Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 63

dukes · 09/03/08, 3:35 PM

Originally Posted by Valerian

Uh 3008 DPS in cat vs 2535 DPS in bear? That doesn't look right. Not sure on the exact numbers but currently in bear form I do less than half the damage I do in cat. Either they still need to buff cat form somewhat or they overbuffed bear form, assuming your numbers are correct.

Assuming all talents:

Both: Attributes 6% instead of 3% (SotF), +10 Expertise (Primal Precision).

Cat: 10% bonus to Shred (RnT), 4% crit (MS), -6 energy off Mangle (Imp Mangle), 80% cost off missed Finishers (Primal Precision), 30 energy/30 seconds + some damage (KotJ). Savage Roar finishing move (40% AP boost). Berserk.

Bear: 20% damage to Mangle / Maul (Savage Fury), 10% to Maul (RnT), 30% damage to Swipe (Feral Instinct), 4% damage (MS), 15% damage while Enraged (KotJ), 1.5 sec off cd for Mangle (Imp Mangle). Berserk (only increases AoE damage).

--------------------

Say 5% total damage gain to both.
Cat gains 4% crit and 10% damage to Shred, 40% AP boost, much better energy control.
Bear gains an average of 25% damage to abilities on top of 4% flat damage, Enrage boost, and shorter Mangle cooldown.

I could see those differences making a very big swing towards Bear Form compared to Cat, but I'm not sure if it makes as big a swing as that shows.

Considering their swing towards wanting to make tanks do more damage overall, and Bear form always being heavy on the damage dealing (in general, compared to other tanks), it's not that surprising that Bear seems to be doing a lot of damage (especially with all the extra damage talents).

Mijae · 09/03/08, 3:45 PM

Do those outcomes change based on armor penetration? The 25% number is more accurate for a high armor boss. A low armor boss would be closer to 17%. This would decrease the value of bleeds, but I could see the relative value of bear go up or down.

My bear model gets similar numbers in full dps gear. It will most likely be lower with full tank gear. However, this is a shift in the ratio of bear to cat damage. A current build in full dps gear cat will do around 2k dps in end-game gear, in bear would do 1400 dps (about 70%). It seems LK bear is closer to 85%.

• Astrylian · 09/03/08, 3:54 PM

Originally Posted by nightcrowler

- I've assumed 1.5 sec GCD going from cat to bear and a 1.0 sec gcd going from bear to cat, is it right?

No. All shifts are 1.5sec GCDs.

Valerian · 09/03/08, 4:29 PM

Originally Posted by dukes

Assuming all talents:

Both: Attributes 6% instead of 3% (SotF), +10 Expertise (Primal Precision).

Cat: 10% bonus to Shred (RnT), 4% crit (MS), -6 energy off Mangle (Imp Mangle), 80% cost off missed Finishers (Primal Precision), 30 energy/30 seconds + some damage (KotJ). Savage Roar finishing move (40% AP boost). Berserk.

Bear: 20% damage to Mangle / Maul (Savage Fury), 10% to Maul (RnT), 30% damage to Swipe (Feral Instinct), 4% damage (MS), 15% damage while Enraged (KotJ), 1.5 sec off cd for Mangle (Imp Mangle). Berserk (only increases AoE damage).

--------------------

Say 5% total damage gain to both.
Cat gains 4% crit and 10% damage to Shred, 40% AP boost, much better energy control.
Bear gains an average of 25% damage to abilities on top of 4% flat damage, Enrage boost, and shorter Mangle cooldown.

I could see those differences making a very big swing towards Bear Form compared to Cat, but I'm not sure if it makes as big a swing as that shows.

Considering their swing towards wanting to make tanks do more damage overall, and Bear form always being heavy on the damage dealing (in general, compared to other tanks), it's not that surprising that Bear seems to be doing a lot of damage (especially with all the extra damage talents).

