Some preliminary notes:
- Blizz, you need to admit that you’ve totally screwed up here. The pinned topic is a sad example of rationalization and motivated reasoning that suggests you’re trying to delude yourselves that the botched change isn’t really that bad and that you know better than literally every single player who’s given feedback on this change. You need to get out of that mindset, listen to your customers, acknowledge that you’ve screwed up, and fix it.
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Any outcome that leaves wereform druids unable to reach 4 or 5 fpa with the same gear configurations that currently reach 4 or 5 fpa is going to leave wereform druids non-viable for hell and ubers. Period. There is no getting around it. Here is a good summary of why wereform druids are totally dependent on fast fpa.
- No one cares that some non-viably bad weapon options got slightly faster in act 1 of normal difficultly. They are still non-viably slow. And now everything else is too.
- The “problem” you’re trying to fix arises from a misunderstanding of the original design intent. The original devs gave manform druids deliberately awful attack speed to force players to choose between wereform melee or manform caster, with no melee+caster hybrids allowed. It’s shouldn’t be a surprise that wereform druids can’t function with these attack speeds – because they’re deliberately awful! The fact that you don’t understand this shows that you’re out of your depth here and really, really shouldn’t be messing around with things you don’t understand.
OK, now, how to fix this mess? As I noted above, the only viable options are going to involve getting the wereform attack speeds back to where they’ve been for the past two decades at 4 or 5 fpa with endgame gear. (Getting more options that can reach 4 or 5 fpa, or maybe even 3 fpa, would be a nice buff. But at this point I’d just be happy to avoid the disaster of the current change.)
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Option 1: Revert the change, leave things they way they’ve been for over 20 years. This is the best choice. Seriously. The original devs knew what they were doing, the status quo is acceptable, and you’re more likely to break things than improve them. (As amply demonstrated by the current situation.)
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Option 2: Give both manform and wereform a base speed of 13 frames. This is one way to salvage the the wereforms’ attack speeds. I don’t like it because it flies in the face of the original design intent that manform should be non-viable as melee, but that shouldn’t bother you since you don’t understand it anyway.
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Option 3: Change the cap on EIAS from 75 to 200 while in wereform as suggested here. That would make manform and wereform speeds match up early on, while allowing wereforms to eventually go faster with enough IAS (including off-weapon IAS, which would be a nice change). This would work nicely for werewolves since they get a ton of skill IAS. Wearbears would likely need a large buff to compensate for needing to change to IAS-centric gear. Perhaps changing the werebear damage bonus from ED% to an independent multiplier, or adding a large flat +damage to werebear.
[Edit: There’s a 4th option. It’s probably the best given Blizz’s stated goals with the 2.4 change.
Option 4: Compute the manform calculation and the traditional wereform calculation in parallel, and then use the result with the lowest fpa.
Assuming the motivation behind this change is to prevent new players from being confused when their level 1 werewolf with no IAS is slower than manform, then this is likely the best solution. It accomplishes what Blizz set out to do with the 2.4 change, unifying early-game wereform and manform attack speeds, but also leaves the current late-game builds unchanged. Additionally, unlike other options that change the IAS calculations in novel ways, this option runs no risk of unintended side-effects. ]
7 Likes
I don’t approve of increasing the IAS cap to 200 because it would greatly decrease gear variety. Everything would revolve around how many sockets you could jam 15 IAS jewels into and would incentivize cookie-cutter gearing even more than the current system does.
I LIKE not needing to worry about IAS on gloves, helms or whatnot. It gives my fury druid flexibility other melees lack.
In don’t see any simple way out of the mess the Devs have made other than not implementing the change. The alternative is tweaking practically every shapechanger skill to try to mimic the damage and survivability they had pre-nerf. People are not going to stand for a nerf to a weak class in a patch that is supposed to buff weak classes.
What could they do without reverting it? Well, for a start they could make Fury uninterruptible and up its damage about 25%. But then they have to buff Feral Rage, Hunger, Rabies and Maul and probably increase Were toughness somehow too. They really have painted themselves into a corner here and the mealy-mouthed “We don’t want to reduce shapechanger viabilty” post didn’t help matters when that is exactly what they are doing.
