So my 881 alt DH outdps'd my 891 Feral on Guarm

[Doffen]

Even then you should go by the overall rankings and just be realistic for how high you can go. Sure, ilevel ranks can give you some idea, but seeing that you get 100th percentile ilevel doesn't necessarily mean you're playing perfectly by any means(especially if your ilevel is very low compared to the rest of your raid, because that means you get much faster kill times than people in full raids with lower average ilevel). So use some combination of the 2, but I'd heavily lean towards the overall percentile.

Yeah, see your point, also checking both cause I find it interesting to see how you can do compared to the very best as well as those around your ilvl. The higher your ilvl and traits gets, the more important overall gets imo. Further into the expansion when gear and traits normalize a bit more I'd lean into overall myself. You have to use the logs wisely either way

[Polarthief]

It's only PTR wait for live.

It's only live, wait for hotfixes.

It's only hotfixes, wait for 7.2 PTR.

It's only PTR, wait for live.

[Whitepaw]

Right now, there are 4 x Ferals in the top 1000 dps on Guarm Mythic. The list is dominated by melee dps.

The top Feral is Elure (Zul'jin - US) at 602k dps, with ilvl 892. Elure is at no. 461. The top 10 dps are all above 700k, with ilvls ranging from 886 to 897.

Now, we can pretend that this information isn't important or that it's inconclusive - or any other kind of psychological trick to avoid the obvious conclusion (not enough data available, fx). But when there is a gap between the highest parsing Feral in the world and the highest parsing 10 players in the world of more than 100k, I think it's fair to say that Feral is undertuned atm.

"But the next tuning pass will fix this!" Not if they keep to the notes published a few days ago. The devs are NOT going to shave off 100k (or 14%, as an average) from the highest parsing specs with the changes mentioned in the next server maintenance. They are going to nerf a few percentages (and only on some specs - by the looks of it, Ret paladins aren't really nerfed at all).

I also think it's fair to say that the speculative "We should do more ST, because our AoE sucks" and "Our rotation is harder - our potential output should be higher than others!" are also flawed and non-existent. Neither is true.

What is true is this: Blizzard developers need to balance the output of dps specs, across as many scenarios as possible (i.e. no more ST v. AoE specs - that whole idea is flawed and wrong). When that doesn't happen, some specs get left behind, while others are preferred, because they are competitive. Feral is not among the competitive right now. And Feral isn't even the worse spec - there are specs not even in the top 1000.

But what about the chances for more balancing patches before 7.2? We can be hopeful, but it seems that the train has left the station as far as bringing Feral to a competitive level. Why? Because right now, there are several specs better than Feral, both melee and caster. Nerfing so many specs now seems beyond the devs' willingness to act and change the meta-game. Imagine the outcry at this point in the X-pack if the devs nerfed Ret paladins with 100-120k, together with DH, DK and Rogues. Buffing several specs by 15% also seem undoable at this time (the exception being hunters, where all the specs will be buffed).

So my prediction is that we will stay in the middle of the dps pack until 7.2. That's actually ok, because then we're balanced - but remember, the gap between the top dogs and the bottom is quite large and Feral is burdened by having a deliberately over-designed dps rotation, something that hasn't been implemented on Ret paladins, DH, DK or Rogues.

[Deleted]

snip

The very top logs have always, and will always, be dominated by short kill times (thereby also specs with high burst), as well as the incredibly lucky (thereby also specs with high dps variance caused by RNG). And no matter what OP may claim, feral is one of the most consistent dps specs in the game.

DPS difference on 3 minute Guarm kills does not make the slightest bloody difference for how useful ferals are on actual progress. Now, the real question is how well we can do on bosses in the Nighthold, and how important single target dps is there. Being able to do high single target damage to main targets regardless of the situation has always been our strength (as it has been our weakness as well), and it will continue to be. I suspect that reports of our "weak" single target damage in comparison to the buffed specs have been heavily exaggerated, as they always are. Remember when the whole feral community thought we were useless prior to Emerald Nightmare, and we turned out to be top dps (ignoring Shadow Priests)?

Additionally, I do think it would be boring if no classes had situations they prefer, but that's a whole different discussion entirely.

[Whitepaw]

The very top logs have always, and will always, be dominated by short kill times (thereby also specs with high burst), as well as the incredibly lucky (thereby also specs with high dps variance caused by RNG). And no matter what OP may claim, feral is one of the most consistent dps specs in the game.