Nitpick that KoJ is 60 energy per TF (unless they nerfed it), but otherwise what you said looks correct. When I said it "didn't look right" I didn't really mean he had messed up numbers or anything. Was more a point that it seems strange bear form is doing so much damage compared to Cat form. Even with infinite rage, unless other tanks are doing similar damage (and those damage results scale similarly along with gear) it seems a good selling point of a feral tank is having your tank deal nearly as much DPS as any other hybrid dpser. That in and of itself seems like an odd "niche" for a druid tank to fill.

Then again they have said there are still scaling issues with Cat form that will be addressed so I'll reserve judgement for the moment. But with numbers like that we're looking at early BC level druid tanks again which I can't imagine is what they want (I remember swipe tanking instances and coming out as top damage which just didn't sit right with the group :P)

nightcrowler · 09/03/08, 4:32 PM

About the bear/cat simulation:

About Bear Attack Power:

Bear AP = ((Cat AP-(agi*1.1*1.1*1.06))/1.1)+80

where the modifier are from HotW, BoK and SoF. And the +80 is due to the level scaling (level x 2 for cat, level x 3 for bear).
So in my simulation the Agility is set to about 925 (very similar to what said a previous poster).

X Astr. I wrote it wrong. I had set shifting GCD to 1.5 already in the first simulation, so I'll edit my previous post. Thanks for the answer. Do you know something about swing timer?

X ppl saying that bear dps is too high: Keep in mind that in a real environment:
- you don't have dps gear on.
- you don't have neverending rage.
- you are not specced for maximum dps.
- you don't use enrage while taking damage on a boss fight.

Originally Posted by Mijae

Do those outcomes change based on armor penetration? The 25% number is more accurate for a high armor boss. A low armor boss would be closer to 17%. This would decrease the value of bleeds, but I could see the relative value of bear go up or down.

I'll do it tomorrow.

dukes · 09/03/08, 4:49 PM

Originally Posted by Valerian

Nitpick that KoJ is 60 energy per TF (unless they nerfed it),

Ah, I was assuming Tiger's Fury still cost 30 energy, but they must've removed that when they added the cooldown. That means it's 2energy/sec equivalent, or an increase of 20% energy regen. With OoC being 4procs/min (iirc) that would be approximately 168 energy/min regen if used on Shred, or another ~3energy/sec, giving a total of 150% energy regen.

The Tiger's Fury energy not only increases the energy when you have the damage buff from the ability, but also gives it when you need it so that it isn't wasted (and controllable = useable with trinkets/short term buffs). With Berserk active, it'll really increase the burst damage potential of a Feral. With both more expertise base (talent) and 80% refund on missed finishers, energy should be a lot easier to control, although we lose the gain of approx 30 energy when required due to losing Powershifting.

During Berserk, you gain 150 energy over the period, up to 210 with Tiger's Fury used. That's doubled, however, because of the Berserk effect, which is 420 energy equivalent. That's a pretty ridiculous amount of energy to spend in a 15 second period.

kalbear · 09/03/08, 5:16 PM

Toskk has put up a very thorough analysis of comparing druids to warriors in terms of the items available and the druid's time to live vs. the warriors. They appear to be roughly equivalent. Some quibbles on this, however:

The warrior is not uncrittable. This kind of throws the whole thing out of wack at the onset, to be honest. At the very least it dismisses the gear choices completely as being unacceptable for the warrior, and I'm not sure that it can be reasonably said that this is dismissable. Yes, Toskk admits this, but I think it bears mentioning.
The item levels aren't the same. That makes it tough to evaluate based on armor.
No raid buffs of any sort. Kings now significantly helps warriors more than druids, for instance.

It's also interesting to note that while a warrior no longer gets a ton of shield block %, a paladin does. In this example the mitigation from a warrior's block was 23.12%*856 BV = 197 blocked damage per hit, or roughly 100 blocked damage per second (the attack swing was set to 2.0). By comparison, a paladin will have around 50-60% block rating, bringing this up to around 250 blocked damage per second. This would make a paladin quite a bit better in that regard, though their lack of defensive stance hurts more here.

