Feral Cat Idle Time

[Djuntas]

Interesting. Not bad.... ;o

[traen]

And you are correct, this post is about less wait time. If the intent was to reduce wait time, I would rather see SR's effect changed to have increased melee haste (like SnD but not as much as haste; to compensate, part of the autoattack damage boost would remain). This would have the effect of boosting our energy regen. Berserk would probably have to be modified if it was changed that way, but imo it is a much better solution than to introduce some no-CD ability that directly generates energy.

You don't need to add any haste effect to make us press buttons like crazy.

All you need is to return wotlk initial dps model. 12 seconds mangle, that you actually had to keep up. 9 seconds rake, 21 seconds SR(with 5cp). Was fun!

But honestly, our rotation was pretty annoying these days. I doubt that blizzard will ever agree to increase feral dps rotation difficulty again.

And I really don't think that decreasing damage of our abilities and increasing energy regeneration is good idea.

[darkwarrior42]

From my perspective, time spent pooling energy waiting for the opportune moment to strike isn't really idle time. You're planning and preparing, there is purpose to the time not spent hitting buttons. It's all part of your rotation and plan, and to have the right sense of timing and to know when to use your energy is a skill. The time you spend waiting is building energy, so it's time spent with a purpose.

I contrast things like that with Ret Pallys.... when I play ret, there is often idle time. By idle, I mean time spent waiting for things to come off cooldown not doing anything else. If I'm waiting for CS, that's not time spent waiting for a purpose; unlike an energy class, my time spent waiting isn't giving me more resources to use when I do strike, it's just.... waiting.

*shrug* They feel vastly different to me. Rogues and kitties may spend less time hitting buttons, but it feels like my ret pally has more downtime than any other spec I've played (which, for the record, is all specs of hunter, mage, rogue, paladin, and druid, at level 85).

[Ezryn]

Question, why isn't Nature's Grasp factored into the pie chart? I thought all ferals cast Nature's Grasp during idle time for a chance of proccing Clearcasting?

[Deleted]

Question, why isn't Nature's Grasp factored into the pie chart? I thought all ferals cast Nature's Grasp during idle time for a chance of proccing Clearcasting?

because it doesn't work any more for Ferals since Cataclysm

[Deleted]

I really dislike this thing about feral dps, I think I won't level my cat anymore, playing a Warlock and a Prot Warrior, feral feels just awful, it's not my thing.

[Flaks]

Ask arms warriors what it feels like to have almost zero idle time in movement fights.

That said, I think reducing your idle time may just take you back to WotLK days. And despite how rewarding that was, I can imagine it was a real bitch attempting to play at your best day in and day out for mediocre raid performance.

[Deleted]

IMPORTANT POINT >> Pretty sure that sim is reforging to mastery not haste, with a tonne of haste you dont have nearly that much idle time. Not to mention the fact we're the most mobile class, giving us quick oppertunities to use utils like CR and Tranq. Makes me feel more useful :3

Edit - wheres mangle?!

[MasterNewbie]

Edit - wheres mangle?!

May not be necessary. Sim could've assumed you had an arms warrior or bear tank in the group.

[Deleted]

From my perspective, time spent pooling energy waiting for the opportune moment to strike isn't really idle time. You're planning and preparing, there is purpose to the time not spent hitting buttons. It's all part of your rotation and plan, and to have the right sense of timing and to know when to use your energy is a skill. The time you spend waiting is building energy, so it's time spent with a purpose.

I contrast things like that with Ret Pallys.... when I play ret, there is often idle time. By idle, I mean time spent waiting for things to come off cooldown not doing anything else. If I'm waiting for CS, that's not time spent waiting for a purpose; unlike an energy class, my time spent waiting isn't giving me more resources to use when I do strike, it's just.... waiting.

*shrug* They feel vastly different to me. Rogues and kitties may spend less time hitting buttons, but it feels like my ret pally has more downtime than any other spec I've played (which, for the record, is all specs of hunter, mage, rogue, paladin, and druid, at level 85).

Just to make this clear, Simcraft doesnt count energy pooling into idle time, or atleast it doesnt for sub rogues and dont rly know why it shouldnt be the same for ferals and from what i understand we dont rly pool energy that much these days, only time i energy pool is when i have to refresh rake and rip at almost same time and when preparing for a target switch but that's just me, i might be wrong.

