[Feral] The art of a Kitten: PvE guide

[kaiadam]

Whatever gets you ahead I guess. I wonder what the 'real' dps spectrum is for feral DPS then, any log where this bug was used, regardless of who used, it really doesn't count anymore or rather, shouldn't count.

There's probably a hundred different things that are unintentionally beneficial towards a subset of WoW.

Biggest example I can think of - engineering belt bombs. Why would you give a free 1k dps, on top of glove enchants that are arguably better than other profession bonuses, just for being an engineer?

Are you going to discredit all the parses with engineering characters as well?

[FeralSynapse]

There's probably a hundred different things that are unintentionally beneficial towards a subset of WoW.

Biggest example I can think of - engineering belt bombs. Why would you give a free 1k dps, on top of glove enchants that are arguably better than other profession bonuses, just for being an engineer?

Are you going to discredit all the parses with engineering characters as well?

There is a difference between a profession perk and the vortex bug/exploit. Being able to near extend Rip for such a long duration is huge DPS boost. It's a bug, it's not working as intended and it's artificially inflating numbers. Vortex was not designed to interact with Rip this way and it needs fixed. Not a hard concept-if your using an exploit/bug it shouldn't count, class spec, etc does not matter.

[Deleted]

Generall updating again removing old bad information i thought i had and added new fresh!!
also

Requesting players to share Screenshot over UI in idle or combat for different feral druids to give them who are struggling(Including myself sometimes) an idea on how you can make it to look like. Preferably a list of addons.

Hit and Expertise cap!
Looking on simulations and their stat weights we need to consider that it runs the same test 25 000 times. We do get energy back when we miss on a spell so just because the weights says Hit and Expertise is lower, you might aswell on some tries without Hit/Exp caped have them as highest priority because you happend to miss 20/50/70/100 % of all the attacks you make. But you might as well have the value of Hit and Exp cap as 0 because you might have 0 misses without caping them even. Generally i would recommend Hit and Exp caps even thought stat weights says otherwise.

3.5 The Opener
DoC
Pre Healing Touch
Pre Pot
Pre Savage Roar
FF
Rake
Shred
Savage Raor
TF+Berserk
Shred up to 4cps if PS proced on second PS pop HT else NS+HT
Rake with DoC buff to 5th CP then Rip.
Continue normal DoC priority

Non DoC
Pre Pot
Pre Savage Roar
FF
Rake
Shred
Savage Roar
TF+Berserk
Rake(with TF buff and probably some trinket/Synapse Springs etc)
Shred to 5th CP put Rip up
Continue normal priority

Mangle
Shred and Mangle has the same weapon scaling but Shred has 20% extra damage on bleeding targets. Mangle has a energy cost of 35 where as Shred have 40.
Shred vs Mangle, Shred actually wins on simulations, Where it easily could be closer gap by a player because of the easier CP management with more Mangles, Hence this needs more testing but something i can speculate is that Mangle will be a win when you starve for CPs for example losing Rips and need to build CPs to get it up again or preventing it from dropping.

Mangel might be the way to go now also some times if you are exploiting the Ursol's Vortex bug.
Todo: Gear list in priority.

[Paloro]

I don't agree with your opener.

I follow:
Pre HT
Pre Pot
FFF
0 CP SR
Rake
Shred
TF + Berserk
Shred
NS + HT
Rip

At this point you should have ~6 sec left on SR

Shred
Shred
Rake

HT from PS

SR

then continue your rotation

[Deleted]

Why i choice to refresh SR is because you don't need to SR right after the Rip on low CPs that will waste your energy much better getting up a DoC+ trinket proced Rip then hit 5 CP and make a SR. Not saying your way is wrong but this is how i tend to do it, Might be something to look at.

[Deleted]

Okay, so I started raiding again after a break since 5.1 What I noticed was that we're now simming a lot lower, why is that? As far as I've seen with patch notes we haven't recieved any nerfs? If I remember correctly we were #6 on sims or something like that, but are rather low now.

[aggixx]

Something was messed up with the default action list so we're simming lower if you use said default action list. Nothing has changed.

[Deleted]

I just learned about the vortex bug today, I did see that there was a feral on rank #1 for blade lord when we were progressing on it and thought it was weird that he only used 3 rips, that was over a week ago. This hasn't been fixed yet? Normally bugs like this are fixed instantly.