It's a promising example that things will be okay when Wrath starts. What's troubling is Toskk's analysis of all the other stats that improve warrior's mitigation/TtL which have no effect or a reduced effect on druids. Unless an item is perfectly itemized for a druid (which means the 5 stats on it are armor, stam, agi, defense, dodge, and/or expertise) the item will be inferior, point for point, than any piece a warrior is likely to pick up. It very much depends on what the item has in terms of armor and stamina (and to a lesser extent, agility) which scale better than a warrior by a significant margin, but the fact remains that due to the item budget being able to provide more value over multiple stats than one, it is likely warrior itemization will improve faster than druid itemization, at least as it stands.

TimWischmeier · 09/03/08, 5:26 PM

Originally Posted by kalbear

Unless an item is perfectly itemized for a druid (which means the 5 stats on it are armor, stam, agi, defense, dodge, and/or expertise) the item will be inferior, point for point, than any piece a warrior is likely to pick up.

In addition to that, besides juwelry/cloak, we will share our others slots with rogues. New talents/mechanics pending, the gain from those pieces in regards to tanking is still way smaller.

loos · 09/03/08, 5:55 PM

Originally Posted by kalbear

The warrior is not uncrittable. This kind of throws the whole thing out of wack at the onset, to be honest. At the very least it dismisses the gear choices completely as being unacceptable for the warrior, and I'm not sure that it can be reasonably said that this is dismissable.

He doesn't say he's dismissing it, he's assuming that enchants (which are not taken into account) will make the warrior uncrittable.

Second, the Warrior tank in the example is not quite uncrittable in that gear set, although I treated him as uncrittable. The reason for this is that enchants and trinkets were not included in the gear listings, which I am assuming will push the Warrior over the uncrittable mark for a level 80 character.

kalbear · 09/03/08, 6:06 PM

In addition to that, besides juwelry/cloak, we will share our others slots with rogues. New talents/mechanics pending, the gain from those pieces in regards to tanking is still way smaller.

Not necessarily in theory, but in practice rogue leather will only have at best agility, stam and expertise. As an example, currently there are 4 items in the beta that are leather gear and fit this at all. There are no items a druid can use outside of the weapon slot that have more than 3 of any of the stats. Except for jewelry, that is, which can in theory have armor, stam, def and dodge.

He doesn't say he's dismissing it, he's assuming that enchants (which are not taken into account) will make the warrior uncrittable.

Right, but that means he's not comparing gemming, enchanting, or buffing when comparing the two classes. I don't think that's a reasonable position to take. I'm not saying a warrior can't become uncrittable with the gear currently existing + enchants; I'm saying that those should be taken into account for purposes of comparing, because what use is comparing a crittable warrior to anything? Especially when they gain so much from defense in terms of mitigation and avoidance, whereas druids do not. It's another place where a warrior's advantage in itemization improves.

Another thing not taken into account is the gun slot. He doesn't even use the current guns available. I agree with him that taking trinkets out of the equation is not so bad, but taking the gun slot out without commenting on it seems a bit shortsighted. At the very least, using the Engineering one as an example would be a good idea, given that it gives over 70 stamina, hit rating and defense in a slot where a druid gets nothing like it.

• Astrylian · 09/03/08, 6:08 PM

Indeed, our performance as tanks looks viable, at Naxx level. I think our only concern is the itemization, and the impact of only gaining significant tanking performance from 2 stats. While we may scale as well as warriors with equal stat increases, we'll be getting significantly less stats than them.

mydhrin · 09/03/08, 6:41 PM

Originally Posted by Astrylian

Indeed, our performance as tanks looks viable, at Naxx level. I think our only concern is the itemization, and the impact of only gaining significant tanking performance from 2 stats. While we may scale as well as warriors with equal stat increases, we'll be getting significantly less stats than them.

Yes, the fact that druids only scale from Agility, Dodge Rating and Stamina compared to all other stats (listed by Toskk) for Warriors is going to give a good advantage to Warriors MT at end-game WotLK (Tier 9 level) and should give the same result as BC. That's why I'm hoping for a new mechanic or other changes to make druids profit from stats like strength and defense rating on tank gear, specifically neck, rings, cloak. A talent that could take the place of FFF would be very nice. They could take from the idea of warriors and let us convert strength and defense rating to avoidance (which is the stat that we have less with our set of gear).

