Page 4 of 45 FirstFirst ...
2
3
4
5
6
14
... LastLast
  1. #61

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    so would it be a waste to aim for hit gear? or look for stuff like armor over hit? i have two back pieces im refering to, platinum mesh cloak (154 armor, 32 hit)...or cloak of the shadowed sun (490 armor, 0 hit)...my hit is 83 with mesh cloak, im in 4/5 t7, some ulduar gear, some naxx 25 gear...what would u suggest?

  2. #62

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Khraeme
    so would it be a waste to aim for hit gear? or look for stuff like armor over hit? i have two back pieces im refering to, platinum mesh cloak (154 armor, 32 hit)...or cloak of the shadowed sun (490 armor, 0 hit)...my hit is 83 with mesh cloak, im in 4/5 t7, some ulduar gear, some naxx 25 gear...what would u suggest?
    All depends on your threat man; If you're fine with your threat then you dont need more hit; If you are being chased consistently by DPS then maybe the hit cloak would be better for you.

  3. #63

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    makes sense, but also depends on dps, i mean i usually run with a hunter, who does MD for pulls, ok good initial threat, rogue with ToT...but u get those annoying a*s mages who open up right away with 30k dmg at 6kdps for arcane even before i get off an attack, and QQ about dying...but ill def test both out, and see my recount, on how many misses i get, and if my threat is low, thanks

  4. #64

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Khraeme
    makes sense, but also depends on dps, i mean i usually run with a hunter, who does MD for pulls, ok good initial threat, rogue with ToT...but u get those annoying a*s mages who open up right away with 30k dmg at 6kdps for arcane even before i get off an attack, and QQ about dying...but ill def test both out, and see my recount, on how many misses i get, and if my threat is low, thanks
    If mages aren't using mirror images at the start idk wtf they're doing lol. Unless it's a gimmick fight ofc.

  5. #65

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    mages tend to be stupid and go all out right away..idk why

  6. #66

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    After playing a feral tank/dps since TBC, it is my opinion that Maul is a really dumb ability.

    In my experience the biggest difference between a good bear tank and a bad bear tank is whether or not they have Maul macroed to every attack they use. If they don't realize this OR mash their Maul button at around 2 second intervals like a maniac along with their other attacks, they are really gimped for threat and damage. I assume it's kind of the same thing with a warrior's Heroic Strike. They should really change this somehow, it really feels stupid explaining such an unintuitive mechanic to starting feral tanks.

    Meanwhile, since this is a guide, let me echo the advice: macro Maul to all your bear abilities, kids! :-X

  7. #67

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Neba
    After playing a feral tank/dps since TBC, it is my opinion that Maul is a really dumb ability.

    In my experience the biggest difference between a good bear tank and a bad bear tank is whether or not they have Maul macroed to every attack they use. If they don't realize this OR mash their Maul button at around 2 second intervals like a maniac along with their other attacks, they are really gimped for threat and damage. I assume it's kind of the same thing with a warrior's Heroic Strike. They should really change this somehow, it really feels stupid explaining such an unintuitive mechanic to starting feral tanks.

    Meanwhile, since this is a guide, let me echo the advice: macro Maul to all your bear abilities, kids! :-X
    lol im the latter i have it keybinded to 2 and i spam 2 nd 3 while tanking lots of mobs and afk (swipe and maul)

    My gf used to make fun of me bc i could watch tv while tanking pretty much anything lol

  8. #68

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    I feel bad for your fingers then, especially when Heroism/Bloodlust is popped. :P

    I wish bear tanking was more about timing abilities like in cat form and not hammering the same few buttons to perform abilities on every global cooldown and melee swing.

  9. #69
    Pit Lord Alski's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Earthquake rubble
    Posts
    2,380

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    i prefer just rolling my face on the keyboard.

  10. #70
    The Patient Leafre's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Pécs, Hungary
    Posts
    261

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Alski
    i prefer just rolling my face on the keyboard.
    That's too much effort to tank. I just place my cats on the keyboard and let them walk on it. Works like a wonder.
    I am a Leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.

  11. #71

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    There's only one reason to not bind Maul to all your abilities and that's rage starvation. It tends to happen to offtanks and there if you miss a Maul or it gets parried you end up costing yourself 40 rage and have nothing for the next several seconds while the DPS roar closer to you threatwise. Because I occasionally help guildies level by tanking through instances for them, it could get very messy for the one good DPS accompanying me if I don't generate threat for 10 seconds, so I have two separate buttons next to each other which I spam together.

  12. #72

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    One thing regarding Lacerate that caught my eye in the OP:

    "It is important to note that while the rolling dot is a good source of threat, the initial application is not, and it has the downside of resetting the timer and preventing ticks. This makes Lacerate important to stack up at full effect, namely five charges, and the just to refresh before it expires."


    Is this really true? I spam Lacerate quite often on a single target and the DoT seems to tick just fine. A quick web search seems to also indicate that the DoT timer isn't reset.

