dukes

Just convince your guild to go back and do Anub'rekan, I believe CryptFiend has everything

212 Armor
+14 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 10.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 12.
Equip: Increases your hit rating by 10.

Also technically the Heavy Clefthoof leggings have as much avoidance as your Nomads (I think anyway) with the benefit of 34 defence so you can swap the Figurine for SHotM. You can get 4hit/4agi, 4agi/6stam, 4agi/6stam, and end up with 12 agi (~1dodge), 54 stam, 4 hit, 4 dodge rating, and 34 defence rating (~10 defence, 0.4%dodge/miss). Unfortunately it would still lack any real offensive stats though - not sure if you really want to lose out on that if you're switching to the PvP bracers anyway. The other thing I prefer to keep in mind is that you need 5 blue gems for the 18 stam/5% stun resist gem (which I currently have and keep forgetting about the gem requirement, which is a pain when thinking about replacing stuff but enough of a stam boost to be worth worrying about), so if you're getting that or thinking about it, you need to be looking at gear that will get you that requirement (obviously I have no idea what you're looking at upgrade-wise).

 

Dakous

With the preceding or next shot being, more times then not, dodged, the 2% (that's with 0 defense and SOTF, right? - another 1% from casually +def/+res items is pretty trivial) - 1 in 100 hits to be crit, and the hit before and after have to connect... 0.4^3 * 0.01 = 0.00064.

Admittedly, I haven't had as much experience as some of the illustrious peers here, but I've yet to have a death in Karazhan that was crit related.

Am I saying no to defense/resilience? No, most certainly not. Any item that's remotely attractive, I take it and thank for bonus. But crit "immunity" isn't even on my radar (but I do have a clefthoof set put together - I used to wear it, but I view the 2.0.10 nerf as Blizzard's memo to me that I should have paid attention to the agility buff instead).

The gear swap I did, I believe I was capped around ~69%. I'm at ~63% now, and it was a trade up of four times as much dodge. While the iDPS is a significant fraction change (37-31 = 6, 6/31 ~ 20%), moving from ~20% to ~60% is a huge improvement.

Of course, there's room for multiple sets of gear for multiple preferences, and you've tanked Hydross and I haven't, but these are my thoughts, such as they are. I did not like the agility tank premise at first, either, but I took the memo.

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I wonder how far away, with all sorts of crazy world buffs, potions and the like, a fully geared druid can push their total avoidance.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

Boevis

I actually had a Cryptfiend cloak for a while, but it falls behind Thoriumweave in both armor and stamina (364 hp for me in bear) for a very minor dodge/defense gain. But you are right about those pants, I've just never considered clefthoof items because my defense is easily covered by jewelry items and a couple sockets. I'll have to take an in depth look at it later, though this makes me wonder if there's any worthwhile rings that aren't Armor/Def, the only thing I see is the delicate eternium which has a pathetic 15 Sta.

As for max dodge, I'd wager it's above 90% but with a significant drop in armor.

edit: http://ctprofiles.net/3769940 with Wastewalker pants instead of nomad. (I'm sure there's some 'of agility' items I could have taken for higher dodge). Unlisted is 11 Sockets and 136 dodge rating. 497 + 88(sockets) + 18 + 88 + 35 + 15 + 25 + 20 = 786 * 1.1 = 864 Agility = 58.58% Dodge + 193/18.9 + 4 = 72.79 + 91/2.4/25*2 + 5 = 80.82% Avoidance + click for another 14.29 = 95.11% woo! That's Mark, GoA, Elixir, Mastery, Ground Scorpok, Food, and then Kings. Throw on darkmoon and hakkar heart if you want a bit more.

 

• Daboran

If you want to go balls-out for agility, convince some friends to farm the zone rare-elites for "of the Monkey" blues. I got the Drakehide Chest off Nemathion yesterday - 278AC/39agi/60sta.
If you can stand the farming, you would end up with some amazing agi/stam figures if you kitted yourself out completely with these items. I'd say you could add another 100agi to your example easily and would have really good sta too.

