... and if you don't get the reference then you fail, hardcore.
I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts while my ridiculously busy schedule of ridiculousness keeps me from writing anything meaningful.
After our bug-filled jaunt into ICC last week, we decided to start fresh this week even though we only got 5 bosses down last week... And due to illness/inability to form coherent sentences/real life causing low attendance/etc, we waited until Wednesday night to go in this week.
To make a much longer story very short: we smashed 7 bosses (Lower Spire + Fester, Rot, and Princes). A typical first night for us.
I was surprised by a couple of things during the run, though, that I wanted to share.
First, remember a few posts back? I said that the death of cat DPS was greatly exaggerated? Boy was I right.
Now, I realize they thought it was underpowered and made a couple of changes to bump it up. They may have done so even before I posted my previous thoughts. They may have done a little before then, and a little after. I'm here today to confirm that cat DPS is most definitely alive and well, even before the Cataclysm.
For the first time in my experience, I actually led the DPS chart on a couple of fights. One of them by a good margin.
At the end of the Saurfang fight I was sporting over 13k DPS. Once I get near my gaming machine again I can try to post up a screenshot - I got one that should show the Recount breakdown to show how much is attributed to melee, Rake, Rip, Shred, and Ferocious Bite. Much like pre-4.0, the breakdown was fairly even - roughly 25% each going to melee, Rip, and Shred, with the remaining 25% divided up among Ravage, Rake, and FB.
After a top half performance on Rotface, we moved to Festergut. We had a mage leading the chart for most of the fight, but I was a close second until we hit 25%. It is so incredibly liberating to actually have something to do differently when the Raid Leader announces "Kill shot range." Anyway, mere seconds before Fester fell down I passed him, finishing with 12.5k DPS to his 12.3k. The breakdown of damage was shifted slightly. I don't have the screenshots to compare at hand (I will offer more details once I do), but while the same general breakdown showed, it was shifted. (i.e. Rip had the highest percentage on Saurfang, IIRC, and Shred had the highest on Fester, again, unless my memory is failing me.)
I'm loving Nom Nom Nom, even if it did get the much less cool name Blood in the Water. Once the boss is in range, your life becomes Shred/Rake to 5 CPs, FB, do this two or three times depending on the time left on Savage Roar, then Shred/Rake to 5 CPs and Savage Roar, wash, rinse, repeat and watch the boss die. Since you don't really have to worry about refreshing Rip, the only timer you really have to watch at that point is Savage Roar.
Speaking of timers, I was moderately more impressed with my output because I haven't been using a debuff tracker addon. Last time I tried to load BadKitty, it was broken, and I haven't checked in the past week or so to see if it was fixed. I suppose it's technically harder to play this way, but given the proclamations of doom and gloom for Kitty DPS I wasn't worried about it until Cata actually dropped. So I was doubly surprised to find myself on top of the chart.
Moving on... My DPS as a tank seemed relatively high as well. There were even a couple of fights that I beat out a couple of our lower-geared folks that just must have had a bad fight that boss. I dunno *shrug*.
Speaking of tanking, my single-target threat has been WAY up - to the point where I'm stealing threat from our other tanks if I don't watch it - while my AOE threat has been way down, so-so at best. That 6-second cooldown on Swipe is a pain in my arse. Tab-targeting helps, but having the Pulverize buff fully powered helps as well, and you need to consume 3 stacks of Lacerate to get there, which requires focusing on one target. I still don't have a good handle on how to get and hold AOE threat, but I also realize that I might not have that until Cata comes and we get Thrash.
In completely unrelated matters, I finally completed the holiday uber-meta. Picked a candy bucket in Telaar and got Achievement spammed... Got my Violet Proto-Drake and danced in the... wait, I already spent 5k gold to get 310% flying. blizz can I have my 5k back? See, what I was reading over the past few weeks (sorry, I'm a bad blogger and don't have sources to link, it's been too long and I don't remember where I read them to begin with, but Wowwiki confirms it) said that if you already had a 310% speed mount, you got Master Flying for free, but this was not true if you gained the mount afterward. So, I spent my 5k, and then heard afterward that enough people complained about the holiday meta that they changed it so that it granted the Master flying skill. Thus I curse my impatience but please Blizzard give me my 5k back.
Anyway.... cheers!
Showing posts with label DPS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DPS. Show all posts
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The Alt Club
Rambly post is rambly, about alts and paladins and tanking and dps and gearscore and another baby and I don't know where I'm going with this but hey it'll be fun.
It seems like everybody in my guild has at least 5 or 6 level 80 alts. I have 10 characters on Baelgun, but my reduced play time due to marriage and baby has meant that my alt-o-holic ways have been curtailed almost entirely.
Lately, though, since Kaethir has basically reached the point that even frost badges are useful for nothing except primordial saronites for LW patterns, or down-ranking for gems or heirloom gear, I have taken the time to work on my highest alt, Alrom, instead of repeating the same random dungeons with a supremely over-geared tank every morning. A week or so ago, he finally reached the level 80 plateau, and started the rep/gear/badge/daily grind. *Dance time* I have finally joined the Alt Club!
I have made no secret of the fact that one of the things I love most about playing a Druid is the versatility of being able to play whatever role I choose (provided of course that I have the gear, spec, etc. available at the time. It should be no surprise, then, that my first alt is from the only other class in the game that is capable of all 3 major raid roles, a paladin. A dwarf, which I suppose is a little odd for most players, but, well, there it is.
Being a fresh level 80 with essentially a few quest blues and greens and 3 pieces of heirloom gear to his name, I have been queuing as ret with him, dealing with the longer queue times in order to be a contributing member of the group rather than a severe liability. I suffered, the first few days as an 80, from being limited to normal dungeons due to Blizzard's insistence that you have a GS in the 2500-ish range before you get to go into a heroic dungeon. Once I picked up a couple of decent low-level pieces and bought my first T9 piece, however, the heroic queue opened up for me and off I went!
Melee DPS as a paladin instead of a kitty is a world of difference. No button-mashing, no energy management, no worrying about clipping a DoT, no worrying about losing a buff or a debuff or any of the other 100 things a kitty has to worry about. Just hit whichever ability is left-most on my bar and not on cooldown. If I've managed to flub that up and nothing is off cooldown at the moment, hit Divine Plea. Wash, rinse, repeat. Watch things die. It's so easy and smooth it's sickening. Of course, maybe that's because I'm in a heroic with overgeared players and it doesn't matter that I can't get above 2k DPS yet. Heck, 1.5k most of the time.
By the way, that notoriously long queue as a DPS? Meh. 8-10 minutes is the worst I've seen. That's still forever, compared to sub-30 seconds as a tank, but come on. Half the time I queue up, take a flight path, do one Tournament Daily, take another flight path and the queue hits before I land. I suppose in today's 'gogogo' world where 20 seconds is too much time to wait, most people would be upset. Me? I'm more than happy, even though I can't tank yet and that's really what I want to do.
I have been working up a prot set and spec in the meantime, and although I'm not there yet being a lot of times the only player in a group that is still actually pulling upgrades from heroics, it is moving quickly. I need to get Kaethir off his furry rear end long enough to buy and cut a couple of gems for Al, for the pieces that I don't expect to be replaced within a week or so (like that prot t9 piece I bought), and take the energy to find an enchanter to put something, anything, on those pieces I'm bothering with gems for. I'm not even really close to the 535 defense I'm told I need for heroics, but once I get there, look out, there'll be a fail-pally tank on the loose.
Since I don't want to be a total fail-tank when I do get to delve into heroic tanking, I have been taking some of my questing time to put on all my prot stuff and see how it works. It's quite painful, in some respects. Part of a prot pally's mana regen is based on incoming heals - which you don't get running around solo. I am satisfied with the survivability, but the loss of DPS just makes soloing too slow to be much fun, so I am only going to be soloing as prot to make sure I keep my weapon skills at a reasonable level with whichever weapon is currently my best prot weapon.
Tanking also seems a little more smooth with a paladin to me, but then, I haven't been put in a situation where I really have to use all the paladin's tools yet. It is a little overwhelming how much is available when things go wrong - hands, seals, hammers, etc. - compared to the bear's available responses, which are: bash, growl, and make myself harder to kill. I suppose on one level it's easier to bear tank, because when stuff goes wrong you just do more of what you were already doing anyway. Of course, I'm probably just blowing hot electrons because this will all be moot come Cataclysm anyway, but still.
Awhile back, I wrote a post wondering about what I would do with Alrom once I got him to level 80. Turns out he's going to be doing the same things Kaethir does, except while wearing plate, casting spells, and wielding weapons, instead of fur, roars, and claws. I suppose there's some psychological or metaphorical connection I should be making here, but at the moment the only thing that comes to mind is that I like tanking, I like damage meters, and I like hitting things. Or maybe it's more that I'd rather do that than play whack-a-mole. Or whack-a-not-green-bar. Whatever.
I do still enjoy healing, and I may in the future trade in one of my pally specs for a holy one to find out what it's like. Frankly, not being able to be a proactive healer frightens me, but in a heroic I don't expect slow reaction times to lead to wipes, and I don't intend to use this character in raids except, maybe, for the occasional weekly raid quest or alt-able portion of our guild raids. Time will tell.