    Also, is Swipe spam on a single target much better these days? In TBC at least I remember calculations that most of the time the initial threat of Lacerate was better since it carries quite a large amount of extra threat like Sunder Armor, but things have changed with the +30% Swipe damage talent. I'm pretty sure Swipe is better now especially with a lot of AP/crit but how significant is the difference?

  13. #73
    Herald of the Titans arel00's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    Italy
    Posts
    2,852

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Threat wise, the initial damage alone of Lacerate set, for BiS gear at T7 level, at roughly 75 TPR (threat per rage).
    Swipe, on the other hand, sets around 140TPR.

    As you can see, the TPR factor (which is, in short, what we call efficiency) of Swipe is nearly double than Lacerate when you consider only the spamming factor and not the rolling dot.


    I will correct the post nonetheless.
    Quote Originally Posted by Qieth
    I don't do math, blind assumptions work so much better for me.

  14. #74

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Thanks for the advice, I'm going to use Swipe more extensively then.

  15. #75
    The Patient Leafre's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Pécs, Hungary
    Posts
    261

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Talking about threat, here we go:

    Quote from ThinkTank
    First off, the hit numbers: melee miss rate against a level 83 mob is 8%. Spell miss rate is 17%. So faerie fire misses more than twice as much as melee attacks. Making it even worse, the crit multiplier for spells is only 1.5, spell crit is typically much lower for ferals than melee crit, and for this test we're going to assume that you're totally expertise-capped too.

    We'll take a typical AP value: 6000. A crit rate of 50% for melee, and 15% for spells (this is pretty correct when raid buffed). And let's go with 0 hit total. Not really realistic, but who cares - this is bold theorycrafting when smoking time.

    So the value for various bear attacks in terms of damage is:
    mangle: (base damage * 1.15 + 299)*naturalist * master shapeshifter * savage *armor *(2*crit rate + 1*(1-crit rate))* (1-melee miss rate)
    swipe: (AP*.063+108)*naturalist*master*feral instinct*armor*(2*crit rate + 1*(1-crit rate))* (1-melee miss rate)

    lacerate: (AP*.01 +88)*naturalist*master*armor*(2*crit rate + 1*(1-crit rate))* (1-melee miss rate)
    Faerie fire: (AP*.15+1)*(1.5*spellcrit rate +1*(1-spellcritrate))*(1-spell miss rate)

    After using 6k AP, 50% crit rate, 15% spell crit, and no hit - we get this:
    mangle: 2239 damage
    swipe: 698
    lacerate: 163
    FFF: 803

    Okay, so mangle wins big on the damage - but FFF even with all of that is coming in second. Even with a 17% miss rate and a bad crit rate, it wins. But what about TPS?

    Mangle TPS: Mangle damage * 29/14
    swipe TPS: swipe damage * 29/14*1.5
    lacerate TPS: 29/14*(damage+1031)/2
    FFF TPS: 29/14*(damage+632)

    So the final TPS is:
    mangle: 4638
    swipe: 2169
    lacerate: 1237
    FFF: 2974.

    But wait! What about higher AP? Turns out that FFF wins at any level over swipe. Well, okay - at around 240,000AP, swipe beats FFF.

    But what about a better armor reduction? After all, 30% armor is pretty high...right? Not really, but let's just take that out entirely. If your target has 0 armor, swipe will do about 120 more threat per application. But at 0 armor, your swipes are hitting for 722 damage each. I don't know about you, but that's not what mine hit for. And while you can get 0 armor as a cat under certain circumstances, chances are you'll never hit that as a bear.

    What about higher crit? Even with an 80% crit rate, swipe still loses by a few hundred.

    What about more hit? That's funny - because hit actually makes FFF stronger. Why? Because the hit rating to 1% hit conversion is 32.79 hit rating per 1% - but the spell hit rating only costs 26.3 hit rating per 1%. And remember - this assumed expertise capped, which means 14% reduced parry and dodge or 56 total expertise skill. Again, not really realistic; chances are against bosses you're going to have a lot less.

    So for pretty much any numbers that you can think, faerie fire beats swipe, and it scales insanely well with AP. Also, if you don't have things like master shapeshifter or even naturalist, faerie fire does even better by comparison.

    So yes, every time you can you should be faerie firing for maximum threat and for maximum damage. Mangle beats it, and keeping up a lacerate stack beats it - but lacerate by itself doesn't come close, nor does swipe.
    Would be a good idea to add some information about the threat values.
    I am a Leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.

  16. #76

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Yep, the guy quoted there is more than right. FFF is integrated well into my tanking rotation and the results are visible compared to before the patch. More threat ftw .
    /hug

  17. #77
    Herald of the Titans arel00's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    Italy
    Posts
    2,852

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Leafre
    Would be a good idea to add some information about the threat values.
    I didn't at first because it would be both theoretical values, given they depends largely on the gear, and because it would be risky to implement math on the guide. As much as I love numbers (and you guys know it by now) I felt unnecessary if not dangerous to turn it into a Bear-math thread.