[Ohforfsake]

There! Damn it i knew there is something wrong with stenhaldi's logs.. But honestly even with this bug abusing we are not touching other melee classes' top damage -_- THIS is what makes me sick, we need a bug to be competitive. And blizzard doesn't even care. I was ranking high myself a few times, been #1 on garalon and the dogs, and people in my raid that can't even get into #200 on their class are slowly creeping ahead of me on DPS. This is just frustrating..

[Williee]

For feral, it has been like that a lot. Past tiers and expansion, when I main as a kitty dps, it was a similar situation. Just not much you can do sadly, be happy with your wlog rankings.

[Deleted]

There! Damn it i knew there is something wrong with stenhaldi's logs.. But honestly even with this bug abusing we are not touching other melee classes' top damage -_- THIS is what makes me sick, we need a bug to be competitive. And blizzard doesn't even care. I was ranking high myself a few times, been #1 on garalon and the dogs, and people in my raid that can't even get into #200 on their class are slowly creeping ahead of me on DPS. This is just frustrating..

I honestly prefer it that way, while it would be nice to get a small buff (more to our energy regen) i won't complain, I'm doing well on fights and can out DPS most in our raid group. I do think we get shafted a little to much in the grand scheme of things though, but that comes with been a feral.

Looking at the parses, we are about the middle of the pack, shown in Simc also, not as bad as arms war/unholy DK, but not as good as fury war/combat rogue.

[Ohforfsake]

I honestly prefer it that way, while it would be nice to get a small buff (more to our energy regen) i won't complain, I'm doing well on fights and can out DPS most in our raid group. I do think we get shafted a little to much in the grand scheme of things though, but that comes with been a feral.

Looking at the parses, we are about the middle of the pack, shown in Simc also, not as bad as arms war/unholy DK, but not as good as fury war/combat rogue.

Well, the problem is.. those classes dont HAVE to use subpar spec for dps. Warrior can easily respec fury, DK can easily respec frost, and they'd become one of the top dps. While we can not respec some "other better feral". There is just none.

Being on the bottom is only good in the terms of the "bright future", as you can only expect buffs. But i'd rather sit in the middle of the strong specs, that way you get both, a safe future and good numbers.

What i myself would like to see..
1) Destroy the atrocity of a rotation that is DoC. Make it somehow so it wont be the top dps rotation anymore and more of an utility one. I'm pretty sure the utility was the real intention of it, not being top dps and used in a rotation, just like "powershifting" was not an intended dps strategy in TBC. Perhaps make it so it'd be triggered by all the healing spells rather than direct cast ones but would require 3 of them to be cast before the effect triggers.
2) Incarnation having its own stance bar
3) Increase the duration of berserk by 10 sec.
4) Flat 5% damage buff to bleeds and ferocious bite

[aggixx]

Looking at the parses, we are about the middle of the pack, shown in Simc also, not as bad as arms war/unholy DK, but not as good as fury war/combat rogue.

SimC DPS comparison doesn't mean anything. The profile used in the raid sim does about 10k less DPS than is actually possible.

What i myself would like to see..
1) Destroy the atrocity of a rotation that is DoC. Make it somehow so it wont be the top dps rotation anymore and more of an utility one. I'm pretty sure the utility was the real intention of it, not being top dps and used in a rotation, just like "powershifting" was not an intended dps strategy in TBC. Perhaps make it so it'd be triggered by all the healing spells rather than direct cast ones but would require 3 of them to be cast before the effect triggers.
2) Incarnation having its own stance bar
3) Increase the duration of berserk by 10 sec.
4) Flat 5% damage buff to bleeds and ferocious bite

As much as I'd enjoy them, the changes you suggest would easily make feral one of the best DPS specs, if not completely overpowered. As usual, feral is in a decent place if you can play it very well, if you can't, then not so much. Would it be gamebreaking for us to have a small buff? No, but we're not in dire need of assistance.

[nijuu]

All I want is to have a reason to use FB above 25%. I know it's not that bad at the moment, but it doesn't really feel like a good 5cp finisher who is supposed to be a good execute-spell. It barely hits for more then a shred on average and that shouldn't be the case. It should feel good to spent 5 combo points on an ability where the damage is even higher the more energy you have rather than hitting like a combo-building ability. I think it should felt more rewarding to use it inbetween refreshing RIP and SR on the target

[aggixx]

Barely hits for more than a shred? It hits almost 3 times harder than shred does for less energy. It already plays a very very prominent role in the rotation at the moment, if they buffed it any more it would simply become "can I refresh rip or SR now? No, well then fuck timer collision I'm just going to Ferocious Bite".

[Deleted]

Well, the problem is.. those classes dont HAVE to use subpar spec for dps. Warrior can easily respec fury, DK can easily respec frost, and they'd become one of the top dps. While we can not respec some "other better feral". There is just none.

