So back in BC I turned my then Resto 1-55 druid into Feral. My guild needed a tank. That's what I was. A tank. I of course kittied for solo and questing and occasionally to get into a heroic I didn't feel comfortable tanking. But dpsing in cat was AWKWARD for me and my DPS generally sucked so bad it well...sucked.
Stuck in feral (I just couldn't bring myself to boomkin or resto again, i had enough casters/healers) I leveled through Northrend as a hybrid feral more geared towards DPS, but picking up half the tanking talents because well, I'm a tank, right? I'd run instances regularly with my leveling partner who just happened to be a holy priest.
I DPSd a few runs here and there. My DPS was "okay" but I wasn't topping charters. My "rotation" as you were was sloppy and I was sitting there trying to mash buttons like I do with my mage frustratingly stuck at 0 energy 90% of the time.
Then lo and behold just after reaching 80 this dual spec thing appears. Ooo! Pretty! And then this absolutely amazing thing happens. I can spec one spec fully and totally on dps and this other one on completely tanking. A novel concept. A feral druid that can actually be fully one or the other. No need to sacrifice this awesome talent here because its net effect wasn't useful when I was tanking.
Another amazing thing happened. Our guilds ret paladin respeced protection and was actually pretty good at it. Suddenly, I don't need to be feral for a tank.
Our MT and my best friend (one in the same) kept mentioning to me how he was seeing insane DPS out of feral cats. Feral? DPS? HA! Not for me. I'm a druid tank! HA! But...dual spec...DPS...why not?
So I start running heroics. Dagnabit 0 energy. I get frustrated and start reading up on basics of DPSing as a kitty (because I had NEVER bothered since I had never been interested). I start separating DPS from tanking set. Run some more heroics. Then all of a sudden I'm topping the DPS charts. 1.4k DPS quickly went to 1.9k dps. And now an almost solid 2k.
I find myself completely mesmerized. I start crafting epics from LW and I find myself making DPS pieces before the tanking pieces. I find myself enchanting pieces for DPS and not tanking. I'm asking for might over kings. Next thing I know in crafted epics and 80 blues I'm hitting 3k DPS consistently on trash mobs in vault. I run Naxx with my guild and I'm doing 2.2k dps throughout the arachnid quarter. This is just awesome! Getting rotations down. Seeing massive numbers. DPS count go up and up. Having to worry about pulling threat of the tank rather than the healer. I'm addicted!
These aren't insane numbers. But for me in just 78-80 blues pulling that kind of DPS seems awesome. I can't imagine what it'll be like when I start getting raid geared. Was feral buffed big time? Or am I doing something right? or both?
This is really fun!
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Feral Kitty...where have you been all my life?!Follow
I suppose Rip as our major damage source being allowed to crit and Savage Roar being changed could be considered a buff :)
I'm not seeing my cat form very often because most of the time I am being volunteered to tank. But this past week with dual-spec and no arena apparently resulted in plenty of people actually using a tank/dps setup on their DKs, pallies, and warriors, allowing for the occasional run as cat...
And yes, I was blown away by what I was able to do with the gear I was able to gather so far, with bear stuff always being the priority. On static heroic bosses like Ingvar in UK or the snake guy in Gundrak I found myself doing like 3.3K and actually felt limited in what I could reach simply by running out of mob too soon. Swiping on trash is plain insane if you bring up Savage Roar. No energy? Just pop Tiger's Fury or Berserk and keep going...
You're right. If you haven't played as cat for a while or simply don't do it as often, it feels completely different to how it used to be. Topping charts here and there is nice, but what's even more important is that you no longer need to feel ashamed of your damage (or lack thereof)
I think I can say that after getting over the bear health loss, this has been my best week of druidism ever. Only drawback being that now that arena starts again, I'd essentially be needing a 3rd saved spec since both bear and cat build I am using lack some essential PvP talents. I think Blizz should do some streamlining and make those missing points available somehow.
I'm not seeing my cat form very often because most of the time I am being volunteered to tank. But this past week with dual-spec and no arena apparently resulted in plenty of people actually using a tank/dps setup on their DKs, pallies, and warriors, allowing for the occasional run as cat...
And yes, I was blown away by what I was able to do with the gear I was able to gather so far, with bear stuff always being the priority. On static heroic bosses like Ingvar in UK or the snake guy in Gundrak I found myself doing like 3.3K and actually felt limited in what I could reach simply by running out of mob too soon. Swiping on trash is plain insane if you bring up Savage Roar. No energy? Just pop Tiger's Fury or Berserk and keep going...
You're right. If you haven't played as cat for a while or simply don't do it as often, it feels completely different to how it used to be. Topping charts here and there is nice, but what's even more important is that you no longer need to feel ashamed of your damage (or lack thereof)
I think I can say that after getting over the bear health loss, this has been my best week of druidism ever. Only drawback being that now that arena starts again, I'd essentially be needing a 3rd saved spec since both bear and cat build I am using lack some essential PvP talents. I think Blizz should do some streamlining and make those missing points available somehow.
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Was feral buffed big time? Or am I doing something right? or both?
Both! :D
We have more potential than ever before, but our "rotation" is one of the most (if not the most) difficult of all classes. So our success is a lot more dependent on skill than many other classes, which is good. It makes kitty dps fun and involving. I'm not bored when I go cat, and quickly get sleepy when I go boomkin (although that's a personal opinion, no offense to the crit chicken out there ;)
Unlike you though, I'm still using a hybrid spec, because feral is my solo spec, I use it to tank heroics, dps anything, quest, pvp, etc. My second one is resto and my primary raiding spec, so I can't really pickup all the talents I want. It is nice though to at least have all feral glyphs instead of a weird feral/resto mix.
