Feral DPS Discussion - Page 54

Esfera · 04/02/10, 3:38 PM

Originally Posted by Slimbones

One situation I run into is when I have 5 combo points on the boss, and rip and SR both expire simultaneously. If I use the combo points to reapply rip, then quickly get another combo point and get SR back up, does the rip that was applied without SR up stay "unbuffed" by the SR? Or does SR apply to everything once its up, regardless of whether it was up when they were applied? I've been doing it this way because it is so much more downtime on rip to use the 5 CP on SR, then have to get a full 5 more CP to get rip up. But in the back of my head I wonder if those rips are getting the SR bonus. It doesn't happen that often in my rotation, I'm usually pretty good at keeping them desynchronized, but it does happen on occasion. Any thoughts?

Buffs are applied towards rip on application.. Debuffs are checked every tick. So Savage Roar needs to be active before you apply Rip. An example of a debuff would be that Mangle gets checked every tick of a bleed.

Slimbones · 04/02/10, 4:14 PM

Originally Posted by Esfera

Buffs are applied towards rip on application.. Debuffs are checked every tick. So Savage Roar needs to be active before you apply Rip. An example of a debuff would be that Mangle gets checked every tick of a bleed.

Damnit. And thank you.

Jone · 04/02/10, 4:21 PM

Originally Posted by Slimbones

Damnit. And thank you.

The best advice for rip and SR colliding is to clip the hell out of SR -- refresh it 6-8 sec early so you have time to build 5CP for the next rip.

Slimbones · 04/03/10, 5:33 AM

Originally Posted by Esfera

Buffs are applied towards rip on application.. Debuffs are checked every tick. So Savage Roar needs to be active before you apply Rip. An example of a debuff would be that Mangle gets checked every tick of a bleed.

So that being the case, sounds like the optimal use of Hysteria would be to apply rip at the very beginning, do your usual thing, but try to have 5 combo points right at the end to apply rip again right before hysteria wears off, thus extending Hysteria for another 26 seconds, at least as far as rip goes. I guess super optimal would be to get off the 5cp rip with a second or two left on hysteria and then also get rake off too before it ends, thus giving an extra application of supercharged rip and rake. Cool.

I guess another question then is whether or not it would be worth it to clip rip to get another application in. In an ideal world if you applied it right at the start, it would wear off with 4 seconds left and you could reapply and get rake up again as well as mentioned above. But you wont always have 5 CP right as you get it, so say you finally get rip applied 6 or 7 seconds in. . would it be worth clipping to get in another application before hysteria expires, or maybe even to apply a 3 or 4 CP rip before hysteria expires?

lairpie · 04/03/10, 11:24 AM

Back when we had a blood DK I never really had trouble with timing hysteria such that I'd get 2 rips with it. You would absolutely be timing zerking with hysteria which gives you a lot of control over your CPS. Use your zerking to get a long SR up, and a FB then you'll have enough time after zerking to get your CPs up before you need to rip again. Its always possible you'll get insanely unlucky or something, but in practice it nearly always worked fine. You'll obviously want to be communicating with your DK on vent or through some macros to make sure you get that hysteria at the right time.

Deathwing · 04/05/10, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Helistar

snip

I think you're on to a good idea(one I've wanted for a long time), you just abandoned it too early. I took BIS cat gear and ran it through simcraft as well. I got ~13800(I'm rounding up) for the default profile in simcraft. Yes, I know there are higher dps results posted in the simcraft thread, but for the purpose of percentage comparison, that's irrelevant.

I took the same actions profile and modified it for mangle spam the same way you did. The one big thing you missed was that OOC should be used for shred almost all the time now, since it costs 60 energy(I also change my talents to move two points from improved shred to improved fb). After tightening up some of the other numbers(like when to FB), and they should be since you generate more CP/s and mangle costs less energy, I was able to get mangle spam to ~13450(rounded down ever so slightly). I can post the profile changes, but this might not be the right thread.

2.6% dps loss? I'd consider it. Given how many secondary abilities bosses are using these days, shred is at a noticeable disadvantage on add-heavy fights(Deathwhisper, Valithria, LK sorta, blood council sorta, putricide), fights where the boss turns around alot(Saurfang, Rotface, BQL, Deathwhisper, Festergut) and everyone's favorite, P3 Sindragosa(which is the only part of the fight that matters). In fact, I'd be willing to bet you'd make up the lost dps on most of those fights from being able to avoid those situations where you get your energy low enough to pop TF, but then boss turns around for 3+ seconds, OOC procs, and you waste most of your TF.

