[Feral] Pawkets' PvE Guide / FAQ - 6.2

[aggixx]

Do you mean doesn't work all the time or doesn't work at all? Because it works for me, but if you press it when you're on the GCD it will cast everything but Incarnation because Incarnation is on the GCD. Its pretty annoying. I've tried a couple times to get them to change it but for some reason they're attached to it being on the GCD because it "fits the flavor of being a shapeshift" or something (hardly a direct quote so don't freak out).

[Exigent]

Honestly I bet that was the issue. Definitely annoying, but easy to work around. I'll confirm tonight.

[Anbokr]

Worthless is quite an exaggeration; its hardly worthless but it does lose to the other talents by a fair margin. As the passive option it is intended to be the inferior choice for PvE. Here's the last comparison I did a couple weeks ago for single target:
http://downloads.simulationcraft.org...0_1t_post.html

That was before the feral buffs a few days ago which makes Claws of Shirvallah just a tiny bit worse, but the impact is probably pretty insignificant.

Thanks for the info, will probably reconsider boosting my feral then, I love that form and I don't plan on playing him for pvp :/.

[Soular]

Nice job aggixx.

[Deleted]

Are there any sims about The races? Troll berserking vs. Taurens 2% critdmg

[Zanzha]

night_elf_day_shadowmeld : 38464 dps
night_elf_night_shadowmeld : 38335 dps
tauren : 38258 dps
night_elf_day_no_shadowmeld : 38178 dps
worgen : 38150 dps
night_elf_night_no_shadowmeld : 38068 dps
troll : 38023 dps

were the last sims I saw for it

[Deleted]

night_elf_day_shadowmeld : 38464 dps
night_elf_night_shadowmeld : 38335 dps
tauren : 38258 dps
night_elf_day_no_shadowmeld : 38178 dps
worgen : 38150 dps
night_elf_night_no_shadowmeld : 38068 dps
troll : 38023 dps

were the last sims I saw for it

Thanks. So, Tauren is a good choice now (from DPS PoV). I liked my kitty-cow

[aggixx]

Keep in mind how small of a difference we're talking there, if you exclude the shadowmeld profiles the difference is 0.6% at most.

[rijn dael]

At work, so I can't test right now, but can you put multiple castsequences in the same macro?

Something like:

#showtooltip Berserk
/cast Incarnation: King of the Jungle
/castsequence reset=2 ,Berserk
/castsequence reset=2 ,Tiger's Fury

Only relevent if you want a 1-bind macro to handle all your cds, you press once to activate the incarnation GCD, then press again to fire off the instants without losing time to incarnations gcd - I kinda prefer having a bind for each on my naga side buttons though.

/cast Incarnation: King of the Jungle
/castsequence reset=2 ,Berserk,Tiger's Fury

Worst case you could make it a three-button-push to activate the TF (like this)

- - - Updated - - -

Snapshotting question -

I have been updating my weakauras that monitor dot strength (so they track SR/TF/BT buffs) to also take advantage of predicted buffs in the future, so I now have a predicted strength shown if I were to clip at pandemic end / dot end, as well as showing what my current value is.

For TF/incarnation it is a straight forward question of if the cd will be up by those points.
For BT I check if I have Predatory Swiftness and will probably have BT up (estimated by assuming I gain 1 cp per 2sec, and assume BT will be up for the 2 gcd's after that).

The sim would generally refresh if it gets a better snapshot value as soon as it enters pandemic range, but wouldn't it be a gain to wait if you know your power is about to increase? The differences can be pretty extreme, from the base case that the sim would pandemic clip at (SR+TF at ~1.6x snapshot) up to 2x (rip) / 4.1x (rake).

Using the same aura's I can also see snapshot drops as they are coming - wouldn't it generally be a gain to take an amplified dot before the snapshot buff ends, even if it is pre-pandemic?

I can generally figure out enough of the simc apl to determine what it would do, but not enough to write it and sim either of these scenarios.

