The Fluid DruidShapeshifting With Style.

I’ve been quiet lately, since there hasn’t been too much feral news to discuss. Some quick updates on what I’ve been doing and where the site’s going from here:

Website: I’ve seen a few 500 errors pop up when trying to get to the site. I think I’ve fixed the problem, but please send me a PM if you happen to get it again. In the process, I’m updating WordPress and all my plugins, so also let me know if anything looks broken or odd. One of these days, I’ll get around to updating my guides.

Personal Stuff: Still in Iraq, working long days that are getting longer. Day-to-day operations are easy; picking up and moving an entire force out of a country is harder. That said, most of our stuff will be moved in the next few months, so things will slow down rapidly after that. I’ll also be relocating to Kuwait at some point.

Writing: I haven’t linked it in a while, but I’ve been writing a series of feral strategy guides for Firelands for WoW Insider. You can read them here. Subscribe, if you haven’t already; after my Rag strat post (which should go up any day now), I have a column going up next week that does some DPS comparisons between ferals and other classes, using data from Raidbots and WoL. Good stuff, will probably be controversial. After that, I’ll be shifting gears and writing some guides on feral soloing while we all wait for 4.3.

For this blog, I have some more mathy things planned, whenever I get time to sit down with Mew. If there’s anything you’d like to see in particular, feel free to shoot me a PM on the forums. (I’m also off-handedly considering entering the Blizzard writing contest; never written fiction before, but always wanted to try.)

Other Games: Due to laptop limitations, I’ve been spending non-WoW time playing indie games and stuff on the DS. Two gems I’d like to highlight-

Radiant Historia (DS). Man, I’m not sure how I missed this game when it came out. If you like JRPG’s even a tiny bit, you owe it to yourself to check this out. I might be committing blasphemy, but it feels a LOT like a Chrono Trigger 2 (don’t even mention that CC game…that’s in the same memory hole as the Matrix sequels.) Let’s see: no random battles, skippable cutscenee/dialog (and/or fast-forward), combat that requires thinking, mostly well-developed characters, mature plot, multiple endings, can skip back in time to re-do battles/select different conversation responses to see what happens, etc. Loved it. Put 35 hours into the game, beat it, then cracked a FAQ for the first time to complete the two sidequests I missed to get the “true” ending. (And yes, there’s an optional super boss, who I left alone.) Oh, and no level grinding necessary.

Space Pirates and Zombies (PC). I love space games, but they’re few and far between. Years and years ago, I played a game called Subspace, which was essentially multiplayer PvP Asteroids, on crack. (Subspace was reborn as Continuum when Virgin dropped it, and is still active today.) It was loads of fun, and I still drop back in for some Trench Wars now and then. Well, if you strip out the multiplayer, but add a strategic map, fleets, missions, plot, you name it…you get SPAZ. If you liked Homeworld, Inner Space, Freelancer, Privateer, etc., you owe it to yourself to check this game out. On Steam and most of the other download services for $15; demo’s available as well.

So, GC came out of hiding and posted a long dev blog post on threat. (Read the whole thing.) Summed up, it basically says, “we decided threat management wasn’t a fun situation anymore, so it’s gone. Oh, and btw, we’d like all the tanks to work like DK’s do.”

My thoughts:

• I disagree with him about throttling. Full-time tanks are welcome to correct me on this, but IMO, what makes the game fun is tradeoffs (Do we bring 6 healers or 7? Do I gear for hit or haste? Leatherworking or Enchanting?). As a tank, having to at least consider threat made things more interesting. As a RL, having to consider who knew how to use threat-reduction CD’s effectively was interesting. Lots of heroic-mode fights are/were exercises in threat management (Staghelm, Hodir), and I don’t remember tanks getting upset over those.
• That said, I’d have appreciated this change a LOT more in WOTLK, when we had 1) crappy Cower, and 2) died in one errant hit. HP pools have increased to the point where my druid can take a few hits in 5-mans and survive.
• I do agree, though, that LFD presents unique challenges, due to drastically different gear levels. The threat increase could’ve just been baked into the LotD buff.
• Long-term, I like the idea of moving mitigation away from passive stats and more towards active stats. They’ve already done that with DK’s and Druids, really, so we have a trend…problem is, two-thirds of all tanks are shield tanks, who will not like change. There’s a reason only one-third of tanks are DK’s and Druids. :)

Comment away!

