So far, I've dpsed in Karazhan and Gruul. My DPS gear is pretty good I think (2/5 T4, end-game blues, etc.) and here are my statistics:

In Gruul fight, I once came 5th and the other time 4th (when I managed to survive through all the fight). 2 Hunters and 2 rogues were ahead of me.
In karazhan, I'm 3rd, after a rogue and hunter, in my karazhan group.
I don't even come last on magtheridon, where I tank one of the adds and continue through the rest of the fight in tanking gear.


Now, how does this compare with other druids that dps out there? I'm afraid I haven't got any numbers but I'd like to see where other people with good gear come on dps meters in the TBC raid instances.

Personally I tend to end up somewhere in the bottom, a lot depending on the encounter. I often tank though, so it's kinda hard to say exactly, but either ways, some indication of what your DPS is, rather than your position on the meter would be much better for discussion purposes.

I normally place anywhere from 2nd to 7th in 25 man raids, when strictly dpsing. Right now im at the point where im looking for how to optimize my dps/gear

What i would really like is to get a discussion going on gear/gem/enchanting choices.

things that i am curious about:

+ hit vs + crit vs AP

Valuation of Str VS Agi as attack power gets higher

the effect the 2 piece malorne bonus has and whether it is worth sacrificing a bit in stats for.

feel free to look up my armory on wow.com toon name is boh on anetheron in <infamous> I'm most likely logged out in my dps gear.

I've been playing around with different gear sets as i have accumulated most of the gear from the 5 mans/karazhan/gruuls.

anyhow, much appreciation for any insights that can be offered.

Where you place is completely relative to the performance of other people in your raid.

We should probably put that in context by posting actual damage per second and mentioning whether any pots were used if we want to discuss actual druid damage potential.

My own DPS is rather meh but I'm working on it. I'll post actual numbers from this week later.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....sid=1&pageNo=1
I think Emmerald and others have covered this topic extensively with the exception of the value of t4(5/6~) set bonus's. His base values make his AP Equivalency a bit off as you get further away from the base, but they serve their purpose well enough. Except for his values of +skill which he got completely wrong.

Personal Bias: I run with Clefthoof Hide Leggings and Shapeshifters Signet (+9 Feral Skill) and I'm working on reducing my +hit from it's previous 8.6+ values to the 4.7% I actually need (9 Feral Skill adds .9% for a total 5.6% hit, which is what we need for bosses) I hate missing, but it's very easy for me to never miss.

Malorne 2/5 is listed as a 4% proc rate on Thottbot. Being rather conservative and simply counting it as "half a mangle" puts it at a 4% chance to do another 500-700 damage depending on armor. Or simply, 25-40 DPS scaling with gear quite nicely. Off hand, I'd say it's worth at least 150 AP.

Procwatch gives me a roughly 5% proc rate (1 in 20) but might be slightly inflated due to not counting Maul as a hit. Not sure it's enough to account for a full %, but I'd be confident saying that the proc rate is in the 4-5% range. I'll split out the cat and bear procs this week and see if there's any difference.

I've also had it chain proc, so it doesn't seem to have the hidden cooldown a lot of the new proc trinkets do.

Malorne 2/5 is a flat 4% chance on hit. http://www.thottbot.com/s37311

I am very confident that our base miss is no more than 5%
http://elitistjerks.com/showthread.p...616#post321616
And elsewhere on the page is some of my testing on druid Hit % and the effects of +skill. As always, I'm adding to it.

Only dealing with white damage, consider this:
3500 AP 35% Crit
NW/PI full feral this gives us ~335 damage on our attacks, critting for 737
Out of 1000 attacks (with base 5.6% dodge on the boss)
56 attacks miss
350 attacks crit (350 * 737 = 257,950)
594 attacks hit (594 * 335 = 198,990) = 456,940

25 more Agi gives you 25 AP and 1% crit 25 AP raises damage to 337/741
360 attacks crit (360 * 741 = 266,760)
584 attacks hit (584 * 337 = 196,808) = 463,568 a 1.45% increase

25 more Str gives you 60 AP raising damage to 340/748
350 attacks crit (350 * 748 = 261,800)
594 attacks hit (594 * 340 = 201,960) = 463,760 a 1.49% increase

Not much of a difference.

I've been reading a lot of your posts and playing with +hit myself when I am dpsing, and I'm not sure. Anecdotally, last night dpsing on Nightbane, I had >6% to hit as well as the feral weapon skill from Clefthoof Hide Leggings. White hits did not miss. Yellow hits did, in fact a number of times over the course of the fight.

I'm not completely confident in my understanding of the mechanics of hit and wpn skill, so if there's something I'm missing please let me know. It seems to me that the 5.6%/8.6% white/yellow requirements could still hold true, though.

in which case + hit is pretty important (up to 8.6) for a druid seeing as my damage breakdown is normally something like

~33% white
~33% shred
~18% rip
~15% mangle


then random 3% when the occasional rake is thrown in or whatnot.

To clarify, 8.6% is a number I've heard thrown around, and not something I've tested.

thats pretty much the number i had heard originally too.

Well boss level mobs are denoted with a skull where as a player can actually see a mob that is level 73. Seems to me there is a distinct difference there.

I hope this fits into the topic of the thread: Can anyone tell me which trinket I should use in my 2nd trinket slot to optimize DPS (Assuming the stats mentioned above by Boevis)?

I recently got myself a Bloodlust Brooch which I think is a no brainer to keep equipped all the time.

But I also got Core of Ar'kelos, Bladefist's Breadth which I currently keep as my second trinket, Ababus of Violent Odds and an Hourglass of the Unraveller.