I made a list for anyone interested:

 

Boevis

My Server is terribly bad with farmers, and alliance outnumber horde 3:1 so even if some decent monkey gear dropped, it wouldn't be available to me. One thing to note though, a full set of "of the Beast" from that stuff would be pretty fantastic for OT gear early on.

 

• Daboran

I'm winding up the courage to get my *bullshit* hat on and ask a GM the same thing

 

◊ Lord BEEF

That's pretty insane. Did you also include the 3% from survival of the fittest?

Also keep in mind that enemies have a 5% miss rate, and this increases with defense.

With the right gear a druid effectively becomes an evasion tank full time, for whatever that's useful on

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

dukes

It's not really useful on anything imo. The problem is entirely rage gain - if you're avoiding everything something is throwing at you, your threat gain will be too low to make it worth doing - the only boss I can think of where it might be of some use is Temporus (second boss in Black Morass) on Heroic. His frenzy is a stupid attack speed (and not always dispellable) and mortal wound stacks up way too fast without a decent amount of avoidance.

One thing I would love to see would be procs in forms and being able to get Mongoose - 120 agility on proc is what, 8% dodge? yes please

 

oldmandennis

I've been trying this since I was 64 or so, with no luck. When did you do it? I've heard a couple of people say they changed their policy to "only 24 hours after the quest is done" sometime last summer.

It's really a bummer. They should make a badge of justice replacement.

 

◊ thejdawg

I said I sold mine accidentally. When actually I had picked up the Eye of the Beast, and vendored that long ago as well. But I got it replaced as the MoT.

 

Dakous

On the contrary, your crit rating will be going through the roof. While it won't keep up with dodge, if all your abilities are essentially -5 rage (or -15 hiswipe), your rage income isn't as relevent. I've found that with the ~60% dodge, the start of fights is scary, but for 5's, reshifting for furor and popping enrage so I start with a brickton of rage isn't a big deal. For raid bosses, at some point in the initial aggro stabilization period, I'll get hit once, and that's generally all the head start on maintaining rage I need - yeah, now and then, I'll be starved for rage, and yeah, my DPSers aren't blowing the doors off the charts, and I can't lock down groups like I used to be able to (but I was chalking that up to the nerf), so maybe it's not enough, I dunno.

IRT to above, the ctprofiles link above has 2xDelicate Eternium Ring - it's Unique-Equipped.

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

Tuftears

So far as replacing the quest trinket goes, I believe you can simply say you want to use one of your limited item restoration credits. I used this method to get back the Ward of the Elements that I'd sold long ago.

I've heard you get three item restoration credits every six months or so.

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

Jini

I did my own max avoidance setup: http://ctprofiles.net/5221551. It has a few different items for some variety and to provoke thought.

Unlisted are 9 Delicate Living Rubies and 2 Shifting Nightseye (in two cases its worth the nightseye in place of the DLR to get the socket bonuses), and ring enchants. ctprofiles also seems to have issues with some of the pieces such as Elementium Band of the Sentry.

My spreadsheet is showing 71.74% dodge when buffed, 6.12% chance to be missed, 4.42 crit reduction. This gives a total of 77.86% all the time avoidance, 92.15 when the trinket is active. This is only about 1% better dodge but ~3% more avoidance 1/23.2.

The big drawback is only having ~12k armor and 13.5k buffed health. A 38.5% crit rate and +4.4% chance to hit is a nice addition. I would hesitate to tank this way for anything really serious but could be fun as a lark.

 

Boevis

Not sure how I missed the Skulkers. Adding those instead of the wastewalker pants gives me another 1.06 dodge. I also forgot to add in Feral Swiftness for another +4%, Using a yellow dodge gem for the socket bonus in wastewalker gloves gives another .04%. So 81.92% total Avoidance, 96.21% with trinket clicked.

