we are only 9 days into the season and I don’t raid, so i don’t have any tier pieces and I am not catalyzing champion gear for a 2 piece bonus.
since I don’t have all those lovely free thrash procs flying around from the tier set, i feel a gap between thrashes for aoe threat. (i really wish they would blast the threat modifier of swipe like crazy - maybe damage can stay light but give me 360’ aoe threat)
anyway, I am running a no apex build and I am taking raze, sundering roar, harnessed rage (the extra mangle) and brambles instead of the apex.
I feel like this gives me passive aoe threat from brambles and i can tactically use sundering roar and raze (frontal of course) for aoe threat fill in.
with soul of the forest and harnessed rage, i have extra mangles generating extra rage so I have plenty of rage for raze when other abilities are on cooldown. i feel like the extra mangle is good on bosses and priority mobs.
maybe if I was playing with top 1% players in full bis and tier set, I could run the “correct” build, but since I am a pug player working towards +10s, i have to make changes that help me in my situation with current gear.
without the 4 piece set bonus, there isn’t the full effect of the thrash, thorns, guardian spirit thrash reset, incarn extension loop.
it will looks great once we get it, but until then I want damage I can control when I want it.
thrash on cooldown, mangle more or less on cooldown, keep up iron fur, have sundering roar and raze to help gather at start of pull.
once the pull is going, then thrash with mangles rotated through the pack is enough to keep threat. but at the begining and pulling a few packs together, I want to make friends with as many mobs as I can along way while DPS unleashes as soon as they see me move. #puglife
4 piece set bonus? different build. until then i do my own thing.
besides, i have tested elunes with apex, elunes with no apex with raze, elunes apex no raze and extra mangle, and DotC on pulls in Murder Row (m0) and the various elunes builds do almost exactly the same damage. Claw does really good initial damage but falls off as the pull goes on and gets squishy with lower dps. no bueno.
so if i can do the same DPS and be able to do more aoe/frontal damage during pulls, ima do that. for now.
Yeah… I’m itching to get my 4pc as well. It looks like it’ll be really exciting to play. I have the 2pc, but that kinda sucks. A 20% chance to get a 100% damage buff to an ability that is 7% of our damage? Yawn.
that is sort of the thought behind my build. even if I am off base a bit, at least i have the original bear loop of thrash/mangle for rage gen, ironfur/raze to spend, moonfires along the way.
i find that in incarn, I thrash, mangle, thrash, raze, thrash, mangle, etc. (ironfur after thrash). outside of incarn, thrash, mangle, raze, thrash, mangle, raze, etc.. but I also like having double mangle for bosses and prio mobs.
heck, I’m ony doing +9s at the moment, so it’s all good. i might cap out at +10s this season anyway (did resil +16s last season - was too much stress)