Simple question, does anyone know offhand how much hit rating is required not to miss in Cat form vs level 73 mobs (a few basic searches turned up nothing!)? I'm currently sitting at 121 hit (7.67% vs level 70 mobs) and I'm hoping that I can ditch some of that and boost my other stats a bit.

Druids do not get the dual wield penalty, so you only need 8% to never miss vs lvl+3. I believe that's ~ 126 hit rating.

8.6%

Keep in mind that +Feral Attack rating can help remove the need for some +hit.

Does anyone have a source for the hit needed beeing 8.6%?
Thanks

Check combat mechanics 3.0, but the thing to bear in mind is that specials and autoattacks seem to have different miss rates; 8.6% for specials, 5.6% for auto.

Why?
Auto attacks have a 5% of missing (add 0.6% for 3 levels above you).
Now if you are dual wielding, that miss chance increases by another 19%, thus making 24.6% on level 73 mobs.

As for special attacks, I can't tell how the miss chance is there exactly. All I can tell you is that I've missed a backstab while having 8% toHit (see screenshot. Also referring to the combat mechanics thread.).

Thus it was believed to be similar to the Hunter miss chance (or something like that if I remember correctly) to be around 8.6%.

On an aside, I was under the impression that crit added more dps point for point than hit for druids, due to PI and PF. At least until you reach more or less unatainable crit %ages.

Still a bit confused as to how the two roll system for hit and crit works exactly though. I heard there was a thread on these forums with some interesting theorycraft on this matter but I cant seem to find it. Can anyone link it perhaps?

Man, Kalman, that pun was grisly despite no one catching it.

"Crits can Miss" vs. "Three Outcomes"

That should be one of them.

Backstab: Two Rolls? is the one that comes to mind, but I think there may be another.

Perhaps you meant grizzly?

EDIT:

To get my post reasonably on topic. I'm curious about gear comparison systems. When comparing AP to Crit/Hit Rating, approximately what values can we assign to each? I've read/been told that hunters use 1 crit OR hit RATING ~= 2 AP.

However, if I translate this to druids:
25 Strength = 60 AP
25 Agility = 25 AP + 1 % to crit (or 22.1 crit rating, or 44.2 AP) = 69.2 AP

I have a hard time believing that AGI out weighs STR by that much. Has anyone seen any equivalency math specifically for Druids (Kitties)?

It sounds difficult to believe, but I think it's probably true. When you consider how large a percentage of your damage is coming from auto attack you will appreciate agility more I think. However without decent amounts of AP (which is best augmented by strength) agility is worth much less I think, and we arrive at a chicken > egg scenario. Taking that into consideration, I think that once you reach a certain level of AP, the returns on agility will be larger than that of strength. I'm unsure how much AP that is, and i'm not at home to spreadsheet it out, but perhaps when I get home I'll give it a whirl.

Varies based on your AP. But ranges from 1 Agi = 2.1 AP to 2.4 AP

So, by that equation...

The AP value of the crit given from 1 AGI is equal to 1.4 AP (top end).
1 AGI = .04% Crit
or .04 * 22.1 = 0.884 Crit Rating = 1.4 AP.
(1 / .884) * 1.4 = 1.5837... AP per 1 Crit Rating?

Would this value be the same for Hit Rating? (Prior to the 8.6% cap of course)

I understand that these values would be a rough estimate, and assume "average" AP levels. Would be nice to use a guideline when comparing gear that's made for my class

I'd be very interested in seeing such a spreadsheet, especially if it shows the why of things like we have a high percentage of white damage, and why crit makes that better.

I'm completely new to the DPS business even though I've been "Feral" since well before 1.8 (Back when Feral was 18 points and still having Innervate). Hasn't been a problem so far since we seem to be short on tanks most of the time, a roll I am far more comfortable and competent in.

As such, a lot of these basic assumptions elude me. I wouldn't know where to even start to spreadsheet it out.

Off the top of my head, we have a high amount of white damage compared to Rogues because:
- our base miss-rate is much lower because we don't dual weild or use a two handed weapon,
- We gain attack power at a greater rate (higher strength contribution, Heart of the Wild)
- Our specials are essentially the same as Rogue specials but are generally less effective, as are our finishing moves.

Could be wrong though, I'll see when I bust out Excel.

How high is your percentage of white damage then?

For combat rogues, it ranges at about 50-60%.

We are like rogues without slice and dice. Slice and Dice pushes rogue white damage from about 30% of their damage up closer to 50% (bigger than just the boost from haste due to losing finishing move damage) whereas druids its around 30%.