So, druids are in a really good place now. I love the class more than ever.
Nuit Midril - White Mage/Scholar on Ultros
Nuit the Insane! - Retired Druid on Sentinels.
Ombre - Retired Dragoon/bard on Phoenix.
Glad to see you're enjoying the Kitty side of Feral now. I've always liked DPSing as a Cat, but now its like I'm in heaven. :) I'm happy with the Dual spec because there are times when my guild needs me to tank so now I can do both, better.
Wait until you're fully geared. I average about 4500 DPS these days in 25 man raids with full buffs. That can dip to 3500 and spike as high as 7000 (orly!?) depending on the fight and the conditions.
Fights like Gothik, Grobbulus and Razorscale my DPS sucks because there's lots of small, weak targets that die too quick for my rotation to be put to good use or I'm just required to stay constantly on the move.
Whereas...
...fights like Patchwerk, Gluth, Thaddius, Loatheb, XT-Deconstructor, where I can just stand still for the most part and pound away at my rotation are where I really shine. Oh, and external boss-related buffs to my damage output can't hurt either (pos/neg charge, spores, increased damage applied to the heart, etc).
Not to brag but my DPS is so good my guild doesn't want me doing anything else. Not tanking or healing. So my offspec is now PvP lol.
Edited, Apr 29th 2009 3:20pm by Tavarde
Fights like Gothik, Grobbulus and Razorscale my DPS sucks because there's lots of small, weak targets that die too quick for my rotation to be put to good use or I'm just required to stay constantly on the move.
Whereas...
...fights like Patchwerk, Gluth, Thaddius, Loatheb, XT-Deconstructor, where I can just stand still for the most part and pound away at my rotation are where I really shine. Oh, and external boss-related buffs to my damage output can't hurt either (pos/neg charge, spores, increased damage applied to the heart, etc).
Not to brag but my DPS is so good my guild doesn't want me doing anything else. Not tanking or healing. So my offspec is now PvP lol.
Edited, Apr 29th 2009 3:20pm by Tavarde
Tavarde wrote:
Not to brag but my DPS is so good my guild doesn't want me doing anything else. Not tanking or healing. So my offspec is now PvP lol.
Edited, Apr 29th 2009 3:20pm by Tavarde
This. I am "no longer allowed to respec, nor to bring my paladin" (for healing) according to the GM.
Funny enough I average almost these exact numbers, and am currently spanking all the rogues in our guild unmercifully. I know once they get their T8 "Rupture can now crit!" bonus things will probably even up more, but for now this is the good life. Also, arms warriors and bear tanks are wonderful beautiful things - who misses the Mangle glyph?
Ahh I remember back in the day in BC, where you had to micromanage every last blip of energy and powershifting to have a hope of even not looking silly dpsing...
I'm first and foremost a tank and have just been collecting bits and pieces of dps gear whenever no dps'er wanted it. Now with the dual spec and because we actually have too many tanks at the moment, I got a chance to dust off my dps gear.
The 2 raids i attended as dps i ended up in top 5 on dps on most bosses and sometimes even top 3. I do have some decent dps gear, but not all are properly gemmed/enchanted as they serve as tanking gear as well.
It just seems too good to be true that I can top dps in half decent gear against full time dps'ers in full 25 man raid gear. I love it, but it does smell like the nerfbat is inbound :/
The 2 raids i attended as dps i ended up in top 5 on dps on most bosses and sometimes even top 3. I do have some decent dps gear, but not all are properly gemmed/enchanted as they serve as tanking gear as well.
It just seems too good to be true that I can top dps in half decent gear against full time dps'ers in full 25 man raid gear. I love it, but it does smell like the nerfbat is inbound :/
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It just seems too good to be true that I can top dps in half decent gear against full time dps'ers in full 25 man raid gear. I love it, but it does smell like the nerfbat is inbound :/
While that is certainly a possibility, I think it's rather unlikely at the moment. Most important aspect is that you need to look at overall damage, especially over a great variety of boss fights. Any fight where there is boss movement involved, you'll most likely lose against classes without any positional requirement for their main attacks. Especially rogues will most likely move far ahead again once they get their hands on the 4 piece T8 bonus.
You don't even need to be raiding to see the differences. Just compare Novos to Invar or Cyanigosa.
Druid is still at a distinct advantage considering the split of our attacks heavily favors yellow moves over white dps; and the bulk of our yellow attacks are dots that tick no matter where you are. You're probably correct in that Rogue will pull ahead once they get 4t8 but I'm pretty sure class balance wasn't meant to be designed around set bonuses.
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Druid is still at a distinct advantage considering the split of our attacks heavily favors yellow moves over white dps;
Not any different with rogues these days, even more so since hardly anybody plays Combat anymore. Same deal with warriors. There is no distinct advantage over other classes because of yellow hits. This can be seen for example by most warriors stopping to stack +hit once they are capped for their specials - regardless of dual-wield penalty.
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I'm pretty sure class balance wasn't meant to be designed around set bonuses.
No, and it isn't. Given equal skill and gear, a rogue will always come out ahead of a cat over the course of a raid, simply because their highest damage yellow hits (or call them combo point builder) are either not dependent on being positioned behind the target or don't require them to hit the target themselves at all (HAT). What T8 will do for rogues, however, is to widen that gap by quite a bit.
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