Feral Druid (DPS Problems)

[Vonos 2]

Hello there!

Thanks for your time looking at my post, I have recently started playing a Feral druid within a month back. Got to 110 two weeks ago and been constantly playing feral and at first with bad gears my DPS was sustaining around 250k when I was 850 ilvl geared in raids. But when I've gotten more time to gear up my druid and eventually my druid hit 878 ilvl and containing some of the BiS gears for feral for example the two trinkets. My DPS did not increase a huge amount of deal. Instead having an 28 ilvl upgrade + having the 3 golden trait, my Feral DPS only increased by 50k~60k in raids, this has started to take a toll with the lack of DPS that is needed to be pushing 7/7 M Emerald Nightmare. I've also asked many questions with our top server Feral Druid what I'm doing wrong and he is struggling to find any MAJOR point factors that why my DPS is extremely low with my ilvl.

My Artifact weapon is 25/34 currently, with Frost Relic 880 from H Guarm, Life Relic 880 from M Nythendra, Blood Relic from H Elerethe ~ Can't quite remember what ilvl it is.

I know my uptimes is low but when I've tested on target dummy my DPS is still around 310k~ even with 95% ~ 97% up time on my dots, so i'm completely clueless.

 

Armoury:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/frostmourne/Vonos/simple

Logs:

Nythendra:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/VXNz26RCaKZcYqrg/#fight=8

Ursoc:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/VXNz26RCaKZcYqrg/#fight=10

 

[Tarazet 144]

On the Nythendra kill, you only cast Rip twice with Tiger's Fury up. You also cast it twice without Savage Roar active. As long as I can remember, that kind of management has been extremely important because Feral bleeds have a snapshot effect. You want to apply bleeds with as many buffs up as possible. Funny enough you are quite good at applying it with Bloodtalons, which is a bitch, but you fall down on the more basic mechanic of the class.

You can see this for yourself by going to the "Damage Done" pane and looking at the "Source Auras Filter." This can show you how many times you cast each ability with Tiger's Fury up by clicking the buff icon, then if you click it again, with Tiger's Fury absent.

Regarding the uptimes, Feral has a whole bunch of dependencies on bleeds being there all the time. Work on smoothing out your rotation. When I was playing feral in raids back in Pandaria, I used a very simple and effective mod called Cat's Eye to track all of the key debuffs and timers. It's basically a well designed and eye-catching Weakauras.

Edited December 30, 2016 by Tarazet

[Vonos 2]

Oh I see, basically my rotation is still unpolished and I'm getting heavily punished because of not having every buff active and applying the dot with the buffs. But another question is that I usually time Tiger's Fury with Ashamane's Frenzy then get 5 combo points then use Rip ~ usually, but if you think about it the timing it should actually match with Berserk or by off by 10 seconds max but it seems like thats not the case, when I activate it at the start before pulling the boss it is by a huge margin around 20 seconds and when It feels like I waste a lot of time applying and reapplying dots without the buffs being up and have to wait for certain buffs up. Is it also because my rotation is extremely slow? Also I feel like that blizzard is heavily punishing feral druid for not having a perfect rotation like there is a really really small margin of error.

Thanks for your time answering my forum though :)!

[Tarazet 144]

You can say that timing TF with Ashamane's Frenzy and Rip is your goal, but looking at the actual execution it doesn't seem to be happening consistently.

My opinion is that the Icy-Veins recommended rotation is excessively difficult. It literally throws away every QOL thing you can take in your talent tree - you have to maintain Savage Roar, it makes your dots tick faster so you have to apply them more often, and you don't refresh Rip using Ferocious Bite. So it's actually harder than it has ever been to play Feral with the optimal talent build. Feral is not an easy spec, never has been, but especially now you get severely punished for not having enough Critical Strike in particular, and for sure pressing the wrong buttons. I've been playing Enhancement in Legion and it is much more forgiving.

I checked your armory and it seems you switched to using Incarnation, which is not a bad call but it does require you to be AMAZING with your opener to maximize your damage in that window. Unfortunately, Jagged Wounds is far too strong not to use, even though it makes your life really rough.

[Vonos 2]

I use Incarnation when I'm looking forward to do Mythic + and Normal Mythics , where because in those boss fights thats where my DPS shine. I can easily burst and maintain around 600k~ single target DPS in a 2 minute fight but it heavily drops when its a 3+ minute fight as that is when all the abilities start going hard cool downs. But even with that, it seems that Feral AOE DPS lacks heavily also without the increase swipe damage by 7% trait. This makes Feral trying to climb high in Mythic + very hard where to do high keys you need huge numbers in AoE where feral clearly doesn't have.

What is the optimal stat-line as a Feral, for example whats the Crit Cap that I should reach before focusing a lot in mastery? And how much haste I need to make sure it doesn't drop below the certain percentage.

Another question is in the Icy - Veins guide it says that Lunar Inspiration is the recommended choice but where in my opinion that Lunar Inspiration doesn't bring as much damage in single target nearly enough as Blood Scent, do you choose those talents based on the stats on your Feral?

[Tarazet 144]

Lunar Inspiration is also along the lines of yes it's better, at least single target, but it makes your rotation more complicated. Blood Scent smooths things out by generating more combo points passively with critical strikes, so that it is easier to keep up your rotation. It's not really a matter of hitting a certain cap - more of a comfort level with the rotation. It's my opinion that the standard build of Lunar Inspiration, Savage Roar, Jagged Wounds and Bloodtalons is too difficult for most people to reasonably execute in a raid setting. Random stuff happens, and you need to be able to react to it and act on the fly.

That said, I do like the Feral style of lining up buffs to get strong bleeds off. I recall in Throne of Thunder, I was able to do astounding amounts of damage to the bats by using the Dream of Cenarius (now called Bloodtalons) buff charges together with Tiger's Fury on Thrash and Swipe when they dropped down and just made them melt away. That kind of thing doesn't seem to work as well now. Other classes are better at pounding on groups of squishy targets.

There are some pretty good new talents for dungeons, though. Predator is awesome - you can get great uptime on Tiger's Fury. Brutal Slash is a much better version of Swipe. I'm not wild about Incarnation in dungeons, though, because the trash in a lot of cases are more dangerous than the bosses are, and not having Savage Roar hurts you outside of Incarnation.

[lokiside 0]

http://clawnalyst.nimos.ws

 

use this site to find out what your doing wrong in any given fight just paste the link to the log you want to look at and hit enter.

Edited January 14, 2017 by lokiside

[Ghash 7]

What is the proper way to handle bleeds when you can't get them buffed with Bloodtalons or Tiger's Fury?  Apply them and reapply as soon as possible with Bloodtalons?  What about Ashamane's Frenzy?  Can I delay using it to sync it with Tiger's Fury and Bloodtalons?  If I do reapply a Rip because I now have a Bloodtalons charge, do I still need to pay attention to the 4.7 second rule (with Jagged Wounds) of refreshing it or is it better to clip it regardless since it'll be buffed?

I'm ready to give up on Feral DPS entirely because of the immense skill cap with little reward.  I'm pulling approximately 235k on single targets at 859 ilevel (usually can only manage 180-190k on AoE) .  My windwalker monk with an 856 ilevel pulls more than 100k more than that on average, and easily twice the AoE damage.  

 

Thanks.