(Reposted with subject line; yay for bad Internet dropping out while typing up post)

Last time I blogged about a bug (Rake only giving 1 CP on crit) Blizz fixed it in a few days, so here’s hoping. :) Please (if you have 4pT12 and can confirm) check out this bug report on the US forums and bump/confirm as you can. Sadly, I think this one’s going to take a patch to fix.

What’s the bug? Well, Primal Madness is supposed to grant you 20 extra energy (current/max) on popping TF/Zerk, and take it back when they fade. It’s not a great talent, but it’s a small DPS increase since you have more energy to burn during times you do more DPS (TF/zerk up) and less energy when they drop off. Unfortunately, if you have 4pT12 equipped, the remaining duration on PM has a chance to be reduced to 2 seconds when you use a finisher. This means you could pop TF, hit Rip, and watch 20 energy drop off while you still have 3 seconds left on your TF.  Looks like the set bonus implementation for buffing Berserk got copied over to PM. Oops.

This isn’t a very large bug; the number of ferals with 4pT12 is still pretty small, and it only reduces your DPS by 1% or so…but obviously, progression guilds are looking for every edge. So. Go bump.

(Thanks to Yawning for awesome Mew ninja coding skills to code up the bug, Floofles for spotting it in the first place, and Reesi at TIB‘s Tweet for bringing it to my attention.)

-Al (whose crappy laptop ABSOLUTELY DRAWS THE LINE at Alysrazor’s tornadoes).

The Curse client does a lot of things right…but it does NOT handle version control very well.

Say you don’t run it for a week or so (don’t have an always-on internet connection or something)…you start it up, and get this:



A week! A WEEK!

Grr. Okay, let’s “go there now.” Click Yes.

What’s this?

A 403 forbidden page. Classy.

Oh, and did I mention that trying to just reinstall it gives you an obscure error and directs you to a forum where they tell you your .NET is corrupted, which is totally wrong? A simple program uninstall and reinstall fixes things, but geeze.

(Sorry for the off-topic post, just ranting. When you get 2gig a week of BW as a cap, you get mindful of crap like this.)

On-topic…I got to DPS for our second Baleroc kill (real last-minute, hey, can you do X so we can do Y, etc.). All I had was my hybrid bear/cat spec from soloing SSC. (1/3 Fury Swipes, no BiTW, no FA, etc.) Reglyphed real quick, loaded Ovale, and boom. 23k. I know, not anything special, but after playing resto for a while, it’s good to see that I remember what I”m doing. :) Oh, all JP/MF/359 gear except for a Ranseur’s, since they’re dropping like candy in our runs. (Now if only the healer staff would drop…)

In case you haven’t heard, UW finally got nerfed yesterday, as I predicted.

• Unheeded Warning now grants 1926 attack power, instead of 680 weapon damage. (source)

Looking quickly at the numbers, this pretty much puts it in line with the other ilvl 359 raiding trinkets, Prestor’s and Essence. Fluid Death is still #1 for 359′s, but any of the 372′s+ beat it.

(FWIW, I was never a fan of UW for PvE, but I agree it was too powerful for PvP.)

Peace out.

-Ala (who’s still raiding as Resto and is struggling to find things to write about at the moment…which isn’t helped by the Army deciding to block Google Reader. 150+ blogs ARE NOT BEING READ, and it irks me.)

Wow. Long time, no write. Blame the Army for filtering access to all the good websites at work and then making me, you know, work. :P (Just kidding, I love my job.)

