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?

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.

In a most fortuitous coincidence, Blizzard is releasing Patch 3.2.2 today just as AION boasts its first opening day. I’ll be the first to admit that this is happening earlier than I anticipated; naively, I assumed that because the supposed WoW anniversary is in November, we’d be seeing an Onyxia release about then. If previous PTR patch notes can be trusted, we can be squaring off with the Brood Mother this evening! But let’s be real—what can we ferals expect?

• The amount of ArP gained per point has been reduced by 12%. Before you all explode and lament the skyrocketing prices of Delicate Cardinal Rubies, please take a look at the previous post: (Armor) Penetration: how hard will it be in 3.2.2? Although stacking ArP becomes a much more expensive endeavor, it’s entirely possible to pull off ridiculous DPS by reaching toward the hard-cap.
• Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the Druid’s finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast. Potentially super cool for PVP, and situationally useful for PVE. For slightly more discussion, check out my post: Can’t wait until November? Hot 3.2.2 action here!
• Infected Wounds: the debuff generated by this talent no longer stacks and instead causes the full effect with a single application. Again, we’re seeing more PVP utility here and limited PVE utility. This change isn’t actually increasing the effect of Infected Wounds, but rather gives you the full effect of two stacks in one application, bringing this talent more in line with the one-hit punch of Thunderclap.
• Onyxia. Am I the only one who was sick to death of her in vanilla? Maybe not, but Kalon points out one good reason to check her out again.

I am currently flirting with AION, mostly because I can get away with being a retard in game right now, but I don’t really foresee it replacing WoW. If you’re interested, you can look me up as Sibilance (Asmodian side) on the Zikel server. Here, have a token Ascension screenshot:

That’s all for now. Are you looking forward to 3.2.2.?