Mid-Week Update
7:43 AM
Just a few Feral nods from the devs:
Feral PvP on the other hand, needs some help. Our defense is almost non existent and the SR situation is just awkward at best. Feral PvP HP looks like a roller coaster... falling and rising fast, it's stressful and isn't very fun to be honest.Whoa. I am not sure what the original poster is talking about in terms of Feral needing help, or why a 3min damage reduction cooldown is going to help overall, but that is a huge buff to Feral+Disc since Feral is getting Dispersion from Symbiosis. That means that I will have access to Barkskin (20%, 1m), Dispersion (90%, 2m), and Survival Instincts (50%, 3m) at my disposal to survive. Dispersion is obviously the winner here since it can be used while stunned and it has the most damage reduction at a medium cooldown, but having all these different damage reductions is going to be amazingly overpowered. I really do not see how anyone is missing this.
We gave Survival Instincts back to Feral recently. Not sure if you have that change.
The rest of the posts were regarding Moonkins, so I will skip them, but there was one more post I wanted to share:
P.S. Why are treants even there?I honestly think that people have this perception of the Tree Posse; they do not understand just how good they are in a PvP context. Maybe this quote is in reference to Moonkins and Raiding, but for Feral this talent is a no-brainer for PvP. I hate to go on these rants all the time, but Incarnation is not a very good damage-dealing ability.
Because they do good damage? And they want to be your friend?
Let me explain one last time: Incarnation puts you into a state where you simply stop using Shred and instead use Ravage. Straight off the bat, Ravage is better damage (720% vs. 504%) but costs 5 additional energy; if we work out the DPE, then Ravage is 16% damage per energy with Shred at 12.6% per energy, and until the last patch where the cost was reduced from 50 to 45 for Ravage the dpe was 14.4% which is much closer. Now, we can see plainly that Ravage is better than Shred, and with the costs being roughly the same now there is even a decent argument for choosing it.
However, the difference is really the damage boost we need to look at. Incarnation gives 30s of up-time on a 3m cd, which means that we need to look at the best-case number of Shreds-vs-Ravages that can be used in a 30s window (and let's assume Berserk is up as well for best-bang-for-buck). If we look at it naively and assume someone else is providing bleeds and ours have 100% up-time and we applied them a long time ago (not going to happen in practice, but is good for an upper-bound), then we can say that in 30s we will gain at least 300 energy with zero haste. Let us say that we pooled to 100 energy meaning that we netted 400 energy over 30 seconds to use entirely on Ravages-as-Shreds. Keep in mind that we are not even talking about finishing moves here... just Ravage-spam all the time.
This is equal to 17 Ravages (400 energy banked / ( 45 energy cost / 2 berserk ) ) instead of 20 Shreds (400 eb / ( 40 ec / 2 b ) ). Adding up the napkin maths to pretend we are dropping one big Ravage and one big Shred gets us the following:
Ravage: 12,240% damage (17 Ravages * 720%)
Shred: 10,080% damage (10 Shreds * 504%)
Difference: 2,160% damage
What does all this mean? This means that Incarnation IN THE BEST AND UNATTAINABLE CASE will get you basically 4 additional Shreds. If you assume that Berserk will not be used during this time, then the difference is basically 1 Ravage. If you start factoring in things like having to use energy to apply Rake, SR, and Rip (and maybe you want to throw an FB in there) then the balance really starts tipping toward Ravage, but the difference goes down significantly. Remember, Ravage is better damage overall, but the fewer landed means the better burst wins out with the difference being potentially smaller.
Just to put a nice little bow on this rant, if you also factor in that in PvP a large chunk of your Incarnation time is going to be spent eating CC, then it looks even less appealing. Additionally, that 2,160% best-case damage difference looks pretty paltry when you consider that a 3min cooldown is going to net you four additional Shreds in damage. However, if you look at Tree Posse, you get roughly that same amount of damage (4 Shreds), but it comes with a 5s stun, a 1min cooldown, and it does not matter if the opposing team CCs you through its duration -- the trees keep hitting stuff.
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August 10, 2012 at 12:29 AM
Wow, with Survival Instincts back in for Feral, damage mitigation is going to be almost as good Bear form minus the actual Bear :O I agree with you that people seem to be bemoaning the spec separation and the perceived loss of druid versatility, but not taking stock of all of the great things we now have access to.
Having pets as a feral was kind of an odd concept to me at first, but after playing Enh Shammy for a while I really appreciate the value of having my own minions on CD.
August 13, 2012 at 7:35 AM
"I agree with you that people seem to be bemoaning the spec separation and the perceived loss of druid versatility, but not taking stock of all of the great things we now have access to."
I love this... your comment actually made my heart ache as I thought back on TBC arenas as Feral. I think that is what I'm going to write about today (time permitting).
"Having pets as a feral was kind of an odd concept to me at first, but after playing Enh Shammy for a while I really appreciate the value of having my own minions on CD."
Pets is an interesting concept in general, but my rationale is always from the PvP perspective, and in arenas we often find ourselves using strong abilities with medium-to-long cooldowns and being countered because of loss of control of our character. Recall, I have also played a Warlock in PvP (back in TBC as well) and had a huge amount of fun playing a DoT-based class. I am all in favor of Feral getting some direct damage to complement our DoTs; however, I view pets as yet another DoT that we "apply" and don't have to mess with after the fact. In fact, Tree Posse might as well be a DoT+Stun that has a 1m cooldown; I absolutely love it.
August 14, 2012 at 11:51 PM
@ Reygahnci
Alas, I am a Cata-baby and I never got to enjoy TBC arenas. I look forward to your next article, tho :D
My initial experience with pets was as a brand-new player on a hunter and constantly having to keep track of the damn thing (and doing it poorly). Minions on CD are less about management and more about timing, but I like your view on them as just another type of DoT for Feral, helps it make more "sense" to the spec I think. I'm excited to try it in MoP!