[Feral] WoD Secondary Stat prioritisation

[Deleted]

So, I have just been reading through the new Alpha patch notes and noticed the section on secondary stat attunement. From what I can tell, it is intended that the secondary stat a spec is attuned to will generally be its best secondary stat.

What I find interesting is that feral's attunement is crit, giving us an extra 5%. I know that Blizzard wants to reduce some of our bleed damage and increase direct damage, but I hope they don't do it to the detriment of mastery.

My concern at the moment is that our priorities will be completely different. It seems they are moving towards a model of keep rip/rake up as a matter of course, but main priority is shred/FB spam. Personally I like our current style of game play, planning when to put bleeds up for procs, planning when to use combo points etc.

I know that an element of that game play is disappearing anyway due to the new dynamic DoT system and the removal of snapshotting, but it would be a shame for rip/rake to become abilities that don't matter anymore beyond simply monitoring up time.

I would interested views and opinions from other ferals, particularly anyone in the alpha that can comment on how the game play feels and works at the moment.

[Deleted]

During late cataclysm our DoTs were just "something to have up" as well. It won't be anything entirely new for us. That being said... after having had the taste of MoP bleed maintenance and planning, I am not sure if I would enjoy going back to having tons of combo points to spend on FB.

[Dandeleon]

I see 2 possible builds in WoD:
1- Crit based - using Inc + Savagery, for single target/burst damage.
2- Mastery based - using SotF + Bloody Talon, for bleed cleave and sustain damage.

[gestapo]

@OP
I was about to make this exact same post. You've summed up - word for word - what I wanted to say. I share your concerns because I'm a big fan of the heavy bleed playstyle and I was concerned to see Crit being the Secondary Stat Attunement for Feral.

From what people are saying, SSA is basically telling the players what the optimal stat is. Like Karlzone said, it will be similar to Cata, but I sincerely hope we retain our current playstyle or at least have a choice of either a crit oriented or mastery oriented where both are equally good.

[Deleted]

My hope at the moment is the way the post was phrased. They did say that the SSA would *generally* indicate the best secondary stat! but not always. I wonder if perhaps feral is an exception to the rule? Only time will tell I guess.

If they are moving damage away from bleeds into direct damage, it is only natural for the value of mastery to decrease and the value of crit to increase. That being said I would have thought the reduction in mastery value would be bigger than the increase in crit value. I am looking forward to doing some testing on the subject if I get into beta. If not I look forward to seeing what the theory crafters come up with.

[Zstr]

̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶5̶%̶ ̶c̶r̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶z̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶r̶e̶m̶o̶v̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶L̶e̶a̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶p̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶b̶o̶n̶u̶s̶ hmm I remember seeing it in some early wod blogpost
no changes to really reverse stats wise are being implented yet

[Raugnaut]

Attunements provide such a tiny difference to stat weightings that blizz might have well not added them. There will be no noticable differences until the later tiers, and class mechanics will decide the wieghts of stats more then these attunements will. I forsee attunements disappearing within a few more builds.

[Deleted]

̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶5̶%̶ ̶c̶r̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶z̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶r̶e̶m̶o̶v̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶L̶e̶a̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶p̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶b̶o̶n̶u̶s̶
no changes to really reverse stats wise are being implented yet

That's not what the blizzard post said. In any event I seem to recall they said they were buffing crit because the of reduction in contribution from agility. Also I think the attunement is multiplicative rather than additive

[Zstr]

stat wise it's still looks same, and it's more rather to compensate stat squish
even u say before in cataclysm `dots just to have them up`, and they were still a lot portion of damage, mastery was still the best stat to go on gear, after agility, coz you won't be able to go for crit cap like in wotlk, it's still dmg increase but not significant.
as their philosophy of classes - they want all secondaries be equal, however I won't see any haste buff
and as far as it goes mastery+crit would be most gear to chose from for BiS list
time and sim will tell, it's too early to say while things in deep development, and things not come to numbers adjustment

[Gemini Soul]

Has there been some sims ran lately, to give us an idea on whats best based on talents we take

[teddabear]

Has there been some sims ran lately, to give us an idea on whats best based on talents we take

Last I read they will scale differently so stat priority will change as your gear level changes. Also Tier bonuses will change priority too.