And personally, I will disagree on the mangle-shred having more punch on adds. If your adds are dieing THAT quickly, they aren't adds, they're minor annoyances. And both builds will be inconvenienced at that point because that's not enough time for either to get good cycles going. If anything, a shred build will lose more from having to use mangle that much more.

MegaVolt · 04/06/10, 1:53 AM

Originally Posted by Deathwing

but then boss turns around for 3+ seconds, OOC procs, and you waste most of your TF.

With Mangle spam you will hit the boss and probably get parried a lot. One of the biggest advantages of Shred in fights with turning bosses is that the positional requirement makes absolutely sure that parries never happen. The energy waste you described can of course occur and it certainly is a dps loss if it happens but the chance is quite low - the chance to get a parry when Mangle spamming a boss that's facing you on the other hand is significant and should be a way bigger dps loss.

On Deathwhisper and LK I have to be behind adds because of cleave, Shred isn't a problem.
All bosses have to be attacked from behind to avoid parry, making Mangle bad on BPC, BQL, Fester, Saurfang and Putricide.
The only significant adds without a cleave I can think of are the oozes on Putricide but those are running around anyway, meaning you will be naturally behind them.
I have to admit I haven't done Dreamwalker as cat yet (going tree there every time) so I can't say much about those adds.

Even for the add fights (except Dreamwalker) I just don't see an advantage for Mangle since the positional requirement for Shred should never be an issue and for bosses that like turning around Shred will prevent accidental parries.

The only fight I see Mangle spam being a valid strategy is Sindragosa p3 for the ice tombs but I haven't done that fight as cat either.
I was told the tombs have a front and a back so it is at least theoretically possible to Shred there. Since the encounter enforces a positional requirement this might make Shred practically impossible, depending on the orientation of the tombs.
Does anybody know how they are oriented? Is it just the same as the guy trapped inside, do ice tombs always face towards or away from the boss or is their orientation just random?

Exalter · 04/06/10, 2:38 AM

Well I made a addon that supports the priority list

1. Keep up Savage Roar
2. Keep up Mangle
3. Keep up Rake
4. Use shred for CP regeneration (remember, that points 2 and 3 are more important)
5. When at 5 CP and Rip is not up, use Rip
6. When below 30 Energy, use TF
7. Use Clearcast Proccs for Shred
8. When at 5 CP and Rip and SR are running with 8 seconds (might be longer, depending on your gear) or longer each, use FB
9. When Rip and SR will drop at nearly the same time (with less than 3 seconds difference), try to recognize it early. Then use SR with a small amount of CP to desynchronize both timers.
10. Use Berserk only at high energy, (but not higher than 85) not directly after TF and as often as possible. If you will get Hysteria or some boss mechanics will enhance your damage, save it for these situations.

As of right now it's fairly basic, I plan on having it flash a color to warn you that the debuff is about to expire.. Hopefully within the next couple days I can do this..

The Addon is on Curse, it's Called 'SpellFlash_Druid' Please let me know what you think.. Also I dont have a level 80 druid as of yet so I only imagine everything is working 100%.. I just released the addon today.. Please make comments about the addon at curse.com.. Thank you!

Jone · 04/06/10, 5:06 AM

Originally Posted by MegaVolt

the chance to get a parry when Mangle spamming a boss that's facing you on the other hand is significant and should be a way bigger dps loss.

Do you know that you get 80% energy refund on a parried attack when specced into primal precision? The only situation where you end up losing more energy than the difference between mangle and shred is if you've mangled on a OOC proc, but that's about as likely as the overcap energy scenario. Where is the massive DPS loss from a parried mangle versus a failed shred in your model?

ETA: Those replying to me are right, PP is only for finishers, but they indicate there's still an energy refund for a missed attack.

Duilliath · 04/06/10, 5:11 AM

Originally Posted by MegaVolt

The only fight I see Mangle spam being a valid strategy is Sindragosa p3 for the ice tombs but I haven't done that fight as cat either.
I was told the tombs have a front and a back so it is at least theoretically possible to Shred there. Since the encounter enforces a positional requirement this might make Shred practically impossible, depending on the orientation of the tombs.
Does anybody know how they are oriented? Is it just the same as the guy trapped inside, do ice tombs always face towards or away from the boss or is their orientation just random?

