Fero changes?

[Nekokirei]

"I think thats wrong, simply, i have many dps issues at 68 and i dont raid.
I`m regularly out dps`d by warriors and hybrid tanks."

um...all things being equal, my guild's top warrior has never out dps'd me--we're both 65, and, even before i hit 65, he was working whatever aggro generation warriors use to keep aggro (not sure if hta'ts good or bad) with me in a group.  he's hit a lot harder, but as far as consistantly dishing out blows, he's below me.  mind you, my guild has a few chars with a couple pieces of PoP raid gear and the odd piece of VT gear, and we're far from uber raiding or OoW farmers.  you might want to take a look at what those warriors and hybrid tanks are wearing/using and their AAs in comparison to your own.

i know the one time i went on a tactics raid, i was pretty embarrassed when the numbers were put up--as much as i'd like to blame it on the molasses from the lag, i just sucked; but that's compared to the folks i was with...er...and the 3 deaths i took... =)

like tast said, there are a lot of factors and you've got take all of into consideration.

*edited in--have been working on getting my warder a bit tougher, don't know if you've got it, but man, adding warder's alacrity is really filling a gap that i didn't even know i had...of course, tast was ready to reach through the screen and throttle me while trying to explain why it was so good, but well worth looking at if you don't have.

[jitathab]

In my experience other people parsing you on raids, especially if it is one person is soo unreliable you can just ignore it.
For example on a recent Quarm kill, I parsed myself at no7 someone else at 20.

Ok we have seen a lot of different sides on this now.

Tastian perhaps you can put up a few options around what been talking about of what might actually be gainable and we debate them.
Yes I know there were some discussion starts on your first thread, just want to see some numbers.

[Tastian]

To be honest I hesitate a bit to put numbers out there and have people see them as real options when I just can't be sure what they are willing to do just yet.  If I can get some feedback from ry that this is something they are willing to tweak soon then I will try to post a few of the more popular options to give people a better idea of mana costs/benefit.  For now though I'd like to see people get a better idea of how others see fero and maybe give it more thought themselves.  There have been a few people in this thread and in PMs that have basically gone "wow I never thought of that, definitely change my opinion about what it should be." 

[Sithasoule]

as ive stated in another post, i dont actually parse myself, i dont know how and i guess a lazyness factor comes in because ive never actually tried that hard to work out how it works.

My little exerience comes from watchin numbers shoot by on the screen, and i realise this isnt a good way to get olid numbers, but it does still seem that amount of hits, and the numbers im seeing on those hits seem to make me a little underpowered.
As i`ve said, i dont parse and i may be completely missing the big picture.

I have BF maxed, 1 point each in crit blasts, warder flurries and crits ( apologies for not remembering the exact names hehe).

i have 2 points in my personal melee crits also which do seem to hit quite regularly so ive got no complaints there.

my warders top crit seems to be 147, havent been lucky enough / high enough to get any sor of focus for him yet.

im using barbed knucles in MH and ViC in offhand atm.

i guess its a newbies frustration seeing the awesome numbers som people put out and im comletely willing to accept the more experienced people who parse can tell me im talking rubbish.

im not really trying to make a serious argument, rather just put my point across as i see it, and if thats wrong then so be it.

ty to all who respond, im working on ambidexterity atm, ive dumped quite a lot into avoidance aa`s lately cause i duo withmy shammy wife and tank a lot.

if you think theres something ive missed there pls do tell me, im always looking to increase my dps a little.

no magelo, cant figure that thing out either lol

[Buzak]

there is no doubt our new fero needs a upgrade.. its not really worth the extra mana for that little att compared to old one.
as for upgrade we have to consider not only what we as bsts would like on ourself. but actualy a total change would be interesting. in the spirit of frenzy perhaps adding a 20-40% melee dam mod(or adding melee dps in simular ways thats stacking with everything). and then reducing armour class by like 200. that way making it a powerfull offensive buff, but not one to be taken lightly on the tank and such. as for resists it would be nice with a upgrade, but not essential, 65 all resists is kickass as it is. and using both feros you can keep 6-8 people on fero depending how much you pay attention and can extend the duration.
otherwise making new one a group one would be kickass as well.

