[Feral/Guardian] Simple questions + WoL Feedback

• Melthu · 10/03/12, 6:36 PM

New thread for MoP. This is the thread for simple questions regarding Feral and Guardian. If your question applies to one of the existing thread topics, please post it there instead; if you expect to generate significant additional discussion, create a new thread. If, however, you have a simple question that only requires a simple answer and don't see a better place to post it, this is your thread.

Review the forum rules. Though forum rule 7 is relaxed for this thread, that doesn't mean the rest of the rules are. Familiarize yourself with them prior to posting or you will be infracted.

Additionally, we are now allowing you to post your World of Logs parses if you feel stuck with respect to your DPS. Please note you must follow the criteria listed here:

The parse must be from a 10 or 25 man raid (non-heroic is fine). 5-mans and target dummies are not welcome.
In line with this, you must be max level (90). We're not about to look over a log from a level 70 Sunwell run.
Your profile MUST work. If you tend to change specs/log out in PVP gear please create a character profile through Wowhead or a similar site. That way if your issue is related to your gear, help can be provided. If your post is about an alt druid, you absolutely must provide an armory link/character profile or we simply can't help you.
You must give a few sentences regarding what you think your problem is. Are you moving a lot due to fight mechanics? Do you perform some vital secondary role that may impact your DPS? (kiting, etc). We can't help you if you don't help us.
Tanking or DPS parses are welcome. Be sure to specify your spec and role within the raid.

Please note that this thread is no exception to how the rest of our forums work regarding the fact that no one is obligated to help you. Do not bump, repost, or cry about it. You will be heavily infracted if you do.

desec · 10/10/12, 7:42 AM

What are the Guardian Gem Priorities? Are there stat weigh calculations yet?

With the 4T13 bonus I opted for Agi+Stam mix gems and ignored all setbonuses. Forgewise I gept all Mastery there was and forged anything else to Dodge. I didn't care for Expertise or Hit at all!

Mr. Robots standard PvE stat weighs are the following:

1.70 Agility
1.40 Dodge
0.75 Mastey
0.70 Crit
0.40 Haste
0.35 Expertise
0.36 Hit

Why in the world would Haste be above Expertise and Hit? And if Agility is the strongest stat, why would I not go for all-Agility?? For some reason going for Dodge over Mastery doesn't feel right... need some confirmations here ;D

Edit:

On an Item with a red socket with 60 Agi bonus AMR tells me to use Agi+Dodge...
On an Item with a red and a blue socket with 120 Agi bonus... 2x pure Dodge... wth?

Hinalover · 10/11/12, 1:51 AM

Mr. Robot is not taking into account Effective Health. Bosses are hitting for 375 - 400k damage and given that guardian lost their Savage Defense bubble, our EH has gone way down. In order for us to reach those survival soft caps, we need a combination of Stamina and Mastery FIRST before going into dodge. For some perspective that means in current MV normal, you need around 500k health and 4-5k mastery in order to reach that soft cap. Crit, Haste, exp and Hit are useful for rage generation but after they buffed Rage from white damage, the value of crit, haste, exp, and hit went down. If you want, the guardian module of Rawr; which can be viewed on these forums; have been updated for the most part for 5.0.

Authopsy · 10/12/12, 2:41 AM

Originally Posted by waflz

I hope this question is simple enough.

What would be the rotation for max damage rotation on any target?

What would be the rotation for highest burst damage on any target?

The kitty doesn't really have a rotation. It's more of a priority list. You should read the feral guide made by Jazida(available here).
I pasted the prio list here for you:

Single Target

1. Keep Faerie Fire up (if no other armor debuff).
2. Keep Savage Roar up
3. Use Tiger’s Fury on cooldown*
4. User Nature’s Vigil on cooldown*
5. Use Incarnation on cooldown*
6. Use Berserking on cooldown*
7. Use Force of Nature on Cooldown*
8. Use Nature’s Swiftness/Healing touch to generate Wrath of Cenarius procs when GCD will not cause energy cap*
9. Use Predatory Swiftness to generate Dream of Cenarius procs when GCD will not cause energy cap.
10. Ferocious Bite if the boss has less than 25% hp remaining and Rip is near expiring.
11. Ferocious Bite if you have 5 CP and at least 10seconds on Savage Roar andRip
12. Keep 5 combo point Rip up.
13. Keep Rake up
14. Spend Omen of Clarity procs on Thrash if Thrash has less than 6 seconds remaining.**
15. Ravage to generate combo points if Ravage is available (Incarnation)
16. Shred to generate combo points if Shred is available (Behind boss, berserk w/glyph, etc)
17. Use Mangle to generate combo points.

*If there is ahigh-dps burn phase or a bonus damage phase, it may be prudent to save your cooldowns until then.

** As of the writing of the guide, Blizzard just pushed a hotfix increasing thrash damage by 60%. I am still in the process of running simulations on this change, but with decent mastery we may end up maintaining Thrash as a third bleed. Hotfix was reworded to only apply to Thrash(bear). Thrash is still a dps increase to maintain as long as it does not interfere with your normal rotation. It does not generate CP.

AoE: In an AoE phase, your priority system will be something like:
1. Keep Savage Roar up
2. Keep Thrash up on as many targets as possible
3. Swipe to generate Combo Points on main target
4. Typhoon to enrage other melee

TheeTova · 10/17/12, 2:02 PM

I've done a ton of math on stat weights and as weird as it seems, when it comes to rage/sec and mitigation haste is better. This is mainly do to so much rage coming from white attacks.