On a completely non-WoW-related post, my wife is pregnant again, or so the little peed-on stick tells us. Some people seem to think that we are crazy, but I like the idea of having our first two kids so close together. My wife insists that we'll be waiting for awhile after this one before trying again, even though she's the one that wanted a big family when we started this whole shindig. I can't help but think that she said that last time and, well, look where we are now. Not that I'm complaining, I like fatherhood. Here's to hoping my second child is as happy and easy to take care of as my first.
I don't know if it was fun for you, but it was fun for me! Wwwhheeeeeeeeee!
It seems like everybody in my guild has at least 5 or 6 level 80 alts. I have 10 characters on Baelgun, but my reduced play time due to marriage and baby has meant that my alt-o-holic ways have been curtailed almost entirely.
Lately, though, since Kaethir has basically reached the point that even frost badges are useful for nothing except primordial saronites for LW patterns, or down-ranking for gems or heirloom gear, I have taken the time to work on my highest alt, Alrom, instead of repeating the same random dungeons with a supremely over-geared tank every morning. A week or so ago, he finally reached the level 80 plateau, and started the rep/gear/badge/daily grind. *Dance time* I have finally joined the Alt Club!
I have made no secret of the fact that one of the things I love most about playing a Druid is the versatility of being able to play whatever role I choose (provided of course that I have the gear, spec, etc. available at the time. It should be no surprise, then, that my first alt is from the only other class in the game that is capable of all 3 major raid roles, a paladin. A dwarf, which I suppose is a little odd for most players, but, well, there it is.
Being a fresh level 80 with essentially a few quest blues and greens and 3 pieces of heirloom gear to his name, I have been queuing as ret with him, dealing with the longer queue times in order to be a contributing member of the group rather than a severe liability. I suffered, the first few days as an 80, from being limited to normal dungeons due to Blizzard's insistence that you have a GS in the 2500-ish range before you get to go into a heroic dungeon. Once I picked up a couple of decent low-level pieces and bought my first T9 piece, however, the heroic queue opened up for me and off I went!
Melee DPS as a paladin instead of a kitty is a world of difference. No button-mashing, no energy management, no worrying about clipping a DoT, no worrying about losing a buff or a debuff or any of the other 100 things a kitty has to worry about. Just hit whichever ability is left-most on my bar and not on cooldown. If I've managed to flub that up and nothing is off cooldown at the moment, hit Divine Plea. Wash, rinse, repeat. Watch things die. It's so easy and smooth it's sickening. Of course, maybe that's because I'm in a heroic with overgeared players and it doesn't matter that I can't get above 2k DPS yet. Heck, 1.5k most of the time.
By the way, that notoriously long queue as a DPS? Meh. 8-10 minutes is the worst I've seen. That's still forever, compared to sub-30 seconds as a tank, but come on. Half the time I queue up, take a flight path, do one Tournament Daily, take another flight path and the queue hits before I land. I suppose in today's 'gogogo' world where 20 seconds is too much time to wait, most people would be upset. Me? I'm more than happy, even though I can't tank yet and that's really what I want to do.
I have been working up a prot set and spec in the meantime, and although I'm not there yet being a lot of times the only player in a group that is still actually pulling upgrades from heroics, it is moving quickly. I need to get Kaethir off his furry rear end long enough to buy and cut a couple of gems for Al, for the pieces that I don't expect to be replaced within a week or so (like that prot t9 piece I bought), and take the energy to find an enchanter to put something, anything, on those pieces I'm bothering with gems for. I'm not even really close to the 535 defense I'm told I need for heroics, but once I get there, look out, there'll be a fail-pally tank on the loose.
Since I don't want to be a total fail-tank when I do get to delve into heroic tanking, I have been taking some of my questing time to put on all my prot stuff and see how it works. It's quite painful, in some respects. Part of a prot pally's mana regen is based on incoming heals - which you don't get running around solo. I am satisfied with the survivability, but the loss of DPS just makes soloing too slow to be much fun, so I am only going to be soloing as prot to make sure I keep my weapon skills at a reasonable level with whichever weapon is currently my best prot weapon.
Tanking also seems a little more smooth with a paladin to me, but then, I haven't been put in a situation where I really have to use all the paladin's tools yet. It is a little overwhelming how much is available when things go wrong - hands, seals, hammers, etc. - compared to the bear's available responses, which are: bash, growl, and make myself harder to kill. I suppose on one level it's easier to bear tank, because when stuff goes wrong you just do more of what you were already doing anyway. Of course, I'm probably just blowing hot electrons because this will all be moot come Cataclysm anyway, but still.
Awhile back, I wrote a post wondering about what I would do with Alrom once I got him to level 80. Turns out he's going to be doing the same things Kaethir does, except while wearing plate, casting spells, and wielding weapons, instead of fur, roars, and claws. I suppose there's some psychological or metaphorical connection I should be making here, but at the moment the only thing that comes to mind is that I like tanking, I like damage meters, and I like hitting things. Or maybe it's more that I'd rather do that than play whack-a-mole. Or whack-a-not-green-bar. Whatever.
I do still enjoy healing, and I may in the future trade in one of my pally specs for a holy one to find out what it's like. Frankly, not being able to be a proactive healer frightens me, but in a heroic I don't expect slow reaction times to lead to wipes, and I don't intend to use this character in raids except, maybe, for the occasional weekly raid quest or alt-able portion of our guild raids. Time will tell.
On a completely non-WoW-related post, my wife is pregnant again, or so the little peed-on stick tells us. Some people seem to think that we are crazy, but I like the idea of having our first two kids so close together. My wife insists that we'll be waiting for awhile after this one before trying again, even though she's the one that wanted a big family when we started this whole shindig. I can't help but think that she said that last time and, well, look where we are now. Not that I'm complaining, I like fatherhood. Here's to hoping my second child is as happy and easy to take care of as my first.
I don't know if it was fun for you, but it was fun for me! Wwwhheeeeeeeeee!
Friday, August 27, 2010
Once Bitten, Twice Cheesy... and also, MOAR DOTS!
Ok, so I can't help myself with the cheesy achievement title ripoffs for post titles.
One week after our first ever BQL kill, we downed her again - this time I was DPSing, and picked up the Achievement for being both bitten and not. Despite this, I was mildly disappointed in the run. Even after we down a boss the first time, I expect the next few times we kill it to continue to be difficult, especially if we rotate in new/less geared/less skilled/whatever players. We did wipe once, due to bite issues and an early DPS death, but the second attempt saw her down with 5s left on the enrage timer - an eternity compared to our first kill - without any real drama. Am I being silly, thinking that it should still be a challenge for another few kills after the first? Or perhaps for thinking that it WASN'T a challenge the second time around? Or maybe even just for being disappointed? I don't know.
Even so, I'm still very pleased. We had issues with disconnects (not during the fight) and such all night, and still managed to deal with things and get the run as far as we were going to get it.
On the upside, since we hadn't got Fester and Rot the first night, we went to do them and I stayed all feline-ish and managed on Fester to place 2nd on our DPS chart. I'm certainly pleased with myself for it - even if a couple of our heavy hitters weren't quite doing what they could, the fact that I was even in the ballpark is impressive to me. Someone who doesn't normally DPS outside of raids, hasn't really DPSed at all in several weeks, and even then was not quite in the top rank having just started doing this a couple of months ago... yeah, I was happy.
I can't remember if I've said it before, and I'm too lazy to go looking through my archives to find out, but pretty much the most difficult thing for me to learn, to get my DPS to the next level, has been that there are times as a Feral Cat that the best thing to do is NOTHING AT ALL.
When I first started, I was unknowingly locked into the idea that the way to increase DPS was to constantly be hitting buttons - obviously, if you're doing something with your energy you're doing more DPS than if you're not, right? And that's true... for every individual second in time. But when you look at the whole...
It becomes a delicate balancing act between available energy, combo points, buffs, and debuffs. It becomes very easy to mash buttons to get MOAR DPS NOW!! but then, in 10 seconds when you need to rebuild your combo points very quickly after your Savage Roar so you don't lose uptime on your Rip, you don't have the energy to Shred in quick succession to do so, and it becomes better to just sit and watch white damage - which should be, by around a 10% margin, the biggest percentage of your DPS anyway - so that when you need that burst, you have the energy to do so.
Something else that it's taken me awhile to really understand is that when the priority system says "keep up Savage Roar" at the top, it really means that we need that buff up no matter what. Don't wait for 5 CP, don't force another ability off first, just make sure that buff stays up, because it buffs every single thing you do. If that means hitting it with 1 CP, so be it - but understand that you're going to need to do it again fairly quickly in that situation, and be prepared for it.
To critique what I did wrong on that fight, that I could do better:
92% uptime on Savage Roar. I spent 21 seconds of the fight without my most important self-buff. Need to be more precise.
91.6% uptime on Rake. 22.5 seconds downtime is too much. I also clipped this several times - poor energy efficiency.
80.1% uptime on Rip. 48 seconds downtime. While it's expected that there will be a *little* more downtime here - you need to build up CP at the beginning of the fight for this - it's still too much downtime. 20% of the fight I didn't have it going. Have to be careful with clipping here as well, although I've noticed that for some reason it occasionally won't let me clip it.
It's hard to tell, in retrospect, if I had proper use of Berserk and Mangle - I only used Mangle twice and we had a couple of warriors who were keeping Trauma up, and I used Berserk the maximum twice allowed by the enrage timer. Given the warriors I probably should have skipped Mangle altogether, although it's entirely possible I just fat-fingered it a couple of times, as it's right next to Shred.
