Sunday, August 17, 2008

Beta Builds: Feral Raid DPS



This is the first post in a series that looks at the talent builds which will be coming with WotLK. Of course, the current trees are subject to change.

0/54/11 (+6)
This is the basic build that contains all essential damage enhancing talents, with 6 points left. Feral Swiftness, Brutal Impact and Feral Instinct, while really nice in themselves, do not directly increase your DPS and are only in there to get the prerequisites for talents further down.

Let's take a look on some selected talents.

Feral Charge (1 point)
Not a DPS talent in any way, but you need the point to go further down the tree and the other alternatives are not as good. Especially now, that it works in cat form as well. It is still in question whether the cat version interrupts and/or works on bosses, but helps against knockback effects (e.g. Lurker) and to move around and position yourself behind enemies quickly.

Primal Precision (2 points)
Some people might argue that it is a talent focused on dealing more damage and wonder why I omitted it from the build. The reason being that it becomes completely useless, once you hit the expertise and hit caps with your equipment. It is a possible choice for some of the six points left though, especially in the earlier stages of raiding.

Nurturing Instinct (2 points)
I am torn on that one. One the one hand, it is not directly useful for your DPS, and with our small mana pool (especially with the expansion, when we will share more equip with rogues) the increased healing output is not really interesting for backup healing. On the other hand, receiving 20% more healing can make the life of your healers easier and enable you to survive longer. On the gripping hand, it gives your self-healing with HoTs a pretty big punch, which could leave you standing while the rogues and warriors get turned into corpses, when your healers have no time to keep melee DPS up. If you add a self-cast Lifebloom and/or Rejuvenation into your powershift (maybe even with a weapon switch), it could amount to a significant contribution.

Survival of the Fittest (3 points)
This is not only a tanking talent, as many would argue. With its 6% buff to all stats you gain some AP/crit. For level 70 with T5/T6 equip it amounts to around 1.5% crit and 100 AP. Not much, but you need some points to advance further down and in combination with the crit immunity you gain it is nothing to sneer at.

King of the Jungle (3 points)
Tiger's Fury is getting changed to a free ability on a 30 second cooldown (somewhat similar to Feral Faerie Fire). 60 energy every 30 seconds amount to 2 energy/second extra. Normal regeneration rate is at 10 energy/second. That means with that talent you gain 20% energy regeneration rate! In addition you can choose when you want to use it, making it even more useful. It is a no-brainer for almost every feral build, including raid DPS.

Improved Mangle (3 points)
For a raiding cat, Mangle is only used for its debuff, as we rely on Shred to dish out the hurting. Saving 6 energy every 15 or so seconds would seem not that great a boost to our DPS, and probably isn't. With the old energy regeneration system (one tick every 2 seconds) it was very attractive, as it reduced a 3 Shred + 1 Mangle rotation from 166 energy to 160 energy. But as the tick is now 1 energy every 0.1 seconds, it has lost some of its appeal. After taking some time to think about rotations for WotLK, we need still need every help we can get in keeping up our buffs/debuffs (more on that in another post), so I consider it a must.

Infected Wounds (3 points)
Invaluable in PvP, still a nice utility talent in a PvE setting, probably more suited for feral tanks though. Could be worth putting one point in it to reduce the damage on the tank, but no more than that. Its usefulness also depends on whether it stacks with other classes' abilities (like Thunderclap).

Rend and Tear (5 points)
One of the cornerstones of our new DPS rotation. 10% more Shred damage scale very nicely, although it will be hard to keep bleed effects on our targets for every Shred. It is the most raid-focused talent by far, as it is not worth the 5 points in PvP or solo play.

Berserk (1 point)
With its 5 minute cooldown it is not really targeted at DPS ferals. You can use it maybe twice in a fight if you use it very early; which carries the danger of pulling aggro. But who can resist an "I-WIN!"-button? This ability is so great in so many aspects of the game, I cannot imagine any feral build without it. Even if you just take it for its sheer coolness.

Nature's Grasp (1 point)
As it now works indoors, an interesting escape mechanism when pulling aggro. Maybe not that useful as a cat druid, but it only costs one point and in combination with bear form you might survive long enough for your tank to taunt the mob back.

Naturalist (5 points) vs. Master Shapeshifter (2 points)
This whole part of the Restoration tree is pretty strange. It is OK to put some feral stuff in there, as well as OOC (which now will be something every druid build will take, as it procs off spells). But in most builds you will not have the points left to go for Master Shapeshifter. Think about it: Most builds can only use one aspect of this talent, and have to spend 5 points to get it. In PvE, Natural Shapeshifter is useless ballast.
Now you can put 2 points in Naturalist and 5 in Natural Shapeshifter/Master Shapeshifter for 2% more damage and 4% crit, or just 5 points in Naturalist and gain 10% more damage. To get both, you need 10 points.
Also, if compared to other crit chance increasing talents: 1 for 5% via Leader of the Pack, 3 for 6% via Sharpened Claws. The 5 points for 4% just don't measure up.
I hope they will put some more work into that part of the tree.


I am really looking forward to the "new" feral druid and think the raiding DPS build is pretty solid as it is. Blizzard should put some work into our rotation and in Master Shapeshifter, however. Another look at the tier 2 talents would not hurt as well, as there is nothing for a raid DPS build in there.

Next: Feral PvP