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My guild's only DPS warrior rerolled DK because he hated warrior. If we don't replace him (quite possible since all of the buffs he brought are covered and we're a small-roster guild), i'll be penalized 10% DPS over the guy whose guild brings a 3k DPS arms warrior. It's a bizarre case because -we already bring the same buff-, but if someone else does our DPS goes way up.

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Trauma gives a great opportunity for Warrior/Feral synergy - Trauma procs on Critical Strikes, and what do Ferals bring? 5% more crits. I really wish Blizzard would play with the Arms tree more to exploit this.

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And mages want a damage buff? El oh el. Also looking at the Premo PTR parses the last two or three days only reinforces what I already knew: mages are fine.

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You can't possibly be this ignorant?

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So having adequate raid buffs means its justified for a single class(hybrid no less) to decimate everyone else's dps?

It's no different than what's happening on live servers with fury warriors.

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It's not justified. The issue is that there's a further 10%~ DPS gain from bringing someone to bring a debuff that you personally bring. If Druids are balanced around other people bring it, they're going to suffer if their DPS warrior isn't Arms or if they don't have one. If they're balanced around not having it, their DPS is going to be too high with it.

We want to know what the deal is, what's going to be changed to fix it (because it is too high), and whether or not Trauma being provided by an outside source is considered too large of a fluctuation.

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So having adequate raid buffs means its justified for a single class(hybrid no less) to decimate everyone else's dps?

It's no different than what's happening on live servers with fury warriors.

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No, I'm saying that a single class decimating other DPSers situationally is not justification for nerfing it. Trauma was just an example - there are many other factors that play into Maximizing Feral DPS, including as I said positional requirements, RNG (critical strikes, Omen of Clarity procs). Not to mention complete mastery of arguably the most complicated DPS rotation in the game.

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You can't possibly be this ignorant?

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Should probably ask yourself that.

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No, I'm saying that a single class decimating other DPSers situationally is not justification for nerfing it. Trauma was just an example - there are many other factors that play into Maximizing Feral DPS, including as I said positional requirements, RNG (critical strikes, Omen of Clarity procs). Not to mention complete mastery of arguably the most complicated DPS rotation in the game.

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Even without an Arms Warrior, Ferals would be doing more dps than any Warrior spec.

You need to be hit with the same nerf bat that hit Fury Warriors.

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Even without an Arms Warrior, Ferals would be doing more dps than any Warrior spec.

You need to be hit with the same nerf bat that hit Fury Warriors.

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I thought this was a Feral vs Mage DPS thread? Everyone knows this patch is breaking Warriors. I want them to buff Arms.

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Even without an Arms Warrior, Ferals would be doing more dps than any Warrior spec.

You need to be hit with the same nerf bat that hit Fury Warriors.

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I wish I knew why you were so bitter that you had to come into a thread about other classes and use something which is widely considered to be an over-reaction as proof another class needs to be decimated.

Mind you, that's not even the point of what we're talking about - there's a debuff which majorly affects exactly three specs (Arms, Fury, Feral) that has two providers, one of which is hardly guaranteed to be in raids yet causes the other's DPS to increase by a large amount.

we were missing 3% attack speed and 3% damage last night btw

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It's not justified. The issue is that there's a further 10%~ DPS gain from bringing someone to bring a debuff that you personally bring. If Druids are balanced around other people bring it, they're going to suffer if their DPS warrior isn't Arms or if they don't have one. If they're balanced around not having it, their DPS is going to be too high with it.

We want to know what the deal is, what's going to be changed to fix it (because it is too high), and whether or not Trauma being provided by an outside source is considered too large of a fluctuation.

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I will agree the difference between having mangle/trauma provided for a Druid makes too big a difference but right now the majority of the evidence indicates feral dps is too low without a mangle bot. That may or may not be true but if you look at all the parses available right now that is what they indicate. Another thing that hasn't even been mentioned is how well all the classes are going to scale. The tabard only partially simulates scaling but I wouldn't count on it being completely accurate. Warriors as usual will scale very well. Feral will not scale as poorly as before but it remains to be seen how much of the scaling issues have been fixed. I suggest looking at all the parses available and certainly not focusing on patchwerk which is very much atypical.

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we were missing 3% attack speed and 3% damage last night btw

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Thanks Pinch - you guys have always been stellar about weighing in on these topics. I can only imagine what must go through your guild chat knowing that your parses will be so propagated and scrutinized.

I, personally, truly appreciate you guys making them public, it's one of the few sources of reliable data we (the community) have from the 3.1 changes.

Keep up the great work and tell Psamtik I want his Orb of the Sin'dorei.

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we were missing 3% attack speed and 3% damage last night btw

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Tell Trajer to stop slacking >_>

Wait a second. Are we really going to balance all the classes around DPS meters from Patchwerk? Comparing melee to melee sounds fair enough, but don't compare ranged to melee, because Patchwerk is the exception to rule. Most fights require moving, and running away, etc... where ranged can have a huge advantage over melee.

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I am consistently top 3 DPS on Sapphiron simply because my DoTs and my ability to move out of Blizzards and DPS at the same time keep me ahead of everyone else.