Then, there is also the question of magic damage which, although that Mother Bear helps us here, is less then warriors and an other factor to consider for MTing end-game raids.

Garanthir · 09/03/08, 7:21 PM

Originally Posted by mydhrin

They could take from the idea of warriors and let us convert strength and defense rating to avoidance (which is the stat that we have less with our set of gear)

I think trying to use Stats designed for other classes is not the way to go. Feral Druids now share gear with Rogues as we all know. So rather than try to develop a need for Str or Def Druids should be designed to make use of the stats on Druid/Rogue gear. Someone mentioned an AP to AC conversion earlier in this thread for example. Things like that make more sense than having us chase after suboptimal gear.

TheNameLessOne · 09/03/08, 7:37 PM

Originally Posted by Garanthir

I think trying to use Stats designed for other classes is not the way to go. Feral Druids now share gear with Rogues as we all know. So rather than try to develop a need for Str or Def Druids should be designed to make use of the stats on Druid/Rogue gear. Someone mentioned an AP to AC conversion earlier in this thread for example. Things like that make more sense than having us chase after suboptimal gear.

That means druid only rings, cloaks and necks. Since no rogue in their right mind would want anything with bonus armor on it and no other tank would want something with stam, armor and agility. Not to mention, technically druids still don't want rogue gear as it has attack power instead of strength.

Garanthir · 09/03/08, 7:50 PM

Originally Posted by TheNameLessOne

That means druid only rings, cloaks and necks. Since no rogue in their right mind would want anything with bonus armor on it and no other tank would want something with stam, armor and agility. Not to mention, technically druids still don't want rogue gear as it has attack power instead of strength.

I am simply making a point that Druids should not be tweaked to depend on a handful of items designed for other classes(specifically Warriors/DK's/Paladins) when almost every part of our gear is being merged with Rogues. There's no reason Druid/Rogue gear cannot work well on both classes and two roles(tank/dps) if designed and implemented properly.

Selmarix · 09/03/08, 8:33 PM

Assuming items with an equal split in item budget between all stats, you can sum that up with the item formula and actually get a linear dependency between the stat and the item level.

If there is only a single stat on the item, you get 1 stat point per item level (only if the stat cost is 1).
With 2 stats on one item (item budget split equally between the stats), you get 1.33 stat points per item level in sum.
With 3 stats on one item, you get 1.58 stat points per item level in sum.
With 4 stats it is 1.78 stat points per item level.
With 5 stats it is 1.95 stat points per item level.
With 6 stats it is 2.1 stat points per item level.

That is only the extreme case of exactly equal split and equal value of the single stats though. In real items the difference will usually be smaller.
So a warrior with an optimized 5 stat plate item will have up to 46% more stats in sum from the item budget than a druid with an optimized Agi, Sta leather item (because of gear homogenization there will likely be no pure defensive stat on the leather items).

Pzychotix · 09/04/08, 5:02 AM

Originally Posted by dukes

During Berserk, you gain 150 energy over the period, up to 210 with Tiger's Fury used. That's doubled, however, because of the Berserk effect, which is 420 energy equivalent. That's a pretty ridiculous amount of energy to spend in a 15 second period.

Note: Berserk will essentially double your current energy as well. So, if you use Berserk at 100 (90 if Berserk uses GCD), you get that much energy from Berserk.

Originally Posted by kalbear

Right, but that means he's not comparing gemming, enchanting, or buffing when comparing the two classes. I don't think that's a reasonable position to take. I'm not saying a warrior can't become uncrittable with the gear currently existing + enchants; I'm saying that those should be taken into account for purposes of comparing, because what use is comparing a crittable warrior to anything? Especially when they gain so much from defense in terms of mitigation and avoidance, whereas druids do not. It's another place where a warrior's advantage in itemization improves.

What you can take away from his numbers is the scaling of each stat. Melian, from the Druid forums, extrapolated this out with respect to gear scaling:
WoW Forums -> The State of Feral Tanks (8885) by Toskk

Ok, good to know. Kings will affect druids more than warriors, though, so lemme include that quickly.

