The only buff to our dps we get on that day is to Predatory Instincts comes out to 210 more ap or at 14 ap per dps, or 15.7 dps. So I am down 106 dps yet.
Second paragraph. So no I didnt miss it. And I already said why I am trying to avoid the new talents. I just do not have enough information to say how they will affect us. Also, I find it really bad that I have to take new talents to get closer to where I was, while every other class can take new talents to get stronger. The idea that the new talents will put us on an even field is flawed for that reason. In my dps gear right now, I have a combined 2% miss/dodge rate. most of that can be eaten up by more expertise, but at that point, I have to get rid of other dps increasing talents to get it. Same with Rend and Tear which there is some dispute on how much damage it really is. Shred makes up about 30% of my damage right now, so at best, it is a 3% increase in my dps. I just ate 5 new talent points to still be ~11 dps behind where I am now, and that is assuming I do not sacrifice anything else that increases dps, aka I get to lvl 75. Haste gear has never been very good for ferals. Depending on you gear, white attacks are only 20 - 40% of your overall damage.
Also, the stated reason why we got the agility nerf was that we are supposed to stack strength, not agility. But wait, looky here, there isnt any strength on the new leather. Does that count as a stealth nerf?
I didnt forget about Survival of the Fittest, I am just trying to remember the math to get my original agility and strength so I can figure out how much of a dps boost it is at my gear. And keep in mind as I said earlier, there is no strength on the new leather and we are being pulled away from agility, so SotF is not that much of a buff anymore.
In bear form, more haste is not unnecessarily better due to parry mechanics. If we tank in haste heavy gear, we will also need to stack on expertise to keep from getting parried to death. Also, as we equip less agility gear we lose a lot of our dodge, meaning we take more damage and we will die more easily. As there really isnt that much gear past lvl 77, it is really hard to say what end game looks like.
In conclusion, I still say that ferals are going back to our pre-BC standing unless something changes big time between now and when WotLK is released.
tenshirou, the feral staff you linked is ilvl 158, while the mace you linked is ilvl 171. That's the only reason there's such a big difference between the two.
Plus of course, 1% crit is not a straight 1% damage increase. Usually it's quite a bit less, especially at higher crit rates, even when you factor in talents.
You just made my point. At the same LEVEL they are usable, we are getting lower ilevel items. The lack of new weapons I actually expect to change, just what I am seeing now has me really worried.
And everything I have read says we get more than 1% increase in dps per crit because we get more combo points when we crit so we can throw out finishers faster. I actually have abused this to keep up with the other melee. If we have 100% crit we can use a finisher after just a mangle and a shred, which allows a rip just 3 seconds into a fight. Versus at 50% crit you would need to wait for a mangle, shred, shred to be certain you have 4 combo points. So 4.5 seconds. If we could keep the same crit we have now, then Savage Roar would be very good since it would fit easily into our current dps cycle. I know I am burning energy with shred at 5 combo points waiting for rip to finish. With fewer combo points, it becomes less likely that Savage Roar will be used since it SEEMS, that rip is still more dps then Savage Roar is by itself. Toskk is trying to figure out if this is true or not right now. Either way, all my assumptions are based on what things are like at lvl 70.
You're probably right on the damage contribution of crit after talents and combo points.
The itemization thing though is just bind on equip items versus bind on pickup items in the expansion though. If you look at other itemization, the bind on equip stuff is generally much worse than bind on pickup items that require the same level to equip.
As long as there are bop feral staves, that won't be a limiting factor.
Yeah, I cant argue about the BoE vs BoP thing. That IS the only blue feral weapon in the beta right now. The closest thing to a feral dps staff is Staff of the Duty Bound from a lvl 76 quest and it is a green. Stat wise, it seems similar to [Staff of Primal Fury] . Which still makes my point that unless Blizzard adds something new, we will be lagging behind on gear since the equivalent level of progression is BoP blues with stats equivalent to T6 rather then T5.
Last edited by tenshirou : 07/24/08 at 6:08 PM.
Reason: Badly worded
Yeah, I cant argue about the BoE vs BoP thing. That IS the only blue feral weapon in the beta right now. The closest thing to a feral dps staff is Staff of the Duty Bound from a lvl 76 quest and it is a green. Stat wise, it seems similar to [Staff of Primal Fury] . Which still makes my point that unless Blizzard adds something new, we will be lagging behind on gear since the equivalent level of progression is BoP blues with stats equivalent to T6 rather then T5.
Its almost certain they'll add the proper itemization, at least with respect to ilvls. There were a ton of weapons available for ferals pre-raid near the end of leveling (Nexus king quest, Cipher of Damnation quest, Botanica Staff etc).
