Low Feral DPS

[woodleyctd 0]

Wassup.

 I'm a fresh level 120 and I've read a good amount about my class on ice veins for talents, rotation, and stat priority but I'm still averaging 3k DPS in single target combat. I know my spec isn't specifically for that as I have went with the open world/leveling/dungeons but I still feel like I should be able to produce higher numbers as people in my dungeon groups have produced 5k+ even before hitting level 120. I think my rotation is ok as I have downloaded the recommended add-on, Hekili. Have been selecting poor gear choices or is it something else?

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/gn8z6tDcb42Ajv3w/#fight=last

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/hydraxis/Woodley

Edited August 16, 2018 by woodleyctd

[BigPyroMage 0]

Hey Woodley,

 

Let me save you from the pain that I went through in Legion. I mained a Feral Druid for Legion; worst decision ever. Walk away pick a new main. Feral Druids, blizz dont love us like that. Since your a fresh new 120. Im assuming your good at leveling, pick a new class or go Balance. Feral Druids are my favorite class. You have to be twice as good to get half the results. I ended up rerolling after constantly getting kicked from Mythic Groups. my rotation was sketchy tho but still,...Feral Druid is a very unforgiving spec. My Mage spits out the big deeps. Hopefully one day blizzard will tune Feral. I would park it and used Feral as an alt until 8.1 drops

[Livelordx 0]

9 hours ago, BigPyroMage said:

Hey Woodley,

 

Let me save you from the pain that I went through in Legion. I mained a Feral Druid for Legion; worst decision ever. Walk away pick a new main. Feral Druids, blizz dont love us like that. Since your a fresh new 120. Im assuming your good at leveling, pick a new class or go Balance. Feral Druids are my favorite class. You have to be twice as good to get half the results. I ended up rerolling after constantly getting kicked from Mythic Groups. my rotation was sketchy tho but still,...Feral Druid is a very unforgiving spec. My Mage spits out the big deeps. Hopefully one day blizzard will tune Feral. I would park it and used Feral as an alt until 8.1 drops

I can back this as well. Feral druid pve has a higher skill cap for dps than balance, and is a lot easier to achieve the dps result with balance, for less work. Though I do believe; however, feral druid pvp content is still strong and decent. 

[jinsu2301 273]

If the best advice you guys can give is "don't play your spec" maybe you shouldn't bother? Just saying.

 

On 8/16/2018 at 8:23 AM, woodleyctd said:

Have been selecting poor gear choices or is it something else?

Best way is to sim yourself first. That way you can see if you're doing something wrong in terms of rotation. You can also try going with a less punishing Blood Scent/Sabertooth/Feral Frenzy build for single target.

[Madnbad 0]

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20767687552

Once you get gear that increases your upfront damage, respec your talents. You can kill regular mobs within the stun and even boss dps is on par with a fully buffed set up rip rotation. You still use rip if the target will live long enough.

[BigPyroMage 0]

I am simply thinking bigger picture. One of the worst frustration about WoW is a spec that doesnt work. Yeah you can sim and read all the guides but the numbers might not reflect until a later patch. I speaking from the perspective of a Feral Main for Wrath,Warlords and Legion. Just walk away its almost 10years and i am still waiting for that Feral buff. I just love the class fantasy but at some point you get jealous of other classes.

[jinsu2301 273]

1 hour ago, BigPyroMage said:

I am simply thinking bigger picture. One of the worst frustration about WoW is a spec that doesnt work. Yeah you can sim and read all the guides but the numbers might not reflect until a later patch. I speaking from the perspective of a Feral Main for Wrath,Warlords and Legion. Just walk away its almost 10years and i am still waiting for that Feral buff. I just love the class fantasy but at some point you get jealous of other classes.

Well, maybe you are doing something wrong, I did fine as feral last expansion...

[woodleyctd 0]

On 8/17/2018 at 4:38 AM, jinsu2301 said:

If the best advice you guys can give is "don't play your spec" maybe you shouldn't bother? Just saying.

 

Best way is to sim yourself first. That way you can see if you're doing something wrong in terms of rotation. You can also try going with a less punishing Blood Scent/Sabertooth/Feral Frenzy build for single target.

Thanks for the reply jinsu2301.

I'm definitely not wanting to start over. I like feral and I want to continue playing it. Also, theres always a chance ferals get buffed in the coming months so I'm staying optimistic right now. I think I will begin by  experimenting with different specs and see if I see improvements from there. What do you mean by "sim yourself"? I didn't mention this before but this is my first time playing WoW since MoP and I never heard of that before.

[jinsu2301 273]

5 hours ago, woodleyctd said:

What do you mean by "sim yourself"? I didn't mention this before but this is my first time playing WoW since MoP and I never heard of that before.