Druid, for AP, Armor, agi, stam:
2.22 * 0.001361 + 0.528825 * 0.004976 + 0.793238 * 0.011982 = 0.015157 seconds.

Warr for armor, str, def, stam:
9.9 * 0.000326 + 0.528825 * 0.000686 + 0.48075 * 0.004984 + 0.793238 * 0.008109 = 0.012419 seconds.

Warr for armor, str, def, dodge, stam:
9.9 * 0.000326 + 0.436535 * 0.000686 + 0.39685 * 0.004984 + 0.39685 * 0.004951 + 0.654803 * 0.008109 = 0.012779 seconds.

Druid, for AP, hit/crit/haste/Pen, armor, agi, stam:
2.22 * 0.001361 + 0.436535 * 0.004976 + 0.654803 * 0.011982 = 0.013039 seconds.

So provided our other slots are itemized reasonably well, it seems that druids will scale very slightly better than warriors for this model. Some warrior pieces will likely have an additional mitigation stat, such as Block Rating or Value; however druids will benefit slightly more from gems, which may be enough to balance it out.

mhr_78 · 09/04/08, 5:09 AM

I had this idea recently that circulated also back in vanilla WoW when ferals were basically druids rolling on rogue gear.
As this time seems to be revived in the next expansion, it might be worth to revisit the utility of intellect for a feral.

Shamans get a new talent that converts intellect to Attack Power, whereas druids are still stuck with the coefficient on Heart of the wild that "just" buffs caster form intellect by 20% - still dating back from the times where feral druids were capable to offheal in raids.

The intellect coefficient of Heart of the Wild or a possible spirit coefficient might be worth revisiting for WotlK to give druids a more broader array of itemisation to choose from.

In the end with raised spell costs, the utility of a feral druid sitting there in rogue gear will be very limited - even moreso if we bring entangling roots as CC to dungeons.

And i would not mind to be recognised instantly as druid wearing druidic gear either, not a rogue with a walking stick.

Selmarix · 09/04/08, 6:41 AM

Melian's extrapolation has some flaws.
He seems to assume that the leather items for druids will have the same amount of stamina than the plate items for the other tanks. Judging both from the items we see in the expansion and the items in TBC end game plate items tend to have a lot more stamina.
If feral set items would end up with the high stamina, then cats would have a disadvantage in gear compared to rogues (if there is still only one set for ferals) and nearly no offset items would be worth it for bears. And PvP gear should not be the top tanking gear either.

In end game epics 3 stat + armor is not a common pattern. The distribution is usually 4-6 stats + armor.
So druids will scale with the second druid pattern in Melian's extrapolation but probably considerably less stamina.
Warriors will scale better than the second warrior pattern at least in some plate slots with an additional stat added (e.g. parry or agility).

The non leather/plate slots have different patterns and different scaling behavior for druids so this only applies to the 8 leather/plate slots.

dukes · 09/04/08, 7:10 AM

Good point Pzychotix, that gives us an equivalent of 620 energy to use within a 15 second period plus OoC procs. Even using our highest energy move (Shred) it's still challenging to even spend that much within the period (14 GCD's, 42 * 14 = 588 energy, plus OoC procs and finishers cost less energy).

Selmarix, remember that any stamina we gain will be modified by Dire Bear Form (+25%) and HotW (+20%) whilst tanking, so we don't technically need as much base stamina from gear as other tanks to get the same health pool. Comparing 8 piece Tier 6, for example, gives +475 stamina for Warriors, but only +343 stamina for Druids; this ends up with a slight advantage for Druids when including SotF(3%), HotW(20%) and the Dire Bear Form(25%) modifiers to the Druid value (~530), and Vitality(5%) to the Warrior value (~500).

The upshot is that we can assume similar health values for WotLK regardless of actual stamina values on gear. With Blizzards drive for similar tanks for most situations, I doubt they'd overlook something like this when they've already considered it in TBC.