Its unclear what the agi/crit change is for but there's clearly some reason for it. Putting our crit in line with Rogues might be the goal, though it seems a tad odd. Combo point generation might be a tad tough (though the new King of the Jungle talent is insanely good for this).
I need to go dig up the blue post that covers it. It might have been from the alpha boards which means its gone, but long story short, ferals were never meant to stack agility like we do now. The plan was for us to stack strength like shamans or warriors do. The power of agility as a crit producer was never noticed until theory crafters noticed that agility is far and away our most powerful stat. The nerf is to force us to stack more strength. Which is where it becomes silly since there isnt any strength on the new leather. It is self defeating. So here is to hoping blizzard notices and gives us the buff of god to offset that oversight. And someone in the beta might want to point this fact out in the beta forums. I would, but I am not in the beta so cant.
Tenshirou's post of 'math' is almost entirely inaccurate. 1% crit is not even remotely close to 1% damage. It varies by gear level. With 50% crit, 1% more crit is ~0.666% more damage. And 14ap is not even remotely close to 1dps. That also varies by gear level, but for me it's 3.85 ap per dps. You forgot crit/hit on your Tiger's Fury calculations, so add another 40%-50% to your TF calcs. Even with the same (inferior) spec, you'll be about on par for DPS with what you had before.
But most importantly, none of this 'balance at 70' whining matters. When 3.0 hits, balance at 70 won't matter. Balance at 80 is what will matter, and doing any sort of commenting on that at this point is simply a waste of everyone's time to do.
The talent calculator on the official homepage is showing a change in the description of the berserk talent: "Berserk instantly clears all effects which cause loss of control of your character and makes you immune to them for the duration while in bear/direbear/cat form."
Does anyone know if this is the fact in the current beta? And does anyone know whether you can shift whithout loosing the berserk buff?
That is exactly how it reads in the Beta currently. You do retain the buff while shifting to other forms(including caster). It's not castable in caster/travel/flight forms however.
Tenshirou's post of 'math' is almost entirely inaccurate. 1% crit is not even remotely close to 1% damage. It varies by gear level. With 50% crit, 1% more crit is ~0.666% more damage. And 14ap is not even remotely close to 1dps. That also varies by gear level, but for me it's 3.85 ap per dps. You forgot crit/hit on your Tiger's Fury calculations, so add another 40%-50% to your TF calcs. Even with the same (inferior) spec, you'll be about on par for DPS with what you had before.
But most importantly, none of this 'balance at 70' whining matters. When 3.0 hits, balance at 70 won't matter. Balance at 80 is what will matter, and doing any sort of commenting on that at this point is simply a waste of everyone's time to do.
Exactly, you can't just look at single changes in a vacuum and try to make any kind of meaninful patch 3.0 level 70 analysis, because it simply doesn't matter. The Agility nerf is a deserved one, 50-55% crit rates are ridiculous, 50%+ unbuffed dodge rates are ridiculous. The level of mudflation at this stage of TBC's lifespan is pretty wild, you can't simply let the natural deflation of level based inverse scaling (ratings, agi conversions) happen. You'd lose very little actual power .. by the time end of WotLK mudflation was in full swing, you'd be walking around with 80% crit or something equally crazy.
Trust in them to get the balance of the new skills right, combat mechanics are changing significantly. We may not necessarily need or want to keep 100% Rip uptime tight cycles anymore, we may prefer Savage Fury uptime instead. Primal Fury cps aren't the only way to compress cycles, you'd have Tiger's Fury and Berserk.
The only real dps problem we can anticipate already is the fact that there is no change that has addressed the bad scaling cats have with haste. Given that cats are unique in that respect (the only other one-handed melee dps class, retribution paladin, has the advantage that seal damage scales with haste as well), and that haste is a multiplicative stat, it is a scaling problem that will need to be addressed (if, as it was the case with TBC, we do 30% less haste friendly damage than the rest, and 50% haste are normal, that is a 15% scaling disadvantage)
The Agility nerf is a deserved one, 50-55% crit rates are ridiculous, 50%+ unbuffed dodge rates are ridiculous.
Trust in them to get the balance of the new skills right, combat mechanics are changing significantly.
Why is a 50% (60%, realistically) unbuffed dodge rate ridiculous? Again, tanks need to have similar levels of avoidance in order for content to be designed around any of the 3 classes tanking them. Warriors have ~65% combined miss/dodge/parry.
