Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 213

Emi · 10/20/08, 4:48 AM

Originally Posted by Salex

He might also mean Natural Reaction, rage gain on dodge. Either way, we shouldn't have rage problems in bear form.

Put 3 points in Improved Mangle, hit Berserk then Maul, Mangle throught the duration and you'll see what i mean .

An extreme situation for sure ... but ... come WotLK i wouldnt put aside the probability of having a fight where such extreme TPS was needed.

david0925 · 10/20/08, 6:03 AM

In all honesty, I was pretty skeptical of IW when it first came out. After I played with it on Live I have to say it is probably the best attack speed reduction talent out of the current 3 tanking classes (I don't read on DKs yet)

First of all, it is tied to our main attack that should be used whenever it is off cooldown, this makes it impossible to accidently skip; the initial Mangle+ Maul should allow you to put up a two stack and keep up.

Second, it is tied to two abilities (Maul in bear, Shred in cat) that have no cooldowns. This makes it very easy to reapply should the Mangle is mitigated, the same cannot be said for Paladins or Tanking Warriors.

Especially with the dual-spec feature now, unless you wanted to save the "other" spec for pvp or for resto/balance, having a full bear and a full cat spec makes sense anyway as a feral, and if you spec a full bear, there is very little reason you skip IW (I'm actually debating whether or not I have enough points to put into IW for full cat; it's just that good)

Cat Spec. play with Ilotp or IW as you like.

Bear Spec. I'll put points into FA when I find out how many I actually need to take boss AP down to 0 at 80.

Vaccine · 10/20/08, 9:34 AM

Originally Posted by kalbear

And Maul is great for soloing and farming, but has issues with CC and at best gives bears something close to the shockwave/avenger's shield-hammer of the righteous ability the other tanks possess innately.

You mean that other tanks have to pay talent points for? Getting that as a glyph is pretty sweet by my standards. I don't get all this glyph of Maul hate, I've been playing with it for a few weeks now and its absolutely fantastic.

nightcrowler · 10/20/08, 10:38 AM

On a side note:
Challenging Roar has a 3 min CD (lowered by 30 seconds with the glyph if I remember correctly), I don't think in progress you'll pull a pack of mob with less than 2min and 30 sec time between them and last 6 seconds (exactly the 4 gcd we need for swipe), could it be a viable way of doing it? Using CR at the start of every pull while building aggro with swipe?

kalbear · 10/20/08, 10:56 AM

You mean that other tanks have to pay talent points for? Getting that as a glyph is pretty sweet by my standards. I don't get all this glyph of Maul hate, I've been playing with it for a few weeks now and its absolutely fantastic.

No paladin tank or warrior tank is going to skip AS or shockwave now. So no, I don't think it's reasonable for a glyph to be a fill-in for a talent discrepancy, especially one that isn't skippable anyway. I don't hate glyph of maul; I just feel that this should be baked in to talents just like the other tanks have, and that other glyphs for bears should be available.

As to revenge, warriors are still complaining about being rage starved. Don't know how useful value those complaints are, but they're still there.

Nightcrowler, that's a way to get initial aggro, but it's not a way to hold the mobs unless they don't last for more than 6 seconds. And I pull more frequently than every 2 1/2 minutes, personally, especially when doing 5 or 10 mans.

halmmar · 10/20/08, 11:14 AM

Originally Posted by kalbear

As to revenge, warriors are still complaining about being rage starved. Don't know how useful value those complaints are, but they're still there.

Same as for druids, then. I rage-starve in heroics/ZA all the time (never able to use Berserk to its full potential). It's not a problem - you don't have to out-threat people using haste pots and bloodlust.
On brutallus, I don't see anyone complaining they are rage-starved.

Side-note: Growl costs no rage. Being starved in heroics is now a non-issue for druids with the 20yd range <3

Edit for Merendel: Centarion spotted an extra "now" stuck in my sentence when I refactored it.

Centarion · 10/20/08, 11:21 AM

Actually Growl never cost any rage.

Merendel · 10/20/08, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Centarion

Actually Growl never cost any rage.

I think he is referring to the fact that if we loose agro we can taunt it back without having to chase it across the room now.

