Best target for Hysteria

Greetings All

I thought I knew the answer to this question, but recently one of our guildies discovered a thread on EJ that seems to shed new light to what class player is the best for hysteria. I'm a tank myself and since have no threat issues, I always cast hysteria onto a DPS players, as common sense (at least in my mind) dictates.

I was under the impression that rogues were the best choice but the EJ thread contradicts that, saying feral cats would be the best choice and goes as far as to say "Rogues - A good portion of their damage is elemental." I assume by "elemental" they mean "magic" which in turns makes me go huh? To me, rogues were always the epitome of physical dmg class, aside from poison.

But since I have neither played or have any experience with druids nor rogues, I figured I'd bring this up here and ask you guys about it. So, assuming that a raid would have a feral cat and rogue, both doing rough and about same top damage, which one should I cast hysteria on?

From what I've seen depending on the spec the rogue is in (some or good percent of the damage is due to poisons) correct me if I'm wrong. The line up I use is Feral Druids, Warriors, and then Rogues .. Like Paladins and Death Knights a percent of the attacks are spell based and won't get the full benifit of Hysteria.

warriors and ferals both do 100% physical damage, the reason why most people say give it to the ferals is because hysteria doesn't stack with deathwish so if you hit it at the wrong time it would essentially be wasted on the warrior.

Also Hysteria stacks with Berserk. So Feral Druids benefit 100% from Hysteria while using their biggest cooldown.

Rogues always have a portion of their damage from poisons; for Mutilate spec poisons may (ballparking it here based on my ICC-10 geared rogue) climb as high as 35-40% of their damage.

Feral Druids > Warriors > Combat Rogues > Blood/Frost DKs > Unholy DKs > Ass Rogues > Paladins > Shamans > Hunter pets

To clarify:
* First 2 are explained
* Combat Rogues don't have poison talents, don't use Envenom or Mutilate and generally know how to use it.
* Blood DK does mostly physical DPS, Frost only does IT & Frost Strikes (and Howling Blast) that don't scale, because Necrosis & BCB do
* Unholy DK for the still decent scaling
* Mutilate Rogues (or Ass Rogues as I call them) do more poison dmg, as explained above
* Retridins & Enhancement Shamlings do even more magical damage, often hitting 50/50
* If you REALLY don't wonna let it go to waste, let that BM Hunter go over you on those meters :p

I'd agree with WarTotems comments overall, with one addition. Whoever you are using Hysteria on, make sure they are not also receiving Tricks of the Trade. For example if you have two rogues trading Tricks of the Trade, you shouldn't use it on either of them. Simply because the buffs do not stack the damage portion of them (Hysteria would override the 15% physical damage bonus because it is stronger, any magic damage such as poisons would still receive the 15% "all damage" bonus of Tricks of the Trade). I would say it should be something for the DK casting Hysteria to work out with the Rogues in the group ahead of time to avoid overlapping their buffs. A 20% increase on someone else may be better than a 15% (5% increase during Tricks averaged with 20% when Tricks is not active) increase on someone who got Tricks of the Trade for a third of the duration anyway.

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Originally Posted by Dannyl

"Rogues - A good portion of their damage is elemental." I assume by "elemental" they mean "magic" which in turns makes me go huh? To me, rogues were always the epitome of physical dmg class, aside from poison.

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To ease your mind on this front, poison damage counts as nature damage. So it's non-physical and in fact classified with the other elemental/magic damage types (like Lightning Bolt).

Thanks to everyone for the answers, it has been quite an enlightening thread. Has made me really look into our DPSers and think who I should be putting my hysteria on. We don't actually have any MS feral druids in the guild so it comes down to between the warriors and rogues, which we have both combat rogues and fury warriors. The warrior would seem to be the best choice, however, because it does not stack with deathwish, timing it would be tricky. Generally I always use my hysteria twice; at the very beginning of the fight and later when at the same time with heroism, though both are times when the warrior would normally use deathwish.

How about when the difference between e.g. in this case, the rogue and warrior DPS is significant, that would change the priority correct? If (just pulling numbers from my head) the warrior was doing 10K DPS and the rogue pulled 12K DPS, the rogue would then be the better target? As I'm looking at some of our recent raid logs, there can be as much as 700K dmg done difference between the rogue and warrior.

Actually, I don't know why nobody mentioned hunters yet. Yes, a Fury Warrior or Feral Druid are much better targets for Hysteria, but I'd argue a hunter can compete with a rogue. And I certainly think it is better than any DK, Retribution Paladin and Enhancement Shamans. A hunter might even be your best choice at a time, when melees might be in a disadvantage (e.g. Sindragosa's last phase, especially if it is timed well with the sub 20% phase and the hunter's own cooldowns).

As a feral druid I cry myself to sleep every night knowing I've almost never gotten a hysteria. People seem to LOVE putting it on rogues or other DKs ... which clearly displays a lack of understanding.

