Which DPS Idol?Follow

So for many weeks I've been using the lv 200 heroism badge idol, Ravenous Beast I believe it's called, the one that ups Shred damage by 203. Tonight I finally got the lv 213 idol off Grand Widow Faerlina in heroic Naxx, Idol of Worship, which "increases periodic damage done by Rip by 21 per combo point".

My question is, as a feral DPS, which do you all think is better for more dps and damage output in the long run? I use both Shred and Rip very regularly in my rotation and I don't plan on getting rid of the lv 200 idol. Just wanted to hear everyone's opinions on this.

I can confirm this.

In general, the DPS idol released with each tier should be an upgrade. We have no real reason (or ability) to get an idol that changes game play or gives a bonus to a spell in an effort to get us to use it more (Ulduar Resto idol, anyone?)

Wouldn't the changes to Savage Roar sort of balance things out as far as how the two idols work? The flat 30%/33% increased damage from Savage Roar changed from 40% increased AP would affect the 203 on the shred idol and wouldn't do anything for the rip idol no?

Edit: Was thinking of something else, this is what the post should've looked like.

The idols, as far as I know, grant flat bonuses and are not affected by anything (buffs or otherwise). As such, the change to SR will have no impact on that level. The only thing that changes in that regard in 3.1 is Primal Gore, allowing the Idol of Worship bonus to get a multiplier (crit).

As it is, Worship is better during a long boss fight, but Ravenous is better on trash (all those 3 mobs too tough for Swipe-spam but not tough enough to last through a Rip). It is highly suggested not to swap idols during a fight, but I've seen somewhere that it might be worth it for a Berserk, where the Rip bonus will be minimal compared to the horrifying amounts of Shreds you'll be doing. It might be nice to test it out.

I don't remember the figures, but on paper the DPS increase from Ravenous is higher than Worship. The thing to remember is that you don't Shred on every given occasion because of all the debuffs you have to keep up, thus impacting that theoretical DPS increase. The DPS increase from Worship, on the other hand, will be up pretty much for the entirety of the fight.

Edited, Mar 30th 2009 10:25am by Selverein

Yeah, same, I've had really really bad luck in the last runs we managed to do.
Now a lot of people in my guild are "burned out" (read: too lazy to help others now that they got their gear) and we can't run 25's anymore and we even struggle to run 10's, mostly cause people don't need upgrades in there anyway.

I'll just hope the idol's upgrade drops in Ulduar 10. :/

What if I told you I had that idol on my druid and I never play feral...

If it makes you mad I can say this.

Every time I miss naxx my god damn SF idol drops, but when I'm there it doesnt drop. EVERY DRUID HAS THE GOD DAMN IDOL BUT ME AND IM ONE OF TWO BOOMKINS! We have 5-6 raiding druids. I hate this game sometimes. rng is too rng.

/rawr!

As far as I know, the bonus from the shred idol is not affected by AP, but is affected by bonus multipliers to shred (mangle and bleeds w/ rend and tear). If you look at your shred tooltip before and after equipping the idol, you will notice a change in the base amount added to the % damage for the ability. I don't know the exact numbers, and don't feel like looking them up, but instead of being 225% weapon damage + 600, it will be 225% weapon damage + 803.

Are you referring to your own tooltip? Because I believe those adjust for AP-based DPS. Anonymosity was referring to the base function.

I'd have to see some hardcore math supporting the Shred idol being better, because again Rip is so much more damage over the course of a fight according to most Recount and WWS indicators.

And there's no evidence that supports SR affecting the Shred idol and not the Rip one.

Edited, Apr 3rd 2009 10:23am by Norellicus

That should be everyone's tool tip. The 225% is the part that scales with your AP. The other portion of shred is a static portion and as far as I thought, it's a combo of the 225% and the static portion that's being affected by the new Savage Roar's increased 30/33% damage and why people see much larger yellow attacks on the ptr. Early on with lower AP numbers it's a very large buff (30/33% increased damage off of shred's static part), but at insane high AP numbers, the static part matters less and less in the whole scheme of things and is why I thought blizzard made a comment that they weren't scaling us for the infinity but rather for right now and what is relevant.

