Feral Megathread - Page 287

Kaeleb · 06/29/08, 1:24 AM

Somehow i can't shake the feeling that there are too many good news ...

Raiding armor sets and PvP rewards sets will look different and won't share the same model anymore in Wrath of the Lich King.
The attacker/target range mechanics are being re-evaluated it might be changed for Wrath of the Lich King to fix most of the existing bugs, including the ones affecting the attack range of Feral Druids.
There will be a new model for the Druid's Dire Bear form and the Dire Cat form will be introduced.
Most of the shaman totems, Unleashed Rage, and Battle Shout are some of the buffs changed in WotLK to affect the whole raid instead of the party.

And of course the previously mentioned Windfury Change ... maybe im thinking too much into it, but if they work an all this "neat" stuff i am terribly afraid they screw up our Itemisation. Anyway fun times are coming if you dont have to fight your way into a MeleeGroup to benefit from your only Enhancer. Can't wait for the Beta to see how things will turn out.

Skysec · 06/29/08, 2:24 AM

Originally Posted by Mijae

It's already a buff and druids don't benefit from it... They would need to change the mechanics of how the buff is applied or managed for it to make a difference.

It is a weapon imbue right now, not a buff.

Hoofhearted · 06/29/08, 7:37 PM

Wow Web Stats Our first night on M'uru.
I am logged out in my M'uru gear. Most of it is from badges/pvp/boe and pretty easy to get. The bracers are Guardian's Leather Bracers with a 10 agi gem but they aren't showing on armory atm.
I tweaked the setup for a while and disregarding some direct upgrades like [Leggings of the Immortal Beast] and [Stanchion of Primal Instinct], I think it's the best setup possible.
If you want to use [Wildfury Greatstaff], it ends up being 17 armor short of the cap without GoA, and 1 defense over crit immunity with 12def on bracers.

This might be one wws too many, but all the posts here helped me alot.

Mijae · 06/30/08, 3:17 AM

A few more interesting bits from WWI Q&A.

The attacker/target range mechanics are being re-evaluated it might be changed for Wrath of the Lich King to fix most of the existing bugs, including the ones affecting the attack range of Feral Druids."
There is a plan to give player access to two talent specs to switch between them without having to respec all the time.
There will be a new model for the Druid's Dire Bear form and the Dire Cat form will be introduced.

monster · 06/30/08, 8:25 AM

Originally Posted by Hoofhearted

Wow Web Stats Our first night on M'uru.
I am logged out in my M'uru gear. Most of it is from badges/pvp/boe and pretty easy to get. The bracers are Guardian's Leather Bracers with a 10 agi gem but they aren't showing on armory atm.
I tweaked the setup for a while and disregarding some direct upgrades like [Leggings of the Immortal Beast] and [Stanchion of Primal Instinct], I think it's the best setup possible.
If you want to use [Wildfury Greatstaff], it ends up being 17 armor short of the cap without GoA, and 1 defense over crit immunity with 12def on bracers.

This might be one wws too many, but all the posts here helped me alot.

I am pulling around the same numbers as you, and also using [Stanchion of Primal Instinct].
Wow Web Stats

Also, that staff is amazing, my dps went up to 750~ last night using that staff to tank during p1 and it's amazing for threat.

sal · 06/30/08, 12:23 PM

I am not sure if this has been noted before but I believe it applies for evaluating the best avoidance setup.

Currently in rawr (14.1 I believe) the statistics on stanchion have strength and agility swapped (75 str instead of agi). If one right clicks the item it can be updated via the internet to import the proper values. I must say, the placement for non-radiance mobs is staggering.

Considering the updated values stanchion can safely be used in all non-sunwell radiance boss content without sacrificing much. For non-radiance bosses natural power belt and badge of tenacity can easily make up the difference.

