Feral Megathread - Page 289

kalbear · 07/02/08, 1:55 PM

Many of the druids in here seem to go with the 15 def chest enchant, and some also use the 20 resil head enchant from SSO.

One option is the 15 resilience chest enchant. You do lose some dodge but it is far more effective in reaching crit immunity than the defense is.

Inaiwae, I'm not arguing that the elixir of ironskin is more item points than the other values. I'm arguing that there are fights where it is not that helpful, and that 30 resilience doesn't matter in certain circumstances. Quite a few. Now, if you can maximize your setup such that using an elixir of ironskin and an elixir of agility is the best for that fight, that's great. I'm saying that 30 resilience isn't always the best choice. For example, instead of using the Thunderheart bracers, why not use Band of the Swift paw? You lose threat but gain more effective health.

I also don't understand why you would regem from 15 stam to 10 def. There's no need for that; you can get around it via enchants for the most part. Gems are way worse on the item economy than enchants are. But I don't know what your setup was, so perhaps that's the only way you can do it.

As to the item value - this only matters if you can be perfectly itemized. It doesn't matter that you can get either 30 resilience or 250 HP unless what you're replacing is perfectly itemized. The Thunderhearts, for instance, aren't. They waste budget on int and armor pen. So while agility + ironskin is more item points, that doesn't mean they're useful item points. This is why pvp gear works so well - because it's actually well-itemized for tanking, whereas so much other gear is not.

Mostly, I debate this:

Assumption: it is possible with your best gear to be at crit immunity border when using elixir of ironskin (so the resilience is not wasted).

That's a very, very big assumption.

Cluey · 07/02/08, 2:53 PM

I gemed my [Vindicator's Dragonhide Bracers] with a [Glistening Fire Opal] and enchanted them with 12 defense rating.
This just happens to mean they are almost exactly the same amount of anti-crit as an [Elixir of Ironskin] so I can swap between them and my T6 bracers depending on content.

I have a couple of different gear setups in Itemrack but find myself using what I classed my trash/heroic tanking setup more often than the straight tanking one now. I have even used this setup on Teron a couple of times!
For reference I will attach my Rawr files to the post instead of making a huge list, there are two .xml files in the zip.

I used a 10 agility gem and +4 stats enchant for my T6 bracers as they are not a clear upgrade over the PvP ones for what I do most often in raids, this makes them great for cat and also gives a lot of avoidance when needed for tanking.
The last two Brutallus kills I swapped them in and used the elixir to remain crit immune, it isn't a perfect scenario but that sums up feral druids quite well.
Everything is a trade off somewhere, you choose what you are happy with and go from there.

Edit.
@ coredumperror you to look further at what you did on Brutallus brows the log file and filter out for what you want, this link is only your Dots which means only Rip.
Looking at it you are getting some unmangled Rips including the first two tics.
Personally I haven't tried to get the super Rips, I find there is enough going on already without distracting myself trying to achieve them.
I also noticed that you have 146 hit rating on armory in what looks like your cat gear and you have a Moonkin with Improved Faerie Fire in the raid, as long as he keeps it up you only need 95 hit rating so if he is consistent and keeps it up you might be able to swap gear around to gain some more DPS.

@ Madrail. I don't see any point trying to make Ferocious Bite work. Also looking at my last Teron parse and coredumperror's Brutallus link above shows us both with 18% of our damage coming from Rip leaving a lot of our damage affected by Armor Penetration, no idea where you are getting your 25-25% numbers from.

TimWischmeier · 07/02/08, 3:06 PM

I am looking for some feedback to our raidsetup.

Our guild leaders try to keep the same setup throughout the most parts of an instance. We basically kept the same setup for all T5 and T6 instances. The only thing we really changed was going from 7 healers (SSC and TK) to 8 healers (MH and BT). This comes mostly from our roster. Regarding my situation in this setup:

We basically have 4 spots for tanks. They are split in 2 spots for Def-Warriors (we sadly don't have any protection paladins, though we are trying to get one for Felmyst and Mu'ru) and 2 spots for ferals. We ferals do have good equip for tank and dps purposes, basically we just need 1 or 2 items each from MH/BT. We just downed Kalecgos, so a lot of brutallus wipes are to come soon.

