[Feral] DoC Vs. HoTW for 5.4

[voxTree]

NS isn't going away, it is becoming baseline for all druid specs. I use DoC and will probably continue to in 5.4 unless HotW's % agi sims as a dps gain past a certain ilvl.

*It's becoming baseline for resto and balance.

[teddabear]

*It's becoming baseline for resto and balance.

There are rumors Blizzard may give Feral a proc from Nature's Grasp but at this late stage it is looking improbable.

[Kojo]

Huh, where'd this rumor come from? And aren't they making some glyph that cuts down the cd on grasp to like nothing?

[Domatic]

DoC will probably still be better especially with the buff as long as you are actually good at using your PS procs to set up bleeds with DoC. but however it will be interesting with HoTW and around 28k+ agility which should deffinately be better for ferals who do not manage their DoC well.

[Deleted]

DoC will probably still be better especially with the buff as long as you are actually good at using your PS procs to set up bleeds with DoC. but however it will be interesting with HoTW and around 28k+ agility which should deffinately be better for ferals who do not manage their DoC well.

To clear something up first, HotW being good or not has nothing to do with how much agility you have since both DoC and HotW have near-identical scaling. That being said, if you're doing DoC poorly there's a big chance you're doing similar mistakes with HotW (lets face it, trinket and bleed magnitude management is much harder than using DoC). I'd argue that if you're playing poorly your Tier 6 talent doesn't make much difference and I would avoid making decisions based around bad play.

If you have bad gear (ie. no proc-based items which can be used to maximize your dps) then the difference becomes negligible. Only when you get a decent amount of set items and trinkets is when HotW and DoC start making a wider gap. At this point it is possible for DoC to drop below HotW if you ignore it completely but can go above HotW if played well. This is where most of the "low-mid skill" disparity about the difficulty of DoC seems to originate from. And an extra observation to finish: the main issue with DoC isn't that it is difficult to play but that it isn't user friendly: there's no user-interface link to chain DoC -> Predatory swiftness -> Healing Touch thus confusing the fresh feral into thinking that you need to hardcast it out-of-form or use NS for it. And second: if you've played leveled a druid pre-DoC for months then putting healing touch on your main cat bars and regarding it as a "damage skill" requires a specific mental shift which again is not portrayed well as far as the UI goes.

[Domatic]

To clear something up first, HotW being good or not has nothing to do with how much agility you have since both DoC and HotW have near-identical scaling. That being said, if you're doing DoC poorly there's a big chance you're doing similar mistakes with HotW

The reason i said ferals not managing their DoC well is when people do a PS healing touch then shred for the next 2 attacks over using it at 4-5 combo points then setting up a rake or a rip with DoC for the extra 25% bleed damage and for those who overide their bleeds alot with ones that have less attack power/no DoC. and there is almost no way to make mistakes with HotW which just grants you 6% more agility and 6% more stamina

[aggixx]

The reason i said ferals not managing their DoC well is when people do a PS healing touch then shred for the next 2 attacks over using it at 4-5 combo points then setting up a rake or a rip with DoC for the extra 25% bleed damage and for those who overide their bleeds alot with ones that have less attack power/no DoC. and there is almost no way to make mistakes with HotW which just grants you 6% more agility and 6% more stamina

Someone playing HotW can just as easily clip their bleeds at the wrong time (or not at all) as someone playing DoC. That's not a problem unique to having DoC as a talent.

[Deleted]

The reason i said ferals not managing their DoC well is when people do a PS healing touch then shred for the next 2 attacks over using it at 4-5 combo points then setting up a rake or a rip with DoC for the extra 25% bleed damage and for those who overide their bleeds alot with ones that have less attack power/no DoC. and there is almost no way to make mistakes with HotW which just grants you 6% more agility and 6% more stamina

You're giving DoC too much credit, yes DoC is 25% extra damage on bleeds but trinkets like Renataki, Juju and Rune are 60-140% each and go up to 400-600% when you combine them. These trinkets are the same deal whether you use DoC and HotW and if you can't manage them with DoC you won't be able to manage with HotW thus making the comparison entirely meaningless. You won't even notice the 6% extra agility.