Using Shifting Nightseyes instead of the Living Rubies will never net you more avoidance overall (+4 Agi > +4 Dodge) But are obviously better choices for tanking when you're HP is this low. The only way to beat a +8 Agi gem is with some of the epic gems or the 8 dodge gem combined with a dodge/agi socket bonus.

 

• Cryect

Curious what other people are seeing for DPS in sustained fights (best I know of is Morogrim).

The sustained DPS fights if anything are showing to me druids really aren't scaling any better than rogues at least DPS wise.

On Morogrim first buffed to the teeth I push about 850 DPS while our rogues were pushing 1050 DPS (not that it matter since couldn't approach that DPS without pulling aggro). This is when fully cat and not using Hurricane at all on the fight (which we decided is actually better for total DPS on Morogrim).

For those curious what my stats look like on the fight here's the below image make note thats with everything except battleshout (hmmm our DPS warriors have kinda all quit recently). Enhancement Shaman (nonimproved totems though) and 3 rogues were the other party members (so no TSA either).



Edit: Oh and this DPS using Everbloom Idol for Shreds and swapping to Idol of Feral Shadows for Rips.

 

dukes

I assume that's with Major Strength, Major Agi, Fel Strength (which explains the red stamina number), Onslaught, Flask of Relentless Assault(?), Elixir of Mastery. I'd be interested to see your actual gear (checked armoury and it's tank gear) - mine looks pretty similar except I'm still using stealthers helm (t4 is tank socketed), fel cleansed pauldrons, and the primalstrike belt/bracers/ches, and no-one in guild has yet seen a mithril chain... - I assume those are windslayer wraps although they have a pretty generic icon. Is that an alchemists stone btw? I use the hourglass of the unraveler with bloodlust brooch - proc rate is pretty insane but I know a couple of people who just don't seem to be able to get it to drop (both exalted and haven't seen it yet :< ).

I'm sitting on ~2700 AP unbuffed and 31% crit unbuffed. Unfortunately I don't get to DPS much - generally kara when there's only one tank needed on a fight and I'm not healing (aran/curator/illhoof - all are weird fights for melee dps because of armour/dps buffs on the mob) so it's kind of hard to judge straight dps. Would like to get a chance to dps on morogrim, but swipe is kinda good for picking up adds so I'm solo grabbing one side while 2 warriors grab the other and help with any that escaped (altho TC is good, the 5 second cooldown is kinda annoying).

As far as I can tell our scaling is pretty similar to rogues. Last maulgar fight (everyone unpotted) I ended up ~80-85% of the top rogues damage - and remembering back to an aran fight before everyone started getting raid gear I was on 160k, rogue on 180k at the end.. I think the majority of the damage gap is cooldown abilities - combat rogues just exploit things like adds (which a lot of fights have) with blade flurry to get ridiculous damage out, as well as adren rush more than once per fight. Combined with Vanish for threat wipe and I don't think we can keep up for pure-dps. Still, innervate and combat res are pretty useful, as is a bit of aoe. It doesn't help that the majority of the time you'll end up with windfury instead of GoA too (or at least I do, mainly because a warrior gets so much benefit).

My stats raid buffed would be around:
Str: 389 + 18(motw) + 35(mjr.str) + 88(soe) + 15(mastery) = 545 * 1.2(hotw) * 1.1(kings) = 719 - 389 = 330 extra above base
Agi: 392 + 18(motw) + 35(mjr.agi) + 88 (goa) + 15(mastery) = 509 * 1.1(kings) = 602
Add on Fel Str/Onslaught/Terestians/Flask/catform/agicatform/pred strikes = 120+60+360+556+140+602+90 = 1928 extra ap, before battle shout/might.

Total of: 1300 (exact before cat) + 1928 + 660 (extra ap from str) = 3888.
Add might(264)/battle shout(381) and it's around 4.5k before trinkets for AP (about the same if you don't have battle shout), but I'm sure my crit would be lower than yours - currently 31.58 with no buffs. Add 0.8% for motw, 3% for goa, 2.5% for agi, 0.6% for mastery, and then BoK on top of all that and I'd probably be ~42% or so.


