11-01-2016, 10:39 AM
Purrfessor has dropped a bit of a gift on us Ferals this week.
Nganga found this on the forums as we were both researching how we can squeeze out the most AoE damage in Mythic+++ dungeons. This is probably of limited use as a Feral is likely only to worry about this after item level 850 but I wanted somewhere to post it so I could make some notes and comments to help any serious feral druids in the Tribe and ourselves.
Subject: Feral Mythic Trash Rotation
*** Repost from Purrfessor: ***
Feral is absolutely 100% viable EVEN IN M+ but first let me get this out of the way, unless it's higher mythic + many mobs simply don't live long enough for feral bleeds to tick all the way down, and burst AoE is dependent on very specific talent choices and legendaries. However feral can absolutely deal great amounts of damage in higher M+ with the correct play style. This play style however is much more difficult then just about any other melee class for the result you get. Yes you can pick easier talents and do less damage unlike other classes faceroll talents are their best. Feral in dungeons takes some serious effort, concentration, and practice to preform on a high level.
Rake is the core of your dungeon damage, when i check my overall damage at the end of the dungeon it usually sits around 35-40% over my total damage. Personally I almost always stick with the follow talent set up for dungeons.
Dungeon Talents:
While it does depend on your talents and legendaries (since those significantly change your rotation) you usually want to do the following in a ROUGH order as everything changes depending on the situation:
Longer living mobs:
Speaking of energy, knowing when to dump energy and work around your omen procs is another substantial gain to your dps. You always want to be spending your omen procs in this rough order:
Shorter living mobs:
Other things to note:
-Ferocious bite... unfortunately... really sucks. The damage from ONE full 50 energy bite is roughly the same as 1/6th-1/7th of a SINGLE 30 energy rip with jagged wounds. Plus many artifact abilities depend on rip being up on the target 24/7 such as ashamanes' bite and open wounds. The only scenario where bite is useful is when you can not snapshot a better rip under 25% of a mob's HP.
-Always rip higher health or priority targets, and depending on your mastery, two ticks alone of rip can out damage a bite.
-it's 110% OKAY to wait at energy cap as long as any other choice would have made your bleed fall off. For example, with jagged wounds, rake's pandemic threshold of refreshing is roughly at 4 seconds. If you're about to cap energy and a rake you need to refresh is sitting at ~8 seconds it's completely worth it to wait. While you're sitting there keep your auto attacks rolling on something to fish for an omen proc (refer back to omen proc section), or use some CC on a mob that needs it. Refreshing rake/rip earlier even is MUCH BETTER then letting it fall off completely.
-Generating 5 combo points at the end of one pull so that you can SavageRoar leading into the next (while still stealth) is a GIGANTIC gain along with having Tiger'sFury up from the Predator reset
-Letting savage roar fall off is acceptable in a handful of situations, including but not limited to:
You will not be able to cast another finisher on the mob.
You will be casting SavageRoar again before reapply any bleeds
You would otherwise not be able to generate an acceptable amount of combo points before the next pull (usually 5)
While savage roar is substantial damaging buff, it only helps the damage you deal AFTER using roar, and outside of some very long living mobs and bosses you should almost never ever have to re-cast it mid-pull except the very first time.
-Many other talents (Such as soul of the forest, and brutal slash) are viable for dungeons and are MUCH easier to use (little more spammy) but as you get higher and higher into M+ those heavily cripple your single target damage to the point of detriment. There is a strategy using soul of the forest to rip multiple mobs and swiping to trigger ashmanes' bite procs but I personally don't find this to be overall very viable due to SoTF losing to SR in high mob or single target situations and targets tend to die eventually so you simply can't rotate between the same 3 targets turreting bleeds.
-Cooldowns should be ROUGHLY used whenever you can get the biggest use out of them while not waiting a long time on them. That means sometimes you should berserk a mob to keep rake on everything, or saving it for the next pull which may be a boss, or using Ashamnes frenzy to get combo points leading up to a huge AoE pack for a SavageRoar. Really just have to test them out to get a feel for it.
-Many of the abilities and dps gains are HEAVILY tied to how many artifact points / where your point are at. The combination of shadow thrash + luffa bracer legendary EASILY accounts for over 50% of my gigantic small mob aoe pull dps (Such as bats in black rook, early demons in Vault, etc)
-Legendaries such as Luffa Wraps (higher thrash usage ), Wildshaper's Clutch (more combo points for rips), and Ailuro Pouncers (free BT... when it gets fixed) all really change things up and interact with each other in very specific ways.
Feral dungeon dps is NOT IN ANY WAY easy, if you are careless with a single aspect you will lose the majority of your dps as every part of your rotation works off each other to increase the damage of a few key abilities. I would go as far to say that being a feral DPS in a dungeon setting is one of if not the hardest dps to play optimally.
