Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 12

Skippert · 07/01/08, 11:04 AM

Definately true, but

Even though prolly still significant, the disavantage will be smaller with the upcomming change:
"Ferocious Bite: Damage for extra energy now scales with attack power." Druid - Wotlkwiki
And I'm also eager to get more detail on "Ferocious Bite, Rip: Damage values changed." from the same page.
I just hope it's at least Blizzard's INTENTION to make Fero Bite a 'reasonable' subsistute for rip again in long PVE fights.

-edit-
Arms warrior talent Trauma increases bleeddmg on the target by 30% indeed. Didn't see that one yet.
That will definately keep rip superior, but the big question is if you're getting these warriors in your raids. When I read the warrior topics there's no clear "yes" answer and even arms warriors dunno if they're gonna spec as deep as trauma cus the extra fury talents they can spec from getting 10 extra CP's are pretty powerful.

Moof · 07/01/08, 12:05 PM

With the news of the new Dire Cat form, what could possibly be changed or augmented with this new form other than simply adding more AP?

As for the added 50% crit on FB with Primal Aggression, I mainly see it as a very nice pvp buff which almost guarantees a FB crit to finish off near dead opponents.

kalbear · 07/01/08, 12:56 PM

Changing the base attack speed from 1.0 to 2.0 would massively help the cat's DPS given windfury and PPM mechanics will now be working with cat form. My suspicion is that they will introduce some kind of scaling mechanism to make the AP on weapons not quite so insane or give extra AP based on agility & strength. Not much, in other words.

Pitbuller · 07/01/08, 1:01 PM

WF totem dps is same no matter of weapon speed.

Polyamorous · 07/01/08, 1:12 PM

Originally Posted by kalbear

Changing the base attack speed from 1.0 to 2.0 would massively help the cat's DPS given windfury and PPM mechanics will now be working with cat form.

I can't imagine them doing that, it would involve rebalancing shred, mangle, and ravage. I was imagining something along the lines of more AP per agi/str, and maybe a small armor modifier or dodge buff since kittehs are so squishy in pvp.

kalbear · 07/01/08, 2:23 PM

WF totem dps is same no matter of weapon speed.

It is more likely to trigger based on slower weapons, was my understanding. Maybe I was thinking of the windfury weapon buff and not the totem. If that's the case, I apologize. Regardless, PPM mechanics definitely favor slower weapons (depending on the enchant, of course), and that's likely a bigger boost.

I can't imagine them doing that, it would involve rebalancing shred, mangle, and ravage.

Why? Changing the base speed of the white attacks doesn't change any of the special attacks; in theory it would do no special damage by itself. Shred, mangle and ravage are not based on the base attack speed in any way. It would also nerf the 2pt4 bonus, which they probably want to do to some degree.

Polyamorous · 07/01/08, 2:33 PM

Originally Posted by kalbear

Why? Changing the base speed of the white attacks doesn't change any of the special attacks; in theory it would do no special damage by itself. Shred, mangle and ravage are not based on the base attack speed in any way.

They are definitely based on attack speed. If you have the same dps, but make the swing take twice as long, your base damage doubles. Shred, mangle, and ravage give % modifiers to base damage. 2.0 swing speed would make for huge specials unless the modifiers were changed.

Fflewt · 07/01/08, 2:34 PM

I was curious if anyone had an explanation concerning lacerate's comparatively high miss rating. We're a T4-ish guild and were running Shattered Halls on normal mode last night for rep. Our feral tank has decent expertise (21 rating) and finished the run with only one swing dodged, 100% of his mangles landing, 1 swipe parried, but 9 of his lacerates were blocked, 1 was parried and 1 was dodged. Is there something special about lacerate that permits it to be more easily avoided or mitigated? (All of the blocks were done by trash mobs. Bladefist got the parry and the dodge) This wasn't a fluke run, lacerate always seems to have a higher proportion of mitigation/avoidance in all of our runs. Has anyone come up with an explanation or was there an announcement from blizzard regarding this design feature that I missed?

The WWS for the run is: Gamay - WWS
Any feedback on this feature of lacerate would be greatly appreciated.

Vair · 07/01/08, 2:41 PM

Lacerate does low damage so it's easier to fully block. And one parry and one dodge over the course of an instance is called luck not an increased mitigation factor.

Chojee · 07/01/08, 2:59 PM

Originally Posted by kalbear

It is more likely to trigger based on slower weapons, was my understanding. Maybe I was thinking of the windfury weapon buff and not the totem. If that's the case, I apologize. Regardless, PPM mechanics definitely favor slower weapons (depending on the enchant, of course), and that's likely a bigger boost.

Both Windfury Totem and Windfury Weapon are straight 20% procs. Windfury weapon has a hidden 3s internal cooldown, so slower weapons are strictly better. With the AP bonus applied, added on hit ppm proc effects, as well as Omen of Clarity, a slower cat weapon would certainly boost cat dps. The 2pT4 bonus is a straight 4% on hit without an internal cooldown, so a faster cat weapon would be better for that, but the loss in stats should be scaled past quickly in WotLK(seeing as how it's already detrimental in Sunwell gear).

kalbear · 07/01/08, 3:26 PM

.
They are definitely based on attack speed. If you have the same dps, but make the swing take twice as long, your base damage doubles. Shred, mangle, and ravage give % modifiers to base damage. 2.0 swing speed would make for huge specials unless the modifiers were changed.

Ah, true. That wouldn't be so hard though, but it does point to dire cat likely not having any weapon speed modification.

slant · 07/01/08, 5:39 PM

Windfury weapon is a 36% proc when dualwielding, although I'm not sure why that's pertinent to a feral druid thread. As for dire cat, my best guess is that it will offer different skins and have its base damage scaled to 93.2DPS, the same as an ilvl 115 blue 2hander. They certainly won't change base weapon speeds without modifying all of our abilities to fit, although I could see inscriptions offering proportionally smaller base attack speed changes-- and being highly prized if so.

Skippert · 07/01/08, 6:02 PM

IMO the only problem for feral PVE DPS scaling is our relatively crappy white DPS. Two possible reasons: 1. there's no haste effects like S&D/flurry 2. we're single wield so the AP gain on white attacks only applies to one 'weapon'.

I'd rather have a talent simply increasing sustained white dmg than any flashy stuff further increasing our yellow dmg, cus our yellow damage is already fine.
Windfury scaling is a good start.

Eishara · 07/01/08, 6:18 PM

Are you certain that a 'Dire Cat Form' won't simply just be a cosmetic change for level 70/80 Cat Form rather than an improvement on the existing form? It just seems that there's no real need for it given that the only reason there's a Dire Bear form is so that Bear Form would retain similar AC to the class that it's aping.

EDIT: Whoops, that'll teach me to not read. I, of course, meant Armor Class, not Attack Power.

slant · 07/01/08, 6:26 PM

Actually, the reason behind dire bear form is the warrior/paladin switch from mail to plate at level 40. The attack power is pretty minor.

I would love to see dire catform as an alternative to catform rather than an upgrade or simple skin change. For example, they could position dire catform as the feral PvP form (maneuverability, escape from CC, snares, cheat death analogue, and so on but no rip) or as the melee group support form (innate infected wounds proc, finishing move for a 2%/combopoint groupwide haste, etc, but slower energy regen).