Hope that was a helpful look at things for somebody.
Anyway, I also managed to pick up a couple of pieces to keep my healing set from falling waaaay too far behind, just in case I'm ever called on to really respec for it or I decide its time to go back. Not spending frosties on it, at least not until I have all my crafted patterns bought, but I'm still trying to keep a reasonable set together.
We didn't get a chance to go after PP - we didn't push hard for progression this week. Next week after we down our usual crew we're looking at locking out for a second week, to get good shots at PP and Sindy in.
One week after our first ever BQL kill, we downed her again - this time I was DPSing, and picked up the Achievement for being both bitten and not. Despite this, I was mildly disappointed in the run. Even after we down a boss the first time, I expect the next few times we kill it to continue to be difficult, especially if we rotate in new/less geared/less skilled/whatever players. We did wipe once, due to bite issues and an early DPS death, but the second attempt saw her down with 5s left on the enrage timer - an eternity compared to our first kill - without any real drama. Am I being silly, thinking that it should still be a challenge for another few kills after the first? Or perhaps for thinking that it WASN'T a challenge the second time around? Or maybe even just for being disappointed? I don't know.
Even so, I'm still very pleased. We had issues with disconnects (not during the fight) and such all night, and still managed to deal with things and get the run as far as we were going to get it.
On the upside, since we hadn't got Fester and Rot the first night, we went to do them and I stayed all feline-ish and managed on Fester to place 2nd on our DPS chart. I'm certainly pleased with myself for it - even if a couple of our heavy hitters weren't quite doing what they could, the fact that I was even in the ballpark is impressive to me. Someone who doesn't normally DPS outside of raids, hasn't really DPSed at all in several weeks, and even then was not quite in the top rank having just started doing this a couple of months ago... yeah, I was happy.
I can't remember if I've said it before, and I'm too lazy to go looking through my archives to find out, but pretty much the most difficult thing for me to learn, to get my DPS to the next level, has been that there are times as a Feral Cat that the best thing to do is NOTHING AT ALL.
When I first started, I was unknowingly locked into the idea that the way to increase DPS was to constantly be hitting buttons - obviously, if you're doing something with your energy you're doing more DPS than if you're not, right? And that's true... for every individual second in time. But when you look at the whole...
It becomes a delicate balancing act between available energy, combo points, buffs, and debuffs. It becomes very easy to mash buttons to get MOAR DPS NOW!! but then, in 10 seconds when you need to rebuild your combo points very quickly after your Savage Roar so you don't lose uptime on your Rip, you don't have the energy to Shred in quick succession to do so, and it becomes better to just sit and watch white damage - which should be, by around a 10% margin, the biggest percentage of your DPS anyway - so that when you need that burst, you have the energy to do so.
Something else that it's taken me awhile to really understand is that when the priority system says "keep up Savage Roar" at the top, it really means that we need that buff up no matter what. Don't wait for 5 CP, don't force another ability off first, just make sure that buff stays up, because it buffs every single thing you do. If that means hitting it with 1 CP, so be it - but understand that you're going to need to do it again fairly quickly in that situation, and be prepared for it.
To critique what I did wrong on that fight, that I could do better:
92% uptime on Savage Roar. I spent 21 seconds of the fight without my most important self-buff. Need to be more precise.
91.6% uptime on Rake. 22.5 seconds downtime is too much. I also clipped this several times - poor energy efficiency.
80.1% uptime on Rip. 48 seconds downtime. While it's expected that there will be a *little* more downtime here - you need to build up CP at the beginning of the fight for this - it's still too much downtime. 20% of the fight I didn't have it going. Have to be careful with clipping here as well, although I've noticed that for some reason it occasionally won't let me clip it.
It's hard to tell, in retrospect, if I had proper use of Berserk and Mangle - I only used Mangle twice and we had a couple of warriors who were keeping Trauma up, and I used Berserk the maximum twice allowed by the enrage timer. Given the warriors I probably should have skipped Mangle altogether, although it's entirely possible I just fat-fingered it a couple of times, as it's right next to Shred.
Hope that was a helpful look at things for somebody.
Anyway, I also managed to pick up a couple of pieces to keep my healing set from falling waaaay too far behind, just in case I'm ever called on to really respec for it or I decide its time to go back. Not spending frosties on it, at least not until I have all my crafted patterns bought, but I'm still trying to keep a reasonable set together.
We didn't get a chance to go after PP - we didn't push hard for progression this week. Next week after we down our usual crew we're looking at locking out for a second week, to get good shots at PP and Sindy in.
Friday, July 2, 2010
A Primer on Kitty DPS, Part 2 (The Spec and Glyphs)
I can't think of anything funny or witty to open this up with, so... here I go again!
Here is Part 1... refer to that if you're a little confused.
I realize that a lot of this will be useless soon, as Cataclysm will change everything, but hey I'm just late to the party getting in on this. It will get reworked come Cataclysm. Besides, I had to get my rant off my (4) readers' feeds.
The Kitty Spec
There used to be a little difference between the best specs for single-target or AOE DPS, but with the changes to Mangle they are close enough together that I'm going to present just one spec...
Just like the Bear Spec, you have a few points in the Resto tree, none at all in Balance, and a ton in Feral.
Restoration Talents
Tier 1
2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild - Increases all your attributes AND makes your buff better? Can I get a few more points in it?
0/3 Nature's Focus - Resto/Balance Talent. Ignore.
3/5 Furor - Gets you to the second Tier, and lets you do a little shapeshifting without always losing all your energy.
Tier 2
5/5 Naturalist - 10% damage bonus. Need I say more?
0/3 Subtlety - Resto/Balance. Ignore.
3/3 Natural Shapeshifter - Makes shapeshifting cheaper... and lets you get Master Shapeshifter.
Tier 3
0/3 Intensity - Not interesting to cats. Not really interesting to bears, either, but at least they'd get something out of it. Next.
1/1 Omen of Clarity - Free stuff is good mmkay?
2/2 Master Shapeshifter - With Natural Shapeshifter, we've spent 5 points to get only a 4% damage bonus (less mana cost is good but meh.) We spent 5 points to get 10% just a few minutes ago. What gives? Well... it's not worth it without spending all 5 points here, and there's nowhere we'd rather spend all 5 points, so here it goes. And really... it's 4% damage bonus across the board, don't complain.
Feral Talents
Tier 1
5/5 Ferocity - Reduces the Energy cost of some key abilities (with the changes to Mangle, it's most important for Rake and Swipe for cats)
5/5 Feral Aggression - Increases damage done by Ferocious Bite - not very useful except in long raid boss fights, but then it can make a significant difference.
Tier 2
3/3 Feral Instinct - The stealth upgrade is a nice bonus. 30% additional swipe damage is HUGE. This talent was left off single-target maximized builds before the changes to Mangle.
2/2 Savage Fury - 20% increased damage to Rake and Mangle (and Claw, but... ew.) So... 20% increased damage to Rake here. Rake is a fairly large chunk of our DPS. Take it!
0/3 Thick Hide - Bear talent, safely ignored.
Tier 3
2/2 Feral Swiftness - Not the most key talent, but the increased movement speed really helps get on target faster and stay on target longer during movement-heavy fights. Increased dodge chance helps survivability as well.
1/1 Survival Instincts - An emergency button for 1 talent point, to help you through those rough patches, worth taking it.
3/3 Sharpened Claws - Static crit chance bonus? Yes, please!
Tier 4
2/2 Shredding Attacks - Shred is one of your key DPS and combo point regen abilities, so reducing its energy cost by 18 is huge.
3/3 Predatory Strikes - This gives you a bunch of attack power (and can randomly give you an instant-cast nature spell. While it is rarely to your benefit to cast spells... it might help? It's here for the huge AP bonus, though.
2/2 Primal Fury - You're going to crit, a LOT. This gets you free extra combo points when you do.
2/2 Primal Precision - A HUGE chunk of Expertise you don't need on gear is great, and you get refunded if any of your finishing moves fail to land. Which they shouldn't, but that's another discussion, and sometimes it's unavoidable.
Tier 5
0/2 Brutal Impact - Increasing the stun duration of Pounce is... well it's PvP-focused and if you're going for a PvP spec you might want it... but here it's not really that useful. Maybe, possibly, if you had free points you wanted to spend, but I'd still spend them elsewhere.
1/1 Feral Charge - Allows invisible-flying-cat-leap and helps in engaging enemies quickly. Worth 1 point.
0/2 Nurturing Instinct - I'm not really sure how this is useful (maybe PvP for a hybrid heal/cat spec?).
Tier 6
0/3 Natural Reaction - Bear Talent.
5/5 Heart of the Wild - 10% increased attack power... yum...
3/3 Survival of the Fittest - 6% to all attributes? Awesome! Oh and cats get to be uncrittable too?? Sweet!
Tier 7
1/1 Leader of the Pack - Static raidwide 5% buff to ranged and melee crit chance is good for 1 point.
0/2 Improved Leader of the Pack - Wouldn't be a terrible choice to put any points you want to move in. Not great, but not wasted either.
0/3 Primal Tenacity - Not a bad PvP talent, but kinda wasted on a PvE build.
