Feral Megathread - Page 327

♦ Regen · 09/12/08, 4:17 AM

Originally Posted by Valerian

The new bracers have Armor Penetration RATING on them not just armor penetration. I'd imagine it would remain unchanged at 70 when converted.

It is changed because the whole system is changing from a subtraction off base (like how FF works) to a % of total remaining armor. Buff against high armor targets, nerf against low armor targets.

To get Armor penetration rating values divide by 7 (350 flat rate on Stanchion goes to 50 rating).

At 80, 1 armor pen rating = 0.065 % (50 rating gives 3.25%, 3.25 / 50 = 0.065)

May be slightly rough work if they change stats (know they did a little on t6 but I'm guessing thats only from the bonus armor???)

urotas · 09/12/08, 9:41 AM

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find an answer with the search function. Does Primal Tenacity or the 5% stun resistance meta gem help with Sathrovarr the Corruptor's corrupting strike stun? I was wondering if the talent would be worth getting for Kalecgos.

Craiz · 09/12/08, 11:10 AM

In regards to the Thunderheart Harness nerfs, there needs to be more compensation for the loss of tanking stats. I for one have passed a lot of sunwell dps gear to the full time dpsers, and have been content with my t6 for tanking. But we're getting a severe feral t6 armor nerf with no bonus to agility, and then also getting a agi/dodge nerf too?? How is this acceptable? Warhammer is looking better and better imo.

Valerian · 09/12/08, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by urotas

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find an answer with the search function. Does Primal Tenacity or the 5% stun resistance meta gem help with Sathrovarr the Corruptor's corrupting strike stun? I was wondering if the talent would be worth getting for Kalecgos.

For what its worth, I've done a full night or so of attempts with full primal tenacity and never had one of those knockdown/stuns resisted. I think it may be because its a knockdown that the talent doesn't work. Then again its possible I was just unlucky too.

foxglove · 09/12/08, 4:21 PM

Originally Posted by Valerian

For what its worth, I've done a full night or so of attempts with full primal tenacity and never had one of those knockdown/stuns resisted. I think it may be because its a knockdown that the talent doesn't work. Then again its possible I was just unlucky too.

I, also, have never resisted the Corrupting Strike stun even with Primal Tenacity and the metagem--I don't think it can be resisted--which is why I have a macro to barkskin and pop a free action pot before I taunt the demon.

Astrylian · 09/15/08, 9:30 PM

Rawr Beta 16.1 posted!

DOWNLOAD: Rawr b16.1

This beta contains one new model, Rawr.Rogue! Let us know how it works. Additionally, this is expected to be our last version of Rawr aimed at WoW 2.x; all future Rawr development will focus on WoW 3.0, and WotLK. If you have any suggestions/requests for features/fixes in the new version of Rawr, now is the time to let us know! Post on our development site, Rawr - Home.

Beta 16.1:
- The beginnings of user-controlled item filtering is in. Let me stress that this is just the beginning. Currently it's hidden away in a menu item (Tools>Refine Relevant Items...), and only supports the most basic filtering by item type (Leather vs Mail, Maces vs Swords, etc.). In the future, we expect to expand upon this greatly, by allowing all kinds of filters (such as by source, by item level, etc), and will be making the UI to control this more intuitive. Please post on our development site, let us know what sort of filters you'd like to be able to create
- More improvements to the performance and accuracy of the Optimizer
- The Add Item dialog now accepts whole links to wowhead or thottbot
- Added Flame Armor Kits, Arcane Armor Kits, and Lesser Arcanums of Resilience to the default enchant list

chiefwigum · 09/17/08, 12:00 AM

Originally Posted by coredumperror

Ever since I got my [Stanchion of Primal Instinct] several weeks ago, I've been itching to use it on more than just trash and M'uru adds. My guild DPSers are getting ever better gear, and they're really starting to ride my threat. The lack of armor, as well as the low stam, really makes me shy away from using it on sunwell bosses, though.

I've recently started experimenting with stanchion on Felmyst. I still end up with 74% mitigation due to a pally with imp devo in my group (I'm usually in the 3x hunter + Restosham group), and it immensely helps my threat compared to [Wildfury Greatstaff]. I am almost always in that 3xhunter + restosham group, though, so imp devo is a luxury born only of the grouping requirements for felmyst.

