Perhaps you should just delay your Hysteria+Berserk until 1 or 2 TF cycles in?
My reasoning here was to get the max amount of CDs from Berserk, and that the rare few experiences I've had previous with getting Hysteria told me I didn't need to. The responses to this post make me feel justified in that stance.
Originally Posted by Cliffjumper
I've had issues with this on Vezax, which we use a DK to tank...
Who is your prot pally using his HoS on most of the time in your 10 mans, if he thinks you're not a good target for it?
It's interesting that you mention Vezax, because this is where the problem is most prevalent. The arguement was that HoS was better served on a warlock, with emphasis on the Animus burn. I understand the variables of Vezax that could lead to high ranged dps, I couldn't understand HoS on a warlock, rather than HoS on myself and the warlock shattering.
With regards to the comments on the problem stemming from the tank's TPS, this now seems to be the most likely cause. The issue of threat being more prevalent in 10s could easily be explained by the prot pally's more central tanking role, and reliance on a somewhat forgetful hunter(when it comes to MD) for a threat assist.
Now the question is as a new member, how should I break this to the previously mentioned tank officer? :P
Also, am I completely off base here in remembering that the -threat from cower is affected by the cat -30%threat modifier?
It's interesting that you mention Vezax, because this is where the problem is most prevalent. The arguement was that HoS was better served on a warlock, with emphasis on the Animus burn. I understand the variables of Vezax that could lead to high ranged dps, I couldn't understand HoS on a warlock, rather than HoS on myself and the warlock shattering.
With regards to the comments on the problem stemming from the tank's TPS, this now seems to be the most likely cause. The issue of threat being more prevalent in 10s could easily be explained by the prot pally's more central tanking role, and reliance on a somewhat forgetful hunter(when it comes to MD) for a threat assist.
Now the question is as a new member, how should I break this to the previously mentioned tank officer? :P
Also, am I completely off base here in remembering that the -threat from cower is affected by the cat -30%threat modifier?
There's a fundamental difference in the way threat is problem for us vs others, which often stems back to berserk. Sure any class can have a lucky couple crits at the start and pull agro. Any fight I pop berserk within the first 10 seconds I risk pulling agro (especially when I don't have Vigilance). On Vezax, ranged have the opposite problem. They often get starved with no shadow crash to start and can get long streaks where it's up. HoS is an instant percent threat reduction, so the higher your total threat the more it reduces it. That means it highly favors the long term threat generators over burst threat at the start. That includes Hodir where ranged can potentially throw out huge sustained numbers.
Of course, it's a 2 minute cooldown so it could potentially be used both at the start and again when threat number get high enough to warrant using it. It will also depend how many paladins you have in your raid vs threat risks.
While a fair commentary, I understand the mechanics of threat, Vezax, and HoS. Other than the questions I had in the previous post, the only one remaining would be that of justifying using an external threat drop on a warlock, over a feral that has none. If anything I'd assume the onus would be on the warlock to watch it's threat given the special circumstances on the fight.
There's a fundamental difference in the way threat is problem for us vs others, which often stems back to berserk. Sure any class can have a lucky couple crits at the start and pull agro. Any fight I pop berserk within the first 10 seconds I risk pulling agro (especially when I don't have Vigilance). On Vezax, ranged have the opposite problem. They often get starved with no shadow crash to start and can get long streaks where it's up. HoS is an instant percent threat reduction, so the higher your total threat the more it reduces it. That means it highly favors the long term threat generators over burst threat at the start. That includes Hodir where ranged can potentially throw out huge sustained numbers.
Of course, it's a 2 minute cooldown so it could potentially be used both at the start and again when threat number get high enough to warrant using it. It will also depend how many paladins you have in your raid vs threat risks.
