Feral Druid Tweaking (Cat)

[dgreenbe]

Thanks everyone for the active commentary!

Elementary, my dear Watson.

By the way, the percentage buff doesn't affect attack power scaling. It's calculated after it goes through that.

This helps, but also throws off Druid gear balancing as it still doesn't scale off of agility and crit as well, it just makes AP a bit better (not haste, or crit much, or expertise, etc)--but still not very good, certainly not anywhere as good as it is for specs like Ret (slow 2H dps known for stacking Strength and funneling that into dps through synergy with their multiplier talents). So it is a boost but it isn't a great one and it also isn't tailored as well towards addressing the feral issues. After all, Ferals are really just dual-wielding and hitting at 1.0 speed, and Shred is based on that. The buff to dots is a less scaleable replacement for dots critting, and in that regard it's pretty solid, but after testing on PTR, the scaling issue for the main attack is still an issue.


As far as "logs," Watson: There are like 3 decent feral druids on the server as far as I know and they're all geared and have arguably one of the best set bonuses in the game. They do decently *for their spec*, and are okay with great gameplay at a tough spec and great gear, and not so great if you look at world boss damage meters. I know, the sample sucks. Is anyone arguing that they are worth a raid spot at sustained, single-target DPS? The main comment is either that they are bad, or that they are "good enough" or "don't deserve to do good dps" (actual quotes).

However, again, this sampling dps of a couple of the best ferals--even assuming they have the dps we're talking about, and that generally isn't the case aside from very lucky RNG--does not sufficiently address the main point regarding scaling. There is little doubt in my mind after testing that Feral DPS will be pitiful once we start going through T6, and by then it will be too late.

What is the opposite?

unbuffed fight for 3 minutes vs Boss dummy --> https://i.imgur.com/nHZZsdu.png
Ill post damage meters after our next raid, but its above 2k in 25m raids, keep in mind I just changed from tank to dps and Im missing few current bis items and better enchants/gems.

A feral druid with 2T4 bonus doing 2k sounds good--is there another good-geared rogue, and how much DPS is he doing, to compare?

To be clear, even if the difference is not dramatic (I think it will be), the main thing is what the difference represents: evidence of a lack of scaling in good gear that will get much worse over time.

[agrodon]

Keep in mind the class buffs are currently not active outside of instances, so world bosses are a bad example.

[Nyeriah]

Thanks everyone for the active commentary!

Elementary, my dear Watson.

By the way, the percentage buff doesn't affect attack power scaling. It's calculated after it goes through that.

This helps, but also throws off Druid gear balancing as it still doesn't scale off of agility and crit as well, it just makes AP a bit better (not haste, or crit much, or expertise, etc)--but still not very good, certainly not anywhere as good as it is for specs like Ret (slow 2H dps known for stacking Strength and funneling that into dps through synergy with their multiplier talents). So it is a boost but it isn't a great one and it also isn't tailored as well towards addressing the feral issues. After all, Ferals are really just dual-wielding and hitting at 1.0 speed, and Shred is based on that. The buff to dots is a less scaleable replacement for dots critting, and in that regard it's pretty solid, but after testing on PTR, the scaling issue for the main attack is still an issue.


As far as "logs," Watson: There are like 3 decent feral druids on the server as far as I know and they're all geared and have arguably one of the best set bonuses in the game. They do decently *for their spec*, and are okay with great gameplay at a tough spec and great gear, and not so great if you look at world boss damage meters. I know, the sample sucks. Is anyone arguing that they are worth a raid spot at sustained, single-target DPS? The main comment is either that they are bad, or that they are "good enough" or "don't deserve to do good dps" (actual quotes).

However, again, this sampling dps of a couple of the best ferals--even assuming they have the dps we're talking about, and that generally isn't the case aside from very lucky RNG--does not sufficiently address the main point regarding scaling. There is little doubt in my mind after testing that Feral DPS will be pitiful once we start going through T6, and by then it will be too late.

What is the opposite?

unbuffed fight for 3 minutes vs Boss dummy --> https://i.imgur.com/nHZZsdu.png
Ill post damage meters after our next raid, but its above 2k in 25m raids, keep in mind I just changed from tank to dps and Im missing few current bis items and better enchants/gems.

A feral druid with 2T4 bonus doing 2k sounds good--is there another good-geared rogue, and how much DPS is he doing, to compare?

To be clear, even if the difference is not dramatic (I think it will be), the main thing is what the difference represents: evidence of a lack of scaling in good gear that will get much worse over time.

