Feral Druid Tweaking (Cat)

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natnat123
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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking

#46 » Post by natnat123 » 08 Oct 2017 16:26

flosr1 wrote:
08 Oct 2017 16:15

or maybe warrior aoe threat should just be nerved? that would maybe be a better solution.
nope, nope anddddddd nope. i also tab target when doing aoe threat, without doing that. i can quickly loose aggro to someone with high burst damage or a geared mage ect doing a ton of aoe.

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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking

#47 » Post by flosr1 » 08 Oct 2017 16:27

i have to agree with you on the ret pala thingy, they are a support class and also quite OP.

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Anesthesia
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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking

#48 » Post by Anesthesia » 08 Oct 2017 17:16

flosr1 wrote:
08 Oct 2017 16:15
but making an aoe threat ability uselss is not quite the way to go. especially because Anesthesia also brought a similar argument for mangle and lacerate before those were buffed.
Simply spamming Swipe in AoE would be a horrible way to play a character, if you macro Maul with Swipe, it would be even worse. What exactly is the problem with Druid AoE threat? You are forced to use Mangle/Maul on mobs to apply debuffs in AoE as well, buffing Swipe does not seem to be needed, after all Im not even using 3 talent points to increase its damage and players dont seem to overaggro me unless someone makes a mistake.
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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking (Cat)

#49 » Post by flosr1 » 08 Oct 2017 17:29

well if you argument like this, we can just nerve mangle and lacerate again, because single target aggro was totally fine before it was buffed.

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Anesthesia
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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking (Cat)

#50 » Post by Anesthesia » 08 Oct 2017 17:34

https://truewow.org/armory/spell.php?id=62600&realm=t procs from Lacerate crits would not give a noticeable increase in absorbed damage trough SD, keep in mind that usual swing time for boss is 2.4 seconds after IW/TC effect. In between his melee swings you can damage him with 2-3 abilities that can crit, with more than 30% chance to crit, you will have roughly 50% chance to have SD up on each of his swings, and with your chance to avoid the same attack of 50%, your SD absorbs will be highly efficient. Enabling https://truewow.org/armory/spell.php?id=63503&realm=t would only affect tanking 2-3 targets, and I dont think this should be buffed, as shield tans are supposed to have an advantage there.

From personal experience during the Karazhan raid, I was absorbing and self healing more than the second healer on fights such as Opera event (while one boss is up), Attumen the Huntsman (while one boss is up) and similar.

*

Mangle was buffed because Maul was doing much more damage per rage, and Lacerate was too low damage to even be used.
I dont think Maul is supposed to be the main ability, and using Swipe while tanking single target as it had the same effect as Lacerate is just wrong.

Creator of this thread changed name to include (CAT) we should stop discussing the tank mechanics on this post.
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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking

#51 » Post by .Watson1988 » 08 Oct 2017 18:00

dgreenbe wrote:
08 Oct 2017 16:20
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.
If there actually were some decent logs proving this we could finally stop this circular argument. But there aren't or at least not here on the public PW forums or on the PW Discord. Just some recount snap shots of some random players.

But at least we are finally approaching the essence of this long drawn out lamentation:
"My feral dps should do the same dps as a rogue."

And yes, rets deal too much dps in comparison to Warriors.
And rogues deal slightly too much damage overall single target, imo. And this might get off the charts once they get Glaives.
And hunters are now too strong as well after buffs and the pet fixes. I see more and more hunters in raids and thus think that people start to realize that hunters are very strong (in raids).

And can we once and for all define what people here perceive as "good" dps? what value is that? Is "good" dps 10% lower than the current top dps spec?

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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking (Cat)

#52 » Post by Anesthesia » 08 Oct 2017 22:37

I think 25 man raids are balanced as if every DPS did +2k, someone else might give you a better answer.
We cant expect every class to perform the same way in every occasion, if we could fit every DPS class into 1.7k - 2.3k that would be great, as balancing raids would be easier and everyone would be happy.
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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking (Cat)

#53 » Post by jetteroo » 09 Oct 2017 07:08

it’s difficult to just buff one spec and not end up buffing another in same class becos of shared abilities.

Discussion about how hybrid classes should perform is a tricky topic. Dun forget that as an e.g all healing and all tank classes are all hybrids.

Once we bring up the argument the hybrid classes should not do better than pure dps classes then the discussion becomes very tricky....

All classes have progressed since vanilla but the slant of certain classes towards certain specs remain ....

Also remember that blizzard didn’t classes to be as balanced before 80 as at 70, so inevitably we will have a bigger issue with balances vs at 80.

Think it’s important we bear all above in mind when we have discussions like this.

