Feral questions? - Page 6

Celeras · 11/22/08, 7:41 AM

Originally Posted by Celeras

I don't understand Rannasha's thread at all. It very bluntly states that Str is the best DPS stat, followed by AP, followed by Agility. Then, he goes on to chose all agility enchants? 20 agility to gloves, over 44AP? 16 agility to boots, over 32 AP?

I just don't get where he came up with these choices. It seems completely contradictory, but there may just be something I'm not understanding.

Quoting what I said earlier in the thread, as nobody replied.

Just wanted to confirm that I was 100% right about Rannasha's information. Be wary while reading his "cat megathread". According to the latest version of Rawr posted right above me, almost all of his enchant selections are incorrect for cat DPS.

Darkrawr · 11/22/08, 7:54 AM

Just a couple things I wanted to double check on, make sure I'm on the ball here.

1) Armor is disappearing from feral staves with the next patch. Does this mean feral staves in the future will no longer have armor, or is this retroactive, all the way back to pre-WOTLK feral staves? I'm guessing all feral staves lose their armor period, just wanted to make sure I correctly understood this. Don't suppose we're getting anything in return for the item-value lost in losing the armor either, are we?

2) Something I'm not seeing too much discussion on... Our avoidance got nerfed fairly hard. Given that our dodge has been lowered form where it used to be, avoiding all the extra damage that you can becomes more important. Shouldn't one of our first priorities be to hit unparriable, to keep ourselves from insta-gibbing ourselves? To my way of thinking, if I make it so that parry-response attack can't happen, it's just as good as if I'd dodged it, and it makes me easier to heal and keeps me, and consequently my raid, on their feet. Am I wrong in how I'm thinking to prioritize expertise?

3) On a related note, I don't recall ever seeing exactly how expertise works on the combat table when you're not hitcapped. I know that when you perform an attack, there are certain results, (normal hit, crit, dodge, parry, miss) and that the way +hit works is to push miss off of the table entirely. I'm curious, if I haven't hitcapped yet, but were to get myself expertise-capped (hit unparriable), how would that work on the combat table? Would it start by pushing the Miss off first, and then begin on Dodge on Parry, leaving a % of Dodge/Parry on the table equal to however much +hit I needed to reach the hitcap? Or would it just push Parry and Dodge off entirely, and leave the miss on the table? I ask because it would seem that hitting the expertise cap would be more important from a survival/avoidance standpoint than hitting the hitcap. Thus, if threat is not a terribly big problem, expertise should far outweigh hit in terms of value, right?

4) I know the 2-piece Tier 4 bonus no longer works at level 80. Does this apply to set bonuses in general? Is my 2T6 still something I should consider when weighing my old gear against the new stuff?

Rangifer · 11/22/08, 8:42 AM

Darkrawr:
1) If they do remove armor from weapons (given the removal of the bear bonus, this may not be necessary), they would reallocate the item points, as they did with armor when the removed bonus armor (ie heavy clefthoof).

2) Expertise is good. However, Stam and AC are still more important, since you still want to be prepared for a worst case string of hits.

3) If I remember correctly, the order is Miss - Dodge - Parry - Glance - Block - Crit - Hit.

4) Just 2T4 as far as I know. The set bonus was too good at 80 if it wasn't removed.

manapaws · 11/22/08, 9:25 AM

A question on set bonuses - what are the other ferals using? I'm currently using 2pc t6 and 2pc t7 for both bear and cat. The t7 4pc is more bear oriented, so will probably strive for that - which leads me to my next question - how much AP / Crit would I need to gain to not miss the loss of +15% mangle threat from 2pc t6?

I don't really care about 4pc for dps, will probably use 2pc + offset crap.

• Abradix · 11/22/08, 10:09 AM

The 2p T6 bonus isn't worth holding on to unless you're having extreme aggro problems for some reason. Any level 80 gear will give you much more surviveability then T6, and the minor threat difference isn't worth it. If you're looking for an estimate of how much threat it is overall, WWS isn't loading for me right now but if I recall correctly, Mangle was around 18% of my total damage on this week's Patchwerk, so 2p T6 isnt worth more then a maximum 3% threat.

Malazaar · 11/22/08, 10:57 AM

Edit: Nevermind, i should read more thoroughly

Abranor · 11/22/08, 11:32 AM

Originally Posted by Darkrawr

Just a couple things I wanted to double check on, make sure I'm on the ball here.

1) Armor is disappearing from feral staves with the next patch. Does this mean feral staves in the future will no longer have armor, or is this retroactive, all the way back to pre-WOTLK feral staves? I'm guessing all feral staves lose their armor period, just wanted to make sure I correctly understood this. Don't suppose we're getting anything in return for the item-value lost in losing the armor either, are we?

Armor is not disappearing from feral staves. It is not going to be increased by the mutiplier.

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler on the WoW Forums

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q u o t e:
finally, in a previous post, you stated that all armor item budget would be reallocated on staves. For example my staff from heroic halls of lightning has 700 armor. Will it continue to have 700 armor that just no longer gets multiplied by anything, or will those item budgets be spent and the staff will gain (purely random here) say 20 agi and 30 stam?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It will get 700 armor that is not multiplied by anything (except the meta).

