Feral Cat Idle Time

[JayJay09]

I love it. In fact I find it hard to play classes where you mindlessly spam every single GCD and missing one is a DPS penalty. The downtime allows Feral to be more complex and gives you a few seconds to plan ahead your next cyclone of moves.

/fix'd it for ya -.-.

[Deleted]

just wondering 2 things: how do you get simcraft to calculate this? and what's the comparable number for frost DK's, ret paladins and enhancement shamans? i want to get some perspective into things, and those are the other melee classes i play.

[Deleted]

http://simulationcraft.org/422/Raid_T12H.html 5th graph "spent time"

ret paladin = 5.64%
1h frost = 5.74%
2h unholy = 7.02%
arms = 8.50%
enhancement = 11.04%
fury = 11.77%
combat = 15.37%
subtlety = 26.43%
assassination = 35.93%
feral = 40.47%

It's mostly energy based classes that have wait time, since energy is our main resource and we have to wait for it to generate. The other non-energy melee classes just wait for stuff to come off cooldown.

[traen]

That is pretty interesting. Conversely Hunters have precisely 0 time to wait: there's always something to do. I wonder if this idle time should be used for all specs? As it is, if you use MD or Tranq shot or some other utility you would lose DPS as a Hunter, whereas with a Feral Druid there's definitely time in your rotation (you'd lose auto attacks of course but still). I wonder if this is something Blizzard considers flavour between the classes, or an area to improve on? And if it's an area to change, in which direction? More to do for the Feral, or less for the Hunter?

Hm. Interesting!

Nothing to change here. Its just different. Casters cast all the time. The amount of spells casted is the amount of damage.
For feral druid most important thing is energy management and dots uptime.
Lets say caster did 100 casts. And he "forgot" to cast 7 of them. So... he did 93% of his possible damage.
Lets say feral have 93% dots uptime. He did 93% of his possible damage.(100% is absolutely impossible, but its just an example)

Its just different. You don't need to make ferals spam buttons like crazy or let hunters/casters go afk for 10 seconds without losing dps.

Feral rotation is more than complicated.
You always know what button to press when you play hunter. You have simple list of priorities that never changes.

When you play feral its always about trading something for something. And you have to weight 2 abilities and decide where you will lose less dps.

Just few simple examples:
1) You have 5CPs and omen of clarity procs. Now you can do "free" shred. But was it free actually? You trade it for 1.5 combopoints that you did not recieve from shred.
2) Same as above, but you have 4 seconds of rip left and 90 energy. What is worse - to refresh rip for free 2 second before clipping a dot, or wasting 3 combopoints by doing 2 shreds?
3) Some as above, but you have 5 seconds of rip left and tf just became available. Should you dump energy by FB potentially losing 0-3 seconds of rip depending on your luck? What about 4 or 6 seconds?
4) Same as before, but add SR timer, rake timer, Blood in the Water, trinket proc, berserk, boss turning to you to cast f*cking hummer(you can't use shred in this time), etc.

Its not like feral druids sit on their ass doing nothing. Every second we do complicated calculations like this. And we make decisions every second. And the druid who makes better and faster decisions is usually top dps.

Look at arcane mage. They have zero dps downtime. They always cast something. Basically it means that they press the same button for the whole fight over and over again. But does it mean that playing mage is more complicated than playing feral druid? I doubt so

[Deleted]

5) Will we get the boss to 25% in these 6 seconds I have left on rip or should I renew it and waste a probable FB

These questions are really hard to answer.

OT: I wouldn't mind having something else to do in between, except tranq, fff, whatever but I don't really see anything else we can do, doing 20 fff with 0 damage does seem pretty useless but w/e.

[Deleted]

100% is absolutely impossible, but its just an example

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-iw...tab-auras-cast
98.4%, close enough

[Deleted]

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-iw...tab-auras-cast
98.4%, close enough

You are sometimes refreshing too early or am I wrong?

[seraph1337]

To borrow something I've been told about the Sith Assassin in SWTOR, perhaps an energy-neutral (free) attack that does minimal damage (but enough to be worth hitting) would be a good way to remove the downtime from the rotation. Assassins in SWTOR have a free attack that you can basically spam between using abilities similar to Mangle/Shred.

[Deleted]

This is why I like feral. I find cooldown whack-a-mole classes like ret paladins extremly boring and you need some macro software like autohotkey (I do use it for my druid too because it's convenient though) to do max dps, that's stupid design if anything.

[Deleted]

playing feral druid is fun because it requires using your brain rather than mindless spam of same 2/3 skills (looks at mages), and even though we have 40% downtime its making sure we are still maximising our dps in the downtime, through SR, Rip ticks, Rake, having FFF up etc

[Deleo]

Well the "we require brain" argument can backfire. If you have too much time to think then its not really that smart. Personally I still like to see a bit less idle time. Maybe somewhere close to 25%. 40% is just too much imo.

[traen]

You are sometimes refreshing too early or am I wrong?

Dot clipping allows you to refresh a little bit earlier without dps loss
And you have to refresh early(on 3-8 seconds left) sometimes to synchronize rake with tf. It will be dps gain.

But ofc dot uptime is not everything. If you have less than 6 seconds of fight left, it will be actually better to spam shred instead of refreshing rake. With 4 minutes fight it means that you should lose 2.5% of rake uptime in some cases.
Usually both rip and rake have uptime between 94-96%.

And I'm still not sure sometimes if it worth to use TFed FB in the cost of potential 1-2 seconds rip downtime. I just don't know. Sometimes I risk and fail miserably. Sometimes I have lucky crits and even have more than 3 seconds left on rip when I finish getting my 5cp back. Sometimes I do not risk and waste 5+ combopoints.
Its really hard to deal with random in feral rotation.