When those buffs were applied, players tested them with end game gear to check how they would scale in the long term as well as starting gear. Do you have any numbers to back up what you are saying? It feels like they are all assumptions.

Training dummies also don't have the buff applied to them, because they are outside instances.

[dgreenbe]

Not assumptions:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=38393&start=15#p416135

If the PTR numbers don't include the buffs, then it's possible that ap will be better than agility (they came close when I tested that), which would further hamper feral scaling with crit. While these aren't AP buffs, the bleed buff functions as reorganizing feral around AP.. For reasons often stated in this thread, that's not optimal and would lower crit gearing and scaling, and it effectively turns feral into an unnecessary version of a vanilla shadow priest, stacking ap instead of sp, but without any crucial raid support buffs (dps warriors provide the same buffs).

[.Watson1988]

Thanks everyone for the active commentary!

Elementary, my dear Watson.

By the way, the percentage buff doesn't affect attack power scaling. It's calculated after it goes through that.

This helps, but also throws off Druid gear balancing as it still doesn't scale off of agility and crit as well, it just makes AP a bit better (not haste, or crit much, or expertise, etc)--but still not very good, certainly not anywhere as good as it is for specs like Ret (slow 2H dps known for stacking Strength and funneling that into dps through synergy with their multiplier talents).

He? If the ability is buffed by a flat multiplier then also the sensitivity to the input parameters increased (see my trivial example).

So it is a boost but it isn't a great one and it also isn't tailored as well towards addressing the feral issues. After all, Ferals are really just dual-wielding and hitting at 1.0 speed, and Shred is based on that. The buff to dots is a less scaleable replacement for dots critting, and in that regard it's pretty solid, but after testing on PTR, the scaling issue for the main attack is still an issue.

Ferals are dual wielding their paws? And I thought they always attacked with the same paw. So, can they miss with their off-paw (off hand) while having 8% hit?

As far as "logs," Watson: There are like 3 decent feral druids on the server as far as I know and they're all geared and have arguably one of the best set bonuses in the game. They do decently *for their spec*, and are okay with great gameplay at a tough spec and great gear, and not so great if you look at world boss damage meters. I know, the sample sucks. Is anyone arguing that they are worth a raid spot at sustained, single-target DPS? The main comment is either that they are bad, or that they are "good enough" or "don't deserve to do good dps" (actual quotes).

Who are these awesome ferals? Where can I find some posted logs for actual PW boss fights that include them? And not some world boss fights and shitty recount snap shots.

However, again, this sampling dps of a couple of the best ferals--even assuming they have the dps we're talking about, and that generally isn't the case aside from very lucky RNG--does not sufficiently address the main point regarding scaling. There is little doubt in my mind after testing that Feral DPS will be pitiful once we start going through T6, and by then it will be too late.

How short are these boss fights? And how few are they? Constantly blaming rng issues although the sample is supposed to consist of multiple boss fights with a 5 to 8 minute duration is statistically not sound.

What is the opposite?

unbuffed fight for 3 minutes vs Boss dummy --> https://i.imgur.com/nHZZsdu.png
Ill post damage meters after our next raid, but its above 2k in 25m raids, keep in mind I just changed from tank to dps and Im missing few current bis items and better enchants/gems.

A feral druid with 2T4 bonus doing 2k sounds good--is there another good-geared rogue, and how much DPS is he doing, to compare?

Just because Rogues and Rets are stupidly strong doesn't mean all other classes should do insane dps as well. During our vanilla phase warriors, rogues and hunters were crazy off the charts with world buffs and yet we had no buffs to other classes. I don't know where this need for severely streamlining dps output so suddenly comes from (which is also not TBC like).

To be clear, even if the difference is not dramatic (I think it will be), the main thing is what the difference represents: evidence of a lack of scaling in good gear that will get much worse over time.

Any tests with logs or decent form of documentation or some mathematical proof? Gut feeling is often a bad advisor. Also, why bother about stuff that is still far away. PW staff can issue fixes once the issues start to emerge. It's not like rogues equip one T5 piece and then suddenly jump to 4k dps.

[Anesthesia]

If the PTR numbers don't include the buffs, then it's possible that ap will be better than agility (they came close when I tested that), which would further hamper feral scaling with crit. While these aren't AP buffs, the bleed buff functions as reorganizing feral around AP.. For reasons often stated in this thread, that's not optimal and would lower crit gearing and scaling, and it effectively turns feral into an unnecessary version of a vanilla shadow priest, stacking ap instead of sp, but without any crucial raid support buffs (dps warriors provide the same buffs).

