.jpg)
Just a quick note: despite what you might have read recently, maul is most certainly not your second-biggest source of threat behind faerie fire. You might be able to make an argument that it's the second biggest source of threat per rage point, but most of the time who cares? On most raiding bears maul is 50-60% of your overall threat for a single-target encounter, and for higher-end bears it is as much as 70%. For multitarget fights it still remains huge due to the glyph of maul, and only is eclipsed by swipe (and only when you have at least 4 mobs and preferably a lot more than that).
Also, swipe is not at all inefficient compared to lacerate on a per-threat point. Unless you have shredding attacks - and what bear build has that? - lacerate costs the exact same amount of rage that swipe does. Swipe on a single target puts more threat on that target than lacerate does; the only time this is not the case is when you have a lacerate-5 stack up, and you should only do that on long fights or when you really want to do max damage. It is otherwise as expensive as lacerate, and definitely on multimob fights is far more efficient.
Yeah, I'll post from time to time when things get really wrong (like they did above) or when it strikes me. But some other quick notes:
- The rage normalization stuff I've talked about elsewhere; maul being removed from on next swing is great. Rage normalization is a bit scary, but mostly because it's going to be a focus on warriors (rightfully so) and not on bears.
- Shockingly the LK weapons are good, in case you were wondering.
- Bears are really awesome on LK too. There's a reason the only guild that's killed LK25 has a bear with a pvp weapon as their main tank, and 3 ferals on the kill.
- You should get stacks of glyph of mangle and carry them around too, and swap them with your glyph of maul when you don't need multitarget stuff.
- No, manglespam doesn't beat shred. Even with 4pT6.
- Ferals aren't going the way of blood DKs, and our mastery will be split between cat and bear the same way our tier gear is.
- Yes, frost resist gear on Sindragosa is good
- Yes, you should get out of improved mangle in cat form and put those points elsewhere.
Any other quick bits of news you'd like my opinion on before I disappear into the ether?
Posts
20 comments:
Knew you couldn't stay completely away, Kal. How's your son doing?
Well, FFF technically is the biggest source of threat per rage point, since its costs no rage. :P I think BBB got mixed up...FFF has the second highest Damage->Threat modifier (close to 3x), with only Lacerate being higher. That said, it's mostly irrelevant since Maul>all, in absolute terms.
Alaron - thanks. :) My son is doing really well; he just turned 1 and is amazingly strong. Like, push me around on a non-wheeled chair strong.
I don't think that FFF has the highest damage-threat multiplier. For starters, it's not constant; it provides a static amount of threat (632) and then adds that to the damage and multiplies by the base. The highest threat multiplier is actually swipe, since it gets the base threat multiplier and then adds another 50% on top of that. If you're counting static values, maul actually does really well here - it has a static value of 432, which is third to lacerate. And lacerate gets that stupid divisor anyway, so it's just barely above maul and below FFF.
But yeah, it's simply wrongly stated. If you're not mauling, you're not doing the right thing. It's to the point where maul is so good that even if you're rage starved you should maul instead of other things unless debuffs fall off.
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?47813-WOTLK-Bear-Threat-Values
Faerie Fire Feral: (36 + 638 + damage done) * stance
Mangle: Damage done * stance
Maul: (422 + damage done) * stance
Lacerate (Initial): .5*damage + 515) * stance
Lacerate (Bleed): .5*damage done * stance
Swipe: (1.5 * damage) * stance
Tested as of 3.3 PTR (but has not changed most of the expansion so should not have changed in the patches since ICC release and now)
WASSUP!
"No, manglespam doesn't beat shred. Even with 4pT6"
Awesome, made me lol.
WELCOME BACK!
Great to read your stuff again. And with Darksend recently posting again...it's a good day for feral durids.
Geez, now to figure out where I can possibly spend those improved mangle talent points.
Good to see you again Kalon. I'm glad all is well with you.
Nice to see a fresh post Kalon, hope its a sign of weakness and a potential run to the blogsophere.
I've been working on a post that I'd like to get your input on, can you email me at feralaggression@gmail.com?
On a side bar it seems we're still in sync as I just wrote a post about the 3 pts in imp mangle this morning.
Willowbear - feel free to check it out if you need some suggestions on where to invest those pts
Kal,
Yeah, it's impressive how strong toddlers are. My 19-month-old insists on helping me bring in groceries.
Eh, forgot about the Swipe buff...bah. If you can hang around for a couple days, there'll probably be some stuff for you to talk about after tomorrow. :P
Alaron - I'm kinda dreading the changes that are going to be announced. Considering how much of the feral tree is 'gain x stat' or 'do x more damage' the whole thing would need to be revamped heavily to compensate for removing those into the mastery section. And I'd be surprised if they did that and explained it well. But yeah, I'll stick around and talk about it some.
