5.0.5. Feral Stat Priority

[CalliatTN]

Hey guys, it's my first time posting here, and i apologize if there's already a thread discussing this, i was unable to make the search function work : /

I have a question about our stat priority atm. Everyone seems to agree that it's Mastery>Crit>hit/exp>Haste, just as it was in cata. But looking at what my dmg consists of now, it's auto attack 26%~ Shred/Mangle 25%~ Rip 20-23% and rake 18%. In cata, it was almost the other opposite way, so for me it made more sense that mastery was our top prio (though not by far) since my bleeds were also my top dmg.
Are you sure it should still be this way? Even with auto attack and shred above both bleeds? Personally i think it would be better to switch crit and mastery in the priority, but i have only concluded this by a couple non-scientific tests on a target dummy, swapping out mastery/crit/haste pieces.

Please help me find out what's the better

CalliatTN ~

[Tinderhoof]

If you have high mastery and good bleed uptimes, you shouldn't see auto attack and shred above bleeds. For me Both Rip and Rake are #1 and #2.

[CalliatTN]

What's you dps on average an burst? Just ~ish numbers.
I don't have 100% uptime on rip, think it's about 90-95%. Rake is 99%+. I find it hard to believe that those 2-4 seconds of downtime move rip so far down my dmg, but i might be missing something, so if you could tell me your average dps, i can compare it to mine ^^

[Tinderhoof]

With how bad our energy regen is now a 90% Rip uptime is pretty good. Do you some logs and an armory link?

[CalliatTN]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/t ... iat/simple armory link.
I'll edit with logs tomorrow, after our first raid.

[kaiadam]

22% wrath
20% melee
17% rip (80% uptime)
15% rake (85% uptime)
15% shred
5% bite
4% thrash

Average 75k dps on gara'jal (pure patchwerk fight if you don't go down - I didn't).

The fact that wrath is so high on the damage list and is completely unaffected by mastery more or less reduces mastery to the level of all our other secondaries, and raises haste to the level of our other secondaries as well. No sim or spreadsheet is taking into account HoTW wrath spam as far as I know.

I'm of the opinion that we should cap hit and expertise (or come pretty close to) anyway even if it isn't mathematically the best, because the extra attention you pay to whether your attacks landed or not will cost you dps in some other way.

[Tinderhoof]

HotW will mess with Bleed up times vs auto attack up times. Kaiadam's damage spread was close to mine, but 30% of my damage was from Wrath. If you have a 90% + uptime on both Rake and Rip (IE not doing HotW) they will be over auto attack.

I agree with trying to get Hit/Exp caps no matter what rotation we are trying. The reason for this is because of SR. The following has happened to me to often already with only 2 bosses under my belt. Rip and SR are about to fall off together. I have 5 combo points and try to refresh Rip first and then SR. Rip misses 3 times and now I have to refresh SR with my 5 combo points and Rip is down for another 6-9 seconds.

For me in my current gear I am not able to hit them even going for every reforge and gemming hit/exp gems. I can get kinda close. It did suck to see some of my Wraths missing. I still don't think the HotW on use will stay this beefy mostly because to make it good you need an SP staff (remember you can't swap off hands in combat). I am going to try DoC tonight on the troll dude. Just to see how compareable it is.

[kaiadam]

Really, wrath misses? I thought HoTW automatically gave you 15% spellhit, at least that's what I read from the spell details in wowhead.

[Etapicx]

HotW has in its description before that it was calculation Hit+Expertise=Spell Hit it is not in the tooltip now and i've seen some misses but they are really rare for some reason.

[Dysheki]

I have 3.67% hit/4.62% exp and didn't have any wraths miss last night (just looked at the logs - 146 total).

[Tinderhoof]

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/398c1vf8 ... etails/16/
17 misses on the night.
2 misses on the Feng Kill.

[Terias]

During Epicenter, Feng has a 75% chance to be missed, does that apply to spell hit?

It likely does since you have no missed on the other fight.

[Etapicx]

During Epicenter, Feng has a 75% chance to be missed, does that apply to spell hit?

