28/08/2022 Update:
If you're interested in learning more about the GotVV-shift, please start with my posts concerning the 5% crit (i.e. this one). I feel morally obligated to point out the biggest, unsolved issue of this technique so that people would immediately be aware of it before reading further. Nap informed me that this is spell batching, which is part of the old client. According to him, this issue was not present on VVotLK Classic, but since my threads regard the original Vanilla VVotLK, I'm keeping the information here almost unchanged for informative reasons.
That said, I am more than aware that it's not structured well as my thoughts are all over the place. For that reason, I created this guide. Take care!
Thread Navigation
- Introduction
- General overview
- The importance of the CC procs
- Desperate times call for desperate measures
- Is stil heaviuh den feadus?
- RNG - the untrustworthy friend and unpredictable foe click here
- General overview
- Displaying RNG with /rolls
- The vital presence of the /stopattack command click here
- Quick clarification
- GotVV without the /stopattack command
- GotVV with the /stopattack command
- VVhat's the value of a Combo Point?
- Bonus damage
- Attack speed modifiers click here
- General overview
- Our attack speed in a raid setting
- Sacrificing DoTs in favour of CCs click here
- FB/Rip/Rake & CCs click here
- Timing FB
- 5CPs & CCs. Should we use Shred or FB?
- 5CPs & CCs. Should we use Shred or refresh Rip in case it has expired?
- Rake & CCs. Should we use Shred or refresh Rake in case it has expired?
- Folow-up click here
- Predator's Swiftness - another reliable way to force CCs? click here
- Backstory
- VVhat can we do with this information?
- New equation
- Author's note
- Agility vs Strength vs Haste. VVhich archtype would be the most suitable for the GotVV-shift? click here
- Unnecessary introduction
- An example build for each archtype
- Performance of each archtype in fights with different lengths and a different amount of CCs
- Final verdict
- Follow-up post click here
- Something about the 5% melee crit click here
- Follow-up post 1 click here
- Follow-up post 2 click here
- Personal analysis of Savage Roar click here
- Cat's openers: Shred spam vs SR mid-Berserk vs FB mid-Berserk click here
- Personal analysis of bearweaving click here
- Backstory
- General overview
- Some calculations
- GotVV-shift vs bearweaving
- Conclusions
- Restoweaving click here
- Preface
- Comparing the damage of GotVV-shift vs VVrathweaving vs Restoweaving
- No weapon swapping
- Healing only when PS is up
- Conclusions
- Improving the GotVV-shift click here
- Daggerweaving
- Swinging with the main weapon and swapping idols afterwards - a match made in heaven
- Being under the hit/exp cap in favour of more offensive stats click here
- GotVV-shift in retrospect click here
- Preface
- General overview
- Attack speed modifiers
- Maul-Mangle-Maul vs CC for Mangle
- GotVV-shift with a 2.4-speed weapon
- Nuances in feral cat's gameplay click here
- Preface
- Clipping DoTs
- Staying at 100 energy with 5 CPs
- Cat's movement speed
- Exception that proves the rule click here
- Preface
- 4-CP Rip
- Going for a 5-CP SR if you're sitting at 4CPs
- Going for a 5-CP FB if you're sitting at 4CPs
- Ogre Pinata pre-pull rotation click here
- Preface
- General overview
- An alternative approach
- Actual theorycrafting
- Follow-up post click here
- One man's trash is another man's treasure click here
- Preface
- AP increase from Crystal of Ferocity & Scourgebane Draught
- Swing timer reset from Oil of Immolation
- Eskhandar's Claws
INTRODUCTIONI. General overview
In this forum thread, I've talked about a new playstyle, its advantages and disadvantages, and some tricks around it. Before I say anything else, I'd like to stress on the fact that this is going to be a DISCUSSION thread. I'm more than ready to accept any constructive feedback, which might disprove most of the points I make here. If that's the case, I'll acknowledge the false information and correct it. Keep in mind that not everything is mentioned in the first post!!! You have to read everything here, in order to get a better understanding of the risks and the nuances (orr just view the summary)! Other people's comments are also worth reading, so make sure you check them out as well. Speaking of which:
Big thanks to Nap for basically collaborating with me on this project. Thank you, DarkenedHue, for pointing out some of my mistakes in the OP, and to both of you for sharing the EJ forum page. VVithout you, this theorycraft would have remained in the dust. Nap and wtfzomglol have created some good macros, so make sure you use them. Thank you, Blunta, for motivating me to finally record some tests on dummies and informing me about the lag/human error factor. Thank you, Aldtharios and Nobuemon for your time to respond to my DMs and to shed some light on the 'exploit' topic. Thank you, Sand1dark for informing me about the Predator's Swiftness interaction with Regrowth on discord. Also, props to skullatbash, DarkenedHue, Septimun, and Bigpwn for their amazing work in the bugtracker!