Telling people not to complain during a beta is bad advice; beta is the best time for feedback as it is the point at which something most likely to be fixed. Relatedly, Druids/Ret Paladins have always been low on the hybrid DPS meters. You have Enhancement shaman/warriors dealing 2200dps on Brutallus and Druids rarely getting to 1900dps; that is fairly absurd when Bloodlust alone is 600rdps.
The Washington Post helps perpetuate a common and pernicious misreading of the decision, referring to "the Supreme Court’s judgment that corporations have the same rights as people when it comes to political speech." What the Supreme Court actually said is that people do not lose their free speech rights when they organize as corporations, including nonprofit interest groups as well as businesses.
I've made a video showing feral charge (cat) jumping over water available here: YouTube - WoTLK beta - Feral Charge (Cat) Mark II
It seems to share the same mechanics as shadowstep in that youre able to travel over obstacles with it which is sort of nice, it does however travel slowly midair and often you land out of melee range since mobs are able to move away while you jump.
If you want me to test the ability in any other way just let me know and I'll try my best!
Why do you keep bringing up Warrior avoidance? What difference does it make if content is balanced around all four tanking classes having ~20% combined avoidance at the Naxx 2.0 level and 30% at the post Arthas level instead of 40/50 or 60/70 or whatever? It prevents unhittable tanks. It prevents avoidance from becoming the one sole thing to strive for once you reach necessary baseline survivability. It prevents stuff like Sunwell Radiance. And that's a good thing. Can you honestly not see what a crude, hamfisted joke of an idea Sunwell Radiance is?
Originally Posted by sadris
Warriors have ~65% combined miss/dodge/parry.
Can you tell me how much combined miss/dodge/parry Warriors have when they first zone into Naxx 2.0? While they're tanking neo Kel'thuzad? While tanking Arthas?
No one's saying we shouldn't complain during beta. But there are right and wrong ways to complain. Bringing up our lower scaling with haste relative to dual wielders (especially in light of the new WF totem) is a valid complaint. Bitching that Agi conversion ratios were nerfed at level 70 is not.
I've made a video showing feral charge (cat) jumping over water available here: YouTube - WoTLK beta - Feral Charge (Cat) Mark II
It seems to share the same mechanics as shadowstep in that youre able to travel over obstacles with it which is sort of nice, it does however travel slowly midair and often you land out of melee range since mobs are able to move away while you jump.
If you want me to test the ability in any other way just let me know and I'll try my best!
Thanks for the videos, any chance you can do one of Berserk? Both Bear Form and Cat Form? I'd like the seen the animation for it and how the Bear Form version works against multiple mobs.
it does however travel slowly midair and often you land out of melee range since mobs are able to move away while you jump.
If you want me to test the ability in any other way just let me know and I'll try my best!
Is the daze effect applied when you land or when you cast the spell?
The Washington Post helps perpetuate a common and pernicious misreading of the decision, referring to "the Supreme Court’s judgment that corporations have the same rights as people when it comes to political speech." What the Supreme Court actually said is that people do not lose their free speech rights when they organize as corporations, including nonprofit interest groups as well as businesses.
Thanks for the videos, any chance you can do one of Berserk? Both Bear Form and Cat Form? I'd like the seen the animation for it and how the Bear Form version works against multiple mobs.
Not specced for Berserk at the moment, but when I first tried it out I don't think I saw any special animation :/ (I'll recheck this later if I remember).
Originally Posted by sadris
Is the daze effect applied when you land or when you cast the spell?
Tried it just now and the daze was applied midair. I've got around 450 latency to the server so my guess is that it's applied as the server recognizes that you've cast the spell.
Tenshirou's post of 'math' is almost entirely inaccurate. 1% crit is not even remotely close to 1% damage. It varies by gear level. With 50% crit, 1% more crit is ~0.666% more damage. And 14ap is not even remotely close to 1dps. That also varies by gear level, but for me it's 3.85 ap per dps. You forgot crit/hit on your Tiger's Fury calculations, so add another 40%-50% to your TF calcs. Even with the same (inferior) spec, you'll be about on par for DPS with what you had before.
But most importantly, none of this 'balance at 70' whining matters. When 3.0 hits, balance at 70 won't matter. Balance at 80 is what will matter, and doing any sort of commenting on that at this point is simply a waste of everyone's time to do.
Crit rate -> damage is only that low due to rip not scaling w/ crit and only needing 4 combo points every 12 secs, so you can "screw" around doing what ever in between and get 30-35% of your DPS for "free". In WotLK its not quite that simple due to druids now requiring combo points to keep both rip and savage roar up.
