Predatory Strike Utility

With the release of 3.2.2 a lot of people have been focusing on the ArP change and the Predatory Strikes change has kind of fallen to the wayside. While a few blogs have mentioned it, they haven’t really talked about it’s added utility to the cat class. The neat thing here is, Predatory Strikes is a core talent and a must have as a feral druid so really this is a free added bonus for the low low price of.. nothing! As the images below state, you get 20% chance per combo point and since 5 cp rips are a core component of our dps you have a 100% chance to trigger Predator’s Swiftness

So what kind of neat things can I do with this new change as a kitty kat?

• Instant Rebirth
• Instant Healing Touch (who needs Nature’s Swiftness?)
• Instant Cyclone

The PVP utility is clear and extremely apparent, but in PVE all 3 abilities have functionality, an instant Rebirth being the most logical. Having the ability to drop an instant Healing Touch on yourself or on your MT or someone on the raid is nice if the situation warrants. Most recently with the release of TOC, being able to Cyclone the Faction Champions instantly is great to maintain your dps and at the same time pull targets off your raid or lock out their healers. A lot of people who play feral druids out there like to think that “well I’m not resto so it’s not my responsibility to heal targets” and leave it to the healers. However we are a hybrid class and part of the versatility of our class to be able to shift out and help in “oh shit” situations and potentially save the raid (or yourself).

A simple tip could be, as soon as you apply a 5 cp rip, look around your raid and see if there’s anything you can do to help. It’ll take some getting used to, last night during a raid I rezzed someone and at first I thought I didn’t since there was no cast time. I spent a good 10s trying to figure out what happened before I realized it had happened instantly (PS+Rez!).

Grunty has Arrived!

For those who purchased the alive stream to obtain a Grunty, the long wait is finally over and is finally available!

To obtain your Grunty, do the following:

1. Check your email for the promo code
2. Logon to http://www.blizzcon.com/pet
3. Plugin the code and redeem

Algalon has been… Observed.

Alright sportsfans, I’m finally (and I do mean finally) happy to report back that we have finally managed to defeat Algalon. It’s been a long time coming and I really wish we had put more effort into this but it’s been extremely challenging to get people to put in the time to learn this fight and execute. We’ve had approximately 3 months worth of timers available to us however we’ve only put in 5 timers worth of time. With the arrival of TOC it seems ppl only care about getting new loot. For me, Algalon was a milestone that I had been craving for a long time. Loot will come and go and will be replaced soon enough, a title (Starcaller!) is something that will last forever.

While I normally don’t write up full out strategies on a fight and try and focus more on kitty aspects, I feel that Algalon does deserve a full writeup. Partially because the job of a kitty is pretty simplistic and there’s not too much to mention but also because the Algalon is all about execution and there are a lot of little things that help contribute to a successful kill.

Algalon the Observer

Algalon has the following abilities that affect your MT/OT.

• Quantum Strike – Inflicts 15,675 to 17,325 Physical damage.
• Phase Punch – Inflicts 8,788 to 10,212 an applies a stacking debuff on the target. When the debuff reaches 5 stacks the target is affected by Phase Punch which will shift the target to another plane for 10 seconds.

Algalon has the following abilities that affect your whole raid.

• Cosmic Smash – Inflicts 41,438 to 43,562 Fire damage to anyone under the area of impact, and less Fire damage to everyone, based on proximity.
• Big Bang – Inflicts 76,313 to 88,687  Physical damage to anyone not standing inside a Black Hole. Removes players from Black Holes.
• Ascend to Heavens – Inflicts 655,500 to 724,500 damage to all enemies. Cast 6 minutes after engaging him. Equivalent to Berserk.

Algalon has the following adds that join the fight:

• Collapsing Star – Summoned periodically during Phase 1. They lose 1% health each second and cast Black Hole Explosion as they die, which inflicts 16,088 to 16,912.  Shadow damage to the entire raid. They leave Black Holes on the ground as they die.
• Black Holes – Spawned by dying Collapsing Star. Players standing in a Black Hole are shifted to Worm Hole dimension, taking 1,532 to 1,968 Arcane damage every 1 second spent shifted. Dark Matters populate the Worm Hole. If a Living Constellation enters a Black Hole, both despawn.
• Living Constellation – Spawned in threes periodically during Phase 1. Attack with Arcane Barrage, which inflicts 4,163 to 4,837 Arcane damage. If a Living Constellation enters a Black Hole, both despawn.
• Dark Matter – Spawned inside Worm Hole dimension during Phase 1. Attack any raid member who enters a Black Hole. Spawned periodically from Black Holes during Phase 2.

