Unbearably HoT

In a shocking turn of events, Blizzard has already posted details regarding the next patch—three months in advance. How does this affect us Druids? Unless you’re super pumped about Onyxia (and presumably didn’t farm her for eight thousand years in vanilla), there isn’t much on our horizon save this:

What’s great about this change is the fact that it will be baked into a fairly essential Feral talent: you won’t need to spend extra points to take something gimmicky. Now, although this is seemingly designed to give Ferals a PVP utility boost, how helpful is it really?

Say, for example, you’re participating in an arena match. You’ve managed to get five combo points on a Mage (without having to switch targets), and you hit him with a Maim. Your pocket healer is busy kiting an Enhance Shaman. At that point, you have a few choices. You can pop out of Cat form and hit yourself or your teammates with a cast-free Regrowth, Healing Touch or Nourish. You could also use that instant cast for a Cyclone or Entangling Roots—note that the blue post specifies “Nature spells.” It’s essentially Nature’s Swiftness. So fully talented, you’ve got a 20%/40%/60%/80%/100% chance to get an instant cast per combo point.

Is this useful in a PVE scenario? Situationally. If you’re going through a normal rotation, find yourself with five combo points and realize you’re about to die, you’ve got nothing to lose giving yourself (or anyone else, including the tank) a cheap, instant heal. It does, however, require that you’re paying attention to your combo points and thinking ahead. Bottom line? It’s a gimmick you’ll seldom pointedly use in PVE but may actively pursue in PVP.

Just three more months.

A “filler arc” is a phrase used to describe a short side story in a serial comic book or TV show that diverges from the main storyline. It’s often used as a device to prolong the life of a series, give the producers/creators more time to work on the plot, and ostensibly to give the viewer time to catch up to the main story. Remember when your elementary school teacher would take a day off and leave the substitute with four thousand worksheets to keep you busy? It takes up time. Patch 3.2 essentially functions as Blizzard’s filler arc: a semi nonsensical diversion that appeases the content-mongerers and passes out catch-up loot to everyone else.

I mean really—let’s set up a tournament on Arthas’ doorstep where we can hang out and practice fighting shit. He’ll obviously ignore everyone (after having interfered in such minor affairs as Utgarde Keep, for example) and wait until we’re ready to charge through the Citadel itself. But despite Blizzard’s new round of sweeping class changes, Feral model update, and lackluster boss encounters, it really is an excellent time to round out your gear sets and snag some muchly needed updates.

Just in time for Patch 3.2, I’ve updated the Cat DPS Gear Spreadsheet to include all the new Feral DPS items—except for trinkets, idols (which I’ll cover in another post), and PVP gear. This list will exist in a constant state of flux as numbers change, items are added, and I decide to integrate other useful features, such as gear weights based on the FBN model (which I generally follow). I am, however, trying to stay away from designated “best-in-slot” items. Why? Although I’ve suggested super jawesome high-end items to aim for, it’s exceptionally pertinent to note that you need to build your gear around your stats and playstyle. Blindly following any suggestions and/or lists are a sure fire way to look like a retard at some point down the road.

Here are a few things to remember:

• Armor Penetration hard cap is 1231.6. Generally, we Druids talk about reaching an ArP “soft cap;” that is, the ArP hard cap minus the ArP proc from a trinket. For example, 1231.6 – 612 (proc on Grim Toll) = 619.6. That 619.6 is your soft cap. Until you hit 619.6 ArP, that’s the best stat to stack for both gems and gear (but don’t take a lame piece of loot JUST for the ArP).
• Expertise and Hit still exist for a reason. You don’t necessarily need to be at the cap these days, but you’ll want to be close.
• Keep slots open for tier gear! The two-piece T9 bonus extends the duration of Rake by three seconds. This is pretty cool, especially when you consider that’s three more seconds for you to dick around with other things. Like Shred. The two-piece T8 bonus, if you recall, harkens back to the days of T4 and free energy gains. This time, however, the periodic damage dealt by your Rake, Rip, and Lacerate abilities has a chance to cause you to enter a Clearcasting state. Right now, it looks as though wearing two-piece T8 and two-piece T9 will be optimal. If you’re currently wearing four-piece T8 or two-piece T8 with two-piece T7, I don’t recommend breaking your set bonuses until you have two pieces of T9.

If you were actively raiding Ulduar (especially hard modes), you may not find considerable gear upgrades until you’ve been through the Heroic versions of the Coliseum. If you’re looking for quick and dirty upgrades, however, you’ll likely get the biggest bang for your badge buck by going with items such as:

• Hood of Lethal Intent (75 Emblems of Triumph). Arguably BiS until Heroic T9.25.
• Leggings of Wavering Shadow (39 Emblems of Conquest). Definitely not BiS, but very easy to obtain right now.
• Broach of the Wailing Night (19 Emblems of Conquest). Again, not BiS, but with the changes to Conquest Emblems, you’ll have no trouble picking this up after a night of Heroics. It’s a very well rounded and well-itemized accessory with both ample ArP, AP, and AGI.
• Dexterous Brightstone Ring (35 Emblems of Triumph). Basically the best ring you can get your paws on until you get one to drop out of the Coliseum.
• Duskstalker Shoulderpads (45 Emblems of Triumph). Although a shoulder slot generally gives it up for a piece of tier gear, these are essentially better than everything until the Heroic T9.25 spaulders.
• Death-warmed Belt. Sure, you’ll have to shell out some cashmoneys, but you’ll get an incredibly shiny belt with the capability to sport three sockets. This will tide you over until you can pick up the Belt of the Merciless Killer/Belt of the Pitiless Killer from the Twin Valkyrs.