It means simulating a fight scenario with your character. it's usually done through a website called raidbots. 

best thing to do first would probably be a Quick Sim: 

• 10,000 iterations,
• Patchwork fight style (=no movement),
• 1 Boss,
• 5min fight length,
• No Buffs (make sure to check "Show all options")

You then compare that number to the same thing ingame: fight a Test Dummy, no blood lust/food/flasks/potions, for 5 minutes. (or do it with buffs, and change the simulation settings accordingly)

 

Oh, and don't use Load from Armory, it's bugged. Use the SimC addon, and just copy/paste the string from the game to raidbots.

This might be all a bit overwhelming at first, but it's really easy to use once you get the hang of it, and it provides you with a much better overview with how well you are doing vs. how well you could do potentially.

 

Edited August 18, 2018 by jinsu2301

[AZAPCAP 0]

You can definitely get more dps out of Feral. I'm level 113 at the moment and am easily averaging 2.5k+ DPS on a raid dummy. there are quite a few different rotations / talent choices that you can pick that trade off between potential DPS and easy average DPS. I'd encourage you to try out different build rather than going for the 'optimal' but difficult DPS build.

For example you might want to try Moment of Clarity rather than Bloodtalons.

[jinsu2301 273]

22 hours ago, AZAPCAP said:

I'm level 113 at the moment and am easily averaging 2.5k+ DPS

That doesn't mean anything though. If you go into BfA with Legion gear (especially legendaries), your stats will be through the roof. I started off with almost 40% in all secondary stats at 111, and ended with less than 10% once I dinged 120. The result was that my damage didn't change while mob health did.

But I do agree, it's definitely worth experimenting with talents. I used to hate feral until I went with a Sabertooth built, and the difference in DPS is often marginal, especially if you take potential for playing sub-optimally into account...

[milliamp 0]

Feral is a class designed to tunnel raid bosses and high health mobs. It's also a ramp up class meaning it takes a bit to get going so you are at the wrong end of the spectrum when fighting adds and things that die fast. 

It lacks a cleave or meaningful AoE meaning you have a huge handicap going into Mythic+ and most real encounters. Having a class with 4 specs is good because wow has become a bit less forgiving of alts but feral isn't really a relevant DPS spec for end-game content where damage matters.

Even though single target damage on raid bosses and test dummies is the one thing the fundamental mechanic isn't flawed at it's still not better than other specs even in that role.

This is not something that will get fixed, the spec is essentially (not) working as Blizzard intended. If hunters and rogues are underperforming it will get patched. Because Druid has Tank, DPS, ranged DPS etc. ferals crappy damage for 99.9% of wow content is the intent.

This is why if you care about your damage the response from people here is to use a spec other than feral. Its not intended to be on equal ground in PvE content with other damage classes. Burst and AoE classes destroy Feral in most actual PvE situations in the game. Patchwork hasn't been current content in 10 years and even then it was a trivial gear check for the 2nd encounter of the first raid tier at the time.

Feral spec is a relic of the past useful for little else outside Patchwork and test dummies. If Blizzard were going to try to keep the spec relevant by adding a cleave or better sustained AoE it would have happened before now. 

[jinsu2301 273]

42 minutes ago, milliamp said:

...

*Sigh* Wow. So first off, the whole "hybrids doing bad dps is intended" thing hasn't been true since Wrath. Feral was viable in Legion raiding, and actually did some pretty decent burst AoE with Brutal Slash. I know it, I was there, I did top the charts with my cat, and I suck. 

They nerfed Brutal Slash pretty heavily with the start of BfA, but after the recent AoE buffs, feral is doing fine in 5-man environments. It's not heroically bad, as some people would like to think. You won't be pushing super-high keys with it, but the same can be said about half of the other specs.

There are some glaring issues with the spec, like energy starvation, too long of a ramp up, or Bloodtalons being mandatory while awkward to play with.

But the idea that Blizzard wants feral to be bad is just absurd.

[Mordecaidrake 0]

I've been trying to figure out how to maximize feral DPS for weeks now and can't quite figure it out. Raidbots says I should be 12k but haven't once been able to replicate it. My original issue in my rotation was using my bloodtalons proc once it popped, but found it's better to save it for rake/rip. But I'm still averaging 7-8k dps on raid dummies. At this point is it pointless to continue pursuing feral and just switch to balance? Balance at least has solid AoE built in to even it's single target where as feral requires respecs to do anything halfway decent. 

[Tarazet 144]

I don't agree at all with the concept that Feral is not meant to be a PvE spec or that Blizzard is incompetent at balancing specs. Blizzard's testers are ridiculously good players. I've seen them go up against high rated teams in Mythic+ invitationals and completely embarrass them. They know how to play the game at the highest level and for better or worse, they are the resources that are used to balance the classes and the content. Then the Wild West gets hold of it and gasp and surprise, the real-world results vary.