Whoa! That’s a lot of information, lets try and translate this and simplify:

• Tanks will need to rotate tanking Algalon so that Phase Punch will not stack to 5, we rotated every 3 debuffs. If you miss and a tank is phased out -> you wipe!
• Cosmic Smash drops a big red void zone (a la Sarth) and everyone needs to move away. If you get hit by it at close proximity you’ll get launched into the air -> you die!
• Big Bang means everyone (minus 1 tank, explained later) gets into the phased plane to avoid massive damage. Don’t get into the void zone -> you die!
• Collapsing Star dies -> Black Hole Spawns -> Closed by Living Constellations

General Strategy

Ok, now we’ve gotten all the fight mechanics out of the way and tried to simplify them down as much as possible. Lets discuss how the fight works. Essentially the fight is broken down into 2 phases:

Phase 1

During this phase, 2 tanks are required to rotate on and off to keep the Phase Punch debuff from reaching 5 (we rotated every 3). The real dangers lies in the Cosmic Smash and Adds that spawn during the phase. Cosmic Smash will spawn in a random location (quite frequently in melee/tank range!) and it is imperative that all melee including the tank move out of range. Dealing with Collapsing Star and Living Constellations are also tricky. You need to kill Collapsing Star at an opportune time (explained below) and you also need to use Living Constellations to close the Black Holes that are created. However at the same time, you need to close them at the right pace so that you still have two portals open so that your raid can avoid Big Bang by entering the phased state.

If your raid is executing properly you should experience Big Bang twice throughout Phase 1, once every 90s. During each Big Bang, one of your tanks will have to stay in the normal plan and eat the Big Bang otherwise, Algalon will Ascend to Heavens due to the fact no melee are in range. Your tank will need some sort of damage reduction ability to survive through the Big Bang such as Shield Wall, Guardian Spirit etc

Phase 2

Once Algalon reaches 20% phase 2 will begin. At this point, Collapsing Star and Living Constellations will no longer spawn, but four Black Holes will spawn. Dark Matter will begin to come out of these Black Holes which will need to be offtanked.  This essentially becomes a DPS race to burn down the remainig 20% while not getting overrun by Dark Matter that will continually spawn. In addition, Big Bang will still occur so it’s imperative that you bring him down fast to avoid having to transition through another Big Bang.

General Tips

• Timing is everything in this fight, the execution of each individual element needs to be spot on to spread damage evenly and to avoid spikes of damage.
• Announce when tanks are taunting off each other, the amount of damage that Algalon does does not afford you the time to change targets late
• Do not kill a Collapsing Star if Cosmic Smash is incoming, spread the damage out or someone will get instagibbed
• Avoid killing a Collapsing Star if you are rotating tanks, switching tanks and suddenly getting hit with additional dmg can cause a tank death
• Healers should try and stand behind void zones so that if they pull healer aggro, they can kite it (especially resto druids who can move and heal)
• The OT that is not currently tanking Algalon should be on taunting duty to close Black Hole
• When Algalon begins his Big Bang cast, ALL healers should check to see if they have aggro on a Living Constellations, I don’t even know how many times a healer walked into a void zone first because they were close and closed it on half the group. If you have aggro, wait for others to enter first then use a aggro dump ability (Fade, Shadowmeld) so that you don’t close the portal on yourself.
• When you enter the phased plane, I would recommend that you run to the edge of the map and not into the middle of the map to avoid Dark Matter. The reason for this is because there is never a void zone right on the edge of the map whereas if you run into the middle there is a possibility that when you rejoin the normal plane you could have walked right into another void zone and get dumped straight back in.

