[Feral] level 100 talents discussion

[aggixx]

Taking a random feral druid WoL, I replaced every Savage Roar they cast with a crit Ferocious Bite, and it came out to be a 1% overall DPS gain. And this is certainly an oversimplification, as in reality the benefit will be lower. (I can post the math if anyone is really all that curious, but it is pretty simple to do yourself). Savagery is a convenience talent, wonderful for soloing or fights that are incredibly short, but on real bosses it will not amount to that big of a DPS gain, so I really hope Moonfire talent is stronger.

What? Why would it be lower benefit? You're completely disregarding the increased bleed uptimes.

Being very generous, if Rip has 90% uptime at the beginning of the expansion and does 20% of our DPS, increasing that uptime to 95% by taking Savagery (which I don't think is unreasonable at all) then that alone is a 1.11% DPS gain. And using more realistic numbers would probably be closer to 2%.

[teddabear]

What? Why would it be lower benefit? You're completely disregarding the increased bleed uptimes.

Being very generous, if Rip has 90% uptime at the beginning of the expansion and does 20% of our DPS, increasing that uptime to 95% by taking Savagery (which I don't think is unreasonable at all) then that alone is a 1.11% DPS gain. And using more realistic numbers would probably be closer to 2%.

At the beginning of the expansion I hope Rip has a much lower uptime. It would be preferable to not have to rely on Blizzard to buff the spec every patch because Ferocious Bite doesn't scale.

[Elunedra]

ofcoruse 1 telant will always be best, when blizzard first said they where changing the talent system to prevent cherry picking, i already said it was never going to happent as 1 talent always stays better.

however i think they did a decent job on DoC \ HotW, ofcourse all ferals shoulds take DoC,but the slackers can still take HotW (like me) and come up with a silly argument about more versitility, while not beeing that far behind

[exochaft]

At the beginning of the expansion I hope Rip has a much lower uptime. It would be preferable to not have to rely on Blizzard to buff the spec every patch because Ferocious Bite doesn't scale.

Correct me if I'm wrong, as my old age wears on my brain, but for the past two expansions haven't Feral bleeds been reduced in power after a short while making it to live, followed by rebuffing their power later in the expansion? Perhaps the whole resilience changes (assuming they don't change... again) will prevent such things from happening, since I'm sure this pattern was mostly about PvP.

[teddabear]

Correct me if I'm wrong, as my old age wears on my brain, but for the past two expansions haven't Feral bleeds been reduced in power after a short while making it to live, followed by rebuffing their power later in the expansion? Perhaps the whole resilience changes (assuming they don't change... again) will prevent such things from happening, since I'm sure this pattern was mostly about PvP.

I'm sure most Ferals remember the Cataclysm nerf. I think the most noteworthy PvP related issue in MoP was that after Feral was sufficiently neutered in PvP with 5.4 they received a surprise damage buff.

[v1perz53]

What? Why would it be lower benefit? You're completely disregarding the increased bleed uptimes.

Being very generous, if Rip has 90% uptime at the beginning of the expansion and does 20% of our DPS, increasing that uptime to 95% by taking Savagery (which I don't think is unreasonable at all) then that alone is a 1.11% DPS gain. And using more realistic numbers would probably be closer to 2%.

You missed the key statement where I said I replaced every single SR with a CRIT FB. In reality, you will never crit every single FB. Also, FB uses 25+x energy, whereas SR is 25 energy, so in my theoretical situation I didn't account for increased energy cost of using more FBs. Those two things were why in reality this would be less than the DPS gain I mentioned. Though your point about Rip uptime is valid, but I don't really see how SR being passive would effect uptime by that much. You aren't going to be sitting on combo points with passive SR, you will be using them on FB instead. Frequency of non Rip finishers wouldn't change, just which you use would. I think passive SR could possibly have a positive effect on Rip uptime, but it is impossible to definitively say it will, and how much of an impact it would have.

And either way, combining my best case with your best case, the talent is a 3% damage increase, still a far cry from the 10-15% hunters get from their talent!

[aggixx]

Pretty much every Rip downtime of more than a couple seconds is caused by SR/Rip timer collision, taking Savagery would remove that issue. I would be curious to see what the exact difference is, but there's no much point in toying with it in sims until we have beta info and can sim using dungeon blues.

[Whitepaw]

And either way, combining my best case with your best case, the talent is a 3% damage increase, still a far cry from the 10-15% hunters get from their talent!

So what? Hunter dps and druid dps will be balanced anyway - so even if hunters get a larger dps increase with talent(s) at level 100, they will still be balanced around that talent.

The question you should ask yourself is this: Do we really WANT a talent that gives us +15% damage? Because that would basically force us to take that talent over other talents. Blizzard would also balance us around that talent - so we would be balanced at that talent, but underpowered using any other talent.

Your answer to that would be "But yeah, we already have that with DoC - it's the best dps talent at level 90!". True, but not by 15%.

I'm pleasantly surprised if we gain a 3% damage increase when using the passive Savage Roar talent. Taking that talent will let me do more dps single target - but it will also free up brain cycles to gain some situational awareness (good for PvE survivability) and simplify my PvP play.

[v1perz53]

So what? Hunter dps and druid dps will be balanced anyway - so even if hunters get a larger dps increase with talent(s) at level 100, they will still be balanced around that talent.

The question you should ask yourself is this: Do we really WANT a talent that gives us +15% damage? Because that would basically force us to take that talent over other talents. Blizzard would also balance us around that talent - so we would be balanced at that talent, but underpowered using any other talent.