So, without any further ado, here's my take on the "Omen of Clarity" topic:
II. The importance of the CC procs
Some players see this blue buff and tell themselves “Oh, cool. I get to do an extra Shred. Nice”, while in truth those procs play a bigger role. I dare to say that they don’t just increase our dps - they DEFINE the whole philosophy of the cat’s gameplay. Don’t believe me? You think it’s exaggerated?
I’m going to give you a simple example. Imagine that you just cast Rip on a mob, and its full duration is the same as your Savage Roar’s. So 22 seconds (with the three Shreds). You would probably feel comfortable with the long duration of both abilities, and you would try to bite the target, right? VVell, what if I told you that it’s only possible thanks to our CCs?
If we want to refresh both SR and Rip with as few abilities as possible (let’s say 1x Rake and 3x Shreds), and we exclude the OoC procs from our equation, we would need overall:
- 216/206(with t10) energy w/o TF;
- 156/146(with t10) energy with TF.
And since druids regenerate 10 energy per second regardless in what form they are and regardless what stats they have, in the first case we would need 22/21 seconds, in order to accumulate the required energy, and in the second one - 16/15. Yikes! And that’s with crits and with only one enabler for SR, mind you. Double yikes!
As you can see, finding an opportunity to FB your target w/o any CC procs is impossible, to say the least. VVith this simple example I’ve shown you why we are extremely dependant on those blue buffs, and why we shouldn’t take them for granted. Thankfully, they don’t have an ICD, so every single AA has a 6% chance to proc them. That’s why it’s so important to force those procs by all means necessary. You can do that by equiping items with haste or using the following spells in combat - Nature’s Grasp, Barkskin, FFF. Before fights and when you avoid certain boss mechanics, you should also cast GotVV.
III. Desperate times call for desperate measures
Here's where the controversial part begins, and this was the reason for creating the thread. As I've stated above, ferals are heavily dependant on the CC procs, and they should use everything they can to force them. But there's something I see that other ferals don't do in fights:
/cast Gift of the Wild while they are still on the boss
(25/08/2021 Update: If you go read my fourth post, you'd see why this macro is incomplete, and we need to add a /stopattack command. Having clarified that, my OP will continue without acknowledging it, because I want you to see the initial thought process)
I want to stress it here - you can cast the aforementioned ability while you are still attacking the boss as you would normally do. VVhile it doesn’t sound like anything new, it does however come with a penalty and a risk. So, what will happen if I exit cat form just to buff the raid, get a CC and shapeshift again? Let’s find out:
VVe /cast GotW -> we exit cat form, rebuff the raid and gain the CC proc -> a GCD appears. Due to the GCD we can’t enter cat form in less than 1.5 seconds, so we would miss out on two AAs (but we can AA once in our neutral form). VVhen the GCD ends, we shapeshift back as fast as possible. Another GCD pops up, which delays our Shred by 1.5 secs. VVhen the second GCD ends, we /cast Shred, and we are back on track.
That’s the desired scenario. In that case we would gain more damage, because Shred would compensate the lost one, and we will also gain 1-2 CPs for refreshing our finishing moves. Proof:
VVhen do I spam GotVV? - only when I'm low on energy, bleeds have >3 seconds, and when my TF and Berserk are on CD. This needs to be clarified.Spoiler:Show
Like I’ve said, those are the positives, now let’s look at the potential problems (in a chronological order):
However, I'd like to talk about the downsides here and show you why they aren't that severe. I'll start with the mildest ones and end on the more crucial problems:- by exiting cat form we take the risk, that our faster attacks might have given us a CC anyway. In that case, we lose the damage from the missed AAs. Casting GotVV doesn’t consume CC procs though.