I'm also debating whether when i (eventually) end up with a t4 helm for dps, and the legs (but with a stamina patch on as I'll use them for tanking primarily), whether the 2 piece bonus is going to be very significant. DPSing on trash where I'm too lazy to switch gear, or when I've been tanking and then go DPS, the 2 piece bonus is noticeable. Theorycrafting inc, although OoC is going to make this a pain. Assume 2ppm for OoC for easyness.

Proc of 1% over 5 minutes:
Total hits: 60x5 = 300 white DPS hits = 60 energy back.
Total energy from normal regen: 3000 (20 energy per tick, tick=2 second intervals). If you use an average of 38 energy per attack (assuming 2/2 for imp shred to make it 42 energy, that you're using rip rather than fb which is better sustained dps anyway, and keeping mangle debuff up yourself) you get ~79 extra attacks, or 0.8 procs. OoC gives an extra 10 specials at 2ppm = 90, average to ~1 extra proc for the bonus.
80 energy back on a shred that hits for 1.4k->crits for 3k, 40% crit chance, will give an extra ~2k damage per shred, or 3.8k damage extra -> 12.6 dps extra for the set bonus. That's pretty good for a set bonus especially as I think it's more than 1% chance, as the 55 strength from 4 piece would give you ~9.4 dps for white hits, obviously more with specials. (assuming 55x2.4 / 14)

If it were 2% chance (probably around that) then it would be ~25 dps increase, which is insane for a set bonus imo. Gonna go get recap and go hit one of those things in blasted lands for a while and check the proc rate, i'll post back in a bit (as long as i can actually find the version of recap one of the warlocks in my guild uses that shows energy gains).

 

dukes

Couldn't find that version of recap, but /combatlog worked fine.

Previous post was a bit large anyway so heres my findings on the t4 proc:

25 minutes default attack on a servant of Razelikh in blasted lands.

64 procs.

25*60 = 1500

64/1500 = 4% chance to proc.

That's pretty damned good. According to the end of the above post, that's 40-50 dps right there (as long as i calced it right). And because it's energy based instead of a flat amount of str/whatever, it scales too. Looks like it could be one of those things you keep regardless of how good your gear gets.

Linky to the log (highlighted bloodlust procs with a big line beside them) ->> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/graham..../tier4proc.txt

Check 6:33 or so for an adrenaline rush

Oh and I had the hourglass on then, and it procced a total of 21 times over that 25 minute testing period, just in case anyone is interested.

 

• Cryect

Fel Strength and Onslaught I thought don't stack (or at least they didn't last I checked in beta I thought)? But yeah else than that the same and heh I popped bloodlust brooch for a screenshot.

Wastewalker Gloves with 2x Glinting Flaming Spessarite. We don't have the pattern for Windslayer Wraps and don't have many times to DPS so we really haven't went out of the way to purchase the pattern. I gave up on the hourglass since I've seen it only once since beta and the instance has bugged out on me enough for me to prefer to not see instance again for a while. The flat equivalence of ~70 AP the Alchemist Stone gives me is plenty to me for now.

Unbuffed I sit at 2481 AP with 35% Crit.

We use paladin tanks after deciding worked so much easier and get to keep more people on the boss (the tanking Paladins stand at Morogrim's left foot while melee is on the right foot and with healing aggro the murlocs go straight for the Paladin then they are frost nova'd rotation in place while AOE'ed down).

in our guild, we have 3 feral druids and 2 resto druids (though one is kinda busy with RL) so often have plenty of opportunties to DPS in the melee DPS group on various bosses.

Yeah, those things and SnD (check out rogues white damage and you will notice its a decent portion higher than our damage so if glancing gets adjusted rogues will gain an even nicer buffer above us). Our extra utlity is really the reason your bring us but its really nice the DPS we can put out for fights so you don't have to swap tanking druids out for fights like it feels like we need to do with our second prot warrior (he's going for a more hybrid build now though that com