Druid Changes Patch 3.1 - Page 50

Beregon · 03/31/09, 5:56 PM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF

I'm hearing some reports of moonkin topping the damage meters on PTR. If it turns out that they need to nerf us, I hope they do it by reducing the amount of haste nature's grace provides. To something like 15%, or maybe 10% haste and 3% damage or whatever.

The idea being that lower haste allows us to continue to enjoy haste as a stat

I would want to have more information on which meters we are topping, when, against what classes, etc before putting too much weight on the reports. We already do pretty well at AOE, add 20% haste to Hurricane due to the NG change and the lower cooldown on Starfall and I can easily see us topping the trash charts without gaining much over current vs bosses.

It's also not unusual for me to hit the top spot in our DPS charts for a single boss fight on live. Over the course of a night for "all bosses" I don't see it happening.

Lord BEEF · 03/31/09, 6:07 PM

The post of mine you quoted is several weeks old. I honestly don't know how the dps rankings are looking currently

Drashian · 03/31/09, 6:54 PM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF

Are we sure thorns generates threat? I thought I read it was threat-neutral at some point. Can someone confirm it does generate full threat?

Confirmed on live (the PTR was down) using Omen to read threat values. 73 threat for a 73 damage Thorns in humanoid form, 151-152 in bear, 51-52 in cat.

Malazaar · 03/31/09, 6:57 PM

Is thorns' strength determined by the spellpower at the point of cast or does it update if you swap gear ? I'm just wondering if i need to gather a spellpower equip for pre-battle thorns buffing.

Murna · 03/31/09, 11:06 PM

It has been confirmed several times in this thread that thorns damage is calculated on cast and does NOT update. Just one example:

Originally Posted by Kirian

Just tested this on the PTR; putting Thorns on yourself in caster gear increases damage from Thorns when you switch back to feral gear. Thorns.

Paminen · 04/14/09, 2:09 PM

Sorry to interrupt the thorns discussion but I had a question I haven't seen an entirely conclusive answer to:

What do the HOTW changes mean for bear gemming? My pre-3.1 opinion was that since we naturally get enough health to tank anything (around 30k unbuffed, which is fine outside of special exceptions like 3d sarth) the best thing to do is pile on the 16 agi for more dodge and armor. With the 10% stamina nerf and the harder ulduar bosses should we be switching our agi gems to agi/stam (or even pure stam) gems, or keeping the agi to positively interact with Savage Defense?

manapaws · 04/14/09, 2:19 PM

Originally Posted by Paminen

Sorry to interrupt the thorns discussion but I had a question I haven't seen an entirely conclusive answer to:

What do the HOTW changes mean for bear gemming? My pre-3.1 opinion was that since we naturally get enough health to tank anything (around 30k unbuffed, which is fine outside of special exceptions like 3d sarth) the best thing to do is pile on the 16 agi for more dodge and armor. With the 10% stamina nerf and the harder ulduar bosses should we be switching our agi gems to agi/stam (or even pure stam) gems, or keeping the agi to positively interact with Savage Defense?

Pre-3.1 I have agi in basically every gem slot. We naturally have enough health to survive stuff, so it's avoidance all the way. The crit from the agi has been handy for rage / threat as well.

Post-3.1 what I've seen so far is that Ulduar bosses hit a fair bit harder, and we have less armor (infact the set I've built in Rawr has less armor in full t8.5 than I do on live in full t7.5). This leads me to believe we have to care about stamina a little more. To cut a long story short, I'm probably going to switch my dragons eyes from the 27 agi ones to the 41 stam ones, and leave the 16 agi ones as is.

I generally think there's enough agi / crit on leather as is to keep Savage Defense up all the time, so it's more about avoidance / threat for me.

Zaidon · 04/14/09, 2:35 PM

Are there any plans to clean up the druid threads or start over with new patch day?

Garanthir · 04/14/09, 2:44 PM

For new content I think it's best to balance your stats and have plenty of gear choices in your bags. A solid all around general set and the ability to bulk up in certain areas will help immensely in Ulduar.

For example: [Shifting Twilight Opal] will be a great help in balancing Stam and Agi for Bear tanks both for it's stats and socket color.

foxglove · 04/14/09, 2:54 PM

I'm going to be keeping my stamina-heavy 3D gemming for Ulduar, I think. Just looking at some of the burst abilities from the Ulduar bosses (Fusion Punch on council, for example), and taking into account that healers tend to react less quickly in an unfamiliar situation, more stamina seems like a good idea for Ulduar progression. The sort of question to ask is: what if my healers make a mistake and get Spell Locked on Ignis? Do I have enough health to survive using a cooldown without praying for some lucky dodges?