There are 4 other melee dps in the setup (usually 1 enhancer, 1 warrior or retribution paladin and 2 rogues). Our number of hunters varies from 0 - 2 (2 are the desired number in our setup).

My question is, how viable is this setup regarding the 2 ferals? Obivously, Kalecgos worked quite well whith 1 tanking and 1 dpsing. but how about the other bosses? I have some concerns about brutallus, I doubt that feral dps is sufficient for a first kill, and the 2 tanks are already there, so basically no need for us. Felmyst and Twins also do not require more than 2 Tanks, is feral dps enough for a first kill here? Mu'ru and KJ I have no idea how well we might perform there.

I am pretty sure we have to minmax the number of healers on some encounters, in how far are we force to also leave some of the ferals at home? I apppreciate any comments on the raid setup and the role of a feral in sunwell, considering our specific setup.

Cluey · 07/02/08, 3:18 PM

Tim you will probably find your raid will work better with one feral and one warrior tanking Brutallus, I expect you are right about a feral being in as DPS for your first kill too.
I have only been in as a tank and while I think I could pull my weight as DPS, especially with a bear providing Mangle for me, I understand why the officers haven't chosen that option.

With a warrior/bear tank combo the raid gains both Mangle and Faerie Fire to buff rDPS, sure you could ask a resto druid to keep Faerie Fire up but I expect you will find they are a little busy for that and wouldn't like the mana hit not being in tree form. If you have a Moonkin this becomes irrelevant but the raid still gains Mangle from having a feral in there.
You will also find, especially pushing for your first kill, that the additional DPS a feral tank provides over a second warrior helps you get there. Our warrior is normally around 350dps for the fight and I have been around 700dps, while he is tanking I am in cat doing the best I can.

Of course most of this is theoretical and it will depend on who you have available on the night and how deep your bench is.

Thessaly · 07/02/08, 3:23 PM

We have basically the same situation, two Warriors, two Ferals. Our melee and hunter composition is actually identical to yours as well.

One of the Ferals (me) tends to default to tanking, and the other to dps. The most common competition for him, as hybrid dps, was for a spot in the melee dps group, and was with our Retadin, who recently stopped playing. While we used the Retadin on our first Brutallus kill, the other feral has been there for all subsequent kills and was present for our first Felmyst kill. We got a good bit more dps out of our melee group with the feral, but about comparable dps increasefor the ranged from JoW with the Retadin. So for Brutallus at least, it was pretty much a wash and just depended on who was available. For Felmyst, the extra tank for skeleton wrangling more than made up for any dps loss relative to other melee. Imp LotP becomes increasingly useful after Brutallus, from what I've seen, as the amount of raidwide damage just seems to keep increasing. I should note that I switched to Resto for our Felymst kill, but this was due to shortages in our healing roster, not any dps issues.

So the answer to your question is, yes, two ferals are completely viable, particularly if one of the warriors is able and willing to swing to dps as necessary. If both your warriors are set on tanking, that's an entirely different issue, and as was just pointed out, will hurt your dps (and possibly lead to threat issues) on Brutallus.

kalbear · 07/02/08, 3:55 PM

Why not have two ferals for the tanks on Brutallus and have the warriors sitting out? That will maximize the damage you can do, Brutallus doesn't crush, and if you go for more avoidance you should be pretty good in that setup.

TimWischmeier · 07/02/08, 4:01 PM

Originally Posted by kalbear

Why not have two ferals for the tanks on Brutallus and have the warriors sitting out? That will maximize the damage you can do, Brutallus doesn't crush, and if you go for more avoidance you should be pretty good in that setup.

Our guild leaders try to run as much of an instance with the same setup, where possible (I like this, as I personally feel this is more motivating). So while using 2 ferals on brutallus and have the 2 warriors sitting out might result in potentially higher damage (which is not necessarily true), this would not be an option for us as long as killing him with 1f/1w or 2w as tanks is not impossible.