Attack power is worth more than crit, and it should be, but critical rating is still very valuable part of feral druid gearing.
> https://truewow.org/armory/spell.php?id=37117&realm=p
> https://truewow.org/armory/item.php?item=28034&realm=p
> https://truewow.org/armory/item.php?item=30627&realm=p
> Shred and melee hits are huge part of your DPS

I dont understand your dissatisfaction with non critical bleeds.
And I dont think 70+ talents will be enabled before wrath phase.

Warriors dont have this; https://truewow.org/armory/spell.php?id=34300&realm=p

[dgreenbe]

Anesthesia, I was talking about Agility vs AP, not crit vs. AP. While I'm ok with non-critical bleeds (this is just one of the causes of Feral issues, and my focus is the issue), the issue that arises is potential for dps to scale with gear and buffs (this is explained in the original post). Without adding talents, the solution for scaling is (and largely has been) focusing on Shred. This was a simple and effective approach, and similar to what Blizzard intended as Wrath Shred focuses on multipliers: 30% from bleed multipliers (in game), and another 56% from talents and abilities (not available on Primal). It's one of my two primary suggestions, and the question is simply one of extent. My view is that this extent is a level of critical strike scaling similar to other DPS specs.

Re Improved Leader of the Pack, the heal above warrior rampage is cool but--at least this would just be my opinion if I was a "progression"-focused raid leader--it wouldn't justify giving a raid spot to a feral over a lower geared rogue or whatever. Maybe I'm wrong on that point, but in my experience so far, Cats get raid spots primarily based upon high skill, high gear, good attendance, and maybe even being an officer, *despite* being cats, not because of it.

Just because Rogues and Rets are stupidly strong doesn't mean all other classes should do insane dps as well.
...

Any tests with logs or decent form of documentation or some mathematical proof? Gut feeling is often a bad advisor. Also, why bother about stuff that is still far away. PW staff can issue fixes once the issues start to emerge. It's not like rogues equip one T5 piece and then suddenly jump to 4k dps.

So, in short, it's your opinion that Ferals should not be good at sustained, single-target DPS. Okay, got it. To answer your question about "why bother" about long-term scaling issues, it's because some people feel that certain specs shouldn't be good. The more time goes--yes, this is speculation--the more people will have the opinion that Feral shouldn't be good, and the more people will feel like it is unfair for Feral to suddenly be good.

[.Watson1988]

Anesthesia, I was talking about Agility vs AP, not crit vs. AP. While I'm ok with non-critical bleeds (this is just one of the causes of Feral issues, and my focus is the issue), the issue that arises is potential for dps to scale with gear and buffs (this is explained in the original post). Without adding talents, the solution for scaling is (and largely has been) focusing on Shred. This was a simple and effective approach, and similar to what Blizzard intended as Wrath Shred focuses on multipliers: 30% from bleed multipliers (in game), and another 56% from talents and abilities (not available on Primal). It's one of my two primary suggestions, and the question is simply one of extent. My view is that this extent is a level of critical strike scaling similar to other DPS specs.

yes, bleed damage is a large component of feral's overall damage done and the lack of crits on those makes them scale less with crit chance inititally. Now Shred, which can crit, got buffed in total damage, so now they scale better with crit chance than before the buffs. I don't see the big problem here besides that bleed damage become a lower portion of feral's total damage. However, as long as rip does way more damage than just simply spamming shred or subsituting it with ferocious bite, the buffs should be a good enough tool to fix the dps issues.

Re Improved Leader of the Pack, the heal above warrior rampage is cool but--at least this would just be my opinion if I was a "progression"-focused raid leader--it wouldn't justify giving a raid spot to a feral over a lower geared rogue or whatever. Maybe I'm wrong on that point, but in my experience so far, Cats get raid spots primarily based upon high skill, high gear, good attendance, and maybe even being an officer, *despite* being cats, not because of it.

Why should the raid leader subsitute the one feral with a rogue? Who brings the 5% melee crit buff then? Currently fury warriors seem to be not on par with arms warriors at all.

Just because Rogues and Rets are stupidly strong doesn't mean all other classes should do insane dps as well.
...

Any tests with logs or decent form of documentation or some mathematical proof? Gut feeling is often a bad advisor. Also, why bother about stuff that is still far away. PW staff can issue fixes once the issues start to emerge. It's not like rogues equip one T5 piece and then suddenly jump to 4k dps.

