Feral questions? - Page 45

Tcon · 06/23/09, 8:48 AM

Was testing dps on a dummy today, applied FF etc. After a while a friend of mine (moonking) applied imp FF, and both FF's stayed on the dummy. Does this mean that they stack? So you get 2 times 5% armor reduction?

Shonassir · 06/23/09, 8:49 AM

Lol it would end up being something that stupid. Just recently got Black Ice, and totally forgot Druids never had Polearms before the recent patch. That is probably exactly the reason the stats are showing different comparisons..no more staff atm

. I appreciate the help and apologize for the seeming stupidity.

Murna · 06/23/09, 8:50 AM

I just wanted to say, we don't need to level our weapon skill.
But Duiliath is right - in caster form our weapon skill of course matters. If your's is too low, your crit chance is much lower as well in caster form.
I can see that you don't have any weapon skill of 400 (looking at your achievements), your friend does have them...

@Tcon: No they don't stack. I never paid attention, but I guess this is blizzards solution to the problem when we can't apply feral faerie fire, when imp. FF is up.

Shonassir · 06/23/09, 8:51 AM

Again, my staves are maxed, but just upgraded to a pole-arm and never leveled the skill. Something so simple and gets overlooked, <sigh> i feel like an idiot now. Thanks for the help guys.

Fuzzywuz · 06/23/09, 12:21 PM

Originally Posted by baldeagle

I have set up the gemming options to show ArP gems, and they consistently come in a little below Delicates, even though I am at 208 ArP rating. This has bothered me a long time about Rawr, in that everything I read here says I should be stacking ArP gems in place of all my agi gems now, yet Rawr contradicts this. Other than this one topic, Rawr has been fantastic as a guide for gearing out my kitty set, so I am reluctant to disregard it on this topic as well, yet every post I read here says abandon my agi gems now.

I am really confused and would appreciate your feedback. Do I swap out all my agi gems now for Arp? or just stick with what I have. I am really quite pleased with my current dps numbers, having hit 7200 on Thaddius the other night, but if stacking Arp gems will increase it even more, I would do that.

Thanks in advance for your help.

If you decide to gem for ArP, its generally agreed that you should be able to eclipse a static value of ArP--Otherwise, it's better to gem for agility.

Doing a copy-paste from nightcrowlers excellent thread: "At about 350 ArPen with RIP idol and 200 ArPen with Shred idol, ArPen becames a better stats than agility"

However.

Mirroring what Cluey said, rawr and FBN are simulators that assume a "stand and shred" rotation and more often than not, this isn't the case. It really boils down to the external factors of how your guild does a particular fight; what you notice works best for you is how you should gem. Personally, I have an ArP set where I can hit the hardcap with a trinket proc, and an Agility set where I do more than button-mash shred, or where I'm stuck out of range of a boss avoiding an AoE with my Rip/Rake dot's still ticking.

xxmykaxx · 07/17/09, 8:39 AM

I have tanked for quiet some time with occasional cat dps if it required. And i never had many problems or concerns (due to this sites help)

But yesterday i tanked / dps-ed the first time with an arms warrior by my side since 3.1. And my mangle timer kept being cancelled. At first i thought the add on was failing, but my dps dropped so something was up.

Now i found out that the spell Trauma cancels out our Mangle since patch 3.1.

Does anyone know how serious this can be in terms for dps in cat?
And if there are any disadvantages linked to this for bear form (i assume not, but you never know).

Duilliath · 07/17/09, 8:44 AM

It's extremely serious for catform. It means you can totally ignore Mangle and use your energy on Shred, Rake, Rip, SR and Bite only.

baldeagle · 07/17/09, 9:56 AM

Originally Posted by xxmykaxx

I have tanked for quiet some time with occasional cat dps if it required. And i never had many problems or concerns (due to this sites help)

But yesterday i tanked / dps-ed the first time with an arms warrior by my side since 3.1. And my mangle timer kept being cancelled. At first i thought the add on was failing, but my dps dropped so something was up.

Now i found out that the spell Trauma cancels out our Mangle since patch 3.1.

Does anyone know how serious this can be in terms for dps in cat?
And if there are any disadvantages linked to this for bear form (i assume not, but you never know).

You say your dps dropped. That should not be related to the warrior putting up Trauma. It creates the same bleed debuff our mangle does, so no drop in dps should be the result, unless you're wasting your energy constantly trying to reaplly mangle over and over, thereby not shredding as much as you would normally if you were not trying to reapply mangle. Guaranteed, if you just let the warrior apply trauma, you'll be fine, with an increase in dps.