Being on the bottom is only good in the terms of the "bright future", as you can only expect buffs. But i'd rather sit in the middle of the strong specs, that way you get both, a safe future and good numbers.

Remember, Blizzard have their own internal numbers, and very rarely even take things like Simc/raidbots/WoL into account. They posted on this yesterday, it not only shows the best of the best, but who is the most lucky, which you do have to agree is a huge factor in DPS, especially classes with random proc and high crit chance.

What i myself would like to see..
1) Destroy the atrocity of a rotation that is DoC. Make it somehow so it wont be the top dps rotation anymore and more of an utility one. I'm pretty sure the utility was the real intention of it, not being top dps and used in a rotation, just like "powershifting" was not an intended dps strategy in TBC. Perhaps make it so it'd be triggered by all the healing spells rather than direct cast ones but would require 3 of them to be cast before the effect triggers.

I see what you mean by this, as it feels I have to pick DoC for me to do the best DPS possible. That said I'm using HotW for progression atm, for the extra strong tranq and I miss DoC. I feel lazy doing the normal feral rotation, Just can't wait till we go back to farm content to finally get back into my DoC rotation.

2) Incarnation having its own stance bar

Would be a little too overpowered since you are almost crit capped when the target is above 80% health, not to mention that ravage hits quiet a lot harder then shred in most cases, this would be to much of a buff.

3) Increase the duration of berserk by 10 sec.

We had the glyph in Cata, where it added 15 seconds (afaik) to our berserk, making it 30 seconds, problem with it was you needed to pick it, wasn't really an option. I prefer how Feral is at the moment, we have the option of going to a complete burst spec (Incarnation/NV) or a more sustained DPS roll, which is more for your average raid boss. Not many classes get the same options as us.

4) Flat 5% damage buff to bleeds and ferocious bite

Not sure what to say on this. 5% to FB which can easily hit well over 300k is really not much, thats 15k extra damage. Even if they did add 5% to FB, I honestly don't think I would notice it anyway. As for the bleeds, not sure either. Everytime I get a new piece of gear with mastery on, i notice an increase in bleed damage, and by time most get BiS T14, people will be thinking about T15.

[Ohforfsake]

SimC DPS comparison doesn't mean anything. The profile used in the raid sim does about 10k less DPS than is actually possible.



As much as I'd enjoy them, the changes you suggest would easily make feral one of the best DPS specs, if not completely overpowered. As usual, feral is in a decent place if you can play it very well, if you can't, then not so much. Would it be gamebreaking for us to have a small buff? No, but we're not in dire need of assistance.

What is so bad in being "one of the best"? Why do we have to fill the bottom of the barrel? Is this our curse or class definition perk? It is not. Im not happy with being the worst dps, even if that means im still "viable". Of course if you can play well, you are an awesome player, you might squeeze the power from any class or spec and be the top DPS in a mediocre guild. That does nto mean the class is "ok" and is not in a "dire need of assistance". I have suggested little changes, that would hardly make us OP, i highly doubt they would allow us even to catch up with the "top dogs". because, like i said, i'd prefer to stick in the middle of good dps. This the golden spot to be.

Would be a little too overpowered since you are almost crit capped when the target is above 80% health, not to mention that ravage hits quiet a lot harder then shred in most cases, this would be to much of a buff.

And how a stance bar on incarnation would be overpowered? It's just a QoL..

We had the glyph in Cata, where it added 15 seconds (afaik) to our berserk, making it 30 seconds, problem with it was you needed to pick it, wasn't really an option. I prefer how Feral is at the moment, we have the option of going to a complete burst spec (Incarnation/NV) or a more sustained DPS roll, which is more for your average raid boss. Not many classes get the same options as us.

berserk is too short atm.. it does not sync with other CDs or pots and does not provide good enough burst alone. Incarnation is not a viable raiding option as you may know. While the burst is great the overall damage sucks. Feral does not require hit/expertise cap, but you basically are forced to do that to use this ridiculously-short berserk to its fullest.. a few misses/didges and you are going to miss its benefit

[Deleted]

And how a stance bar on incarnation would be overpowered? It's just a QoL..

By adding stance, you are now giving the impression that it will be a form you can switch in and out of at will, you can't add a cool down to a stance, that would be just weird.

Incarnation is one of those spells which will get looked at by Blizzard im guessing anyway. It's causing havoc in PvP at the moment due it's insane burst and CC capabilities. Maybe it will get changed in a way to make it PvE viable too. Hoping so, love the epic cat form, just a shame I hardly ever get to see it.

