Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 79

Malazaar · 08/21/08, 2:33 PM

Originally Posted by tlbj6142

Does that mean that FAP is gone? Or, I guess, the same weapon would have good DK DPS (and weapon speed) which is ignored by bears as well as FAP which would be ignored by DKs? Won't that affect the weapon's iLevel?

I've never really looked at our current Druid weapons to see if they would be "good" for other classes. I assume they are not.

I really don't see any reason why not every weapon can have normal swing damage and the equivalent of FAP at the same time. Since there is no class that can use both at the same time, there wouldn't be any problem - or they could just give us normal weapon DPS (as they should have 3 years ago).

Originally Posted by Astrylian

A few feral staves are decent for hunters already. Not the best, but decent.

Yeah you should have seen my jaw dropping as i saw the first "need this for endgame equip" posts from hunters as Stanchion of Primal Instinct dropped :P

tlbj6142 · 08/21/08, 2:51 PM

If Blizzard were to do this (have DK and Feral tanks share weapons), wouldn't they have to either show the FAP on all 2H (maces, staves) weapons' tooltips or remove FAP all together? I know when most players see a FAP entry on an item they immediately know it is a feral item. But if the same item could be used by a DK, it could lead to some loot roll confusion. Seems like the best thing to do would be to get rid of FAP. Though, if they remove FAP, they'd have to re-work a few of our talents that boost AP and/or give us additional AP from our equipped FAP.

Malazaar · 08/21/08, 3:26 PM

I'd be hilarious if it would read "Equip: Increases attack power by X in Cat, Bear, Dire Bear, Moonkin and Deathknight forms only."

But i really hope they get rid of the FAP mechanic altogether.

TheNameLessOne · 08/21/08, 3:37 PM

Unless they drop moonkin from FAP, they aren't going to just hand it out for free.

As for hunters wanting druid weapons, staff of primal fury is the only one they would consider since it doesn't have strength on it. The rest of them are worse than stuff several item levels back, so I would hardly call those decent.

Shuror · 08/21/08, 4:50 PM

Looking at that blue post, I think we will see a removal of feral attack power within a near future. Personally I never liked the concept, although it did provide nice effects in the aspect of scaling of AP abilities and percentage AP boosts. Most likely, weapon DPS will be equalized to paw DPS, and the base 55 DPS of paws will be removed.

Sharing tanking 2H maces(that is the only type of twohander which both classes can equip) with Death Knights is quite a good concept.

However, making Druids share DPS weapons with Death Knights, Paladins and Warriors would mean that a large majority of twohanded weapons dropping in raids would be maces. In the aspect of character customization and also weapon specializations for Warriors I think it would be, however convenient, lame.

Edit: Comma overload.

Lord BEEF · 08/21/08, 5:10 PM

I think the feral attack power is more of a technical limitation than anything else. To simply remove that, they'd have to make it so the weapon dictates your swing speed and they want to keep the current attack speeds for cat and bear as this keeps it much simpler to balance. I suppose they could do a workaround and somehow let you get advantage of weapon dps while keeping your current swing speed, but that's effectively identical to feral attack power (actually inferior factoring in savage roar, unleashed rage, etc).

The simplest and most logical thing to do would be to simply remove moonkin from feral ap since mana from melee in moonkin form is gone, and just have two handed maces with 150 dps and 1400 feral attack power or whatever item level dictates. It really wouldn't cause any balance problems. Nobody is going to be scared of a druid in caster form autoattacking. It would ensure a better selection of tank itemization for both death knights and ferals. You could eliminate the 'one weapon per instance if you're lucky' crap that happens now.

If this makes maces overrepresented they could always give druids two handed axes again. They had them in the original beta for WoW. Or polearms. Whatever would feel the least weird I guess.

TheNameLessOne · 08/21/08, 6:17 PM

Polearms and spears used to be separate weapons back in the day and druids could only use spears. They removed spears from the game and unified those two weapon classes under polearms since they had so few of either. Forgot if there were any other classes that could also only use spears.

Alandriel · 08/21/08, 6:40 PM

If I was setting up itemization, I'd do the 150dps/1400FAP change, but I'd also make the tanking weapons 2h Maces (to share with DKs) and the DPS weapons staffs (to share with Hunters for statsticks), and leave 2h Axes/Swords for Warriors/Retadins/DK DPS.

Tappin · 08/21/08, 9:23 PM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF

To simply remove that, they'd have to make it so the weapon dictates your swing speed and they want to keep the current attack speeds for cat and bear as this keeps it much simpler to balance.

It's far simpler than that.
150 dps weapon --> 150 damage per second * 1 second per swing = 150 damage per swing in cat form.
150 dps weapon --> 150 damage per second * 2.5 seconds per swing = 375 damage per swing in bear form.

