Unbearably HoT

Every year my husband and I discuss whether or not we want to attend Blizzcon. Our conversations usually follow as below.

“Wow, look how insanely expensive the tickets are this year for a two-day convention that focuses on three games.”

“You want to try and go to PAX instead?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

Then I remember that it’s less about the games and the not-usually-surprising announcements (which I’ll hear instantaneously on Twitter) and more about the community I’ve been a part of since 2006. Each year I read those Twitter feeds and live-blogs and forum posts with a certain jealous fondness, wishing that I, too, could hang out with the people with whom I’ve long exchanged ideas and silly conversation. Hell, I just want to go someplace warmer than the Midwest. I have to tamp down the sentiment and consider the simple math.

Two Blizzcon tickets = $350

Two round-trip plane tickets from Detroit to Anaheim = $900[i]

Hotel room for three nights = $537[ii]

Food = $200[iii]

Miscellaneous spending money = $100

Total = $2,087

Working off of the assumption that I’d like to take an actual vacation at some point during the year, spending approximately $2,000 on a glorified long weekend doesn’t fall into our budget plan—especially now that we have a house. And though I’ll miss the people and the high fives and the neckbeards and the /flex photoshoots, I can still watch from afar and speculate. What will they announce at Blizzcon this year?  

After last year’s lackluster performance—why, oh why did you release the Cataclysm trailer and details before the convention?—I think it’s safe to say we’ll see information pertaining to the next expansion. I still want to believe that Mists of Pandaria is a red herring that has something to do with a mobile game or trading card expansion—especially considering the implications of panda-based characters in China—but I’m starting to think it might be legitimate. I can see the summary now—

A sheltered land of mist-draped bamboo stands and free-flowing beer faces a new terror—bamboo blight. You, adventurer, must team up with your with newfound Pandaren allies to find a secluded group of herbal pathologists and develop a cure before it’s too late!

I’m also expecting to see a new Diablo cinematic, and maybe, just maybe we’ll get a release date. We can all dream, right?

For those of you at the convention, have fun, stay safe, and take lots of pictures.

New content arrives. You, dutiful raider that you are, want to find out as much information as you can. Unless you’re particularly averse to spoilers and have somehow managed to shield yourself from the barrage of datamined information out there, information is a beautiful thing. Bringing early knowledge to your raid group allows you to troubleshoot your composition, reduce the number of easily avoidable errors, and make the best use of your time. So why are people flipping their metaphorical shit about the dungeon journal?

If you haven’t heard, the dungeon journal is a new UI feature that Blizzard plans to release in patch 4.2. According to Community Manager Kaivax, the journal will provide instantaneous information about a variety of dungeons: high-quality loot dropped from trash or bosses, boss locations, and a description of bosses’ (and associated adds’) abilities. Kaivax is very careful to mention that although ability descriptions will be “verbose and complete,” they (Blizzard) “will not be giving any strategy tips in the Dungeon Journal.” Great! Instead of alt-tabbing and opening up a third-party site such Wowhead or WoWWiki, all you need to do is press M, select the appropriate dungeon from your map interface, and navigate to the boss you’re interested in learning about.

I initially viewed the addition of the Dungeon Journal feature as an acknowledgment of player expectations. Some third-party mods were (and are) so commonly used that players were more or less expected to have them: Outfitter, Omen, oRA, SCT, Deadly Boss Mods, PowerAuras, QuestHelper[i], and many more that I’m sure I’m forgetting. Over time, Blizzard decided to incorporate elements of these mods as standard game components. Now, as players are expected to scour the depths of the Internet for (at the very least) basic dungeon information, Blizzard has decided to bring that information straight to us. I thought hey, if you’re interested in something beyond the game that provides you with cool videos, fancy diagrams, and maybe even some advanced calculus, you always have the option of searching for it; the Dungeon Journal can easily be ignored.

Still, some raiders seemed to believe that the Dungeon Journal would eliminate the intrigue and challenge of tackling a new dungeon for those who do use it. It seemed that somehow, the very inclusion of the Dungeon Journal would rocket every casual guild to the top of the progression chart. Please, I thought. It’s not a goddamn miracle. By the time any new content hits the live servers, dedicated progression guilds have already played through most of it on the Public Test Realm (PTR), rudimentary how-to videos are making the rounds on TankSpot, and MMO-Champion has datamined the loot tables, boss abilities, and audio files. Soon after, enterprising raid leaders are posting modified strategies in their guild forums, and, if your head’s still buried in the sand, one of your guildies will, in all likelihood, explain things to you before you make a fool of yourself.

So what’s the deal? Well kids, Blizzard lies.[ii] Remember Kaivax’s quote about not providing any strategy tips? The Dungeon Journal does, in fact, provide brief strategy tips about both normal and heroic encounters as soon as the content releases. Phailia, from Inner Sanctum, provides a few examples on the EU forums.