DPS difference on 3 minute Guarm kills does not make the slightest bloody difference for how useful ferals are on actual progress. Now, the real question is how well we can do on bosses in the Nighthold, and how important single target dps is there. Being able to do high single target damage to main targets regardless of the situation has always been our strength (as it has been our weakness as well), and it will continue to be. I suspect that reports of our "weak" single target damage in comparison to the buffed specs have been heavily exaggerated, as they always are. Remember when the whole feral community thought we were useless prior to Emerald Nightmare, and we turned out to be top dps (ignoring Shadow Priests)?

Additionally, I do think it would be boring if no classes had situations they prefer, but that's a whole different discussion entirely.

But are we really that useful on progress? I don't see any of the best raiding team stacking Ferals - in fact, there aren't that many Ferals in the best progression raids (but there are a few, yes).

Regarding the kill time: Isn't that because we scale horribly with Haste - so we don't get enough out of Heroism? And isn't that a design issue as well? Scaling our bleeds with Haste has been a good idea for years and that would go a long way to solve this issue. But even though a lot of well-respected players and theory-crafters have argued for that, the devs have decided not to.

We weren't top dps in EN - we might have been the 2nd best single target dps. But since the best specs at AoE are not "nerfed" nearly as much on their ST as Feral is on AoE, they end up winning (winning = getting a raid spot, being preferred in a raid setup). It will always be preferable to have more versatile specs, since most fights have elements of both ST and AoE.

[Deleted]

But are we really that useful on progress? Snip.

You're not wrong, there is most definitely a reason for why Method does not run a single feral druid, even in the patches where we're the top dogs at dps. We do simply not have a lot of versatility in our playstyles and damage patterns. That said, the issues for anything beyond players in top 5 guilds are usually largely exaggerated.

Yes, I'm sure there are specs that are better overall, but near enough every single spec (especially melee) can say that about themselves. I've usually found that when players moan about their spec's weaknesses and say that it makes them useless in all situations, its just to conceal the fact that they do not play around their spec's strengths well enough.

For instance, on Evil Tree boss, you do not actually need every single melee dps on the blobs at all. As a feral, you can focus on the things that you do well and let others focus on the things that they do well, you just need to start integrating these things in your raid's tactics. On Cenarius you can, pretty much by yourself, control how quickly the boss takes damage in comparison to the adds in order to ensure a clean transition. If you have issues with adds, obviously stay full focus on adds. As soon as you start having trouble with boss health, however, ferals should be the first ones to offer to switch off the boss later, etc.

All specs constantly whine about their viability, and sometimes it may even be true. But when the balance overall is as close as it is, and all specs have situations that they prefer, people should be looking at utilizing their niches in stead. More importantly, they should be looking to creating their niches, even in fights that do not natively support those. As for scaling and kill times, I reckon that's part of the explanation. I've just come to accept that's how it is, so I don't worry about it.

[lotj]

No I was looking at the "By item level" ranks which are as stated a more accurate representation of a players skill level. What it infers that your all item level parses are high is that you're over gearing content and getting good parses compared to people that are lower geared than you but that your skill level isn't as high as someone that consistently ranks high in both measures.

Feral is a hard spec to play. DHs are faceroll with a very low skill cap.

The feral ladder is pretty tight and it gets tighter the higher ilvl you get. There aren't a lot of bad ferals raiding -- H/ToV especially -- to boost the percentages up, and somewhere around the 870-880/ish ilvl range the rankings >~60% gets dominated by artifact ilvl/lvl, relics, fight length, and sockets. I don't know if you can glean as much from ilvl ranking as feral as you can from other, easier to play, specs.

Also, AB becomes pretty rng with a lot of crit & the leg gloves. Having spent way too much time on the target dummy trying to understand it, it seems like there's some proc protection stuff that kicks in at ~90-120s that'll boost it up to ~35% uptime overall pretty quickly*, but if you're looking at a fight <3 minutes then there's a decent shot of getting dicked over purely by rng.

*As in, nothing for that period of time, then repeated refreshes until it levels out, followed by more normal-ish behavior.

[Deleted]

Or since you should now be at AK25 you can just farm your world AP quests for a week and have a weapon at 34 traits. 35 if you want to really push it and find a Maw farm and all that.