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Upcoming Feral Changes, Part III

Moobar · 11/22/08, 4:33 PM

Originally Posted by david0925

There is NO rotation involved with cat DPS, priority is as follows
1.Keep Savage Roar up
2.Keep Mangle Up
3.Keep Rake up
4.Keep rip up

Anyone knows a good addon to help with keeping all of these up?

Pzychotix · 11/22/08, 5:31 PM

Originally Posted by Abranor

Armor is not disappearing from feral staves. It is not going to be increased by the mutiplier.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Upcoming Feral Changes, Part III

Sadly, this means that the armor staves are still going to be the primary tank weapons.

charriu · 11/22/08, 7:45 PM

Originally Posted by Moobar

Anyone knows a good addon to help with keeping all of these up?

I found ClassTimer to be quite good, actually. DoTimer can help, as well.

coldbear · 11/22/08, 8:05 PM

Originally Posted by Moobar

Anyone knows a good addon to help with keeping all of these up?

I just yesterday figured out how to get DoTimer to keep track of my own cooldowns, the debuffs on my target that I care about, and Savage Roar uptime in the same column/format/position as the debuffs - all in the center of the screen where it belongs.

It's complicated and honestly a bit of a pain to learn, took me about two weeks to figure out (but I'm not all that, computer-wise). Walkthrough and further information in my post history in the Druid Questlons thread. I like to keep the number of addons I use to an absolute minimum, but if you just want an easy solution, go with two or three easy-to-setup addons to accomplish the same thing.

Shrea · 11/22/08, 8:14 PM

Someone posted asking about gear and whats good to grab before you get into Naxx 25-man. I was just a little curious on idols. Ive seen the updated [Item not found!], which is [Item not found!], but Im just curious if that would be the best one now. Theres a new rip idol [Idol of Worship] and then theres also the idol from BT [Idol of the White Stag]

Just curious on peoples thoughts on which would be the best Idol to use for dps.

unitsinc · 11/22/08, 9:08 PM

I've not quite hit 80 yet, but have been heavily looking at my professions. I know there is a profession topic, but I wanted to discuss them in regards to our specific class/spec. I'm currently a LW/Enchanter. As usual, I am looking for the best way to "tweak" my character out to maximize every last bit that I can.

So I know as a LW, I get the fur linings. For tanking, this nets me 78 stamina(90-12) and for DPS I get 64(114-50) AP.

As an enchanter I gain 48 stamina(24 on each ring) and 64 AP.

The only other profession I was seriously considering was JC.

As a JC I gain 33((41-30)*3) stamina and/or 21((27-20)*3) Str or Agi.

Adding the numbers up, it seems that I'm better of with my current professions, but Rawr shows that for tanking(which is my main role) that the [Figurine - Monarch Crab] and oddly enough the [Figurine - Ruby Hare] are the two best trinkets(after the armor changes obviously) And as I seem to recall, in BC, they later came out with epic versions of the figurines later on which would lend even more weight to JC.

Any thoughts?

Valerian · 11/23/08, 1:11 AM

Originally Posted by Astrylian

So is this the new thread where I should post about updates to Rawr? Or perhaps we need a thread here for Rawr.Cat and Rawr.Bear? Or even one for each?

Download - Rawr - Release: Rawr 2.1.1

Recent Changes:
v2.1.1: Improved calculations for level 80 combat for several models (Cat, Bear, HolyPriest, ShadowPriest, Mage, Moonkin, Tree, Healadin). Added Leatherworking and Inscription self-enchants. Fixed some bugs with mass gem replacement and the optimizer.
v2.1: Updated for level 80 content. Removed models which haven't yet been updated for WoW 3.0. Added two brand new models: Enhance and DPSDK! Welcome to Rawr, Enhancement Shamans and DPS Death Knights!

Been playing around with Rawr, and I'm seeing that Mangle-Rip-SR5 is my "optimal" dps method. Even when I remove my 2T6 pieces it remains at Mangle-Rip-SR. Is shred going to end up coming back into play? Is it just that my gear is not up to the level where Shred becomes better yet? I'm just curious if our general "rotation" is going to change or if it is just always going to be mangle-rip-SR.

Lebron · 11/23/08, 1:37 AM

The best DPS Idol in the game at this moment is [Idol of Terror]. Granting 65 Agility on a constant basis is almost a full 1% of crit, which we're hungering for in the start of WotLK. Later on in Raiding I see [Idol of Worship] being the best because Rip will scale higher than Ferocious Bite.

My current rotation is a Mangle Spam/Rake/FB+TF/Rip rotation while keeping Savage Roar up at all times. Savage Roar kept up with 2-3 point combo finishes should make your Rake and Rip tick for tremendous amounts. If your using the Rip Glyph then you should have enough time to stack up 5 more combo points, Ferocious Bite, Tiger's Fury, and start up the rotation again. Since Ferocious Bite converts additional energy into damage, Tiger's Fury is dire after a FB.

Raid buffed Rake's are ticking 1.2k+. Rake is now part of the Druid rotation and should always be kept up. Usually at the 4 or 5 combo point area, with a finisher following.

From 3.0 to WotLK release Ferocious Bite was the way to go when specced into Rend and Tear. But now with Crit scaling down your chances of FB critting are lowered. A consistent Rip rotation will be your best bet and overall more DPS on a longer fight.

Savage Roar is your friend, as many others have said Savage Roar is your foundation. Build Rake, Rip, Mangle, Melee Swings all on your foundation.