Anyway, received several questions about what to use VP’s on. It’s really dependent on your current setup; if you have full T11 and your offset is one of chest/legs/hands, your decision is easy. However, if you have mix-and-match heroic pieces, things get a little more complicated. Use Rawr (or Mew for extra precision), either tool works well. I’m also assuming you’re in an average guild that is still working on Firelands normal modes and won’t have access to heroic gear for a good long while. (Depending on how to define your data set of guilds: if you use killing Shannox as a floor, the average raider is 3/7 or 4/7 at this point. If you define the floor as “killed all T11,” then the average raider is 2/7 or 3/7. FWIW, my guild just killed Beth’tilac for the first time after the hotfix.) Given those caveats:

• Chest: I would definitely get this first. This doesn’t drop off Occu’thar, so you have less chance of getting the sinking “damn I JUST paid VP for that” feeling. Either way, if you have 4pT11, don’t equip it until you get 2p of T12.
• Gloves/Legs: Once you get the chest, you DEFINITELY want to get 2pT12. (Yeah, it’s that good.) At this point, you’ll have to make a decision with pluses and minuses. The offset gloves and legs are both fairly accessible (Beth’tilac and Shannox, respectively). There’s a decent 365 hands item from Molten Front dailies, plus a 378 LW gloves pattern. However, the tier legs are probably the worst piece of the tier set, in comparison to the offset alternative. If your guild is killing Beth’tilac regularly (or will be soon), then go with the tier gloves. If you don’t care about the tiny minmaxing (~20 agi difference or so), then feel free to get the easier-to-obtain offset gloves instead. Either way, once you have 2pT12, you want to hang on to 2PT11 as long as possible, so don’t pick up the alternative piece immediately.
• Neck: Again, this depends on your speed. There’s a better neck that drops off Rag, but if it’s going to be a while, go ahead and buy the VP neck; no Molten Front option here.
• Bracers: Bracers are BoE, so if you have extra time reserves (to farm VP on an alt) or gold reserves (to buy them from someone else’s alt), then no VP investment
  needed. Prices will fall dramatically the longer you wait, of course. Wrists also drop off Alysrazor.
• Ring: One ring drops off Beth’tilac, so we’re looking for options for the other slot. Best, of course, is the rep ring, but seeing as you only gain rep from boss kills once you hit Revered, it’s going to take a while. (275 rep each for first four, 440 each for last 3, 21k to get to exalted.)  There’s two 365 rings available from the Molten Front (one requiring only one day’s worth of dailies to do), so it’s not a large upgrade.
• Relic: 365 relic is available from Molten Front, and upgrades for this slot are tiny anyway.

Blue post

There was a couple interesting blue posts about ferals a few days ago:

Thanks for taking time to break your feedback down, Hotted. We’re keeping a close eye on Feral in PvP and understand the concern. Things currently on our radar include the Berserk duration, the Unheeded Warning trinket, and the Predatory Swiftness talent.

Let’s please not devolve too much into a discussion of “get your PvE/PvP balance out of my PvP/PvE game!” It’s just not beneficial to anyone.

That said, we’re happy with Feral performance in PvE overall. It we were to nerf Predatory Swiftness, it’d have a minor impact on PvE. Unheeded Warning is both a PvE and PvP problem. The particular mechanics of the trinket keep it disproportionately powerful for Feral druids. Nerfing Berserk would have PvE ramifications, but we’ll take steps overall to make sure your dps doesn’t drop in PvE. We do everything we can to ensure we’re considering all aspects of gameplay when approaching class balance.

Mostly, I see this as a tempest in a teapot that’ll blow over. It’s hard to get an objective read on the situation (forums discussing WoW arena play are quite possibly the most anti-objective data source I’ve ever seen). UW will probably get a nerf (they don’t want people using PvE trinks in PvP anyway). Pred Swiftness may get a CD, but that is likely something that wouldn’t go in until the next patch. I could also see PS being changed to a passive ability that consumes CP’s (ie you don’t get a finisher and a instant cast, one or the other.) I don’t see them changing Berserk at all; too much synergy with the set bonus to be making adjustments like that quickly. I’d have to run numbers, but I suspect that a nerf to Berserk duration might push 2pT11/2pT12 ahead of 4PT12 for PvE damage purposes.

