Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 93

• Falk · 09/25/08, 1:26 PM

Wasn't it confirmed to be 1 rage? (But yeah)

Khanus · 09/25/08, 2:04 PM

Originally Posted by sadris

If you're already swimming in rage why does it matter that this buff will give you more? You can only dump rage as fast as the GCD lets you.

Maybe if they reintroduce the Reliquary "rage burn" mechanic, but then you really could just turn off Sanc.

Wyldthang · 09/25/08, 2:53 PM

Originally Posted by Beace

I hadn't noticed this before. Doesn't this mean that a well geared prot paladin will regen silly amounts of mana with holy shield up?

Yes, mana problems for a prot pally should drastically decrease. This is one reason I'm strongly considering making my prot pally my tanking character for WotLK. If I do decide to stay feral with my druid, I'll likely go for dps. I know that seems like a taboo decision in this thread- being a dps feral druid, that is.

Garanthir · 09/25/08, 4:08 PM

Originally Posted by Wyldthang

I know that seems like a taboo decision in this thread- being a dps feral druid, that is.

Huh? There's plenty of DPS data in this thread, a lot of discussion focuses on tanking at the moment, but that's not to say DPS is "taboo". Tanking just happens to be the current focus.

summlan · 09/26/08, 6:00 AM

Is it just me or are more feraldruids fed up with tanking sunwell? (20 hours a week of mangle, maul, swipe smashing)

I get upset every time i see a new "what about feral tanking" thread in the betaforum. Id be much more happy if they fixed our pvp and dps problems first and then did some tweaking for tanking.
But it sure seems like a lot of ferals find tanking fun since its such a big part of this thread, i just cant see why

Duilliath · 09/26/08, 8:21 AM

//edit: Post I replied to was moved to Dung Heap, so scratched that bit.

Originally Posted by summlan

Is it just me or are more feraldruids fed up with tanking sunwell? (20 hours a week of mangle, maul, swipe smashing)

I get upset every time i see a new "what about feral tanking" thread in the betaforum. Id be much more happy if they fixed our pvp and dps problems first and then did some tweaking for tanking.
But it sure seems like a lot of ferals find tanking fun since its such a big part of this thread, i just cant see why

Because most of them are old school ferals that pushed to tank in MC/BWL and beyond. It's what Ferals did best in TBC (DPS is nice but falters swiftly). On top of that, Tanking is one of the more involving raid jobs. Not always (Mother is a snooze fest, for example), but generally speaking.

Beace · 09/26/08, 8:47 AM

Originally Posted by summlan

Is it just me or are more feraldruids fed up with tanking sunwell? (20 hours a week of mangle, maul, swipe smashing)

I get upset every time i see a new "what about feral tanking" thread in the betaforum. Id be much more happy if they fixed our pvp and dps problems first and then did some tweaking for tanking.
But it sure seems like a lot of ferals find tanking fun since its such a big part of this thread, i just cant see why

I think the main reason is that in TBC we've been a lot better tanks than dps. Except for a few gimmick fights, we can tank anything a paladin and/or warrior can. DPS wise we've been strongly lacking, basically being beat by everyone at end tier (spriests and prot warriors might occasionally end up below us).

Personally I enjoy tanking by far the most though, whick is why I'm playing a feral druid (for various reasons I don't really enjoy playing a prot warrior or prot paladin much). I feel kinda sad to be saying it, but honestly if dps or pvp was my focus, I would not be playing a feral druid, but most likely a rogue.l

Gingershnaps · 09/26/08, 9:56 AM

Originally Posted by Wyldthang

I know that seems like a taboo decision in this thread- being a dps feral druid, that is.

There's a lot of discussion of DPS if you look back through the thread. Lately, there's been a lot of tanking discussion because the devs have been working on Feral's tanking talents. I'm sure that once the changes to bring us up to rogue DPS start being implemented in beta (talent, mechanic changes, abilities, etc), that the focus will diversify a bit more to include that.

halmmar · 09/26/08, 11:47 AM

Originally Posted by Beace

DPS wise we've been strongly lacking, basically being beat by everyone at end tier (spriests and prot warriors might occasionally end up below us).