Vallen - mail sent.
Willow, Jace, Lifeforce - thanks :)
Darksend - after rereading it I think I see where he's coming from. He's still wrong, but I see. It's mostly that someone will quote him as actually being right about something and then someone will have to correct him...again. Ugh.
/cheers to see Kalon again!
And God yes re: LK weapons. I've been salivating over the polearm for a while now, and yet we can't get anything but the dagger and the crossbow to drop. I think we've gotten the caster staff once apart from those. Our raid leader remarked (with no small agony) the other day that we are sharding gear off the ****ing Lich King.
I hope everyone in your family's doing well, and we'd all love to see you around more (but I'll understand if that doesn't happen). Crossing my fingers for the druid announcements tomorrow (and have laid in a stock of caffeine if we're the poor sots who get ours at 3:00 am my time).
Welcome back Kal!
Good to see a blogger returning to the fold, hope to hear more from you.
Whether we like it or not changes are a coming, still its all early days and as the beta starts and progresses im sure Bliz will hone and perfect bears and kitties (i hope)
Allison - thanks :) The family's doing great. CS has apparently been okay on LK kills, but the drop rate on tokens has been wildly screwed up. People are working on their second set of Vanq, while some people don't have their first set of conq at 264 even. It's stupid.
Petra - yeah, the Cat changes are going to be a fun time. Hopefully we'll start hearing and seeing more from the beta soon.
WB Kalon, hope you will be a little more active again. Missed your posts
Muzo
The problem with the LK weapons is that most (only 2 guilds have) can't kill him on heroic and the regular weapons aren't as good as the heroic weapons off other bosses. That and the polearm is BiS for MM hunters except for the heroic version. Add the two together and it seems like you're better off taking Bloodfall or Distant Land and letting the hunters have Oathbinder.
Is 4pt10 still best for tanking if you don't have access to heroic tokens to use for bear, but you have access to all offset heroic gear from 11/12?
anon the second - the normal mode weapon is better than distant land or bloodfall if you're trying to get to the arpen cap. For bears I'd agree strongly - it's much easier to get the non-LK weapons. For cats, though, it's plenty good and great as a replacement for Twin's Pact.
Oh, right, this:
Is 4pt10 still best for tanking if you don't have access to heroic tokens to use for bear, but you have access to all offset heroic gear from 11/12?
I don't know why you wouldn't be able to get any 277 tokens but can get any other piece of gear - but yes, I'd think so. That implies you'd be working on something like LK HM, and on that an extra cooldown is a godsend. Especially as the health scales up and you start getting enough.
I'm personally not going for 4pT10, but that's mostly because I'm not working as a tank on the hardest of hard modes, so having just generically better gear wins over a cooldown when I do tank.
"I don't know why you wouldn't be able to get any 277 tokens but can get any other piece of gear - but yes, I'd think so. That implies you'd be working on something like LK HM, and on that an extra cooldown is a godsend. Especially as the health scales up and you start getting enough. "
That's exactly what we're working on, but I'm dps main spec. I have 4pc 264 gear for both cat and bear (lol vanq tokens), but most of the offspec leather gear for the tier slots not many people want. So if they dropped again I could probably pick up head, leg, shoulders offset, but I had been sticking with the 264 4pc because of the cooldown. I just wanted another opinion.
"anon the second - the normal mode weapon is better than distant land or bloodfall if you're trying to get to the arpen cap. For bears I'd agree strongly - it's much easier to get the non-LK weapons. For cats, though, it's plenty good and great as a replacement for Twin's Pact."
You can get ArP hard capped without an ArP weapon, and even without being hard capped most theory I'd seen showed the 277 weapons rated higher than the 271 Oathbinder.
Rawr agrees with you, Anon. I've personally found it harder to get that cap without DBW and a weapon. If you have one or the other and have most of the other drops, you're probably right - Distant Land beats it. If you don't, it's tough.
I should have put it this way: until you can reach the arpen cap without the weapon the LK staff beats the heroic non-LK staves.
I forget how much of an impact DBW has on hard cap. I've had it for so long I didn't even think about that. I think I had it before the LK weapons were even known so I never looked at the math without including it. That's my fault for not considering the other possibilities.
Now if I could just get the 277 Distant Land to drop.
The 4pc is nice to be able to cd every soul reaper instead of worrying about the second tank taunting. Not sure if the bonus will be enough to do the same on heroic, but I did it on regular for the first time this week solo tanking LK minus the shamblers.
Post a Comment