With my current gear I get:

Crit- 0.0432
Agi- 0.0301
Dodge - 0.0252
Haste - 0.0204
Hit* - 0.0182
Exp* - 0.0182
Mastery - 0.0110
Armor- 0.0065

Note: this assumes 100% dodgable or physical damage. I tend to scale my dodge with how much of the inc damage I can dodge.

I've even gone as far as calculating the breaking point in boss fights when SD is better than FR based on your current gear and how much of the incoming damage is "dodgable". Currently for me if 42.26% of the damage is "dodgable" then I will mitigate more damage with SD then I would heal with FR. Remember, this is just the math and not an end all to what button to push.

Stat Weights: Must Tova: Guardian Stat Weights
SD vs FR: Must Tova: Savage Defence vs Frenzied Regen
Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...6UDkxYVE#gid=0

The Shortest Path · 10/19/12, 11:07 AM

That's incredibly interesting to see, Tova, that Crit has such a high relevance compared to anything else. I knew it was at least as useful per point of rating than mastery, but wasn't aware it was this much.

I wonder, though, wouldn't Agility be somewhat effected by the same things that lower dodge rating, considering that part of its usefulness comes from contributing to your total dodge? And even moreso for Mastery, which seems to have little relevance compared to everything else.

TheeTova · 10/19/12, 11:17 AM

The one thing I found while going through the math was

a. it takes so much agi (about 1200) to get 1% crit and 1% dodge
b. it takes so little crit rating (only ~380) to get 1% crit
c. as for mastery, it takes so much mastery rating (over 2000) to get 1% physical damage reduction

With all this and there being so much off stats on things like gems (plus getting 50% more from bear form) the off stats are just that much more desirable.

TheeTova · 10/24/12, 5:48 PM

There has been recent developments so I thought I would update you guys

Crit 0.0416
Agi 0.0296
Dodge^ 0.0251
Hit* 0.0225
Exp* 0.0225
Haste 0.0204
Mastery^ 0.0109
Armor^ 0.0063

*Before caps
^ 100% dodgable or physical damage

Stat Weights: Must Tova: Guardian Stat Weights
SD vs FR: Must Tova: Savage Defence vs Frenzied Regen
Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...6UDkxYVE#gid=0

TheeTova · 10/27/12, 3:40 PM

Thought I'd share something Williee on MMO-Champion shared in a bear thread!

#showtooltip Nature's Swiftness
/run SetCVar("autoUnshift",0)
/cast nature's swiftness
/cast healing touch
/run SetCVar("autoUnshift",1)

No shifting NS macro for bear and cats! I've also worked it into Clique. More info on:

A Real Nature's Swiftness Macro!

Stribor · 10/28/12, 7:28 PM

Not sure if this is the right place to ask. What happened to guardian thread?

Knowme · 10/29/12, 2:12 PM

Why is an agility potion while HotW activation better than an int potion? Am i missing something oO

Oher topic.

5CP
SR < 6 sec
RIP <10 sec

FB -> SR -> hope for crit luck to get rip uptime rdy
or
SR -> then save rip uptime

kind regards

TheeTova · 10/29/12, 3:07 PM

Agi potions are better during HotW for the simple reason that agi, while feral/guardian, is nature spell power (including healing). If you mouseover int, you can see "Increase Spell Power by 0".

aijlad · 10/31/12, 3:59 PM

@TheeTova - so on a fight like Stone Guardians where the vast majority of the damage is a bleed (cannot be dodged) how does that affect the stat priorities? Obviously dodge becomes nearly worthless at that point. Do we need to start reforging between fights to min/max per boss?

Instead of reforging based on what % of avoidable damage is able to be dodged on a per boss basis, would it be safer to simply go for an RPS build with hit cap, exp soft cap, crit and mastery and depend on FR/SD from your higher rage generation? Without being on the bleeding edge of progression it doesn't make much sense to have the raid stop and wait for you to reforge mastery > dodge or dodge > mastery between boss fights. Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding your stat priorities around what % of damage is able to be dodged.

thefool808 · 11/01/12, 12:44 PM

If you want to go with one build, go with RPS and then you can adjust your SD/FR usage based on what percentage of incoming damage is dodgeable (or more likely what level of health you are when you have 60 rage). If dodge at 100% dodgeable attacks is 251 and haste is 204, that would mean there would need to be a fight where more than 80% of the damage is dodgeable. From a really quick look at logs, some fights get close to 80% and possibly a little higher, but the majority are way below that.

TheeTova · 11/01/12, 4:31 PM

Yeah, how I look at my stat weights is that rps is so much more consistant fight to fight bases. I did reforge to dodge for spiritbinder but kept my crit. Right now though over all I set my dodge and mastery below everything. As there are arguements against it because say rng and the 42 second rule for 100% uptime on SD doesn't make me desire consistant stats like mastery for two main reasons.

1. There is just way too much mastery rating needed to get that passive mitigation (over 2000 rating for 1% damage reduction)
2. That's what cds are for. We have so many things at are disposal and these discussions tend to avoid this. My favourite actually atm is healthstone and NS. I can use either about every 30sec for a nice heal.

Back to the SD vs FR. Check my blog post on it. SDvsFR

Another just quick point, I even weigh FR a bit more than that breaking point especially in 10 mans. You're essentially another healer that can instantly manage your health better than a casting healer.