They would probably want to remove the base feral damage when we have a weapon equipped. Or they could choose to leave it since any of our AP scaling (not dmg, but ap) moves lose benefits like unleashed rage or savage roar benefits.

It would probably less work to change FAP to DPS than to continue to worry about FAP items. Assuming they're willing to do some minor tweaks to AP scaling and benefits from base feral damage, the only reason to keep FAP is to limit the weapons we can use.

I guess there could be some boomkin issues due to low weapon damage on caster staffs. It wouldn't be hard to balance that with a moonkin form multiplier. It seems like it's easier to adjust boomkin weapon damage than continue to balance them around different caster staffs, dps weapons, and FAP weapons at the same time. This is especially true since moonkins very seldom meleekin during groups/raids anyway and seldom swap to FAP weapons in my experience.

seminarca · 08/22/08, 12:48 AM

Latest beta patch has the following changes:

Ferocious Bite damage slightly increased.
Swipe now hits 4 targets.
Savage Roar now increases attack power 40% and lasts 14/19/24/29/34 sec depending on how many combo points you have up. (Previously 35% attack power and 9/12/15/18/21 sec)

They keep tweaking Ferocious Bite, but they are going to have to make the numbers really ridiculous to tempt us into using it .. if it continues consuming all energy after use.

The Swipe change is nice, but I'm afraid they might add a cooldown to it. It's now vastly superior to Thunder Clap, which just had its cooldown increased from 4 secs to 6 secs. Or maybe the buff is to compensate for the new Warrior AoE move.

The Savage Roar buff simply looks like a minor upwards tweak.

Lord BEEF · 08/22/08, 1:30 AM

Increasing the duration by ~60% seems a bit more than minor to me. That allows for a lot more flexibility in cycles, am I wrong?

deep · 08/22/08, 1:35 AM

In the latest beta patch, energy regeneration continues while in Bear Form or caster! Shifting out of Cat Form after a Ferocious Bite, counting to three and shifting back into Cat Form puts energy to 70 after Furor. Also a "/cast !Cat Form" simply adds 40 energy to the current energy through Furor. Can someone please confirm this is not only with my druid? :F

Ravager · 08/22/08, 1:37 AM

Originally Posted by seminarca

Latest beta patch has the following changes:

They keep tweaking Ferocious Bite, but they are going to have to make the numbers really ridiculous to tempt us into using it .. if it continues consuming all energy after use.

The Swipe change is nice, but I'm afraid they might add a cooldown to it. It's now vastly superior to Thunder Clap, which just had its cooldown increased from 4 secs to 6 secs. Or maybe the buff is to compensate for the new Warrior AoE move.

The Savage Roar buff simply looks like a minor upwards tweak.

I think those changes are pretty great.

The extra duration on Savage Roar is hardly a minor upwards tweak. Getting an extra 13 seconds on it gives you 13 extra GCDs to spend using Mangle, Shred, and Rip while gaining the benefit of Savage Roar, not to mention you won't have to refresh it as often.

The increase to AP is interesting given that nobody has had a chance to actually use the kind of level 80 gear that would scale best with it (besides Blizzard's own team) but I think we'll see some interesting results as people start reporting their performance in level 80 dungeons and gear. Obviously with the lack of FAP we'll have roughly the same amount of AP as Rogues, but while their damage will scale with their weapons, ours will scale with Savage Roar.

And the Swipe change is just great. There won't be a cooldown on it (I think it's rather silly to even worry about such a possibility) because that would completely break Druid tanking. My best guess, not being in the beta, is that we'll be seeing a lot of 4-pulls in instances and it'll be up to the various tanks to decide whether they want to use CC or if they're comfortable with their healing and just tank everything.

Lord BEEF · 08/22/08, 1:59 AM

Originally Posted by Ravager

Obviously with the lack of FAP we'll have roughly the same amount of AP as Rogues

FAP isn't going away.

We were discussing that it could potentially happen, but there has been no indication that this is their intention.

Ravager · 08/22/08, 2:20 AM

Originally Posted by deep

In the latest beta patch, energy regeneration continues while in Bear Form or caster! Shifting out of Cat Form after a Ferocious Bite, counting to three and shifting back into Cat Form puts energy to 70 after Furor. Also a "/cast !Cat Form" simply adds 40 energy to the current energy through Furor. Can someone please confirm this is not only with my druid? :F

Wow. I can only hope that is true but it smells like a bug related to us being able to use consumables in feral forms.
It sure would be a great PvP buff since most shifting is done to escape snares rather than to gain an extra 40 energy after a Ferocious Bite.