[Paloro]

By adding stance, you are now giving the impression that it will be a form you can switch in and out of at will, you can't add a cool down to a stance, that would be just weird.

Incarnation is one of those spells which will get looked at by Blizzard im guessing anyway. It's causing havoc in PvP at the moment due it's insane burst and CC capabilities. Maybe it will get changed in a way to make it PvE viable too. Hoping so, love the epic cat form, just a shame I hardly ever get to see it.

I'm pretty sure he means just giving it a "replacement" set of action bars just like current "stances" or forms have now. It basically just saves you from having to put ravage in a weird spot.

I've only used Incarnation for 1 fight this entire tier. As much as I love the DoC rotation with all the little intricacies of it, I wish that the other talents are tweaked to provide more variety throughout the fights in a tier. I'm getting super jealous of mages that can literally pick a new spec for any fight and within that spec, they have 9 options to go with just from talents.

[aggixx]

What is so bad in being "one of the best"? Why do we have to fill the bottom of the barrel? Is this our curse or class definition perk? It is not. Im not happy with being the worst dps, even if that means im still "viable". Of course if you can play well, you are an awesome player, you might squeeze the power from any class or spec and be the top DPS in a mediocre guild. That does nto mean the class is "ok" and is not in a "dire need of assistance". I have suggested little changes, that would hardly make us OP, i highly doubt they would allow us even to catch up with the "top dogs". because, like i said, i'd prefer to stick in the middle of good dps. This the golden spot to be.

There's nothing wrong with being "one of the best", there always has to be someone. I never said we were merely "viable", I said "decent" as in in anything less than a top 100 guild you can more than pull your weight if you know what you're doing. Sure, if every other DPS in the raid is competent as well maybe we're just in the middle of the pack, but we're definitely not at the "bottom of the barrel".

I'm honestly not sure where you're getting this impression that feral sucks other than your own observations into a very narrow scheme of things. Feral does fine on RaidBots where more rotationally complex classes suffer in the rankings (yes, even on top 100 there are most definitely not 100 parses where people did everything perfectly), and SimC actually has us in like 3rd or 4th if you use the best action list that's out there.

berserk is too short atm.. it does not sync with other CDs or pots and does not provide good enough burst alone. Incarnation is not a viable raiding option as you may know. While the burst is great the overall damage sucks. Feral does not require hit/expertise cap, but you basically are forced to do that to use this ridiculously-short berserk to its fullest.. a few misses/didges and you are going to miss its benefit

Berserk is fine, people just got too used to be it being 25 seconds long and having the ability to spend the first half dumping your energy pool and then spend the rest of it energy starved and moving away from that is a very distinctive feeling. Your APM/active time still goes way way up during Berserk so it's really not that different.

And the second part is kind of a misconception, misses and dodges during berserk are one of the few times that it actually decreases the value of the stats, that means that every other time misses and dodges matter so little that it outweighs the significance of the ones during berserk to our overall DPS in a way that makes the stat have low theoretical DPS. The situation you described is already accounted for in the stat's value as it happens in the sim just like it can happen in-game. Basically what you're complaining about is the RNG of hit and expertise and the "illusion" that ferals must not cap them in order to do the most DPS.

If you're so bothered by not being hit and expertise capped, then I don't know why you don't just hit and expertise cap. You literally lose like 100 DPS which is almost completely negligible. Just because the sims say the stats aren't worth much doesn't mean it's rational to ignore capping them, there's a LOT of actual situations where not being hit and expertise capped will tank your DPS.

By adding stance, you are now giving the impression that it will be a form you can switch in and out of at will, you can't add a cool down to a stance, that would be just weird.

He was talking about it in more of a technical way than you're thinking about it. On beta it was considered a stance in the sense that Paloro talked about, where when you activate Incarnation you could have your bars change as well as have a macro conditional [stance:7] to use for it. Essentially what this allows you to do is have a macro that would cast Shred while Incarnation is down, and Ravage while it's up, which would allow you to save a keybind for ravage (something I know I've really struggled with finding a decent keybind for and I imagine it's similar for other people).

They ended up removing that functionality presumably because buffs that required cat form or bear form to be active (Savage Roar, Tiger's Fury, Might of Ursoc, Savage Defense, etc.) would get removed when you transition in and out of incarnation because when you shift you are technically in caster form for a fraction of a second. To fix this they changed it so that Incarnation was merely a buff that would change your model while it was active, which was quite unfortunate that they had to resort to that.