Unbearably HoT

On the heels of me actually trying to use my brain to make some thoughtful damage reductions, Blizzard went ahead and did it anyway:

Pretty across the board, without any regard for rotation difficulty. Doesn’t this still penalize the “less-skilled” players? More on this later.

Slightly more information from Kalon here. 

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.

Bushidox, of Cenarion Circle, is the second winner of the Guest Yogger contest and comes to you today with a discussion about the benefits of Armor Penetration.

With the 3.1 patch and Ulduar there are a number of new gear choices and options to maximize your effectiveness as a cat. The biggest stat change is to Armor Penetration, which used to be the ugly redheaded stepchild of DPS and has recently turned into the girl next door (re: catches your eye but remains fairly unobtainable). Theorycrafters agree on a couple of key points about Armor Penetration. First, the ArP stat was made a great deal more effective in 3.1, to the tune of around a 25% increase in effectiveness. Second, there is now a great deal more gear to be had from Ulduar that has significant ArP, typically at the cost of Haste or Crit Rating. Third, while effective, ArP has to be stacked fairly high in order to see real results. The general consensus is that with Faerie Fire and 5x Sunder Armor active on a boss target, an ArP trinket proc, and an ArP value above 400, ArP becomes our greatest stat to stack for DPS increase.

Currently, testing illustrates that you can reduce a target’s armor below zero, at which point ArP becomes the best stat by a fair margin. I know what you’re thinking: that’s too much ArP to reach, and even if you did hit it, you would have to give up so many better choices to obtain it. This is in actuality false. Using Rawr, I configured a gear set up that has the following sexy attributes. Two piece bonus for tier 8.5, two piece tier bonus for tier 7.5, 266 hit rating, 137 expertise rating, and 667 armor penetration rating before trinket procs. All told this gives you an unbuffed crit rating of 43.5%, and nearly 7400 attack power before raid buffs.

Here is a table of the gear pieces used and the pertinent values for each piece:

For the sockets, one yellow socket is 16 Hit, 3 yellows are 8 Hit/8 Exp, and the last yellow socket is 8 Hit/8 AGI. All three red sockets are 16 ArP, all three of the blues as 8 ArP/12 STA, the extra socket in the belt is 16 ArP, and the Meta is a Relentless Earthsiege Diamond. The enchants are assumed to be Ebonhold helm, Hodir exalted shoulders, 22 AGI to cloak, 10 stats to chest, 50 AP to bracers, 44 AP to gloves, Crit/AP on pants, 16 AGI to boots, and Massacre on weapon. This may be further enhanced by your choice in professions.

Why is 667 ArP significant? The reason being, is that if either Grim Toll or the Runestone proc, the target suddenly has zero armor towards the penetration cap against your attacks. On the table you will note that the Runestone is listed as 655 proc when the tool tip has it listed as only 612. Several players have reported the proc rate as giving 655. It remains to be seen if they change the tool tip or the item proc to match the current tool tip. Either way, you now are doing true maximum damage. You get the benefit of both of your 2 piece set bonuses, have no misses, and are at the soft 6.5 Expertise cap assuming you took the talent Primal Precision. The current model of Rawr supports this, as at this point ArP now becomes the best choice for gem sockets over any other option. In addition, with 600+ ArP and at least one trinket proc checked, Toskk’s model supports ArP as only being beaten out by Critical Strike. Fully buffed, you will be around 50% crit anyway, which is where most experts agree is the sweet spot for cats.

Now understandably you are going to say, “But wait, that’s a dream set up! There is no conceivable way I can possibly get all that gear in this lifetime—why would I care about a theoretical model?” To this I can only assure you that 400+ ArP will result in a significant gain when paired with a Grim Toll/Mjolnir Runestone proc. The best news is that with Valorous Helm and Shoulders and an Aged Winter Cloak, you are already around 100 ArP. My advice is to pick up the ArP pieces when you can cheaply, and save up for the Mjolnir Runestone. I also would not bother gemming for ArP until you hit at least 300+ penetration and have one of the two trinkets. The Moljner Stone and Grim Toll will likely outstrip any conceivable trinket pairing, even the godly Darkmoon Card: Greatness. While not nearly as noticeable on non-bosses, significant ArP will benefit you for all sorts of DPS.

Now that you know the facts, go out and give your pussy the penetration it deserves!

For more of BushidoX’s reference notes, please click here!

Wickit, of Ysera, was one of the winners of the Guest Yogger contest and offers up his two-copper about set bonuses for feral DPS.