Buzak Ubertroll & fluffy ubergater

[Nimbin]

I was reading one of the thread on pet flurries and it gave me an idea.  I guess the effect would be similar to Combat Effects but not quite.  I was thinking of Fero allowing a flurry of procs to go off from your weapon(s).  Make it 0-2 additional procs per round with a 25% chance of success of firing(whatever seems right) or maybe just 1 additional proc mainhand for the duration of the buff.  It could eliminate stacking issues with worn CE items and give the buff it's own category.  The buff would be vaulable to DPS types as well as tanks for aggro. 

[hakaaba]

Anything that would involve requiring coding will be almost impossible to convince them to do.  This is why the most realistic thing we can expect is some type of mod that is already implemented.

[cassaya]

The problem with Ferocity as I see it is that it used to be a spell which was more desirable but the long recast, and shortage of raid buff slots, have largely driven it out of favor in my experience.

With Irionu the gain was so small that there was not much point, although for those still raiding content that doesn't involve keeping 3 buff spots available for mob AoEs having it on a seperate cast timer from the original Fero did allow one Beastlord to cover more people.

My vote would be to change Irionu as follows and leave the old version alone:

1) scrub the gains over original as they just are not worth the effort (possibly even a slight reduction over original Fero maybe acceptable for group form)
2) Target type group (and MGBable), essentially make it group form of original Fero (You can even leave the recast as is).
3) Possibly slight duration increase, with extension focus at the very least it should last through the average boss fight.
4) Ok here is the spell that should have the high mana hit, I don't think 900 or even a bit more would be unreasonable on this one because of the massively increased raid utility.

Essentially isn't a spell meant to be a buff you are going to keep on a group full time but in situations where you are engaging a named mob and need a blanket boost to resists + the attack doesnt hurt those not at cap this is the spell you use. Fero is still there for the other uses.

As an MGBable grp buff I suspect that with the current buff slot shortage on raid mobs when full resists are needed this may very well be something raid leaders would willingly trade off our MGB of PoS for.

[Kanan]

welp... considering how important resists are becoming and a prevalence of mana-tapping AEs, I'd definitely say that one mgb of a grouped fero would be prefered over PoS by raid leaders. 

I don't particularly want that, but that's what I know other classes would very much want.

[jitathab]

For raids resist importance has already been designed out of some content. All DoN dragons totally ignore your resists and ignore Vet AA. Had similar issues in quite a bit of GoD content.

I wouldnt want to loose the resist component though as it does help when grouping and the content which doesnt ignore resists.

[Tastian]

"4) Ok here is the spell that should have the high mana hit, I don't think 900 or even a bit more would be unreasonable on this one because of the massively increased raid utility."

Like was covered above a group version of fero would mostly find itself in the 2k-2.5k mana base range.  MGB'd that'd mean somewhere between 4k and 5k mana depending and that's if it were MGB and not just group buff or even target group buffable.

The idea of making the upgrade a group buff or a more situational buff has been mentioned, but again I want people to realize what they are asking for.  There is just no way they'd make a group version of fero that cost so little mana.

[tacyttik]

Many people seem to agree that fero of irionu in its current form is underpowered and ineffective. New content basically ignores resists, attack > 2000 has a diminished effect, and most are capped with stamina. I've said before that I dont believe devs will give us a new buff that's both group AND powered up. You can put it on your wishlist, but logically it's unlikely.

That being said, ask yourself what you really want...do you want a group version of a watered down ineffective buff? Admittedly it would be nice to mgb it, if it's marked as a mgb-able spell. But still, with many ae's, you have -500 resist mods, which means even at 600 resists, you wont have a good chance at resisting. Which is what the devs want. They want you to be hit by AEs. It forces you to have gear with spell shielding, and dot shielding. You have to upgrade your gear in a way that you have these effects before you can do new content.