Nightcrawler, ran a 25 man naxx last week on beta. You wont be waiting 2.5 min between pulls. On average the way we cleared that place if I started a stopwatch on a pull we would be pulling group 4 or 5 beyond that one by the time it reached 2.5. The shorter CD is very nice particularly if agro gets shaky at a pull for some reason. I don't feel conflicted about using it anymore. With 10 minutes you just knew if you used it now it would not be back up when you needed it. Now its usual back up by the time you need it again, however its not short enough that you can use it every pull unless you clear very slowly.

unitsinc · 10/20/08, 2:21 PM

One thing that I'm really loving is bear FFF. I know it was mentioned a few pages back, but the threat on it has to be excellent just from my personal experience. One of my guilds best hunters(we're 4/6 in SWP) shot a mob(that I hand't touched) 2-3 times and all I had to do was FFF, and it came back to me. I don't have specific numbers on it, but I've found it to be incredibly useful especially combined with the 20 yd taunt. A mob runs off, taunt it from range, and FFF it and thats more than enough threat to keep it on me past the duration of the taunt.

Feanoro · 10/20/08, 7:56 PM

Forgive a stupid question, but I fail at searching, it seems. Since my bear is my alt, I haven't kept up with the changes as well as I should, so I want to confirm:

Does the new version of Survival of the Fittest fully grant crit immunity with no defense or resilience gear whatsoever? I'm looking at whether it's time to promote some cat trinkets to my bear set as well as regemming and so on.

Thanks for the help.

Nyrri · 10/20/08, 8:09 PM

@Nightcrowler

I was running your version of the sim with your gear, and it would take a fair amount of time (usually 3+ minutes) to build up close to 4k dps (and that was with you using Berserk). However, when I run it, trying to keep up rake, mangle, SR, and rip, I can attain 4k dps without using Berserk. Is the difference based upon human discretion on which to use next? I also wait at some times to pool energy if rake is >2 second to falling off (old habit from mutilate...), which is the only thing that I think I am really doing different from your conditionals.

You may want to take a look into pooling energy (if you haven't already). For Mutilate we used to Mut>SnD>Mutx2>Rupture>Mut>pool energy to 80ish>SnD. Obviously this was pre patch, but that is just to give you an idea.

Edit: Upon further Simulation runnings, it appears you were either running into a horrible streak of no crits and very little OoC procs. You're currently showing up as 4.8k dps this simulation.

nightcrowler · 10/21/08, 2:08 AM

@Nyrri
Into my "personal" simulator I have obtained 5030 dps on average on a 10 minute fight. In the simulator you are talking about you should have 4.8k on average because he didn't use CD like heroism, drums, haste potions and so on, it also use a static strategy (for example it didn't change when you use berserk) while in my simul I use a dynamical approch.

Doing it by hand after a bit of exercise I was able to do 4.8k easly with 5.3k spike under 3 min and reacheing 8-9k during berserk.

My strategy use energy pooling, you can see it going down in the page, the times it didn't use it is because is better to don't use it.

@Merendel
I didn't think it was so quick the trash clearing inside naxx, well we will have an hard work.

What I really hate about swipe is not the absence of an initial aggro snap, but the absence of free CD, basically when you'll tank more than 4-5 mobs you will do only swipe... boring.

manapaws · 10/21/08, 2:37 AM

Originally Posted by nightcrowler

What I really hate about swipe is not the absence of an initial aggro snap, but the absence of free CD, basically when you'll tank more than 4-5 mobs you will do only swipe... boring.

I find it's fun / effective when tanking lots of mobs (since you have unlimited rage) to maul tab maul tab between the swipes, since they're on different cooldowns. This is combined with the maul glyph.

The only thing I dislike is when classes such as boomkins and ele shamans use abilities which knock mobs back :/

Prinsesa · 10/21/08, 2:44 AM

Originally Posted by Feanoro

Forgive a stupid question, but I fail at searching, it seems. Since my bear is my alt, I haven't kept up with the changes as well as I should, so I want to confirm:

Does the new version of Survival of the Fittest fully grant crit immunity with no defense or resilience gear whatsoever? I'm looking at whether it's time to promote some cat trinkets to my bear set as well as regemming and so on.

Thanks for the help.

Yes, that's exactly right - Bears can become uncrittable simply from talents.

Beace · 10/21/08, 3:24 AM

Originally Posted by manapaws

The only thing I dislike is when classes such as boomkins and ele shamans use abilities which knock mobs back :/

Indeed. This is becoming a big hate thing for me. Here I have gone through the effort of positioning myself and all the mobs, then someone comes along and knocks them all back and I have to reposition again. Not counting the actual threat loss, it's damn annoying.