After all, currently with 0 spell damage Moonfire will do over 900 armor-ignoring damage and cost only a global cooldown, much more than we could get in that time span from white attacks.
Hopefully that's not the case. Right now I can get crits of normal attacks in the 600-700 range. I would really hope that I could get more than that in the lvl 80 gear/stats case. And this isn't just a white attack we'd be missing; we'd be able to also do at least one yellow attack in that time as well. We're talking this scenario, right?
0.0 Shift to caster, cast moonfire
1.5 shift to cat
3.0 can do actions
vs. 0.0 shift to cat, gain 40 energy
1.5 can do actions
3.0 still in cat, doing actions
That's a GCD worth of yellow attacks, 1.5 more white attacks vs a moonfire. There will be no lost energy; both take 3.0 seconds of time and will regen 3.0 seconds of energy in that time (so 30 energy). The only time that scenario b is worse than scenario a is if after 1.5 seconds, 40 energy + 1.5 seconds worth of regen is not enough to do a yellow attack.
Honestly, I think it would be better to simply shift twice in 3.0 seconds and gain 110 total energy instead of do anything like moonfire; while you'll waste 10 energy you'll be able to do a lot more with that than you would a moonfire shot.
Besides, Moonfire and Wrath use mana, which is even more precious, now that we can convert mana to energy so much more efficiently. What this does do, however, is not penalized our energy so hard when we NEED to shift out and cast a spell (like Innervate, Rebirth, an emergency heal, etc.)
Energy regen in other forms is a huge improvement. Another use that comes to my mind is using Bear Mangle to keep the debuff up without taking energy from a Shred cycle.
If this is intended behavior I expect Furor to change or be replaced, perhaps with the old swiftshiting (mana cost reduction on quickly returning to form).
The problem with that is that for the same mana as a powershift, for a mangle. I like the thought of weaving other skills/spells into cat rotations, but it all ends up costing mana. I don't have the exact number for mana cost of shifting at 80, but it looks like it's going to be like 1000 or so mana, with natural shapeshifter. Using that number as ballpark, you're looking at 40 energy per 1000 mana, or 1050 mana per 42 energy (shred), and an average shred (averaging crits out) of ~4000, that ends up being ~3.81 damage per mana from shred. Moonfire, for example, (using the same base mana assumption that makes shifting cost 1000) would cost 857, and do an average of 1263 damagge, or 1.47 damage per mana from moonfire. And most importantly, the DPM of shred scales with our gear. The DPM of moonfire doesn't. I like these ideas, lets keep trying them, I'm just saying that with what we currently know, they're definitely DPS losses.
It's interesting to think that powershifting may be so good now, that mana may end up effectively being the limiting power source of cats, such that we may end up doing things like prioritizing BoWisdom over BoMight, or socketing for mana/manaregen, so that we can just remove all waiting from our rotations. With enough powershifting, something like 1Roar-5Bite-5Rip in a 16sec cycle may be even eventually possible.
EDIT:
Extrapolating from the PVP gear, our tier gear won't have extra armor, but they add stuff like this?
Our PvP gear very well may be placeholder, and/or that very well may be intended for warriors/DKs, not bears.
Extrapolating from the PVP gear, our tier gear won't have extra armor, but they add stuff like this?
We've already seen 2 other pieces of gear with the exact same design (a ring http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...reitem_017.jpg and a neck) so while the PVP class specific gear may be in flux is there a good reason for those misc pieces to be?
If their goal is to reduce the overall bloat in drops all they need do is find a way to make defense more useful to a feral than it currently is and those misc pieces suddenly become equally good (or superior due to armour bonuses) options for ferals too.
Just as a note: there's not a single point of strength on our currently known pvp-gear, neither the 5 set-parts, nor the staff, therefor high amounts of agility... Is that the way we go?
edit: I think it's worth noting because it's completely against our current pvp-gear, which hast lots of strength and no agi on it.
Are we looking at the same gear? BC Arena gear has equal numbers of AGI and STR.
Extrapolating from the PVP gear, our tier gear won't have extra armor, but they add stuff like this?
You guys should note:
These items are more than likely placeholder gear, to get the PVP ball rolling.