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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking

#54 » Post by dgreenbe » 09 Oct 2017 17:15

.Watson1988 wrote:
08 Oct 2017 18:00
If there actually were some decent logs proving this we could finally stop this circular argument.
It's not a circular argument, it's me providing information, a few people discussing mechanics, and a couple people such as yourself disingenuously doubting any information you don't like while having zero information of your own simply because you are for some reason highly animated by the belief that Feral should not be good. Which is a fine opinion to have--I disagree--but I get it already.

The rest is you accusing people of making straw men while making your own straw men, but since you've expressed your opinion and are no longer providing anything additional to the thread, responses to most of what you post would be a waste of time.


Currently, I'm waiting for information on what to compare Anesthesia's dps to, as DPS is a relative question, and if the top DPS are doing close to 3k DPS in sustained, single-target DPS and Feral is doing 2k, this fits perfectly in the 60-70% range that others are describing and is evident in the DPS logs on Discord.

For DPS going into the future, as stated before, testing shows that in high-end gear Feral has scaling issues, and these are obviously largely rooted in significantly lower scaling with crit--much higher % of damage critting by other melee specs obviously would have this result, and there is no reason to believe otherwise.

There are some issues with PTR testing compared to a raid environment, and if there is a better way to test this or if someone has done better testing I'm interested in learning about it. But thus far there is no reason to believe that Feral will magically scale as well as other specs when it benefits less from AP, crit, expertise, haste, and armor pen compared to other physical DPS specs.

jetteroo wrote:
09 Oct 2017 07:08
it’s difficult to just buff one spec and not end up buffing another in same class becos of shared abilities.
Cat form abilities are not shared by any other form, except for Berserk, which is locked on Primal.



For people to have a general idea of top DPS logs who haven't had a chance to really look at this yet, I've provided some typical logs posted on Discord.

Gruul:
Image

Mag:
Image

Kazzak:
Image

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.Watson1988
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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking

#55 » Post by .Watson1988 » 09 Oct 2017 18:35

dgreenbe wrote:
09 Oct 2017 17:15
.Watson1988 wrote:
08 Oct 2017 18:00
If there actually were some decent logs proving this we could finally stop this circular argument.
It's not a circular argument, it's me providing information, a few people discussing mechanics, and a couple people such as yourself disingenuously doubting any information you don't like while having zero information of your own simply because you are for some reason highly animated by the belief that Feral should not be good. Which is a fine opinion to have--I disagree--but I get it already.

The rest is you accusing people of making straw men while making your own straw men, but since you've expressed your opinion and are no longer providing anything additional to the thread, responses to most of what you post would be a waste of time.
Nice word twisting. Firstly, you are putting again words in my mouth that I never said ("ferals should not be good", and the term "good" is still not defined). Secondly, I am simply doubting your information because it is not discernible at what level of gear the players involved are or what they did during the fight. Furthermore, it is only a snap shot of one guild (?) for Gruul and Magtheridon and it might not represent the whole cross section of raider population and boss fights. I say there is currently a lack of unbiased and sufficient data, especially if we consider that we soon get into a new raid tier. I like to have solid data before I start coming to conclusions or even undertake the effort of prediction of future performance.

And then
"...but since you've expressed your opinion and are no longer providing anything additional to the thread, responses to most of what you post would be a waste of time."
Yawn, what a classic "I don't like what you say that's why all you say is a waste of time" argument. Is this high school again?

But let's get back onto more polite paths and look at your provided "data":
What are we able to see here? Maybe you can elaborate a bit what exactly you can derive from this and why?

I can't get much from it. The warrior and shaman seem to be top notch, rogue is in line with what I saw in our raids, but I cannot determine if your Rets are either undergeard, were slightly distracted in the fight, or they are just poor players.
Neither can I see the used gear by the ferals nor discern their rotation. So, I cannot make sure that their performance was the best possible. I also cannot prove the opposite of course.

And concerning kazzak data: A 50 seconds fight in which you blow all your damage cooldowns, trinkets, and blood lust is supposed to be representative for the overall dps balancing?

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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking

#56 » Post by Anesthesia » 10 Oct 2017 10:41

dgreenbe wrote:
09 Oct 2017 17:15
For people to have a general idea of top DPS logs who haven't had a chance to really look at this yet, I've provided some typical logs posted on Discord.
I am assuming those dps meters you posted include your druid character. Your gear is probably better than mine and you should be able to do 2k dps, unless you forget to apply Mangle debuff.
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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking (Cat)

#57 » Post by dgreenbe » 10 Oct 2017 11:09

Ferals can do 2k dps. I haven't disputed that. What I've mentioned is that this dps is relative to almost 3k dps for the top dps-- almost 60%. This is the first point: 60% is low, especially on fights with sustained, single-target dps. I'm assuming you're okay with that, but I don't know if that's the case, and I don't know how that's good.

