DPS is going to change. No longer can you simply Mangle and then Shred to maybe 4 points, maybe 5 points. All of a sudden Rake is quite viable. And Tiger's Fury means something! Not that you'll have to dredge it out of your spellbooks; it's instant, no cast, no global cooldown. Just macro it to your favorite ability (or all of them!) and you'll have it up as often as is relevant to you. Obviously you don't quite want to do that if you're taking King of the Jungle, what with all that wasted energy, but I'm not so I probably will for a while at least.
A good post about the new DPS cycle is over at Of Teeth and Claws, so I won't try to repeat all of it. Basically, our DPS cycle becomes more of a priority list. The simplified version:
1. Tiger's Fury
2. Mangle
3. Savage Roar (on more than 2 points only)
4. Rip (on 5 points only)
5. Rake
6. Shred
Basically you want all buffs and debuffs up, and if they are (or on cooldown in Tiger's Fury's case,) Shred. The start of your rotation should look like this:
Tiger's Fury + Mangle (macro'd!)
Savage Roar (only if Mangle crit)
Rake
Savage Roar (only if Mangle didn't crit)
Shred to 5 points
Rip
Obviously without Savage Roar before level 75. They should call it Hack and Slash to match the rhythm of Slice and Dice, but whatever.
I ran some DPS tests with a rotation similar to this and found I was doing about 940 DPS, which is a solid improvement despite no longer having Omen of Clarity at my disposal. I no longer expect to be both my guild's top tank and DPS. That's fine with me.
With the patch a lot of other preparation needs to be made. For example, I need to back up my macros because they will be hosted server side now, and I don't want the patch to destroy them. I have also updated my loot lists for my Druid and Hunter, based on new spreadsheets and Toskk's updated method. I still have to figure out what I want to do with my Paladin, and there's no time left! Oh well, at least I have all my talents figured out, that's good enough for now.
One other thing to look at is Glyphs. Being Druids, we really don't have as many glyphs that directly affect us as other classes do. This makes glyph selection considerably easier for us. Our glyphs:
Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration
Glyph of Maul
Glyph of Rake
Glyph of Rip
Glyph of Shred
I intend to take the Maul and Rip glyphs, with intentions to take the Mangle one later on at 80. This is because I believe the other effects are not meant for PvE (Shred) or useless (Rake) or redundant (Growl, assuming it's still affected by hit rating and expertise.) In any case, I think the effects of these glyphs are just more useful in general, since I plan on being flexible enough to be a good DPS. As for the minor glyphs, I plan on going with Challenging Roar, though if something better comes along, it's the first to go, Thorns so that I may actually start using the spell, and Unburdened Rebirth, because it's the best thing to happen to Rebirth since the cooldown was lowered.
Those are my plans for tomorrow (though I guess it's now today, I started writing this at work, but now I'm at home with finally a peaceful moment to myself.) Maybe tomorrow I'll make up some statistics and use them to prove that Eclipse is the central defining talent for Moonkin. You have been warned.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Rend and Tear
When I first saw Rend and Tear, I wasn't too impressed, at least from a tanking standpoint. You see, for some reason, in the back of my head, I've always thought of Mangle as producing more threat. Well, with all this talk of Rend and Tear being such an awesome talent for bear threat, I decided to look into it. Here's a fairly representative report of Druid threat, taken from a Brutallus fight:
Clearly, Maul produces the most threat, about 38% of the threat for the Druid's entire rotation. What does Rend and Tear do for this? Well, the damage goes, up and the innate threat stays the same. Since Lacerate is up pretty much all the time, it's like a flat 20% increase to Maul damage. In the case of the druid above, this increases Maul threat by about 16%. This is about a 6.2% increase in threat overall.
This seems like a decent use of talent points. You get about 1.2% threat per point. But, we're not through yet. You see, any self respecting tank will also take Imp. Mangle, which increases Mangle to occur 33% more often. This will increase the amount of damage done by mangle another 33% on average. Maul still goes up 16% with the addition of Rend and Tear. It's just that the impact of this is less, with Mangle doing more damage. In fact, in this case, Rend and Tear is only a 5.8% increase in threat.
We're still not through. Apparently, all the threat modifiers have changed. Let's rework this table to see what the change looks like all around.
With all these changes, looks like Rend and Tear is about a 5.7% increase in total threat. I can't prove this with numbers right now, but Mangle - Bear seems to be doing a lot more damage on the PTR than it used to. However, this is likely due to the Savage Fury change (though the damage seems higher than 20% more.) We'll leave the analysis here though.