Feel free to comment; I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. (On possible PvP changes or VP’s, take your pick.)

Several proto-posts because I haven’t had time to sit down and write out something in full:

• Rake is bugged. I’m sure most of you have noticed this by now, but Rake is only giving 1 CP, even on a crit. I don’t think this is intended behavior. Surprisingly, I can’t find a mention of it on the Bug Report forums, so I went ahead and reported it on the US forums here. Feel free to bump/confirm as desired. (If any of my EU readers would like to report this in the EU forums as well, that’d be great.) EDIT: Fixed in Tuesday’s maintenance, thanks all for bumping!
• Early reports suggest feral DPS has improved, vis-a-vis other classes. I don’t want to beat this drum too hard yet, but early reports show us being slightly above-average, compared to the decidedly below-average spot we were in previously. (The relatively large standard deviation on the “all parses” data, though, indicates either that there’s still a wide range of skill for feral players or we’re fairly subject to RNG…though we still need much more data before coming to any definitive conclusions.)
• Hybrid feral is still viable in Firelands, but only for a few encounters. Is it better DPS to pop into Cat for 20s (Rag) or 30s (Beth’tilac), or just burn your leftover Rage and Vengeance? IMO, I think swapping to Cat is the better option, but that’s anecdotal. Anyway, Shannox is the only encounter where I can see it being really helpful (esp. in 10 man, having a hybrid feral Riplimb tank who can go Cat and Berserk for the final burn on Shannox). What do you think?
• I’m raiding as Resto for the moment. Low FPS ended up killing me. Sigh. At least with healing, I can turn my camera away and get reasonable framerates. Just an FYI, since people keep asking me about my Armory.

There are few things in the feral  repertoire I can think of that have caused as much vitriol on blogs and forums then the positional requirement of shred.  Pretty much at the start of every expansionand the weeks leading up to every major content patch the posts begin to fly demanding the removal of the positional requirement, or defending it.  T11 has been likely the most extreme example of this as we had to deal with several bosses that presented greater then average difficulty to be able to shred consistently.  The good news is that Blizzard has heard the issues and are taking steps to ease the difficulty required for our most potent single target attack.

• Now there are some encounters where the positional penalty is just too extreme. In 4.2 we have the ability to make the “back” of a boss encompass 240 degrees, and we have done so for bosses like Magmaw, Sinestra and Ragnaros. Furthermore, there are fights where Killing Spree and Feral Charge just kill you. That obviously isn’t acceptable. We have manually added some safeguards to try and manually solve a few encounters, such as Magmaw, but even that isn’t bulletproof and we are investigating more robust and global solutions. But it’s technically challenging given the diversity of our encounters. 
   

This is an all around win for us.  While it might have been nice to have these changes come in a little sooner, it’s nice to know that going forward we are not likely to have to deal with another encounter like Al’Akir.

Note:

While I have you here I wanted to take an opportunity to talk for a minute about a new area of the Fluid Druid Forums.  The Raid Strategies section in the Kitty DPS forums is now open for business!  Please feel free to post questions or tips and tricks you have learned during your experiences raiding in the new tier.  Have a cool way of using Feral Charge?  Post it up.  Getting stuck with a mechanic you can’t seem to get around?  Ask how some of our experts handle the situation.  Have a cool video from a feral prospective?  Show it off!  I will be collecting tips, tricks, videos and faq’s and regularly updating the first post of each thread.  So get cracking and best of luck in The Firelands!

I really don’t want to write this post. Every time I write about feral gear or stats, the #1 question I get is “What secondary stat is best? What should I reforge to?” That question has an answer, but before I get there, I want to say this:

IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER ANYMORE.