I basically picked them up to save them from being disenchanted and hoped I'd figure it out after a while which one to use when but apparently I couldn't. Anyone care to help?

I would think the hourglass would be ideal. Due to high crit and fast attack speed, druids crit a lot so the hourglass would be activated very frequently. The hidden cooldown of course comes into play but I think it'd be your best bet overall.

You seem to be forgetting that a crit also gives 2 combo points for specials, which I'm sure is quite a bit of DPS - assuming no t4 bonus, 20 energy/2 seconds = 120 energy in the time it takes for rip to run out, which means you can do 2 moves and a rip without the talent, without clearcasting. With clearcasting, the combo point talent, and the malorne bonus, you can pretty much keep a 5 point rip going 90% of the time, which is a lot of damage. I like stacking AP, but I'm inclined towards getting more crit atm as I'm sitting on ~2.7k ap unbuffed and 33% crit.

Liar-> I'd use the Hourglass. Internal cooldown is ~45-50 seconds, works out as something like 50ap constant as well as the crit bonus. I've been using the Bloodlust/Hourglass combo for a while and it's doing well for DPS. Activated trinkets are better for rogues though IMO, mainly due to being able to use them with cooldowns (adren rush + blade flurry + bloodlust brooch is some sick damage).


I think this thread basically belongs in the druid discussion thread btw (3 roles 5 stages etc).

Thanks for the advise guys.

I am going to go with Bloodlust/Hourglass combo then unless someone has a convincing reason to not use the Hourglass.

No, I wasn't forgetting, it's just more math than I was willing to do at that point and time. Using the same numbers from earlier as well as my 20 second cycle from the powershifting thread. ( Druid cat dps- Powershifting ) And assuming you switch between all 3 idols...
3500 AP 35% Crit
Mangle - ((3500/14+54.6)*1.6+264+23)*1.1*1.2 = 1022
Shred - ((3500/14+54.6)*2.25+405+81)*1.1*1.3 = 1675
Rip - (3500*.24+1092+120)*1.1*1.3 = 2934
Auto = 335 from before

And now my brain starts to hurt because I forget how to do probability. Missed attacks extend the cycle giving more auto's and a missed Shred if no crits occur will cost you the benefit of the Mangle debuff for the final Shred. Each Crit shortens the cycle by 2 seconds, resulting in 2 fewer Auto and 1 fewer Shred. Ignoring misses, I think it's something like ...
(0C*(M+S*4+R+A*19))/20 + (1C*(M+S*3+R+A*17))/18 + (2C*(M+S*2+R+A*15))/16
But like I said, I suck at probability.

On the note of Trinkets, Hourglass is really good, and Abacus is terrible. And not that this is the main Druid thread, but I honestly feel that how Blizzard has always designed trinkets is proof that they simply don't consider Druids at all when designing gear except as an afterthough. 26 crit rating use: +200 AP, gee thanks Blizzard, now where's the 26 Agi, use: +100 Str trinkets? The best Feral gear in the game shouldn't make Rogues jealous.

I am sure I missed a shred last night when I was at 7.2% to hit, on Nightbane. I will keep a specific eye out for it in the future. I recently got a new neck and lost some +hit and it brought me below the 8.8% to hit I had for ages (and never saw a miss with). Probably raiding tonight, though maybe as a tank, blech.

As far as DPS goes, last night I was fully potted and fighting for the top spot on the meters in nightbane. We had 3 other excellent DPSers so I was just happy to see everyone in the same place (a few thousand between us all) instead of being top and wondering why everyone else is slacking =)

Cat DPS is excellent. It seems to me that it is very very crit dependant. More so than just AP. With the 35% crit I had last night my damage would sometimes rocket, 2 CPs, the huge crit numbers, constant rip cycles really make your DPS quite insane. Anyways, Feral druids can definately keep up with rogues, hunters, mages and locks at the moment. It might be tougher for us, and you probably will not beat those crazy locks, but you still do very respectable DPS.

All i meant from that comment about forgetting 2 combo points on a crit was that although there's practically no difference between agi and strength on base stats, once you factor in more combo points agi pulls away quite a bit from strength until you hit the glancing cap. I still prefer using things like Windslayer Wraps over Wastewalker with 2 agi gems though - AP is still pretty important for Rip DPS and provides a decent base damage boost.

Has anyone else noticed a lower crit rate on shred than they should have? I seem to never get more than about 26-27% crit with it, when my crit on char screen shows ~34% raid buffed. Last night on Mag over 2 fights - around 15 minutes of data, in tanking gear, 24% crit - I had 14% total crit with shred. Every Kazzak I've ever done I always check too, and it's NEVER equal or above what it should be. However, in PvP it seems to have a 50% crit rate.

Crits indeed do mean some pretty amazing damage streaks sometimes. On Nightbane last night I was about 60-80k off the top KTM threat after a landing transition where I needed to shift out and heal/rez/innervate. As soon as I got back to dps I went on a truly amazing crit streak and had to actually stop using specials for fear of pulling aggro off the MT.

The Rogues on these forums have already proved that specials are on a 2 roll system, and assuming your tank gear has little or no +hit on it, that's a potential 14.2% avoidance by Mag, leaving you 85.8% hits that can crit. 24% * 85.8% = 20.59% Of course, there's a new theory that 1 skill or defense changes +hit by .1% not .04% as is generally believed, keeping the %dodge the same that would give the boss 15.1% avoidance. 24% * 84.9% = 20.37% effective crit with shred.

Hmm, so under a 2 roll system the first roll includes all avoidance while the 2nd roll is purely between hit and crit?