Friday, October 1, 2010

[Druid] some groovy glyphs for ferals

Thanks to lissanna over at restokin, I have a better idea of what glyphs ferals are going to want come the 4.0.1 patch. Note that it's a very good idea to pick these up now if they're cheap, as if you learn them once you'll have them for the rest of your life. Note that I've not figured out exactly what is going to be best; I'm simply posting them to let you be aware of them. They are ranked in order of what I think will be best to worst.

Bear glyphs:

Prime:
Major:
Minor:
I don't think the faerie fire extension will be that critical, but it might be nice. And feral charge going from 15 to 14 seconds isn't that amazing of an ability unless they remove the dead zone and allow us to charge in and get the 15% haste.


Cat:

Prime:
Minor:
5 prime possibilities are interesting. The reason Tiger's Fury is so high right now is that Tiger's Fury appears to be one of the things they'll want ferals to manage, as it adds 15% more damage for 6 seconds. Being able to do this ability every 27 seconds instead of every 30 means that you'll get 11% more TFs in a fight, potentially, which gives a 3.2% DPS increase. Furthermore, right now DoTs don't update with buffs like TF, so you'll want to time it so that your rips and rakes are refreshed when TF is up. This might lead to an optimal rotation where you have this, the Glyph of Shred and the Glyph of Rip and skip the Glyph of Savage Roar - because if you do this you can always update your rips with 15% more DPS, no matter what. More testing is required of course.

Glyph of the Wild is included because of its ability to trigger Omen of Clarity effects very easily. With feral mana regen fairly low, being able to do this more often will be a good thing.

21 comments:

Unknown said...

Fyrry Friends what do you guys think of the new Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration? Is it good/bad?

If I understand it correctly it stops "Frenzied Regeneration" and gives us a healingbuff instead, is this good/bad? I can't really make up my mind.

Unknown said...

Well it sux for the scenario where your heals r dead and you try to stay alive as much as possible...

Cortano said...

Rip Glyph is +15% damage now; max rip time is 22 sec: 16 base + 3 rips @ 2 sec. You are really looking at every other rip being boosted by TF.

Cortano said...

Frenzied Regen: No rage->healing is a little negative, but in its current form it really drains your rage fast. I think most druids will view it as a slightly good thing.

Ferocious Bite: It has changed to be 35 energy + 35 energy for +100% damage. That extra energy usage is actually pretty good: same DPE but twice the DPcombo-point. The glyph probably won't see much use in current form.

tbot said...

Hey kalon, before you do you next big run of numbers. I noticed you haven't been including shred in your valuation of mastery.

considering the tooltip says "things the improve bleed damage improve shred" wouldn't that suggest our mastery is included?

Just a thought

Golle said...

Noes! Rip uptime decided by a cooldown. Me no want! I hope the 15% TF buff will be more dynamic than it is now.

Anonymous said...

The quote is "Effects which increase Bleed damage also increase Shred damage".
Mangle is an effect on the target, along with Trauma.

Rend and Tear does not count as an effect as it's a talent which says Shred gets a bonus on a bleeding target.

Mastery likewise is not an effect.

The fact that mastery has never interacted with shred before tends to lend support to this.

Kalon said...

spda242 - the healing part isn't that special at all (the rage part at least), but giving a big bonus to incoming heals is huge. There might be situations where self-heals are going to be better, but with rage being limited and with heals being more easily timed, I think this is a good glyph.

Cortano: rip's duration is 22 seconds, but your TF uptime is 6 seconds out of 27 - which means that they do overlap, albeit only a bit, and with potentially some difficulty to line up. If this holds, I'll do a diagram of it. As to FB scaling - 100% more FB damage when FB doesn't have nearly as big of damage boosts as it used to (including that it doesn't scale from weapon damage any more) AND that you don't get CP from it means that it's still inefficient compared to shredding or raking with that extra energy.

tbot - mastery does not appear to affect shred in any way. If it did it would be a killer skill for cats, but so far it's just rip and rake.

Helistar said...

I'll do my best to fit a Glyph of Rebirth everywhere. Considering that brezs are being nerfed big way, having the player I just rezzed insta-die due to some aura will have me (and him) banging the head on the keyboard.....

Anonymous said...