So we currently value the possibility of keeping as much players as possible in the setup higher than having some more wipes because a lineup is a bit more difficult to play.

kalbear · 07/02/08, 4:32 PM

Sorry; I thought that you were asking whether you should sit out one feral or two in favor of the warrior tanks. I figured that sitting out one warrior or two in favor of the ferals would be reasonable.

I don't see how it's remotely debatable whether the prot warrior could do less damage than the feral druids when they're not tanking. Prot warriors can do decent DPS when geared for DPS, but a prot warrior only switching weapons/gun isn't going to do as much damage as a feral going from bear to cat.

If your other DPS is very, very good you could bring two cats, but it would be tough. If you do that, I'd recommend maximizing the benefit of LotP and putting one with the hunters and another with the melee if possible (and if it doesn't hurt another melee). Barring that, both in the hunter group would be best.

Astrylian · 07/02/08, 4:52 PM

Feral/Feral is actually likely lower damage than Feral/ProtWarr, because then a DPS Warr has to terribly gimp their DPS by keeping up Imp TClap, if not DemoShout as well.

kalbear · 07/02/08, 5:00 PM

Demo shout can be taken care of by one of the ferals - it's not perfect, but it's probably good enough given Brutallus' overall damage. ImpTC...how much does that really gimp a fury warrior's DPS? I honestly don't know.

Astrylian · 07/02/08, 5:08 PM

Alot. They have to stance dance (and lose all their rage) to do it.

And if you've got 3 locks, it'll be better to CoW than demo roar. :P

Mijae · 07/02/08, 5:32 PM

On Brutallus you basically need the average dps of over 1700 per person (depending on number of healers). A decently geared and well played feral can exceed that with proper buffs.

I estimate my dps gear 4t6/2t4 (only bracers from SW) in a melee group at just over 1900 dps (enh shm, ms war, 3 blessings, 4 drums, demonslaying elixir, haste potions, 1 shift per cycle, other druid mangle). The hunter group would be a bit less depending on if improved totems, number of drums and number of hunters; slightly under 1800. Those are of course with perfect rotations, but even messing up slightly you should still get at least near 1700 dps. Those numbers don't count using any scrolls or getting bloodlusts either.

Yes you need to go all out on consumables, but everyone should be for that fight.

Valerian · 07/02/08, 6:40 PM

Originally Posted by Astrylian

Though oddly enough, that looks like exactly what we'll be doing in WotLK, based on the current talent trees, what with FB always critting against bleeding mobs.

Don't warriors get a talent to improve bleed damage by 30%? Even with a nearly 100% crit rate I suspect Rip benefitting from this and mangle is going to be better (barring some crazy change in base damage and scaling).

Astrylian · 07/02/08, 10:13 PM

Aye, true. We'll have to run the numbers if the current cycle will still be best, or if 'keep mangle and rake up, spam shred, and bite+powershift at 5cp' will be better. I don't plan to bother with those calculations for a while though, prolly til lvl80 is playable in beta.

Tierlac · 07/03/08, 2:52 AM

I have a 70 NE druid that raids lower content then what my main does, Dragonia on Bonechewer and have a good question.

I've been having a disscusion amongst my guild about Demoralizing Roar. Some of them are saying it produces aggro. Now I went out armed with both KTM and Omen and tested this theory. Then it lead me to test other non-damagaing aggro generators. The result at least on KTM/Omen was that Demoralizng Roar produced absolutly ) aggro generation where as all the other skills, Faerie Fire, Shapeshifting, rage and Frenzed Regeneration did. I've looked all over for any type of evidence to this and the only thing that I could find that would did state that Demo Roar did infact produce aggo was here

Demoralizing Roar - WoW: IncGamers World of Warcraft Wiki

Now it's listed that this skill produces Moderate threat. Thier definition of moderate threat is-
MODERATE Threat - Skills with normal threat generation, such as a hit, a heal, or a damaging spell without positive or negative threat modifiers.

Farie Fire, Shapeshifting (besides Frenzied regen) and the other non damaging things that a tank can do count as this category also and if so why is it these other skills show up on Omen/KTM and not Demo Roar and fall under the NEGLIGIBLE - Skills with no intention of threat, but have an extremely low threat value anyway. Most buffs go into this category, and most harmless debuffs.
. I'd like to hear some input on this