I'd like to see FoI given some original spell intent changes, so that when other classes look at what we get, they arent crying about how we shouldnt have it. It should be an UPGRADE from the previous spell. Spell shielding and dot shielding are along the resist intent, and if other beastlords are like me, their 'geared toward dps' armor is lacking in those 2 fields.
%Crit mod would be along the atk intent. Cleave seems to give a bigger bonus than ferocity effects, and since rangers got a long lasting, group version of a DA mod, something like %crit mod seems reasonable for a single target short duration buff.
Stamina...I dont think we're gonna get anything that fits in this line. I'm almost certain Tastian quoted devs saying there was NO chance of getting raw HPs from FoI. Besides, if raw hps were put in FoI, it would stop being a 'raise dps' buff, and start being a tank rotation buff from the start of a raid to the end. Or at least on tanks during boss mobs, when it matters.


Side note, I remember someone on the boards talking about frenzy, saying that we should get an upgrade to that line. I wouldnt mind a stat-cap increasing self only buff (that does NOT stack with wunshi), as a way of upping at least our own stats when we dont have access to wunshi. Just a thought.

[cassaya]

There would have to be some pretty significant other changes other than just conversion to a group spell to justify a 2k-2.5k base mana cost. Because no 6 minute base duration spell would be worth that in MGB so it would religate the spell into the very rarely used category which is probably a step below where the current version is already.

IMO, if not going to make something that is going get used there is no point to changing anything at all. Reading the stuff proposed in these changes lately strikes me as a case of "if you are not working for me, then you are working against me". Needless to say I would rather not have working against me.

It may not be a fair comparison, but I have to look at other changes happening at the same time as what was done with SA for example to judge whether I think it was a fair trade. And frankly, what I see is this; Howl of the Predator has a mana cost of 375 with a duration of 1 hour 20.0 mins and Strength of the Hunter 325/1 hour, they are trying to retune these spells to make them more powerful too, but I don't see the mana cost nerf bat wailing on Rangers the same way it is on Bsts at the moment.

[hakaaba]

I dont know about you but its already far below the 'rarely used' category for me :D

In any case 2k mana is rediculous and even the peoplewho want it to be a group buff admit that -- therefore  it cant be a group buff.

The way to get the most from our money is to keep it with all its downsides -- single target--long recast -- in order to make it extremely potent on the few single targets we can put it on.

However, this idea requires them to change it from barely above nothing as it currently stands to extremely potent heh.

[Tastian]

"It may not be a fair comparison, but I have to look at other changes happening at the same time as what was done with SA for example to judge whether I think it was a fair trade."

No, it's not a fair comparision cass.  SA gives back mana, that always plays into things when a spell is being balanced/tweaked.  Look at SV for us, with a 312 mana cost.  That is very much in line with other buffs of that type.  In fact, it's less mana for more base duration than the ranger version.  Our version of HP buff (allandu) is very similar to other buffs(closest to probably ToKragg for shaman from before).  Even SA as a mana giving buff is between steeloak for druids and claire for enc.  Lots can argue where the usefulness of the other aspects of those buffs fall, but overall SA is still middle of the road for efficency.

"the mana cost nerf bat wailing on Rangers the same way it is on Bsts at the moment."

Other than the change to SA what else has the mana cost nerf bat hit recently? 

"There would have to be some pretty significant other changes other than just conversion to a group spell to justify a 2k-2.5k base mana cost."

It was covered earlier in this thread, but if you look at avatar for shaman(which is the closest thing to fero) and other group buffs you see a pretty clear pattern when a spell is turned into a group buff.  Now mind you champion gained +10% dmg mod on it, but other than that it's identical to ferine avatar as I recall(and being group of course hehe).  FA costs 350 base per cast and champion is 1500 mana per cast.  Right now normal fero costs 600 mana, so if a group version with upgraded stats were to happen it could easily be in the 2-2.5k range just based on prior spells.  That is why a lot of people aren't so keen on the idea of a group version.  The group version carries a lot of "balancing" with it that would really make it annoying and almost unuseable in a lot of situations.  By keeping the spell single target the places it can be used go up, the potential power the spell has goes up and it still has the potential to give us some added utility in various situations(group and raid).

Other group buffs tend to be at ~3X the cost of the single target version of the spell(1300 group claire, 400 normal claire, 2340 group mark, 780 single shot, wunshi same as mark, etc.).  Even under those rules fero would be in the 1800 range(3600 to MGB) which is far, far more than most beastlords would want to use.  Especially in a situation where your group might have a couple casters that click it off, or just imagine the fizzle on that lol, poof there goes 900 mana.