So, in short, it's your opinion that Ferals should not be good at sustained, single-target DPS. Okay, got it. To answer your question about "why bother" about long-term scaling issues, it's because some people feel that certain specs shouldn't be good. The more time goes--yes, this is speculation--the more people will have the opinion that Feral shouldn't be good, and the more people will feel like it is unfair for Feral to suddenly be good.

Nice strawman. So saying druids should not be entitled to insane above average dps just because a few specs currently have these insane dps is equal to saying ferals should not have good dps.
I just take Anachrony as an example and argue that his 2k dps in non raid BiS gear is actually good enough to be viable in raids. And if you are not happy with 2.1 to 2.3k dps in bis gear as a feral, druids still have 3 other specs to choose from. Why should all talent specs of each class be top notch?

[Fitzpatrick]

There is currently a ideological divide on Primal between people that feel like every spec should be able to put out the same DPS and others who feel like utility should account for something. I'm in the latter: if Ferals could could put out the same DPS as a rogue but could still innervate, battle rez, had ImpLOTP, and MoTW, why on earth would anyone bring a rogue?

[flosr1]

i agree on that with Fitzsimmons. Support classes should never be as good dps as full dps classes like Mage, Rogue etc. They have enough other abilities that make them already OP. I think that feral cat would have been a bit too weak without the changes on TBC release, but i think now it is really good.
I noticed some feral cats just go for the wrong items. Go for the old TBC feral items with STR and AGI, rather than rogue items with AGI and AP. 1 STR = 2 AP for a cat. those items usually (not always) scale much better with raid buffs. So try to go for STR and Agility, rather than Attackpower. Ofc, you need to compare item stats carefully. Also, T4 set is a good choice for feral cats, it gives some pretty good boni.


I wanted to talk about something else here. A Member of the staff asked me if feral tank changes are ok like this now and i do not think so. Single target aggro is fine, but AOE threat is still too weak. I would not mind if warrior and prot pala threat would be so OP maybe. On a balanced lvl 80 wotlk server, we would have the maul glyph, which hits an additional target. Maul is main single target aggro ability, without the glyph, we have a double disadvantage here. Swipe is already weaker than Warrior or Pala AOE thread abilities and we also miss that glyph.

Also, i think bear tanks are too squishy compared to warriors and paladins. i am not really sure what the reason for this is, because i am not so familiar with other tank classes. But at a regular lvl 80 server, we would have the talent that enables Lacerate to crit. Without that, we have much less Savage Defense procs. Savage Defense was given us in wotlk, because the high armor bonus was just a bit too OP in TBC. that high armor bonus has been removed. Nowe we are kinda stuck in between on primal wow, Savage defense does not nearly proc as often as it should to make us a stable tank and we also have less armor. We kinda get sandwiched in between here, cause boss dmg has beed buffed. I think warrior and pala tanks can deal with that much better, cause they have high avoidance and as far as i know, the stats on their gear scales much better.

I am against enabling other talent rows, since all other classes cannot benefit from those. But i think we should atleast get a small armor bonus on Bear Form again, until Northrend is opened. In TBC, we had 400% armor bonus on ALL items. Maybe changing the armor bonus from 370% on cloth and leather items to 425% on cloth and leather items would be a good choice. Like this, we would avoid giving too much armor from rings, weapons and necks etc.

[Scen]

There is currently a ideological divide on Primal between people that feel like every spec should be able to put out the same DPS and others who feel like utility should account for something. I'm in the latter: if Ferals could could put out the same DPS as a rogue but could still innervate, battle rez, had ImpLOTP, and MoTW, why on earth would anyone bring a rogue?

For unqiue buffs and higher dps. It's okay if rogue DPS is top and feral DPS isn't but it's not ok if feral DPS is about 30% lower against single target (ignoring specific fights). As far as I'm aware ferals have very poor AOE (from what everyones saying) so that is another weakness for them. I'm not for or against any changes here so that's all I'm going to say on the matter though because I don't have enough numbers to work with, I just think some people are overvaluing utility in PvE a bit.

[Fitzpatrick]

Feral needed the huge armor in TBC because they could still be crushed. Here, in a 3.3.5 build, they can't. I'm not sure the 75% armor is really warranted anymore.

You also are countering your own argument with asking for AE tanking buffs. Feral AE threat was laughably low in TBC. Besides, its nice to have to worry about AE threat as a DPSer as opposed to Vanilla where there was almost no way to pull aggro from tanks. I hesitate to interject, as my druid isn't very high level, but Anesthesia mentioned having luck with tab-targetting-maul/mangle-spam for AE instead of Swipe spam.