I'm still undecided about moving those points. If a 5.7% threat increase is what you need to keep above the DPS as a bear, there's something wrong with your threat. Still, it does allow for more DPS to the boss. I suppose I will have to wait and see how my guild's DPS shapes up in the expansion.
Clearly, Maul produces the most threat, about 38% of the threat for the Druid's entire rotation. What does Rend and Tear do for this? Well, the damage goes, up and the innate threat stays the same. Since Lacerate is up pretty much all the time, it's like a flat 20% increase to Maul damage. In the case of the druid above, this increases Maul threat by about 16%. This is about a 6.2% increase in threat overall.
This seems like a decent use of talent points. You get about 1.2% threat per point. But, we're not through yet. You see, any self respecting tank will also take Imp. Mangle, which increases Mangle to occur 33% more often. This will increase the amount of damage done by mangle another 33% on average. Maul still goes up 16% with the addition of Rend and Tear. It's just that the impact of this is less, with Mangle doing more damage. In fact, in this case, Rend and Tear is only a 5.8% increase in threat.
We're still not through. Apparently, all the threat modifiers have changed. Let's rework this table to see what the change looks like all around.
With all these changes, looks like Rend and Tear is about a 5.7% increase in total threat. I can't prove this with numbers right now, but Mangle - Bear seems to be doing a lot more damage on the PTR than it used to. However, this is likely due to the Savage Fury change (though the damage seems higher than 20% more.) We'll leave the analysis here though.
I'm still undecided about moving those points. If a 5.7% threat increase is what you need to keep above the DPS as a bear, there's something wrong with your threat. Still, it does allow for more DPS to the boss. I suppose I will have to wait and see how my guild's DPS shapes up in the expansion.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Why convention is convention
So after trying to run Savant as a totally different, unique, 10-man guild that doesn't over recruit and doesn't depend on anything outside of the game to communicate, I've come to the realization that a lot of these things are done by a lot of guilds because its easiest to do it that way. And it works.
As such, Savant is becoming a more conventional guild. Some things I've learned:
- It's impossible to get as many reliable people as you need. Even if that number is only 10.
- You NEED forums if you want to discuss guild matters with your guild.
- Raiding only twice a week is perfectly fine, and trying to be as little of an influence on people's lives as possible makes it pretty easy to get good, fun-lovin' folks.
- Raids will never start when they're supposed to as long as you don't have a full guild.
All in all, I've learned quite a bit, a lot more than my false start trying to run SNAFU. Savant now has a website (which of course needs work.) We now have a clear plan of how many we want to recruit and of what class.
I think this is the best time to try something a little risky, it's sort of like a pregame for WotLK right now, and you have two 10-man instances to try your organization on. If you are thinking of doing something off the beaten path, now's your chance.
The only thing I'm gonna have to figure out when Wrath hits, is how will I deal with people who level especially slowly?
As such, Savant is becoming a more conventional guild. Some things I've learned:
- It's impossible to get as many reliable people as you need. Even if that number is only 10.
- You NEED forums if you want to discuss guild matters with your guild.
- Raiding only twice a week is perfectly fine, and trying to be as little of an influence on people's lives as possible makes it pretty easy to get good, fun-lovin' folks.
- Raids will never start when they're supposed to as long as you don't have a full guild.
All in all, I've learned quite a bit, a lot more than my false start trying to run SNAFU. Savant now has a website (which of course needs work.) We now have a clear plan of how many we want to recruit and of what class.
I think this is the best time to try something a little risky, it's sort of like a pregame for WotLK right now, and you have two 10-man instances to try your organization on. If you are thinking of doing something off the beaten path, now's your chance.
The only thing I'm gonna have to figure out when Wrath hits, is how will I deal with people who level especially slowly?
Monday, September 29, 2008
10 minute blog post
Short post, so let's get to it.
My paladin, Eia, has hit 70. She leveled pretty much all of level 69 in about 3 hours in Netherstorm, first doing Area 52, then doing Kirin'Var. She did this as Ret, with the help of a Rogue guildie who remained out of party to let me get the whole amount of experience.
Within moments of hitting 70, she was respecced Prot and made uncrittable via a combination of Defense and Resilience. I'm trying to take her into Kara this week, so that of course wasn't enough. After a few instances, she now has ~495 defense and the Continuum Blade, which will have to do until I can get the S2 mace. I'm starting to hate AV. Even so, she probably won't be good enough to tank for a little bit, until I can get her avoidance up higher, but golly, I'm gonna try!
