Feral Weapon Enchant explained for SL

Chey

Chey

Legend
As most of you are probably aware by now plus damage is the best weapon enchant for Feral druid. We believe the addition is calculated before the multiplier instead of after the multiplier. This is only true for weapon applied enchants for feral, no other slot or class calculates in this way.

There still seems to be some confusion on what version enchant is best and how to apply to artifact weapon.

For a start ignore what the enchant actually states as most of the time tool tip is wrong, even after applied.

ARTIFACT- Fangs of Ashamane
Do NOT apply to off hand of artifact weapon, this gives you zero benefit. The same with sharpening stones applied to off hand. Only the main hand calculates the “plus damage enchant/stones” use off hand to enchant with a proc or Agilty/attack power.

https://www.wowhead.com/spell=27967/major-striking
ENCHANT VERSION- TLDR
1H (Fangs of Ashamane or Claws of Ursoc)
Enchant weapon Major Striking (ID 4746)

https://www.wowhead.com/spell=20030/superior-impact
ENCHANT VERSION- TLDR
2H (staff/polearm/2H mace)
Enchant 2H weapon Superior Impact (ID 1896)

EDIT: Added a spreadsheet to show the tooltip differences.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/1qae...Fyr7pQ/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=msexcel

Hope it is helpful to someone while they still have game time.
 
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Mahvet said:
Explain to me the differences between the feral artifact and the guardian artifact. Which one is better for general use between both specs? Does the slower swing speed on the guard benefit at all for either spec or both?

Are the claws good for feral? Are the fangs good for guard? Is one a shit option over the other in all scenarios?
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You were never able to use artifact weapons outside of their designated specs. Don't know if that has changed or not.

Also, in terms of the general topic, has any feral tried + weapon dmg main-hand and ele force off-hand? Ignores armor and adds decent sustain and also works great with dots. I would assume this combination is unparalleled by literally any other combination of enchants.
 
Tried the other day on warlock and it failed. Tried using demo's main hand and offhand for affliction and it rejected it. Was curious as wanted to have double enchants versus affliction's single on staff.
 
Mahvet said:
Bro.... I change out the druid weapons and the warrior weapons everyday all day. I know it works.
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Ah, my bad. I've been leveling/gearing 4 toons at the same time and haven't tried any of them yet. I assumed the red text of "Requires: Demonology" when equipped as affliction meant it wouldn't function. This is great to hear for an additional weapon enchant!
 
Mahvet said:
Well this was fun....
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I'll tell you the same thing I tell a lot of people asking niche questions like this:

Everything (potentially) changed with SL and we're still largely working on information thats based in BFA. It's more or less working out fine, but things like "what weapons for a feral druid are best" is something thats very new on a spec not many people play. This is compounded by what can only be described as disasterously bad and unreliable tooltip scaling.

So you have a real chance here to be the hero and find out! Equip both and spend some time at a target dummy or batting around a friend in duels. Record swing numbers. Does one hit harder than the other? Is there some weird hidden mechanic where maybe swing time affects GCD or some other whack shit? Feral druids are weird, man. Who knows whats going on in there. But you can test it! Be the first guy to figure it out!
 
It's an easy test really. Get the base of both and just test it right out of the gate. I doubt one is gonna massively outscale the other when you start doing your relics and whatnot.

Main part would be to see if Bite scales off slower weapon speed or not, because that would be the main reason to go with a slow weapon in the first place.
 
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I was curious if weapon damage on offhand really did anything other then buffing offhand white hits, considering feral druids don't do offhand white hits I can see ele force of flat ap/agi on offhand wepaon being best. I am currently working on a rogue project and I will be testing out weapon damage enchants/stones on them.

I already know that a +2 weapon damage stone increases gloomblade damage by 11. gloomblades ap ratio is 47% close to 50% so I tend to use it when checking things like this out. I just need to get my rep up with the consortium for the weapon damage enchant.
 
Mahvet said:
Explain to me the differences between the feral artifact and the guardian artifact. Which one is better for general use between both specs? Does the slower swing speed on the guard benefit at all for either spec or both?

Are the claws good for feral? Are the fangs good for guard? Is one a shit option over the other in all scenarios?
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Hey Mahvet,

Feral dose not use the “speed” of the weapon only the “weapon dps” so i think that is the same on both artifacts.

Iam not 100% because my Fangs have grandfathered relic so they are just better.

So to try and clarify if one weapon hits lower but is faster and the other hits harder but is slower resulting in the exact same weapon dps then it will give you the exact same damage as feral on all of your abilities.

I use the stun mace and swap to Fangs for burst so i have dancing steel on off hand for bigger bites.

If you use fangs all the time then yes I would say +damage and ele force would be a great combo.