With my current set up (50% mastery, Luffa bracers, Pouncer boots, and swapping Symbiote belt on for bosses) I am able to very consistently pull roughly or over 350k dps on bosses / 450K mobs(3-6) and spike upwards of 1.5m dps on anything bigger than that with shadow thrash slot machine luck. Here's some proof of numbers while I helped out a guildy who was streaming: https://www.twitch.tv/zatcharygaming/v/9...=22h38m00s
*** End repost ***
Granted Purrfessor runs with a *sick* amount of legendaries and swaps 1 between boss and trash. But even without the legendaries the recipe above for multiplying your damage by stacking your skills correctly is clearly something that can drastically improve AoE dps!
I created a Legend of the skills/talents/items mentioned here for quick reference.
Nganga found this on the forums as we were both researching how we can squeeze out the most AoE damage in Mythic+++ dungeons. This is probably of limited use as a Feral is likely only to worry about this after item level 850 but I wanted somewhere to post it so I could make some notes and comments to help any serious feral druids in the Tribe and ourselves.
Subject: Feral Mythic Trash Rotation
*** Repost from Purrfessor: ***
Feral is absolutely 100% viable EVEN IN M+ but first let me get this out of the way, unless it's higher mythic + many mobs simply don't live long enough for feral bleeds to tick all the way down, and burst AoE is dependent on very specific talent choices and legendaries. However feral can absolutely deal great amounts of damage in higher M+ with the correct play style. This play style however is much more difficult then just about any other melee class for the result you get. Yes you can pick easier talents and do less damage unlike other classes faceroll talents are their best. Feral in dungeons takes some serious effort, concentration, and practice to preform on a high level.
Rake is the core of your dungeon damage, when i check my overall damage at the end of the dungeon it usually sits around 35-40% over my total damage. Personally I almost always stick with the follow talent set up for dungeons.
Dungeon Talents:
- Predator
- Displacer beast
- Balance affinity
- Mighty bash
- Savage roar
- Jagged wounds
- Blood talons
While it does depend on your talents and legendaries (since those significantly change your rotation) you usually want to do the following in a ROUGH order as everything changes depending on the situation:
Longer living mobs:
- Keep rake up on all targets
- Keep up savage roar to buff all the rakes, thrashes, and rips you do
- Swipe when all targets are bleeding, or are close to death
- Keep a constant check on mob HP, as bleeding low HP targets is a damage loss and you want to get as many predator resets as possible. This aspect alone on top of keeping a 100% rake uptime on every mob is CRITICAL to dealing great feral dungeon dps. If you don't properly time every single bleed, finisher, SR, and more your damage will drop like a rock.
- Make sure bleeds are on targets that are about to die with either:
- - Rake for a single target
- - Thrash for multiple targets
Speaking of energy, knowing when to dump energy and work around your omen procs is another substantial gain to your dps. You always want to be spending your omen procs in this rough order:
- Raking when it needs refreshing
- Swiping if all rakes are good on their time
- Buffing yourself with SR
- Thrashing if you your rake AND combo points are looking good
Shorter living mobs:
- Buff SR (from last mob 5 points)
- Thrash
- swipe swipe swipe swipe swipe...
- Fill in energy with TF resets
- Rip on priority targets (Super short live trash mobs you should save the points)
- Keep up SR
Other things to note:
-Ferocious bite... unfortunately... really sucks. The damage from ONE full 50 energy bite is roughly the same as 1/6th-1/7th of a SINGLE 30 energy rip with jagged wounds. Plus many artifact abilities depend on rip being up on the target 24/7 such as ashamanes' bite and open wounds. The only scenario where bite is useful is when you can not snapshot a better rip under 25% of a mob's HP.
-Always rip higher health or priority targets, and depending on your mastery, two ticks alone of rip can out damage a bite.
-it's 110% OKAY to wait at energy cap as long as any other choice would have made your bleed fall off. For example, with jagged wounds, rake's pandemic threshold of refreshing is roughly at 4 seconds. If you're about to cap energy and a rake you need to refresh is sitting at ~8 seconds it's completely worth it to wait. While you're sitting there keep your auto attacks rolling on something to fish for an omen proc (refer back to omen proc section), or use some CC on a mob that needs it. Refreshing rake/rip earlier even is MUCH BETTER then letting it fall off completely.
-Generating 5 combo points at the end of one pull so that you can SavageRoar leading into the next (while still stealth) is a GIGANTIC gain along with having Tiger'sFury up from the Predator reset
-Letting savage roar fall off is acceptable in a handful of situations, including but not limited to:
You will not be able to cast another finisher on the mob.
You will be casting SavageRoar again before reapply any bleeds
You would otherwise not be able to generate an acceptable amount of combo points before the next pull (usually 5)
While savage roar is substantial damaging buff, it only helps the damage you deal AFTER using roar, and outside of some very long living mobs and bosses you should almost never ever have to re-cast it mid-pull except the very first time.
