Unbearably HoT

You know Blizzard is overwhelmed when they decide to release 4.3 information in the wee hours of Sunday morning while many of us were eating pizza, getting drunk, and catching up on past episodes of True Blood. In the event that you were partying and didn’t have the opportunity to check your RSS or Twitter feed, here’s a quick recap.

• Feral, 2pc – While Berserk is active, Savage Defense absorbs are 100% larger, and your Blood in the Water talent now causes Ferocious Bite to refresh the duration of your Rip on targets with 60% or less health.
• Feral, 4pc – Frenzied Regeneration also affects all raid and party members, and your Stampede talent now grants two charges after using Feral Charge (Cat).

Ravage me again!

Let’s start with the bad news first—any sort of modifications to Stampede are situational at best and won’t provide cats with a sustained DPS increase. Why? Although certain encounters are designed with predictable add switching (Ragnaros) or events that require one to leave and re-enter melee range swiftly (Searing Seeds[i]), I suspect that, for most encounters, Ravage² will be used once at the beginning of the fight and will then be forgotten.

I do realize, however, that I’m evaluating this bonus wearing T12-colored glasses. It’s entirely possible that T13 content will require an excess of melee target switching. By providing cats with two free[ii] ravages, perhaps Blizzard is trying to address the fact that cat burst damage is incredibly lackluster when target switching is involved. Unfortunately, we’ll need four pieces of gear to access this bonus and alleviate some of the burst damage concerns.

Taking a bite out of DPS disparity

The feral two-piece set bonus provides a far more significant sustained DPS boost. Blood in the Water currently functions as an execute—as soon as your target drops below 25 percent health, Ferocious Bite has a 100 percent chance to instantly refresh the duration of Rip on your target. The idea is that the bulk of one’s combo point generation can be solely dedicated to Ferocious Bite without having to use them to maintain Rip as well.

Now, with the T13 two-piece bonus, you can stop worrying (for the most part) about Rip once your target hits 60 percent, increasing the effectiveness of the two-point Blood in the Water talent by 240 percent. Before your little fluffy heads explode, please remember that the two-piece bonus won’t improve your DPS by 240 percent. Right now, two points in Blood in the Water accounts for approximately 1.66 percent[iii] of your DPS. Therefore, if the two-piece T13 bonus improves that by 240 percent, we’re probably looking at an approximate DPS increase of 2.324 percent.[iv]

Some bears are probably here by accident

Because I haven't been tanking since Wrath, I can't comment with any authority on the bear bonuses. I do, however, think that the two-piece bonus is marginal; when bears asked for another defensive cooldown, I don't think they were looking to switch Berserk from DPS to mitigation. The four-piece bonus, on the other hand, seems like a welcome addition to a bear's arsenal.

If you’ve been reading through the 4.3 information dump, you’ve probably noticed that Ghostcrawler made an attempt to acknowledge the difficulties native to melee DPS.

Raid buffs? I’m uncertain whether he means that the awesome-factor of player buffs will be increased for melee or whether there will be a zone wide buff instead. A zone wide buff seems far easier to implement than individual player-buff tweaks, and we’ve seen effective zone buffs in place as recently as Icecrown Citadel. In ICC, Hellscream’s Warsong (or Strength of Wrynn) provided extra hit points, enhanced healing done, and increased damage done—all of which seemed to work very well. We could very easily see something like this added again. With a flat fifteen percent damage enhancement, a 25,000 Shred becomes a 28,750 Shred. The initial damage for Rake or Rip increases by fifteen percent, and so does the damage over time effect. What if Blizzard chose to pick a single melee stat, say haste, to boost?

We ferals have a little something called “Mastery” to consider, and if we see a simple flat haste increase I’m concerned it will further devalue Razor Claws. As I mentioned in my Class Discussion post, we seem to be moving back toward an emphasis on direct damage rather than a reliance on bleeds and bleed amplifiers. There’s nothing wrong with capping hit and expertise, and stacking critical strike and haste, but we’ll be sidelining abilities that benefit from our Mastery—though by how much I can’t really speculate at this juncture. But haste certainly isn’t the only option.