I have been using double ele for guardian because it simply dose more damage than the +damage for that spec. Having said that I currently just change it to double lifesteeling to test. Don’t think the roc rate will be as high but I am testing for solo dungeons.

Yes you can use other specs artifacts now but I don’t think it works when you have it in a saved set, pretty sure you need to manually swap it once you are in that spec.
 
Chey said:
Hey Mahvet,

Feral dose not use the “speed” of the weapon only the “weapon dps” so i think that is the same on both artifacts.

Iam not 100% because my Fangs have grandfathered relic so they are just better.

So to try and clarify if one weapon hits lower but is faster and the other hits harder but is slower resulting in the exact same weapon dps then it will give you the exact same damage as feral on all of your abilities.

I use the stun mace and swap to Fangs for burst so i have dancing steel on off hand for bigger bites.

If you use fangs all the time then yes I would say +damage and ele force would be a great combo.

I have been using double ele for guardian because it simply dose more damage than the +damage for that spec. Having said that I currently just change it to double lifesteeling to test. Don’t think the roc rate will be as high but I am testing for solo dungeons.

Yes you can use other specs artifacts now but I don’t think it works when you have it in a saved set, pretty sure you need to manually swap it once you are in that spec.
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Is the stun really worth the weapon swap?

You get put on gcd for swapping, which is baseline 1.5sec (affected by haste), and since the stun is 3 seconds, that means half of that duration is basically just you swapping weapons, which means even if you have PERFECT timing (i.e. swap the exact time the stun applies) you have a window worth of 1 ability before the stun fades. Wouldn't it simply be more worth going for the stun meta gem at that point? If you're looking for that type of mechanic anyways.
 
This is all theory and has not actually been verified in game, but here's my current understanding, using the formulas from the Ask Mr. Robot theorycraft section as reference.

My explanation is based on the fact that all of a cat druid's hits are main hand hits (vs off hand hits which would have a x0.5 multiplier), and the attack speed is base 1.0 (faster than any single weapon another class might use). So you would be getting the full effect of the extra damage from the enchant on every auto attack hit vs say a rogue who would only be getting benefits on the main hand portion of their attacks from their main hand enchant. You also get a bigger boost to the WDPS contribution on your ability damage, because the extra damage is just added per hit and you hit so frequently, causing a bigger increase in WDPS than any other class. You also of course get the huge benefit of being free to enchant the offhand with whatever you want, vs another class where off hand WDPS is actually a factor.

Essentially, because of cat form's fast attack speed and exclusively main hand attacks, you get more benefit from a plus weapon damage enchant because the enchants aren't normalized for the faster attack speed. As a corollary, this also means that other classes should also get more benefits from the enchants if they use faster attack speed weapons. For the most part this is irrelevant because you are just going to be using the artifact and don't have much choice. Outlaw rogues with daggers maybe? Fury warriors with one handers (and dropping crusader for weapon damage lol)?

Also, in theory the attack speed of the weapon itself shouldn't matter when you're shapeshifted, so feral vs guardian artifacts is just which has better WDPS, and the only differences there are due to rounding errors to get whole number damage values. Just use whichever one you got relics for/like what it looks like better. But if you care:

ilvl 31 is 4.16667 DPS for feral and 4.2308 DPS for guardian.
ilvl 32: 4.44444 for feral, 4.42308 for guardian
ilvl 33: 4.72222 for feral, 4.61538 for guardian
ilvl 34: 4.72222 for feral, 4.80769 for guardian
ilvl 49: 7.77778 for feral, 7.69230 for guardian

If there was a 2h option, that should be better because better WDPS, but you would lose elemental force or whatever on the off hand.
 
Bestworld said:
Is the stun really worth the weapon swap?

You get put on gcd for swapping, which is baseline 1.5sec (affected by haste), and since the stun is 3 seconds, that means half of that duration is basically just you swapping weapons, which means even if you have PERFECT timing (i.e. swap the exact time the stun applies) you have a window worth of 1 ability before the stun fades. Wouldn't it simply be more worth going for the stun meta gem at that point? If you're looking for that type of mechanic anyways.
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not swapping on stun, swapping for bite where you are pooling for the 50 energy anyway, may not always be ideal. I guess situational.
 
Can abilities such as sinister strike bloodthirst etc strike with the offhand? How does weapon damage on offhand impact abilities? or is it just white hits? (for classes other then druids)
 
Claws of Ursoc are the cooler artifact, but they also require a fire relic on 2nd slot, which is one of the hardest ones to find.