Tier 8
0/3 Protector of the Pack - You are not a bear. Bad kitty.
3/3 Predatory Instincts - Damage from Melee crits increased 10%. Not too shabby, and a reduction to damage from AOE effects to boot.
0/3 Infected Wounds - Not a bad debuff.... but doesn't help us at all. Maybe if your raid group needs the debuff, and you've got points to spare....
Tier 9
3/3 King of the Jungle - A key talent to keep us going by giving us a way to quickly regenerate energy, with some side perks on top.
1/1 Mangle - One of our key debuffs, and a damage ability. There's a reason people refer to one cat strategy as Manglespam.
0/3 Improved Mangle - Without this, Manglespam is a costly tactic (and you may actually want to Claw (ew!) instead).... but since it lasts 1 minute you shouldn't be using it often enough for the increased cost to matter, since normally you'll be behind an enemy so you can Shred.
Tier 10
5/5 Rend and Tear -Increases a bunch of your damage on Bleeding targets. Since you make targets bleed (a LOT!), increases a bunch of your damage.
1/1 Primal Gore - You should Rip on any boss fight - trash you won't have time. But for boss fights, gives you the ability to crit. More random free damage, and it only costs 1 point.
Tier 11
1/1 Berserk - Become the flailing cat-ball of death. You know you want to.
You may (or may not) have noticed that I'm 1 point short - that can go where you feel it will be best utilized (1/2 iLotP or 4/5 Furor are probably your best bets).
The Glyphs
Generally speaking, your best three major Glyphs are:
Rip: Increases duration (and thus damage) of Rip by 4 seconds.
Shred: Makes your Shred extend Rip by 2 seconds, up to 6 seconds total - so makes Shred doubly-important when Rip is up.
Savage Roar: Makes the ability that you always have up and buffs all of your attacks buff them more.
If you're weird and just don't like those, consider these Glyphs, which, while subpar, are not horrible:
Mangle: You probably should shift talent points around to take iMangle if you're going to use this. It makes Manglespam better...
Berserk: You get to be a cat-ball of death for a little longer.
Minor glyphs are a little more malleable. The generally accepted "best" are:
Challenging Roar: Not as cool for cats as bears, but makes it easier for you to sacrifice yourself (or try to shift to bear and tank for a few seconds) to save your healer.
Unburdened Rebirth: I honestly don't think any Druid should be without this.
Dash: Remember me talking about how it's important to move quickly in certain fights?
Peronally, I drop Challenging Roar for Aquatic Form and Dash for Glyph of the Wild. Personal choice.
So what's the point? See Part 1. We increase our damage a bunch, sure, but we've made a lot of our abilities synergistic - as I said then, Savage Roar buffs everything, Mangle buffs Rip, Rake, and Shred, Rake and Rip both buff Shred, Shred extends Rip... and on the occasions we get to Ferocious Bite or have to Claw, they've got some buffs too. The really tricky part is keeping everything going properly.
Stay tuned for Part 3 (Gear, Gems, and Enchants)! (Sometime before Cataclysm... I hope...
Here is Part 1... refer to that if you're a little confused.
I realize that a lot of this will be useless soon, as Cataclysm will change everything, but hey I'm just late to the party getting in on this. It will get reworked come Cataclysm. Besides, I had to get my rant off my (4) readers' feeds.
The Kitty Spec
There used to be a little difference between the best specs for single-target or AOE DPS, but with the changes to Mangle they are close enough together that I'm going to present just one spec...
Just like the Bear Spec, you have a few points in the Resto tree, none at all in Balance, and a ton in Feral.
Restoration Talents
Tier 1
2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild - Increases all your attributes AND makes your buff better? Can I get a few more points in it?
0/3 Nature's Focus - Resto/Balance Talent. Ignore.
3/5 Furor - Gets you to the second Tier, and lets you do a little shapeshifting without always losing all your energy.
Tier 2
5/5 Naturalist - 10% damage bonus. Need I say more?
0/3 Subtlety - Resto/Balance. Ignore.
3/3 Natural Shapeshifter - Makes shapeshifting cheaper... and lets you get Master Shapeshifter.
Tier 3
0/3 Intensity - Not interesting to cats. Not really interesting to bears, either, but at least they'd get something out of it. Next.
1/1 Omen of Clarity - Free stuff is good mmkay?
2/2 Master Shapeshifter - With Natural Shapeshifter, we've spent 5 points to get only a 4% damage bonus (less mana cost is good but meh.) We spent 5 points to get 10% just a few minutes ago. What gives? Well... it's not worth it without spending all 5 points here, and there's nowhere we'd rather spend all 5 points, so here it goes. And really... it's 4% damage bonus across the board, don't complain.
Feral Talents
Tier 1
5/5 Ferocity - Reduces the Energy cost of some key abilities (with the changes to Mangle, it's most important for Rake and Swipe for cats)
5/5 Feral Aggression - Increases damage done by Ferocious Bite - not very useful except in long raid boss fights, but then it can make a significant difference.
Tier 2
3/3 Feral Instinct - The stealth upgrade is a nice bonus. 30% additional swipe damage is HUGE. This talent was left off single-target maximized builds before the changes to Mangle.
2/2 Savage Fury - 20% increased damage to Rake and Mangle (and Claw, but... ew.) So... 20% increased damage to Rake here. Rake is a fairly large chunk of our DPS. Take it!
0/3 Thick Hide - Bear talent, safely ignored.
Tier 3
2/2 Feral Swiftness - Not the most key talent, but the increased movement speed really helps get on target faster and stay on target longer during movement-heavy fights. Increased dodge chance helps survivability as well.
1/1 Survival Instincts - An emergency button for 1 talent point, to help you through those rough patches, worth taking it.
3/3 Sharpened Claws - Static crit chance bonus? Yes, please!
Tier 4
2/2 Shredding Attacks - Shred is one of your key DPS and combo point regen abilities, so reducing its energy cost by 18 is huge.
3/3 Predatory Strikes - This gives you a bunch of attack power (and can randomly give you an instant-cast nature spell. While it is rarely to your benefit to cast spells... it might help? It's here for the huge AP bonus, though.
2/2 Primal Fury - You're going to crit, a LOT. This gets you free extra combo points when you do.
2/2 Primal Precision - A HUGE chunk of Expertise you don't need on gear is great, and you get refunded if any of your finishing moves fail to land. Which they shouldn't, but that's another discussion, and sometimes it's unavoidable.
Tier 5
0/2 Brutal Impact - Increasing the stun duration of Pounce is... well it's PvP-focused and if you're going for a PvP spec you might want it... but here it's not really that useful. Maybe, possibly, if you had free points you wanted to spend, but I'd still spend them elsewhere.
1/1 Feral Charge - Allows invisible-flying-cat-leap and helps in engaging enemies quickly. Worth 1 point.
0/2 Nurturing Instinct - I'm not really sure how this is useful (maybe PvP for a hybrid heal/cat spec?).
Tier 6
0/3 Natural Reaction - Bear Talent.
5/5 Heart of the Wild - 10% increased attack power... yum...
3/3 Survival of the Fittest - 6% to all attributes? Awesome! Oh and cats get to be uncrittable too?? Sweet!
Tier 7
1/1 Leader of the Pack - Static raidwide 5% buff to ranged and melee crit chance is good for 1 point.
0/2 Improved Leader of the Pack - Wouldn't be a terrible choice to put any points you want to move in. Not great, but not wasted either.
0/3 Primal Tenacity - Not a bad PvP talent, but kinda wasted on a PvE build.
Tier 8
0/3 Protector of the Pack - You are not a bear. Bad kitty.
3/3 Predatory Instincts - Damage from Melee crits increased 10%. Not too shabby, and a reduction to damage from AOE effects to boot.
0/3 Infected Wounds - Not a bad debuff.... but doesn't help us at all. Maybe if your raid group needs the debuff, and you've got points to spare....
Tier 9
3/3 King of the Jungle - A key talent to keep us going by giving us a way to quickly regenerate energy, with some side perks on top.
1/1 Mangle - One of our key debuffs, and a damage ability. There's a reason people refer to one cat strategy as Manglespam.
0/3 Improved Mangle - Without this, Manglespam is a costly tactic (and you may actually want to Claw (ew!) instead).... but since it lasts 1 minute you shouldn't be using it often enough for the increased cost to matter, since normally you'll be behind an enemy so you can Shred.
Tier 10
5/5 Rend and Tear -Increases a bunch of your damage on Bleeding targets. Since you make targets bleed (a LOT!), increases a bunch of your damage.
1/1 Primal Gore - You should Rip on any boss fight - trash you won't have time. But for boss fights, gives you the ability to crit. More random free damage, and it only costs 1 point.
Tier 11
1/1 Berserk - Become the flailing cat-ball of death. You know you want to.
You may (or may not) have noticed that I'm 1 point short - that can go where you feel it will be best utilized (1/2 iLotP or 4/5 Furor are probably your best bets).
The Glyphs
Generally speaking, your best three major Glyphs are:
Rip: Increases duration (and thus damage) of Rip by 4 seconds.
Shred: Makes your Shred extend Rip by 2 seconds, up to 6 seconds total - so makes Shred doubly-important when Rip is up.
Savage Roar: Makes the ability that you always have up and buffs all of your attacks buff them more.