Blizzard could opt to provide a buff that works like a Flask of Battle. This zone wide buff would enhance the player’s greatest stat, providing a sort of dual-flask effect. As a cat, I could expect to see an AGI increase that would improve both attack power and critical strike, two things of which I wholeheartedly approve.

Still, while I love anything that benefits melee, the damage buff may be a Band-Aid that doesn’t necessarily address the real issues that make melee more difficult in the first place.

• Frontal cleave. If your genius tank decides to haphazardly reposition a boss that has a 180 degree cleave, you’re far more likely to accidentally eat that damage.
• Instant death. Similar to above, if the tank dies, melee is usually the first to eat dirt. Now, I’m not saying that tank death should be acceptable or even common place, but you can certainly battle rez your tank and continue an encounter. Minus a few melee.
• Variable hit boxes. Certain bosses (or even trash mobs) require you to practically stand in the character model to DPS, making it difficult to stay in range if the boss is moving or is repositioned often.
• Low visibility. I often play at max zoom so that I can sort of see what’s going on around me. As melee, I’m usually clustered around the ass-end of a mob and don’t have a lot of room to work.
• Dodge and parry. Melee DPS requires eight percent hit[ii] and twenty-six expertise to accurately hit a boss and avoid being dodged or parried. If you’re a rogue, you actually need seventeen percent hit for poisons to work effectively. And, if you dual-wield, you need twenty-four percent hit for all white damage attacks to connect. Casters only need to worry about the seventeen percent spell hit cap—that’s it. They don’t have to worry about a secondary stat to avoid being dodged or parried.
• Semi-strict positioning. Building on the above bullet point, melee need to stand behind the boss. If you’re a druid or a subtlety rogue, you are required to stand behind the boss to use your main combo point generation abilities.
• Threat. Standing in melee means that you have a 110 percent threat cap until the boss turns around and wrecks your face; standing at range gives you 130 percent. This is moderately hilarious as most melee DPS don’t have an adequate threat dump in the first place (though theoretically the recent tank threat boost should ameliorate this).
• Diminished reaction time. If a mob’s damaging/threatening ability originates from its body, melee have the least amount of time to react to said ability and get out. This is partially alleviated by spells such as Dash, Sprint, and instant Ghost Wolf, or even by talents that boost run speed. 
• Spread. Certain encounters require that everyone stands a certain distance away from everyone else. Groups running with melee heavy compositions are penalized when melee can’t spread out and still DPS the boss. [iii]

To me, the solutions seem straightforward.[iv] Design encounters in which melee can stand a respectable distance from the boss without feeling like they’re slamming their weapons (or paws) into thin air. Remove the position-based requirement of abilities such as Shred and Backstab. Eliminate the need for expertise. Ensure that boss gimmicks are simultaneously targeting both ranged and melee DPS—get rid of the tired whirlwind and cleave routine.

Once we address the aforementioned disadvantages it will be far easier to evaluate what else, if anything, needs to change so that melee DPS consistently competes with ranged DPS. Then, all things being equal, we can more accurately determine why feral DPS still seems low, even for melee. I suspect that the T12 set bonuses are pushing us into making stat choices that are at odds with our Mastery, effectively splitting the difference between direct damage and bleed effects. But for now, I suppose I’ll take my free damage handout. And like it.

What ideas do you have to improve melee performance?

Once I got back from the East Coast and recovered from a brutal cold, I decided to gather my thoughts regarding Blizzard's request for class feedback. When I tried to post in the thread, however, it was already at its post limit. So if any of you Blizzard types are out there, here's my two copper.

What type of content do you focus on?

PvE. I haven’t been even remotely interested in PvP since Resilience stopped being important for Bear tanks.

If PvE, what type of PvE?

Heroics and raids; admittedly just moving back into a raiding schedule.

If PvP, what type of PvP?

Gross!

What are your biggest quality-of-life issues?