Like everyone else, when I got my first two pieces of tier 7 armor I was thrilled by the +4 seconds it added to Rip uptime. Who didn’t love the idea of two extra free ticks of Rip? Then along came 3.1 and it became even better with Primal Gore. With the average 50% crit chance the bonus basically guaranteed a free Rip crit, but it couldn’t last forever, right?

Patch 3.1 also brought us our Feral Tier 8 set and two new set bonuses. The first of these two bonuses allows our bleeds to proc a Clearcasting state. This is fantastic for Feral DPS. Clearcasting from Omen of Clarity is a huge boon to Shreds, so increasing the chance we have to enter this “state” is great. The four-piece bonus, however, is heavily debated. The second bonus adds eight seconds to Savage Roar, but to get it you have to break your tier 7 bonus.

It’s an interesting dilemma, because it’s essentially doubling the tier 7 two-piece bonus. We aren’t increasing the DPS of Rip anymore and will have to reapply it four seconds sooner, but we’re now able to reapply Savage Roar eight seconds later. The problem is that most of us clip Savage Roar anyway, so just how helpful is this?

For every combo point after one point we spend putting up Savage Roar, we gain five seconds (on top of the initial 14 seconds from one combo point). This means we can equate T8’s four-piece bonus to 1.6 combo points, but let’s call it two for argument’s sake. What is the cost of two combo points? At the high end, a Shred crits for two combo points and costs us 42 energy. At the low end of the spectrum, a Mangle or Rake can crit for two combo points at a cost of 34 energy. Double those values if the ability doesn’t crit. We’re going to use those abilities anyway, but now those combo points can be put towards Rip or a Ferocious Bite.

The set bonus thus has a few benefits for Feral DPS:

1. Generally, it’s best to get Savage Roar up as soon as possible in a fight. This means that it often applies with one-three combo points depending on your preference and luck with crits. With the four-piece T8 bonus, a one or two combo point Roar will be pretty close to a three or four combo point Roar.
2. On trash your Roar will last a bit longer while you’re moving from mob to mob or Swipe spamming. This is nice since less time spent refreshing SR means more Shreds/Rakes/Swipes.
3. I mentioned Ferocious Bite earlier and I meant it. By decreasing the number of combo points needed to keep SR up for a decent period of time, we open the window for weaving more Bites into our rotation.
4. There are fights out there where an extra long Rip will be wasted. For example, XT-002’s phases might clip your Rip if applied late before a switch to a heart phase or applied too late during the heart phase.
5. The bonus really lends itself to a Feral DPS who loves Armor Penetration. If you’re stacking ArP, Rip begins to devalue (even if only slightly), but SR increases in value.

However, there are drawbacks:

1. There are fights where Rip uptime is very nice (i.e. Hodir and Razorscale). Applying a Rip and getting a couple of Shreds in to increase its duration (Glyph of Shred) just before a Flash Freeze or before Razorscale lifts off into the air can really help your DPS while you aren’t touching the boss.
2. Much like #1, there are fights that might incapacitate you (i.e. Ignis Slag Pot) and an extra four seconds on Rip can help you maintain a close to 100% uptime.
3. Of course, the most obvious is it’s free damage and statistically at least one free Rip crit.

Personally, I’ve made the move towards Armor Penetration, but currently maintain my tier 7 bonus (head and shoulders). I have been debating if I should pick up the Conqueror’s Helm and Valorous shoulders for tier 8 (I wear Winter’s Icy Embrace for my chest and we haven’t downed Yogg yet for Conqueror’s shoulders). The conclusion I’ve come to for myself is that I will pick up the T8.

With my ArP I want to get in there and start Shredding as soon as possible. I want that extended Savage Roar to help weave in more Ferocious Bites. I maintain a near 100% Rip and Rake uptime, of course, but Shred crits for 13-14,000 and Bite crits for the same or even more with an extra 25% chance to do so (5/5 Rend and Tear). With a focus on ArP you want to maximize SR, and the T7 bonus becomes less important. With a focus on critical strike (AGI) Rip is probably still the way to go with Primal Gore.

You have to take into account the T8 stats, too. The shoulders will really help reach the Expertise soft cap (especially if you choose Footpads of Silence or Flamestalker Boots over the Runed Ironhide Boots) and the pieces have pretty high AGI for Blessing of Kings and talents to increase. I think for a Druid like me I’ll take the 4-piece bonus from T8, but not until I can replace both my T7 pieces at the same time.

No sense in breaking the bonus too early.

If you recall, I posted a preliminary Ulduar Gear List for Feral DPS a few weeks ago. Since then, I’ve done a lot more raiding, have made substantial changes to my spreadsheet (thank you, Gingershnaps, for the extensive and awesome layout work), and have a different methodology for how you can select Cat gear. I’ve also noticed a disturbing trend in the way some of the new Druid gear looks.