Lacking, yes. Strongly lacking, no.
I do about as much damage as arms warriors (who get into the enhancement shaman group (bloodlust+windfury)). And I almost always pull more dps than the shadow priests (although that's not much to brag about).
We get some pretty nice utility (5% crit, innervate, rebirth and easy to keep alive). We just don't scale well with bloodlust and haste potions.
But I think 1600 dps is pretty ok for someone who's mainly there to offtank trash. Sure, the rogue or hunter may pull 2500 dps. But if they die at 50% boss health (and someone always fucks up), your res is worth maybe 1000 extra dps (rogue now unbuffed).

Now, the annoying thing is carrying around >4 sets of gear (tank boss/trash, fire resist, shadow resist, dps and heal)...

Neddie · 09/26/08, 11:51 AM

Originally Posted by Beace

I think the main reason is that in TBC we've been a lot better tanks than dps. Except for a few gimmick fights, we can tank anything a paladin and/or warrior can. DPS wise we've been strongly lacking, basically being beat by everyone at end tier (spriests and prot warriors might occasionally end up below us).

Not only in BC but before that. We've never been top DPS, but (if you could find the gear) we've always been fairly capable tanks.

I enjoy tanking more because a tank can make or break a fight, and an individual DPSer (or healer for that matter) rarely can. That's also a big reason I care more about them making us viable tanks and care less about viable DPS. Ferals now have a reputation as decent tanks but don't have a reputation as decent DPS. If WotLK comes out and we're weak tanks it will be hard to find a raid spot, because we'll have to compete with 10 other classes for a DPS spot, and there will be a prejudice already that druids are bad at pure DPS and scale poorly with gear. If WotLK comes out and we're decent tanks but our DPS is still sub-par, we're likely to be desired for our tanking abilities (at the very least off-tanking abilities) and hopefully we'll still have good enough DPS that we won't be kicked out of the raid when our tanking isn't needed.

It also seems to me that it's much easier to balance our DPS. It's only one variable to tweak. They could increase the damage of rip, the AP boost of savage roar, etc. etc. Lots of ways to adjust it to the value they want. For tanking it's much more complicated -- they need to keep our threat high, but not make our damage too high. They don't want to make any one tank required for a certain fight, but they also don't want to make every tank class identical.

As for PvP, I'd love to go back to feral being a viable competitive PvP spec, but at this point pretty much anything they do is a boost, and as complicated as tweaking tanking is, tweaking PvP will take a long time. I'm pretty sure WotLK will be live and full of level 80s doing arenas before they're done tweaking PvP.

Beace · 09/26/08, 1:19 PM

Originally Posted by Neddie

Not only in BC but before that. We've never been top DPS, but (if you could find the gear) we've always been fairly capable tanks.

I purposely didn't mention pre-TBC because feral wasn't really an accepted spec back then. To a point, we were capable tanks, but the bridge between a feral druid and a prot warrior was certainly a lot bigger than it is in TBC.

• Diameter · 09/26/08, 2:54 PM

Currently, testing the dps of a feral druid at level 70 will not equate to anything close to what we have at 80. I believe one of the main solutions to the problem is the addition of a scaling self-buff ability which we get at level 75 - that being Savage Roar.

I've love to see nightcrowler edit his dps simulation to assume a bear tank or arms warrior who can keep mangle/trauma & a bleed up 100% of the time to see how much this affects our dps. Unfortunently, I can not find any additional talents that would increase our dps if you skipped all Improved Mangle and Savage Fury. So, the spec would remain the same, but you would exclude mangle from your cycle.

coredumperror · 09/27/08, 6:54 AM

Has anyone done any math on which professions would most benefit ferals? I'm currently LW/Ench, and from what I've read, I'll have access to these things that other professions won't have:

Leatherworking:
Fur Lining - Attack Power
Fur Lining - Stamina
Fur Lining - Resistances: 60 of any one resist to your bracer
Jormungar Leg Reinforcements: These are the same stats as the BoE Frosthide Leg Armor, but they require significantly cheaper materials to create. AKA, no real benefit for a hardcore raider.
Nerubian Leg Reinforcements: Same garbage as the Jormungar: identical stats for less materials.

They haven't added new drums yet. Whether or not Tinnitus is still in effect, I'm not certain at this time. I tested it by popping one of my drums of battle on beta and I didn't get the debuff, but it could be invisible (like potion sickness seems to be).

Enchanting:
Enchant Ring - Stamina
Enchant Ring - Assault

The Enchanting benefits are straightforward: no one else can enchant rings, so that's 48 more stam or 64 more AP.

