Feral Changes Part II, Blue Posts, WOWDB Update

[WoRBot]

News on the upcoming feral changes, a recap of the blue posts from the day, and information on the latest features added to WOWDB.

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[SirAlex]

I like how blizzard is getting rid of the Feral Attack Power... It was a very high-end stat for level 60 (only being seen through AQ40, Exhaulted status with Cenarion Hold, and Naxxramas). Every level after 60, feral-attack-power items were of an inexhaustible supply. Basically, TBC implemented too many Feral Attack Power items and it killed the unique feel of the stat. Orinigally there was no Feral Attack Power, and items like Bonecruser and Unstoppable Force were actually good for ferals. Hopefully Blizzard will reimplement some good 1h maces for ferals again (given they produce good OH's for once as well)

On the note of Blizzard's dealing with armor... I think its a pretty low and weak move on Blizzards part. A lot of the high-armor leather items make ferals drool on themselves (which may lead me to believe that they are getting rid of bonus armor on items due to lawsuits filed against them for electrocution by salivating on their keyboard). Anyway... The high armor items were a good way for druids to distinguish a DPS item from a tanking item. Sure this leaves more items avaible for druids to choose from... but in reality its simply making the game more casual...

World of Blahcra..

[Kanzentai]

Originally Posted by SirAlex

but in reality its simply making the game more casual..

Obvious troll is obvious.

[mercia]

Originally Posted by SirAlex

but in reality its simply making the game more casual...

So treu I loved the feral only staves now we need to share our staves with huntards :S wel i rerolled paladin anyway :P

[Endless]

Originally Posted by SirAlex

Basically, TBC implemented too many Feral Attack Power items and it killed the unique feel of the stat.

Uh?

There are exactly 13 epic items with FAP on it, 4 of which come from PVP, all weapons. Breakdown is:
four from pvp,
one from rep,
one from badges (introduced with SWP),
one in bot heroic,
one in Kara,
one in ZA,
one in SSC,
one in MH,
one in SWP,
one world drop.

Which means that if you missed your chance when your guild was going through tier 4, tough luck, you'll have to wait for a drop in SSC. Got unlucky and it never showed up in SSC or that other druid won? Fear not, there is pillar of atrocity in MH. Meanwhile, melee gets on average two weapons per tier, same for healers, same for casters. Bottom line is, a feral druid had less choice on average than a caster or a meleer had when it came to weapons, and I don't see how a druid would have geared up weapon wise if there had been less of the FAP items.

[SirAlex]

Originally Posted by Endless

Uh?

There are exactly 13 epic items with FAP on it, 4 of which come from PVP, all weapons. Breakdown is:
four from pvp,
one from rep,
one from badges (introduced with SWP),
one in bot heroic,
one in Kara,
one in ZA,
one in SSC,
one in MH,
one in SWP,
one world drop.

Which means that if you missed your chance when your guild was going through tier 4, tough luck, you'll have to wait for a drop in SSC. Got unlucky and it never showed up in SSC or that other druid won? Fear not, there is pillar of atrocity in MH. Meanwhile, melee gets on average two weapons per tier, same for healers, same for casters. Bottom line is, a feral druid had less choice on average than a caster or a meleer had when it came to weapons, and I don't see how a druid would have geared up weapon wise if there had been less of the FAP items.

I believe your missing my point on how FAP items were and how they are now. At level 60, there were only 4 items (yes they were all epic/legendary too) that had FAP. Each of these items were hard to get. Come TBC, there were lots of greens, blues, and epics with FAP on it. I think Blizzard should have gone back to the idea of FAP items being on high-end content (ie 1 from KT, one from BT, one from Sunwell) to keep the tradition of FAP being a rare and awesome stat. Blizzard could have avoided having to remove FAP if they had simply not throw it on a lot of items like they had.
As stated before, ferals had to level and raid without FAP in the begining.... no reason they couldn't have done the same thing again. Also, ferals had a pretty wide range of choices. But once they found a FAP item (given how hard it was to get one) that was their weapon of choice.

[Tales]

Sooo, ferals should have had an even worse scaling on TBC just to keep out one of their stats because that would make it more awesome or rare?