Indicators:
Plate wearers all have the exact same itemization.
Enh Shamans and Hunters have the exact same itemization.
Feral Druids and Rogues have the exact same itemization.
All casters have the exact same itemization, including DoT based classes that have little use for the excess +crit.
Resto Druid and Healing Priests have the exact same itemization.
(Holy paladin set didn't show up, so I can't make a comparison to resto gear.)
I highly doubt that, even after all the gear homogenization they've done, that each piece is the optimal way of itemization for each class.
Druids are going to have a harder time hitting the armor cap in Lich King largely because there is no leather tanking gear, and virtually no bonus armor at all (except on a few pieces like rings and necks).
Obviously he forgot to include cloaks ^^ I'm not quite sure yet how they will manage pvp balance without any extra armor on gear though. The cloak is very good for plate tanks because of a good balance of def, armor, stam, str. Druids get more from armor and less from def. so the cloak is equally good for every tank. I don't see a problem there.
Obviously he forgot to include cloaks ^^ I'm not quite sure yet how they will manage pvp balance without any extra armor on gear though. The cloak is very good for plate tanks because of a good balance of def, armor, stam, str. Druids get more from armor and less from def. so the cloak is equally good for every tank. I don't see a problem there.
Uh the problem would be cause that cloak is perfectly itemized for a DK. They don't have shields and want as much bonus armor, strength, stamina and defense they can get. Getting all itemization as second rate hand me downs from DKs isn't exactly what I would call progression.
Druids need to be reworked to want more stats for tanking than what they currently do. Otherwise you will be left out in the cold, with terrible scalability. In T6 you do effectively stop scaling since all you can aimed for was the armor cap and you basically stopped once you hit that. Take away the the armor cap without give anything back is all druids are left with currently.
Making cat 2 hander dps weapons wouldn't be too difficult I think. We could use ret / MS weapons if we benefitted from weapon dps (1 weapon dps = 1 dmg in cat and 2.5 dmg in bear). Obviously they'd have to adjust for feral base damage. And some of our moves that would lose AP scaling might need to scale a little different.
Bear weapons would be more difficult unless we could get enough armor without armor on a weapon.
I'd be fine with very sporadic upgrades since nobody else can use them. Something like: rep --> badge reward --> mid game raid token turn in --> end game raid quest reward would be fine as long as:
a) itemization in the other slots is considerably better (as they seem to be shooting for).
b) higher iLvl tanking weapons are itemized to be better tanking weapons than lower ones (yes Pillar, I'm looking at you).
c) we don't go several tiers without any tanking weapon upgrades (go go SSC Staff!)
Here's the easiest solution:
All weapons now boost your AP by the following equation:
(Weapon DPS - 55) * 14
In other words, strip 55 DPS off the weapon (due to our 55 base DPS), and turn the excess into AP. It would keep all current abilities working as is, and would suddenly turn every 2hander into a viable usable item.
Edit: There are downsides to it though.
Plate wearers utilize +str and +crit. We utilize mainly AGI. There aren't any 2handers with armor, so we would lose out on a billion armor. Eh. Now that I think about it, we would still need class specific weapons simply because we don't share our stats among anyone else.
Plate wearers utilize +str and +crit. We utilize mainly AGI. There aren't any 2handers with armor, so we would lose out on a billion armor. Eh. Now that I think about it, we would still need class specific weapons simply because we don't share our stats among anyone else.
Hunters could use Druid staves and vice versa for DPS. Death Knights could use druid tanking maces.
All weapons now boost your AP by the following equation:
(Weapon DPS - 55) * 14
In other words, strip 55 DPS off the weapon (due to our 55 base DPS), and turn the excess into AP. It would keep all current abilities working as is, and would suddenly turn every 2hander into a viable usable item.
Edit: There are downsides to it though.
Plate wearers utilize +str and +crit. We utilize mainly AGI. There aren't any 2handers with armor, so we would lose out on a billion armor. Eh. Now that I think about it, we would still need class specific weapons simply because we don't share our stats among anyone else.
This works, except for bookmins (they get weapon dps and fap). But it wouldn't take a lot to fix that as well.