Edit: aggix said it much better in a much shorter sentence

[mmokri]

HotW. Why? Because rogue respec is faster way to deal more damage than to play piano.
Also most likely rogue is going to deal more damage then DoC druid despite DoC complexity.

[Deleted]

You're giving DoC too much credit, yes DoC is 25% extra damage on bleeds but trinkets like Renataki, Juju and Rune are 60-140% each and go up to 400-600% when you combine them. These trinkets are the same deal whether you use DoC and HotW and if you can't manage them with DoC you won't be able to manage with HotW thus making the comparison entirely meaningless. You won't even notice the 6% extra agility.

Edit: aggix said it much better in a much shorter sentence

Example:
You are in low energy and combopoints when Renataki suddenly procs and it starts to build stacks. With HOTW its easy to do early dot refresh already at low trinket stacks at like 4-5 Blades (at least Rake, maybe Thresh too with proc, no idea if worth). Then all bleeds/dots again at 10 stacks. Now try doing same with DoC, is it possible at all to do doc-rake at 5 Blades stack, and still have DoC also for 10 stack refresh?
Ok example is not too good, but it shows with hotw it is easier and _faster_ to react various trinket procs immediately and there is more freedom to do it.

Btw, how good does simcraft model Renataki usage? Saw in Fluidruid site some comments that simcraft is maybe not too good at timing refreshes to 10 stacks etc?

[mmokri]

Also don't forget Force of Nature + Natures Vigil combo. Popping treants under 10% buff gives more damage then HoTW.

[ScrubKitty]

Also don't forget Force of Nature + Natures Vigil combo. Popping treants under 10% buff gives more damage then HoTW.

Nature's Vigil is the lowest dps output of the three talents and currently on the PTR Treants gain no effect from it with both their melee damage and Rakes.

[mmokri]

Nature's Vigil is the lowest dps output of the three talents and currently on the PTR Treants gain no effect from it with both their melee damage and Rakes.

1. simcraft probably does not support this talent combo
2. gonna wait 6.0 till fix

[Deleted]

Example:
You are in low energy and combopoints when Renataki suddenly procs and it starts to build stacks. With HOTW its easy to do early dot refresh already at low trinket stacks at like 4-5 Blades (at least Rake, maybe Thresh too with proc, no idea if worth). Then all bleeds/dots again at 10 stacks. Now try doing same with DoC, is it possible at all to do doc-rake at 5 Blades stack, and still have DoC also for 10 stack refresh?
Ok example is not too good, but it shows with hotw it is easier and _faster_ to react various trinket procs immediately and there is more freedom to do it.

All this example shows is how DoC sometimes cannot/does not have to react to trinket procs. This does not prove added complexity, it shows that DoC can be very reliant on RNG. What is the most difficult? Using or ignoring trinket procs?

(Keep in mind all is not this black and white. Generally DoC is more difficult, but your example doesn't work)

[Deleted]

Example:
You are in low energy and combopoints when Renataki suddenly procs and it starts to build stacks. With HOTW its easy to do early dot refresh already at low trinket stacks at like 4-5 Blades (at least Rake, maybe Thresh too with proc, no idea if worth). Then all bleeds/dots again at 10 stacks. Now try doing same with DoC, is it possible at all to do doc-rake at 5 Blades stack, and still have DoC also for 10 stack refresh?
Ok example is not too good, but it shows with hotw it is easier and _faster_ to react various trinket procs immediately and there is more freedom to do it.

With the example you've mentioned there's literally no difference between HotW and DoC since you would no doubt still have a DoC proc from your last finisher (the one used at 4 stacks) and then could use NS+HT (pre-patch) to bootstrap your 10-stack ones at 4CP. But this is besides the point, if you're good enough to handle these procs well while keeping savage roar up then you should have no problem dealing with DoC other than lazyness.

- - - Updated - - -

1. simcraft probably does not support this talent combo
2. gonna wait 6.0 till fix

The new Catus beta should support it soon. Currently on PTR DoC increases rakes of treants by 30% without consuming charges, but NV and HotW do not work. Currently there's no way of telling which of these scenarios is intended and which one is a bug. Since they wanted to make Druid T6 talents independent of T2 and T4 talents I doubt they will make a T4 talent heavily dependent on a T6 talent.