Another thing of note is that my horde hunter, Miyra, has made enough gold (with a little help from the other side) to buy her epic flying. This is a character with no professions, and aside from a lucky epic gun drop on the other side (so I lost 15% of the money from it to the neutral AH) she earned her epic flight in ~3 days /played time. No raid gear or anything like that, either. If it weren't for the drop, it would probably be more like 4 days, but still, that's not bad considering there was still instance running time and all that.
Well, that's really all I wanted to say for now.
My paladin, Eia, has hit 70. She leveled pretty much all of level 69 in about 3 hours in Netherstorm, first doing Area 52, then doing Kirin'Var. She did this as Ret, with the help of a Rogue guildie who remained out of party to let me get the whole amount of experience.
Within moments of hitting 70, she was respecced Prot and made uncrittable via a combination of Defense and Resilience. I'm trying to take her into Kara this week, so that of course wasn't enough. After a few instances, she now has ~495 defense and the Continuum Blade, which will have to do until I can get the S2 mace. I'm starting to hate AV. Even so, she probably won't be good enough to tank for a little bit, until I can get her avoidance up higher, but golly, I'm gonna try!
Another thing of note is that my horde hunter, Miyra, has made enough gold (with a little help from the other side) to buy her epic flying. This is a character with no professions, and aside from a lucky epic gun drop on the other side (so I lost 15% of the money from it to the neutral AH) she earned her epic flight in ~3 days /played time. No raid gear or anything like that, either. If it weren't for the drop, it would probably be more like 4 days, but still, that's not bad considering there was still instance running time and all that.
Well, that's really all I wanted to say for now.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Been awhile
Wow, this spot has been empty for about a month! Not a good start, but I have to get back into it. I'm letting my 17 subscribers down!
My Paladin is on the cusp of level 70. I took her into Kara anyway, where absolutely no Plate dropped, but I did get a healing Libram off of Opera and my T4 gloves off of Curator. I'm specced Ret right now, to aid in leveling. I expect to be 70 before Saturday night. My wife is leveling her as we speak (She's so nice!) When I hit 70, I will start tanking Karazhan on her, and work on her gear. Fortunately we have a good Pally that can tank the harder fights until I get up there.
I've been on the PTR, just messing around, and I say I approve. Berserk is probably the coolest thing to happen to bear form, being able to spam Mangle on three target is just pure awesome. I haven't really been able to test the DPS of Cat form yet, but it looks promising. For reference, my build on the PTR. I will talk about it in a little bit.
I did happen to spec balance for a little bit, and I'm impressed with how well I've been able to do. It hasn't really gone much beyond the Ogres above Shattrath, but even the elites up there were pushovers. I'm happy that wrath will mean only one set of caster gear, though I doubt I could responsibly reduce my tank and DPS sets to one set. There will be overlap, though. (There kind of is right now, I have the Gauntlets of Malorne in both sets, and two differently gemmed and enchanted Stag-Helms of Malorne. But as far as caster stuff goes, for all I care it's all one set. I'm sure some Boomkins and Treefolk will disagree with me.
My PTR set consisted of a mix between my current healing and balance gear, and I topped out with 980 spellpower, which I don't think is bad at all. Wrath was critting for 2k, but I wasn't really impressed with Starfire cast time/damage ratio compared to Wrath. For reference, I used a balance build similar to the one posted on Gray Matter recently (under the heading My Mock Raid Build.) Basically I took the same balance tree then started going up restoration.
As far as Savant goes, we're chugging along. We had a really good week where we cleared Karazhan, then went on to kill Akil'zon and Nalorakk in ZA. I've finally got off my ass and made a website for Savant, but I'm sure the use of it will be slow for a while. I think it will basically be a forum to discuss happenings and random crap and nothing more. Which is fine by me. I'm using MyGuildHost because they are the same folks that run our vent, UGT Servers. The Vent servers are reliable, and the web hosting is pretty good. If you want to get something usable up right away, it's very easy using their platform. But if you want to customize it, you may be frustrated at your limitations, especially if you do web development for a living. =~_n= All in all, it's good enough that I don't have any major complaints, just some bug reports to file with them (the Guild code that lets a member skip approval doesn't seem to work right now.)
Now, about the Feral build. I may be naive, but I'm hoping for a build that still allows me to be good DPS and good Tanking, with a leaning toward Tanking. To that end, I believe I have the important talents for tanking, or will take them before 80. I also try to maximize DPS per talent point where I can. From my previous build, I'm going to take Omen of Clarity at 71 (for leveling, yeah!) and then Predatory Instincts, Feral Instinct, and King of the Jungle. This is deeper into Feral than I expected to go, but I believe it is best.