If you're weird and just don't like those, consider these Glyphs, which, while subpar, are not horrible:
Mangle: You probably should shift talent points around to take iMangle if you're going to use this. It makes Manglespam better...
Berserk: You get to be a cat-ball of death for a little longer.
Minor glyphs are a little more malleable. The generally accepted "best" are:
Challenging Roar: Not as cool for cats as bears, but makes it easier for you to sacrifice yourself (or try to shift to bear and tank for a few seconds) to save your healer.
Unburdened Rebirth: I honestly don't think any Druid should be without this.
Dash: Remember me talking about how it's important to move quickly in certain fights?
Peronally, I drop Challenging Roar for Aquatic Form and Dash for Glyph of the Wild. Personal choice.
So what's the point? See Part 1. We increase our damage a bunch, sure, but we've made a lot of our abilities synergistic - as I said then, Savage Roar buffs everything, Mangle buffs Rip, Rake, and Shred, Rake and Rip both buff Shred, Shred extends Rip... and on the occasions we get to Ferocious Bite or have to Claw, they've got some buffs too. The really tricky part is keeping everything going properly.
Stay tuned for Part 3 (Gear, Gems, and Enchants)! (Sometime before Cataclysm... I hope...
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Little Druid that Could
Awhile back I was running some regular commentary about my guild and the progress we'd been making in ICC and whatever other random game or real life thought crossed my mind. Well... I figure since I took more than a month to write the first post of my Kitty primer I should ramble on awhile about what's been going on, starting, of course, with the most important person on the planet...
WARNING: POOPY DIAPERS AHEAD!
Kaethir's Cub
My little one was born, of course, back near the end of March. She's grown from the measly 6lb 3oz she was at birth to a whopping 10lb 7oz as of a week or so ago... Needs more meat on her bones, she's not gonna tank any bosses at that size!
She's doing great, no jaundice or major problems, and she's been sleeping through the night almost since the day my wife went back to work. She's been "talking" for awhile now, smiling and giggling and generally making our lives wonderful.
Not to say she's perfect, but, well, she's perfect! She has of course the times that she decides to poop while you're changing her diaper... four times in a row... but I couldn't have asked for a better infant. The few times she's cried there's always been a reasonable reason (gas, constipation, or the doctor sticking her with a giant needle) and so far she's just been a wondrous little miracle.
Sorry, I'm a new Dad, sometimes I just have to get mushy about her.
Movies
I don't recall mentioning much of anything about movies before, but I enjoy good Sci-Fi, Adventure, and Action flicks as much as the next person and I wanted to mention that Iron Man 2 and Avatar are both really good films that have come out in the last few months. You should see them, or so I would have you believe.
Also, I saw an advertisement for The Expendables. Anything with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Terry Crews is going to be either really, really good, or really, phenomenally bad. I'm cautiously optimistic.
One final note on movies and then I'll quit. In a moment of masochism I decided to DVR Transmorphers when I saw it on Encore. I noticed this littlegem pile of awful awhile back in Blockbuster. Incidentally, it came out a little before Transformers, which was an infinitely better movie. I watched about 20-30 minutes of it (that I can't get back) before deciding that there was no redeeming quality to it, at all. IMHO, and in no particular order, it had bad acting, directing, casting, special effects, music, choreography, and writing, and the plot (which seemed like some inane mashup of the Matrix and Transformers) had to have been written by a dyslexic chimpanzee. Save yourself.
Epic Adventurers and ICC
On with the show.
When last we left ourimpaled imperiled heroes, Epic Adventurers had finally downed Deathbringer Saurfang in 25-man mode. We've had a few changes to our raiding schedule since then, but we've continued to press onward.
Our progression 10-man team (which I, unfortunately, am unable to participate in) has downed Festergut, Rotface, and the Blood Princes, while our 25-man team is regularly one-shotting the first 6 bosses (through Saurfang, plus Festergut and Rotface) in one night.
We run a fun/alt 10-man run on Sunday nights, which regularly clears through Saurfang. The group I led in this past Sunday took a couple of shots at Rotface but couldn't pull it off.
I have been learning more and more about the intricacies of playing a Feral DPS, and I've had occasional opportunities to tank even on our 25-man runs, which has been a blast for me. I've been topping 8k DPS against Saurfang, without optimizing my gems. I share some gear between my sets, so it's impractical to completely optimize for either, and I think I've done well with the limitations I have.
The big team is currently stumbling over the Dreamwalker. The strategy we've been employing is to have just 2 tanks to hold down the baddies, each one generally hanging out at the point of the wall in between the spawn points on each side of the green dragon, with the melee DPS roughly divided up between the sides and the ranged DPS and heals more or less roaming around the middle, assisting wherever it is needed. Owing to the nature of the fight, we've been running a little healer heavy.
We seem to be having some difficulty keeping up. I'm not entirely certain where the problem is. This is complicated by the fact that due to my reduced raiding schedule, I'm not there every week.
It has been suggested to me that we should use 3-4 tanks, split up the DPS more, and engage the Adds closer to their spawn points. I'm a little leery of the idea, but I may propose it to our raid leader as something to try. I'm sure we'll get it figured out soon.
Two posts in three days? Is the ground getting cold for anybody else?
WARNING: POOPY DIAPERS AHEAD!
Kaethir's Cub
My little one was born, of course, back near the end of March. She's grown from the measly 6lb 3oz she was at birth to a whopping 10lb 7oz as of a week or so ago... Needs more meat on her bones, she's not gonna tank any bosses at that size!
She's doing great, no jaundice or major problems, and she's been sleeping through the night almost since the day my wife went back to work. She's been "talking" for awhile now, smiling and giggling and generally making our lives wonderful.
Not to say she's perfect, but, well, she's perfect! She has of course the times that she decides to poop while you're changing her diaper... four times in a row... but I couldn't have asked for a better infant. The few times she's cried there's always been a reasonable reason (gas, constipation, or the doctor sticking her with a giant needle) and so far she's just been a wondrous little miracle.
Sorry, I'm a new Dad, sometimes I just have to get mushy about her.
Movies
I don't recall mentioning much of anything about movies before, but I enjoy good Sci-Fi, Adventure, and Action flicks as much as the next person and I wanted to mention that Iron Man 2 and Avatar are both really good films that have come out in the last few months. You should see them, or so I would have you believe.
Also, I saw an advertisement for The Expendables. Anything with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Terry Crews is going to be either really, really good, or really, phenomenally bad. I'm cautiously optimistic.
One final note on movies and then I'll quit. In a moment of masochism I decided to DVR Transmorphers when I saw it on Encore. I noticed this little
Epic Adventurers and ICC
On with the show.
When last we left our
Our progression 10-man team (which I, unfortunately, am unable to participate in) has downed Festergut, Rotface, and the Blood Princes, while our 25-man team is regularly one-shotting the first 6 bosses (through Saurfang, plus Festergut and Rotface) in one night.
We run a fun/alt 10-man run on Sunday nights, which regularly clears through Saurfang. The group I led in this past Sunday took a couple of shots at Rotface but couldn't pull it off.
I have been learning more and more about the intricacies of playing a Feral DPS, and I've had occasional opportunities to tank even on our 25-man runs, which has been a blast for me. I've been topping 8k DPS against Saurfang, without optimizing my gems. I share some gear between my sets, so it's impractical to completely optimize for either, and I think I've done well with the limitations I have.
The big team is currently stumbling over the Dreamwalker. The strategy we've been employing is to have just 2 tanks to hold down the baddies, each one generally hanging out at the point of the wall in between the spawn points on each side of the green dragon, with the melee DPS roughly divided up between the sides and the ranged DPS and heals more or less roaming around the middle, assisting wherever it is needed. Owing to the nature of the fight, we've been running a little healer heavy.
We seem to be having some difficulty keeping up. I'm not entirely certain where the problem is. This is complicated by the fact that due to my reduced raiding schedule, I'm not there every week.
It has been suggested to me that we should use 3-4 tanks, split up the DPS more, and engage the Adds closer to their spawn points. I'm a little leery of the idea, but I may propose it to our raid leader as something to try. I'm sure we'll get it figured out soon.
Two posts in three days? Is the ground getting cold for anybody else?
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
A Primer on Kitty DPS, Part 1 (Mechanics, Everybody Else, and the Rotation)
Kaethir's back for round 3!
Please see the caveats from the Bear and Tree primers.
Please add to those caveats that at the time I began writing this, I'd only actually had a strict feral DPS spec for essentially one and a half raids, so while I think I know what I'm talking about, I may be off a little bit.
Mechanics
Feral DPS is one of the more difficult rotations to pull off. To be great it requires keeping track of 3 boss debuffs, 3 player buffs, and timing cooldowns of these with how much energy and combo points you have and can generate. Our debuffs are two bleed effects and a bleed-damage-increasing effect. Our non-static buffs increase our physical damage by 30% (finishing move, duration varies), increases damage done by 40 for 6 secs (and returns energy!), and reduces the energy cost of all abilities by 50% for 15 secs.
Due to the nature of the beast, Kitties do best on stationary fights where they can simply lock in to their priority system of a rotation and ignore everything else. In ICC, fights like Deathbringer Saurfang and Festergut are pretty much the Cat's meow (I'm sorry, sometimes I can't help being punny.) There is basically no movement and no target switching involved. We get a lot of our DPS from our two bleed effects - Rake and Rip - and the interactions between those, Mangle, and Shred. Yet still, the biggest chunk of our DPS comes from pure melee white damage.
