So as the Feral population continues to explore ways and means to de-dysfunctionalize this neglected spec by blizzard, I am here to tell just my own point of view that it was Haste all along.
Mainly since we are able and allowed to stack enough Haste this season too without sacrificing way too much mastery/versa.
Beginning at 22% haste everything about the spec started to feel amazing. Damage/cc/gcds. And we are able to fight back/react against all these overtuned wheelchair oneshotter specs.
I am playing circle of life, and still will try with draught.
On top of all the known functional benefits of haste, I am doing more damage as well. Without change in playstyle either btw. Not even multidotting.
Ye i think the feeling of doing faster clones with the higher haste gave me the impression that im going in and out of cat form faster, when in fact its just the faster clones that makes the whole process feel smoother
well its not totally about circle legendary being “all that good” by itself.
I put on circle to complement the haste build.
circle of life was my very first legendary i made in season one, and i played necro when everyone was kyrian “”“bIg bItEs”"".
The legendary frankly sucked back then because i was trying to do the whole “multidotting” thing, and i was playing crit for some reason.
Now with circle legendary, and stacking a lot of haste (because we can now without sacrificing huge mastery/versa), and only hitting one target, it feels great imo. Our damage is rolling fast in this fast meta. Remember when we could actually tank people in season one and slowly kill them? lol.
What snuppy was doing was nuking the fk out of people with ( pop cds > swarm > feral frenzy > 4 set op dot > high end pvp ilvl with mastery substats ). The legendary defiantly pushed the damage faster, but frankly that damage is gonna kill stuff regardless.
Many people have tried circle of life, but more than the legendary itself, im extremely happy with haste over mastery now.
So… I played full haste feral beginning of season 2 SL about half a year ago when I played frost FMP to 2.6 and glad. I had no idea ferals plays mastery so when I started gearing full mastery instead I lost so much damage compared to my original haste build. I now play mastery with circle but haven’t pushed any 3s this season.
Haste def feels good I don’t know why every high feral goes mastery. Energy feels so freaking bad
More passive energy regeneration and faster autoattacks leading to more Clearcasting procs (I hope that is the correct name), both leading to more attacks from your end.
If you sim a “normally” pvp geared feral in pvp spec, the stat weights will say haste is your best stat, slightly ahead of mastery, and way ahead of versa (versa was about equal to haste/mastery last season with the trinket set bonus). The problem with haste is that a lot of the benefit is baked into auto-attacks and energy regen, which requires very high uptime. Whenever you kite, are cc’ed, cast heals and clones, the dmg value of haste is suffering. On the flipside, haste also contributes to your heals/regen, gives you faster clones etc, so theres obviously a utility benefit too.
If you compare the dmg value of haste and mastery, mastery is most likely less prone to downtime, and more importantly: also adds to your impact dmg (bite, frenzy). So when the sims show haste and mastery as roughly equal, the actual pvp dmg value is probably higher for mastery. That being said there is a pretty crucial haste breakpoint around 14%, where you can clone out of disorienting roar. Which is probably why most ferals wanna have a decent chunk of haste, but then going mainly for mastery beyond that point.
You can actually use Cyclone out of Roar with 0% Haste. Non cat GCD is 1.5s and Cyclone cast as well. You’d Roar, be on GCD for 1.5s (reduced by haste) and the cast Cyclone during the second part of Roar. I know for a fact, having played the spec for two seasons, that you don’t need haste to perform that CC chain. If there is such a breakpoint it might be to land that CC on a Sephuz target, but it is otherwise not needed.
Both yes and no. I tested quite extensively last night, and the results with two people around 40 ping and me having 1% haste were:
in most cases the clone would go through
in some cases mage was able to cs, but the clone still went off (cs hit nothing)
in a few cases mage managed to cs clone
in every single case you could clearly see the roar fade before landing the clone, but the delay when leaving cc makes it “impossible” for enemy to interrupt
The main issue is the responsiveness/latency factor, which is also why a druid will be able to triple clone with good timing, despite someone spamming interrupt while in the clone. Im not sure how the results would be if the mage had 5 ping. From personal experience it feels like low haste is very unreliable, but that might also be due to spell pushback or other stuff.
Yes. In short you can, but the timing has to be perfect so latency or pushback prevents it, but that is no news.
Fortunately you will never have 0% Haste on Feral because only half the leather PvP gear has Mastery on it while everything but gloves has Haste, so once you are out of Mastery parts you just fill with Haste and naturally get enough to be comfortable. It is what Ferals have been doing in S1 and S2 already (Necro Ferals ofc, convokers went Mastery > Critical Strike for obvious reasons).
After playing it more today, i went back to mastery>haste.
Just for the pure reason that every single class wrecks our face in a face-to-face dps style, and I feel forced back into the style of getting a kill in short window of cc & stun, then kiting around until next setup.
I mean what the hell is demon hunter, warrior, hunter, dk, rogue damage…