[aggixx]

The sim would generally refresh if it gets a better snapshot value as soon as it enters pandemic range, but wouldn't it be a gain to wait if you know your power is about to increase? The differences can be pretty extreme, from the base case that the sim would pandemic clip at (SR+TF at ~1.6x snapshot) up to 2x (rip) / 4.1x (rake).

Sure, but it would be a mess to implement it properly and it really isn't something that occurs very often. If you have no modifiers up other than SR, then waiting for a single upcoming buff (TF) is a pretty small gain and you're likely forced to bite first to use TF at all which runs the risk of causing a Rip downtime at lower gear levels. Any other situation where you're about to stack a 2nd modifier on top of a current one its unlikely that the 1st modifier will even be around then.

Think its just one of those things you can take advantage of occasionally as a player but its too unreasonable to put in an APL. There's a small handful of things like this where you can get a small gain out of adding a ton of incomprehensable conditionals to the APL, but it just causes too much potential for unforeseen misinteractions with any later changes to justify the small DPS bump. That and the fact that the readability of the APL quickly goes to shit.

Using the same aura's I can also see snapshot drops as they are coming - wouldn't it generally be a gain to take an amplified dot before the snapshot buff ends, even if it is pre-pandemic?

If I understand correctly you're talking about predictive clipping. The problem is that the sim already applies Rake extremely agressively; it essentially has the strongest possible Rake applied at all times, energy permitting, so in its case it isn't relevant. In the case of Rip it does relatively minimal snapshot management just because Ferocious Bite is so strong. The opportunity cost of applying a Rip that wastes ticks just isn't worth it when you could instead Bite and do a ton of damage instantly.

[rijn dael]

Ah okay, I am over-valuing the damage done by dots compared the alternative - I blame the affliction warlock in me :P

From the APL, I can't see it ever overwriting rake before pandemic - regardless of snapshot value - but you say that would be a dps increase? (from your feral guide snapshot stuff). Things like refreshing rake just before incarnation expires unless you would lose a significantly better existing rake etc - even if that might be losing a few seconds of pre-pandemic rake.

And you are saying the damage per energy/cp ratio of Rip vs FB is too similar in damage to matter, you just want to maximise total throughput - so it isn't worth trying to predict things vs the risk of downtime at any skill level?

[aggixx]

From the APL, I can't see it ever overwriting rake before pandemic - regardless of snapshot value - but you say that would be a dps increase? (from your feral guide snapshot stuff). Things like refreshing rake just before incarnation expires unless you would lose a significantly better existing rake etc - even if that might be losing a few seconds of pre-pandemic rake.

This is the line that manages that behavior:

actions+=/rake,cycle_targets=1,if=persistent_multiplier>dot.rake.pmultiplier&combo_points<5

The conditional reads something like "if the persistent multiplier of the new DoT is greater than that of the old DoT and I have fewer than 5 combo points," persistent multiplier being an integer that represents all of the snapshotted multipliers (TF, SR, BT, Imp Rake).

And you are saying the damage per energy/cp ratio of Rip vs FB is too similar in damage to matter, you just want to maximise total throughput - so it isn't worth trying to predict things vs the risk of downtime at any skill level?

I wouldn't say at any level, but the problem is that for the T17M profile Rip does a bit more than double the damage of a Ferocious Bite over its entire duration. While there is room to maximize a bit there, as soon as you do anything that wastes any number of ticks that gap starts to drop and the gain gets smaller and smaller very quickly. Simple math certainly shows there is some room for optimization but the problem is if we can't nail the exact parameters of what that optimization is in SimC, then its questionable trying to execute it ourselves in any but the rarest of circumstances.

The last snapshotting change that was added to the APL was the late refresh thing (where it waits to refresh during Pandemic time if its overwriting a stronger bleed), but aside from that me and the couple other people that have messed with it have had issues coming up with any other bleed micro logic that is actually any significant gain.