Still going to run hard modes in Ulduar? Even if you just try and pick up some easy 10-man achievements, you can still score totally sweet gear. Here are a few pieces you shouldn’t overlook:

• Drape of the Faceless General (Vezax Hard, 10 man). This is only marginally “worse” than the two shiniest cloaks from the Coliseum (that we know of): Drape of the Untamed Predator/Cloak of the Untamed Predator. Why? This cloak sports ArP and two sockets. Awesome. I still haven’t seen this drop.
• Embrace of the Gladiator (Thorim Hard, 25 man). While you’ll go far with the newest chestguards from the Coliseum, three sockets are nothing to sneeze at.
• Seed of Budding Carnage (Freya Hard, 10 man). Although this isn’t BiS anymore, it’s still a fantastic necklace with ArP, AGI, Hit Rating, and a socket.
• Loop of the Agile (Iron Council Hard, 10 man). The socket on this ring really makes it great.
• Soul-Devouring Cinch (Yogg Hard, 10 man). With the capability to slot another socket here, this belt still remains one of the best. Good thing Yogg is pretty cake right now.

This spreadsheet isn’t the end-all-be-all on what you want or need: think about it as a resource for quickly skimming through gear to aim for. If you notice any mistakes and/or items that are not included, please feel free to drop me a line, either via comments or the Contact page.

Looking for info and gear suggestions for Bomb Owls and Bears? Go see Graylo and Kalon, respectively.

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.

A note before reading: apparently any sort of discussion that in any way discusses nerfs now classifies as “nerd-raging.” This is not an angry rant whatsoever; do yourself a favor and don’t read it as such.

A recent blue post addressed the topic of Feral DPS, suggesting that it is, perhaps, a little “too high.” While that immediately elicited a response from me that probably sounded a little like “Go fuck yourself,” Mr. Ghostcrawler quickly followed that statement with:

I may be mistaken, but this seems to be the first time that someone involved with Blizzard recognized the inherent complexity of a successful kitty DPS rotation. Are we talking Ikaruga hard? No, but as compared to a few other classes that focus mostly on pushing buttons as they come up and/or rely on only one or two primary spells (rather than monitoring buffs, debuffs, Clearcast procs, etc.), we’re up there. This is fantastic. While our rotation has always been something of a pain, it’s incredibly satisfying to finally see that the effort we put into maintaining said rotation (while being mobile and, you know, not dying) entering a directly proportional relationship with our damage output. Remember powershifting? This is how it should be: you play well, you see ridiculous numbers.

Despite the fantastic numbers we’re seeing from some of the best players out there, we still have limitations that other melee DPS classes don’t have (that, perhaps, work to keep our DPS in check). Like what?

• Multiple DoTs. Death Knights aside, Feral Druids arguably suffer the largest overall DPS loss when we’re placed on targets that die quickly. Yogg-Saron’s Immortal Guardians are a prime example. Depending on your rate of combo point generation (read: how much Crit Rating you have), a full-fledged damage rotation generally cannot be accomplished in the time it takes for one of these Guardians to die. The damage loss from Rake and Rip downtime can be mitigated slightly by adopting a different playstyle—if you’ve gone the way of heavy AGI and the Idol of Worship, that is. Equip the Idol of the Ravenous Beast, throw on your ArP gear (if you’re not already stacking it), and make sure Savage Roar never drops. At that point, you can simply Shred and Ferocious Bite to your heart’s content. It is pertinent to mention, however, that even by gemming for ArP and using a cycle that prioritizes Shred and FB, Rip and Rake generally constitute ~20% and ~10% of my total damage, respectively.
• Combo points. Rogues are included in this category as well. If a situation (or a poor raid assignment) requires we switch targets, each switch wipes our combo points and necessitates a rotation restart. The four-piece T8/8.5 bonus helps mitigate the stack of buffs and debuffs we need to reapply (by considerably extending Savage Roar uptime), but if you’re unable to plan how you’ll wipe your points before starting over, you’re wasting your energy. Literally.
• Positional requirements. Unless you’re using Backstab as a Rogue (and if you are, you’re an idiot), no other melee DPS suffer from positional requirements. Shred, our largest damage dealing attack, can only be executed behind a target. Encounters with mobile mobs (or overexcited tanks) make it difficult to score a direct hit from behind. If you’re dancing around the mob just trying to pull off a Shred, your rotation is essentially hiccupping. Other bosses, such as Kologarn, don’t even let you behind the boss (or his arms) at all, resulting in huge DPS losses. Blizzard has already removed the positional requirement from Mutilate, and I’m wondering if Shred won’t be far behind. Despite the frustration the positional requirement causes, I do believe that it functions as a DPS equalizer. If Feral Druids had the ability to run around like a moron and do the exact same DPS as when they stood still, it would be wildly unfair.

Beyond that, we’re still melee. While certain fights are geared toward showcasing our awesome, other encounters are still tuned to keep us running in and out, sidestepping chain lightning, and dodging explosions. Many people cite XT-002 as the example of why Feral Druids are overpowered—and if every fight were designed to mimic that encounter, we certainly would be. XT-002 represents an ideal scenario in which we (melee) don’t need to move very much, if at all, and if you blow your cooldown load during each heart phase (where damage is doubled), you can destroy your guildmates’ minds.

XT-002 is insanely enjoyable, but it is the exception to the rule. While my damage remains consistently high, it fluctuates based on what each encounter requires of me and generally hovers between 5k-7k DPS. Please see the DPS limitations listed above. I succeed, Mr. Ghostcrawler, because I am intensely situationally aware, I don’t die to silly things, I equip the right pieces of gear, and I spend an inordinate amount of time monitoring my rotation. I may be a little biased, but let us cats have our day.