It's interesting to think that powershifting may be so good now, that mana may end up effectively being the limiting power source of cats, such that we may end up doing things like prioritizing BoWisdom over BoMight, or socketing for mana/manaregen, so that we can just remove all waiting from our rotations. With enough powershifting, something like 1Roar-5Bite-5Rip in a 16sec cycle may be even eventually possible.
I think it'd take an extremely high crit rate to get the 1Roar-5Bite-5Rip cycle working, if at all.
Assuming even 100% crit that cycle takes 334 energy (3 finishers, 1 mangle, 5 shreds). We regen 160 energy in 16 seconds and have TIME for 4 powershifts which is another 160 energy (could push that to 200 energy if we extend cycle time by 0.5 seconds). This barely covers the requisite energy needs. Now granted OOC provides another roughly 2-3 energy per second so that would be another 30-40 energy. TF provides another 32.
This leaves us (if we powershift at every chance) a gain of 32+40+160+200 = 432 energy generated. So we do have enough here to get the cycle going at 100% crit.
However if we drop it to 50% crit we can simplify it to needing roughly 2 moves to produce 3 combo points (yes a rough simplification but for rough work it should be sufficient). This increases the energy cost of the cycle to 418 (3 finishers, 1 mangle, 7 shreds). However in this cycle we only have time for 3 powershifts which reduces our energy generated to 352.
Hunters could use Druid staves and vice versa for DPS. Death Knights could use druid tanking maces.
I think Death Knights can't use staves or maces.
Hunter weapons actually work decently well. No STR, but we only lose out with kings. Not sure what the value of crit rating will be now, with the nerfed AGI:Crit ratio, so the crit rating on the hunter weapons might actually be worthwhile.
Originally Posted by Tappin
This works, except for bookmins (they get weapon dps and fap). But it wouldn't take a lot to fix that as well.
Honestly, boomkins getting FAP should be removed by now. No one's scared of taking a melee hit from a boomkin, and the mana on melee mechanic has been removed.
Hunter weapons actually work decently well. No STR, but we only lose out with kings. Not sure what the value of crit rating will be now, with the nerfed AGI:Crit ratio, so the crit rating on the hunter weapons might actually be worthwhile.
Honestly, boomkins getting FAP should be removed by now. No one's scared of taking a melee hit from a boomkin, and the mana on melee mechanic has been removed.
Death Knights can in fact equip maces. In the beginning of Alpha, they were unable to, but they gained the proficiency some time in the end of alpha or the beginning of beta I think.
Moonkins benefitting from feral attack power is an obsolete mechanic now, yes. It can simply be removed completely, with nobody complaining.
Regarding a conversion from weapon DPS to FAP, I think this would be less logical than a simple DPS->DPS conversion. Rip would need to be upscaled with the absence of weapon scaling though.
Regarding a conversion from weapon DPS to FAP, I think this would be less logical than a simple DPS->DPS conversion. Rip would need to be upscaled with the absence of weapon scaling though.
Death Knights can in fact equip maces. In the beginning of Alpha, they were unable to, but they gained the proficiency some time in the end of alpha or the beginning of beta I think.
Moonkins benefitting from feral attack power is an obsolete mechanic now, yes. It can simply be removed completely, with nobody complaining.
Regarding a conversion from weapon DPS to FAP, I think this would be less logical than a simple DPS->DPS conversion. Rip would need to be upscaled with the absence of weapon scaling though.
DKs can wear maces? Then we've pretty much got very nice synergy going, if DKs are meant to use bonus armor on their weapons (I have zero idea about DK itemization).
As to DPS to FAP, I think it would just be simpler, because it wouldn't require any change in existing talents or abilities. Rip and SR would have to be retuned, as well as the talents Predatory Strikes and HoTW. However, I don't know how hard it would be to implement (Weapon DPS - 55) * 14 in comparison.
I think it'd take an extremely high crit rate to get the 1Roar-5Bite-5Rip cycle working, if at all.