However, the Leatherworking bracer enchants are just better versions of existing enchants that everyone can have. With Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault providing 38 AP, that means LWs get 114 - 38 = 76 AP. With Enchant Bracers - Major Stamina (not on wowhead) providing 16 stam, LWs get 90 - 16 = 74 stam. So far there doesn't seem to be any way to enchant bracers with resistances besides the Fur Lining, so that's a situationally powerful benefit to being an LW.

Therefore, for the purposes of tanking with LW/ench, I would have access to 74 + 48 = 122 more stam than I would if I had no professions. For DPS, I'd have access to 64 + 76 = 140 more AP. That seems a bit unbalanced in terms of the item value of 122 stam vs 140 AP, so here's hoping these boost the AP benefit a bit.

Now, I've been seriously considering dropping LW for JC, as I see these benefits:

BoP Trinkets (and these are just the lvl 75 blue ones. The epics will be far better):
Figurine - Monarch Crab
Figurine - Emerald Boar
Jade Ring of Slaying
Prismatic Jewelcraftter's Gems: These are gems created by the special new Dragon's Eye gem. They have better stats than the best epic gems, count as all 3 colors, and you can have any 3 of them in your gear at one time.

Examples include:
Solid Dragon's Eye
Delicate Dragon's Eye

So, as a tanking JC, with the lowest level bop trinkets we know about, I could be gaining a whopping 156 stam from one trinket slot. That is, however, giving up something else that could be in that slot. I could also get 96 AP and 54 agi (or 54 of any other stat) from one trinket, with a use for some extra dps every 5 minutes. In addition to those, I could have one more "better than the best" gem somewhere in my gear, plus whatever else they add as bop JC stuff later.

Considering that at this point, professions really don't seem nearly finished, this whole post could become obsolete at any time, but I was bored and figured I might as well put forth what knowledge I had

Beace · 09/27/08, 9:13 AM

Going by Profession - Leatherworking, there is another much stronger lw-only leg enchant. Not really sure what to belive on that subject...

For tanking at least, I think we can forget about the use of jc-only trinkets, unless they do something major there. I'm pretty sure we'll be running around with dual armor trinkets. The gems are pretty damn nice though.

Obviously we haven't seen everything yet, but it's gonna take a lot more than what I've seen so far to change from lw/ench. I'm also kinda expecting them to be introducing good crafting bop items from dungeons (think the lw-only boots from ssc, and the chest from sunwell, etc.

coredumperror · 09/27/08, 1:16 PM

Originally Posted by Beace

Going by Profession - Leatherworking, there is another much stronger lw-only leg enchant. Not really sure what to belive on that subject..

From what I can tell, that was removed when they added Fur Linings. Made me a sad bear.

manapaws · 09/27/08, 1:31 PM

Speaking of professions, my druid is a JC and Engineer. I'm guessing epic level gems won't be available til Icecrown level (epic gems weren't available in BC til mh/bt until they gave them to everyone after the content was mostly on farm anyway). This being the case, the blue quality gems are 16 stats ie 16 agility , or 8 agility 8 hit, etc. At the early stage of the game, JC's will have access to 27 agility ones, or 33 agility more since they're unique x 3. They also won't have to worry about metagem criteria colours since the JC only gems are all colours.

Onto engineering, and with the way omen of clarity now works, anyone game to provide a dps estimate for Hyperspeed Accelerators? It does take up an enchant slot though, so it's competing against other hand slot enchants (currently known ones are 44ap, 20agil, 15expertise, 15hit).

In anycase, I'm fairly happy to be able to roll into naxx with some tier 7 goggles and 2 stamina trinkets figurine - monarch crab and sonic booster- will do nicely until (knowing my luck) some better stuff drops. Or allow my DKP to go towards items I'd prefer

teiglin · 09/27/08, 2:20 PM

Engi glove enchant is pretty horrible for pve, averaging out to less than 23 haste rating. Compared to existing 20 agi, 20 hit rating, or 44 AP, it would be a minimal upgrade at best. I believe it's meant to be a pvp enchant since you could do large burst with that kind of haste even if it's for a very short time.