Same as the person inside. And generally speaking, they're running from the boss, meaning their backs are to the wrong side.

Helistar · 04/06/10, 5:14 AM

Originally Posted by MegaVolt

With Mangle spam you will hit the boss and probably get parried a lot. One of the biggest advantages of Shred in fights with turning bosses is that the positional requirement makes absolutely sure that parries never happen. The energy waste you described can of course occur and it certainly is a dps loss if it happens but the chance is quite low - the chance to get a parry when Mangle spamming a boss that's facing you on the other hand is significant and should be a way bigger dps loss.

The idea of mangle-spam is not to ignore positional advantage, but to make it so that it's not a requirement. Of course every time you can be behind the target, you most definitely should. So parries won't be an issue more than they already are, and the advantage is of never risking the "You must be behind your target." message when sitting on a OOC proc and/or at 90+ energy. Note that a parried mangle is 0.2*36 = 5.14 energy lost, which means that it's the equivalent of half a second sitting at 100 energy.

BTW ice tombs on Sindragosa seem to be oriented as the character frozen inside them, so in P3 they usually are oriented the wrong way.

@Deathwing: good work on improving the simulations. I agree that with higher stuff the difference will be smaller, as the auto-attack % will be going up, making yellow damage less and less relevant. I'd be interested in the numbers, maybe you can post your mangle profile in the simulationcraft cat DPS thread? In particular I'd like to check again the loss of mangle-spam without the glyph.
One thing I don't agree with is using OOC for shreds: the whole idea of mangle-spam is to make life easier and require less concentration. Using OOC for shreds means that you have one more button, and one more button which is not easy to choose, since you must not only make sure that OOC is up, but also that you are in a position to take advantage from it. Have you tried to see how much the change is if you just use mangle? Without the rip glyph shred loses the DPE advantage of the 1 extra rip tick, so the difference with mangle will really be minimal.

Edit: ack, two replies while I was writing, sorry if some info is repeated.

talchas · 04/06/10, 8:53 AM

Primal Precision only applies to finishers. If I recall correctly, combo moves instead always only cost 10 energy if missed/dodged/parried, even untalented.

Deathwing · 04/06/10, 9:14 AM

@Megavolt: Helistar covered it pretty well, but I'll just reiterate. Mangle build is more a build of convenience than anything else. Mobile fights, bosses turning to cast, add fights, they all present situations where you might be at high energy and want to shred, but immediately can't. I'd actually bet you face that at least once or twice per boss fight. If you have the cognitive dissonance to prepare for that, kudos to you, but I don't want to have to be prepared to run around the boss to get my shred off in between 90 and 100 energy.

Even if you're using a move predictor, the player knowing ahead of time that he won't have to use shred increases their efficiency.

Helistar covered the parry thing pretty well.

@Helistar: Sure, I'll post the profiles and numbers in the simulationcraft dps thread. My only reasoning for always shredding on OOC is because it costs 60 energy. Maybe looking at it as a "free move" might be a better way.

@Talchas: No, missed finishers withOUT(herp derp) the talent(this includes rogues) will still cost full energy.

I was saying shred is a disadvantage on add fights because it has to cast mangle more, actually brings it closer to a mangle build. Also, a mangle build generates CP faster, which is good on target switching.

Gallowglass · 04/06/10, 9:27 AM

Originally Posted by Deathwing

@Talchas: No, missed finishers with the talent(this includes rogues) will still cost full energy.

Primal Precision(2/2) - Increases your expertice by 10, and you are refunded 80% of the energy cost of a finishing move if it fails to land.

Helistar · 04/06/10, 10:07 AM

Originally Posted by talchas

Primal Precision only applies to finishers. If I recall correctly, combo moves instead always only cost 10 energy if missed/dodged/parried, even untalented.

Do you have a source for this? I've been looking around without much success. Unfortunately, since resource status is not recorded in the combat log it's not easy to see the value, but I'm pretty sure that when you hit the gas vials on Putricide you will end up energy-capped even if you keep spamming like mad, which would not be the case if the cost were a fixed 10 energy per cast, so my take is that 20% cost for basic moves which do not connect is right, all the talent does is to extend this refund also to the finishers.