So, I wanted to ask you guys who are experienced with tanking Brut and Twins (both are on farm status for my guild, and I definitely won't be using Stanchion for Kalecgos due to the stun)... do you think it's safe to use Stanchion on those fights? If so, how do you make up for the loss of armor? I'm still using ironshields for brut, in addition to Wildfury, and while I've very rarely ever seen myself get low on HP, I'm sure my healers really appreciate the ease of keeping me up through stomp with 20k+ armor (I love being able to finally benefit from Inspiration!).

As for twins, we kill Sacrolash first with me holding the offtank roll (the prot warrior holds aggro about 60-70% of the time with our strat). When I'm holding aggro, she crushes me HARD, and confounding blow hits like a ton of bricks. However, I often have threat troubles, especially near the beginning of the fight if I don't get an early flame sear for rage. I've been using Pillar for Twins, but I'd love to use Stanchion instead.

I guess I'm just asking for confirmation that I can finally dump my damn Wildfury. It pisses me off so much that there isn't a strictly "better" tanking weapon anywhere in TBC, and I'm sitting there wearing a piece of SSC gear to tank bosses two tiers above it.

The rest of my gear is linked in my signature. I have every piece of feral gear from pre-muru bosses except the twins shoulders, all gemmed for agi.

I've been using the Stanchion Kalecgos up to K'J reflections (Yes, I tank them all) and seems to work fine, haven't had any issues with 30k armor raid buffed, but I do switch to BoT armor trinket once in a while if the healers are failing.

You may not agree with me, but I feel pretty safe with 30k armor and not to mention I run high amount of dodge and my raid group is always resto shaman (GoA) + 3x hunters every night. Yes, I am not armor capped but I've been running 30k armor over the last 2-3 months in BT/SWP and haven't had any issues. I do sit around 37k armor with Inspiration for most part while main tanking bosses, which is pretty much all I need and my threat's amazing to begin with. Also, I love stacking the expertise, it's awesome not missing a single mangle on a boss fight.

My goal's to push over 50-51% dodge unbuffed, hopefully I get the shoulders (Twins), legs (Felmyst), and chest (M'uru) from SWP since those three items will bump my dodge by a lot and I am mostly gemmed out with agi.

Also, if any one wants to compare Brutallus WWS - Wow Web Stats
You can see my current tanking gear in the armory.

Promethius · 09/17/08, 2:44 PM

Has anyone suggested converting extra armor to dodge, expertise, hit or crit depending on the piece instead of tacking the stats onto an already expensively itemized stat? 70 armor may only translate to 7 dodge rating, but that's still better than only getting 1 str. Heck, they might as well do away with the intellect on the pve gear while the're at it and spread those freed up itemization points across the aforementioned stats.

Lyssa · 09/18/08, 4:48 AM

Originally Posted by chiefwigum

Also, if any one wants to compare Brutallus WWS - Wow Web Stats
You can see my current tanking gear in the armory.

"The report #oxxsd4nakxpig has been deleted by its owner."

Agreeing with you though - I've started running with Stanchion for every fight (that I tank - which means Kalec, Brut and M'uru mainly) in Sunwell. For Brutallus I switch to Wildfury before Stomps. My mitigation is pretty good considering Sunwell Radiance - WWS from yesterday shows 49.2% dodge. If you compare it to the prot warriors' avoidance, the healers were happy when I tanked. (My Armory probably shows healing gear right now, but I have agi gems everywhere possible, and full T6 with Felmyst pants and Twins shoulders)

Question for Astrylian - figured this would be as good a place as any to ask it - any chance of implementing the JC BoP gems into Rawr? The difference isn't much, but there is a difference.

Skytor · 09/18/08, 5:48 AM

After a few months break from WoW I came back to my feral and have discovered that the whole UI / control system that i used to use for tanking feels really clunky and horrible to me now...

It seems like an oppurtunity to review the way I do things to learn and improve. I stopped raiding after we killed Illidan so what i'm talking about is primarily for 10man / heroic type tanking with multi-mob packs e.g. Lynx packs in ZA - 4+ pulls anywhere...

What I used to use:
- Floating nameplaces (modified with aloft to get rid of the fussy borders etc.)
- Macros on my hotbar for Mangle, Lacerate and Swipe - that used [target=mouseover] to allow me to drop abilities on off-target mobs as needed.
- the routine being pretty much - pull, swipe a couple of time to get initial agro - target the DPSed mob and spam maul - use the mouse over stuff to spread swipes, lacerates and mangles around to the off-targets.