Kitty Tips

• As always, blow your Berserk early, if you have aggro issues (and you have a pally) call for Hand of Salvation this should allow you to reuse Berserk again in Phase 2.
• Before Big Bang is being cast, take a look around you to see where is the closest Black Hole so that you have your route planned out
• Before Cosmic Smash is being cast, take alook around to find an exit route, don’t walk straight into a Black Hole by accident!
• Try the best of your ability to put up a fresh set of dots as Big Bang is being cast, so that while you’re phased out, they will continue to roll. If you can time this correctly by the time you leave the phased state and find Algalon your dots should just be falling off (in other words minimal dps loss).
• Innervate is a healers best friend, now that it’s been pushed down to a 3min CD, use it twice during the fight
• If you have multiple kitties, try and setup a brez order ahead of time so that you don’t need to communicate who should rez first.

Ever since 3.1 came out, this has been one of my goals to kill Algalon. It was extremely exciting and humourous at times. The attempt before our kill we had Algalon at 1% when he cast a 3rd Big Bang and for some reason everyone entered the phased state and we got instagibbed by Ascend to Heavens (/facepalm). My goal now is to try and get as many ppl experienced at the Algalon fight so that we can push towards Algalon25. From a 25 man perspective we are very close to getting Freya HM and after that we are only missing Firefighter to unlock Alg25. Celestial Defender is still available on our realm and I would really love that title

I really do hope this helps those who are out there working on this and if you do have any specific questions please feel free to drop me a question in the comments.

Pics to be uploaded shortly! Here’s one for now.

He disappeared before I could get him in the shot

The show in Dalaran!

Meters from the fight, Ill try and get WOL next time

Blogs Gone Wild

Blogging is a very curious thing sometimes. You post your thoughts and opinions out there and a few things can happen:

1. People read it
2. People read it and add some of their own thoughts
3. People read it, add some of their own thoughts and appreciate what you have to say and share it others

It truly is an amazing thing when someone appreciates what you have to say and link you up. As I’m still relatively new to this, things like this make blogging worthwhile as it shows that what you have to say is helping people out there and you’re not just some crazy person ranting. Thanks to Kalon over at ThinkTank for linking me up and literally spiking my number of visitors (it looks like my blog just got a shot of HGH). I have a steady reader base (about 200 a day) but one post by Kalon made my totals spike up significantly.

What happens when a well respected blog links you up

I haven’t forgotten how this all started, I will be adding a supplementary post to expand on some of my original thoughts. But for now, for those who want to read more thoughts about 3.2.2 ArP (which has been criss crossed across 4 blogs now) check out these posts below. Make sure you read them in this order as this is the order in which the discussion developed, also make sure you read all the comments as there’s a lot of gold there too.

1. 3.2.2 Arp Nerf & You by Vallen @ Feral Aggression
2. A Very Good Post on Armor Pen. by Jacemora @ Druid of the Moon
3. Pimping a blog: Feral Aggression by Kalon @ ThinkTank
4. MOAR ARMOR PEN by Kalon @ ThinkTank
5. Armor Penetration (for feral druids) FAQ by Alaron @ The Fluid Druid
6. Armor Penetration FAQ, Part 2 by Alaron @ The Fluid Druid

3.2.2 ArP Nerf & You

In a recent post by Ghostcrawler (GC) has announced that there will be a nerf on Armor Penetration in 3.2.2. This is an early notice to everyone so that they understand and can prepare for the forthcoming changes. In other words, when selecting gear and gemming keep this in mind for 3.2.2 as things will change (who wants to replace expensive epic gems right?). Before we get down to the nitty gritty lets go over exactly what has been announced. For a full view of follow-up posts by GC and massive amounts of QQ check here.

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

The nerf to armor pen in 3.2.2 is intentional. Compared to the recent buff where we increased the value of armor rating to 125%, this nerf would take it back down to 110%. While we are still evaluating the effects of this change in the 3.2.2 build, we did want to let you know of the possibility in case you were about to spend a lot on armor pen gems.In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.This change is largely for PvE reasons, though we won’t cry at all if melee damage in PvP drops a little as a result.We’re letting you know now so that this doesn’t feel like a stealth nerf, assuming it goes live. While you might disagree or be frustrated by the change (though I also suspect it won’t come as a surprise to many players), we ask that you try and keep your response to something appropriate for these forums.

So what does that mean to us kitties? Well lets break it down step by step.

What is Armor Penetration (ArP)?