EDIT:

IMPORTANT POINT >> Pretty sure that sim is reforging to mastery not haste, with a tonne of haste you dont have nearly that much idle time. Not to mention the fact we're the most mobile class, giving us quick oppertunities to use utils like CR and Tranq. Makes me feel more useful :3

Would be nice if we could see our idle time in haste build but most ferals have around 15-18% haste and that's 1.5-1.8 more energy per second which on a 10min fight would translate in around 900-1080 extra energy and lets say on average u use around 35-40 energy per GCD that would give us an extra 25-28 GCD-s or 38-42 extra active seconds if we count GCD to be 1.5sec which is usually less coz of our base haste+haste procs (matrix, hungerer) and bloodlust so it still is pretty high. And this is all without factoring in the energy cost reduction from berserk and useing FB with high energy.

DISCLAIMER: i'm terrible with math and every time you use it as a fact a kitten will die.

[MasterNewbie]

Cat form, rogue and hunter GCDs are generally 1 second regardless of haste.

Based on a Mew sim with a haste oriented get up, in a 10 minute fight, on average, 447 on the GCD abilities were used, so you have 153 seconds of no ability use.

E: This is a 27 second drop in wait time, which is consistent with Kraf's math (after correcting for the 1 second instead of 1.5 second GCD).

[Deleted]

Feral dps is a lot about using the right skill in the right order, and prioritizing what to use. its not so much about reaction and exact timing. personally i would prefer to have a bit less wait-time as kitten, and a bit more fast-paced combat.

[Deleted]

Cat form, rogue and hunter GCDs are generally 1 second regardless of haste.

I knew rogues have 1sec GCD, dont care about hunters but i was under the impression ours is 1.5 since my GCD is faster to me under BL (or atleast i see it that way) and when i compare it to my dk in unholy presence again to my eye it seems slower on feral.
And yes haste build doesnt make a big difference and who knows if next patch we go back to mastery build our idle time will be pretty high.

[Deleted]

Feral currently has the highest idle time a DPS can have with Assa rogues coming very close. Do you guys find this kind of design interesting?



Personally I'd understand some idle time as we need to build up energy but don't you think not doing anything for 40$ of the time is rather bad design?

This only tells me that simcraft is still using the wrong reforging....

[MasterNewbie]

# gear_expertise_rating=260
# gear_hit_rating=276
# gear_crit_rating=1744
# gear_haste_rating=1884
# gear_mastery_rating=1886

That would appear to be the case. Though in fairness, having it be haste oriented with more hit/exp appeared to actually increase the amount of wait time. (I would suppose because you aren't getting energy returns from as many misses.) I have a chardev profile that uses the same gear with different reforges,

# gear_expertise_rating=775
# gear_hit_rating=890
# gear_crit_rating=1217
# gear_haste_rating=1616
# gear_mastery_rating=1487

Can be found here for those who want to use it for SimC fun. I suppose it isn't as haste oriented as it could be, I tried to get closer to hit/exp caps since the BiS list they have has an abysmally low amount of both, so some of that could be changed to haste but I would keep it the way it is.

[Zheryn]

I love this about feral. It's so frustrating to have to mash a button every GCD.

[Deleted]

You don't need to add any haste effect to make us press buttons like crazy.

All you need is to return wotlk initial dps model. 12 seconds mangle, that you actually had to keep up. 9 seconds rake, 21 seconds SR(with 5cp). Was fun!

But honestly, our rotation was pretty annoying these days. I doubt that blizzard will ever agree to increase feral dps rotation difficulty again.

And I really don't think that decreasing damage of our abilities and increasing energy regeneration is good idea.

Changing the duration on our buffs/debuffs doesn't change anything for our idle time, since we still get the same limited amount of energy to play with.

[druidicitus]

There's always Natures Grasp and FFF to press. When I look at logs after raid, I'm the one having 20+ FFFs, and my kittz colleague have 0

[Kisho]

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!

[Deleted]

Generally Blizz wants ppl to have room in their rotations for utility abilities, that's why they reworked DK runes for example.

For hunters, they could for example add a short cooldown on steady/cobra shot, which is the filler ability/spell, so you can't spam it and have room to choose other spells.