Feral Druid of the Claw hero talent tuning

Classes Druid
1

Mainly focusing on the underperforming talents Tear down the Mighty and Ruthless Aggression in this post, as Wildpower Surge is largely disliked by feral druids and probably shouldnt be buffed.

A large benefit of buffing these two talents is increasing the viability of druid of the claw in raid builds, as both of the currently dominant options also scale better into AoE.

Ruthless Aggression

Ruthless Aggression is an interesting case, as its value plummets with increased targets. In many ways, its Killing Strikes opposite. Its contribution is simply too weighted into auto attacks compared to its increase in the number of ravages to scale well into AoE. This is not inherently a problem though, after all, Killing Strikes can handle the AoE scaling, particulary in dungeons where you can reset combat. Additionally, its dps increase is flat on average, with small dips in value during cooldowns due to Claw Rampage causing some overwrites and not being able to autoattack during Convoke. Killing Strikes naturally gains value during cds for the same reason (again not a problem, just highlighting differences)

The issue, however, is that it is not competing even in pure single target. This is essentially the perfect tuning knob for druid of the claw in raid. The talent did get played earlier on this expansion, however that was due to an error in sims not properly giving the killing strikes buff, so it was thought to be better. This was discovered because of the suspicions it created in myself and others after playing both nodes.

Ruthless Aggression would need to be buffed to 60% attack speed, up from the current 35% attack speed, to overtake Killing Strikes in single target; putting it ~0.2% ahead (it should probably be buffed by more than this, due to its inflexibility). The break-even point is at 55% attack speed.

Sim link for reference, RA build is the exact same, it just switches killing strikes for ruthless aggression:

https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/tT5jrwuwLS2Yciec3JFCxK

Tear down the Mighty

Tear down the Mighty (TdtM) is more similar to strike for the heart (SftH) archetype wise compared to the aformentioned ra/ks node. Main difference being Strike for the Heart's value increasing during berserk unlike tdtm. That being said, Tdtm still doesnt scale as well into more targets as the relative value of Feral Frenzy itself falls off compared to alternatives. There is also the question of, “how low of a cd is too low” for feral frenzy. Honestly, ff isnt very intrusive to the rotation, so I dont think this is too big of a concern. The amount it needs buffed by to be played is quite substantial though, as strike for the heart is currently pretty strong.

Tear down the Mighty would need to be buffed to 25s cdr, up from 10s cdr (20s feral frenzy cd) to overtake Strike for the Heart in single target; putting it at ~0.4% ahead.
at 20s cdr (25s ff cd) Tear down the Mighty would be ~1.2% behind. It scales exponentially the more you reduce the cooldown. This loss could potentially be reduced a bit with APL adjustments, but again, it really needs to be ahead in single target specifically to be played.

I do think its worth considering having this node increase the damage of feral frenzy by a small amount as well (or a much larger amount if the cdr isnt increased up to 25s). This was simmed at the same time as the RA adjustments but ill repost that link here:

https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/tT5jrwuwLS2Yciec3JFCxK

AoE notes

Ruthless Aggression will never be tuned too high for 2+ targets. It just wont. By design it is stuck being a single target exclusive. For reference, at 2t it needs to be buffed up to 95% to break even. Yeah, thats not happening.

Tear down the Mighty doesnt fall off very fast. The main difference is talenting feral frenzy instead. With the aformentioned 25s cdr, it keeps its lead at 2t, is even at 3t and then slowly declines past that, assuming you play feral frenzy for strike for the heart as well. Tuning this a bit higher than that will not kill strike for the heart. At most tear down the mighty may get considered in theater of pain.

More sims (includes combinations of tdtm and ra buffs)

1t: https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/paWqTuESvt6AJn6EXeS6tE
2t: https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/aF672uwSmjgQ4V3eKiomgX
3t: https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/ry7mma7CDi6wqft64r2Nkh
4t: https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/xpBs9ZdWswa847WA7yK6Et
5t: https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/gB3ekXeUCkDQmMLt15o26q

Sorry this became a dissertation.

12 Likes
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and make predator resets once a monster with bleeds dies

1 Like
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semi-related to this post, wildstalker nodes need a tuning pass as well. I just cannot provide great numbers at the time, as the aoe implementation of vines isn’t known at this time. (I would be genuinely ecstatic if that information somehow became revealed, I check my in-game mail)

1 Like
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On a pvp sidenote i wish they would make some changes to this hero talent tree as well.

Killing strikes making your first tigers fury after entering combat proc a ravage is nice but it would be far more reliable if it were just 1 free ravage every tigers fury regardless of combat kind of like implant from wildstalker.

The rng of procing ravage in general is very annoying in pvp aswell as it only procs off auto attacks which means between chasing classes like frost mages or kiting when your on the defensive
Means it will always proc far less in pvp than any pve environment.

Consider either buffing the damage in pvp considerably or make ravage able to proc from other abilities like shred, rake, brutal slash, etc.

4 Likes
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I wanted to play Druid of the Claw in PvP but when I respecced to Wildstalker my damage shot up considerably. Ravage just doesn’t seem to do anything extra in PvP compared with a normal ferocious bite even when you include the DoT.
And you’re totally right that the random proc nature of Ravage makes it feel really bad for PvP. I like being able to swap to bear then back to cat and retaining the bear form armor and health but I was having a lot of trouble actually killing anyone. Felt like I had to make crazy plays just for a chance to beat someone, vs as Wildstalker being able to put my bleeds on someone from an opener and taking out half of someone’s health just from that.

3 Likes
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The Killing Strikes talent has design issues for sure. It’s cool that it allows a nice opening burst, but the fact it hinges on combat drops makes it one of those classic feral moments where nelf is just the objectively correct pick. They could make a change like you stated, where it’s just every TF, but that would probably have to come with removing the agility bonus, or greatly reducing it.

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Oh hey, that’s me! Thanks for putting this post together Crazymeow.

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Probably would have to nerf the agility unfortunatly your right but id take that change any day

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It is objectivaly worse in most everyway minus the extra survivability your right. After the rip nerfs ive been trying to find new talent setups and seeing if leaning more into bite damage again would make up for it but so far it doesnt feel anywhere near as good. Need to test more for sure

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100%. I want my kitty to chunk healthbars with some big bites. Not whittle people down with 5 different dots. Every time I’ve tried DotC in PVP it feels incredibly lackluster compared to the other tree.

4 Likes
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For sure both trees should be viable in pvp. I actually think the bleed from ravage is better than the actual ravage some times.

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For PvP? Yeah. Ravage basically does the same direct damage as bite with PvP scaling which to me is really bad for a hero main talent.
Whereas the wildstalker vines do pretty good damage in PvP and also make bite do more damage than a ravage! They actually feel impactful unlike ravage.

1 Like
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wildpower surge really needs love too

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Both trees need tuning imo druid of the claws single target options need buffing especially ruthless aggression crazy how the aoe option, killing strikes destroys it in aoe and single target, wildstalker tree needs aoe buffs to dead talents such as root network and twin growth and bursting growth

15

While technically true in the scope of this post, the very first line points out why feral cares less about this. If this talent is buffed to the point of being better it creates a state where feral players feel they need to bearweave to achieve their maximum throughput, and this is undesirable to the majority of feral players. On the flip side for bears I do not know if they care about having to shapeweave to maximize damage.

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For guardian the talent is already good, but yea shifting is a lot more tenable for them (i find it weird that cat form isnt judt always more dps for them when not tanking but alas)

1 Like