Assuming even 100% crit that cycle takes 334 energy (3 finishers, 1 mangle, 5 shreds). We regen 160 energy in 16 seconds and have TIME for 4 powershifts which is another 160 energy (could push that to 200 energy if we extend cycle time by 0.5 seconds). This barely covers the requisite energy needs. Now granted OOC provides another roughly 2-3 energy per second so that would be another 30-40 energy. TF provides another 32.
This leaves us (if we powershift at every chance) a gain of 32+40+160+200 = 432 energy generated. So we do have enough here to get the cycle going at 100% crit.
However if we drop it to 50% crit we can simplify it to needing roughly 2 moves to produce 3 combo points (yes a rough simplification but for rough work it should be sufficient). This increases the energy cost of the cycle to 418 (3 finishers, 1 mangle, 7 shreds). However in this cycle we only have time for 3 powershifts which reduces our energy generated to 352.
That seems to point towards 1sr/5fb/5r being a potential highest dps cycle, mandating the use of at least the mangle and rip glyphs. One interesting thing that may be overlooked is that haste, while not super amazing for white dps, does decrease the gcd on shifting now that it affects both melee and spells. The fact that you say that 0.5 sec increases energy available by 40 means you could actually get 1/3 of that on average (~13 energy) per cycle assuming you just add another shift every 3rd cycle. Thus, haste may be of some value if we find that gcds becomes the limitation of our dps.
Implications of something like this would be if every single gcd is necessary to maintain such a cycle, hit and expertise gain more importance than currently calculated due to unnecessary extension of the cycle on avoided attacks. The "cat" feral spec may end up looking like this: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...01351005503012. It's interesting that 5pt rip has a 30% ap modifier and fb got its 5pt modifier boosted to 35%. With a close to 100% crit rate on landed bites, that's a 2.26 crit multiplier and 1.15 feral aggression multiplier opposed to a 1.3 mangle or 1.69 mangle/trauma multiplier for rip. Add in scaling with armor pen and fb looks very competitive as a finisher. If the dpe of fb over rip manages to outperform the dpe of 2 rakes to 2 shreds, the cycle may even change to 1sr/5fb/5fb with rakes thrown in to maintain bleeds, though I'd be doubtful with the expected scaling for rake.
With regards to Astrylian's point on the mana restraints of heavy powershifting, has anyone tested if abilities like a survival hunter's hunting party on both energy and in form mana regen, or if vampiric touch or a ret paladin's judgement of the wise applies to mana to druids in forms? I'm afraid our immunity to mana burns and drains in forms may mean we're not allowed the benefit of mana returns in forms either. If developers are aware of the use of powershifting as a means of increasing cat dps, perhaps a suggestion in beta for mana returns working on shifted druids if it isn't already implemented could be in order.
Thus, haste may be of some value if we find that gcds becomes the limitation of our dps.
Remember that they've changed Omen of Clarity to only proc off white hits, and so boosted the PPM causing haste to actually be worthwhile anyway (or at least a lot more so than currently). Haste certainly looks like it's gaining enough value to become one of our main DPS stats.
On bleeds @ FB: Rend and Tear doesn't say anything about it having to be one of our bleeds on the target ("increases damage done ... on bleeding targets") - if you have a bear tank then Lacerate will be up, an Arms warrior will mean deep wounds/rend (see new overpower on rend tick talent), and (dependant on spec) Rogues may be using rupture.
We do want to give Ferals who want to focus on being cats some excellent melee dps. We do want bears to be end-game tanks. We want to see serious guilds with a bear MT and a death knight OT.
What held us back from that before was that the kitty could turn around and tank almost as well (and sometimes better) than the Prot dudes who abandoned any hope of competitive dps in order to be able to tank for their guild. Clearly (I hope) a class that could do rogue-level dps and warrior-level tanking with the same talent build is the kind of thing that makes other players a little miffed.
But we're reevaluating a lot of old (and some admittedly tired) decisions for Lich King. Not only will tank-spec classes be able to do a lot higher dps (not the highest in the raid mind you, but higher), but we think it's fine for a Feral to nerf their tanking ability a little in order to go for high dps, or lower their dps a little in order to be amazing tanks.