2 Likes
I agree on option 3.
200eias(speed increase) in combination with old formulas is the best! It will give the most diversity as well, not like the guy below says.
Let me show you an example.
Shape Formulas:
[] = floor
{} = ceiling
NeutralFrame(NU):
NU WereWolf: 9
NU WereBear: 10
Delay = [256*(WeaponBase) / [(weapon ias-wsm+100)*AnimRate/100]]
Anim speed = [NU * 256 / delay]
Speed increase/EIAS = [120 * ias / (120 + ias)] + skill ias - wsm *(IAS is both wep and gear as usual formula)
FramesSerial = {256x7/[(AnimRate1 + Speed increase)/100xAnim speed]}
Frames WolfPaw = {256x13/[(AnimRate1 + Speed increase)/100xAnim speed]}- 1
Frames Biting = {256x10/[(AnimRate1 + Speed increase)/100xAnim speed]}- 1
Frames BearPaw = {256x12/[(AnimRate1 + Speed increase)/100xAnim speed]}- 1
Now, lets see with an eth tomb reaver:
Polearms = 17 frames per direction
We assume cap is 200 here for eias.
Werewolf we assume 75 SkillIas.
If you rock a 90 ias tombreaver:
Fury:
0 offhand ias = 4/4/4/4/6 fpa
2 offhand ias = 4/4/4/4/5 fpa
73 offhand ias = 3/3/3/3/5 fpa
(hl, LoH, nosferatus, 2 x 15ias jools in a helm = 80, or you May choose treachury over forti etc)
Another cheaper way would be 2 x shael in eth tomb:
Offhand ias on fury:
0 offhand ias = 3/3/3/3/5
52 offhand ias = 3/3/3/3/4
Next is u reachable.
Now lets look upon werebear:
120ias warscyte(-10wsm +4 rangeadder)
0 ias = 4 frames
Or u can choose 110ias wep and have 2 good jools instead. U then need 7 ias offhand.
So druid werebears will not reach any higher, unless u have fana merc:
Lvl 15 fana = 33sias.
110 ias warschytr will then need 47offhand ias. Meanwhile:
120 ias warschyte will then need 37offhand ias.
As a druid u will not reach higher than 3 frames ever.
But there are other cool stuff like 3hybrid bear with beast cadeuce:
7 frames with 10 ias offhand, but ur mainly a grizzly + fissure/volcano/armageddon with a rather low fireclaw or maul build 
3 Likes
I have a feeling that Blizzard won’t listen to most of these suggestions. I think there might be a slight buff to werewolf but I would not expect much.
In general I have a feeling that when patch 2.4 finally lands, it will be mostly the same as it is now.
What I think is going to happen is they will just make fury auto hit and be unblockable. That seems to be their main move they do when they don’t have any good ideas on how to buff something. It would be a buff in pvm and get fury druids kicked out of the gm melee community.
Well spoken, I hope they finally swallow their pride and listen!
I mean, another, simple fix would be to increase the IAS bonus of werewolf and provide an IAS bonus to werebear (could be lower than werewolf). Its simple, easy to implement, and once the values are correct shapeshifting will work just fine.
We need to be able to reach 3 frames, all other classes got significant buffs, shapeshifters the weaker class cannot just remain the same, we need buffs, 3 fpa at least AND passive skill FRW. With the buffs other classes got, going back to what we had is also a significant Nerf, applying what is on PTR is equivalent of deleting the shape shifting skill tree
That won’t work because there is a cap at 75%, they have to raise the ceiling for that to work.
1 Like
The real fix here is to start zealing in human form, which attack faster than fury does
LOL
2 Likes
Option 1 would be the best i think. Only change i would like is reducing the duration on rabies. The skill is fun but even when u reach 50-60k poison damage with really good gear its dealt over 20+ sec and thereby reduced to 2.5 - 3k dps . I would say reduce the duration to about 6-8 sec and keep the same amount of damage and the skill would at least be viable in some areas
Ahh sorry. Perhaps I didn’t understand that this was the root cause of the issue. Thanks for clarifying.
1 Like