[Leviathonlx]

Originally Posted by SirAlex

I believe your missing my point on how FAP items were and how they are now. At level 60, there were only 4 items (yes they were all epic/legendary too) that had FAP. Each of these items were hard to get. Come TBC, there were lots of greens, blues, and epics with FAP on it. I think Blizzard should have gone back to the idea of FAP items being on high-end content (ie 1 from KT, one from BT, one from Sunwell) to keep the tradition of FAP being a rare and awesome stat. Blizzard could have avoided having to remove FAP if they had simply not throw it on a lot of items like they had.
As stated before, ferals had to level and raid without FAP in the begining.... no reason they couldn't have done the same thing again. Also, ferals had a pretty wide range of choices. But once they found a FAP item (given how hard it was to get one) that was their weapon of choice.

Ferals didn't level and raid without FAP at the beginning because only a idiot druid/guild would let a druid raid as feral (actually letting them DPS) pre TBC since there was almost no itemization for feral period. I didn't even level to 60 as feral in vanilla WoW since it was such a terrible tree until the talent revamps but feral was far from good until TBC when they got Mangle. Your logic is so flawed it's incredible.

[SirAlex]

Originally Posted by Leviathonlx

Ferals didn't level and raid without FAP at the beginning because only a idiot druid/guild would let a druid raid as feral (actually letting them DPS) pre TBC since there was almost no itemization for feral period. I didn't even level to 60 as feral in vanilla WoW since it was such a terrible tree until the talent revamps but feral was far from good until TBC when they got Mangle. Your logic is so flawed it's incredible.

lol i know feral was the ultimate piece of crap (except for Feral Charge) Pre-TBC until it got all re-worked. I am saying that once blizzard implemented FAP they were ultimately dooming the existence of the stat as it was. AKA it should have never been implemented in the first place because of how desirable those individual items were for ferals. Seriously, 2000 Attack Power on an item is pretty OP (yes it compensates for the DPS loss) but why didn't Blizzard originally just implement a "DPS on Weapon to Feral-Form DPS" conversion?

[Leviathonlx]

Well even without the 2000 FAP on a staff it still is going to equate to 2000 FAP since the FAP on a weapon has always corresponded to the DPS of the weapon.

[beansmoke]

The "find an upgrade" option on the WoWDB profile character feature doesn't seem to be converting stats to equivalent values (Agility to attack power, or Intelligence to spell crit, for example), and seems to be ignoring some ratings stats entirely (haste, crit rating, hit rating, etc.), rendering them as "undefined." As if this wasn't bad enough, it doesn't provide any method for weighting for a specific purpose. I'm a dps feral druid currently. This is obvious from looking at my talents, but even if it wasn't, there's no way for me to set it. And yet, it tells me that Pendant of Titans (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=32362) is an upgrade to Slasher's Amulet (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=35610)?? Mousing over the item shows me that I'd gain 43 Stamina, 25 Dodge Rating, 21 Defense Rating, and 20 "undefined", and lose 25 "undefined," 45 "undefined," and 36 "undefined".

This makes the entire feature practically worthless. I understand it's in beta, but to put up something so wholly unusable is silly.

[Shape]

Band-aid fix for a band-aid nerf. It boggles my mind how they could sit around and say 'oh we'll just remove the armor from leather' and not take bear mitigation into account.

I'm on the fence as to whether I think the homogenization of gear and raid roles is good or bad, but I'll still maintain that Blizzard doesn't have a grip on the feral condition. FAP translation from weapon dps sounds great, and I feel bad for the guilds that were trying to progress through SWP only to dust a Stanchion week after week. But as history has proven, i don't have a lot of faith in them getting feral itemization 'right' the first go around.

For the first time in my bear life i'm having aggro issues in multiple mob situations when every other tank class is laughing at how easy tanking is due to recent changes. I really really wonder what blizzard's feral playtesting team consists of.

[Kody]

Originally Posted by beansmoke

The "find an upgrade" option on the WoWDB profile character feature doesn't seem to be converting stats to equivalent values (Agility to attack power, or Intelligence to spell crit, for example), and seems to be ignoring some ratings stats entirely (haste, crit rating, hit rating, etc.), rendering them as "undefined." As if this wasn't bad enough, it doesn't provide any method for weighting for a specific purpose. I'm a dps feral druid currently. This is obvious from looking at my talents, but even if it wasn't, there's no way for me to set it. And yet, it tells me that Pendant of Titans (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=32362) is an upgrade to Slasher's Amulet (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=35610)?? Mousing over the item shows me that I'd gain 43 Stamina, 25 Dodge Rating, 21 Defense Rating, and 20 "undefined", and lose 25 "undefined," 45 "undefined," and 36 "undefined".

This makes the entire feature practically worthless. I understand it's in beta, but to put up something so wholly unusable is silly.

The neck comparison you provided is related to the way the talents were set up with our scoring system. We're going to be fixing that soon.