Feral Druid DPS possible without MCP?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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So Im considering rolling a Druid (probably on EU but not sure yet) and Ive been looking into the different builds. Lately Ive been interested in the possibility of rolling the fairly niche feral druid DPS build which utilises a level 30 weapon called the Manual Crowd Pummeler.

From what Ive researched from various forum posts and theorycrafters Cat DPS with MCP is decent for the most part (especially early on) and maybe falls off a little later on. The main downside to this is the need to farm this weapon multiple times for every raid as the weapon is good because of its on use ability which has 3 charges that make it useless once those charges are gone.

So while this does seem a little annoying I dont think its a dealbreaker to farm this item, the problem is that Ive heard this is BiS throughout the entire game which seems strange, and a little boring (its cool to have an item to look forward to). I have seen some people suggesting that you can replace the MCP with late game drops like Blessed Qiraji War Hammer, Hammer of Bestial Wrath, and Mace of Unending Life (plus off hands ofc) as well as two handers like Draconic Maul and Unstoppable Force (edit: Forgot to mention Atiesh and The End of Dreams), but this is disputed by a lot of theorycrafters who say MCP is always BiS.

Now as I said before, Im not really opposed to MCP at all, it is what it is, but Im simply wondering if using any of the weapons Ive mentioned in place of MCP would be bad or suboptimal even despite the great stats and extra attack power in bear/cat forms, and if so by how much? Even by using these drops are we sacrificing a lot of DPS?

So yeah, I know this is a pretty niche thing to ask about but Id be really intereted to hear any insights on this topic, especially people who have experience with playing feral druids.

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Farm your pummelers.

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I know the importance the MCP has to feral DPS, Im just looking for more insight on how its better than anything on offer in the game. Im no theorycrafter or anything so when I see, say, the +420 Attack Power on a weapon like Atiesh plus all the stats I would just be interested to see some insights or perhaps statistics showing by how much the MCP is better and by how much it is.

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The biggest reason is that druids dont benefit from weapons aside from statistics.
Not even procs, though you can get procs from other slots lile trinket and etc.
Pummeler straight gives you an attack haste where as other weapons just sit there doing nothing

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It’s better because it continually multiplies the effectiveness of your other gear. Increasing your attack speed allows you to deal damage quicker with the stat boosts provided by your other gear. If you just have a passive stat you aren’t getting that effect anymore.

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you probably wont get hard numbers becasue very few people actually did this in the real vanilla

on private servers they went all in on pummelers

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Yeah, the theorycrafting Ive looked at said as much. Basically the +50% attack speed is what makes the MCP so potent.

The reason I made this post is because I wonder if any of those late game stat sticks like Atiesh, which also gives +420 attack power to feral forms, ever offsets the benefit of the +50% attack speed.

Not that I doubt it does, as I said Im no theorycrafter. But Ive never really seen any of the theorycrafters really talk about itemisation that much beyond the MCP. And they probably know better than me, but I have seen conflicting information from other people who suggest that you do end up replacing the MCP.

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Well, yea. Regrettably the MCP will remain BiS simply because all druid has to look forward to is haste and that’s about it. All other weapons don’t matter as they’re just stat sticks.

Druids are already notoriously difficult to gear for in vanilla (classic) and made worse by their poor hybrid design. It eventually got REALLY good, but never in vanilla. Also don’t forget in phase 5 you will have the ability to equip idols so keep that in mind when deciding to do all that work (and it IS a lot of work farming ad infinitum MCP), all the bag space you will need to occupy, and the constant swapping of weapons becomes a pain. The upside of course is, that they vendor somewhat nicely, so when exhausted of their on use, you make some money for all that farming effort.

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No, it’s not. I mean you can meet the dps checks without it, but all the neckbeards will want more. MCP is greater than ateish.
MCP stands out the most when it comes to druid tank threat.

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Whelp, guess Id just use Atiesh for going around IF and looking cool, or perhaps pvp.

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No, they do not.

50% attack is a literal 50% modifier on your white attacks, which are a huge portion of your DPS to begin with. Even with just the FAP from Atiesh, a 5pt FB is only gaining 72.45 [420 * (3% * 5 CP) * 115%] damage before Armor reduction. Shred gains 67.5 [225% * (420 / 14) * 1] and autos only gains 30 [(420 / 14) * 1].

It just isn’t enough. More hits of a thing in this era is simply better than slightly bigger hits. If there were strong +Critical Strike items with FAP, it would be a closer comparison, but you’d need a fair amount of additional Crit to actually make it work.

