Unbearably HoT

As I started writing this article, Wintersdark responded to yesterday’s piece with the following:

I’d like to see other classes able to get great dps when handled as masterfully as a cat putting out consistently astounding numbers.

Exactly! Part of the fun in Feral DPS is the challenge the rotation affords—and I’d hate to see it go. While it’s possible to tune down our damage while simultaneously simplifying our cycles, why not step up everyone’s game and put them to the test? Sorry, I’m dreaming again. Blizzard’s reality is that a happy player-base keeps them in business, and the vast majority of their player base wants the game to be simple, accessible, and enjoyable. Is that so bad? We can discuss that debate another day.

Regardless, it’s important to critically dissect both sides of any argument to reach the most logical conclusion. Yesterday I highlighted a few key elements that I believe “justify” our top-end DPS, but today I’d like to constructively address what “adjustments” could be made to tone down damage without leaving less-skilled players in the dust. First, we need to identify the biggest difficulties in our rotation and the abilities that produce the most damage. By creating a sort of mental Venn Diagram, one can figure out where “difficult” overlaps with “damage” and start tweaking from there.

During a “normal” encounter, Shred occupies the largest piece of my damage pie-graph. There’s nothing particularly difficult about hitting a Shred button, but as I outlined yesterday, the positional requirement of that ability can render it slightly difficult to execute in a busy, mobile encounter. To make it easier for the less-skilled individuals, Blizzard could remove the positional requirement on Shred, and simultaneously balance damage by adjusting Shred’s damage multiplier—let’s say from 225% to 200%. By doing that, Shred is still superior to the now-obsolete Backstab and gains the same hit-it-where-you-want benefit of Mutilate.* Not enough? Shred damage is also multiplied by Bleed enhancers such as Mangle or Trauma. Remove that component from the spell, and you’ve knocked it down again.

What about our actual rotation? To sustain considerable damage, the following buffs and DoTs need to remain active:

 

• Mangle (applied by you, another Druid, or a DPS Warrior)
• Rip
• Rake
• Savage Roar

 

Beyond maintaining those abilities, Shred functions as your main combo point generator. Whenever you have five combo points and don’t need to refresh Rip or Roar, you weave in Ferocious Bite. If you’re really trying to go balls-out, you’re monitoring your Clearcast procs and utilizing your highest Energy consuming ability, Shred, when it pops. Man, what a pain. The answer to simplifying while tuning down, then, is not achieved by shortening durations. If you recall, we already have various set bonuses (two-piece T7 and four-piece T8) and glyphs (Glyph of Rip, Glyph of Shred, Glyph of Mangle) that extend the duration of many of these abilities—but we still need combo points to keep them active. If you’re gemming for AGI or you have some higher-end gear, you should have no problem reaching 50% crit unbuffed, which is essential for generating enough combo points to keep a rotation alive. If, however, you don’t have access to the gear (or the Crit while raid buffed), you’ll find yourself CP starved and your buffs and debuffs will gradually fall-off.

Why not take the Mutilate approach? If you’re not in the know, Mutilate generates two combo points (largely because it’s using two weapons at once).** By building in two-combo points to the already muted Shred (i.e. <225% multiplier damage with zero Mangle bonuses), confused and/or harried individuals only need to refresh their buffs and debuffs once in awhile—and don’t need to worry about scrambling for points to do it.

Unfortunately, this presents another problem. While an excess of combo points makes life a lot easier for those straining under the DoT rotation, it provides a field-day of opportunities for someone (like me) gleefully looking for extras. As I mentioned earlier, when you have five combo points and nothing to do with them, you Bite. Addressing this potential damage influx can be addressed in one of two ways:

 

1. Through Rend and Tear (reduce critical strike chance of FB on bleeding targets to 15%, down from 25%).
2. Through Feral Aggression (reducing FB damage done to 10%, down from 15%).
3. Both.

 

So I suppose there are three. In an ideal world, Blizzard would fiddle around with Feral Aggression, drop the FB damage boost on it to something highly undesirable, and then there wouldn’t ever be a question of whether or not you pick up Feral Instinct. Feral Instinct, in turn, boosts Swipe damage. I end up using Ferocious Bite far more than Swipe, and I chose to invest my points into strictly single target boss-damaging talents. Extra Swipe damage, however, remains incredibly useful for trash and during certain encounters—like Thorim’s arena. Although my rotation currently demands that I pick up that extra 15% damage for FB, losing Feral Instinct wasn’t a choice I made lightly.

Modifying Rend and Tear, however, makes the talent even more of a groaner. It’s suddenly non-useful from an FB perspective, and you still need to waste five points in it to pick up the extra Shred damage. Making changes to Feral Aggression allow us to invest those points somewhere else—such as in Feral Instinct or Survival Instincts (both of which I don’t have in my current build).

But why not make this whole thing easy and nerf Savage Roar? It’d be a straight-up damage loss across the boards, no matter how you play. That’s just it: “no matter how you play.” Ghostcrawler wants to approach this from a perspective that low-skill individuals deserve a chance to do decent damage while still blowing their (admitted complex) rotation. Nerfing Savage Roar does nothing to uncomplicated the rotation, and really only makes those players suffer more.

What are your ideas?

*Please note that if you’re regularly standing in front of a boss (or any mob) to DPS, you’re doing it wrong and you’re destroying your damage with Parries anyway. Removing the positional requirement on Shred only allows you to keep up your rotation and do some damage when a mob is moving around a lot.

**Mortality also insists that I mention that Mutilate actually can generate three combo points thanks to Seal Fate.