[aggixx]

Btw, how good does simcraft model Renataki usage? Saw in Fluidruid site some comments that simcraft is maybe not too good at timing refreshes to 10 stacks etc?

It doesn't wait for it to stack at all, it just goes with the flow. That said, I spent maybe an hour or two trying to get that to work but the problem is 1) There many buffs you have to account for and if any of them happen while you're waiting to apply Rip it completely wrecks the damage gain you're trying to achieve in the first place, and 2) Even if you make sure to obey all these buffs (stop waiting when TFs about to expire, when OoC procs, when T16 4p is about to expire, etc) it happens so infrequently that even if it it is a DPS gain it's such a small gain you can't even tell the difference.

Also don't forget Force of Nature + Natures Vigil combo. Popping treants under 10% buff gives more damage then HoTW.

1. simcraft probably does not support this talent combo
2. gonna wait 6.0 till fix

It does support it, except for like Alpheus said, NV has zero effect on treants. And even if it did you probably still wouldn't be right because you would likely lose a significant amount of DPS forcing them to be used during NV instead of trinket procs.

The new Catus beta should support it soon. Currently on PTR DoC increases rakes of treants by 30% without consuming charges, but NV and HotW do not work. Currently there's no way of telling which of these scenarios is intended and which one is a bug. Since they wanted to make Druid T6 talents independent of T2 and T4 talents I doubt they will make a T4 talent heavily dependent on a T6 talent.

Imo, it's pretty clear that that's just a bug and they have no intent of making damage buffs on the player apply to the Treants. They're guardians, not pets, so they're not likely to make such accommodations.

[mmokri]

It does support it, except for like Alpheus said, NV has zero effect on treants. And even if it did you probably still wouldn't be right because you would likely lose a significant amount of DPS forcing them to be used during NV instead of trinket procs.

Probably only AP proc trinkets
I want total delete of tier6 talents with HoTW baseline instead of mushrooms

[Deleted]

Probably only AP proc trinkets
I want total delete of tier6 talents with HoTW baseline instead of mushrooms

All stat procs work - mastery from rune (even the negative components), haste, agility, - since they copy your char's stats over when you summon them and then sync with you with a slight delay (I believe it was 2-3 seconds). What made treants more appealing in the latest PTR build is the fact that they apply Rake (imagine it as a 1/3rd of a normal rake, scales with mastery) which behaves exactly as a normal rake - currently even accounting for DoC - as far as damage and stat snapshots are concerned (they do not benefit from damage-increasing buffs like Savage Roar and Tiger's Fury, though).

As for T6 talents, well they have to cater to 4 different specs for both PvE and PvP. This expansion's talents certainly haven't seen much diversity (even though HotW hurricane and DoC dps were a nice touch, even though slightly unintended) and at this point the best we can do is to stick with the facts we know and give as much feedback as possible for the 6.0 changes (especially for the never-ending DoC vs HotW damage/utility debate).

[mmokri]

@Alpheus haha got nice DoC rework idea - every time you use heal yours damage cooldowns are reduced by 8 seconds ; Every time you use damage ability yours utility cooldowns are reduced by 2 seconds

[Deleted]

It doesn't wait for it to stack at all, it just goes with the flow. That said, I spent maybe an hour or two trying to get that to work but the problem is 1) There many buffs you have to account for and if any of them happen while you're waiting to apply Rip it completely wrecks the damage gain you're trying to achieve in the first place, and 2) Even if you make sure to obey all these buffs (stop waiting when TFs about to expire, when OoC procs, when T16 4p is about to expire, etc) it happens so infrequently that even if it it is a DPS gain it's such a small gain you can't even tell the difference.

Did you try this with doc or hotw? With hotw its easy and trivial to refresh Rake every time something important procs, while with doc its prolly impossible. Any idea how much better new Rake has to be for refreash being worth? With my ferals normal mode gear Renataki 10 stacks seems to be already +71% dot strenght, hard to believe that does not show in dps. And what comes to Rip, I am getting 9-10 Blades stack Rip up maybe 80% of time when trinket procs, some better feral player would get it close to 90% of time or more. Who knows, maybe Renataki could be even better than RoR when used properly. Or maybe it really shines with hotw (agility proc)? Just throwing ideas here