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Sapphiron is exactly the fight where melee are never top 3, unless you are doing a 10 man, with less than 3 ranged classes.

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This conversation is highlighting the mangle/trauma problem for Feral Druids. With it, we can compete (in 3.1), without it we haven't a prayer.

Also, the whole Savage Roar, Rake, Mangle, Rip, and Tiger's Fury micromanagement routine that Druids suffer through is ridiculous. For fights that require target switching, or running away, then our DPS severely suffers greatly (as is probably the case for many melee).

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And mages want a damage buff? El oh el. Also looking at the Premo PTR parses the last two or three days only reinforces what I already knew: mages are fine.

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I don't understand your logic here.

Even if i put aside the fact the mage design discussion is about how mages will scale in 3.1 - and just focused on where they are now.

Mages should be the highest dps in raids, yes?

They have lowest protection and no pet and cc that actually heals their attacker (lol), so in pvp 1vs 1s they are generally the lowest survivability class.

I would have thought - even if we put the old glass cannon bs aside - that anyone with the most extreme weakness in one facet of the game should be the strongest in some part of the other.

I would never expect my hunter to be able to dps as well as a mage in raids - the hunter is too diverisifed and powerful in other parts of the game to also rule dps in raids as well.

A mage's most powerful spec should be as strong as the most powerful spec from the other pure classes (hunters/rogues/locks).

Mages are not entitled to #1 every time, but they need to be able to achieve it without having some ungodly crit rate like 70%.

This is simply about balancing damage for 3.1, not giving special treatment to mages.

Ideally, all three specs of all four pure classes should do equal dps, but that's not realistic right now.

So, Destro/Demo (if that's the top build now), Combat Rogues, TtW fire mages (if that's the top build now), Survival Hunters should all be pretty equal. Right now, they are kinda out of whack with, at least parse evidence, pointing that Hunters/Mage are on the lower end of the spectrum unless heavily RNG favored.

Some Hybrid dps, specifically Elemental Shaman and Feral Druid seems to be equal to the top pure classes at the moment.

Balancing mages around a 70% effective crit rate to obtain optimal Hot Streaks (crit + crit) procs will tend to short change Mages in fights.

That being said, there is a lot of ambiguity about the "Glyph of Living Bomb" which currently is broken. It doesn't do any of the following (has been reported and is being looked at on PTR):

• Doesn't properly utilize the correct crit multipliers from talents
  
• Doesn't proc ignite
  
• Doesn't currently proc Hot Streak
  

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15671260523&pageNo=1&sid=1#1

Some or any of the above can be massaged to thin out the negative effects of RNG on the mage class. If the periodic crits from Living Bomb can proc Hot Streak, it will go a long way to helping with the dependency on RNG, or changing Hot Streak from a crit + crit based proc to a % based proc.

Combustion is also a pretty easy tool that could be modified to help promote less RNG by being extended or changed to a flat increase of crit % for a certain amount of time.

I think that's what we've summed up/discussed in the last 6 pages of this thread.

I don't know about those Premo guys.. =p

Anyways, BUFF SHADOW PRIEST DPS GC AND A PONY TOO

Feral druids should be down with the shadowpriests, the ret paladins, the elemental shaman, and now the fury warriors. The levels of dps they can put out on the 3.1 PTR is absurd.

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Feral druids should be down with the shadowpriests, the ret paladins, the elemental shaman, and now the fury warriors. The levels of dps they can put out on the 3.1 PTR is absurd.

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Hay, you know the rule, its more fun to buff dps then nerf it.

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That being said, there is a lot of ambiguity about the "Glyph of Living Bomb" which currently is broken. It doesn't do any of the following (has been reported and is being looked at on PTR):

• Doesn't properly utilize the correct crit multipliers from talents
  
• Doesn't proc ignite
  
• Doesn't currently proc Hot Streak
  

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15671260523&pageNo=1&sid=1#1

Some or any of the above can be massaged to thin out the negative effects of RNG on the mage class. If the periodic crits from Living Bomb can proc Hot Streak, it will go a long way to helping with the dependency on RNG, or changing Hot Streak from a crit + crit based proc to a % based proc.

Combustion is also a pretty easy tool that could be modified to help promote less RNG by being extended or changed to a flat increase of crit % for a certain amount of time.

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i cannot agree with you more. With the introduction of the LB Glyph, Mages can become more dependent on keeping LB up instead of hopping we get double crits. I know for me, I'm planning on dropping my Scorch glyph for the LB glyph. Then switching to TtW/FB spec.

Combustion - 3 minute cooldown

When activated, this spell causes each of your Fire damage spell hits to increase your critical strike chance with Fire damage spells by 10%. This effect lasts until you have caused 3 critical strikes with Fire spells.

Updating this to an Icy Veins type model would be excellent. Increases critical strike chance by 30% for 20 seconds, 2 minute cooldown.

It would also give TtW Fire mages a sort of dump on demand that they don't currently have.

The problem with the current model is, while it increases the chance of critical strikes until you get 3, it doesn't necessarily assist in getting them back to back. You can crit on the 1st, 3rd and 5th just as easily with Combustion. Your chances aren't exponentially higher to get back to back crits with it active.