Seriously. There is no magical reforging solution that will solve your problems. It’s too bad WoW isn’t like the diet industry. If it was, I could write a book called “Fix your DPS Woes in 8 Weeks with Alaron’s Reforging Guide!” Include a few cherry-picked log parses, some motivational stories, and boom; best-seller. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.

Before wasting tons of effort on reforging, I would consider checking all of the following:

• Rotation/skill. If you’re consistently going out of range of the boss, letting your bleeds fall off without refreshing them, or energy capping consistently, it’s going to hurt your numbers.
• Latency/FPS. Self-explanatory, hopefully. I’m suffering through this right now.
• Gear. You still need lots of Agility…no getting around that.
• Raid composition. A raid full of top DPS will boost your DPS naturally – the fight will be shorter, which means you’ll have more time (percentage-wise) under single-use buffs such as a potion and Hero/BL.
• Raid strategy. Interrupt duty sucks for DPS.
• Fight mechanics. Ranged mobs we can’t target sucks for DPS.
• Enchants/Consumables. Of course.

Once all that is sorted, THEN worry about reforging your secondary stats.

Also, consider that stat values have a complex interrelationship. The simple “RSV Charts” that I and other sites used to run are helpful, sure, but it’s important to understand that those values are usually derived from a single data point, typically a BiS gearset. Increasing a stat raises the value of all other stats, and decreases the value of that stat, which makes exact numbers very difficult to come by. That hasn’t mattered so much in the past when we had a clear stat priority, but with numbers this close for this expansion, it’s much much harder to definitively say what’s “best.”

Anyway, rant over, stats, right. In 4.1, Mastery was king due to its strong effect on our bleeds. However, the (relative) nerfing of Rip has devalued it somewhat, bringing mastery back to the pack (and bringing hit/exp up in value somewhat). Haste got a bump in value due to the enhancement of white attacks (from the buff to Savage Roar). The thing to remember, though, is that all the haste/hit/expertise in the world does you little good if you’re not actually in melee range.

Here’s my recommendations:

For new/inexperienced ferals, or those with poor computers/connections: Focus on capping Hit/Expertise. The potential DPS loss is slight, and the actual gain will be much greater from not having to compensate for missed specials.

For exceptionally complex fights: As above, focus on capping Hit/Expertise. One less thing to worry about.

For AoE fights: Again, Hit/Expertise. Unlike single-target abilities, Swipe does not refund energy if it misses. If you can cap Hit/Expertise, go for Haste for more OOC procs.

For heroic 5-mans: Don’t waste gold on reforging/gemming, unless you really want to.

Raiding, Ilvl 359: Mastery still slightly edges out Haste, at this gear level. If you’re still rolling with a full-Mastery setup, I wouldn’t worry about changing it up. Crit remains the best third option.

Raiding, Ilvl 372-378: Mastery and Haste are so close in value that many differing conclusions have been reported. Some live 4.2 experience is probably going to be necessary to determine how much out-of-range time exists in the fights. Crit/Hit/Expertise are almost exactly equal in theoretical value. I’d stay with Mastery until you break 2pT11. (BTW, keep 2pT11 until you can get 4pT12, it’s that good a bonus…more to come when I finish my gear column) After that, I’d probably recommend a Hit/Exp cap, then Haste or Mastery as you prefer.

Raiding, ilvl 391: Haste pulls a bit ahead of the rest at this gear level, from a simulation perspective. It’ll take quite a while for someone to get full 391, obviously, but once you’re raiding H Firelands, try a Haste setup and see how you fare.

Or, ignore all that, and do what you like. It doesn’t make that much difference anyway. (Which, coming from the guy who spent hours running numbers comparing ArPen vs. Agi back in Ulduar, is somewhat depressing.) If you’re really interested in the numbers, feel free to dive into the thread on our forums (here and here are good points to start from). Have fun in Firelands!