• Position-based DPS. Obviously it’s best to stand behind your target anyway, but we don’t always have that option thanks to some less-than-stellar raid design. This really seems to be a disadvantage limited primarily to ferals and subtlety rogues.
• Inability to shapeshift out of snares. One of the best things about being feral was always the ability to be supremely mobile.
• Inability to use Berserk to break an initial fear.
• High cost of Skull Bash. I’m grateful that Skull Bash was added to our repertoire, but I’m unsure why it has such a high energy cost (25 energy) as compared to Kick (15 energy). This discrepancy requires that ferals pool more energy than rogues to perform the same job.
• Feral Faerie Fire still on the spell hit table. This is pretty self-explanatory. Why should I have one spell that falls under a caster hit table? It may not miss often, but when you’re really trying to fine tune your rotation, it’s annoying to re-cast.
• Lengthy DPS ramp-up. Anything that needs to die quickly from burst damage (especially frontal burst damage) isn’t best handled by a cat—unless they’re little critters you’re swiftly able to swipe to death. I don’t have a problem with our reliance on debuffs and bleeds, but it requires a certain amount of time investment to make them worthwhile.

What makes playing your class more fun?

Mobility and versatility. I like being fast, and I like being able to hero-tank every once in a while.

What makes playing your class less fun?

Anything that’s at odds with what I’ve listed above. Please see “Quality-of-Life Issues”.

As a note, it seems like the changes to shapeshifting out of snares and breaking fears with Berserk were specifically tailored to address PvP complaints. While these complaints were probably legitimate, I despise that PvP concerns end up making changes to my PvE environment. Is it really too difficult to make certain changes and abilities apply only to battlegrounds and arenas?

How do you feel about your “rotation”?

In my mind, feral DPS was the most fun back in Ulduar before changes were made to Mangle: excellent DPS truly felt like a direct product of maintaining a (relatively) complex rotation of bleeds, buffs, and debuffs. I’d almost like to see a bigger penalty for letting Rip or Savage Roar drop off; however, I’m pretty comfortable with the rotation as it stands right now.

What’s on your wish list for your class?

• Removal of the positional requirement for Shred. If that’s not an option, it’d be great if encounters (specifically raids) could be designed so that there’s always a possibility to get behind the target—even if it’s tricky. A Mangle-spam rotation is not competitive with a Shred-based rotation.
• Reinstatement of shapeshifting to remove snares. If this remains a PvP concern, bump up the cost of shapeshifting. Although there’s a certain amount of shapeshifting during heroics and raids, the mana cost should never be as prohibitive as it will be in a PvP environment where the druid is under duress.
• Removal of Feral Faerie Fire from the spell hit table.
• A better marriage of Razor Claws and stat priorities. We’re a class that relies on bleeds and bleed amplifiers, yet we seem to be moving back to favoring hit and haste (direct damage) over mastery (damage over time).
• A solution to the lengthy DPS ramp-up mentioned earlier. Quite a few people have suggested a feral-flavored Redirect; I like this.
• Reduction in energy cost for Skull Bash. This should be baked into Brutal Impact.
• The ability to display capes in cat form.

What spells do you use the least?

There are a plethora of spells I don’t use, specifically in the Balance and Restoration spell books, but if we’re looking at Feral DPS, I’d have to point to Claw. I also rarely seem to use Innervate anymore. It’s been nerfed so far into oblivion (for ferals) that it’s barely any help except in the most desperate of situations.

After an apparently overwrought tussle about a “need” roll on an STR mace, a warrior[i] I know asked, “How good is strength for druids anyway?” “Complete shit,” I responded instantaneously. But that’s not entirely true. These days[ii], most druids know that it’s almost never preferable to take an item boasting STR rather than AGI, but STR still provides us with oft overlooked benefits. Currently, one point of STR grants us two[iii] AP. Come 4.2, that’ll drop to one point of AP per each point of STR. So if we’re not being morons and gearing with STR, how will this strength nerf actually affect our DPS?

Let’s take a look at Mark of the Wild and Horn of Winter[iv] using some made up STR values.

Strength is also buffed by various enchantments.

Most of you probably didn’t need charts to explain that the amount of AP we’ll receive from STR is effectively halved, but I spent five fucking minutes putting it together, so enjoy it. Now, assuming that one point of AP is approximately equal to 0.72 DPS, the STR nerf will result in a net loss of 542.88 DPS from normal raid buffs and a 50.4 DPS loss from chants. That’s a total theoretical DPS loss of 593.28.