- by exiting cat form, other members lose our "Leader of the Pack" aura.
- when casting GotVV, there’s a possibility that our buff might whiff, which means we have to spend another GCD to do this again.
- we change back to cat form, but now we have less energy due to having 3 points in Furor.
- when we enter cat form again, our Shred is delayed due to the GCD. In that time our cat AA could proc the CC.
- the more we do this trick, the less mana we have. This might be a problem if a person dies during an encounter, and we don't have enough mana to resurrect him.
- something, something - the need of many wildspine leaves.
"something, something - the need of many wildspine leaves"
They are derp cheap; I have around 300 grammes of catnip whenever I raid.
"we change back to cat form, but now we have less energy due to having 3 points in 'Furor'"
Yeah. VVe lose energy by shapeshifting out and into cat form past 60. That's why I do this trick with as little energy as possible.
"by exiting cat form, other members lose our "Leader of the Pack" aura"
Even though this sounds bad, it's important to mention that this aura can still be given by another player. If you have another feral druid (bear/cat) or a fury warrior in the raid, then no one will lose the 5% crit (this part is false for pservers; see this post). However, if you are in a 10-man raid, and the raid comp lacks a fury warrior, then using that trick will be illadvised. Speaking of 10-man raids:
"the more we do this trick, the less mana we have. This might be a problem if a person dies during an encounter, and we don't have enough mana to resurrect him"
This is another reason why I don't recommend spamming that spell in small groups. You won't have Blessing of VVisdom from a paladin, and your mana (despite being a secondary resource) might be needed in that group size. You just need to save some of it, in case your fellow group members tend do die a lot. And even then:
"when casting GotVV, there’s a possibility that our buff might whiff, which means we have to spend another GCD to do this again"
Now we get into the more spicy things. Let's be real for a second. Since feral druid depends on the CC procs, and we don't obtain them consistently [i.e. we don't get a guaranteed CC proc after X number of AAs, and we don't have a pity timer that increases the odds of us obtaining it after several misses], it's safe to say that our gameplay is extremely RNG dependant. VVhat I'm trying to say is that /casting GotW during autoattacking isn't breaking that pattern. It's the opposite, since we are giving RNG a big push and thus increasing the likelihood to obtain a CC proc. I'll explain it with math:
Every single AA and every single target of our spells (be those friendly or hostile) have a 6% chance to trigger Omen of Clarity. If we imagine for example a small window of 10 AAs, the probability to obtain a CC proc on the 10th attack would be 46%. That's because if we calculate the probability of every single autoattack whiffing, we will get 0.94^10=0.5386 or 54%. Now, let's calculate the probability of casting GotVV on a full 25-man group. If we want to calculate the chances of whiffing on every single buffed player, we will get 0.94^25=0.2129 or a 21% chance to whiff (that doesn't take into consideration the presence of pets). This means that we are more likely to succeed than to miss. This means that the numbers are in our favour. But what happens if we miss? Then we go to the next point:
"by exiting cat form we take the risk, that our faster attacks might have given us a CC anyway. In that case, we lose the damage from the missed AAs" + "when we enter cat form again, our Shred is delayed due to the GCD. In that time our cat AA could proc the CC."
This is inevitable. This is the biggest penalty we have to accept when we spam GotVV constantly. There's a possibility that we actually might lose damage from doing that thing. I can mention once again that the probability of this occuring is small, but it can still happen. This is where the real discussion begins:
IV. Is stil heaviuh den feadus?
So, as you can see, this small trick can cause a huge headache. Some of you might be wondering why I am even bringing this up if it has the potential to penalise us. I’m going to answer the question by asking another. Are you willing to risk, or are you willing to wait patiently 3-4 seconds while autoattacking in order to pool some energy and be able to cast a single attack again? Personally I got used to it, because the constant spam allowed me to squeeze in some FBs in a single fight and to refresh both SR and Rip when their timers were synchronised. Admittedly, this playstyle is not for everyone, since RNG is not a trustworthy friend, and it won't benefit everyone equally.
VVhat do you think?