Ramp up time

[teddabear]

I was surprised to see Ghostcrawler specifically mention idols when defending ramp up times. Does anybody really feel Feral needs more ramp up time? Given the very small upgrade the new idol is even without the ramp up this seems like a poorly designed item. Personally I still have the old Idol in my equipment manager and only occasionally switch to the new one, specifically Saurfang and Festergut. In my opinion it is a DPS loss on most bosses

[earneck]

I purchase the ICC idol for specific fights, and then sell it back. If I'm not going to use it outside the instance, whats the point of keeping it?

[Degrador]

If I'm not going to use it outside the instance, whats the point of keeping it?

To save the annoyance of constantly having to buy it and resell it everytime you go to ICC? If you're not going to use the emblems for anything else, what's the point in keeping them?

[littlepiggy]

I was surprised to see Ghostcrawler specifically mention idols when defending ramp up times. Does anybody really feel Feral needs more ramp up time? Given the very small upgrade the new idol is even without the ramp up this seems like a poorly designed item. Personally I still have the old Idol in my equipment manager and only occasionally switch to the new one, specifically Saurfang and Festergut. In my opinion it is a DPS loss on most bosses

I haven't tested it, but I'm going to assume by the time you get a rip up the Idol will be at it's maximum. I think the real problem is if it falls off, but you're ready to put a rip it won't make much of a difference

[leofric]

Since almost every good druid has the same opener, Idol of the Crying Moon takes ~18 second ramp up time. Making it worth ~73 agi for that period.

If the stacks never fell off, Idol of the Crying Moon will beat out Idol of Mutilation after ~2 min.

Keep in mind that Idol of Mutilation is a chance on hit. Granted it is a 70% chance, but if you don't get the first proc Idol of the Crying Moon comes out ahead much faster.

In the end, I use Idol of the Crying Moon for stable fights like Saurfang, Festergut, Rotface, Princes, Blood Queen, and LK. And use Idol of Mutilation for trash and all the other bosses.

[littlepiggy]

I think the idol in question is actually based on the rake dot. http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50456

lol whoops I guess I never payed attention/forgot and just assumed it proc'ed off of any attack, thanks for correcting me =D

[Nirual]

All of the new relics for frost emblems have this ramp up concept. In many cases, it's the same stat/ability as the previous tier, just ramping up to a slightly better bonus than granting the full bonus the first time.

It seems ramp up is the new magical word when it comes to buffing PvE dps without making the same spec too good at PvP (heaven forbid moonkins ever come out on top...).

However, they seem to forget that their own encounter design makes it nearly impossible to keep the full benefit of those effects for long enough periods of time on many of the encounters, to say nothing about how long it takes for those relics to actually beat out the previous tier.

[Deleted]

There is a huge difference between "has a chance to" and "will". I will draw the example with the balance tier 9 and tier 10 idols. Tier 9 had a chance on moonfire ticks to give us 200 crit rating, but fact of the matter is that the buff had an uptime of ~80%, even if we kept moonfire up all the time. The effective crit from the idol then is 160 crit rating. Going from that, to something that increases crit by up to 220 *everytime a dot ticks*, is a huge step. Not only does it ensure a 100% uptime, it also ensures that the dot will be refreshed on the very last dot tick, giving you 12-13 seconds before you have to have a new dot up to ensure that it doesn't drop off.

I am sure that the same applies to your idols.

[Requital]

Coming from a Ret Paladin and hating Druids because you guys have an interactive rotation and far less ramp up time then Ret I hope for the sake of your class you never have to experience the same type of ramp up time that Ret has it really is a downer so GL in not getting screwed like that.

[Alski]

far less ramp up time then Ret I hope for the sake of your class you never have to experience the same type of ramp up time that Ret has it really is a downer so GL in not getting screwed like that.

Go play a feral at lvl 80 then come back and tell me this :P

You only need to hit the boss 5 times for SoC and crit 3 times during that period for Vengeance and your set.

[leofric]

Coming from a Ret Paladin and hating Druids because you guys have an interactive rotation and far less ramp up time then Ret I hope for the sake of your class you never have to experience the same type of ramp up time that Ret has it really is a downer so GL in not getting screwed like that.

What ramp up time are you speaking of? Seal of Corruption or Libram of Three Truths? Because both of these have less ramp up time than the feral idol and you rotation is simply to keep everything on CD.

[teddabear]

Since almost every good druid has the same opener, Idol of the Crying Moon takes ~18 second ramp up time. Making it worth ~73 agi for that period.

If the stacks never fell off, Idol of the Crying Moon will beat out Idol of Mutilation after ~2 min.