Sustained threat really isn't an issue though (if it is, that's definitely a TPS issue on the tanks side), sure, HoS used on a 800k threat warlock 3 minutes into the fight is going to reduce more threat than on a 100k threat feral druid 30 seconds in, but the tank is a lot more likely to be at 1mil threat 3 minutes in, than at 100k 30 seconds in both because of the miss factor, but also because most tank threat requires a significant buildup of debuffs to really get going, while a feral (or any class that's burning cooldowns) is going at 200% higher than average. When you don't have to worry about things like interrupts, cc's, or moving around (or other things that gimp us in PvP), Feral Burst DPS really is among the most absurd. And again, we are one of 4 classes without a threat drop, so while it's possible for that warlock to be at 1.2mil threat after 3 minutes with excellent crits, it takes 1 gcd for him to drop down to 600k, meanwhile the druid can cower (at a significant DPS cost) and drop down to 96k ... not really that useful.
I have to wonder if they're going to add in something to Cower like they did with Feint (or give us the no-stealth-break on falling damage, or a decent (ie. not moonfire) ranged attack since every other melee class has one (especially DK's who can hit for 4k crit for 8k from range on both Rune and Runic Power abilities), or immunity to snares while shifting since mages have that with blink and we currently just die horribly while being slowed by every other class in game) But that's all irrelevant to the discussing and just musing on other things.
I think the main issue on Vezax, is that the Animus spawns after 4 minutes (?) so the Berserk/Hysteria is up again, and should be used on Animus instead of immediately when they come off cooldown (which is likely 7th vapor). However, casters are also likely to be standing in the Shadow Crash, with a bloodlust/heroism used in order to kill the Animus ASAP, so their burst potential is just as high as a Feral's (if not higher). What is likely happening, is that casters are using their threat loss cooldowns (invis, shatter) sometime in P1 of the fight, and it's simply not off cooldown for the Animus. Obviously, this is just bad planning, a far more logical (depending on number of Paladins) is to HoS the highest casters at around vapor 3, and tell people to save their own -threat cooldowns for the Animus. The HoS's will be back up, and casters will have their cooldowns up. My guild calls me selfish for asking them to do it this way, but honestly, It's just the best way of doing things when threat is an issue and you don't have an option of holding back, the Animus needs to die ASAP.
Obviously, this is just bad planning, a far more logical (depending on number of Paladins) is to HoS the highest casters at around vapor 3, and tell people to save their own -threat cooldowns for the Animus. The HoS's will be back up, and casters will have their cooldowns up. My guild calls me selfish for asking them to do it this way, but honestly, It's just the best way of doing things when threat is an issue and you don't have an option of holding back, the Animus needs to die ASAP.
I agree with this in large part because during Animus, there's a lot of stuff going on, and people have to work at their own jobs for that short period. Nobody knows when you're going to pull better than yourself, and having your threat-drop classes save their personal abilities for that phase helps everyone. Personally, I run with a holy pally and I would rather he be healing than HoPing during Animus. If you handle marks well, damage on Vezax won't really be a problem.
Also, am I completely off base here in remembering that the -threat from cower is affected by the cat -30%threat modifier?
You are not. Not only is it just a flat -3474 threat, but it's modified to -2432. It's not worth the global cooldown. You'd probably be better off not attacking for 1 second than using Cower. I don't have any math to back that up, though.
So current theory crafting is that the armour proc is the best trinket to use in one for or another, and that armour penetration is best getting to a soft cap so that the trinket proc + your static armour penetration will bring you to the hard cap.
I saw this this morning:
Items with Triggered Effects: These items generally have cooldowns on how often they can be triggered. Those cooldowns are now triggered each time the item is equipped (example: A trinket has a 45-second cooldown on an effect triggered by player attacks; when a player equips that item, the effect will be unable to be triggered for the first 45 seconds it is worn).