The biggest thing I miss out on is Intensity (Master Shapeshifter will always be seen as a 5 point talent to me, and thus not worth the points, since Natural Shapeshifter is all but useless in PvE, especially with the downfall of Powershifting.) To me, Intesity was the only thing that let me heal instances in my Feral Spec. Now, I will have no mana regen, and therefore cannot possibly keep up with my meager mana bar. But that's okay, you don't go Feral to heal. Oh yeah, Enrage won't generate the extra 10 rage, but I don't think that will be an issue.
I don't think there's been anything in that tree that hasn't been touched on by other bloggers, and I don't really have a perspective on it since I'm not in the beta. But if you look to my blogroll, you will see the best of what I read regularly. And there you will find all the theorycraft your heart desires.
My Paladin is on the cusp of level 70. I took her into Kara anyway, where absolutely no Plate dropped, but I did get a healing Libram off of Opera and my T4 gloves off of Curator. I'm specced Ret right now, to aid in leveling. I expect to be 70 before Saturday night. My wife is leveling her as we speak (She's so nice!) When I hit 70, I will start tanking Karazhan on her, and work on her gear. Fortunately we have a good Pally that can tank the harder fights until I get up there.
I've been on the PTR, just messing around, and I say I approve. Berserk is probably the coolest thing to happen to bear form, being able to spam Mangle on three target is just pure awesome. I haven't really been able to test the DPS of Cat form yet, but it looks promising. For reference, my build on the PTR. I will talk about it in a little bit.
I did happen to spec balance for a little bit, and I'm impressed with how well I've been able to do. It hasn't really gone much beyond the Ogres above Shattrath, but even the elites up there were pushovers. I'm happy that wrath will mean only one set of caster gear, though I doubt I could responsibly reduce my tank and DPS sets to one set. There will be overlap, though. (There kind of is right now, I have the Gauntlets of Malorne in both sets, and two differently gemmed and enchanted Stag-Helms of Malorne. But as far as caster stuff goes, for all I care it's all one set. I'm sure some Boomkins and Treefolk will disagree with me.
My PTR set consisted of a mix between my current healing and balance gear, and I topped out with 980 spellpower, which I don't think is bad at all. Wrath was critting for 2k, but I wasn't really impressed with Starfire cast time/damage ratio compared to Wrath. For reference, I used a balance build similar to the one posted on Gray Matter recently (under the heading My Mock Raid Build.) Basically I took the same balance tree then started going up restoration.
As far as Savant goes, we're chugging along. We had a really good week where we cleared Karazhan, then went on to kill Akil'zon and Nalorakk in ZA. I've finally got off my ass and made a website for Savant, but I'm sure the use of it will be slow for a while. I think it will basically be a forum to discuss happenings and random crap and nothing more. Which is fine by me. I'm using MyGuildHost because they are the same folks that run our vent, UGT Servers. The Vent servers are reliable, and the web hosting is pretty good. If you want to get something usable up right away, it's very easy using their platform. But if you want to customize it, you may be frustrated at your limitations, especially if you do web development for a living. =~_n= All in all, it's good enough that I don't have any major complaints, just some bug reports to file with them (the Guild code that lets a member skip approval doesn't seem to work right now.)
Now, about the Feral build. I may be naive, but I'm hoping for a build that still allows me to be good DPS and good Tanking, with a leaning toward Tanking. To that end, I believe I have the important talents for tanking, or will take them before 80. I also try to maximize DPS per talent point where I can. From my previous build, I'm going to take Omen of Clarity at 71 (for leveling, yeah!) and then Predatory Instincts, Feral Instinct, and King of the Jungle. This is deeper into Feral than I expected to go, but I believe it is best.
The biggest thing I miss out on is Intensity (Master Shapeshifter will always be seen as a 5 point talent to me, and thus not worth the points, since Natural Shapeshifter is all but useless in PvE, especially with the downfall of Powershifting.) To me, Intesity was the only thing that let me heal instances in my Feral Spec. Now, I will have no mana regen, and therefore cannot possibly keep up with my meager mana bar. But that's okay, you don't go Feral to heal. Oh yeah, Enrage won't generate the extra 10 rage, but I don't think that will be an issue.
I don't think there's been anything in that tree that hasn't been touched on by other bloggers, and I don't really have a perspective on it since I'm not in the beta. But if you look to my blogroll, you will see the best of what I read regularly. And there you will find all the theorycraft your heart desires.
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