The meters include a top feral in a top guild with better gear than me, and amazing set bonuses. While I can only assume that their top feral is skilled, I don't know. I also don't know the skill of the other DPS. We could assume the ferals are bad and the non-ferals are good, but we could also assume the reverse. I don't know what to make of such speculation and don't care to get into calling people bad if I can avoid it. Also, as a side note, Mangle is not necessary--Warriors can put up the same debuff more easily.

The second point, however--the main point--is still scaling (even in Wrath content, Ferals really shined once they were able to stack armor penetration). Based upon looking at what scales on Feral and how it scales compared to other specs, there's no reason to think that the 30-40% gap won't widen. If feral, which as a focus on sustained, single-target DPS, does 50% of top melee damage on such a fight (there are actually not that many such fights in this patch), and does less DPS on fights without high uptime on boss, and has no AOE on fights involving AOE, and is even more useless compared to other melee on fights that aren't melee friendly (there are many of these in TBC, especially in Mount Hyjal), then I'm struggling to come up with an explanation of how Feral will be good.

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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking (Cat)

#58 » Post by .Watson1988 » 10 Oct 2017 12:46

Nice that we finally get closer to an agreement:
dgreenbe wrote:
10 Oct 2017 11:09
...
The meters include a top feral in a top guild with better gear than me, and amazing set bonuses. While I can only assume that their top feral is skilled, I don't know. I also don't know the skill of the other DPS. We could assume the ferals are bad and the non-ferals are good, but we could also assume the reverse. I don't know what to make of such speculation and don't care to get into calling people bad if I can avoid it...
The problem is that we cannot conclude all that much from a few recount dps screen shots and thus they cannot be used to confirm your hypothesis (i.e. "Feral dps is very poor even after the buffs") is the essence of my criticism.
The second point, however--the main point--is still scaling (even in Wrath content, Ferals really shined once they were able to stack armor penetration). Based upon looking at what scales on Feral and how it scales compared to other specs, there's no reason to think that the 30-40% gap won't widen. If feral, which as a focus on sustained, single-target DPS, does 50% of top melee damage on such a fight (there are actually not that many such fights in this patch), and does less DPS on fights without high uptime on boss, and has no AOE on fights involving AOE, and is even more useless compared to other melee on fights that aren't melee friendly (there are many of these in TBC, especially in Mount Hyjal), then I'm struggling to come up with an explanation of how Feral will be good.
The received buffs have been percentage increases on some abilities which increased the sensitivity of the abilities' damage to stat inputs like AP, agility, crit chance, etc and thus makes them scale better with stats than before. I haven't done the math and also didn't find any on this thread, so I don't know if the scaling is now sufficiently high enough or still far too low to be able to catch up with higher gear levels on the other melee dps.
...What I've mentioned is that this dps is relative to almost 3k dps for the top dps-- almost 60%. This is the first point: 60% is low, especially on fights with sustained, single-target dps. I'm assuming you're okay with that, but I don't know if that's the case, and I don't know how that's good.
Let's look at the Gruul fight and take a good rogue with 2.7k dps as reference point. Feral dps in BiS has around 2.1k to 2.2k (let's take the lower bound), then we get to 2.1/2.7= 0.77. 23% less damage than the best single target melee dps class in game which brings nothings else to the raid than a buff that is currently provided by arms warriors is not too shabby in my opinion. Is it really good? Not really (however it makes them viable), I agree on that. But at what level should feral dps then be?

Concerning this, Kurthos made quite a statement yesterday on TW discord:
...Mages hunters warriors Paladins rogues are where we want them to be, other clssses are behind....
Okay, so what range and value is this "where" and due to item progression it must be a moving target, so how does it move? And who is this "we"? I think Developers should start to think about a concept for all this class balancing and finally publicly disclose a quantitative decision rule that defines when exactly rebalancing becomes necessary and what target values it tries to attain.

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Re: Feral Druid Tweaking (Cat)

#59 » Post by jetteroo » 12 Oct 2017 06:25

More from what kurthos said:
There is no consideration about hybrid classes when it comes to class balance

The idea “hybrids should function worse than pure dps” is something that is contrived on the player side of the game and holds no weight in the actual game design wise

Mages hunters warriors Paladins rogues are where we want them to be, other clssses are behind

Two major factors should shake up everything with SSC release: itemization could change the possible output of some underperformers and over performers
I do quite agree with the statement about hybrid classes.

Cos all tank classes and heal classes are also hybrids. You just can't not complete any quest/raid without DPS unfortunately.

By making hybrid classes weaker intentionally you will basically be going back to what vanilla was. Forcing certain classes into certain roles.

As to the q of why play a pure DPS class. We all know raid compo is just as important. Every class has a role to play.

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