[Deleted]

I love kitty for this reason, and is why i find it hard to play anything else.

I rarely find waiting a problem, there's always something useful to be doing even if it's not dps related. Kitty requires alot of planning due the reasons mentioned a few posts above. However any other time can always be useful for checking timers, being generally raid aware and helping to make the fight run as smooth as possible, especially during progression where careless wipes can be problematic and frustrating.

Personally I find Predatory Strikes a fun way to fill time, throwing in a well timed instant heal can be quite satisfying and in theroy lessens the strain on healers (if only by a tiny amount!) if used accordingly.

I don't mind the idle time how it is now, but wouldn't want to get any more idle, like many, I did get a little sad when Mangle duration was increased, giving kitty a little less to think about, but hey, more shreds

meow

[Deleted]

And you have to refresh early(on 3-8 seconds left) sometimes to synchronize rake with tf. It will be dps gain.

Really? You want to waste 2 ticks for a 15% dmg buff? 2 ticks are 40% dmg of one rake.
And yes, ofc I know that you can clip it before the last tick. But I wouldn´t waste ticks.

[Deleted]

Dot clipping allows you to refresh a little bit earlier without dps loss
And you have to refresh early(on 3-8 seconds left) sometimes to synchronize rake with tf. It will be dps gain.

But ofc dot uptime is not everything. If you have less than 6 seconds of fight left, it will be actually better to spam shred instead of refreshing rake. With 4 minutes fight it means that you should lose 2.5% of rake uptime in some cases.
Usually both rip and rake have uptime between 94-96%.

And I'm still not sure sometimes if it worth to use TFed FB in the cost of potential 1-2 seconds rip downtime. I just don't know. Sometimes I risk and fail miserably. Sometimes I have lucky crits and even have more than 3 seconds left on rip when I finish getting my 5cp back. Sometimes I do not risk and waste 5+ combopoints.
Its really hard to deal with random in feral rotation.

Clipping DoTs in the old sense would be a noticeable dps loss but with changes to dot clipping (the extra 'tick' gets put on the end of the next dot) the only thing youre missing out on is the minute amount of energy wasted in those 2 seconds

[traen]

Really? You want to waste 2 ticks for a 15% dmg buff? 2 ticks are 40% dmg of one rake.
And yes, ofc I know that you can clip it before the last tick. But I wouldn´t waste ticks.

You are not losing 40% of one rake. You are GAINING damage. You lose some energy, its true. But rake is extremely energy efficient.
You wasted 40% of 25 energy needed for rake - 10 energy. 10 energy is 25% of energy needed for one shred. One shred does ~33k damage. So its something like 8k damage.
Rake does 75k damage per apply. 15% of 75k is 11k damage.
Its not that simple but I guess you understand the idea.

TF synchronized with rake is one of the main things that makes difference between top ranked ferals.

[MasterNewbie]

Really? You want to waste 2 ticks for a 15% dmg buff? 2 ticks are 40% dmg of one rake.
And yes, ofc I know that you can clip it before the last tick. But I wouldn´t waste ticks.

Let's say a rake tick does x damage. So not clipping with TF will yield 10 ticks of x damage with 2 initial hits of x damage each, total damage of 12x. Clipping with TF will yield 3 ticks and 1 initial hit of x damage and 5 ticks and 1 initial hit of 1.15x damage for a total of 10.9x damage. Clipping with TF and not clipping with it both cost the same amount of energy (70 energy). Now the difference is the time that these dots are ticking, not clipping with TF gives a total duration of 30 seconds. Clipping with TF gives a total duration of 24 seconds. So the damage per time of not clipping is 12x/30 = .4x. The damage per time of clipping is 10.9x/24 = .454x. Since they both cost the same amount of energy, over a given period of time, clipping with TF is more efficient than not.

E: The actual difference is not as pronounced since I looked at only two periods. TF wouldn't be available for the second refresh of rake, so if we factor that in (extra 6x damage over 15 seconds), the damage per time of not clipping is still 0.4x, and the damage per time of clipping is .433x. The next rake would be refreshed with TF. So the boost in rake damage by clipping with TF will float around 8% (it would approach 7.5% for REALLY long fights).

[Deleted]

Am I understanding something wrong or do you assume that not clipping means NEVER having TF? That´s not the case.
But I see the point and will think about it when I have more time. Anyway, thanks for explanation.

[Deleted]

Love it completely, tbh. Having some downtime also enables you to pay more attention to your surroundings (you tend to tunnel vision less) and as a raid leader, that is quite a relief Plus, the class and priority system's pretty fun to boot!

[MasterNewbie]

Am I understanding something wrong or do you assume that not clipping means NEVER having TF? That´s not the case.
But I see the point and will think about it when I have more time. Anyway, thanks for explanation.

It is true. Unless you use rake during the first TF, none of your rakes will be TF'd. (Or if you have glyph of TF, but you generally shouldn't in T12). If you wait until TF is active, you might as well get rake up (to buff shred damage AND in any case, three ticks of rake is still more energy efficient than a shred).

If you think about it, if you rake, and three seconds later TF (in the opening), you will have 12 seconds on rake. At the end of TF (24 seconds on TF CD) you will have 6 seconds on rake. Refresh rake at the 2 second mark (20 seconds on TF CD), you have 17 seconds on rake. Refresh at 2 seconds left (5 seconds on TF CD) you have 17 seconds left. When TF is up again, you will have 12 seconds left on rake. At the end of TF, you will have 6 seconds left on rake... this cycle repeats indefinitely. Never will you rake while TF is active unless you clip off some of your ticks.