[natnat123]

nvm

[flosr1]

Feral needed the huge armor in TBC because they could still be crushed. Here, in a 3.3.5 build, they can't. I'm not sure the 75% armor is really warranted anymore.

You also are countering your own argument with asking for AE tanking buffs. Feral AE threat was laughably low in TBC. Besides, its nice to have to worry about AE threat as a DPSer as opposed to Vanilla where there was almost no way to pull aggro from tanks. I hesitate to interject, as my druid isn't very high level, but Anesthesia mentioned having luck with tab-targetting-maul/mangle-spam for AE instead of Swipe spam.

you are countering your own argument here. if tab targeting makes swipe useless, then swipe is maybe too weak? i have no problem with tab targetting, i do that myself, it is also neccessary to lower armor and increase bleed effects, so that there is increased melee dmg on the mobs. but making an aoe threat ability uselss is not quite the way to go. especially because anasthasia also brought a similar argument for mangle and lacerate before those were buffed.
i don't think druid aoe threat should be as strong as warriors or paladins, but we are clearly missing the maul glyph here, or maybe warrior aoe threat should just be nerved? that would maybe be a better solution.

anyway, i think you did not read my point with armor and savage defense properly. on a regular tbc server, we would have the armor bonus like it is now, but we would have more savage defense procs. also lvl 80 wotlk gear is totally different to druid dank gear here, it offers much more agility and therefore more dodge and crit (savage defense procs). on primal wow, we lack both, armor and savage defense procs.

[dgreenbe]

Fitz, I didn't say every spec should be the same, but rather that every spec should be able to satisfy its purpose. In the case of Feral Druid, the primary purpose is sustained, single-target DPS. If you look at the various logs for either world bosses or Gruul/Mag on disc recently, I think you'll realize that there's no worry Feral will be the same DPS as rogue, and if you do any testing I think you'll realize that this is a substantial gap that will widen dramatically over time.

Just looking at some meters right now on disc, I see a Feral in the OP T4 set doing 70% damage, and another Feral in similar gear doing less than that on Mag.

And again--I'm really turning into a broken record here--one of the main issues is damage scaling and that this is going to worsen over time. Yes, I understand that you probably think it's good and enough.

i agree on that with Fitzsimmons. Support classes should never be as good dps as full dps classes

Ret is a support class as well and is also great at AOE, which is why I used it as an example often. Ret is about the same as Rogue now, scales better with STR, and will scale significantly better with expertise, haste, and crit (and all of those make each other scale better). For those new to this thread or who make straw men and just argue that I'm saying Feral should do 4k dps right now, I'm not saying everyone should be the same but rather using this as a point for comparison, and in previous posts I've explained how these specs compare and why that's important.

Also, i think bear tanks are too squishy compared to warriors and paladins.

I originally intended this for Cat form, but since some of the suggestions tangentially affect Bears too (Primal Gore), I don't mind discussing this too. If it's an issue we can have this split and moved to another thread. I haven't thought about this a lot, but you make a lot of strong points. Yes, Bear can have solid mitigation but low Savage Defense uptime can be very risky. As you said, a bear without savage defense up due to no Primal Gore, with lower Wrath armor, and then facing hard-hitting bosses buffed to be challenging for warriors, is in a bad spot. This is another case of purpose--in this situation, the purpose of Bear is to be great against slower-hitting, hard-hitting bosses, and with this weakness I'm not sure that's going to be the case. I would be really interested to see if anyone has done any testing with, say, Kazrogal or Azgalor, or bosses like that where Bear should be good.

Just for some info, I tried to max out mitigation gear. Assessing some gear on PTR, I tried to wear a strong, armor-based set with the 4T4 bonus and T5 pieces. With full buffs and consumes, I was able to have 20805 armor (66.34% mitigation), and with the SSC class trinket (an armor proc, but not a very good proc uptime), I was able to get up to 24875 armor, 70.2%). These were previously the "tricks" to get armor cap early in TBC without perfect gear, but even with all this it wasn't possible. Even in BiS gear, I was only able to hit 23833 armor (69.3%).

Although I'm not sure what's the best way to handle this, buffing the armor multiplier doesn't strike me as a bad idea. I'm sure at least all the people who insist this is a blizzlike TBC server with dual spec enabled will support this, as Bears could get armor cap in TBC by T5.