Since one of our most important DPS abilities (Rip) really wants to have 5 combo points every time we use it, and our only AOE ability (Swipe) is too energy-intensive to use for more than a brief burst, we don't tend to shine in fights where there are lots of adds we have to deal with, or lots of target switching for one reason or another.
Even more important than that, though, is Savage Roar. Since it increases the damage done by every attack we do, it is of utmost importance that we keep it up at all times. As you'll see below, it's the highest priority in our stack.
A side effect of this is that one of the most effective gemming strategies for us CAN be to stack Armor Penetration. I will explain that emphasis later.
Also, because you are a Feral Druid, much like bears you will talent yourself into Leader of the Pack, increasing physical critical chance across the raid. Depending on your exact spec, you may or may not provide the random chance of heals that the typical bear talent spec does.
What Everybody Else Needs to Know
What your raid needs to know first and foremost is that if it is possible to assign you a task that lets you rip into a single target (i.e. leave you on Deathwhisper's shield) it will maximize your ability to help the raid. Not that you're useless otherwise, it's just that those types of tasks are how you can put out the most damage you're going to do, and as a DPS that's almost the most important thing you can do.
Secondly, if your raid is cohesive enough to allow for it, Blood DKs should be targeting you with Hysteria in stationary fights as previously mentioned - you can stack all of your buffs with it and it helps every single one of your attacks rather than just some.
Other than that, it's standard Druid stuff - you have a raid-wide static buff (Leader of the Pack, in this case) and a raid-wide castable buff (Mark/Gift of the Wild), and you can Hibernate, Cyclone, Root, and Battle Rez.
This post seems rather underwhelming after my previous entries - perhaps because there's a little less interaction between other players and DPS than there is in the other direction.
The Rotation
Cats don't exactly have a set rotation. They have a priority system, one which can be brutal if you miss on a part of it, but it goes like this, quoted from Elitist Jerks:
With the recent changes to Mangle, keeping it up is easy - hit it once a minute. That's about the only part of this that's really easy.
The post I pulled that from explains a little farther on why some items are further up or down the list. Basically, the idea is that the abilities that buff more things are more important - Savage Roar buffs everything, Mangle buffs Rake, Rip, and Shred, and Rake and Rip buff Shred (but... Rip is less efficient if it's not at 5 CPs).
Among the things I have learned is that one of the quickest ways to get better at Kitty DPS is to understand that while you have to follow this system, you also have to understand the concept of energy efficiency. In other words, if you already have a Rake up, don't Rake again until it falls off. And if it will fall off before your GCD, WAIT for it to fall off, then hit Rake. If you clip the last tick, you have made the energy you spent on your last Rake less efficient. The same is true for Rip, and Savage Roar, although in a slightly different manner.
Being able to wait for the split second it sometimes takes for things to fall off helps in more ways than is immediately apparent. In addition to making the energy you spent more efficient, it forces you to give your energy a small amount of time to regenerate, which means that when you do fire off that next ability, you have more energy to go after the next one immediately, if that is so needed (and it often is).
I have often heard that certain DPS classes have a very smooth rotation. For example, I have some limited exprience with Ret Pallies, and what I have been told bears out my experience - that is, once you start into your rotation, it's fairly smooth - you use whatever ability is off cooldown. Cat abilities (for the most part) don't have cooldowns, so one of the daunting tasks facing a new Cat is understanding which ability it is most important to use when, and why. Hopefully, between the explanations above and those coming when I go through Specs and Glyphs will make the whys a little more clear.
Whew. That was a long time coming! I (can't) promise the next post will come quicker (but I expect it will)!
Please see the caveats from the Bear and Tree primers.
Please add to those caveats that at the time I began writing this, I'd only actually had a strict feral DPS spec for essentially one and a half raids, so while I think I know what I'm talking about, I may be off a little bit.
Mechanics
Feral DPS is one of the more difficult rotations to pull off. To be great it requires keeping track of 3 boss debuffs, 3 player buffs, and timing cooldowns of these with how much energy and combo points you have and can generate. Our debuffs are two bleed effects and a bleed-damage-increasing effect. Our non-static buffs increase our physical damage by 30% (finishing move, duration varies), increases damage done by 40 for 6 secs (and returns energy!), and reduces the energy cost of all abilities by 50% for 15 secs.
Due to the nature of the beast, Kitties do best on stationary fights where they can simply lock in to their priority system of a rotation and ignore everything else. In ICC, fights like Deathbringer Saurfang and Festergut are pretty much the Cat's meow (I'm sorry, sometimes I can't help being punny.) There is basically no movement and no target switching involved. We get a lot of our DPS from our two bleed effects - Rake and Rip - and the interactions between those, Mangle, and Shred. Yet still, the biggest chunk of our DPS comes from pure melee white damage.
Since one of our most important DPS abilities (Rip) really wants to have 5 combo points every time we use it, and our only AOE ability (Swipe) is too energy-intensive to use for more than a brief burst, we don't tend to shine in fights where there are lots of adds we have to deal with, or lots of target switching for one reason or another.
Even more important than that, though, is Savage Roar. Since it increases the damage done by every attack we do, it is of utmost importance that we keep it up at all times. As you'll see below, it's the highest priority in our stack.
A side effect of this is that one of the most effective gemming strategies for us CAN be to stack Armor Penetration. I will explain that emphasis later.
Also, because you are a Feral Druid, much like bears you will talent yourself into Leader of the Pack, increasing physical critical chance across the raid. Depending on your exact spec, you may or may not provide the random chance of heals that the typical bear talent spec does.
What Everybody Else Needs to Know
What your raid needs to know first and foremost is that if it is possible to assign you a task that lets you rip into a single target (i.e. leave you on Deathwhisper's shield) it will maximize your ability to help the raid. Not that you're useless otherwise, it's just that those types of tasks are how you can put out the most damage you're going to do, and as a DPS that's almost the most important thing you can do.
Secondly, if your raid is cohesive enough to allow for it, Blood DKs should be targeting you with Hysteria in stationary fights as previously mentioned - you can stack all of your buffs with it and it helps every single one of your attacks rather than just some.
Other than that, it's standard Druid stuff - you have a raid-wide static buff (Leader of the Pack, in this case) and a raid-wide castable buff (Mark/Gift of the Wild), and you can Hibernate, Cyclone, Root, and Battle Rez.
This post seems rather underwhelming after my previous entries - perhaps because there's a little less interaction between other players and DPS than there is in the other direction.
The Rotation
Cats don't exactly have a set rotation. They have a priority system, one which can be brutal if you miss on a part of it, but it goes like this, quoted from Elitist Jerks:
1. Keep up Savage Roar
2. Keep up Mangle
3. Keep up Rake
4. Use shred for CP regeneration (remember, that points 2 and 3 are more important)
5. When at 5 CP and Rip is not up, use Rip
6. When below 30 Energy, use TF
7. Use Clearcast Proccs for Shred
8. When at 5 CP and Rip and SR are running with 8 seconds (might be longer, depending on your gear) or longer each, use FB
9. When Rip and SR will drop at nearly the same time (with less than 3 seconds difference), try to recognize it early. Then use SR with a small amount of CP to desynchronize both timers.
10. Use Berserk only at high energy, (but not higher than 85) not directly after TF and as often as possible. If you will get Hysteria or some boss mechanics will enhance your damage, save it for these situations.
With the recent changes to Mangle, keeping it up is easy - hit it once a minute. That's about the only part of this that's really easy.
The post I pulled that from explains a little farther on why some items are further up or down the list. Basically, the idea is that the abilities that buff more things are more important - Savage Roar buffs everything, Mangle buffs Rake, Rip, and Shred, and Rake and Rip buff Shred (but... Rip is less efficient if it's not at 5 CPs).
Among the things I have learned is that one of the quickest ways to get better at Kitty DPS is to understand that while you have to follow this system, you also have to understand the concept of energy efficiency. In other words, if you already have a Rake up, don't Rake again until it falls off. And if it will fall off before your GCD, WAIT for it to fall off, then hit Rake. If you clip the last tick, you have made the energy you spent on your last Rake less efficient. The same is true for Rip, and Savage Roar, although in a slightly different manner.
Being able to wait for the split second it sometimes takes for things to fall off helps in more ways than is immediately apparent. In addition to making the energy you spent more efficient, it forces you to give your energy a small amount of time to regenerate, which means that when you do fire off that next ability, you have more energy to go after the next one immediately, if that is so needed (and it often is).
I have often heard that certain DPS classes have a very smooth rotation. For example, I have some limited exprience with Ret Pallies, and what I have been told bears out my experience - that is, once you start into your rotation, it's fairly smooth - you use whatever ability is off cooldown. Cat abilities (for the most part) don't have cooldowns, so one of the daunting tasks facing a new Cat is understanding which ability it is most important to use when, and why. Hopefully, between the explanations above and those coming when I go through Specs and Glyphs will make the whys a little more clear.
Whew. That was a long time coming! I (can't) promise the next post will come quicker (but I expect it will)!
Friday, March 12, 2010
Oddities
I attempted to point out in my last post that my guild achieved I've Gone and Made a Mess on our last venture into 25-man ICC, a fact for which I am proud - it was only our second Saurfang kill, and only our second attempt that night.