I believe my experiments with the Rawr beta showed something like 83% expected SD uptime (gemming for stamina but using the Darkmoon Card) against the "boilerplate" boss, for something like 8.5% mitigation. I have no idea whether this will play out in an actual encounter or not, but 83% is big enough that it seems safe to give a stamina setup a try. (I will however be regemming to take advantage of more socket bonuses now that we have an excellent purple gem.)

Woodlum · 04/15/09, 2:20 AM

Originally Posted by Murna

It has been confirmed several times in this thread that thorns damage is calculated on cast and does NOT update. Just one example:

Wanted to provide some further data from a short test I did:

3/3 Brambles -> Moonkin Form -> Buff Thorns -> /duel = 417 feedback damage from single autoattack on target.

3/3 Brambles -> Lifebloom to 200 SP (IDS) -> Moonkin Form -> Buff Thorns -> /duel = 427 feedback damage from single autoattack on target.

200 SP gain seemed to equate to +10 feedback damage produced.

ECZO · 04/15/09, 5:17 AM

Since I play on european realms and won't be able to log on until tonight, I was wondering if someone tested the new savage defense on lvl 70 heroics and zul'gurub, and how savage defense is good or bad seeing that will have a nearly 100% uptime with all the crits floating around.
My guesses are that SD will help greatly, but I'm too curious to wait and test it by myself. :P

EDIT finding the right keywords on google can go a long way! A guy made some tests in lvl 70 heroics (namely anzu's trash and boss) and posted his results on the european forums

FULL REPORT (trash and 2 bosses)
Damage In (full report)
Live: 300,483
PTR: 190,497
Damage Out (full report)
Live: 1,234,949
PTR: 1,118,575
Heals (full report)
Live: 267,801 (overheal 3%)
PTR: 170,377 (overheal 7%)

BOSSES REPORT
Damage In (bosses)
Live: 109,519
PTR: 60,687
Damage Out (bosses)
Live: 568,198
PTR: 532,180
Heals (bosses)
Live: 77,672 (overheal 0%)
PTR: 41,290 (overheal 11%)

TRASH REPORT (bosses excluded)
Damage In (trash)
Live: 190,964
PTR: 129,810
Damage Out (trash)
Live: 666,751
PTR: 586,395
Heals (trash)
Live: 190,129 (overheal 5%)
PTR: 129,087 (overheal 5%)

As expected savage defense will be a boon to most of soloing activities in low lvl content.

Erdluf · 04/15/09, 8:37 AM

Originally Posted by Woodlum

Wanted to provide some further data from a short test I did:

3/3 Brambles -> Moonkin Form -> Buff Thorns -> /duel = 417 feedback damage from single autoattack on target.

3/3 Brambles -> Lifebloom to 200 SP (IDS) -> Moonkin Form -> Buff Thorns -> /duel = 427 feedback damage from single autoattack on target.

200 SP gain seemed to equate to +10 feedback damage produced.

That delta seems too low. Multiple sources have reported 6.6% scaling (untalented). If you were getting only 5% = 10/200 (talented), you would need something like 6000 SP to get your thorns up to 417 damage.

Assuming (plausible, not tested) that the thorns you cast on others benefits from Master Shapeshifter, Brambles, and the personal benefit from E&M, damage would be

(73+0.066*SP)*1.04*1.75*1.03

and you would hit 417 damage at around 2264 SP. But at that point, adding 200 more SP should add another 24 or 25 to thorns damage.

Thane · 04/15/09, 9:30 AM

I've always used the Simulation thread to determine what the current "best dps" build is, but that is still showing the 3.0.9 builds, is there a thread somewhere that shows the current 3.1 "best dps" build? And the 3.1 stat weights?

I looked around but wasn't able to find it.

I guess while I'm asking, how about a 3.1 Resto build too?

Thanks,
Thane

Boevis · 04/15/09, 11:02 AM

Only 2 talents changed in regards to "best" feral DPS spec: Primal Gore and Improved MotW.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I go : Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft because I'm not a selfish jerk who cares more about 5% more DPS than 1500 HPS.