Yilfin · 07/01/08, 5:58 AM

Hello here

I want some advises of sunwell feral, who looted the t6 bracers, and put them in place of the pvp ones for tanking. I'm in front of a problem, how to manage the loose of 19 resilience to continue to be immune crit against boss, with the t6 bracers ? Did you enchanted them with 12 def ? But 12 def is not enough, i'll need to enchant my cloak also with 12 def (my other available slots are filled with resi/def enchants). That will be a 12 agi + 4 strength / 4 agi / 4 stam loose, don't you think that the price to pay is too heavy ? Also, i'll certainly use these bracers for dps, and having 12 def in them is strange, but well, i suppose that the dps bracers enchant don't bring too much (4 agi / 4 strength or 12 strength). Or do you start to use elixir of ironskin ?

Thanks in advance for your advises

Inaiwae · 07/01/08, 7:29 AM

head: glyph of the gladiator, 20 resilience
neck: juggernaut, 22 defense (BT and Sunwell necks have both defense so i use this one as an example)
shoulder: aldor enchant, 10 defense
back: slikk's cloak, 16 defense
chest: 15 resilience
ring: violet signet, 19 defense
elixir of ironskin: 30 resilience

total: defense 67, resilience 65, provides 2.735% crit reduction

Personally i use 12 defense enchant on bracers and Brooch of Deftness (i dont have brutallus neck yet) which keeps me uncritable, however i am scryer, i am not sure if that 5 defense difference will matter or not.

Cloak is very bad place for defense enchant, the tradeoff of 12 agility is hard to justify. Similarly try to avoid gemming for crit immunity, use it as last resort. I have zero crit immunity gems.

edit: elixir of ironskin is a must i'd say. Item budged wise, major agility + ironskin have twice as much itempoint than flask of fortification when counting defensive stats only.

Elia · 07/01/08, 9:25 AM

Originally Posted by Yilfin

Hello here

I want some advises of sunwell feral, who looted the t6 bracers, and put them in place of the pvp ones for tanking. I'm in front of a problem, how to manage the loose of 19 resilience to continue to be immune crit against boss, with the t6 bracers ? Did you enchanted them with 12 def ? But 12 def is not enough, i'll need to enchant my cloak also with 12 def (my other available slots are filled with resi/def enchants). That will be a 12 agi + 4 strength / 4 agi / 4 stam loose, don't you think that the price to pay is too heavy ? Also, i'll certainly use these bracers for dps, and having 12 def in them is strange, but well, i suppose that the dps bracers enchant don't bring too much (4 agi / 4 strength or 12 strength). Or do you start to use elixir of ironskin ?

Thanks in advance for your advises

Considering everything you said here and the fact that you plan on using the bracers for kitty as well, I wouldn't use the t6 bracers for tanking. The trade off seems too high; You loose a lot of crit immunity for no substantial gain. I'd use (and do use) the pvp bracers with defense enchant on them for tanking for that extra punch of crit immunity.

You already have 6t6 with the bracers, so why do you want to use t6 bracers for tanking? Just because it's t6, doesn't make it better for your gear and your stats. If you had to use them to get 4t6, then I'd understand having to find a way to use them. That isn't the case for you. Go go pvp bracers.

• Caniki · 07/01/08, 9:55 AM

Shadowmoon Insignia is also pretty handy for maintaining crit immunity. I use it for my general-purpose tanking set. When I swap it out for specific purpose trinkets, I use an Ironskin elixir.

Garanthir · 07/01/08, 10:47 AM

Originally Posted by droeber

Shadowmoon Insignia is also pretty handy for maintaining crit immunity. I use it for my general-purpose tanking set. When I swap it out for specific purpose trinkets, I use an Ironskin elixir.

I also use the [Shadowmoon Insignia] to stay crit immune. In addition one could use [Cloak of Blade Turning] if absolutely needed. It's not the best in slot, but it has it's situational uses.

kalbear · 07/01/08, 10:52 AM

The [Thunderheart Wristguards] are good, but they're not stellar. I'd much rather have the guardian's bracers + a trinket of my choosing (badge/commendation under many circumstances, badge/moroes/shadowmoon under others) than I would the thunderheart + be forced to elixir/shadowmoon. It's just not flexible enough. And it costs quite a bit.

coredumperror · 07/01/08, 3:23 PM

I'm wondering if you guys can help me perfect my DPS rotation on Brutallus. I've been unhappy with my own rip uptime and I think it's because I'm trying for super-rips. Here's a WWS of our latest brut kill: Hibernicus - WWS. I'm not really familiar with gleaning specific information from WWS reports yet, so that's another skill I hope you guys could give me some advice on.

