I'm having a real hard time understanding where our Feral DPS is supposed to come from. Compared to a similarly geared rogue, and just comparing White Damage, Sinster Strike vs. Mangle, and Backstab vs. Shred, it seems we are woefully lower in DPS output. I'm not talking Raid bosses where you use 5CP trinketed Rips and such. Just straight out PvP encounters or PvE mobs.

So for example, I was grinding some Sporeggar rep killing nagas. For the purpose of this example, I ALWAYS Pounced, Faire Fire, Mangle, Shred. All were against level 63-64 of the exact same mob (GREENS!). I then recorded the white, mangle, and shred damage.

Looking at my character sheet, under Melee is stated at the time that my attack was doing 230-256 damage (243 DPS Average). I have all the damage increasing melee talents I can get: Naturalist, Savage Fury, Predatory Instincts, and the Idol of the Wild.

y (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormscale&n=Vika) white damage, non-crit, averaged 169DPS w/ a high of 178 and a low of 160. Now compare that to a Merciless Gladiator's Slicer (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32052). That's a 1H Main w/ Mongoose (which won't proc for us) that doesn't even consider Attack Power yet. Sure the weapon speed makes a considerable difference, but then we're not even considering the Off Hand weapon or the poison.

y white crits averaged 376 DPS. So I'm observing a drop-off of 57.9% DPS on actual vs. listed. Armor on a green mob couldn't possible account for that could it? And that's with a 10% increase in all melee damage and another 10% crit damage. (169 + 169(1.1))1.1=390.39 And that's assuming the 10% crit damage is ONLY on the crit damage and not the +100% total.

Next was Mangle and Shred. Mangle averaged 618.5 damage. This was after all talents and such. Mangle Crits averaged 1362 and had as much as 100DPS disparity in the high-low range. However, when I do the math on what Mangle and Shred claim to do, it seems these are way low.

(243 DPS +29) x 192% + 346) x 30% = 1128.7

Needless to say, that's significantly lower than what I was hitting for.

Shred: (243 DPS x 225% + 405) x 40% (remember always had mangle up for +30%) = 1332.45

Oddly, that was only 41.5% higher than actual damage. So in a nutshell, projected vs. actual: white damage = 57.9% lower; Mangle = 95.7% lower; and Shred = 41.5% lower. Am I whacked here or is there something wrong?

Hi druid,

Cat mechanics are my specialty. Unfortunately I am about to go on a raid so I don't have enough time to theorycraft through all this with you. But I will later! Just sit tight, I'll be with you shortly.. :>

Can you provide a link to your spec please?


-Annikk

It's above Annikk. It's the link that say's "My". Sorry if I obfuscated that too much.

The math is all sketchy though. But just want to understand why the damage my character sheet and the tooltips show are nowhere near the damage I do.

I realize this sounds like the mad ramblings of Doc Brown. And they just might be. I'm sure I'm missing something key here.

Ok now I r tired and too much vodka. I haven't been through the maths yet (when i wake up..) but things that can affect your dmg are the armor of the mob and your chance to miss, be dodged/parried/etc. Could that be it?


-Annikk

I'm not talking about DPS per se. Just the amount of damage Mangle and Shred are supposed to do, and the amount they actually do. DPS would include misses, dodge, etc. which aren't really within the scope of my conundrum.

I'm sure there were much simpler ways to ask what I was asking, but after the fact I didn't have enough energy to rethink it. :crazy:

In a nutshell, does your Mangle do the damage you expect it to do based on what your character sheet says you do, what Mangle says it does, and including your talents? Because what I expect and what I see are far apart. And I have no clue how armor works for mobs nor what their armor values are.

Ok lets talk in generalities....
1. Druids and rogues are about equivalent in T4 content. Druids probably start a little stronger on DPS, but as rogues find their weapons, they start to overtake us.
2. Druid DPS in raids requires you to be behind the mob to maximize damage. Rogue max DPS tends to be a Combat spec which doesn't CARE where you stand.
3. Druids got screwed because of lack of Mongoose, certain buffing effects etc. This will all be fixed in the expansion.

Ok for now, Druid DPS struggles to keep pace with Rogue DPS the higher in progression you go. Can you keep up with Rogue DPS? yes, but you have to work harder than the Rogues do. By the time you are deep in T6, you can't keep pace with the Rogue DPS, but your utility is better than a rogue in some instances. A pocket tank that you can pull out when needed is better than a Prot warrior who you have to pull out of the raid when not needed or just slows your dps down.

The damage on your character sheet NEVER takes into account your special abilities. You will only ever see the base damage of your claws etc. Mangle etc really amp your damage.

Maybe I can simplify things a bit by focusing on actual damage done vs. projected damage.

Using Mangle I conducted two sets of tests. All were against level 10 boars outside Orgrimmar.

I did two batteries of tests, one with Faerie Fire (-610 armor) and one without.

Without FF, my Mangle non-crit damage was averaging 795.
With FF, my Mangle non-crit damage averaged 824.

So whatever the armor of a level 10 boar is, 610 less results in 3.6% more damage. Not sure how armor scales or if we can extrapolate that further, but not important yet.

What IS important is that we agree it would be hard to find something with less armor, a level 10 boar which even hunters know, are DPS not Armor (like a turtle).

According to my character sheet, talents, and the Mangle tool tip, here's what I could expect with 0 armor.