It now makes me wonder if you couldn't use (abuse?) it to get use out of both [Grim Toll] and [Mjolnir Runestone]. At the moment the proc rate is so high on them that they go off pretty much as soon as their ICD is off. Now the idea of this would be you equip say Grim Toll 25 seconds before the fight starts. When the fight starts it is on 20 second ICD and Mjolnir goes off and lasts its 10 seconds. We’re now have 10 seconds on Grim Toll and 35 seconds on Mjolonir. Grim Toll goes off 10 seconds later and lasts another 10 seconds, leaving 5 seconds on Grim Toll. At this point, you just attack away and they should do their work staying out of sync from each other and giving you about 45% of the fight with capped or near hard capped armour pen. This is obviously only good on fights where you are constantly attacking otherwise the procs will swiftly sync up, like Mimiron would be terrible for it for example, but Vezax would be excellent if it can work.
The idea would be you spread them out at the start at whatever timing will maximise their uptime and give them the greatest time frame from each other to minimise bad luck causing overlaps. You effectively double your time spent with max armour (or near enough for Grim Toll which is some 50 less). Going to test it on PTR over the weekend see if I can’t get it sorted on a test dummy.
Originally Posted by Shadowed
The best part is, not only were you late in linking it, that's an April fools topic from 6 months ago.
@Vaccine: I find that idea pretty cool but it seems really unlikely to be usable in real game. As you already said Vezax is ok but Mirmiron is not and there are far more fights like Mirmiron than like Vezax. Also escluding that unless you are the raid leader, you can't ask your raid to wait for sync and exactly start attacking at the right time. This is the same issue I had a few days ago. I'm actually wearing Grim Toll + Greatness. I had tryed to sync them not attacking after the first few second on XT so I could have them proc on heart, a discussion with our RL followed badly. I think those kind of trick are pretty hard to do in a raid environment.
I had tryed to sync them not attacking after the first few second on XT so I could have them proc on heart, a discussion with our RL followed badly. I think those kind of trick are pretty hard to do in a raid environment.
And your RL was probably right. While having the proc on the heart is good, your overall damage which contributes in working against the enrage timer will probably suffer.
My understanding was that they don't share cooldowns, and that the armor pen cap was the only reason not to use both.
I just did a fair amount of testing with my simulator, and delaying the Grim Toll proc by 20 seconds at the start of a 5 minute fight does very significantly reduce trinket overlap. When you factor in the higher item level of something like Comet's Trail and the DPS loss from delaying the first trinket proc, though, it ends up being a net DPS loss. If you're currently using a trinket with passive bonuses comparable to Grim Toll, you could potentially squeak out 30-40 DPS by delaying the first proc.
Combine that with, as was already pointed out, the fact that it's difficult to time properly on most fights, and that breaks in the fight will negate any advantage you gained, and it just doesn't look like it's worth it in most situations.
Pretty marginal benefit, but I haven't seen anyone mention it: casting Nature's Grasp in cat form can trigger OOC. If you've got a free GCD and you're on a fight with no mechanics a random root will mess up, you might as well throw it in for the chance at an extra shred.
Now the question is as a new member, how should I break this to the previously mentioned tank officer? :P
You shouldn't. You should get over yourself.
If I wait until my second Tiger's Fury is up to Berserk I've never had aggro problems on a single fight. There's no downside to this unless the fight is between 6:10-6:40 or 9:10 to 9:40 long (meaning you'd lose your 3rd or 4th Berserk because you delayed by 30s at the start of the fight.) The same principle applies to Vezax -- damage on him is important but you'll only get one Berserk on the Animus regardless, and then it will come up again after the Animus is dead. Vezax always looks like this:
With that fight length, you get three Berserks. You can't possible get more since the fight won't go over 9 minutes, and you won't get less unless the fight is under 7:30. Because of this you can afford to delay your initial Berserk to the 0:35 mark and then delay your 2nd Berserk to the 4:35 mark or whatever. Until the point comes where your guild is doing 7:15 Vezax kills, this isn't an issue -- and once you're at that point, you're beyond the stage of the game where ekeing out the maximum DPS at the risk of pulling aggro is desirable.
Answer: Chill out and don't go around demanding Salv.
'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.