I got 161 rip ticks over a six and a half minute fight (yeah he was enraged for a while, lol. We haven't totally perfected the technique yet, and we run with 8 healers). Since rip ticks every 2 seconds, and I'm pretty sure I had one up within 10 seconds of the fight starting, 100% rip uptime should have given me closer to 190 rip ticks. However, you can see that my max rip ticks were over 950... I got several super-rips, but I don't know my ratio of super-rip to not-super rip (I'm not sure how to use the WWS report to look into that).

So my question is: is it worth losing rip uptime for super-rips? To do super-rips, I wait until Mangle is about to fall off, then rip and mangle again. This usually means that my Mangle debuff only takes 1 second more to fall off than Rip does, but that's still a minimum 13-sec cycle, losing me a significant amount of potential rip uptime. If my old Rip's Mangle got dodged the first time, that's even more time wasted trying for a chance at a super-rip.

The group I run in for Brut is almost always Feral, BM, BM, Surv, Resto Sham. The hunters chain Drums of Battle when it won't mess up their other haste effects, and I spam Drums of War on CD. I've begun power-shifting a lot more aggressively than I used to (at least once per rotation), but this led me to nearly run OOM and I had to stop shifting for a while. So, I figure that starting to bring mana pots to raids will help my dps. I have my Bloodlust Brooch (still waiting for something better to drop) macro'd into my rips so that I won't forget to use it, and it always gets applied to at least 2 rips each time.

This particular Brut kill finally gave me the ability to run with 2t4 and 4t6 (yay for the belt!), but I was running with 2t4 and 2t6 on that WWS. Rawr says that with the gear I used on the kill, I should have been seeing 1750 DPS. I consistently top out at around the 1630s, though, so I've gotta be doing something wrong.

On a related note, is there any kind of online tool that's like the Armory, but that you can save specific gear-sets to, instead of relying on what you logged out in? I'm logged in my tanking gear on Armory, so I can't think of any way to include a link to my DPS set in this post.

Hoofhearted · 07/01/08, 3:49 PM

You will lose about 7-8% in number of rip ticks by trying to get super rips. You gain 30% damage from rip by succeeding. So if you have a success rate of 30% or more, doing super rips will pay off.
This is assuming you would otherwise time rip perfectly to the millisecond of when it falls of, which you wouldn't. So in practice you probably only need to hit about 1 in 5 for it to pay off.

Looking at your wws, your highest rip is 954. I guess that was with trinket proc and trinket use, so lets say it was 850 instead. 850/1.3=650, and your average rip was 705. That looks like you're hitting one in four.

To answer your question, yes it's worth it. I think Be Imba! - the online Character Auditor for World of Warcraft can make profiles.

Oaken · 07/01/08, 8:26 PM

Originally Posted by charriu

All I can say is finally. And YES! One thing hindering our scaling gone away.

I just hope they don't do it they way they did in TBC - make ferals OP and nerf them afterwards.

I believe they did exactly the right thing in TBC by starting us off OP and then nerfing afterwards. There was a tremendous amount of baggage that ferals carried - especially in raiding guilds - from pre-BC. By making us OP people who had been rabid naysayers about ferals had no choice but to sit up and listen because for a month or so we were actually the best tanks for most encounters. It also gave ferals who had been resto for the last 2 years a chance to relearn how to tank in a forgiving environment (who can remember Swipe spam being able to stick 3 mobs to you like glue before they nerfed it?) Once public opinion had swayed in the direction that ferals really were capable tanks, they brought us back to a reasonable level. Was it intentional on Blizzard's part? Maybe not but I expect the uphill climb to find a tanking role would have been a lot harder if they had started us off on an even playing field - the negativity in the WoW community was just that harsh.