Folks, this is not the end of the world. Unless you’re someone who always executes a perfect rotation, you can probably stand to boost your DPS by at least that much. It’s also important to remember that while AP from Strength is being halved in 4.2 Blizzard is giving our direct damage dealing abilities[v] some love:

• Ferocious Bite damage has been increased by 15%. In addition, its base cost has been reduced to 25 energy and it can use up to 25 energy, for up to a 100% damage increase.
• Mangle (Cat) damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 540% weapon damage, up from 460%, and bonus damage has been lowered to 302.
• Rake initial damage on hit now deals the same damage as each periodic tick (and is treated the same for all combat calculations). Periodic damage now gains 14.7% of attack power per tick, up from 12.6%, and base damage per tick has been lowered from 557 to 56.
• Ravage damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 950% weapon damage, up from 850%, and bonus damage has been lowered to 532.
• Savage Roar now grants 80% increased damage to melee auto attacks, up from 50%. The Glyph of Savage Roar remains an unchanged bonus of 5% to that total.
• Shred damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 540% weapon damage, up from 450%, and bonus damage has been lowered to 302.

Although I’m a little surprised that Blizzard is tugging us away from the MAKE EVERYTHING BLEED model, especially given Razor Claws, I don’t anticipate the shift to dramatically change current gemming or gearing notions. If direct damage is given preference over bleed damage over time, it stands to reason that mastery becomes less valuable and haste becomes totally awesome. Remember all that critical strike that you (hopefully) reforged into mastery? Reforge again and pick up haste instead.

Hidden amidst a slew of changes most players no longer care about, Patch 4.1 gave vanity pet enthusiasts some love. In fact, many of you have probably already noticed: vanity pets now persist through zoning, logging out, and logging back in. Although I’ve always been more of a cat person, I can sometimes understand the appeal of coming home to a creature that would greet me at the door and would always be happy to see me.[i]

Enter Malmortis. You may remember him from questing days of yore: he was the tall, rather gaunt looking fellow eager to escort you through the scourge necropolis Voltarus. During Smirkfang’s brief stay in Northrend, I blitzed through the Drakuru questline and then gleefully accepted Lycentia’s summon to Violet Hold. Much to my chagrin, Malmortis was waiting for me at the dungeon portal.

“Ahh…there you are. The master told us you’d be arriving soon.”

“Dude, do you see this?” I called over my shoulder.

“See what?” Lycentia asked. After running through his opening dialogue, Malmortis proceeded to stave in some blue dragon skulls, stalking his prey with a slow, deliberate pace. Dumbfounded, I checked Recount. Malmortis was indeed hitting mobs, adding an incidental amount of damage to my own. On Lycentia’s screen? Nothing, save the mobs’ health dropping in minute increments. We laughed, chalking it up to some group summoning bug, and moved on to Halls of Lightning and Stone. [ii] Suddenly, a wild Malmortis appeared! As before, he spoke his piece and followed us through the dungeons, deigning every so often to cuff an iron dwarf.

When I logged in the following evening, Malmortis was there to greet me. And the evening after. Occasionally he’d only persist at the locations where I’d logged or zoned in, but often he chose to pursue whatever monsters were in the area, delivering his token bone-slaps without generating any threat. This fantastic bug has persisted for nineteen days.

Although I can’t say for sure, I suspect that certain quest NPCs are programmed to function as pets for the duration of the relevant quest. Before 4.1, pets would simply disappear when you left the area, zoned into a dungeon, or logged out. I believe that when Blizzard made the 4.1 vanity pet changes, they accidentally grandfathered some of the quest NPCs in as well. And who cares, right? With heirlooms and guild bonuses and dungeons, leveling from one to eighty is a piece of cake these days—many players have probably skimmed over the quests that could generate this sort of bug.

Me? I’d like to keep him. He’s enthusiastic, he’s helpful, he never stands me up, and he's always ready to go.[iii]