If you're not getting the results you like from Feral, let's see real raid logs and I, along with others, will be happy to take a look at them and give anyone some pointers how to improve their performance. The basic mechanics that underpin the class have been well established for many years, but people take for granted that they are executing them optimally when chances are they probably have some room for improvement. That's both the draw and the drawback for a spec like Feral that is difficult to play near its maximum potential and punishes small errors with large DPS losses. If you get it right, then you get the reward of bringing a class that has superb survival tools and utility, as well as strong pressure DoT damage without being 100% reliant on uptime.

[Shores 0]

I'm lvling a feral druid, im lvl 59 atm. 
but there is just something i noticed about Ferocious Bite that feels off. if you read the skill
it says that its a: Finishing move that causes Phsycial damage per combo point and consumes up to 25 additional Energy to increase damage by up to 100%

but thats not correct. 
1 point= 86 damage
5 points is 428 damage
5 times 86 is 430. so we are missing 2 as it is. i know not a big deal
but the skills does say that it consumes up to 25 additional energy to increase damage by up to 100%. that means i should be doing a hit around 860 damage right? or in this case 856. 
but im not doing nowhere near that damage at all unless i crit.
my recount shows me that ferocious bite did a hit of 595. and i made sure that it had plenty of energy to use for the additional damage. 

i was wondering is this the same on higher lvls or is it not? i know we are more around bleeds but if our filler for when we already have a bleed on a target is nerfed even tho the description says we should be doing 100% additional damage which we are not getting unless we crit. only then its near the description damage.
 
a crit with 595 damage is 1190 damage. but if i should have gotten 856 damage like i calculated then i should have done 1712, mob health is around 2320. i know thats alot of damage i could do to a random mob but its a crit on top of a 5 combo point spender with 100% additional damage.

Edited September 12, 2018 by Shores
added some extra info at the end, and fixed a spelling mistake

[Tarazet 144]

13 hours ago, Shores said:

I'm lvling a feral druid, im lvl 59 atm. 
but there is just something i noticed about Ferocious Bite that feels off. if you read the skill
it says that its a: Finishing move that causes Phsycial damage per combo point and consumes up to 25 additional Energy to increase damage by up to 100%

but thats not correct. 
1 point= 86 damage
5 points is 428 damage
5 times 86 is 430. so we are missing 2 as it is. i know not a big deal
but the skills does say that it consumes up to 25 additional energy to increase damage by up to 100%. that means i should be doing a hit around 860 damage right? or in this case 856. 
but im not doing nowhere near that damage at all unless i crit.
my recount shows me that ferocious bite did a hit of 595. and i made sure that it had plenty of energy to use for the additional damage. 

i was wondering is this the same on higher lvls or is it not? i know we are more around bleeds but if our filler for when we already have a bleed on a target is nerfed even tho the description says we should be doing 100% additional damage which we are not getting unless we crit. only then its near the description damage.
 
a crit with 595 damage is 1190 damage. but if i should have gotten 856 damage like i calculated then i should have done 1712, mob health is around 2320. i know thats alot of damage i could do to a random mob but its a crit on top of a 5 combo point spender with 100% additional damage.

I'll test this, but I think what you're seeing is explained by this: the tooltips are dynamic. They show you how much damage the ability should be doing given the current buffs/resources available. If you starve yourself of Energy and then use FB, the ability will do less damage.

[jinsu2301 273]

14 hours ago, Shores said:

...

Mobs have armor, or an armor value to be specific, similiar to players. I think it's generally about 14% or something, might be even higher for certain mobs in old areas like Outland or Northrend. 

[Shores 0]

8 hours ago, Tarazet said:

I'll test this, but I think what you're seeing is explained by this: the tooltips are dynamic. They show you how much damage the ability should be doing given the current buffs/resources available. If you starve yourself of Energy and then use FB, the ability will do less damage.

i tried it at 50 energy and at 100 energy. the damage is the same. it doesnt make a diffrence because the ability doesnt take more than 50 energy, 25 for ferocious bite and 25 more for the 100% extra damage. i dont starve myself of energy i make sure i have enough for the extra damage, but it just feels like its too low. certainly in dungeons
 

8 hours ago, jinsu2301 said:

Mobs have armor, or an armor value to be specific, similiar to players. I think it's generally about 14% or something, might be even higher for certain mobs in old areas like Outland or Northrend. 

i wasnt sure if mobs had an armor value. and i was in outland at that time. il try to pay attention and see if this damage value changes when i change locations or mobs with less armor? maybe animals?