The new spreadsheet can be downloaded here.

How does this shit work? First of all, it’s important to know how and why I selected the items that I did. In my spreadsheet, I calculated and then sorted all the stat data based on the following criteria: number of sockets, Total Crit%, Total AP, and Armor Penetration (in that order). Remember, after Armor Penetration (which is a little ridiculous to gear for at the expense of other stats), AGI is the best stack to stat as a Cat. In the spreadsheet, I’ve translated AGI into both AP and Crit, and have attempted to pick out the item in each category with the most Crit Percentage and Attack Power. But why, you say, is sorting by socket number important?

An item with more sockets is not necessarily better than an item without sockets; however, the number of sockets can make or break a gear determination. Take the Flamestalker Boots and the Footpads of Silence. If you look purely at the Total AP and Total %Crit columns, you’ll notice that the Flamestalker Boots come out ahead (and have Haste). When you consider, however, that the Footpads of Silence are only 17 AP and 0.3% crit off and have two sockets, it’s easy to see why they’re better. As always, remember to carefully evaluate your gear. Crit, AP, and ArP (and even Haste) are totally awesome, but if you’re completely overlooking Hit and Expertise Rating, you’ll find yourself in trouble.

While you can find your best-in-slot items listed on the spreadsheet in red, I’ve put together two gear lists for you: one for the folks focused on Hard Mode Achievements, and one for the folks still trying to push through the first few bosses.

Best-in-Slot:

Back: Drape of the Faceless General. Normal General Vezax, Hard Mode.

Chest: Conqueror’s Nightsong Raiments. Heroic Hodir.

Feet: Footpads of Silence. LW recipe that drops from Heroic Ulduar.

Hands: Conqueror’s Nightsong Handgrips. Heroic Mimiron.

Head: Guise of the Midgard Serpent. Normal Thorim.

Legs: Legguards of Cunning Deception. Heroic Yogg-Saron, Hard Mode.

Neck: Seed of Budding Carnage. Normal Freya, Hard Mode.

Rings: Metallic Loop of the Sufferer (Heroic General Vezax), Godbane Signet (Normal Yogg-Saron).

Shoulders: Conqueror’s Nightsong Shoulderpads. Heroic Yogg-Saron.

Waist: Soul-Devouring Cinch. Normal Yogg-Saron, Hard Mode.

Weapon: Dark Edge of Depravity. Heroic Yogg-Saron, Hard Mode.

Wrists: Mechanist’s Bindings. Heroic Flame Leviathan.

This “set” will put you at 197 Hit Rating/5.91% (coupled with Grim Toll, you’re at 281, already over-budget) and 203 Expertise Rating/6.09% reduction in Dodge & Parry chance (assuming Primal Precision).

Slightly-Less-Ridiculous:

Back: Drape of Icy Intent. Heroic Hodir.

Chest: Conqueror’s Nightsong Raiments. Heroic Hodir.

Feet: Flamestalker Boots. Heroic Ignis.

Hands: Valorous Nightsong Handgrips. Normal Freya.

Head: Guise of the Midgard Serpent. Normal Thorim.

Legs: Proto-hide Leggings. Heroic Razorscale. These are also BoE.

Neck: Broach of the Wailing Night. 19 Emblems of Conquest. This is a super nice necklace.

Rings: Strength of the Automaton (Heroic Flame Leviathan) and Cindershard Ring (Heroic Ignis).

Shoulders: Treacherous Shoulderpads. Normal XT-002.

Waist: Belt of the Twilight Assassin. 28 Emblems of Conquest.

Weapon: Twisted Visage. Heroic XT-002. Lotrafen is technically better, but Twisted Visage is a lot easier to get.

Wrists: Mechanist’s Bindings. Heroic Flame Leviathan.

This “set,” which is a lot easier to assemble and will give you the two-piece T8 bonus, gives you 307 Hit Rating/9.21% Hit (super over-budget; if you can pick up Lotrafen, you’d be in better shape) and 177 Expertise Rating/5.31% reduction in Dodge & Parry chance (assuming Primal Precision).

I highly recommend using the spreadsheet to mix and match the gear you know you can attain and balance it with the stats you already have. Terrible with math? You can use the spreadsheet in conjunction with a tool like Rawr to get a leg up. Rawr also has the advantage of caching a number of other data elements and gear for your perusal. As always, the spreadsheet will continue to be updated as gear changes and discoveries occur. Looking for Bear information? Check out ThinkTank for super awesome tanking discussion and gearing suggestions.