[Deleted]

I'm confused. I thought snapshotting was completely gone except for some talents like Bloodtalons, so why is there a section dedicated to snapshotting in the guide? So you can still snapshot using TF and SR? I hear people say snapshotting is completely gone, but in fact, only trinkets and items/short buff snapshotting is gone then?

Reading this, I've been doing it wrong for the past few weeks, completely disregarding any snapshotting with TF. (my SR already has close to 100% uptime anyway).

What about re-applying bleeds right after a bleed tick, and not before? Is that still something I should be doing for a DPS increase? Or doesn't it matter anymore either?

[Rioo]

Yes you got it. SR has to be up before applying Rip. I don't know what you mean when you say "save TF", but you should use it at 5 cp together with Berserk and then Rip. If you're using the AoC trinket you can then refresh every Rip with a new one during the next TF thanks to the pandemic mechanic.

As for re-applying bleeds, you can re-apply a bleed without any DPS loss when it's below 30% of the base duration because those 30% gets added to the new bleed. So 4.5 sec for rake and thrash, 7.2 for rip. Savage Roar can also be refreshed early, but I don't remember the number right now (around 12 sec for 5 cp Roar). So say you have a normal rake running, and at 4.5 seconds you re-apply it while having TF up, you'd get a new 19.5 sec long Rake ticking for 15% more. This is clearly a gain. If you have a 15% stronger Rake running and you apply a new rake at 4.5 seconds without TF you'd get a new 19.5 sec normal Rake, and would lose out on 4.5 seconds of stronger ticks. This, and if the boss would die in the next few seconds ofc, is the only time it's bad to refresh your bleed early

[aggixx]

I'm confused. I thought snapshotting was completely gone except for some talents like Bloodtalons, so why is there a section dedicated to snapshotting in the guide? So you can still snapshot using TF and SR? I hear people say snapshotting is completely gone, but in fact, only trinkets and items/short buff snapshotting is gone then?

Reading this, I've been doing it wrong for the past few weeks, completely disregarding any snapshotting with TF. (my SR already has close to 100% uptime anyway).

What about re-applying bleeds right after a bleed tick, and not before? Is that still something I should be doing for a DPS increase? Or doesn't it matter anymore either?

Right, only stat snapshotting is removed. In general, abilities and talents still snapshot but it is somewhat on a case-by-case basis; it just so happens that the class designers decided all of our abilities should.

In general ticks matter a lot less than they did before because of the new Pandemic mechanic. The only case where you particularly care about when the bleed ticks is when you want to let some ticks happen with a damage multiplier before you go about refreshing it and losing that multiplier (as explained in the Late Refresh section).

[Deleted]

Awesome, thanks for the replies.

[lifteez]

I've been combing through MMO-C and fluiddruid a lot recently, but can't seem to find a answer. It seems like people are saying get 5 combo points as a rule, so if I'm at 4, I still use my CP builder, even though I may lose a cp if it crits? rogue main here, so that's were I get the hesitancy to want to shred on 4 CP.
I'm guessing that ferals always Perfer a 5 cp finisher excluding occasions when the target will die before they can get another cp, just want to know for sure!
(Excluding SR, I understand to keep that up no matter what)

[Arctagon]

Clipping a 5 CP Rip (max damage) with a 4 CP Rip (lower damage) is obviously going to have a negative effect on your DPS. In the case of Savage Roar, the amount of combo points is only going to affect how long the buff lasts, and Ferocious Bite will refresh Rip as though it was applied with 5 combo points (granted that's the potency of the last Rip you applied) when in execute range regardless of how many combo points are up when you use Ferocious Bite.

[Memur]

Great guide.

I have a question. Correct me if I'm wrong, as I understand it's always better to wait for 50 energy before using FB. Sometimes I'll notice that I'll have TF just about to end before I can get to 50 energy, in that case is it better to just use it regardless of pooling 50 energy before using FB or just use it before TF falls?

[aggixx]

You never want to delay TF's CD. If you have <40 energy you can TF then Bite, otherwise you want to Bite so you don't waste energy and then use TF. Since that Bite will always happen with 40-50 energy you're not losing much.