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Originally Posted by Ghos7Face

A hunter might even be your best choice at a time, when melees might be in a disadvantage (e.g. Sindragosa's last phase, especially if it is timed well with the sub 20% phase and the hunter's own cooldowns).

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I'm not really sure about that. Granted, my hunter is only level 69 but thinking of the rotation I play him with, has Serpent Sting, which is poison damage and Arcane Shot which I also believe is magic damage. So at least compared to combat rogues, they fall lower on the priority list.

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Originally Posted by feralminded

As a feral druid I cry myself to sleep every night knowing I've almost never gotten a hysteria. People seem to LOVE putting it on rogues or other DKs ... which clearly displays a lack of understanding.

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Trust me, I feel like a donkey for not knowing this before, but then again I ask myself, how could I have known? I can't know every class intimately, especially on a level of just how much of their damage is physical. Also, I realized that Hysteria is something that is rarely mentioned on boards or online guides, and I've read a lot of them, ever since I started my DK back at the beginning of the expansion.

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'm not really sure about that. Granted, my hunter is only level 69 but thinking of the rotation I play him with, has Serpent Sting, which is poison damage and Arcane Shot which I also believe is magic damage. So at least compared to combat rogues, they fall lower on the priority list.

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Don't MM hunters drop Arcane Shot at some point?

Hmmm, there seems to be some glitches in what you're suggesting Cohesiac. Now I can't say this with 100% certainty as I haven't tested it, but I was not under the impression that the buff applies to base weapon damage, only to physical damage applied (which *should* also leave FS in the dark).

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Originally Posted by Gibsaurus

Don't MM hunters drop Arcane Shot at some point?

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Yes, and in 232+ gear it is not hard at all to reach that point.

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Originally Posted by Satorri

Hmmm, there seems to be some glitches in what you're suggesting Cohesiac. Now I can't say this with 100% certainty as I haven't tested it, but I was not under the impression that the buff applies to base weapon damage, only to physical damage applied (which *should* also leave FS in the dark).

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Yeah this is correct. It's just a flat physical damage multiplier, just like deathwish (and hence why it doesn't stack with it). People need to check out how much damage each class does with physical attacks in WoL, they might be amazed. Rogues for instance, regardless of build, are like 25-30% poison damage. Really the only classes over 80% physical are ferals and warriors with warriors having the whole DW issue.

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Originally Posted by feralminded

Yeah this is correct. It's just a flat physical damage multiplier, just like deathwish (and hence why it doesn't stack with it). People need to check out how much damage each class does with physical attacks in WoL, they might be amazed. Rogues for instance, regardless of build, are like 25-30% poison damage. Really the only classes over 80% physical are ferals and warriors with warriors having the whole DW issue.

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With the addendum of melee-based magic damage, like DKs have. It basicly double dibs in both melee scaling ( the damage it's based on) and magic damage buffs (the actual damage it does). Too bad it doesn't get twice the benefit of overall damage, or DKs would be lovin' the ICC buff beyond "unhealthy and phsychologically problematic"

Edit: Hunters do part damage with their pet (not counted in), and are either BM (low hunter damage), Survival (Explosive Shot, Black Arrow) or MM (Serpent Sting + Cobra Shot or whatever it's called)

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Originally Posted by feralminded

Rogues for instance, regardless of build, are like 25-30% poison damage.

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Mutilate rogues tend to sit around 50/50. It's frustrating on LDW trying to convince the raid leader at times. Combat rogues tend to sit around 15-20%(this number I had to pull of wow-meters due to it being a long time since I played combat).

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Originally Posted by WarTotem

Edit: Hunters do part damage with their pet (not counted in), and are either BM (low hunter damage), Survival (Explosive Shot, Black Arrow) or MM (Serpent Sting + Cobra Shot or whatever it's called)

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MM can be a decent option if you don't have a Warrior or Feral Kitteh, especially if they are in the ArP stacking region. Chimera Shot and Serpent Sting don't get the benefit, but the rest to benefit nicely at least. I would be ambivalent and have to check more general output if it were between an MM Hunter and say DPS DK (I expect Blood would be better than MM Hunter, but Frost/Unholy comparable or maybe worse, depending on context).

And Rogues, even Combat, do not make very good use of Hysteria. Assassin Rogues get huge non-physical (if it isn't physical it is the general category of magical, Dannyl, and poison is nature damage, as is Envenom) damage contributions, but Combat Rogues get a big margin from Poison even without those buffs and the fast weapon swings only play that up.

And yeah, Bruised, we always had that problem with our Enhancer and Muti Rogue, back in the regular mode days we just had them stay on Deathwhisper.

I have one rule for the people who want Hysteria in my raids...they have to call for it.

So I end up using it on our fury warrior because hes always the one calling for it, so I have it macrod to him and he rotates it with his Death Wish. Seems to work out best.

I remember back in the days where ManBear would call for Hysteria and we had a rotation set on him.

...Crazy Feral..