Of course, that doesn't include possible synergy with well-timed CDs. It has decent synergy with lust/heroism because of multiplicative haste stacking and excellent synergy with AP trinkets, but no real synergy with berserk. I imagine the consequences of good stacking would be fairly minor. Maybe Rawr will answer these questions for us.

halmmar · 09/27/08, 4:10 PM

At least it seems we get a nice selection of jewellery pieces this time around (17.5k armor). Let's hope there's some druid items in each tier, too.
Cloak
Neck
Ring
Ring
Trinket
Trinket

On the subject of professions I must say I'm a bit disappointed of the alchemy tank trinket. The on-use ability of the JC trinket (1 minute cooldown, macro it with barkskin) is way better than potion efficiency (unless you have heavy diminishing returns, I guess).

raffy · 09/27/08, 9:40 PM

Originally Posted by halmmar

On the subject of professions I must say I'm a bit disappointed of the alchemy tank trinket. The on-use ability of the JC trinket (1 minute cooldown, macro it with barkskin) is way better than potion efficiency (unless you have heavy diminishing returns, I guess).

Your net incoming damage will be lower if you don't overlap avoidance and mitigation abilities.

unitsinc · 09/27/08, 9:52 PM

So I just ran some VERY loose numbers and I added the armor values on our 25Naxx T7 and the armor from the off-slots posted above, 800 for a weapon, and used the armor values from the Deadly Gladiator Belt/Boot/Bracers and I came up with 7027.

Unless I'm mistaken, I think that comes out to right around 45k. That's armor capped again isn't it after just the first tier of raiding? Our armor multiplier is 6.4 correct?

Kieran · 09/27/08, 10:55 PM

Originally Posted by unitsinc

So I just ran some VERY loose numbers and I added the armor values on our 25Naxx T7 and the armor from the off-slots posted above, 800 for a weapon, and used the armor values from the Deadly Gladiator Belt/Boot/Bracers and I came up with 7027.

Unless I'm mistaken, I think that comes out to right around 45k. That's armor capped again isn't it after just the first tier of raiding? Our armor multiplier is 6.4 correct?

No, the multiplier is (base armor x 1.1) x 500% = 550%, so your armor would be 38648.5 .

unitsinc · 09/27/08, 11:50 PM

Ah, my mistake. I just saw the jewelry posted above and they quoted 17.5k, so I just added the total armor up and then divided the 17.5k by the total and it came out with ~6.4.

So with inspiration that puts us right above 48k.

halmmar · 09/28/08, 12:58 AM

Originally Posted by raffy

You're net incoming damage will be lower if you don't overlap avoidance and mitigation abilities.

Yes, but usually you use your cooldown moves if you're dying (too many large hits in a row) or during some sort of silence/enrage mechanic.

Mijae · 09/28/08, 1:57 AM

Originally Posted by unitsinc

So I just ran some VERY loose numbers and I added the armor values on our 25Naxx T7 and the armor from the off-slots posted above, 800 for a weapon, and used the armor values from the Deadly Gladiator Belt/Boot/Bracers and I came up with 7027.

Unless I'm mistaken, I think that comes out to right around 45k. That's armor capped again isn't it after just the first tier of raiding? Our armor multiplier is 6.4 correct?

With full Naxx 25 gear (plus Offering of Sacrifice) and full buffs including Elixir of Protection, Eliixir of Mighty Agility, Imp MotW (1050), Imp Devo (1800), and Imp SoE... we could potentially be over 47K armor (without Inspiration). I'm really not sure how they're going to stop us from hitting the cap again.

david0925 · 09/28/08, 3:00 AM

Originally Posted by Mijae

With full Naxx 25 gear (plus Offering of Sacrifice) and full buffs including Elixir of Protection, Eliixir of Mighty Agility, Imp MotW (1050), Imp Devo (1800), and Imp SoE... we could potentially be over 47K armor (without Inspiration). I'm really not sure how they're going to stop us from hitting the cap again.

If they really wanted to nerf the armor thing again they'll probably axe bear form from 500 to 460 (namely 360% bonus, which was the old moonkin armor value)

Doing the math on naxx 25 gear using just the armor values I have on post 2176
Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion

The armor will go down to 33202, which seems to be more in line with other tanks (assuming they want to have similar values for tanks armorwise).

In order to balance that, they need to give us more aoe threat as well as on demand buttons.

Now for a bit of personal complaint: the flavor of this game has really gone dull in WoTLK. While I know dps/healer/tank should perform within expectation of different class of a different role, right now they're homogenizing so many abilities I don't know if I'm really playing an MMO anymore.