Finally, it is a braindead buff to maintain and use. It only affects your white attacks, so if you’re already doing 150 DPS with them, voila, you’re at 225 DPS by hitting a single button.

All of that being said, Feral really isn’t in a good place now, and only falls off further as time goes on. We scale horrendously. We essentially use MCP to give us an energy-free Slice and Dice, which the Rogues surpass by actually having Slice and Dice and ever improving weapons. On top of that, we just don’t get other freebies like Sword Spec procs and poisons to make the speed boost even stronger.

Your raid will get the job done with Ferals doing DPS, but if you’re really looking to optimize, you should be an Off Tank that buffs the best melee you got and free up a Warrior to go full DPS mode.

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if you really want to be a dps druid then MCP is the bis till phase 6

some people says that bonecrusher is a pre bis on phase 6 along with MCP

some people says that atiesh is a bis along with MCP

either case, you are not free from farm your pummelers

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MCP is +33% of auto attack damage output…50/150 in regards to haste calculations.

MCP increases OOC proc generation from 3.5 to 4.66 procs per minute. If using Phase 3 average energy calculations, thats about +52 energy per minute.

MCP is BiS ALWAYS, because its a pure percental calculation and scales every other piece of gear you have acquired in regards to auto attack.

We were calculating it in Vanilla…but no one was paying attention or caring…not even other ferals :wink:

Ferals aren’t bad. But there are two aspects of boosting feral DPS, MCP and Powershifting with consumables.

As stated MCP is +33% auto attack and +52 energy per minute.

However energy generation is just as important as an MCP…and it will alter the value of auto attacks ratio to yellow attacks.

Cat base energy is 600 per minute.
OOC sans MCP adds 158 per minute.
OOC with MCP adds 210 energy per minute.
Powershifting with talents is 479 energy to generate 60 energy.
Consumables adds over 1700 mana per minute.
Factor Spirit Regen, Raid buffs, JoW if present.

Cat energy generation can increase 250% or more, depending on fight duration. That will adjust the overall effectiveness of an MCP as the correlation between white and yellow damage changes.

You can meet DPS checks with either method alone. Combining them is where cat does solid damage.

Cats are fine atm…they fall off a bit going into AQ40, where we get alot more gear upgrades.

However Cats take alot of effort if you want to put out good DPS. Your DPS will never be great…but LotP + Cat DPS is solid and worth the slot but it will require more farming than other classes.

Enjoy your Gnomer backdoor key :wink:

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Thank you, this is the answer I was looking for :slightly_smiling_face:

Maybe this is a bad thing, but Im not a min-max kinda guy. I did entertain the idea of rolling optimal classes like Warrior, Mage or Rogue but I just like a lot of the hybrid classes, plus the idea of making something suboptimal work is interesting to me. I wouldnt dare burden a high end guild with what I want to do but I also to a certain extent I dont think feral druids are as terrible as people say they are. If I had to I would glady tank or heal for my guild (the ability to sort of do everything is what makes the druid appealing to me), but what I really want to do is make Feral DPS work.

I think if Classic+ ever becomes a thing they should either change some of those endgame weapons so they’re on par or better than MCP, or give us a questline that gives us a real purpose made feral BiS weapon.

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Right… but that’s still a 50% increase from where you begin. The AP required to get that kind of boost would be rather insane.

I neglected OOC because I honestly wasn’t sure if the PPM would hold or not, and I didn’t remember the baseline to begin with. :stuck_out_tongue:

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You have to farm MCPs for bosses or there’s even less reason to bring kitty dps over a rogue or another warrior. Even then, you’re still playing a meme dps class much like a ret pally. If you want to play meme specs and make them work, it means putting forth 10x the effort to perform equally with the meta specs.

Feral tanks it’s a bit different because feral tanks are very useful tanks and rely on MCP for threat, but are overall less reliant on spamming MCP on CD to perform their role.

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This is why a majority of us cannot wait for Burning crusade.

Classic is 100 times better than Retail but its still just not very good.

BC was the goat.

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Yeah, I am looking forward to a TBC Classic. I am attracted to the idea of a Classic plus but I dont think Blizzard would do that when they could just rehash old expansions first.

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If that doesnt work just spam moonfire like the other druids.

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If you want to raid as a druid, I would not recommend. We had several “feral” druid DPSers in our guild. They all quit due to the demands and the general lack of decent feral DPS loot. The only feral left is a tank. And he’s totally legit.

If you want to raid as feral and actually be valuable then go for bear tanking.

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