Take a look at the underlined sections. The Spark of Rhyolith section seems reasonably straight forward at first: “Sparks of Rhyolith deal 8,671 Fire damage to all players within 12 yards.” Then, Blizzard makes a point of adding, “Sparks should be pulled away from the raid as long as possible, then quickly destroyed.” Ignoring the poor sentence structure, that last bit goes beyond a basic description of the boss abilities and further provides strategy advice. The description for Magma Geyser (for the Ragnaros encounter) is similar. Instead of simply including the spell description (which I think is fully described by the second, non-underlined sentence), Blizzard specifically tells players how the Magma Geyser mechanic works.

Though I’m not certain I like that the Dungeon Journal will provide strategic content information straight from source, I still can’t imagine that it will meaningfully alter the raiding community—progression guilds will simply destroy raid content faster. I would, however, suggest the removal of strategic advice from the heroic boss descriptions; even if the “tips” for normal dungeons remain, there will still be an element of discovery, trial, and error for the more difficult content. (For a little while, anyway.) Just remember: you can force a veritable dissertation upon your raid group, but some moron will always manage to stand in the fire.[iii]

When we last met, I had forsaken my subscription and had moved on to other things. Of course, I don’t really remember what those particular things were, but the point is that life suddenly developed a new busyness. Seemingly overnight, I metamorphosed into the kind of person whose crankiness knew no bounds if she didn’t get to sleep sometime before midnight. How lame!  Thus for a time, I resigned myself to the drone of corporate life punctuated by brief sprees of gaming and occasional weekend badassery:

• playing D&D and painting miniatures;
• flirting with AION;
• attending PAX East and Prime;
• trashing a novel I’d been working on;
• boating;
• taking copy editing classes;
• purchasing large quantities of Mackinac Island fudge;
• adopting another cat; and, most recently,
• building a house.

But let’s be real—you don’t spend an inordinate amount of time playing a game, involving yourself in that community, and then writing about it without eventually being sucked back in. At some point I caved and spent the last gasps of Wrath raiding on Mal’ganis, waiting for Cataclysm. As tradition in our apartment dictates, Mortality and I immediately power-leveled to eighty-five when the expansion released. Even after taking a cramped nap on the loveseat, the entire leveling process took less than eighteen hours. Eighteen hours! Chagrined, my husband and I flopped around Orgrimmar for a while, brought our professions to max, tried to get into heroic dungeon groups as two melee DPS[i], and then started the endless process of completing daily quests for reputation gains. Perhaps some of you are familiar with this cycle.

But though Blizzard’s pre-60 leveling experience in Cataclysm drastically improved, the end game suddenly alienated me: I was stymied by familiar content, uninterested in raiding, and wholeheartedly dismayed by the seeming return of melee as a liability. I was completely un-enamored with both the expansion and—for the first time—my class. Faced with the prospect of turning into the type of casual, cranky player I’d always despised, I simply unsubscribed. Again.[ii] I washed my electronic hands of the game, cleaned out my RSS feed, scornfully derided the sad state of feral druids, and sneered at the resurrection of Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman[iii]—two dungeons I had been more than happy to leave behind.

What then? I started playing Rift. It’s a fantastic game with a development team quick to respond to feedback generated by the player base, and while it’s certainly not without its flaws, the game has incorporated and improved upon some of the most successful elements from other MMOs. The community, however, needs time to grow. As Mortality tried and discarded Rift and my fellow gamer-friends dispersed to different shards, my journeys in Telara became largely solitary ones. One afternoon, while hunched over my keyboard obliterating Guardians,[iv] Mortality casually sidled up to my chair. “I’m going to reactivate my WoW subscription,” he said benignly.

Kids, this is a trap. When a super-hot dude drops the “Hey I’m going to play—” line on you, he casts some voodoo nerd spell and somehow you’ve entered your credit card information and fished out your authenticator before you even register what happened. “Oh god,” you say, “why am I in Stormwind again?”

Stormwind indeed. Mortality and I have reconnected with some old players and real-life friends from (the now defunct) Dread Lobster. This change of play locates us back on Doomhammer, Alliance-side, effectively stranding us from our mains. My old roster boasts an array of characters stuck at level seventy—my ancient warrior, a neglected death knight, a sad looking frost mage—and a holy paladin that miraculously made it past eighty. In the interests of new beginnings[v] I’m leveling another druid.[vi] In the meantime, I’m healing heroics on my paladin.[vii]

Although it will take a little while to grind my way back up to eighty-five (I’m halfway there) and gather the necessary druidly accoutrements, I’m back. Expect more content to follow.

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.