Technical Specifications
Name: Feral Aggression
Class: Druid
Spec: Feral
Tier: 1
Ranks: 5
Abilities Influenced:
Feral Aggression. The world hates you, you do realize that? You are a five rank talent with benefits many wouldn’t pay 2 points for, and you sit next to one of the Feral essentials. You’ve been a very bad talent. Very bad indeed.
Oh, hm, yes, this is going a direction no one wants to see it go, so let’s step back and be objective for a moment. We’ll finish this later, Feral Aggression.
Why the Feral Aggression hate? Why is it the case that, in the words of the immortal Ackbar, “it’s a trap!”
Let’s first look at the competition, Ferocity. Ferocity is also a five point, tier 1 talent. It’s effect is that it reduces the cost of Maul, Swipe (kitty gets one now too), Claw, Rake and Mangle (both Cat and Bear versions) by 1 point of Rage or Energy per rank. At all five ranks, that’s five less Energy and Rage per attack on all of the basic toe-to-toe attacks in your arsenal.
Let’s single out the kitty kitty attacks a moment, since Bear is something of a fuzzier line. (Haha, fuzzier! See what I did there? You can’t unread it!) Kitty starts with 100 energy. She refills that energy at 10 points per second. A Claw costs her 45 energy. So, she attacks with Claw, she has 55 energy left. During the 1.5 second global cooldown, she’ll get back 15 energy. We’re at 70, so we’re only at a net loss of 30 points. Next claw drops us to 25, and we’re at 40 after the GCD.
At a cost of 5 less, our energy goes 100, Claw, 60, GCD, 75, Claw, 35, GCD, 50, Claw, 10. We got in a whole extra claw before we had to pause to regain energy. I guess what I mean to say in all too many words is that 5 less energy adds up really fast when you are literally blasting these attacks out one after another.
I had said Bear’s issue was fuzzier. I say this mainly because Bear runs on Rage. Rage comes of attacking and being attacked and if Bear is the center of much brutal attention, Rage management tends not to be an issue. In massive raids, tanks will often tell you they simply can’t use up their Rage. It comes piped in like that kid who cheated at water gun fights by using the hose. You know which kids you are, and know fear. For kids like I will find you and have our revenge. Accounts will come due!
Er, so Bears. What does Bear get? HUGE discount prices! A Swipe only costs 20 Rage. Now it costs 15. 25% off! Maul costs 15. Now 10! 33% off! All Rage must go! It makes being a Bear pretty darn cheap, though we look back again at situation. If Rage will never be an issue, maybe we’ll consider taking…
Feral Agression
Oh, snap! I almost forgot this wasn’t a Ferocity article. I think you feel sufficiently stupid for not taking Ferocity. Let’s try to salvage that, put it in a jar, and take it out later when you’re feeling confident and secure, because we can’t have that. FA has two effects:
- It improves the attack power debuff of Demoralizing Roar by 8% per rank (40% at max).
- It improves the damage of Ferocious Bite by 3% per rank (15% at max).
Since Kitty went first last time, let’s keep on the Bear train. Demoralizing Roar, at glorious level 80, reduces Attack Power by 411 to everyone around you for 30 seconds at the cost of 10 Rage. It’s a tanking ability, obviously. It reduces damage you take from things that plink at you, and is essentially identical to the Warrior’s Demoralizing Shout. You just, you know, roar instead. With points in FA, you now reduce Attack Power by 575.
Skip, numbers make my head hurt. Just tell me if it’s good or not.
Truth be told, I’m not a Theorycraftist. But I’m very good at stealing knowledge from Theorycraftists, and the results are good. Attack Power mileage bounces around a bit, depending on boring things we won’t talk about, but the down and dirty result seems to be that this shines best in the raid environment. You know, that place we said your Rage would rain from the sky to nourish the seeds of your wrath into blooming blossoms of carnage and ruin. Rough numbers put the damage turned away by a roar to be somewhere between 9% and 18%, depending on the phase of the moon and what you had for dinner. An improved roar does, just like it says, 40% more of that. Simple math? Not in my house! That 9% to 18% becomes 12.6% and 25.2%. That’s an improvement of “it doesn’t matter, because you’re a Tank and your job is to take things that make you live, stupid”.
Result: Bear Raid Tank wants Feral Aggression. Bear Raid Tank only wants Ferocity if he finds Rage is an issue.
Kitty. You get +15% to Ferocious Bite. Ferocious Bite is Kitty’s main spike damage attack. It makes one big number, but fails to compete in raw, sustained damage against anything that can survive the spike. And in a raid, such a spike is just going to piss off whatever you bit, where it will promptly turn you into Meow Mix. And since it uses up all of your Energy in the process, good luck defending yourself.
No, Ferocious Bite quickly makes its home amidst the PvP world, where it is designed to rip a player’s head off with a savage ?k crit. Since FB makes such massive numbers, 15% more of it is not a bad thing, really. Would you rather have 15% of a cake, or 30% of a cupcake? The problem falls in with point starvation. You need to ride the Feral trolley down to Rend and Tear, because the +25% crit is vital. Ferocious Bite needs to crit to show its teeth, figuratively and literally. That double damage with +15% means really +30% damage. You’ll want Predatory Instincts to boost your crit damage another 10%, again feeding on the whole percentage of massive numbers theme we’ve got decorating. And you’re going to want every drop of crit chance you can muster, possibly investing into Master Shapeshifter way down the Resto tree. After all of that, you’re going to have to give up on some good talents to make it all fit. And then the moment of truth arrives. You build up those combo points, you lock onto your target and you give them the bite of doom… and it doesn’t crit. Yeah, you’re pretty much boned…
Sour grapes, that is. Here, chase it down with a fortune cookie.
If man were meant to fly, God would have given him wings, though I suspect he knew flying coach was cramped enough with the limbs we already had.