Selmarix · 09/04/08, 7:23 AM

Originally Posted by dukes

Selmarix, remember that any stamina we gain will be modified by Dire Bear Form (+25%) and HotW (+20%) whilst tanking, so we don't technically need as much base stamina from gear as other tanks to get the same health pool. Comparing 8 piece Tier 6, for example, gives +475 stamina for Warriors, but only +343 stamina for Druids, which ends up with a slight advantage for Druids when including SotF(3%), HotW(20%) and the Dire Bear Form(25%) modifiers to the Druid value (~530), and Vitality(5%) to the Warrior value (~500).

That is correct, but if I read the extrapolation correctly then that effect is already included in the TTL scaling per stat point.

The stamina parts of the last two sums:
Warrior: 0.654803 * 0.008109
Druid: 0.654803 * 0.011982

The second factor is the TTL scaling per stat point from the model including the effect of stamina multipliers (if I read Toskk's post correctly).
The first factor is the amount of stamina per item level on the gear. That factor is the same for both warriors and druids here which means an assumption of similar amounts of stamina for both before multipliers (so the pure amount that is displayed on the item).

dukes · 09/04/08, 7:32 AM

OK, I see what you're saying. It seems Melian either has his assumptions wrong, or is assuming that due to less different stats being required for Bear Form that pieces will be itemised with more stamina than now. Either way, it's a change from what we currently have and maybe another analysis needs to be carried out to show what happens if the existing situation were to be carried forward.

• Daboran · 09/04/08, 11:03 AM

Looking more closely at some of the other bloat in Feral tree:

(1) I'd argue that IW needs to be able to proc from Swipe. After all, Thunderclap is an AoE ability.

(2) They need to remove the armor debuff component from Enrage. At present no sane tank would ever use the talented version on anything that hits in melee, making it very poor value. I've never understood why Enrage had a downside anyway...

(3) Catform dps looks really gimped now if you spec for tanking. To me this goes against what they are trying to achieve.
The scenario I'm anticipating is that rather than keep your Feral tank from Kalecgos/Brutallus in the raid for Felmyst, you would now kick them and get a Rogue or ask them to respec for Cat dps (assuming one of the other tanks actually tanks the boss).

Overall, Feral is horribly bloated, and Druid is now 4 specs, not three. You have Balance, Resto, Cat and Bear.

Looking at the talents however I can't see many ways to combine talents. Maybe push Nurturing Instincts into one of the Cat-biased talents?

Mode · 09/04/08, 11:25 AM

Originally Posted by Daboran

Looking more closely at some of the other bloat in Feral tree:

(1) I'd argue that IW needs to be able to proc from Swipe. After all, Thunderclap is an AoE ability.

Thunderclap is also a non-trivial TPS loss vs having someone else maintain it for you. Warriors are GCD capped, so every GCD spent on thunderclap is another devastate they could've done. Thunderclap is also on a 4 second cooldown (6 in WOTLK) and is resisted as a spell. Given how little +hit most warriors have, it gets resisted a LOT.

The only thing comparisons to TC is going to get you is buffs to warriors.

mhr_78 · 09/04/08, 11:51 AM

Imho the main problem is that we need to spend 11 points for effective tanking in the tier6 of the talent tree.

Natural Reaction - which liberates the "bear" spec from needing primal fury through the 3 rage on dodge gain. 3 Points.
Heart of the Wild - must have for every feral druid. 5 Points
Survival of the fittest - must have to be crit immune and nice stat gain. 3 Points

Thats a bit much to take on one level and pretty much sums up the grief a lot of people have with the talent tree.

Whereas in other classes talents you have the choice between talents that are clearly PVP or PVE and work your way up the tree, the feral tree suffers from a PVP / PVE Tanking / PVE DPSing Synergy bloat which then mounts with a end tier talent that is highly situational and can just be labeled as a misdesigned "i win"-button - that will never live up to it's promise if you see what other classes get just while leveling.

I just get frustrated everytime i have to think about a talent spec for my druid that lasts longer than a raid encounter with these talents.

One spec for tanking one spec for DPS and another for PVP in one tree just can not work. Period.