219-244 damage averaging 231.5 (Character Sheet - Melee Tab)
231.5 + 24 (Idol) x 192% + 346 = 836.56

Now I have Naturalist and Savage Fury. So my Mangle damage should be 30% more.

836.56 x 30% = 1087.528

That would be non-crit with no armor mitigation. Crits therefore would be doubled with a 10% increase in the crit damage due to Predatory Instincts.

1087 + 1087(1.1) = 2283

In a nutshell, Actual vs. Projected (w/ FF):

Non-Crit = 824 vs. 1087 (31.9% less)
Crit = 1832 vs. 2283 (24.65% less)

Now if armor for a boar 60 levels below me scaled with the observed percentage decrease from FF (-610 armor = 3.6% damage reduction) then according to those numbers, that boar would have over 5500 armor. I'm pretty sure it doesn't. So where is all my damage that my character sheet and the tooltip says I do???

I did say "maybe I can simplify things a bit." LOL

So I verified how Naturalist works. When you mouse over the Melee damage it shows on mine a +110%. That's Naturalist. A druid with only 2/5 in Naturalist showed up as +104%.

If the 10% comes before calculating Mangle and Shred etc. then I'm seriously questioning how important that ability is. And I'm now wondering when the talent Savage Fury says increases Mangle damage, that it literally means just the 192% + 346 from Mangle.

So this would be the lowest possible calculation of Mangle damage.

+10% applied to base damage = 231.5 DPS AFTER Naturalist.

231.5 x 192% + 346 + 24 (Idol) = 814.48

+20% Mangle Damage: 814.48 (total) - 231.5 (base) = 582.98 (Mangle Only) x 20% = 699.576

Add back in the base damage: 699.576 + 231.5 = 931

So the lowest Mangle Damage possible based on when you apply the 10% from Naturalist and when you add the +24 from the Idol, and ONLY adding the +20% from Savage Fury to the actual Mangle Damage would be 931 average non-crit.

And against the level 8-10 grey boars I was averaging 795 w/o FF. That's a difference of 17%. Considering how low their armor must be, what does that do to our damage against targets of equal level that have equivalent armor values???

With FF? 13% difference. So 610 armor mitigated 4% of total damage.

IF this math is right, then that boar more or less has 1525 armor which while is a lot better number than the 5500 before...but my level 17 rogue (closest to 10 I had) has 400 armor. So I'm as skeptical as before that I'm doing the damage I should be doing. Seriously...is there something obvious I'm missing here?

Low values of armor give a lot more apparent % of mitigation. For example 0-50 armor will reduce the damage by a larger number of percent than 500-550 does.

I think you will find the armor doesn't change a huge amount between low and high level mobs. Certainly a lot of 70 mobs have very little armor, certain casters, etc.


I've been through all your maths this morning Vika and I have to say I think the difference can adequately be accounted for by armor values, and as you say you were reading your base cat dmg without naturalist when in fact the base dmg shows your dmg WITH naturalist.

It's normal for lowbie players to start with very low armor - potentially a fair bit lower than some lowbie mobs. Remember lowbies doing 15 damage per hit aren't really going to notice a huge difference if 17% of that damage is mitigated - the number only becomes meaningful once you are doing hundreds of damage, and therefore losing hundreds of damage to the mitigation. Instead of scaling down the armor for lowbie mobs, Blizzard instead make them easier to kill by increasing your chance to hit mobs below level 10.

If you wish to close the gap between [projected-with-zero-armor] dps vs [actual] dps, you might consider investing in some armor penetration gear. This stuff works very well in pvp and solo grinding. It works best against clothies, and as you stack more and more, it starts to become effective vs leather-wearing classes too. I personally have gone down this route and now have almost 1100 penetration WITHOUT faerie fire. As you can imagine I can fairly rip into cloth classes these days, some of the crits I can get really do turn the course of a battle around because the raw amounts of HP I can burn with just a couple moves has increased so much. Against mail it's not nearly as noticeable, and against plate I just tend to use bleeds anyway. Basically armor penetration = anti-clothie gear.


-Annikk

Thanks Annikk. That is some good food for thought. I appreciate you taking the time to try and provide some light here.

So ignoring all the testing I did on lower level mobs, would you think the damage I did against the 63-64 green mobs is an apt test? If so, I can say that the Naga's I tested against mitigated 48% of damage which would put their armor at 10556. And that may be my answer. Perhaps they do have a lot of armor being like a warrior. I truly have no concept of how much armor a mob might have.

You are most welcome :> 10k sounds like about the right sort of armor a typical warrior naga mob would have.

You may actually be able to look up the naga's stats on Wowhead or something. Then you could calculate a projected dmg number that also takes armor into account - and hopefully this time it will be much closer to the actual dmg output you are getting. :>


-Annikk

Actually I had tried to look up armor values for mobs so I could conduct definitive testing.

But if armor scales as you say, with level being very important, I would still think the testing I did with the 63-64 Naga's would be applicable. Or would I need to test against Level 70 mobs??

And FYI...Elitist Jerks shows damage mitigation from armor as the equation: X/X+10775 = Y where X= Armor and Y=amount mitigated. You can see their post directly to see where the 10775 comes from, but that does take Level into account which may be where things have gone wonky. It assumes Level 70.

Thanks again for the TWO of you who helped me think this through. I take full responsibility for making this too damn convoluted! I plead being at work and not having time to format this into a more palatable context. Sorry. :eek: