Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 167

Yilfin · 10/01/08, 1:18 AM

I paste here the message of ghostcrawler in the us beta forum, you can see the topic here: WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> On the Protector of the Pack nerf

However, we are probably going to have to nerf bears. If we don't, they will be the only MT choice for serious guilds. At the moment, bears in decent gear take less damage, have more health and generate more threat than the other 3 classes by a wide enough margin that we think it's a problem. This is even true on bosses that do a lot of magic damage (like Malygos).

I use the word "nerf" because players use it, and I don't want to hind behind euphamisms. But changing the numbers doesn't have to mean nerfing you into the ground. We just don't want you to dominate. I'm sure you'd feel the same way if Protection paladins were just head and shoulders above the other tanks.

We understand that some Ferals felt they were nerfed in BC either prematurely or in such a way that kept them steadily behind other tanks. (Though Sunwell Radiance was largely for bears.) We will try to make intelligent changes so that you're still out there tanking the Lich King himself. We want you to be about as good as warriors, paladins and death knights, not way above or below them.

Be prepared for bear nerfs in the next builds

coredumperror · 10/01/08, 1:33 AM

I've been doing some testing with Rake in the new build, and all I can say is: wow. Unbuffed, at lvl 77, in full T6, stanchion, and immortal beast, the tooltip shows 223 initial bleed dmg + 1934 over 9 second. It actually deals more, though*. I hit for 255 (crit for 578), with 3 ticks of 767 afterward, for a total of 2556 bleed damage without Mangle. With mangle up, the dot ticks for 996, but the initial damage doesn't increase, for a total of 3243 bleed damage with mangle. That's guaranteed damage** against every target regardless of armor level. Compared to Mangle for pure damage, a non-mangled Rake deals a little less than a crit Mangle on a faerie fire'd lvl 76 mob (I was testing on the ghosts near the Argent Stand in Zul'Drak), if it lives for 9 seconds after you apply Rake.

It's a little harder for me to test the relative damage for Shred, because I have the Shred glyph, giving 20% more dmg to stunned/incapacitated targets. Since that's the only way I can get a shred off on mobs while soloing, it skews the results. I'll see if I can go test this on the target dummies. For reference, though, against a bleeding, stunned, mangled, FFF'd mob, I crit shred for around 5.1k.

The new buff to Mangle is also very nice. I was barely breaking 2000 on Mangle crits against these ghosts this morning, and now I'm regularly breaking 2500 on crits.

* Why does my rake deal more damage than the tooltip suggests?

** One drawback I've found with rake is that the initial damage is so low that mobs can outright block the entire attack. As you all may have noticed with Lacerate, a fully blocked attack also prevents the bleed from applying. This is rather annoying, because these mobs that can block my rakes aren't wielding shields...

Mara · 10/01/08, 1:57 AM

Re: Swipe "chaining"

I just tested it in the 'undead pit' in the catacombs beneath Utgarde Keep (@70 on beta and with premade 80), where they constantly spawn and there are lots of undead mobs wandering in close quarters. Swipe did in fact chain, aggro'ing mobs that were not already on me and beyond the initial swipe range. Note, if you are trying to replicate, they have a very short 'leash'.

However, it was also very annoying because mobs would also be "behind" me and not in the swipe arc. So while the new swipe is comparable than consecrate for threat, the frontal arc limitation is rather annoying.

Note: The threat was just insane. The Zthreat meter had me at around 15,000 tps at one point. Note, this is all anecdotal, I'm not trying to math it out and figure out threat values.

• sadris · 10/01/08, 2:10 AM

How much threat per second was it for a single target?

More importantly, what were your stats? With this information it is trivial to calculate the theoretical TPSPT.

nightcrowler · 10/01/08, 2:33 AM

Looking at the current patch note a full rake timer is our best move. The new dps cycle will be:

4SR/5RIP or FB/5RIP or FB

to build combo points:

build 4 cp
wait about 80 energy:
use SR
build 5 CP
RIP
build 5 CP
use FB if you have less than xx energy or use RIP.

XX energy is a function of your crit rating, ap, talents and the "residual" number of rip ticks.
To build CP the best choce is:
start with mangle and keep it always up
rake and keep it always up
shred in between.

With good timing and mangle glyph you will do 2 rake (9 sec) each 1 mangle (18 sec).

A simulation soon

kalbear · 10/01/08, 3:20 AM

I'd be interested to see how rake, mangle, shred, rip and FB scale with crit rate and armor reduction. In particular how they'll look with lvl 80 blue stats vs lvl 80 Naxx-25 stats. My suspicion is that even with low armor penetration on current gear mangle, shred and FB are going to do more damage than the above 40% crit rate/15% arpen would indicate, and would become significantly more competitive. Especially given that rakes and rips cannot crit.

Any suggestions on actual values of lvl 80s starting Naxx vs lvl 80s through most of Naxx? I'd take anecdotal evidence at this point. The harder part for me is figuring out the raid debuffs that could be going on. Also, how valuable is something like executioner here?

spartakos · 10/01/08, 3:25 AM

About the dps circle you mean 4SR and then "use FB if you have less than xx energy or use RIP" or they are 3 different circle that you think are very close and you have not simulate yet?

Inaiwae · 10/01/08, 3:41 AM

It seems to me that there is quite significant difference in FB and Rip scaling.