Basically the whole problem w/ druids is they are now balancing feral around trauma, when that alone adds ~15% increase to the class. That flat out broken design mechanics as it forces a ridged structure of forcing at least an arms warrior speced w/ trauma if not a survival hunter as well to stay in 80% of rogue range (you need all the energy you can get since you generate less combo points). Either trauma or feral damage needs to be redone so it is not such an insane DPS increase for feral druids. Nerf rip, buff white damage.
Also, they have completely failed w/ making druids want rogue gear other than nerfing the hell out of agil->crit
-Haste is still the absolute worst DPS stat for druids, old WF was far better for druids than the current 20% haste one
-Expertise is better than hit since it works for both tanking and kitty. For kitty only it is equal to hit
-Hit isn't the most desired stat for kitty unlike rogues, you can cap out faster and it just doesn't do enough
-Armor penetration is actually less desired now since rip will now be even more of our damage courtesy of trauma. Still a weak stat compared to what rogues would want
-SOF buf (cat only) doesn't do enough since agil is nerfed and there is no strength gear anyways
-Kitty is more overly dependent on +crit to function properly than rogues since we don't get +45% duration to our slice and dice
The end result is unlike shamans where they nerf and buffed different mechanics to make them want hunter gear, they just nerf druids to force them to substandard gear.
From what I am told, Warriors will not be speccing arms in WLK as Fury provides higher total RDPS.
It doesn't matter w/ something increasing your DPS by such ridiculous amounts, you have to balance around that fact just in case it happens. This is why trauma is such a horrendously bad talent that should not exist in the game at all given current druid DPS mechanics which are not changing (in regards to bleeds anyways).
What are you talking about? A 7-10% dmg buff to *1* raid member, and a 1-3% dmg buff to 2 more is a 'ridiculous amount'? Uhhh, no. Seriously, it's way too early in the beta for all this QQing.
What are you talking about? A 7-10% dmg buff to *1* raid member, and a 1-3% dmg buff to 2 more is a 'ridiculous amount'? Uhhh, no. Seriously, it's way too early in the beta for all this QQing.
Its more like 10-15% and yes when there is only one class in the game that gets that befit, while all the others are as low as 1-3% that is poorly designed buffed. Especially when you consider that in order to get that buff, it requires a sub standard build that will not be normally used. NOTE: I'm am not crunching the numbers on the warrior math and only going off what other have said in this thread.
The bigger issue at hand is druid white damage is still terrible and that issue is not currently being addressed even w/ the refocus on more rogue like itemization.
EDIT:
Even using your numbers that is still a terrible buff, there should never be a buff that targets a certain spec outside of your class 3X better than everyone else (including your own).
Last edited by TheNameLessOne : 07/25/08 at 2:20 AM.
When you use the new finisher Rip uptime will be much lower as today, perhaps Rip overall dmg is then 10%, so Trauma adds perhaps 3% overall dmg to us, which is not that huge. Hearing about great numbers of Ferious Bite and the fact that we can socket armor pen perhaps we won`t use Rip anymore, who knows?
I know I'm late to the party here, but you forgot to factor in our 20% additional weapon AP to our specials.
As for the lack of gear in Beta that's suitable for us, it's way too early to complain. Beta has a long way to go, we'll get our gear. Let's wait until we have more than a single feral weapon to use for comparison.
On Trauma, this has been asked on Emmerald's site and I haven't seen it answered here: Does Trauma's bleed buff stack with Mangle's? There's been a lot of talk about how huge it is for us and how it will hurt us if warriors don't take it, but I've yet to see confirmation that it stacks with Mangle.
As far as our finishers I haven't seen any numbers that prove Savage Roar is worth keeping up. Consider that for every second that we lose on Rip uptime (5 combo points with a Mangle buff but not an SR buff) we lose 347.1 + 0.0325*AP damage. Let's estimate rather conservatively and say that a fresh level 80 feral druid with mostly T6/Sunwell badge level epics and a couple dungeon/quest blue upgrades has 7000 AP. That translates to a loss of 574.6 damage every single second that we don't have Rip running (unaffected by armor), which is simply massive. I really want to find a way to fit SR into our rotation, but it just may not be feasible, particularly if our combo point generation is slower due to fewer crits.
-Haste is still the absolute worst DPS stat for druids, old WF was far better for druids than the current 20% haste one
-Expertise is better than hit since it works for both tanking and kitty. For kitty only it is equal to hit
-Hit isn't the most desired stat for kitty unlike rogues, you can cap out faster and it just doesn't do enough
-Armor penetration is actually less desired now since rip will now be even more of our damage courtesy of trauma. Still a weak stat compared to what rogues would want
-SOF buf (cat only) doesn't do enough since agil is nerfed and there is no strength gear anyways
-Kitty is more overly dependent on +crit to function properly than rogues since we don't get +45% duration to our slice and dice
Granted old WF would have been "better" but not "far better". The only real difference being the extra AP added to the hits. Haste is a weak stat for us so yes, this needs to be looked at. Maybe grant some sort of energy regen based on haste/white hits (like 2T4) and it starts looking better.