As for bear form, somewhat the same thing, you don't have to keep up mangle, saving your rage for other attacks.

Cedrich · 07/17/09, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by xxmykaxx

I have tanked for quiet some time with occasional cat dps if it required. And i never had many problems or concerns (due to this sites help)

But yesterday i tanked / dps-ed the first time with an arms warrior by my side since 3.1. And my mangle timer kept being cancelled. At first i thought the add on was failing, but my dps dropped so something was up.

Now i found out that the spell Trauma cancels out our Mangle since patch 3.1.

Does anyone know how serious this can be in terms for dps in cat?
And if there are any disadvantages linked to this for bear form (i assume not, but you never know).

To elaborate slightly on the above poster, Trauma and Mangle give the same effect of equal magnitude and therefor will overwrite each other . The only difference is that the Arms Warrior applies Trauma passively simply by attacking a target, while we need to use Mangle to apply the Mangle debuff. In the presence of an Arms Warrior (or a Feral tank on your target) you should omit Mangle from your rotation completely - is does less damage per point of energy then Shred and applying the debuff is unnecessary in this situation. An Arms Warrior to apply trauma means a fairly significant increase in damage output for us.

Boevis · 07/28/09, 7:49 AM

NI Increases your spell power, iLotP doesn't scale with spell power. Aside from that, it specifically says it only increases the healing done to you, not by you, so A.

Juveline · 07/28/09, 10:28 PM

First :
Nurturing Instinct,doesn't increase your spell power ,
Nurturing Instinct (Rank 1)
Increases your healing spells by up to 35% of your Agility.
there is nothing about spell power.

Second :
And About Improved Leader of the Pack(Rank 1)
Your Leader of the Pack ability also causes affected targets to heal themselves for 2% of their total health.
So the healing from iLotP is based on your total health.

RagasLS · 07/29/09, 3:22 AM

Actualy, Nurturing Instincts DOES increase your spell power, but only for healing spells. You can even see your spell power gained from agility in character sheet.

Juveline · 07/29/09, 6:09 AM

"Actualy, Nurturing Instincts DOES increase your spell power, but only for healing spells"
But i think you mean NI increase your Bonus healing based on your agility

,becouse spell power include dmg + heal.

RagasLS · 07/29/09, 8:11 AM

Originally Posted by Juveline

But i think you mean NI increase your Bonus healing based on your agility

,becouse spell power include dmg + heal.

Nope, I really meant spell power and not bonus healing - the bonus to healing spells you get is calculated based on this spell power and is higher than 70% of agility. However, the spell power you get from this talent is only used for healing spells. You can test it yourself.

The talent's description is quite misleading.

coldbear · 07/29/09, 11:37 PM

Searched this forum for a few hours but didn't find a better solution than what I figured out myself for XT hardmode first heart phase (we have some people in raid pulling about 4k dps and our raid comps are rarely optimal with regards to specs/debuffs, so I'm trying to make up for it):
1. do good dps before the first heart phase to help us beat the enrage timer (best yet was wipe at .8% a while into the enrage) but still make sure to have 5cp and full energy bar right before first heart
2. get FFF up asap unless there's boomkin in raid
3. Mangle unless it or Trauma is up already
4. Berserk
5. Speed Potion
6. Normal rotation, i.e. keep Rake/Rip up and get some FB's in (I use FaceMauler to help me with this part, though I'm unsure of the exact settings I should have)
7. if heart phase is about to end and dots might get you into hard mode anyway ...AND you have > 2(?) CP's up that are about to go to waste, FB?
8. anyone care to argue that even with a raid that's just barely getting the encounter into hard mode (we're talking "No, we didn't kill the heart in time - Oh wait no the dots took care of it") - that I should NOT Berserk during the Heroism that's obviously going to be popped on the Heart phase? I - along with most people I've seen on here describe feral dps algorithms on hard mode Heart phase - still think that the loss of efficiency that is Berserk+Heroism is outweighed by the imperative to get max burst in during a very small time-window. My theory would be that once a raidgroup is comfortably killing the heart every time Berserk would be better held for non-Heroism time, i.e. popped as normal asap, then whenever CD is up.

Anyone care to point me to a post from someone more knowledgeable than myself?