Rip: AP*0.3 + 3204
FB: AP*0.35 + 1570

Rip is multiplied by 30% (mangle), FB is multiplied by basically 100% (with R&T, your crit chance is 100%). This is quite big disparity. At higher gear levels, with Rake buffed, i dont see Rip being used at all.

angi · 10/01/08, 3:51 AM

@Malazaar Your mangle-values are without 2t6 right? So with 2t6 mangle and shred are on par, meaning mangle is the better one because we generate combo-points faster. Anyway this buff is great for arena.

@nightcrowler Can you simulate a 5SR n x 5FB cycle with only rake and mangle as cb-generators and with 2t6 and fully talented FB? I think that will be the easiest cycle to maintain on bossfights when the dmg lost is not so great to a shred/RIP cycle.

david0925 · 10/01/08, 3:51 AM

FB will probably become the desired finisher to use based on current modifiers. However, the AP requirement for FB to be better than rip will be different based on boss mitigation.

spartakos · 10/01/08, 3:52 AM

Also this will reduce the % of damage from bleeds which will make Armor Penetration rating much better

nightcrowler · 10/01/08, 4:15 AM

Ability Scaling:
with 50% crit, rip glyph (2 more ticks) and rip idol:

Mangle = 2.0*(1/14)*1.2*1.1*(0.5+0.5*2*1.1) = 0.30
Shred = 2.25*(1/14)*1.2*1.3*1.1*(0.5+0.5*2*1.1) = 0.44
Rake = (0.01*(0.5+0.5*2*1.1)+0.18)*1.3*1.2*1.1 = 0.34

remember that you should also consider different energy cost and armor damage reduction.

FB = 0.35*1.15*2*1.1*1.1 = 0.98
RIP = 0.05*8*1.3*1.1 = 0.57

From that scaling value it seams that FB is always better than RIP but that's not true, it mainly depends on energy waste and total ap. RIP has an higher base damage than FB and at least till t7 it's a big part of the dps, also RIP doesn't see armor, cost less energy and doesn't waste extra energy (the extra energy scaling sucks for FB).

So you can apply the following formulas to see if FB > RIP:

ripvsfb=fb.energy+((((rip.hit*(ap*0.39*(1+src)+4165.2)*(rem*2.0)/(12.0)))) + ((1.0*(fb.energy-rip.energy))*((1-red)*(((ap/14.0)*2.25)*(1+src)+(weapon*2.25+742.5))*(1+ret_m1*bdebuff)*1.3*(shred.hit+shred.crit *2*(1+pistinct_m)*(1+META*0.03)))/(1.0*shred.energy)) - ((1-red)*(1+ferocity_m)*(0.35*(1+src)*ap+ 1640)*(fb.hit+fb.crit*2*(1+pistinct_m)*(1+META*0.03)))) /(((1-red)*(1+ferocity_m)*(ap*(1+src)*0.002439+9.4)*(fb.hit+fb.crit*2*(1+pistinct_m)*(1+MET A*0.03)) - (((1-red)*(((ap/14.0)*2.25)*(1+src)+(weapon*2.25+742.5))*(1+ret_m1*bdebuff)*1.3*(shred.hit+shred.crit *2*(1+pistinct_m)*(1+META*0.03)))/(1.0*shred.energy))))

in the equation above ripvsfb is the energy threasold to use FB instead of rip.

If < 35 -> use RIP
if >=35 use FB if you have less than ripvsfb energy.
If >100 always use FB

As you can see it's a function of your energy, the "ticked" rip (called rem), talents, crit and hit rate. ret_m1 = 0.2 with full R&T, src = 0.4 with Savage Roar up, pistinct_m = 0.1 if you have predatory instinct.

Basically it compare the DPE of FB with the one from RIP taking into account the 5 more energy cost of FB, the extra energy waste vs a shred and the dps lost for renewing rip before it expire.

A simulation coming soon.

raffy · 10/01/08, 4:36 AM

On the Druid Beta forum, players are requesting that the Bear form modifier be changed, instead of modifying PotP and whatever-else Blizzard plans to change.

This makes absolutely no sense; changing Bear form modifier is probably the worst thing you could do for our class in terms of progression scaling.

As mentioned by a few people earlier, the real issue is the abundance of extra armor on Trinkets, Rings, and Necks, and more importantly, our weapon. Unlike shields, our weapons armor is part of the item budget.

Wouldn't it be more intelligent to just remove armor'd staffs from the game?

1. It reduces the need to have double the number of FAP sticks, and allows 1 FAP stick per raiding tier/difficulty to serve as both a tanking and DPS upgrade.

2. It removes the need to waste itemization points for armor on our weapons. Instead we could get another tanking stat like expertise and/or hit. Or gasp....SOCKETS.

Ja7us · 10/01/08, 5:08 AM

Changing the bear armor modifier also does collateral damage to PvP resto, which is a completely separate issue. If you want to nerf feral druid tanking, nerf feral druid tanking talents or feral druid tanking gear; it's as simple as that, really. Anything else will ripple outward.

Inaiwae · 10/01/08, 5:10 AM

@Nightcrowler: don't forget that with the new energy regen you do not need to waste any energy on FB. I'd say that what we need to know is the what is better at certain AP and armor reduction, ignoring the extra energy conversion.