Saying your artifact weapon is holding you back at this point in the game is just silly. Any alt should have AK20 immediately on hitting level 110 and completing your world quests to unlock your 3rd relic slot will now have you with at least 2 gold dragon traits if not all three well before you get your 3rd relic.

Legion is now, more than any other time in WoW history - truly a choose your grind.

If you've got an artifact that's deeply lagging compared to your others it's because you made that choice and it's pretty damned easy to catch up.

I'm sorry but what? Where am I talking about AP and traits? I'm talking about legendaries.

[shaunika123]

Here I am, maining a MM hunter....
Everyone outdps's me.
And next weeks tuning will not fix this.
And thats aside from how my spec plays now.
And its not like I can just switch to BM or SV to do good dps, all hunter specs suck atm.

U can go balance, balance is fun too.
(but yes, blizz sucks at balancing, and they sucked at it for over 12 years)

yeah sure it wont

all top specs getting a 2-8% dmg nerf
you get a 8% dmg buff

but yeah you'Ll still be on the bottom

[Whitepaw]

You're not wrong, there is most definitely a reason for why Method does not run a single feral druid, even in the patches where we're the top dogs at dps. We do simply not have a lot of versatility in our playstyles and damage patterns. That said, the issues for anything beyond players in top 5 guilds are usually largely exaggerated.

All specs constantly whine about their viability, and sometimes it may even be true. But when the balance overall is as close as it is, and all specs have situations that they prefer, people should be looking at utilizing their niches in stead. More importantly, they should be looking to creating their niches, even in fights that do not natively support those. As for scaling and kill times, I reckon that's part of the explanation. I've just come to accept that's how it is, so I don't worry about it.

I agree, a lot of this is perception about role which capabilities each spec actually has. For instance, as Ferals we often forget how fast we are. That's a huge strength, but we would only notice and appreciate it, if we lost it!

And I accept what you're saying - I, too, have stuck to playing Feral.

But I still have this sinking feeling that Ferals have lost a lot of what we had once. Some of it came when Blizzard separated Bear from Cat, but we also lost a lot in Legion. I am aware that most Ferals see themselves as dps - not as off-healers. But I miss the ability to switch over, sometimes doing unique and heroic acts.

"But if everyone does as they should, you shouldn't have to off-heal or off-tank!" That's very true, but a LOT of raiding is about things NOT going as planned. I have played Feral since 2005 and I have lost track of the number of times I managed to save the group/raid from wiping.

This has left us with two metrics by which our usefulness to the raid is being valued: Utility spells and dps. Our Stampeding Roar is not really needed in PvE instanced gameplay, our Rebirth has been copied by other classes, we lack good reliable CC (the most important these days is an AoE stun) and we're not able to off-heal reliably (we had that before Legion with Rejuvenation/Healing Touch + Dream of Cenarius. I could easily reach over 10k hps with that, which was actually pretty ok).

So, when dps - now THE remaining metric - seems to fall behind, people react. Which is understandable, because their raid spots depend on it. And the community perception is also important, because the application "Feral looking for a good raiding guild" starts with the word "Feral", and if that word has the label "Doesn't perform well in a majority of current content", then that player is not accepted.

And just to give an example: My Assassination Rogue is in the middle 850's, 20 ilvls below my Feral. But his dps output is VERY close to my Feral in M+. Both very dependent on bleeds, both energy classes, both melee - only the Feral is at 37 Traits on the weapons, while the rogue is at 27. Is it because my rogue has a very nice Legendary ring, while the Feral has legendaries with less dps output? Is it because the rogue goes Deadly Poison on trash, thereby creating a higher dps output - while the Feral, even with Luffa, use Rake/Rip combos to kill trash in most situations? Is it because Vendetta is a superior cooldown in this kind of content (well, it's probably just better designed, in all kinds of content)?

In my opinion, it's probably a mix of most of the above. But the impression I have right now is simply this: Most other melee dps specs were designed and optimised for the current meta-game, whereas Feral was not. So either Blizzard start changing the other specs to have a loooooong ramp-up time and very little utility (i.e. give them Savage Roar and PS mechanics, remove all AoE stuns, remove hard-hitting AoE), or Feral should have some of the braking mechanisms removed, buffed AoE and added some useful utility.