Your answer to that would be "But yeah, we already have that with DoC - it's the best dps talent at level 90!". True, but not by 15%.

I'm pleasantly surprised if we gain a 3% damage increase when using the passive Savage Roar talent. Taking that talent will let me do more dps single target - but it will also free up brain cycles to gain some situational awareness (good for PvE survivability) and simplify my PvP play.

I was really only responding to the person who said that SR talent would be the clear single target winner, and that it would be a big increase to our DPS. Problem is exactly that it is impossible to balance. If moonfire talent doesn't give more DPS than SR, it will never be taken (besides random situations when there is nothing in melee range for a long time). Moonfire gives no convenience or anything besides DPS, so it has to be stronger DPS wise compared to a convenience talent. And as I have said before, balancing two talents that do nothing but give more DPS is impossible, so I would rather have a clear winner for single target DPS and one better for soloing. DoC vs the other choices in that tier works because the other two have other random uses (need to heal your group or tank for a bit or something, use those), and DoC is sufficiently more complicated for more benefit. With the lv 100 talents, neither SR or Moonfire are very complicated, or have other effects to make you consider using one vs the other, so top DPS will always be taken.

And don't get me wrong, I am REALLY happy about passive SR. It is going to make everything I do solo on my feral so much easier. I just will never take the talent for raiding assuming moonfire turns out to be higher DPS, and I really hope it does.

[Deleted]

I was really only responding to the person who said that SR talent would be the clear single target winner, and that it would be a big increase to our DPS. Problem is exactly that it is impossible to balance. If moonfire talent doesn't give more DPS than SR, it will never be taken (besides random situations when there is nothing in melee range for a long time). Moonfire gives no convenience or anything besides DPS, so it has to be stronger DPS wise compared to a convenience talent. And as I have said before, balancing two talents that do nothing but give more DPS is impossible, so I would rather have a clear winner for single target DPS and one better for soloing. DoC vs the other choices in that tier works because the other two have other random uses (need to heal your group or tank for a bit or something, use those), and DoC is sufficiently more complicated for more benefit. With the lv 100 talents, neither SR or Moonfire are very complicated, or have other effects to make you consider using one vs the other, so top DPS will always be taken.

And don't get me wrong, I am REALLY happy about passive SR. It is going to make everything I do solo on my feral so much easier. I just will never take the talent for raiding assuming moonfire turns out to be higher DPS, and I really hope it does.

Keep in mind that the "convenience" you speak of is largely depending on the T17 raids and mechanics: if there are encounters which require ranged combo generation or spine of deathwing-like burst it might skew either one of the talents one way or the other. Until the closed beta gets introduced with some form of dungeon or raid with blue gear we can only speculate on the balance part.

[v1perz53]

Keep in mind that the "convenience" you speak of is largely depending on the T17 raids and mechanics: if there are encounters which require ranged combo generation or spine of deathwing-like burst it might skew either one of the talents one way or the other. Until the closed beta gets introduced with some form of dungeon or raid with blue gear we can only speculate on the balance part.

I definitely agree that the talent that is better depends on the fight in question. However, they really haven't designed a fight with absolutely nothing in melee range for extended periods of time in a while (for good reason), so I doubt that will really be much of a factor. If the boss flies away, there are usually some adds or something for melee to do. And even for a Spine style burst, neither of those two talents are really a factor. Passive SR is a small benefit, but it could even still lose to moonfire depending on how long the burst lasts and how moonfire is balanced. (This coming from someone who killed heroic spine pre nerf as a cat druid)

Again, everything is fight dependent, but I definitely see the intent is that moonfire is more powerful than SR talent for single target in most situations. Otherwise moonfire talent doesn't really make sense, as it barely offers anything else. Though honestly I don't PvP so maybe it has awesome PvP implications that I don't understand. We will have to wait and see.

[Silent Earth]

I don't care if Savagery ends up being a DPS LOSS, I will still take it because I hate, hate, hate, hate maintenance buffs.

Oh, and this is MY personal opinion on the matter. Others can do as they like.

[mmokri]

@Silent Earth consider 6.0-instant-90 rogue. Because feral is kinda fourth rogue spec.

[Elunedra]

not realy, rogues are all about killing, ferals are still in balance with nature, we are just a bit furius

and yes if huntets have 1 talent giving thme a 15% dmg ibncrease then the other two talent should give something similar. and the hole class get balanced around realy relyingo n tiher level 100 talents

overall blizzard will balance classes, so if hunters get 15% dmg from thier talent, then thier damage withotu ther talent will be lower then that of a druid.
i think blizzard wil make all passive SR & moonfire both quite balanced, even if it means they both only yield a 1% dps increase
i cant see how they want to balance the Aoe Rake tho , its either massive AOE dmg or uselessness (maybe they add something as if your rake is only applied to 1 target it will tick for 3% more dmg)

[Haiida]

While the lazy part of me is looking forward to the prospect of not having to waste a GCD and combo points on Savage Roar, the reason I enjoy playing feral in PVE is because of its complexity. I really don't want to turn into a rogue ): I like having more buttons to press (or at least to where I feel like I need to pay attention to my rotation instead of just afking). Hoping Moonfire will be more viable for PVE as well as PVP.

[Silent Earth]

@Silent Earth consider 6.0-instant-90 rogue. Because feral is kinda fourth rogue spec.

I actually mained a Rogue for a large part of Mists before switching to Feral. Both have their pros and cons, but in the end I find Feral more rewarding and I really enjoy the emphasis on bleeds.

That being said, I hope WoD brings with it some much-needed refreshment for the Rogue class.