-Many other talents (Such as soul of the forest, and brutal slash) are viable for dungeons and are MUCH easier to use (little more spammy) but as you get higher and higher into M+ those heavily cripple your single target damage to the point of detriment. There is a strategy using soul of the forest to rip multiple mobs and swiping to trigger ashmanes' bite procs but I personally don't find this to be overall very viable due to SoTF losing to SR in high mob or single target situations and targets tend to die eventually so you simply can't rotate between the same 3 targets turreting bleeds.
-Cooldowns should be ROUGHLY used whenever you can get the biggest use out of them while not waiting a long time on them. That means sometimes you should berserk a mob to keep rake on everything, or saving it for the next pull which may be a boss, or using Ashamnes frenzy to get combo points leading up to a huge AoE pack for a SavageRoar. Really just have to test them out to get a feel for it.
-Many of the abilities and dps gains are HEAVILY tied to how many artifact points / where your point are at. The combination of shadow thrash + luffa bracer legendary EASILY accounts for over 50% of my gigantic small mob aoe pull dps (Such as bats in black rook, early demons in Vault, etc)
-Legendaries such as Luffa Wraps (higher thrash usage ), Wildshaper's Clutch (more combo points for rips), and Ailuro Pouncers (free BT... when it gets fixed) all really change things up and interact with each other in very specific ways.
Feral dungeon dps is NOT IN ANY WAY easy, if you are careless with a single aspect you will lose the majority of your dps as every part of your rotation works off each other to increase the damage of a few key abilities. I would go as far to say that being a feral DPS in a dungeon setting is one of if not the hardest dps to play optimally.
With my current set up (50% mastery, Luffa bracers, Pouncer boots, and swapping Symbiote belt on for bosses) I am able to very consistently pull roughly or over 350k dps on bosses / 450K mobs(3-6) and spike upwards of 1.5m dps on anything bigger than that with shadow thrash slot machine luck. Here's some proof of numbers while I helped out a guildy who was streaming: https://www.twitch.tv/zatcharygaming/v/9...=22h38m00s
*** End repost ***
Granted Purrfessor runs with a *sick* amount of legendaries and swaps 1 between boss and trash. But even without the legendaries the recipe above for multiplying your damage by stacking your skills correctly is clearly something that can drastically improve AoE dps!
I created a Legend of the skills/talents/items mentioned here for quick reference.
- Predator (Talent):
- - The cooldown on Tiger's Fury resets when a target dies with one of your Bleed effects active.
- Tiger's Fury (TF):
- - Instantly restores 20 Energy, and increases the damage of all your attacks by 15%
- - for their full duration. Lasts 8 sec.
- Savage Roar Finisher (SR):
- - Finishing move that grants 25% increased damage to your Cat Form attacks for their full duration.
- - Lasts longer per combo point (max 24 sec)
- Rake:
- - Rake the target for (91.2% of Attack power) Bleed damage and an additional (456% of
- - Attack power) Bleed damage over 15 sec.
- Thrash:
- - Strikes all nearby enemies, dealing (100% of Spell power + 41% of Attack power)
- - Bleed damage and an additional (146% of Attack power) Bleed damage over 15 sec.
- Swipe:
- - Swipe nearby enemies, inflicting 500% Physical damage.Deals 20% increased damage
- - against bleeding targets
- Bloodtalons (BT) (talent):
- - Regrowth (RG formerly HT) cast causes next 2 melee skills to deal 50% more damage
- Omen procs:
- - Your auto attacks have a chance to cause a Clearcasting state,
- - making your next Cat Form ability cost no Energy.
- - (Recommended order for choosing clearcasted skill: Rake -> Swipe -> SR Buff -> Thrash)
- Pandemic cap/threshold:
- - See advance discussion here http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic...071#post-4
- Regrowth (formerly Healing Touch or HT)
- - Healing spell obviously, but used by BT for 2 skill +50% damage)
- Primal Fury (passive):
- - Every time you critically strike with a combo generating ability you gain an additional combo point.
- Shadow Thrash (Proc from artifact):
- - Thrash has a 25% chance to release part of Ashamane's soul,
- - causing all nearby enemies to take (2 * (100% of Attack power)) Shadow damage over 2 sec.
- Legendary: Luffa Bracers (Wrist):
- - Increases damage output of Thrash by 25%(?)
- Legendary: Ailuro Pouncers (Boot):
- - Gain 1 stack of Predatory Swiftness every 15 sec.
- - Additionally, Predatory Swiftness now stacks up to 3 times.
- Legendary: Wildshaper's Clutch (Gloves)
- - Critical damage from your Bleeds have a 40% chance to trigger Primal Fury.
- Legendary: Cinidaria, the Symbiote (Waist)
- - Your attacks cause an additional 30% damage as Physical to enemies above 90% health.