The 225% part is being boosted by the new SR, and the static part is being boosted by the new SR... or at least that's what I thought was going on. With the old SR, the 40% increased AP would increase your base damage, and from there it would also be increasing the 225% portion of shred but not the static portion.




Going in line with what I thought was going on above, Rip benefits from AP which is what the old SR boosted. Since SR no longer boosts AP but Rip now crits, rip is still better, but not because of SR. I've yet to see anyone commenting on that as far as how that may ease the complexities for us, but if what I thought was going on is right, it would mean having to worry about putting rip up while savage roar is down for a whole 1 second isn't a big deal, just put SR up after your first next combo point as opposed to spending what was going to be a 5 point rip into a 5 point SR instead.

Edit: It should be noted I'm not saying which idol is better right now this moment. The OP said specifically in the long run which would be better.

Edit:2 The thing about armor penetration is that it gets better the more you have. So having a bit here or a bit there is silly because it's not a good stat like that. It gets better the more you have, so if you're going to stack it, you stack it large. The idea that they made it a better stat just means we can realize it's potential sooner, but it's still better the more you have. And I assume in the above quoted example (as the person that wrote the quote wrote a simulator), simulation was done with full armor penetration gemming vs agility gemming.


Really Late Edit:
When they removed Rake from Primal Gore's effect, the best stat ranking got switched around again.

Edited, Apr 3rd 2009 3:08pm by Torzak

I've seen nothing to suggest that the new Savage Roar makes rip tick 30/33% harder. Point me to a link that says it does if one exists please.

Because as far as I've been able to follow along with these changes, Savage Roar doesn't affect Rip anymore, but with primal gore Rip can now crit on each dot tick which is still a net gain for Rip. The crit being for 200% damage, or twice the normal tick damage plus things like meta 3% increased crit damage and talents with a similar effect bumping it up from there. With easy 50% crit rate, half the ticks are doing 2x or more the damage. Rip would be ridiculous if it had both 30/33% increased damage and the ability to crit for double damage half the time. Add something like that on top of the way yellow attacks got changed with the new SR and it looks even more silly. I'm pretty sure that's not what's happening. We exchanged super high AP Savage Roars' effect on Rip for Primal Gore's effect on Rip (A Net DPS increase for Rip and a better scaling crit stat).

Edited, Apr 3rd 2009 2:18pm by Torzak

AP is linear for Rip right?

40% more AP to affect Rip VS half the ticks of Rip doing more than twice their normal damage.

Average that out and @50% crit rate all of your Rip ticks are doing 150% or rather just over 150% damage after meta/talent.



1) 40% more AP for Rip VS 50%+ more damage averaged out for all ticks of Rip plus enhanced yellow attacks because of SR changes.

2) 40% more AP for Rip VS 30%/33% more damage for Rip plus 50%+ more damage averaged out for all ticks of Rip on top of that plus enhanced yellow attacks because of SR changes.


1 VS 2, and keep in mind crit rating is going to get higher with ulduar gear.

Maybe I'm wrong and Rip is affected by SR, but logically to me that seems silly. Things would scale very fast were that the case. 33% increased damage on Rips + 60% crit rate?

Edit:

I found a post suggesting a dps increase after 3.1 for BiS feral of 1k DPS without relying on new gear. So from that I assume somewhere along the way Savage Roar would have to be affecting Rip.

I wasn't expecting this update to be worth aprox ~25% DPS increase so what seemed silly about SR I guess is probably more accurate than I had believed.

There's still a lot of theory talk about using shed idol as opposed to rip idol even with some talk of potentially getting rid of the use of Rake Post T8 in favor of just shredding. The T8 bonus doesn't really permit that, but it's theorized that beyond T8 it might be possible.

If anyone wants to follow up on more idol talk, you might catch something at this link
http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t49702-feralbynight_cat_bear_simulation_tool/p4/

Edited, Apr 3rd 2009 3:53pm by Torzak