It likely does since you have no missed on the other fight.

This is probably why Tinder is encountering misses. Also moonfire ticks for 13k self buffed and crits for 26k would it be worth to put it up?

[Terias]

Not sure about lower gear levels, but if I remember correctly, at higher gear levels it's better to just spam wrath. Moonfire doesn't benefit from the nature damage from agi conversion, so it quickly gets much worse.

[Etapicx]

Not sure about lower gear levels, but if I remember correctly, at higher gear levels it's better to just spam wrath. Moonfire doesn't benefit from the nature damage from agi conversion, so it quickly gets much worse.

The point is it isn't nature damage in the tooltip now it is spell damage i went from 300 hits to 12 000 hits... Before it was only nature damage as well as Exp+Hit=Spell Hit now we get spell hit capped and we get spell power increased. The problem is just is it worth the GCD to apply Moonfire to delay Wrath a bit currently i am just applying it before HotW ends so i have it up for a few seconds in the start of cat.

[Cerise]

The problem is just is it worth the GCD to apply Moonfire to delay Wrath a bit currently i am just applying it before HotW ends so i have it up for a few seconds in the start of cat.

I spam Moonfire on movement, such as positioning yourself on the pull ('some' dps is better than no dps) and like you do, just before HotW ends.

[CalliatTN]

Tried out the first 2 bosses in MV now, and oh my god. Those fights are nasty to ferals : /. I don't know if it was our guilds tacts our just the randomness of learning a new encounter, but in both fights i oculd hardly get a rip up on the target before i had to swicth dog or run out of epicenter... So i guess stat prio depends on the fight? On Feng masterty is probably better, since there is soooo much downtime of running away and chasing after, whilst on puppies it's probably bad since you can't possibly keep it up due to target switching, even with warlock symbiosis : /

[Konungr]

Tried out the first 2 bosses in MV now, and oh my god. Those fights are nasty to ferals : /. I don't know if it was our guilds tacts our just the randomness of learning a new encounter, but in both fights i oculd hardly get a rip up on the target before i had to swicth dog or run out of epicenter... So i guess stat prio depends on the fight? On Feng masterty is probably better, since there is soooo much downtime of running away and chasing after, whilst on puppies it's probably bad since you can't possibly keep it up due to target switching, even with warlock symbiosis : /

If RNG is good, Ferals are awesome on Stone Guardian. On our last pull of the night last night, we had 2 dogs on a single side the entire time, and I was able to switch back and forth between whichever two dogs were there, got about 75k sustained (When we popped Heroism at start I was about 90k). We have very low Haste and Crit right now, so keeping up Rake and Rip on both dogs is going to be difficult, but definitely not impossible, even though you won't get 100% uptime on a single dog, between the two, it definitely makes up for it. I'm going to post my logs from the night and see what I was at. Also, I don't have a Symbiosis target, no Warlock or Rogue in our comp and it no longer gives Tanks decent CDs, so there's no real use for it, it would seem.

Looking at the logs, for the attempt I was referring too, I had a 98% uptime on Rake and an 88.6% uptime on Rip, with both on two targets for most of the fight.

[aggixx]

Not sure about lower gear levels, but if I remember correctly, at higher gear levels it's better to just spam wrath. Moonfire doesn't benefit from the nature damage from agi conversion, so it quickly gets much worse.

The point is it isn't nature damage in the tooltip now it is spell damage i went from 300 hits to 12 000 hits... Before it was only nature damage as well as Exp+Hit=Spell Hit now we get spell hit capped and we get spell power increased. The problem is just is it worth the GCD to apply Moonfire to delay Wrath a bit currently i am just applying it before HotW ends so i have it up for a few seconds in the start of cat.

You don't get increased spell power, just a % modifier to all of your spell damage. Moonfire is still bad because you still only have 250 or so arcane spellpower while you have 20kish nature spellpower. Just because both Wrath and Moonfire hit 6 times harder doesn't change the fact that Moonfire sucks as feral.