Id be interested to see that 'rotation diagram'. Im guessing it will mean a rip starts during every TF and we have 5 seconds rip downtime in every 27 second period.
For rake, assuming 15 secs, I guess we will have one rake ticking with the TF boost then another without and so on...we'd probably have to overwrite the second rake with a TF boosted third though?

Question: With dots now 'extending' rather than overwriting we wouldnt get away with extending our first TF boosted rake towards the end? I guess it would downgrade to a non-TF one? At some point I wonder if they will make our dots dynamic like other classes. If they do, would that mean after 6 secs, rip would downgrade cos we lost TF? Im getting confused now...you need to do a post! :)

Anonymous said...

Lack of competitve dps is still a worry, hope they 'balance' it sooner rather than later. Lack of any acknowledgement from Blizz as to the issue also a worry. However, given what we know I'm inclined to think the new 'rotation' may be just as complex if not more so with the TF change and timing of dots to coincide which I like. However, Im not a good theorycrafter so Im hoping you can clear me up on the below :P

Assuming:

1) Getting dots up > getting SR up
2) Dots tick damage will be based on buffs we have when dot is started (maybe this will change?)

Rotation/priority might be something like

1) Use pounce/free ravage
2) Use up what energy you have to get some combo points - Mangle and Shred
3) Get TF up
4) Get Rake up (whilst TF running)
5) Get 5 pt Rip up (whilst TF running)
6) Get SR up
7) Shred and FB as much as poss
8) Refresh Rake when it drops
9) Get TF up when you can
10) Get Rake up again (probably overwriting the one that was running)
11) Get a new 5 pt Rip up (probably having had 5/27 secs downtime)
12) And so on

Have folks played around with this on PTR? How does it feel? Is there a better way?

Question: Other classes dots will change dynamically based on buffs the caster gets/loses right? But not ours? Might this change do we think? Would that be good or bad thing? On the plu side you could just go for 100% rake/rip uptime but on the minus side only 6/27 secs on both would be buffed.

Question 2: How will the dot clipping thing work? If we clip to extend a TF boosted rake/rip when we dont have TF up any longer will the new/extended time knock off the damage boost or will it extend the boosted dot? I assume not but dont really understand the dot clipping mechanic.

Ackward said...

I tried that rotation yesterday. I went from doing 6500 dps in live to 6250 in ptr (with gliphs: rip, shred, tf and fb; and agi gems, no mastery).
I feel the rotation easier, smoother , less stressing. There are fewer moments for having doubts about what to cast and screw the rotation.

Reforging crit or haste for mastery doesn't seem to be able with my gear. I don't pass the 5700 dps with mastery.

Helistar said...

I did some math and TF-synched Rip loses to constant Rip.

Copypasta from my blog:

BTW napkin math shows that in the current scenario synching TF and rip is a loss: Rip lasts 16+6 = 22 secs, TF has a CD of 27s with the glyph.

If you synch you end up with 11 rip ticks every 27 seconds. If you assume that your rip ticks do D damage and you have 30% crit your total damage every 27 seconds is: D * 11 * 1.3 * 1.15 = 16.445 * D.

If you don't sync and keep 100% uptime you end up with 13.5 rip ticks every 27 seconds: D * 13.5 * 1.3 = 17.55 * D. So a constant Rip is better then a TF-synched Rip. Of course it costs you CP to refresh, so it'll be a matter of seeing if you have something better to do with those CP.

Logique said...

Hey,
So I reforged/gemmed to ~Hit/Exp caps, and gemmed everything else to Delicate Cardinal Rubies (+20 Agi). So far this has put me unbuffed w/ Recount at about 7700 DPS peak, and 7200 DPS sustained at the end of 150 seconds (FnB's average DB Saurfang fight duration) only using one Berserk within that time period. I tried gemming pure haste but the increased regen didn't put me above 6900 DPS, either peak or sustained. And also tried reforging to a 20% mastery rating which also did not cause any measurable differences. As you mentioned keeping TF is a big dps gain. It seems from the numbers I have gotten to be the only way to sustain a relatively elevated level of DPS. Still not sure if the TF Prime Glyph trumps SR.

Is it worth getting my crit rating past the white cap? I have not been FB'ing at all. And when I did try to (huge open spots to do so with the extended SR) it has stunted my sustained numbers and have consequently been Shredding.

Currently on live I peak at about 8900 and sustain at about 7800-7900. This is not THAT much of a discrepancy, however fully raid buffed I'm sure I won't be pumping out 17k +.