I informed my raid leader last week that upon the birth of my child (an event which I expect will force me to take a break from raiding for a week or two at the very least, probably more), I will no longer heal on our guild raids - I will either be tanking with another group or I will remove my healing spec for a feral DPS, but until then I would still have the tree stuff and be available for it.
So this week when we hopped in, I didn't ask, I just tree'd up and off we went.
We plowed our way through Marrowgar and the trash before Deathwhisper (picking up the Deprogramming quest), before I looked at recount and realized we had 8 healers on the run. I pointed this out, but my raid leader already had a plan in mind - I tanked up to hold on to Darnavan. Unfortunately some pets and a hunter hit him before I could really get him out of the way, and the damage put in before I could get him back under control made him too weak, and he died about halfway through the first phase. So I switched to cat form and ran around helping out killing wherever I could and we moved on.
He had me stay in cat form for the Gunship Battle, which was odd to me but since it's a ROFLstomp anyway I guessed it didn't matter.
Then Mr. Imma-vampire-really rolled up... and while he initially told me to switch back to tree (which I expected, as my healing is stronger than my DPS due to my DPS being a tank spec and mostly tank gear), some personnel switched out and he told me to switch back to cat form.
He made it very clear to me that I was to keep Mangle up at all times.
I put out what I think is a respectable 4700 DPS on our second (and successful) attempt. I actually think the raid-wide 5% physical crit increase had more to do with our success than the Mangle debuff, but that's neither really here nor there. I put out that much DPS while missing key DPS talents (such as King of the Jungle), having tank-based gems and enchants almost across the board, and having all tank-based glyphs. Yes, I was far short of the raid-leading DPS of one of our rogues, just shy of 9k, but considering the limitations I was working under I don't think I did poorly.
Examining my performance on WorldofLogs, I had 88% uptime on Savage Roar, 83% on Rake, 43% on Rip, and only 4.9% on Mangle. I'll have to check, I suspect Mangle is getting overwritten/overruled by someone else's buff somehow. I had 32 hits/crits of Mangle and it only applied the buff 10 times. Melee was ~39% of my damage, followed by Rake (15%), Rip (~15%), Shred (14%), and Mangle (10%). Ferocious Bite and Swipe (why did I Swipe?) trailed down at the bottom.
I need to push that Savage Roar uptime closer to 95-100%, and the same with Rake. I'm not sure what a good target for Rip uptime is but I've got to be better than 43%.
All in all it was a fun experience and I'm actually looking forward to switching.
Thanks for reading!
I informed my raid leader last week that upon the birth of my child (an event which I expect will force me to take a break from raiding for a week or two at the very least, probably more), I will no longer heal on our guild raids - I will either be tanking with another group or I will remove my healing spec for a feral DPS, but until then I would still have the tree stuff and be available for it.
So this week when we hopped in, I didn't ask, I just tree'd up and off we went.
We plowed our way through Marrowgar and the trash before Deathwhisper (picking up the Deprogramming quest), before I looked at recount and realized we had 8 healers on the run. I pointed this out, but my raid leader already had a plan in mind - I tanked up to hold on to Darnavan. Unfortunately some pets and a hunter hit him before I could really get him out of the way, and the damage put in before I could get him back under control made him too weak, and he died about halfway through the first phase. So I switched to cat form and ran around helping out killing wherever I could and we moved on.
He had me stay in cat form for the Gunship Battle, which was odd to me but since it's a ROFLstomp anyway I guessed it didn't matter.
Then Mr. Imma-vampire-really rolled up... and while he initially told me to switch back to tree (which I expected, as my healing is stronger than my DPS due to my DPS being a tank spec and mostly tank gear), some personnel switched out and he told me to switch back to cat form.
He made it very clear to me that I was to keep Mangle up at all times.
I put out what I think is a respectable 4700 DPS on our second (and successful) attempt. I actually think the raid-wide 5% physical crit increase had more to do with our success than the Mangle debuff, but that's neither really here nor there. I put out that much DPS while missing key DPS talents (such as King of the Jungle), having tank-based gems and enchants almost across the board, and having all tank-based glyphs. Yes, I was far short of the raid-leading DPS of one of our rogues, just shy of 9k, but considering the limitations I was working under I don't think I did poorly.
Examining my performance on WorldofLogs, I had 88% uptime on Savage Roar, 83% on Rake, 43% on Rip, and only 4.9% on Mangle. I'll have to check, I suspect Mangle is getting overwritten/overruled by someone else's buff somehow. I had 32 hits/crits of Mangle and it only applied the buff 10 times. Melee was ~39% of my damage, followed by Rake (15%), Rip (~15%), Shred (14%), and Mangle (10%). Ferocious Bite and Swipe (why did I Swipe?) trailed down at the bottom.
I need to push that Savage Roar uptime closer to 95-100%, and the same with Rake. I'm not sure what a good target for Rip uptime is but I've got to be better than 43%.
All in all it was a fun experience and I'm actually looking forward to switching.
Thanks for reading!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Cat Druids and DPS
Since I'm considering changing my secondary spec from healing to DPS, I figured I should do some research into Cat DPS and try to formulate a plan to be at least decent at it from the get-go. What results below is some of my stream of consciousness formed into intelligible words, thoughts, sentences, and yes, even paragraphs. Please keep in mind that this is from research, not from first-hand experience.
You hear from a lot of people that DPS as a feral Druid is one of the hardest ways to do DPS in the game, at least if you want to put out good numbers for it. What is it about Cat DPS that makes it so hard?
The key issue is the number of, for lack of a better term, things that you have to juggle. You have two ability resources to keep track of (Combo Points and Energy), 3 buffs for which you have to keep track of the buff or a cooldown for it (Savage Roar, Tiger's Fury, Berserk), and 3 debuffs that you, again, have to keep track of, or track of the cooldown (Mangle, Rake, and Rip). Plus you need to find time for your other big hitters (Shred, Ferocious Bite). FB, SR, and Rip all require both CP's and Energy, Berserk has multiple uses and you don't want to have just used Tiger's Fury, everything needs Energy, and your priority list includes things like "Use X if Y and Z have more than 8 seconds left."
I've heard of addons that give you helpful hints of what order to use your abilities in. I'll have to look in to that.
To go into a little more detail, here is the "priority list" as gleaned from EJ's Cat DPS Guide.
Should this eventuality come to pass, however, I will make a valiant effort!! And, of course, report my results to the ravenous masses of my readers!
What's that? I was getting a little evil-dictator-ish? You mean I'm not? And I only have 3 readers? *sigh* Fine.
I may even do a Cat primer... although if I do it before I switch, it will be purely from research, not from personal experience.
You hear from a lot of people that DPS as a feral Druid is one of the hardest ways to do DPS in the game, at least if you want to put out good numbers for it. What is it about Cat DPS that makes it so hard?
The key issue is the number of, for lack of a better term, things that you have to juggle. You have two ability resources to keep track of (Combo Points and Energy), 3 buffs for which you have to keep track of the buff or a cooldown for it (Savage Roar, Tiger's Fury, Berserk), and 3 debuffs that you, again, have to keep track of, or track of the cooldown (Mangle, Rake, and Rip). Plus you need to find time for your other big hitters (Shred, Ferocious Bite). FB, SR, and Rip all require both CP's and Energy, Berserk has multiple uses and you don't want to have just used Tiger's Fury, everything needs Energy, and your priority list includes things like "Use X if Y and Z have more than 8 seconds left."
I've heard of addons that give you helpful hints of what order to use your abilities in. I'll have to look in to that.
To go into a little more detail, here is the "priority list" as gleaned from EJ's Cat DPS Guide.
1. Keep up Savage RoarThat's scary, to say the least. It's hard enough to keep a priority list 5-6 items long (Maul, Swipe, Mangle, Lacerate, FFF, Demo Roar) with all the possibilities in WoW. Ten, I think, will be nearly impossible.
2. Keep up Mangle
3. Keep up Rake
4. Use shred for CP regeneration (remember, that points 2 and 3 are more important)
5. When at 5 CP and Rip is not up, use Rip
6. When below 30 Energy, use TF
7. Use Clearcast Proccs for Shred
8. When at 5 CP and Rip and SR are running with 8 seconds (might be longer, depending on your gear) or longer each, use FB
9. When Rip and SR will drop at nearly the same time (with less than 3 seconds difference), try to recognize it early. Then use SR with a small amount of CP to desynchronize both timers.
10. Use Berserk only at high energy, (but not higher than 85) not directly after TF and as often as possible. If you will get Hysteria or some boss mechanics will enhance your damage, save it for these situations.
Should this eventuality come to pass, however, I will make a valiant effort!! And, of course, report my results to the ravenous masses of my readers!
What's that? I was getting a little evil-dictator-ish? You mean I'm not? And I only have 3 readers? *sigh* Fine.
I may even do a Cat primer... although if I do it before I switch, it will be purely from research, not from personal experience.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Ramblings
Rambling the First, on Hybrids
My apologies to the author whose post inspired me, I cannot recall which blogger it was to give credit. I can, however, use a post from my own blog's history as a starting point.
In examining the fact that Druids simply don't follow the rules, I mentioned the fact that we can, to a certain extent, shift roles mid-fight by shifting forms. While this remains true and does showcase our hybrid capabilities, we aren't and can't be good enough at a backup role to be truly hybrid, with half an exception for bears and cats.