Keep in mind that Idol of Mutilation is a chance on hit. Granted it is a 70% chance, but if you don't get the first proc Idol of the Crying Moon comes out ahead much faster.

In the end, I use Idol of the Crying Moon for stable fights like Saurfang, Festergut, Rotface, Princes, Blood Queen, and LK. And use Idol of Mutilation for trash and all the other bosses.

This sounds about right, how often do you spend more than 2 minutes on one target? If Blizzard really felt it was necessary to give Ferals even more ramp up time they should have at least increased the buff so that the break even point is far below 2 minutes.

[Alski]

This sounds about right, how often do you spend more than 2 minutes on one target? If Blizzard really felt it was necessary to give Ferals even more ramp up time they should have at least increased the buff so that the break even point is far below 2 minutes.

They would need to increase the speed at which it stacks to lower the break even time.

[teddabear]

They would need to increase the speed at which it stacks to lower the break even time.

The are some other options:
1. increase the value which would have the side effect of making Feral really good on tank and spank fights.
2. decrease the number of stacks required
3. a combination of the above

[SoulPoetry]

while it's fairly meh for kitty, feral items are designed with 2 roles in mind and Crying Moon is fairly awesome for bears who haven't had an agility idol since Ulduar, making it ~70 agility upgrade and as i do both, i'm fairly happy with it. you can keep it rolling on add switches fairly easily as you have ~12 seconds to apply a Rake in order for it to refresh so i don't see that as a problem.

[teddabear]

The problem is in most circumstances it is a downgrade from the item from the previous tier. It's not like kitties ar tearing up the charts either. Other than using tank buff trick for Festergut they are one of the lower DPS in Icecrown.

[teddabear]

I don't put much stock in anecdotal evidence. I do fairly well also but you won't see my name on WoL. The top DPS on Saurfang is over 14k, if you can show me a parse where you beat this then I will agree Feral is a top tier DPS class. I also find it disturbing that so many people find it acceptable to be competitive on only 16% of the bosses.

However that was not the point of my post. Even a significant buff to the T10 Idol would be a miniscule increase to our DPS. For example changing it to 3 stacks of 80 agility would be an increase of under 50 DPS, probably less with crit cap. That is less than one half of one percent. However the Idol would then clearly be an upgrade over the old one which is the salient point here.

[littlepiggy]

The top DPS on Saurfang is over 14k, if you can show me a parse where you beat this then I will agree Feral is a top tier DPS class.

Jaiie pretty much already said it, but the top guilds do not represent the average to above average guild. A well played feral in your typical guild will be top 5 easily.

obviously it's going to depend on your starting rotation, but what is the typical feral ramp up time now a days? because I'm pretty sure ret is very close to the same amount of ramp of time as us.

[Deleted]

The slowest buff/debuff to get to max stacks is the frost emblem idol, taking 5 rake ticks = at the very least 15 seconds, probably closer to 20 in usual circumstances. After it gets to max stacks, when you reapply rip/rake again, you are at maximal dps potential. So rampup time to 100% is anywhere between 15 and 35 seconds.

[teddabear]

You're making a few bad assumptions here. 14k would assume the best gear possible. I don't think more than a tiny fraction of the guilds out there can boast that reasonably. Expecting people to meet that lofty goal is unreasonable for the time being.

Your second assumption with respect to 16% of the bosses is simply flawed from the onset. The reason those two bosses are gauges for melee is because they practically do nothing else in the fight but stay on target (Saurfang a better gauge than Festergut due to the random nature of the spores). For melee, that fight IS the Patchwerk of ICC. For them NOT to use that fight as a gauge would be an exercise in stupidity. :-)

I don't think anyone argues that. I certainly didn't and don't. However, the reason that it's annoying and bad for us is that it is a ramp up to a ramp up we already have to do. It seems overly ramp excessive.

There are several issues with this.

Saurfang:
Not all dps are on the boss.
Some DPS that are on the boss 100% of the time have to omit some attacks from their rotation.

Festergut:
Using Festergut to measure Feral DPS can be like using Hodir or Jaraxus to measure Mage DPS. Some Ferals get a huge damage boost by tanking the boss for a few stacks of the damage buff.

Disregarding those 2 fights I still think Feral is competitive on single target DPS but those types of fights are becoming increasingly rare. The combination of having one of the longer ramp up times and also being melee puts Feral at a disadvantage in the encounter design Blizzard seems to be favoring now.


However let me reaffirm my main point, even a large buff to the current Idol would have a negligible effect on overall Feral DPS and would solve the current problem of the new one being a questionable upgrade.