With the way ArP is currently all feral druids have resorted to choosing gear that provides ArP and as GC as mentioned in his post, passed on gear that didn’t have ArP. I am definitely guilty of not taking gear that doesn’t have ArP and leaving myself below the expertise cap in favor of more ArP. Lets break down what ArP really is which is explained in depth here on wowwiki, ArP is defined as the following:

Armor penetration (sometimes abbreviated ArP or called armor pen) is a value appearing on many items, talents, and abilities that indicates the percentage of armor that will be ignored by an attack.  ArP is unique in that the more ArP you have, the greater the increase in damage becomes. Since Patch 3.0,  all items with armor penetration have been modified to a rating system that affects a percentage of armor ignored. This means that gear scales more cleanly with all bosses but has a side effect of becoming less useful on low armor ones.

In lamens terms, the more ArP you have, the more dmg your attacks do as it ignores more armor. Essentially you want to get your ArP as close to 100% as possible which requires a total of 1231.6 ArP (As of 3.2.0). This can be achieved in one of two ways, hard capping or soft capping.

• Hard Capping refers to reaching the 100% mark (1231.6 ArP) through ArP gained from gear and gems
• Soft Capping refers to reaching the 100% mark  through Arp gained from gear, gems & a trinket that procs ArP such as Mjolner’s Runestone or Grim Toll. As an example, if you have a runestone equipped which provides a 665 ArP buff, you would only require 566.6 ArP from gear/gems to reach the 100% cap.

Now you may be asking which is better, hard or soft cap. Consider this, a runestone has an internal cooldown of 45s in other words once it has procced, it will go 45s before it will proc again. That leaves you with 45s where you will be below 100% ArP. Doing some quick math, 655 (runestone proc) / 12.31 (1% arp) = 54% less ArP every 45s, meaning you will only have 46% ArP for a large portion of your fight which is not ideal, whereas hard capped at 100% you would receive the benefits of ArP 100% of the time. If you’re a hardcore theorycrafter (which I’m not) you can take a look at GC’s mathematical equation behind ArP here.

What does the 3.2.2 change mean?

Essentially what the change means is, the amount of armor penetration required to reach 100% will increase. This is highlighted through a post by Whitetooth from EJ located here.

• In 3.2.0 at level 80, 12.31623993 ArP is required to get 1% ArP
• In 3.2.2 at level 80, 13.99572719 ArP is required to get 1% Arp

In simplified terms, instead of 1231.6 ArP for 100% ArP you will need 1399.57 Arp for 100% ArP. A total increase of 167.97 ArP. More ArP required to reach 100% means the less likely it will be to push for a 100% hard cap and less likely that people will choose ArP gear over other gear. Or as Blizzard states:

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

I wouldn’t focus too much on the issue of using too many of the same kind of gem. There are plenty of situations where that has been the case since BC (though it’s not ideal in a perfect world). Rather the case was that classes that had been using Agi or Str or whatever were now switching almost exclusively to armor pen and being greatly rewarded for it. Gear without armor pen was being passed over. Specs that benefited a lot from armor pen were outstripping specs in the same class. As many other players have concluded, it was just too good

What preparations should we make for 3.2.2?

This completely depends on your set of gear. If you’re on the higher end of progression raiding, you can still probably hit 1399.6 ArP with a trinket (hard capping looks pretty tough with these changes) and it probably will not affect you too greatly. You’ll probably still want to gem primarily into ArP as well (until you reach 100% where you’d switch to agility). If you’re on the lower end of raiding or a casual player, all this means is you probably shouldn’t purposely avoid any gear without ArP. Take ArP when you can but understand that you won’t realize the full benefits of ArP until you get closer to 100% penetration which will be difficult for a casual player. A really good table to break down the scaling benefits of ArP can be found on wowwiki here. About 3/4 way down, the table named “PERCENT DPS INCREASE TABLE”

Things I would recommend doing:

• Check to see what upgrades are available to you (realistically)
• Add your current ArP + plausible upgrades to get your ArP potential
• Determine the delta between your plausible ArP vs 100% in 3.2.2 (1399.6 – Your Plasuible ArP)
• If your delta is less than 0 or close to 0, you are probably ok to gem to 100%, if your delta is pretty high, you should probably consider gemming agil until your delta is lower.

That’s it for now, remember this change isn’t finalized and could change but it looks like it will go live. As well all of this goes away with Cataclysm so don’t get too worked up over it.