Blizzard has made a point of making characters with multiple roles specialize and remove their hybrid capabilities in order to be competitive with other classes. While this is a good thing in general - hybrids shouldn't be able to be the best simultaneously at 2 things - it has the (I hope) unintended consequence of removing some of what I consider the key benefits of playing a hybrid class. While being able to switch between tank, healer, and 2 different forms of DPS is nice, we can't effectively switch in the middle of a fight, which would seem to me to be one of the key benefits of being a shapeshifter.
The shifting of stats for bears means that bears and cats can fake it - the gear they want shares stats, with the exception of cloaks, amulets, rings, and trinkets - but you're not going to have "enough" survivability as a bear or be solid enough at DPS as a cat to make this worthwhile, and if you've taken the talents to be really great at one you're going to be missing key talents for the other, not to mention the glyph clashing. The other two forms that share key stats - boomkin and tree - cannot really share because the forms that make each great are not attainable at the same time, and even if they were, you need spirit as a tree and hit as a crit chicken, and each is not needed by the other. This means that unlike cats and bears, where the gear (if not the gems and enchants) can be shared, trees and boomkin are unable to really move between each other.
They are doing away with a number of secondary stats in Cataclysm. Perhaps some of the Druid's hybrid-ness will return, but I doubt it.
In this blogger's humble opinion, the era of the true hybrid is over, and has been for quite some time. Being one of the things that drew me to this class, I hope it can come back, but I mourn its loss and expect that it is gone for good.
Rambling the Second, on Dual-spec
On a side note, Blizzard can we please have 7 specs? I would so have one of each Druid spec and a PvP spec or three. I would even pay 1000g apiece, at least for 2 more than I have now, so I could have a cat and boomkin spec. What's that you said? No other class in the game could use more than 3, and most couldn't even really do that? So what, *I* could use it! ;)
Rambling the Third, on My Specs, My Guild, and Raids
Speaking of specs, I'm toying with a couple of ideas. While I enjoy making like a tree and leaving (ooooh, bad pun!), I have an issue that I've been pigeonholed into that role in my guild's raids (long story, if you've read my earlier posts you should have a taste) and it causes me to have an issue with gear. Specifically, I don't get the opportunity to roll on gear for my main spec.
I've attempted to discuss the issue with my guild and raid leader, and while a resolution may still be forthcoming, I'm not hopeful.
This leads me to some decision making regarding my options. The last resort, always, is to leave and try to find another guild. I'd like to avoid that if I can, because frankly I love my guild, I'm friends in real life with a number of the members, and I don't really relish the thought of trying to find a new one that I would fit in to. Since I don't want to do that, I'm left with trying to find options that simultaneously allow me to stay in the guild, continue running raids, and actually have a chance to roll on gear for my main spec sometime.
The second-most extreme (beyond /gquit) option I have thought of is removing the ability to do anything but tank by respeccing by secondary spec into another bear spec. I think I've just about ruled that out though, because I believe that would lead to no guild raids for me.
I could also forsake the 25-man raids to run my own 10-mans. However, with Wednesday and Thursday claimed for 25-man runs and Tuesday a hit-or-miss night to have the folks in my guild on to play, that seems like an iffy proposition at best. I tried running Mondays in the past, and by then most of our players have their mains locked. My Friday and weekend availability is not steady enough to run then. Plus, given that I have committed to my significant other that I will only raid on a regular basis on one night a week, that would preclude me from running in the guild 25-mans, which I also would like to continue doing.
The option that seems to present me with the best situation is to change my offspec from tree to kitty DPS. This would allow me to roll on leather gear and weapons that I would actually use for my main spec even if I'm in my offspec, because the two forms share stats now. The major downside to this plan is that I lose the flexibility of having a healing spec. If I'm not tanking I become just the meat in the room. (For all you DPS out there, I'm kidding. I love you guys.) Also, I still couldn't roll on tanking accessories for things such as the cloaks, rings, amulets, and trinkets, but I can get by with Emblem items for most of those.
Of course, this plan also requires me to do the research and take the time to learn how to be good with the class with the hardest DPS rotation in the game... or so I've been told it is. Stay tuned, my blog name may become somewhat of a misnomer.
Rambling the Fourth, on Blog Changes
Check out some changes on the site, I added some perma-links to the bear and tree primers on the right, and a real blogroll and limited the blogroll updates to the latest 5. Also, I actually touched my profile. No pics yet, but I'm working on it!
Rambling the Fifth.... ok I'm done.
As always, thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!
My apologies to the author whose post inspired me, I cannot recall which blogger it was to give credit. I can, however, use a post from my own blog's history as a starting point.
In examining the fact that Druids simply don't follow the rules, I mentioned the fact that we can, to a certain extent, shift roles mid-fight by shifting forms. While this remains true and does showcase our hybrid capabilities, we aren't and can't be good enough at a backup role to be truly hybrid, with half an exception for bears and cats.
Blizzard has made a point of making characters with multiple roles specialize and remove their hybrid capabilities in order to be competitive with other classes. While this is a good thing in general - hybrids shouldn't be able to be the best simultaneously at 2 things - it has the (I hope) unintended consequence of removing some of what I consider the key benefits of playing a hybrid class. While being able to switch between tank, healer, and 2 different forms of DPS is nice, we can't effectively switch in the middle of a fight, which would seem to me to be one of the key benefits of being a shapeshifter.
The shifting of stats for bears means that bears and cats can fake it - the gear they want shares stats, with the exception of cloaks, amulets, rings, and trinkets - but you're not going to have "enough" survivability as a bear or be solid enough at DPS as a cat to make this worthwhile, and if you've taken the talents to be really great at one you're going to be missing key talents for the other, not to mention the glyph clashing. The other two forms that share key stats - boomkin and tree - cannot really share because the forms that make each great are not attainable at the same time, and even if they were, you need spirit as a tree and hit as a crit chicken, and each is not needed by the other. This means that unlike cats and bears, where the gear (if not the gems and enchants) can be shared, trees and boomkin are unable to really move between each other.
They are doing away with a number of secondary stats in Cataclysm. Perhaps some of the Druid's hybrid-ness will return, but I doubt it.
In this blogger's humble opinion, the era of the true hybrid is over, and has been for quite some time. Being one of the things that drew me to this class, I hope it can come back, but I mourn its loss and expect that it is gone for good.
Rambling the Second, on Dual-spec
On a side note, Blizzard can we please have 7 specs? I would so have one of each Druid spec and a PvP spec or three. I would even pay 1000g apiece, at least for 2 more than I have now, so I could have a cat and boomkin spec. What's that you said? No other class in the game could use more than 3, and most couldn't even really do that? So what, *I* could use it! ;)
Rambling the Third, on My Specs, My Guild, and Raids
Speaking of specs, I'm toying with a couple of ideas. While I enjoy making like a tree and leaving (ooooh, bad pun!), I have an issue that I've been pigeonholed into that role in my guild's raids (long story, if you've read my earlier posts you should have a taste) and it causes me to have an issue with gear. Specifically, I don't get the opportunity to roll on gear for my main spec.
I've attempted to discuss the issue with my guild and raid leader, and while a resolution may still be forthcoming, I'm not hopeful.
This leads me to some decision making regarding my options. The last resort, always, is to leave and try to find another guild. I'd like to avoid that if I can, because frankly I love my guild, I'm friends in real life with a number of the members, and I don't really relish the thought of trying to find a new one that I would fit in to. Since I don't want to do that, I'm left with trying to find options that simultaneously allow me to stay in the guild, continue running raids, and actually have a chance to roll on gear for my main spec sometime.
The second-most extreme (beyond /gquit) option I have thought of is removing the ability to do anything but tank by respeccing by secondary spec into another bear spec. I think I've just about ruled that out though, because I believe that would lead to no guild raids for me.
I could also forsake the 25-man raids to run my own 10-mans. However, with Wednesday and Thursday claimed for 25-man runs and Tuesday a hit-or-miss night to have the folks in my guild on to play, that seems like an iffy proposition at best. I tried running Mondays in the past, and by then most of our players have their mains locked. My Friday and weekend availability is not steady enough to run then. Plus, given that I have committed to my significant other that I will only raid on a regular basis on one night a week, that would preclude me from running in the guild 25-mans, which I also would like to continue doing.
The option that seems to present me with the best situation is to change my offspec from tree to kitty DPS. This would allow me to roll on leather gear and weapons that I would actually use for my main spec even if I'm in my offspec, because the two forms share stats now. The major downside to this plan is that I lose the flexibility of having a healing spec. If I'm not tanking I become just the meat in the room. (For all you DPS out there, I'm kidding. I love you guys.) Also, I still couldn't roll on tanking accessories for things such as the cloaks, rings, amulets, and trinkets, but I can get by with Emblem items for most of those.
Of course, this plan also requires me to do the research and take the time to learn how to be good with the class with the hardest DPS rotation in the game... or so I've been told it is. Stay tuned, my blog name may become somewhat of a misnomer.
Rambling the Fourth, on Blog Changes
Check out some changes on the site, I added some perma-links to the bear and tree primers on the right, and a real blogroll and limited the blogroll updates to the latest 5. Also, I actually touched my profile. No pics yet, but I'm working on it!
Rambling the Fifth.... ok I'm done.
As always, thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!
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