized pieces for? The only well itemized piece are the legs, while there are much better pieces for all of the other spots (Poison Protocol Pauldrons, Sark of the Unwatched, Double Attack Handguards, Tsanga's Helm or Engi goggles).

Bashui · 01/29/11, 4:11 PM

Originally Posted by efroese

Just how good is the 4p t11 bonus? Is it worth sacrificing better itemized pieces for? The only well itemized piece are the legs, while there are much better pieces for all of the other spots (Poison Protocol Pauldrons, Sark of the Unwatched, Double Attack Handguards, Tsanga's Helm or Engi goggles).

3% of 20k AP (doable buffed in 259 gear) = 600AP which is roughly 230 Agi or 620 mastery. Some of the pieces are non-optimal, but not that far off.

efroese · 01/29/11, 5:32 PM

Originally Posted by Bashui

3% of 20k AP (doable buffed in 259 gear) = 600AP which is roughly 230 Agi or 620 mastery. Some of the pieces are non-optimal, but not that far off.

I was asking in regards to tanking.

Omgzwtf · 02/02/11, 3:06 AM

I'm not quite sure where to put this following post, I had originally prepped it for mmo-champions, however they currently do not allow new posters to post links and pictures.

The following is a cross class tank performance comparison of a bear and paladin, both characters leveled and played by me in the same raid setting with the same team. I would like to present this to the EJ druid community in hopes of discovering a reason by which I should recommend to my guild to keep my druid on the roster as opposed to switching to my paladin alternative. Currently I am rather staggered by the performance difference exhibited below:

Submitted for your approval, this is my personal tank comparison of a bear vs prot paladin.

Conditions:
I play both toons, same account
Fights used for comparison were within 1 week's time
No defensive buffs were missing on either raid
Raid members are from same guild and largely the same (we run tight roster)

Bear raided since release, 2pc of blues, currently 12/12 10man Armory: Iililililil @ Alexstrasza - Game - World of Warcraft

Paladin hit 85 I think 3 days ago, 7pc of blues, cobbled together some gear Armory: Bergelmira @ Alexstrasza - Game - World of Warcraft

Results:

Public view google doc format:
https://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc...COL_3fsL#gid=0

The processed data pretty much speaks for themselves, a under geared paladin is more than capable of surpassing a raid level geared bear druid.

Please note the comparison is only done for melee attacks since I feel this is where most of a class's base tanking mechanics are applied. Magical damage in most encounters are either completely avoidable or completely unavoidable and thus I feel will mitigate the effectiveness of the direct tank comparison. While I am aware of [Perseverance], I would submit that the effects of [Divinity] was also omitted in this comparison, which lends focus to only the physical tanking portion of these two classes. Additionally, I'm not claiming that I'm equally good with paladin and druid, in fact I'd say I'm far more familiar and adept with bear tanking than I am paladin tanking, and yet the results speak for themselves.

World of logs fights used in comparison
Druid VT: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Druid Council: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Druid Argaloth: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Paladin VT: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Paladin Council: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Paladin Argaloth: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

THE QUESTION: Can any fellow bear tank offer me some reason to accept the current performance of bear tanking over the shield tanked alternatives? My guild is about to progress into heroic raiding and I have a suspicion that this difference stands to increase as boss damage output increases with difficulty.

MatsT · 02/02/11, 5:35 AM

One reason could be that you're not taking the druid mastery into account since absorbs counts as damage taken while blocks do not.

Tyrlir · 02/02/11, 3:25 PM

I see two issues with your analysis. The numbers you are using for damage taken are incorrect. Also, the absorb numbers are somewhat unreliable since they will be including effects from both the paladin and the disc priest that are healing. They were present in both raids, but it adds a variable that cannot be attributed to the tank itself.

As the previous poster mentioned, the numbers you took from the logs for damage taken include the absorbed damage as part of that total number. You want to refer to these pages to see the actual damage which was taken:

Druid - World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Paladin - World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

EDIT: The swings taken number for your Valiona calculations on the paladin are also off. It should be 167 instead of 176.

Pumbaa · 02/02/11, 9:15 PM

Simple question(suggestion)

Since most feral tank specs seem to have Stampede - Spell - World of Warcraft , I have to wonder why people take that instead of Nurturing Instinct - Spell - World of Warcraft

The melee haste bonus from Stampede - Spell - World of Warcraft is rather useless, and even if you have to go to dps, it's not really that good either, since you just get one or two free ravages at most. But many fights(Chimaeron Feud, Nefarion P2, Halfus HC last phase) can certainly use that extra healing from heals/tranquility.