Rip is just as good as Rupture. Only issue with Ferocious Bite is it messes up our energy cycles and averages out to be less damage on mobs that are bleedable otherwise it could kinda be said to be better than Evisc (but both of them are really only PvP abilities or for mobs which can't bleed).

This is more likely a reason why ferals have low percentages of white damage compared to a combat rogue - if both reduce their miss rate to 0 (trivial for the druid, possible but somewhat difficult for the rogue), a druid gains roughly a 5.25% boost to their white damage (5/95 = 0.0526), while a rogue increases their white damage by over 30% (24/76 = 0.316). Obviously most rogues don't have quite that much +hit, but it's certainly not hard to approach 20%, even at current (blues + epics that aren't much of an upgrade from blues) gear-levels.

Couple that with Dual Wield spec (a 16.7% boost to white damage), and SnD (30% boost while active). Combine all those together, and you can clearly see how rogue white damage scales significantly faster than druid white damage.

This is also relevant to your second point - while druids get much better AP scaling, rogues get more damage out of each point of AP if they're correctly-specced for it: ignoring glances, which will affect both classes equally, 14 AP gives a druid 1 white dps, while for a combat rogue it gives 1.75*1.3*(1-missrate) white dps, where missrate will generally be around 5-10% for a reasonably-geared rogue (IIRC I'm at around +18% to hit vs a level 73 target with a mix of blues and a few kara epics), leading to a total of more than double the benefit that the druid gains. When you add up all our talents/gear/etc, the amount of white dps we gain from AP is actually kinda scary.

I'm not sure about your CP generators, but Rip, at least, is equivalent to or better than the rogue equivalent - max-rank Rip has a higher base damage than max-rank rupture (1096 vs 1000), and they both gain the same 24% AP contribution, which with feral itemisation (it's worth noting that +feral AP weapons provide druids with a significant benefit to your finishers, while a rogue's weapons do nothing for ours, beyond the fairly minimal amount of stats they'll have) and your superior AP scaling*, means that Rip does more damage than Rupture at equivalent gear-levels (albeit at a higher energy cost - 30 vs 25). Plus of course you can always rely on having Mangle up, whereas a rogue has to hope there's a druid around for that (or be specced rather deeply into sub to get our own +30% rupture damage talent).

* Just as a comparison, since the Armory caught one of my druid guildies in cat form/gear, with roughly equivalent gear, he has just over 2.3k AP, while i have just under 1.6k: if he doesn't log on and switch gear/form - him vs me.

(Err, I seem to have wittered on a bit and probably wandered way off-topic here. I blame the fact that I haven't slept for about 24 hours. But anyway, i think the point i was trying to make is that druids scale much more with yellow dps rather than white, as opposed to rogues, who're tilted much further in the opposite direction).

Hm, Rip seems to be more effective to me than Rupture.
Rupture: 1000 damage over 16 secs.
Rip: 1092 damage over 12 sec.

Both increase with attack power, but in general druids tend to have more attack power than rogues. Of course on the other hand, rogues rarely use Rupture.
Oh, and Rupture costs 5 less energy than Rip.

Eviscerate seems to be better than Fericous Bite (985(?) vs. 952 - corret at all? Thottbot is a bit unclear about the values), but it's again affected by attack power. And both cost 35 energy.

I'm dumb and didn't think of Slice and Dice, typically my white damage is 40-50% of my total damage which is obviously significantly less than a lot of Rogues it seems. I'd just assumed it was a higher percentage. So, my bad there - most of my observations were drawn against my own Rogue who doesn't raid!

Still, what Rogues are actively using Rupture? Is it really a viable replacement to Slice and Dice?

Edit: Now that I mention Rupture, I do recall Khazal using it whilst I was tanking one of the Magtheridon Channelers.

Almost every viable raid spec generates more CPs than are needed to keep SnD running at 100% (5 CPs per 30s, roughly), so you're always cycling another finisher in alongside it. With a 41pt combat SS build, combat potency allows you to comfortably maintain a 5s/5e or 5s/5r cycle most of the time as long as you have a reasonably fast offhand (obviously, with combat potency being a % proc, you'll occasionally get a really unlucky streak where it just isn't proccing, but it averages out ok). Choice of Evis vs Rupture varies depending on the situation (crit rate, mob armour, etc), but generally speaking, if you have a druid present for Mangle, Rupture will be strictly superior.

Going back a little, I'm actually not sure what you're saying here. If Rogues were to gain 3-4 times the hit rating of a Druid they would do more damage? Of course they would! I think both gaining a similar level of +hit would be a better comparison, or would the results be basically the same?