We don't think it will take a complete overhaul of the Feral tree. To be honest, I think it's a pretty fun tree. But it will definitely take some changes to the tree you see on beta today. Imagine 5-10 talent points that significantly increase your survivability but do nothing to your dps. Take those points and you're a tank. Ignore them and you're melee dps. Take a few here and there and you are as flexible as you are today. I'm not saying that is the final or even only sollution. But that implementation gets brought up quite a bit.
Another post from Ghostcrawler regarding ferals; it looks like there's still some shifting around in the feral tree to be done:
We do want to give Ferals who want to focus on being cats some excellent melee dps. We do want bears to be end-game tanks. We want to see serious guilds with a bear MT and a death knight OT.
What held us back from that before was that the kitty could turn around and tank almost as well (and sometimes better) than the Prot dudes who abandoned any hope of competitive dps in order to be able to tank for their guild. Clearly (I hope) a class that could do rogue-level dps and warrior-level tanking with the same talent build is the kind of thing that makes other players a little miffed.
But we're reevaluating a lot of old (and some admittedly tired) decisions for Lich King. Not only will tank-spec classes be able to do a lot higher dps (not the highest in the raid mind you, but higher), but we think it's fine for a Feral to nerf their tanking ability a little in order to go for high dps, or lower their dps a little in order to be amazing tanks.
We don't think it will take a complete overhaul of the Feral tree. To be honest, I think it's a pretty fun tree. But it will definitely take some changes to the tree you see on beta today. Imagine 5-10 talent points that significantly increase your survivability but do nothing to your dps. Take those points and you're a tank. Ignore them and you're melee dps. Take a few here and there and you are as flexible as you are today. I'm not saying that is the final or even only sollution. But that implementation gets brought up quite a bit.
Remember that they've changed Omen of Clarity to only proc off white hits, and so boosted the PPM causing haste to actually be worthwhile anyway (or at least a lot more so than currently). Haste certainly looks like it's gaining enough value to become one of our main DPS stats.
On bleeds @ FB: Rend and Tear doesn't say anything about it having to be one of our bleeds on the target ("increases damage done ... on bleeding targets") - if you have a bear tank then Lacerate will be up, an Arms warrior will mean deep wounds/rend (see new overpower on rend tick talent), and (dependant on spec) Rogues may be using rupture.
Actually haste is still an absolutely terrible stat according to Toskk's calculator. It's below one attack power still even w/ the omen of clarity change.
What about some stat conversion when in forms? It would extremely help ferals with current "unified itemization" approach in WotLK
As feral tanks will sure have crit immunity from a talent it should be nice to have
Defense becomes Agility, when in feral forms. (Pointing to those tanking items for plate tanks)
With Strength gone and AP on all shared gear, Survival of the Fittest all stats raised looks rather bland. There should be talent to convert AP back to Strength for feral forms only.
Like Feral Mastery (normal buyable skill, but Mangle talent required)
Defense on equipped gear becomes Agility when druid is in cat, bear and dire bear forms.
Standard "equip: + X Attack Power" on armors, utility items and weapon changed into X/2 Strength (Standard Conversion 2 AP = 1 STR) - (Feral Attack Power DOES NOT CHANGE into Strength) when druid is in cat, bear and dire bear form.
What about some stat conversion when in forms? It would extremely help ferals with current "unified itemization" approach in WotLK
As feral tanks will sure have crit immunity from a talent it should be nice to have
Defense becomes Agility, when in feral forms. (Pointing to those tanking items for plate tanks)
With Strength gone and AP on all shared gear, Survival of the Fittest all stats raised looks rather bland. There should be talent to convert AP back to Strength for feral forms only.
Like Feral Mastery (normal buyable skill, but Mangle talent required)
Defense on equipped gear becomes Agility when druid is in cat, bear and dire bear forms.
Standard "equip: + X Attack Power" on armors, utility items and weapon changed into X/2 Strength (Standard Conversion 2 AP = 1 STR) - (Feral Attack Power DOES NOT CHANGE into Strength) when druid is in cat, bear and dire bear form.
Mate, you dont need +defense gear in WotLK, cause you got +6% crit reduce in talents.
And for now, u dont have any defense in your tear gear, and u really dont need it. You can reach the cap with enchants.
08/22/08, 5:51 PM