Jes-ter · 02/03/11, 4:35 AM

I don't see a place where people are sharing their favorite macros. I've put together a few, and I'm always looking for ways to simplify my life as a Feral Druid. Is there a place where people have posted some of their new cataclysm macros?

I made this one for thrash/swipe

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Swipe(Bear Form), Thrash
/use !Maul

This seems like something that could use it's own thread, since macros seem to change with every update and new abilities are added, etc. Most of the places on the web where you might find macros you end up with old information.

Originally Posted by Pumbaa

Simple question(suggestion)

Since most feral tank specs seem to have Stampede - Spell - World of Warcraft , I have to wonder why people take that instead of Nurturing Instinct - Spell - World of Warcraft

The melee haste bonus from Stampede - Spell - World of Warcraft is rather useless, and even if you have to go to dps, it's not really that good either, since you just get one or two free ravages at most. But many fights(Chimaeron Feud, Nefarion P2, Halfus HC last phase) can certainly use that extra healing from heals/tranquility.

Maybe I'm misreading your post, but Nurturing Instinct has no effect on you when you're in Bear Form, hence shouldn't affect Feral Tanking unless you're an OT spending sometime as DPS...and in that case I think you get more from Stampede anyway since if you're getting healed a lot as DPS, you're probably not standing where you should be.

a civilian · 02/03/11, 9:22 AM

The point is that nurturing instinct allows for much more powerful tranquilities and it is not infrequent to find an encounter that provides an opportunity for a tank to use tranquility.

Supahflii · 02/03/11, 4:35 PM

Any advice on H. Maloriak DPS? Two add phases make me cry.

spiffo · 02/03/11, 5:25 PM

Originally Posted by Supahflii

Any advice on H. Maloriak DPS? Two add phases make me cry.

When we started practicing Heroic Maloriak, my guild told me to start collecting moonkin gear. Even a blue geared one can easily beat heroic geared feral on this boss.

The boss is pretty awful for any melee, feral druids in particular are at disadvantage. The slimes in black phase have such a small hitbox you practically have to stand on top of them, and swipe seems to miss a lot thanks to this as well (despite the slimes appearing to be close enough on your screen).

If you don't want to go moonkin, you can ask to be on the interrupt duty... that way you can feel at least somewhat useful.

Kiryojo · 02/03/11, 6:23 PM

Originally Posted by Supahflii

Any advice on H. Maloriak DPS? Two add phases make me cry.

In my guild, I was placed on the boss full time, since sustained feral AoE is fairly weak even if you are tab-raking, which is extremely tedious to do on the slime adds. Your single target should be able to beat your AoE in this case, unless the slimes go nuts with puddles on the boss (and if they do, that's a lot less puddles for your raid to dodge anyhow).

What I did was use my Berserk shortly after the black slimes spawned, spammed swipe until Berserk ended, then I went back to single target. If Maloriak gets surrounded with slime, I run back out to help on adds again.

I then used my other two Berserks for the Green Vial phase, popping Tiger's Fury + Berserk one second before he lands, letting me do fairly solid damage on the those adds (top 5ish). I still ended up fairly low on the meters due to dying sub 20%.

So unless you are having a great deal of trouble getting the black slimes down, consider asking to be put on the boss full time.

Windchilla · 02/03/11, 6:42 PM

For H. Maloriak my biggest priorities were Berserk timing and tab rake/rip uptime. I use ForteXorcist for dot tracking since it tracks multiple targets with ease.

I used my first Berserk as soon as TF came off CD during Black Phase #1. Just prior to the 'zerk I tab Raked the mobs and as soon as TF came up I went into 'zerk + swipe mode. After that I went back to tab Rake, Ripping only if I proc'd an additional combo point.

Second Berserk I used on Aberrations with swipe spam, they die entirely too fast to Rake them. I came to these results after a lot of trial and error and am pretty happy with the outcome. At the time the kill was a top 25 Feral on WoL, but it's probably dropped a bit since.

Edit:

Did the above on tonights kill, only I never used Rip on the adds. Always swiped on OOC proc/TF and just hardcore monitored tab dotting. Managed to increase my DPS significantly and picked up a #4 parse on the fight.