We need the same amount of expertise as a rogue does when DPSing so presumably it'll be on the gear in the appropriate amount.
Hit is less needed but still a good stat (only inferior to Agi, Str and possibly ArP depending on how much you have). Remember we will have our set pieces that are NOT itemized the same as Rogue pieces so that should make up for having "too much" hit. Assuming the same 5 piece sets it allows us, Belt, Boots, Bracers, Neck, Cloak, Rings and Trinkets to get hit with. Thats 9 slots for 142 rating. Take 2 slots away and its ~20 hit per piece which isnt terrible. Considering the Neck/Cloak/Ring/trinket slots don't have to be shared only with rogues (can share with hunters for example) I'm sure finding pieces without too much hit on it will be fine. This of course assumes blizzard itemizes things properly which is always a risk though.
ArP is going to be a strong stat due to the fact we can stack it more with gems now. It is the only stat that has increasing returns on it so the more we can stack it the better. Yes our rip damage won't be affected by it, but I suspect our Rip uptime will actually decrease with the new finisher, which means ArP is in fact that much better.
SoF I agree. I don't see why or how they're going to Focus on Str if we're sharing gear with Rogues. Unless they gives Rogues 2 AP per Str and just replace all the AP gear with Str gear (or a mix of Str/AP though thats hoping for a bit much).
Last point again I agree. A talent for increased Savage Roar duration will likely pop up at some point, or at least it should.
Originally Posted by Melthu
As far as our finishers I haven't seen any numbers that prove Savage Roar is worth keeping up. Consider that for every second that we lose on Rip uptime (5 combo points with a Mangle buff but not an SR buff) we lose 347.1 + 0.0325*AP damage. Let's estimate rather conservatively and say that a fresh level 80 feral druid with mostly T6/Sunwell badge level epics and a couple dungeon/quest blue upgrades has 7000 AP. That translates to a loss of 574.6 damage every single second that we don't have Rip running (unaffected by armor), which is simply massive. I really want to find a way to fit SR into our rotation, but it just may not be feasible, particularly if our combo point generation is slower due to fewer crits.
Well SR would give 1750 AP in that situation. Max duration I believe was 25 seconds which is 2 cycles worth of Rip. So that alone gives: 0.0325*1750*24 = 1365 damage back bringing the total loss of 12 seconds of rip down to 5530.2. Now over 25 seconds we also get 25 auto attacks (neglecting haste for the moment). 1750/14 = 125. So we'd get an extra 125*25*(1-crit) + 125*25*2.2*(crit). This number will be a bit high due to neglecting glancing blows and miss chance though. Assuming a crit rate of 30%. This results in 2187.5 + 2062.5 = 4250 reducing the loss to 1280.2. We also have 25 seconds of specials going on here. Each shred done with SR up gains 2.25*1.3*125 = 365.6 damage (402 if Rend and Tear is active). Meaning we only need 4 shreds during 25 seconds before we make up a complete loss of 12 seconds of Rip time.
If a cycle can be optimized in some way so that we're not losing a full 12 second (one cycle) worth of Rip it becomes even better. I did this math relatively quickly so if there are any errors do let me know so I can recheck it, but it does look to me like SR is worth keeping up.
On Trauma, this has been asked on Emmerald's site and I haven't seen it answered here: Does Trauma's bleed buff stack with Mangle's? There's been a lot of talk about how huge it is for us and how it will hurt us if warriors don't take it, but I've yet to see confirmation that it stacks with Mangle.
That's why its such a bad ability, assuming that you will still be using rip. Imagine if malediction had this as well "increase frost damage by 10%". Regardless of whether or not an affliction lock was in the raid, you would have to balance frost mages around that buff.
With the crit nerf, the refocus to attack power and change to a 5 point finisher, Rip got a huge buffs compared to other druid abilities. That is moving druids in the wrong direction and basically running them 180 from rogues. Druids will want rogue gear even less w/ the current changes. The gear you will want to focus on now is what enhancement shaman currently want. However that gear will not exist in WolK, granted it didn't really exist in TBC either.
Last edited by TheNameLessOne : 07/25/08 at 10:48 AM.
07/24/08, 5:32 PM
