Ferocity

[Khauruk]

2. Weapon delay. Since agro is based off of the potential damage done per swing, fast swinging weapons create a lot of agro. Beasts usually end up with fast swinging weapons which is why we tend to create agro out of proportion to the damage we actually deal.

No dual weilding melees except rogues still end up with truly slow weapons.  Most of the best warrior mainhand weapons (i.e. the class traditionally given the slowest weapons) are 23-26 delay.  Swiftcleave, which at least on Luclin is the defacto raiding warrior weapon now, is 19 delay.  The days of getting 30+ delay 1hand weapons itemized are over.

I'd put much of our agro problems to Rake (+400 hate every time, dunno if the attack itself generates any hate), fast debuffing (and often multiple times due to resist checks), and 1-3k hate generated for each nuke.  All that while in the mob's face.

But yes...as a result of how damage bonuses work for the melee hate formula, if you have two weapons of the same ratio, the faster one will generate more hate.

[Grbage]

I wouldn't put agro issues at rake's feet, we were having problems long before it was introduced. It is more along the lines of using fast weapons while casting spells in melee range that give us a lot of agro. Also, warriors are none to happy about SOE going away from tanking designed weapons to general DPS weapons for them to use.

[Khauruk]

Aye, warriors hate it...though they sure don't mind the great dps they do.  Sadly, iirc, Fleshbiter (from Uqua) is still the #1 agro weapon.  Though the haste rounding bug might have moved it to #2 or 3.

My agro problem comes in groups though...and what do I do?  Slow, rake, feral swipe, slow, BE pet, nuke nuke, tank a while, dps when the tank regains agro, maybe nuke some more if the mob is still alive.

Slow - seems to be not quite as much agro as Bazu Bellow w/ 1.5 (690 hate on first tick of the spell), so let's just call it 600 hate.
Rake - 400 + unknown if any
Feral Swipe - 1 + unknown if any
Spiked Sleet - 1135 hate
Ancient: Savage Ice - 1034 hate

So, assuming I only need to slow once, that's ~3,170 of spell based hate w/in the first ~11 seconds of the fight for me to have a chance of doing good dps on the mob.  Raise that by another 500 for those w/ Bite of the Empress.

That leaves me in a situation where if I am grouped with a warrior w/ anything less than Tacvi weapons, and I want to let them tank, I need to debuff from a distance and wait until the mob is ~80% before I can attack.  Nukes?  Forget it.

Is rake our main agro issue?  Certainly not. Does it help though?  Certainly not.

Another reason I wouldn't want CE on Ferocity...I can't cast it on myself then! :)

[Kordana]

For me, the long recast time for something that does not last that long is what bothers me the most. 

My two copper

[Spiritclaw]

Had a thought on how to improve Fero.  Give it a panther like proc, maybe not as powerful, but would boost dps again.

[Khauruk]

My objections -
1 - doesn't scale except if it's coded in the spell design.
2 - agro

/shrug....I'm turning into a broken record, I think.

[Spiritclaw]

My objections -
1 - doesn't scale except if it's coded in the spell design.
2 - agro

/shrug....I'm turning into a broken record, I think.

What about adding a jolt effect?  Right now the only way we lose agro is through roar.  What if they added a self proc that is also a jolt.   Means that if we are tanking we can't use it.

[dainfrol]

That would degrade some of the utility from the spell though.  The tanks in my guild ask for Fero when we are taking on Denrik (sp?) because of the resists and his charm.  When we are in the pit fighting, I could mem 2 versions of fero one for the tank and one for me and the monk, but that would take away a nuke slot.

and there's my 2 cp.

[Spiritclaw]

Hey, trying to find something useful out of the spell.  When Prath said it was broken, but didn't know what to do with it, I started thinking.  Here is a viable solution, maybe not the best, but would give us some utility.

[Grbage]

That would degrade some of the utility from the spell though.  The tanks in my guild ask for Fero when we are taking on Denrik (sp?) because of the resists and his charm.  When we are in the pit fighting, I could mem 2 versions of fero one for the tank and one for me and the monk, but that would take away a nuke slot.

and there's my 2 cp.

Most raid mobs have such a large -modifier to their spells the little extra bit of resist fero gives isn't worth it. Kinda hard to resist a spell with -1k check on it even with resists maxed. Bet if you checked them with and without fero on their charm resist you will see little to no difference.

[Khauruk]

They're trying to revamp the resist system again, hoping to roll it out w/ SoF...so, resists might 'mean something' in current content again.  Hopefully it works better than the last time they tried it (TSS beta)!