Have you run any tests yet at level 80? or just at 85?

- Logique, Fire and Blood

Logique - Fire and Blood said...

Also

As for my opening rotation, I have not been pouncing or ravaging.

My opener goes as follows,

FFF
Mangle
SR
Rake
TF
Berserk
Shred until 5
Rip

Keep TF on CD
Shred For CP

Not sure exactly how timing Dots with TF works.

Would you suggest Ravaging?

Logique said...

*Fixed*

Currently on live I peak at about 8900 and sustain at about 7800-7900. 7200 - 7800 DPS on the Dummy is not THAT much of a discrepancy. However fully raid buffed I'm sure I won't be pumping out 17k +.

Kalon said...

Helistar - I was thinking that as well. And it's not like the other majors are that exciting. The disadvantage is that rebirth is on a 30 min Cd now, so it's not as compelling.

Anon1 - when you extend the dot it gets whatever buffs you have at that point, so if you're not doing TF then, you'll lose 15%. If you do a rip with TF, it'll maintain that high damage until you reapply rip. I want to do a post about it when I'm reasonably sure that this is the intended behavior. I don't think it is, because it makes the rotation for cats way harder than before.

Anon2 - I think getting SR up is a higher priority than people are giving it credit for. It might be more important to get rip up, but spending one CP to get SR up - especially now that (in theory) it increases duration by 6 seconds - is going to be a pretty big win, and 50% more melee damage is going to easily win out over a couple of rip ticks in the long run. That's my theory; I haven't run the numbers. As to buffs affecting dots - the way it works is that dots get the values of spellpower, crit and haste (and presumably mastery) updated all the time, but global values like +50% all damage don't update. That's why TF works the way it does. At least that's what is supposed to happen; I question whether or not this is true now.

Ackward - the crit thing might not be applicable depending on the gear. The folks I've seen that have top end gear seem to benefit from it somewhat. I do think that haste is the odd man out here, as getting more shreds when shreds are so puny doesn't really help, and FB isn't such a gain compared to bleeds and overall damage.

Helistar, I had no idea you had a blog! I'll pimp it. And yeah, the CP thing is what I'm worried about as well; I think that what you say is correct at 80 but not necessarily at 85.

Logique, thanks for doing those runs and tests! That's really useful. Agility is probably the best way to go; haste is good but with the lack of arpen hitting more with melee is just not as awesome. Definitely start out with ravaging; it's a huge upfront dps increase if you can, and if you really want to go nuts berserk then too. A 15% DPS loss isn't so bad, but it's still pretty substantial - and that's on a dummy. On fights where there's a lot more movement and bleeds can't be as much of a factor, I think we'll do substantially worse - fights like LK, for instance. That's more of what I'm worried about. As to timing dots with TF, you need to apply the dot during TF to get the 15% boost.

Anonymous said...

Is it essential for us to keep our t10 4 set bonus once the patch hits? Won't rake crits be built in?

Kalon said...

Anon - it's not essential. In Cataclysm the bonus is going to be +10% more rake damage, which is significantly less of a bonus than what it is now. If you can get 277 pieces that are comparable, you likely should. I would imagine that Ikfirus would be a good choice for a chest piece along with either the legs or the shoulders, but I confess I've not run the numbers. I should do that and check it out.

The two-piece bonus is still reasonable, however.

Helistar said...

@Kalon: yes I recently started a blog, even if it's mostly to provide announcements about my RWF log analyzer (which 1st cataclysm-compatible version ran yesterday for the 1st time... with countless bugs....).

I tested at 85 and right now with "SR at 1-2 CP + Rip at 5" I find myself with leftover CPs, but not enough to reliably put a FB in without losing rip uptime. And with the damage rip is doing (and FP is NOT doing), I think that FBing is a bad idea.

Joshua Muñoz said...

So, speaking of rotations, what's the new optimal bear rotation?

Swipe is weak, Maul is instant cast with a 3s CD on it, so it's not good for macroing to all of your other skills.

Lacerate is the only ability that causes a "high amount of threat" now, so is that the new Maul? Especially with Pulverize (which, from the tooltip, sounds like it consumes a Lacerate stacks), is Lacerate the new thing to macro and just not worry about it?

And then, if that's the case, what's the optimal rotation?