To be fair, there's Vezax Hard kills that are over the 10 minute mark, but on average it's not going to be over 9. Also, on this fight, I do find that even with hysteria (and definitely without), you still want to time your Berserk separate from Bloodlust, this means early Berserk on the Animus. Late Berserk on the Animus, and/or much faster than 8m kills (fastest on WMO is 6:14 atm) can deny you your 3rd Berserk anyway, there's also the Execute Range issue, on this fight specifically, it is more harmful to raid DPS to berserk <35% on the Animus. Since non-bad druids will always save 2nd Berserk for Animus, you have a 1 minute window to burn Berserk on Vezax from the start of the fight, but your Berserk window consists of Not <35% and not during Bloodlust (casters should be waiting for a fresh Crash before using Bloodlust, since they get the greater benefit from it). For optimizing, this puts your Berserk in the first 30 seconds of the Animus if you're actually going to kill it in average time.
4:00-4:15 Animus Engage and tank maneuvers it closer to casters
4:30-4:45 Berserk (-5:00 Hysteria)
4:45-5:30 Bloodlust
5:30-6:00 Execute Range
Obviously this kind of exact timing isn't really possible, Faster DPS decreases your optimal Berserk range. Sooner is just better, and you should have a Salv saved for you.
I really doubt your casters are using their threat cooldowns on p1 vezax. Because of the way the fight starts off a caster won't be pulling up there in p1 unless your tank sustained tps is really sub-par, which is pretty unlikely if you're at that stage. They're probably using their cooldown on the animus and still needing an additional threat drop. If the ranged are executing the crashes pretty well from the start on the animus they could pretty reasonably be putting out double your berserk tps. Asking for the HoS is probably because they're blowing one threat cooldown so that they can dps pretty much from the start and needing a second because their sustained tps is outdoing the tank.
It's worth noting that by taking that HoS from a caster who is really trying to push their dps on animus, what you're picking up is the chance at an extra berserk right at the end of the fight. It doesn't seem like it's often a problem that you take down animus with enough of a raid to finish vezax then wipe with the kind of sliver of hp left that an extra berserk would solve. This isn't one of those fights where damage is constantly ramping up at the end, you don't often finish him off while the raid is wiping.
I say suck it up and hold off a bit on that berserk after the animus spawns until you won't get yourself in trouble.
I've been interested lately in opportunities to replace Rake with Shred depending on trinket procs and did some math on the subject. I'm first going to assume that Sunder and Faerie Fire are both on the mob and that you are at 100% armor penetration through a Grim Toll/Mjolnir Runestone proc, as Shred falls well behind if this is not the case. I'm also assuming 2T8 since it is BiS at this time and easy to obtain. Finally, I'll also assume [Idol of the Ravenous Beast] for now and note the difference without it at the end. For the sake of simplicity I'm going to assume that hit and expertise are capped, though I don't believe the numbers will change if they aren't. For the explanation here I will display numbers to a handful of decimal places, but for accuracy I will use every digit available in my calculator.
a = Attack Power, c = Crit chance (actual crit chance, not what appears on the character sheet)
If you subtract Rake DPE from Shred DPE you get . If you set this expression equal to 0 and solve for c you can find the minimum crit chance (again, actual crit chance on a boss, not what is displayed in the character sheet) required for Shred to do more DPE than Rake at a given amount of attack power, assuming that you are at 100% armor penetration through a trinket proc.
It is possible to reach a point where Shred overtakes Rake. nightcrowler's BiS gear list reaches this point, for example. At 11k AP it takes a little more than 55% crit chance and the BiS list reaches 59%. However, this does assume that you are using Idol of the Ravenous Beast. If you have to provide your own Mangle (and thus are using [Idol of the Corruptor]) it is impossible to get a high enough crit chance for this to occur. For example, without Idol of the Ravenous Beast it would take 67.5% crit chance at 11k AP.
The other thing to keep in mind is that Rake is 20% more efficient at generating combo points than Shred is. It's much more difficult if not impossible to quantify the value of a combo point. I think it would be reasonable to count 1 combo point as 1/5 of the difference between the DPE of a Ferocious Bite and a Shred. My hunch is that this would put Rake back ahead of Shred at reachable gear levels regardless of trinket procs.