Fangs of Ashamane uses a frost relic on 2nd slot, which can be farmed on Azsuna.
 
toskosa said:
Can abilities such as sinister strike bloodthirst etc strike with the offhand? How does weapon damage on offhand impact abilities? or is it just white hits? (for classes other then druids)
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It varies from ability to ability. They can be main hand only, off hand only, or both. If it's both the damage is usually calculated 2/3 with MH DPS and 1/3 with OH DPS. Sinister Strike and Bloodthirst look to be MH only. It's not always obvious or intuitive at all. For instance, the outlaw mastery main gauche uses the main hand DPS even though the tooltip and all logic indicate it should be an off hand attack.

Again, this is based on the formulas listed on Ask Mr. Robot, so there is a possibility that it's not accurate to what happens in game. Especially in instanced PvP, blizzard seems to be quite happy to alter different damage formulas.
 
mirrorbender said:
This is all theory and has not actually been verified in game, but here's my current understanding, using the formulas from the Ask Mr. Robot theorycraft section as reference.

My explanation is based on the fact that all of a cat druid's hits are main hand hits (vs off hand hits which would have a x0.5 multiplier), and the attack speed is base 1.0 (faster than any single weapon another class might use). So you would be getting the full effect of the extra damage from the enchant on every auto attack hit vs say a rogue who would only be getting benefits on the main hand portion of their attacks from their main hand enchant. You also get a bigger boost to the WDPS contribution on your ability damage, because the extra damage is just added per hit and you hit so frequently, causing a bigger increase in WDPS than any other class. You also of course get the huge benefit of being free to enchant the offhand with whatever you want, vs another class where off hand WDPS is actually a factor.

Essentially, because of cat form's fast attack speed and exclusively main hand attacks, you get more benefit from a plus weapon damage enchant because the enchants aren't normalized for the faster attack speed. As a corollary, this also means that other classes should also get more benefits from the enchants if they use faster attack speed weapons. For the most part this is irrelevant because you are just going to be using the artifact and don't have much choice. Outlaw rogues with daggers maybe? Fury warriors with one handers (and dropping crusader for weapon damage lol)?

Also, in theory the attack speed of the weapon itself shouldn't matter when you're shapeshifted, so feral vs guardian artifacts is just which has better WDPS, and the only differences there are due to rounding errors to get whole number damage values. Just use whichever one you got relics for/like what it looks like better. But if you care:

ilvl 31 is 4.16667 DPS for feral and 4.2308 DPS for guardian.
ilvl 32: 4.44444 for feral, 4.42308 for guardian
ilvl 33: 4.72222 for feral, 4.61538 for guardian
ilvl 34: 4.72222 for feral, 4.80769 for guardian
ilvl 49: 7.77778 for feral, 7.69230 for guardian

If there was a 2h option, that should be better because better WDPS, but you would lose elemental force or whatever on the off hand.
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Theory crafting sites don’t formulate the enchant correctly because basically it’s broken.

Your theory is plausible but flawed. If that was the case then other plus damage in other slots would have the same effect but they do not.
Example there is a neck, ring and some other items you can wear that all have +damage on them but they do not multiply like the weapon enchant dose. They increase damage just the same as any other class dose.

I will provide some numbers later but the enchant on weapon is equivalent to ballpark 50+ agility. You can also see this in caster form where your healing is increased by an equivalent amount, it’s not just when in cat form.

You are basically correct with the weapon DPS, feral ignores speed and just uses the total weapon DPS. That’s why some fishing poles have been BiS for feral twinks over the years.
 
Chey said:
Hey Mahvet,

Feral dose not use the “speed” of the weapon only the “weapon dps” so i think that is the same on both artifacts.

Iam not 100% because my Fangs have grandfathered relic so they are just better.

So to try and clarify if one weapon hits lower but is faster and the other hits harder but is slower resulting in the exact same weapon dps then it will give you the exact same damage as feral on all of your abilities.

I use the stun mace and swap to Fangs for burst so i have dancing steel on off hand for bigger bites.

If you use fangs all the time then yes I would say +damage and ele force would be a great combo.

I have been using double ele for guardian because it simply dose more damage than the +damage for that spec. Having said that I currently just change it to double lifesteeling to test. Don’t think the roc rate will be as high but I am testing for solo dungeons.

Yes you can use other specs artifacts now but I don’t think it works when you have it in a saved set, pretty sure you need to manually swap it once you are in that spec.
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Stones you only have 1 gf relic ;) just making sure you share that with the peeps ;)
[doublepost=1608862113,1608862064][/doublepost]
Childishgankino said:
Stones you only have 1 gf relic ;) just making sure you share that with the peeps ;)
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Meaning your fangs item lvl is 42 not 49 ;) happy merry kissmas!
[doublepost=1608862191][/doublepost]Where are the big dick double GF relic lvl 49 feral druids at??????!!
 
I saw one in an eots a while ago cant remember the name.

I swear things like weapon stones and the weapon enchant are so wonky.
 
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