IFF and FF? Wah?

I am saying the tooltip, which currently reads:

Your Faerie Fire spell also increases the chance the target will be hit by spell attacks by 3%, and increases the critical strike chance of your damage spells by 3% on targets afflicted by Faerie Fire.

Should probably read:

Your Faerie Fire and Feral Faerie Fire spells also increase the chance the target will be hit by spell attacks by 3%, and increase the critical strike chance of your damage spells by 3% on targets afflicted by your Faerie Fire or Feral Faerie Fire.

One of the issues we are currently discussing is what to do in the case where someone chooses a talent that they end up not using because someone else in the group also has the same buff of equal or greater potency. To be fair though this is not a new problem. Raids always had to manage buffs like Spirit or Kings that were talented. I think groups usually worked around that by just grouping with the same people a lot and making sure someone had the talent. We are seeing a lot more raids pugged these days, and in any case, you often still want the buff when you are soloing. It is something we're discussing.
----------------------------------------------

So what you are saying is this is definitely how you wanted it to be? I'm a tad bit confused. Feral FF increasing hit as well? Are you ok GC? I'm still slightly confused on what you are trying to say. At first, you made it sound like this was a bug. Now you are saying you want it to work out...but now you need to find a way around people not using it or having it in raids? Yeah, Paladin buffs people spec in to. Its kinda like that I suppose. Or what about me being spec'd IMP Mark and never using it when a resto druid is in raid...does that mean I get something out of it? No, its called being prepared if anything. I also didn't find going 2/5 Nature's Focus to be a problem. I'm not tanking anything so nothing should be hitting me and when I cast wrath, its maybe 1-2 casts for my Eclipse proc.

However, we are still chatting in this thread in regards to what all he is saying. Ways we could make both sides happy. Ghostcrawler originally stated that he wanted us to cast IFF. When you have an Spriest in the raid, you don't care to even look at the button to try and cast. The Spriest has the Hit buff for the raid which is automatically applied. So now, why cast it? Its a dps loss overall for us.

So far a good suggestion is that we originally cast IFF at the start, and then a feral's FF overwrites/refreshes it so it never falls off. That way both sides are happy. Feral's can keep theirs up and we get our long timer on it. What do you all think?

For those wondering, an interesting response came, which holds a lot of truth. It came from our very own Graylo, who runs the blog Graymatter!

Lets assume for a second that a moonkin does receive the 3% crit from FFF or normal FF cast by another druid, without having cast FF on the mob himself. Basically, he is getting 3% crit for free.

Is this that big of an issue?

High end raiding moonkins have been speccing into IFF for a month to get the extra 3% crit. I have looked at my own WWS reports and those of several cutting edge guilds that are in the top 10 or 20 guilds in the world. Most of them seem to have a Moonkin on their roster now (woot!), but none of them are destroying the meters relative to the other DPS classes.

It was my understanding that as a hybrid class we are supposed to be close but still a little behind the more "pure" DPS classes. In my opinion that is where we are.

IFF my not have been intended to work with the FF cast by another player, but if it does, it obviously hasn't upset the balance of the game. Therefore, in my opinion it shouldn't be "fixed".

And hes right. The 3% increase even if we don't cast isn't a major thing and doesn't upset any balance of the game. What are you thoughts?

More Improved FF Testing

Update: Ghostcrawler responded to the question in regards to IMP FF working with FF

I am almost positive the talent is looking at your spells. So if you cast Wrath, it does a check to see if you also have FF up on the target.

The intent of the talent is to encourage you to cast Faerie Fire, compensating you a little for the fact that you are debuffing the target. It isn't intended to just be "here have some crit." The intent is that if you cast FF, even if the debuff is already on the mob, you are rewarded for it.

I suspect it isn't smart enough to detect Feral Faerie Fire now that it's a base spell, so we should probably fix the case of a Balance druid who casts FFF and then goes back to Wrath or whatever.

I am just guessing based on the way spells usually work. I did not try this myself so I could be wrong.

I will also admit that there are some inconsistencies currently in the game between whether you are supposed to apply a debuff again on a mob that already has it (because sometimes you get a "More Powerful Spell" error). This is something we're trying to clean up though.
-----

So its apparently a bug, but the game doesn't recognize it as such? Is there a way we could keep it? With all the replenishers in the raid, we have no mana issues. No reason to fix what isn't really broken..

Now back to your original viewing program!
--------------------------------

My first post ever in this blog (which is still on the front page) was talking about why not just take Imp FF for the 3% crit if you have the points left over? Well, even if you read the tooltip, its a tad bit confusing.

Improved Faerie Fire (Rank 3): Your Faerie Fire spell also increases the chance the target will be hit by spell attacks by 3%, and increases the critical strike chance of your damage spells by 3% on targets afflicted by Faerie Fire.

It requires your spell to be active on the boss for the 3% to hit, but as you read, it says it also increases your spell critical strike chance by 3% on targeted afflicted by Faerie Fire. So does that mean it doesn't need to be our own? From the wording, it sounds like it can be anyone's. But everyone is different when it comes to trying to understand the last sentence.

We did testing on this while it was in Beta. Bullocks had tested it and saw that is apparently worked off a Feral's FF. While he just kinda blurted it out, it made others think. Wisprunner who is another avid Moonkin Theorycrafter didn't believe it so stated there was no justification for taking 3/3 IMP FF unless you needed to make yourself and the raid hitcapped.

However, being the hard-head I am, I challenged Wisp. I provided the numbers, he did the math. Below are the numbers I presented him.

0 hit
2.66%Crit Rating (include 4% for my talent tree)
16 Bonus Damage
Casting Wrath 150 times for each test
--------------------------------------
Test 1 - No FF - 150 casts, 11 crits, 7.3%
Test 2 - Feral FF on dummy - 150 casts, 15 crits, 10%
Test 3 - Moonkin FF on dummy - 150 casts, 11 crits, 7.3%
---------------------------------------

While these tests are small, they still got people to think. Either way, Wisp took my numbers and began to crunch. Being that 3% is so hard to detect with the RNG, it was hard to get any real yes or no answer. However, his results pointed in the direction that yes...It works off Feral FF. A few others of course looked over the test results and have come to the same conclusion.

Wisp went as far as sending the numbers to a friend for a better conclusion( Some math major) which pointed to yes as well. I went as far as to petition a GM in the game and ask. After about 20 minutes talking back and forth about the talent and how playing a moonkin was like, he abandonded me for another 20 minutes before giving me an answer saying it was.

Now, usually..I would be like "Oh, I don't trust GM's. They know nothing about the game they are supposed to supervise." But this guy actually knew what I was talking about. I talked to him about the invisible buff to your haste which is Improved Moonkin form and Celestial Focus. He understood them all and responded to me in a fashion that would probably have made Wisp blush.

Either way, he stated as well that it worked. But people are still curious since numbers are pointing to yes but never giving a definate answer due to the way the numbers are layed. (Those wondering, its an infinite number, like 2.9x..it was for me when I did the math..so its never reaching the 3% qouta) So we are looking for GhostCrawler to be our friend and respond. However being how he is, GC has refused to respond to any questions in regards to this talent.

If you would like to join in our thread hoping to get a response from him, please feel free to respond asking for a straight answer in the read posted below. Until then, I will post the real math later on when Wisp wants to hand it over. I think hes trying to keep it away from me because I refuse to ever let it go. :)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14133419591&postId=142730127776&sid=1#5

Thanks for reading!

Foofy, over and out!