Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 13

Protagonist · 07/01/08, 6:43 PM

Originally Posted by slant

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.

Something like that is what I expect as well. Boring, though. Giving dire cat an "off paw" would be a much more interesting mechanic.

PSGarak · 07/01/08, 6:55 PM

Originally Posted by Chojee

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 extra AP on the bonus attack from windfury doesn't change that it is a speed-neutral bonus. This is because windfury does not proc off of special attacks (anymore), and with a static proc chance its effect exactly counters its PPM. Just about all other procs do, with your normalized proc chance, meaning that a slower attack speed is preferable for just about everything in the game that uses a PPM system. Anything with a static proc% favors a fast speed for higher uptime. An internal cooldown can lower that asymptotically but never actually remove the preference completely. PPM effects are generally more common, meaning that slower attack speeds are generally better, but that should be balanced against what procs a druid can actually make use of in forms.

Moof · 07/02/08, 11:02 AM

Originally Posted by Protagonist

Something like that is what I expect as well. Boring, though. Giving dire cat an "off paw" would be a much more interesting mechanic.

An "off paw" although an interseting mechanic would mean that it would either have to be faster or the same speed as our "main paw". That would lead to some absurdly fast attacks for spell pushback in pvp as well as some very nasty reflective damage from Molten Shield and Thorns. Add the additional dual wield miss rate, I think its safe to say Blizz wil stick to the 1.0 speed single paw.

Although, now that I think about it, that could simply be addressed by changing the weapon speeds to something along the lines of dagger rogues. And that would also make +hit heavy rogue gear, far more apealing to ferals and work well with Blizz's new gear homogenization plans.

What concerns me about Dire Cat form though, if it is simply a different scaling of AP or adjustment of base weapon damage, we'd be essentially losing one of our wotlk "spell slots" to something rather inconsequential.

Protagonist · 07/02/08, 12:17 PM

Originally Posted by Moof

An "off paw" although an interseting mechanic would mean that it would either have to be faster or the same speed as our "main paw". That would lead to some absurdly fast attacks for spell pushback in pvp as well as some very nasty reflective damage from Molten Shield and Thorns. Add the additional dual wield miss rate, I think its safe to say Blizz wil stick to the 1.0 speed single paw.

Not as absurdly fast as you may think. Ask a dagger rogue (if you can find one) with some haste gear what his attack speed is with slice & dice up.

Cat form has always been sort of an emulation of a dagger rogue. Adding an off paw attack with the usual dual wield damage/hit penalties would fit perfectly with this. Besides making it possible for ferals to use more of the +hit heavy rogue gear, it would give cats a bit better white damage scaling.

Mijae · 07/02/08, 3:43 PM

I'm trying to picture a cat sitting up on it's back legs and clawing with both paws at something. All I can see is a cat playing with a toy on a string. They need to add more bite or pounce type attacks instead.

Tuftears · 07/02/08, 5:17 PM

Originally Posted by Mijae

They need to add more bite or pounce type attacks instead.

Back when the stun finisher for WotLK was being called 'Gnaw', I was thinking there needed to be a followup attack called 'Nom', with a low energy cost and damage but increased damage against stunned targets. So your attack sequence would go, Pounce Mangle Shred Shred Gnaw Nom Nom Nom.

• Chicken · 07/02/08, 5:25 PM

Originally Posted by Mijae

I'm trying to picture a cat sitting up on it's back legs and clawing with both paws at something. All I can see is a cat playing with a toy on a string. They need to add more bite or pounce type attacks instead.

They could always make the druid lie on his back and attack with both the fore and back paws. Real cats do it all the time!

More seriously, doesn't the current Cat Form attack animation already alternate paws? The only change it'd need is so that one paw is always used for main hand attacks, while the other is used for off hand attacks.

iamrelevart · 07/03/08, 9:01 AM

They should just animate us as tigons, with that awesome slash. Don't tell me none of you ever did that graphical replacement in your game!! Anyway, I'm really excited to see where this takes druids in WotLK.

blackmatt · 07/03/08, 7:58 PM

Originally Posted by iamrelevart

They should just animate us as tigons, with that awesome slash. Don't tell me none of you ever did that graphical replacement in your game!! Anyway, I'm really excited to see where this takes druids in WotLK.

That would actually be a pretty damn cool way to implement dire cat. And giving us "dual paw" would kind of make sense if they're still trying to make druid and rogue items the same, since it could actually lead to us having too much hit.

Having our white damage scale better thanks to a dual wield mechanic would definitely be nice, but I wonder if there would even be a point to stacking hit past yellow capped since we probably wouldn't have anything like combat potency.

PSGarak · 07/03/08, 8:54 PM

It wouldn't be as useful without a specific DW-friendly mechanic as hit is for combat rogues, but it's still a cheap and effective DPS increase. It would make it easier to share gear with rogues if both of you got at least some benefit out of hit gear. Your preference would probably be similar to Mutilate rogues, which prefer agility over hit, but still use hit as their main yellow gem on gear with good socket bonuses.

Moof · 07/04/08, 8:13 AM

However, the problem i see with using +hit heavy gear, is that our dps gear would then prove much more inneffective when it comes to tanking. Currently, OTing in dps gear isn't too bad due to the heavy stacking of agility. However, any +hit over the soft cap would prove useless in bear form. This in turn goes against Blizz's gear homogenzisation plans since there had been speculation that we'd be able to use dps leather to tank with.

Anedris · 07/04/08, 8:41 AM

Following on that, it seems likely that rather than an "off-paw" allowing druids to make use of extra hit, it is more likely that Blizzard will simply itemize most of the leather with low amounts of hit and let the rogues socket what they need (thus keeping the leather items usable for bears).

Miststorm · 07/04/08, 7:57 PM

So there is still no word about a mechanic that would let cats profit from haste to a similar extend as all the other classes?

This is very disappointing, because the inferior haste scaling thanks to a 55% to 60% yellow damage ratio cats have is the main reason cats became seriously subpar dps in T6+ content. Haste already increases rage generation (via the more damage done mechanic), so why cant it be changed to also increase the speed of your energy ticks? That would fix the scaling issue.

Nathariel · 07/04/08, 8:35 PM

Would a mechanic similar to Combat Potency for rogues be enough for druids to scale better with haste gear?

Although we seem to have a version of it already with the T4 2piece and Omen of Clarity.

Windfury will still have a smaller benefit due to the lower percentage of white damage, but we don't get any benefit at all at the moment.

Just thinking of ways that we could get more yellow damage from increased white attack speed while still keeping the "flavour" of Cat Form.

Gawdmod3 · 07/05/08, 3:58 AM

Infected Wounds - (Tier 10) Shred, Maul and Mangle have a 20%/40%/60%/80%/100% chance to stack a disease (stacks to 5) on the target reducing movement and cast speed by 10% per stack. Lasts 12 seconds.

I believe that this will make a feral druid optimal for arena's of any bracket. Does anyone agree?

Also with the new talent Berserk - (Tier 11) 100% increased energy regeneration in Cat form. 20% increased total health in Bear form. Can't be stopped unless killed. 20 seconds.

Does anyone believe we will be able to keep up with a rogue's dps?