13% Spell Damage can be provided by an Affliction Warlock or Moonkin, but only Unholy DK's can effectively do it AoE. Any warlock can do 10% Spell Damage.
Curse of Elements is 13%, not a talent anymore, so it's the same for every spec.
@Melthu:
from my simulations with 2T8 you need shred to do around 10% more DPE than rake to have a total dps increase. Fully raid buffed it can occour if you use for example DC: Greatness and it procs together with Arpen Trinket and Shred Idol.
Melthu could you please explain, why this line is included in your Rake DPE calculation:
I assume it's because 2T8 but I don't understand this formula.
Yes, with 2T8 each application of Rake (assuming you don't clip) will give you on average 6% of a Shred for free.
Originally Posted by nightcrowler
@Melthu:
from my simulations with 2T8 you need shred to do around 10% more DPE than rake to have a total dps increase. Fully raid buffed it can occour if you use for example DC: Greatness and it procs together with Arpen Trinket and Shred Idol.
You must be placing very little value on combo points for the break-even point to be so low. I made a very rough estimate of the value of a combo point by subtracting the DPE of Shred from the DPE of a 5 CP Ferocious Bite and dividing by 5. I divided this value by 2 to estimate the loss of combo points from refreshing Savage Roar early, critting at 4 CP, Berserk, etc. Then I multiplied this by 27.2% and added it to Rake's DPE to estimate the benefit from greater combo point generation. With this fairly conservative (in my opinion) estimate Shred needs to do 15%-16% more DPE than Rake for you to want to drop Rake from your rotation. Do you have any way of estimating the value of a combo point in your simulator for comparison?
Does anyone have (or can anyone provide a link) to the formula used to calculate the damge of feral attacks. I'm sure this info is probably in Rawr\FbN somewhere, but i lack the programming knowledge to extract it. I wanted to try to caculate the actual DPS loss (if any) we took from the changes in 3.2.
I'd also like to ask if any of you better geared feral's noticed a significant change in your DPS post 3.2. I have not raided since the patch went live, but target dummy DPS seems very unphased at this time. I'm trying to determine if this is due to relatively low gear, or the actual changes themselves.
Wowhead has the formulas for all the relevant abilities. The "nerfs" were really too small to notice in actual gameplay. The difference isn't even close to the variation you can see from fight to fight. If anything, it'd be more noticeable at lower gear levels since only the base values were changed.
Does anyone have (or can anyone provide a link) to the formula used to calculate the damge of feral attacks. I'm sure this info is probably in Rawr\FbN somewhere, but i lack the programming knowledge to extract it. I wanted to try to caculate the actual DPS loss (if any) we took from the changes in 3.2.
I'd also like to ask if any of you better geared feral's noticed a significant change in your DPS post 3.2. I have not raided since the patch went live, but target dummy DPS seems very unphased at this time. I'm trying to determine if this is due to relatively low gear, or the actual changes themselves.
Someone did the math a while ago. I still don't believe the changes were necessary, but there they are. For reference, the "normal damage" of catform is 54.6 + AP/14. None of this is including the bonus 10% damage from Naturalist, Savage Fury, or Feral Instinct which increase the total damage of the ability by a set %.
I've got a question on which gem would benefit my dps more. Atm i'm stacking +16 and +20 str gems so that i get the bonus from kings and then use a flask of endless rage for more ap plus the bonus from our Motw/Gotw. My question is, would stacking armor penetration gems help increase my dps more then then str gems? I've looked through the druid forums and couldn't seem to find any anwers that were uptodate on the subject. I'm hit capped and my crit is over 50% w/ about 7.5k ap w/ the str gems. I've been told to stack agility gems by other druids. I don't have any of the armor penetration trinkets mentioned above, so would stacking armor penetration gems still help me or is there a good combination of gems to spec for maximum dps potential?
07/15/09, 8:18 PM
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