[Cat] Feral Druid MoP Discussion Thread

[Deleted]

So i heard you like rake and thrash...

[Paloro]

Nice mihir! I posted 52.5k on ultraxion last night myself. I'm not liking weaving thrash into the single target rotation though.

[Tinderhoof]

Rake was good to me this week. I wish I had taken FoN for Ultrax this week, I think I could have gotten a little higher:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-y2...?s=7090&e=7368
We did 0% debuff this week so I got an extra Berserk in.

[Paloro]

I'm reluctant to say never, but feral druids shouldn't need to use HotW to heal the raid. If your healers can't do their job, you might want new healers, that's my view on that. Tranquility, sure, but that's 10 seconds of a fight, not really a big deal and besides, lots of classes bring stuff like that (rallying cry, aura mastery, etc, etc).

It isn't that the healers can't do their job. We are talking about progression raiding here! You have to do things differently given the gear you currently have.

3 examples:
1) hc Rag: My guild three healed this fight when most were using 4. This isn't because our dps sucked, but we were trying to consistently push 1 meteor in p3. Having only 3 healers required other druids to use tranq. I realize that tranq isn't quite the best example b/c you can consider it a raid cd, but what other raid cd requires you to cast for 8 seconds out of form?

2) hc Madness: Again my guild chose to go 1 short on the healers to down this fight. Being in t13 now, I have 2 raid cd's (tranq/t13 FR). I used tranq 2 times on each attempt and had to use T13 FR on 2 platforms during the blistering tentacles. Having to do this, I lost close to a minute of full dps time for the fight.

3) hc Spine: I went with a hybrid build so that I could dps the burning tendon + tank the amalg on plate 3. That hybrid build didn't exactly "kill" my dps but it wasn't optimal. I also used T13 FR ~4 times throughout the fight.

[aggixx]

although classes are now quiet balanced, there is still some signs of it, warlock for instance.

I really hope you're talking about 90 and not 85, because classes aren't balanced for shit at 85.

Edit: You guys and your rake logs... here's my Ultraxion kill:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/y...?s=5953&e=6137

Blackhorn was "pretty good" if you care to look at that too :3

[Deleted]

I really hope you're talking about 90 and not 85, because classes aren't balanced for shit at 85.

Edit: You guys and your rake logs... here's my Ultraxion kill:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/y...?s=5953&e=6137

Blackhorn was "pretty good" if you care to look at that too :3

So rake is better to spam then mangle on ultraxion? O.o

and i was talking about the whole lengh of cataclysm, some classes have been OP the whole way but a lot of classes have been very close.

[Garth]

It isn't that the healers can't do their job. We are talking about progression raiding here! You have to do things differently given the gear you currently have.

This is true, I'm sure HotW will be used to help eek out those extra numbers to kill fights.

My point STILL is that that does not make us some sort of healer SLASH dps class, and that our numbers should be just as competitive as any other DPS.

That was all I was saying, not talking about forgoing raid CDs or not using class mechanics to down fights.

[aggixx]

So rake is better to spam then mangle on ultraxion? O.o

It's better to spam rake than spam shred.

[Deleted]

When do we weave in Trash in rotation? to keep the DoT up?
And is it only Ultraxion were Rake wins over Shred or should we just use it instead of Mangle and Shred all the time?

[Deleted]

If you use rake in stead of Shred/mangle ALL the time it'll be impossible to keep up an tiger's fury empowered rake?! Is the initial hit of rake rly stronger than a ticking TF'ed rake + shed/mangle as filler?

[aggixx]

When do we weave in Trash in rotation? to keep the DoT up?
And is it only Ultraxion were Rake wins over Shred or should we just use it instead of Mangle and Shred all the time?

You Thrash when OOC is up and Thrash isn't already up, assuming you don't have something more important to cast (ie, OOC procs when you need to put up rip or rake, then you'd still cast rip or rake).

Rake wins over Shred regardless of positioning.

If you use rake in stead of Shred/mangle ALL the time it'll be impossible to keep up an tiger's fury empowered rake?! Is the initial hit of rake rly stronger than a ticking TF'ed rake + shed/mangle as filler?

Pretty much, yes.

Short summary on rake as a filler:

• Don't do it if you don't have the mastery raid buff.
• Only use shred (or mangle on Ultraxion) in one of two situations:
  
  1. Casting a rake will overwrite a stronger rake on the target and you still have extends available to your rip.
  2. Your rip is about to end and you haven't used all of your extends yet, AND you're not at 5 CP. If you get to 5CP before using all of the extends it's better to just use the CP instead of extending and wasting CP.
• Don't use incarnation. Ever.

[scorpio0920]

rake, shred and mangle seems to be hotfixed?
anyone confirm?

[aggixx]

No idea what you mean, but I don't think rake damage has been hotfixed.

It will be soon if it isn't already, but if they have then it seems to be a rather pitiful change.

[scorpio0920]

Some player report that rake damage has been reduced.

And shred and mangle damage has been increased.

Almost confirm at this moment.

Taiwan realm.


gear 409, mastery 1591

Approximate ​​change

Rake no cri 13k -> 11k

Shred no cri 16k -> 20K

[aggixx]

They just did a build push yesterday, I find it unlikely that they would push a hotfix overnight for something that really isn't that pressing of an issue. Maybe my understanding of how their development process works is completely off.

I did do a short test on the dummy (US Realm) and I did do slightly worse than typical DPS, but it wasn't anything low enough to say that it was attributed to a rake hotfix and not just bad RNG.

[Casseille]

Well, GC did just write the following:

At both level 85 and level 90, in high-mastery conditions, Rake will outscale Shred for DPE and become the primary filler move for CPs. Shred is still weaved in to extend rip duration and letting tf/proc buffed Rakes roll, but overall the rotations is largely simplified by just spamming rake.

Yeah, this seems like a valid concern (i.e. the numbers make sense). We'll investigate and try to shift damage around to discourage it.

See http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...36?page=32#635.

But do they investigate that fast?

And @ Razorback, if you want to keep up to date with the latest theorycrafting and information, read the FluidDruid.net website. Elitist Jerks is pretty much dead when it comes to Feral (they're all moonkin lovers there ), and this place is good for relaying information, but not so much for generating it.

[Deleted]

So anyone else having problem with primal fury proc being delayed?

[aggixx]

Yep, and it sucks. A lot.

[Deleted]

How bad/good is Force of Nature compared to SotF and Incarnation?

[mmofiend]

They just did a build push yesterday, I find it unlikely that they would push a hotfix overnight for something that really isn't that pressing of an issue. Maybe my understanding of how their development process works is completely off.

I did do a short test on the dummy (US Realm) and I did do slightly worse than typical DPS, but it wasn't anything low enough to say that it was attributed to a rake hotfix and not just bad RNG.

It's definitely fixed today. My rakes went down from nearly 10k on the test dummy to 7.5k....thought I was imagining things because my rake damage seemed lower while my ravage, mangle, (not sure about shred) damage was higher. Checked mmo champion to see if any other druids noticed.

Edit: Wow, there must have been some slip from blizzard. My mangle and shred are pretty much the same damage...which makes shred useless.