The Cat Guide - 4.3

[Hadard]

How do you feel on the upcoming nerf to STR to AP ratio in patch 4.2, Mihir?

[tangedyn]

I would like to challenge the consensus that 100% rip uptime is desirable. Specifically I am talking about if you are using the glyph of TF, if you only use rip every time you have the TF bonus your downtime will not be long, although RNG seems to have an impact on just how much since there are times I've had my TF boosted rip last until TF comes off cd, and other where its been off for up to 4 seconds. Now, before I just kept 100% rip uptime, only boosting rip with TF when it was convinient but another feral told me to start doing this so all my rips would be TF boosted and I have experienced a dps increase and wondered if someone else has tested this.

We've already done a lot of testing using Mew with regards to delaying Rip for Tiger's Fury, and at no point was there a DPS increase.

---------- Post added 2011-05-03 at 01:57 PM ----------

How do you feel on the upcoming nerf to STR to AP ratio in patch 4.2, Mihir?

It's probably a good thing if the intention is to keep our paws off Str weapons and jewellery.
Assuming they rebalance our other coefficients around the change.

[Nathanyel]

How do you feel on the upcoming nerf to STR to AP ratio in patch 4.2, Mihir?

Means nearly nothing for cats (well except that Dargonax's Signet is not our BiS ring anymore) and only cements that bears should not use Str amulets/cloaks/rings.

[gollie]

I wonder if we'll get any new agility gloves-enchant now.

[Nathanyel]

I wonder if we'll get any new agility gloves-enchant now.

Oh right, that's something I forgot... unless we get one, 65 Mastery will be our best glove enchant.

[Deleted]

Isn't it a pretty big nerf of the AP from Battle Shout?

[Nathanyel]

Isn't it a pretty big nerf of the AP from Battle Shout?

It is... as well as the extra Str from MotW/Kings... I do hope they buff Cat DPS in some way over the course of this PTR phase.

[Calathiel]

Hmm about the rip - from napkin math it looks like if you have ~ 12 sec or less left on regular rip (after 3 shreds) and and you'll use tf around that time it's worth to recast new rip as it will gives you more dmg per energy used than simply casting shred. Under 25% of boss energy if you're under effect of tf and it's close to end of it's duration if you use FB refreshed rip will have dmg buff (corect me if im wrong but im near 100% sure that it works like that).

[Nathanyel]

Yes, refreshes should take into account current AP/Crit% and dmg buffs like TF.

[Arrockk]

Great...another feral nerf. This one is just subtle and under the rader. Nerfing our ap gains from strength means we lose a considerable amount of ap from battleshout and kings. We are already the lowest...yes..lowest dps class in the game....now Blizz just wants to finish us off...Makes me wanna quit wow.

[Calathiel]

quit then rather than whining :< Get used to the fact that sometimes your class is high sometimes it's low and either play the class/spec you like despite of changes or play fotm - your choice. If you're good you can do competitve dmg as a feral anyway.

[Nathanyel]

Great...another feral nerf.

I hinted at it a few posts above, but let's repeat it loud and clear: this is only the first build/patchnotes release of this patch. Did you follow any previous PTR phase?

[Hadard]

Thanks for the responses, In my opinion the strength to attack power nerf is just to stop us from using strength items rather than to reduce our damage, that is just a side effect. It is like when blizzard nerfed bleeds for pvp. This is the first patch notes we have seen, so hopefully we will see something to make up for the reduction of Battle Shout and MotW/Kings along with some other buffs.

[Deleted]

Fairly sure any supposed gain in having all your Rips affected by TF is lost due to lower Rip uptime. Assuming 22sec (16 + 6) Rips with 27sec TF, you get ~81% uptime with Rip during that 27sec period. Hence you're losing 19% damage from cutting Rip uptime for 15% damage gained on each Rip. Sadly, it doesn't add up as positive. It's more likely that you will see numbers that should be pretty close to having 100% Rip uptime (well, more like ~95%) and never using TF to buff Rip. I am stupidly tired and the math is crude, but I do believe my point is at least in the right direction.

The RNG you mention is related to the time you use Rip after popping TF. The cd on TF starts running the moment you use it, but the buff lasts for 6 seconds. If you use Rip right at the last moment you might see a situation where your TF comes off cd just as Rip finishes or is about to do so. Still, keep in mind that cats usually run with very low hit and exp, so if you end up missing that late Rip you just lost the whole damage bonus. Also, this is one of the reasons why my math in the above paragraph is not accurate. It's more like the worst case scenario of sorts (instant Rip when TF comes up, maximum delay between Rips due to remaining TF cd).

No the RNG I was referring to is rip sometimes falling off with 3 seconds left, presumably the last tick doesn't go off.

And heres the big thing that I don't know if some of you have noticed, but my shred seem to be increasing the uptime of rip but 3 seconds per shred, not 2 in which case the downtime on rip is more like ~2 seconds, assuming the rip hasn't fallen off 3 seconds earlier like it occassionally does for me. I can post videos showing my shreds increasing the rip duration by 3 seconds, and I have, while using berserk, seen my rip duration show 24 seconds when i've used rip follwed immediately by 3 shreds.

I've been testing for an hour on a dummy now and I seriously cannot do more dps by keeping rip up 100% instead of just refreshing it every TF.

EDIT: just done some further testing and I just managed to see my remaining time on rip hit 25 seconds using berserk, rip and 3 shreds, the rip also did not fall off at around 3 seconds, so my thought that maybe the timer was correcting itself when I saw the dot drop at 3 seconds cannot be the case. Video incoming.

---------- Post added 2011-05-03 at 06:00 PM ----------

Video of rip reaching a 25 second duration not including any gcds, thus proving I hope that the glyph of shred is causing rip to last longer than thought and possibly meaning it is better to use rip with tiger's fury.



I know it has been tested in mew extensively, but I do not know if mew was taking this into account.

[littlepiggy]

Rip also falls off around the 2~ second mark (rather than at 0, when it should) when using Glyph of Shred... sounds like the duration's are off.

[Deleted]

Rip also falls off around the 2~ second mark (rather than at 0, when it should) when using Glyph of Shred... sounds like the duration's are off.

It doesn't fall off early most of the time though, just some of it.

---------- Post added 2011-05-03 at 10:34 PM ----------

Done some more testing with some more raid buffs and have now accepted that the consensus is right, although from my testing the difference between 100% rip uptime and just refreshing it with TF is pretty marginal.

[Nathanyel]

Could this simply be attributed to "lag" and/or a client bug? The client thinks one or all of the Shreds extended the Rip by 3 instead of 2 seconds, and then at the perceived remaining duration of 3 seconds, it receives a message from the server that Rip has just expired.

[Deleted]

Rip falling off "early" is nothing really new, but I would appreciate it not doing that. It's distracting and annoying when I can't trust the timer. I've heard the theory Nathanyel brought up before as well, but somehow I feel like such an obvious discrepancy would have been taken care of already.

[Nathanyel]

but somehow I feel like such an obvious discrepancy would have been taken care of already.

This is the Druid class we're talking about. Since when does Blizzard address our problems quickly?

[Deleted]

You put into words that which I wanted to leave unsaid. :<