If so, we should really try to push for an increase in Fero's resist potential.  Nowadays, max resists are easily acheived, and Fero is about 10% of that.

Does anybody remember what their pref. unbuffed resists were when VT was endgame content?

[Shieara]

I don't remember that, but I remember we used to require 120 unbuffed resists for PoP targets.  That was at least one to two expansions after PoP though...we're casual so we're always behind on content.

We did use Fero while we did PoP.  We used it on clerics with weak resists, or sometimes on melee depending on the targets and AE used.

I have to say though, I would not be eager to have the ferocity rotation return to the game.  I have retired my egg-timer!  Except for.../sigh...Draygun.

[Humlaine]

the lying fact here with fero is, reguardless of the changes that are made to it in the future. Your gonna have some Percent that dislike the change, with that in mind we need to find a middle ground on this

first pointer, resists suck, the vast majority are capped or over 450+ in resists. I would really like to see it changed to a percent based resists, along the same lines as the DoN prog aa is, I wanna see it at something like 7% at rk3, 3 at rk 1, 5 at rk2, it would be a nice boost and would be more viable then a resist number

[Nusa]

We've been burned twice on fero "upgrades" already. I want to see the TSS version improved to something useful before agreeing to yet another continuation of the fero line.

[Tomorrow]

Hi All =)

Alrighty, Its really tough for me to vote on something i am unaware about what is exactly the outcome.  So what i am going to do is suggest, The order of what my voting choices would be.

1)  Throw it out and make a new line!!  ~~((( by a landslide  ))~~~
2)  Aura
3)  Group Only
4)  Single Cast spell
5)  Group Cast, with single cast only

Now my reasonings
1)If we were to get an upgrade in this spell it would effect ALL classes.  Parse models now would be measured with every possible mentioned buffs including ours.  Having a fero line, would not increase our dps  (much) since it would be based upon the highest melee model in the game ... rogues.  I would rather throw this spell away and have soe give us something where WE BEASTLORDS can make the most use of.  Sorry about feeling a bit selfish there =(

Next For many years now we have been let down about SoE's choices on how to make this spell worth a Da#@.  I am scared they will give us something useless again, and then punish us by not giving anything decent.  Fero gives this.......... + High Attack, please  lets just end this torture.  If your saying to add Double attack or Triple attack or combat effects or accuracy, i see that as Throw the Fero line away and give us something decent.  Even if we were to get any of those attributes, it would be Tested on ....... not the beastlords......... but rogues and zerkers which probably would be capped compared to us.  Does this add any utility for us?  No.  Replace this spell with something dealing with overcaps.

2) Aura.  Well there are some old school peeps out there thinking if they had 3.2k attack instead of 2.95k attack their dps skyrockets up 100 dps........... thats a farce.  At least this way we can keep the peeps off beastlords case for this spell.  Remember Fero line is attack + resist + stats, Not CE not Accuracy not triple attack not double attack.  Sure, if they make it like Aura of Ferocity

Aura of Ferocity (  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=9018  )
1: Increase Attack Speed by 50%
2: ATK unknown calc: 128 range: 200 -> 0
3: AGI unknown calc: 128 range: 100 -> 0
4: DEX unknown calc: 128 range: 100 -> 0

Well then, All this is...... is a 50% haste.  Does this add raid utility? Again No.  Does this add convenience.......... heck yah.  This aura probably has more benefit to our pets than us.  So this made number 2, because it increased our pet dps woot for that.

3) Group only.  Beastlord dps is primarily melee, we are not shammys, we are not buff robots every 2 mins to recast again for a rotation.  This made number 3 because at least it does not stunt our capabilities of dps too much.  but then again watch SoE make this be a 10 second cast spell that only lasts 3 minutes with a cost of 3k Mana, just so it falls in line with our single cast version.  I don't see this spell as becoming  less intensive on mana.

4)  Single Cast spell............ Although this would be a pain to go back to being a rotation buff robot this will give us the biggest bang for the buck.  I foresee that Single cast version will have the highest benefit i.e. attack+ stats+ resist compared to the others.  I bet you this new spell will be at a cost of 1.8k mana This made number 4

5)  Group spell with single cast available.  So instead of getting a useful spell, now we sacrifice 2 spells for this......... cmon.

This spell line is broken.  Its current capacity is inefficient in mana in terms of dps, and useless with the current AC models.  Even if they add higher AC models in the new expansion we now have a spell that works 1 out of 14 expansions.  Lets end this curse, not just for us but fore everyone.........or we Will be getting a new spell with higher mana cost than our current...... because it only makes sense...........with close to ZERO utility.  Even the aura idea imho does not add much raid utility but if we have to then so be it.