And it should be impossible to miss with any spells during Heart of the Wild, you are granted 15% spell hit regardless of what form you're in so the only thing that should cause you to miss would be epicenter.

The problem is just is it worth the GCD to apply Moonfire to delay Wrath a bit currently i am just applying it before HotW ends so i have it up for a few seconds in the start of cat.

I spam Moonfire on movement, such as positioning yourself on the pull ('some' dps is better than no dps) and like you do, just before HotW ends.

If you absolutely have to move then spamming Moonfire works. Personally I found it much better to just take Wild Charge and caster form Wild Charge to where I needed to be. 1 global to go wherever you want. If you want to get really advanced you could maybe have a balance or resto druid set a mushroom down to where you will need to head to in the fight and then you can Wild Charge to it.

[CalliatTN]

I tried out HotW now, and holy crap. That stuff is retardedly OP.
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-w1u29 ... 41&e=10680
Nearly 30% of my dmg from wrath alone on spirit kings. I was able to HotW twice, 1st with BL and second with 1 tranq, and the dmg is just massive. Since it's a ranged attack, there shouldn't be a boss where you can't use this efficiently, so perhaps we are really, at least for the moment, better off shaping our priority after HotW? In that case, would haste take prio over crit, or vice versa?
And how much are you guys expecting a nurf to this inc?

[Konungr]

I tried out HotW now, and holy crap. That stuff is retardedly OP.
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-w1u29 ... 41&e=10680
Nearly 30% of my dmg from wrath alone on spirit kings. I was able to HotW twice, 1st with BL and second with 1 tranq, and the dmg is just massive. Since it's a ranged attack, there shouldn't be a boss where you can't use this efficiently, so perhaps we are really, at least for the moment, better off shaping our priority after HotW? In that case, would haste take prio over crit, or vice versa?
And how much are you guys expecting a nurf to this inc?

As for the stat priority question, no. Haste won't benefit us enough to make it a priority, even with 30% damage from Wrath, it's still a loss since Bleeds are still dominate, even if Wrath is ~30% of our Damage.

As for the nerf, I doubt it, since it's not OP, it's actually keeping us in line with the other top DPS. If they nerf it because we are in the top percentage of DPS, I will be furious. We aren't the best DPS class, but for the first time since ArPen, we aren't middle of the road to last...

[Cerise]

Personally I found it much better to just take Wild Charge and caster form Wild Charge to where I needed to be.

Yeah, I got that brilliant idea as well.. right after we killed him.

[CalliatTN]

Haste no, since you should use it during BL anyway for max potential, btu crit might be worth it. I started this whole thread because i got more dmg by stacking crit in HCs, so i was thinking crit might be worth it over mastery. Though in the current raid, theres too much downtime on bosses, so having the bleeds tick there is more beneficial. However, if crit could increase your HotW dmg even further, whilst not costing you too much when it's down, it might be worth it. I think it could most definately be worth it on any fight where you have more than 70% uptime on rip, especially if you get to start out with a BL HotW and another one in the end of the fight.

[kaiadam]

For what it's worth, I've attained top 3 feral on wol for every fight from Feng to Elegon this week(still currently #1 on spirit kings and Elegon) and after getting close to exp/hit cap, I reforge everything to crit. The only piece of gear I have not from rep, valor, questing, or 5mans is a 509 bracer I picked up off the BMAH.

(not that the reforging really matters, I'm fairly sure even if I swapped all that crit to mastery or haste I wouldn't gain or lose more than 1k dps either way.)

[Konungr]

For what it's worth, I've attained top 3 feral on wol for every fight from Feng to Elegon this week(still currently #1 on spirit kings and Elegon) and after getting close to exp/hit cap, I reforge everything to crit. The only piece of gear I have not from rep, valor, questing, or 5mans is a 509 bracer I picked up off the BMAH.

(not that the reforging really matters, I'm fairly sure even if I swapped all that crit to mastery or haste I wouldn't gain or lose more than 1k dps either way.)

Very few guilds have completely raids this week, so even less ferals. Less than 200 Ferals on every fight for 10 man MSV...