Problems that i find with it now...
- the floating health bars jump around a fair bit in largeish groups and its hard to keep track of what you have hit and what you haven't generated threat on for a while.
- movement - the above works pretty well once things have settled down but when moving a pack or chasing down "loose" mobs its often more of a pain than a help

I talked to a couple of the best warrior tanks I know about this, their methods primarily being - tab, cleave+devastate, tab etc. Most also noted that TAB targeting is pretty annoying as it has a tendancy to wander off onto distant mobs, especially in paces with multiple levels. This works pretty well for them due to the fact that most tank with a 1.5(ish) speed weapon that sync's their "on next attack" with the GCD of devastate. I know how to applicable that is to druid as you can't really wait for 2.5 sec for maul to "fire" on a target before moving on to the next.

Is it just a question of getting used to it again or am i missing any tricks here? (no 4pcT6 for 15% extra swipe damage btw).

dukes · 09/18/08, 6:52 AM

Originally Posted by Skytor

After a few months break from WoW I came back to my feral and have discovered that the whole UI / control system that i used to use for tanking feels really clunky and horrible to me now...

Almost all spells on my priest are of the form:

/cast [target=mouseover,exists] Flash Heal; Flash Heal

which will allow you to just have one button for abilities instead of needing separate mouseover macros. This will take your mouseover target first if it exists, otherwise it will use your normal target. It hadn't occured to me to make my druid bear form abilities of this form, but it makes a lot of sense thinking about it.

You may need to zoom your camera out more (if you don't already) and play from a semi-topdown view in order to target mobs more easily. I used to use nameplates a lot, but have got used to not using them recently and it seems easier. One useful thing if you stick with nameplates is that I think you can link Omen in to nameplates (using Aloft), so you have threat shown on the floating bar with the name/health, which would assist in working out which mobs you have threat on and which you don't.

Make sure you always get leader in 5 mans or raids if you're MTing, and set out a schedule of targets. If you always use, say, the skull, and tell people that's always the first target, 99% of the time you'll always get that down first and it makes it a lot easier to get significant agro on the other targets. This also makes it easier to keep track of which mob is which, as you always have targets on them and know that you starting hitting skull and cross first, and the square doesn't have much threat because it's supposed to be a sheep (or whatever). Half of tanking multiple mobs is the tank, and the other half is how other people behave on pulls. Also, remember that thorns will create some threat, and helps however small the amount is.

Janraea · 09/18/08, 11:11 AM

Originally Posted by Skytor

Problems that i find with it now...
- the floating health bars jump around a fair bit in largeish groups and its hard to keep track of what you have hit and what you haven't generated threat on for a while.
- movement - the above works pretty well once things have settled down but when moving a pack or chasing down "loose" mobs its often more of a pain than a help

I haven't used aloft before, but I'm very interested now. A possible solution to your problem: I noticed that aloft allows you to make the nameplates *smaller*. If you make them a quarter the size, they won't jump around much at all.

dukes · 09/18/08, 11:16 AM

Originally Posted by Janraea

I haven't used aloft before, but I'm very interested now. A possible solution to your problem: I noticed that aloft allows you to make the nameplates *smaller*. If you make them a quarter the size, they won't jump around much at all.

From what I remember of using Aloft before, there's no need to make the actual bars smaller, just reduce the border/effective size to group them up more and stop them bouncing so much.

Astrylian · 09/18/08, 11:51 AM

Originally Posted by Lyssa

Question for Astrylian - figured this would be as good a place as any to ask it - any chance of implementing the JC BoP gems into Rawr? The difference isn't much, but there is a difference.

Maybe at some point. The problem is implementing the uniquness of gems. For now, just only mark the epic version of the gem as available, don't mark the JC BoP version as available, then after optimizing, switch one of the gems for the JC BoP one.

Orbaxiin · 09/18/08, 9:57 PM

I've been building an avoidance set lately, due to picking up so much alternate T6 gear. I have a question about agility scaling. In my full avoidance set at the moment, I'm running 85% dodge+miss. This includes all applicable consumable buffs and debuffs on the boss. It does NOT include a grace of air totem.

Anyway, when I add the unimproved grace of air totem (77 agility), my mitigation points jump from 127k to 218k, a difference of 91k. Dodge+miss jumpts to 91%. Also, items with dodge rating, such as the pocketwatch, receive a HUGE value boost over straight defense items, such as the Scarab off hydross (42 defense rating). Why does this happen, if there's a simple answer? I'm not a math pro. Why wouldn't my mitigation points increase linearly based on the flat dodge increase each point of agility provides?