    I did list them in TPR order (beside FFF, which has in theory infinite TPR :P), but that was all there was to it. If you notice btw, Faerie Fire is listed above Swipe and Lacerate, with due consideration on its high threat value.

    I will try to load up some numbers for iLvl200, 213 and 226 gearsets, so to give a reference. I'm trying to implement a 10men gear list too, since it's been asked.
    Quote Originally Posted by Qieth
    I don't do math, blind assumptions work so much better for me.

  18. #78

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    i was wondering why all posted specs have imp lotp.
    imo it's kindof a useless talent if healers have healing issues imp lotp can help but u shouldn't be deciding what talents to take inorder to make up for someone elses fault/mistake/lack of skill/...
    second i also don't get why it's so important to spec for imp swipe dmg, k it's nice and all but in this thread it's already been posted that fff>swipe for threat so why make an effort to make a useless skill better but still useless(apart from aoe tanking but swipe has plenty of threat even without it being talented). so why don't u go with a spec like
    http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxRG...Akbyczb:0znMzc
    note that since i didn't spec imp swipe to the max i chose to grab glyph of challenging roar since i reckon ppl who'r used to imp swipe might feel a little uncomfortable without it and since the only other viable glyph is dash but running around faster is hardly needed.
    another note is that i took kotj since the reduced armor of enrage isn't to bad if you glyph for it and it does give you a nice tps boost especially when u'r oting and want to take over threat fast

    (i don't mean to gimp anyone it's just a question and a sugestion )
    In most cases, I understand the other side's viewpoint and how they came to it, but cannot tolerate their stubbornness to not see mine (the right one).

  19. #79

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Quote Originally Posted by arel00
    From various calculation, the Dodge DR hits so hard after you have reached 50-52% dodge chance, that, on a point-to-point basis, defense overcomes agility at that point for a Bear. This occurs after you have reached an agility score of roughly 1200.
    - the dodge DR doesn't hit harder after 50-52% dodge. It hits harder with each % of avoidance you gain, but there's no value where it becomes suddenly awful.
    - the amount of agi needed so that def > agi is much higher than 1200 (aroud 2800 in fact). That's because agi benefits from BoK, SotF and IMotW. The treshold is close to 60% in fact, like Antdog said (but that's not because of a change in 3.1).

    You can use this page to check :
    http://druid.wikispaces.com/Avoidanc...ishing_Returns

  20. #80
    The Patient Leafre's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Pécs, Hungary
    Posts
    261

    Re: Feral Druids - the Bear guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Meledelion
    i was wondering why all posted specs have imp lotp.
    imo it's kindof a useless talent if healers have healing issues imp lotp can help but u shouldn't be deciding what talents to take inorder to make up for someone elses fault/mistake/lack of skill/...
    second i also don't get why it's so important to spec for imp swipe dmg, k it's nice and all but in this thread it's already been posted that fff>swipe for threat so why make an effort to make a useless skill better but still useless(apart from aoe tanking but swipe has plenty of threat even without it being talented). so why don't u go with a spec like
    http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxRG...Akbyczb:0znMzc
    note that since i didn't spec imp swipe to the max i chose to grab glyph of challenging roar since i reckon ppl who'r used to imp swipe might feel a little uncomfortable without it and since the only other viable glyph is dash but running around faster is hardly needed.
    another note is that i took kotj since the reduced armor of enrage isn't to bad if you glyph for it and it does give you a nice tps boost especially when u'r oting and want to take over threat fast

    (i don't mean to gimp anyone it's just a question and a sugestion )

    You forgot that ILoTP affects every melee and ranged players who's in range. Every single melee/ranged crit will heal the target for their 4% of total HP. Now let's count (source, my wws stat on Ignis10, with 5 melee (tanks included)).
    ILoTP rounded heals:
    -Warrior tank: 39500 (18% overheal) - 32390 eff.heal
    -Fury warrior: 51800 (61% overheal) - 20202 eff.heal
    -Feral dps: 63300 (34% overheal) - 41768 eff.heal
    -Feral tank: 78800 (29% overheal) - 55948 eff.heal
    -Enhancement shaman: 39700 (67% overheal) - 13101 eff.heal

    Sum: 163409 eff.healing


    Our healers on that fight:
    -Resto druid: 900k (20% overheal) - 720k eff.heal
    -Resto shaman: 800k (19% overheal) - 648k eff.heal
    -Disc. priest: 700k (27% overheal) - 511k eff.heal

    Sum: 1879000 eff.heal

    My ILoTP heal was around 12% of total healing done. I wouldn't say it's not worth it.


    edit: typo

    PS: I wouldn't say it's the healer's fault that I've healed that "much" instead it's a help I can provide. Why do I have Frenzied Regen, and Survival Instincts? My healer's should not make any mistakes (theoretically).
    I am a Leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •