As discussed, the Natural Grace are a little worse than Edgewalker's and Den Mother are a little better. Still, Natural Grace are close enough that I don't feel bad about swapping them in for Edgewalker's on fights with an early-tanking component like Karathress.

Haramad's annoys me a little because it's a 3.5 AP equivalent upgrade from the trivially-available Mithril Chain, which is nice enough... but at the cost of almost 250 HP, I can't really justify wearing it on most fights. I do pop it in for Gruul and Mag.

Nice! We finally had the [Belt of Natural Power] pattern drop yesterday. Is it a sign when the gear upgrades I'm most excited about are the ones that let me trash two items and win an inventory slot back from oblivion? ([Girdle of Treachery] and [Tree-Mender's Belt] in this case... getting the season 2 Maul also let me bank Wildfury and Terestian's, which I was similarly elated about)

[Belt of Natural Power] is good, but if you have the rogue one available its FAR better for DPS ([Belt of Deep Shadow] I believe. The thing that is nice about the boots of Natural Grace and Belt of Natural power are that they are superb tank pieces so on fights where you are OT'ing you can still do good DPS with them after your done with your tanking (like on Karathress as mentionned or Magtheridon)

I totally agree that Deep Shadow is the preferable DPS piece, it's not even close. We don't have the pattern, though.

I think it's a nice middle ground between Chestguard of the Talon (which I've been using since level 68 ) and the tier 4/5 gear. I've been loath to spec Elemental and make Primalstrike because of the high mat cost. Primal Nethers are basically free, though.

I really really really REALLY hate the mithril chain. I haven't ever seen it drop, and out of our karazhan runs (of which we used to run 3 at the time near the beginning, probably 25+ kara clears total by now) We've seen it drop ONCE. It's really quite annoying.

The only belt plans we're had drop are the plate ones and the elemental DPS one (which is crap anyway afaik). The warriors are happy, but the casters, rogues, shamans, hunters and druids are all starting to get a little annoyed - for reference we've got around 50 vortexes so far - the "designated" cloth crafter and me have 10 each for once (if?) one of the plans drop, and the rest have gone on blacksmithing weapons mostly. It's quite annoying that out of the few DPS and tanking upgrades I can get, they're both ridiculously low drop chance in total.

I'm tempted to grab the next haste belt off Akama if no-one else needs it - it's certainly an upgrade from primalstrike and we don't run Kara any more so treachery is out of the question really.

I also think that, all things considered (int/armour/stamina/bonuses), the t4 chest is better for DPS than the new one, but then that's how it should be when one is a karazhan rep reward and the other is from Mag.

Also, why the hell did you bank Wildfury Vykro? It's so much better for tanking than the S2 - 500 armour, ~30 stam and ~50 dodge rating. I'd use it on things like Mag adds where the damage isn't quite so much as an issue while crit immunity is because of using mostly DPS gear, but I don't see why you'd bank Wildfury for fights like Karathress/whatever.

My objective on any fight where I'm not the MT (eg: everything we've done except for Leotheras) is to wear as little tanking gear as I can get away with, then fill everything else with DPS and let the healers sort it out. The 33 resilience on the S2 mace allows me to be very liberal with crit immunity- I only need 2-3 other Resilience pieces to reach the un-crit cap. Wildfury is quite a bit better for straight tanking, and I would (and do) swap it in on something like Leotheras where I'm kitted with as much tanking stuff as possible, but otherwise I'm happier with the Maul.

Once I pick up the S2 honor bracers it won't be as important for me to hold the Maul for crit immunity and I might end up un-banking Wildfury.

Sorry to hear about your Mithril Chain luck I don't think our guild, across up to 3 Kara groups, has ever seen the Netherspite leather legs, which is annoying along the same lines.

nvm

Just picked up on that. Using the values from [Druid] Why is +hit good for DPS?
GoDM = 49 agi, 42 AP. Equivalent of 138.67
WW = 36 str, 18 agi, 17 hit. Equivalent of 93.6+50.94+32.81 = 177.35
T4 = 32 str, 24 agi. Equivalent of 83.2+68.92 = 152.12
T5 = 35 str, 27 agi. Equivalent of 91+76.41 = 168.41
T6 = 39 str, 40 agi (8 agi gem). Equivalent of 101.4+113.2 = 214.6

The WW are the best bar T6, and even then I'll be using WW over T6 as I'll have a 15 stam gem in for tanking rather than an 8 agi gem (we don't have the 5agi/7stam recipe yet which sucks - brings the value for DPS down by ~22.64, so it's only 20 points above WW and I'd rather have the hit for stability of rotations as I'm on 7% atm).

You miscalculated:

Your GoDM # should b 180.67 using the numbers you posted (you forgot to add the 42 AP).

Bah! Well, with that value it's very little difference. I'd still take WW over the GoDM because of the hit affecting rotations though. It also helps that WW are crafted while GoDM are a drop, which makes WW a lot easier to get.

At this time I only have the T4 shoulders and gloves. I also have GoDM, is it worth replacing the GoDM with T4 gloves for the 2 pc bonus?

Yes, wearing the helm and shoulders of T4 and the rest of T6 is slightly better than full T6 in dps terms (About 1 % DPS).

A couple of questions in regards to gear choices.

The Ashtongue trinket is 40% chance to proc 140 strength, which is nice to have if its up but unnecessary to go out of energy cycle to maintain (by attempting more Mangles). I am just wondering if this can be good enough to be a worthy trinket (Right now ruling out the Trinket off Illdari Council, Crystalforge and Bloodlust are probably best?). Also, blessings deck provides a pretty solid 120 AP after the 15 seconds (less with OOC procs) of applying the stacks. How good is it? I've ready everything before, but sorry if i missed anything

Is the Idol off Supremus worth using at all? I assume it is a worthy choice if there's a Idol Macro for Equipping/Unequipping. But by itself, the Everbloom idol seems to be much better for DPS. Is it worth the trouble to go through rotation? And also if anyone has a idol swapping marco that'd be great. Since in combat, global cooldown is triggered whenever idol is swapped, I have yet to come up with a successful macro (also being a macro noob myself doesn't help either).

The ashtongue trinket works out as worth than either Crystalforge or Bloodlust. I'm currently using the [Hourglass of the Unraveller] (partly because it's passive and I suck at using active ones properly). Part of the problem with the ashtongue is that you will never be in the position where it's up and you're using a rip, because you should always use a rip->mangle cycle (where you save 70+ energy and then do both). The blessings deck is nice, and will stack up relatively quickly, but on any fight where you are out of it for 8 seconds (which may just be to run across somewhere to combat res) it will drop off, making it less useful. You may also be able to get the [Tsunami Talisman] which is basically a better Hourglass.

I'm not sure about using the Idol of the White Stag though. Obviously it would be good to use, but whether it's worth losing the GCD (which I believe impacts white hits, although I'm not sure) is debatable. All you need to do to sort out a macro is:

/cast Rip
/equip Idol of the White Stag

Then just make mangle:
/cast Mangle
/equip Everbloom Idol

The only problem with this is if Mangle misses/gets dodged, in which case you'll end up with everbloom swapped back in and a 1.5 second GCD instead of the 1s.


On the topic of boots, I forgot about the [Shadowmaster's Boots] (which dropped for the third time in a row today which means all our rogues have them). They're pretty obviously better than anything else if you get epic gems in them - ~125 AP and 2.75% crit or so, compared to the Den Mother's 125 AP and 1.28 crit, although I'd probably go with 2x5agi/5hit instead of 2x10agi. Even kings doesn't make up that much of a deficit of crit.

The top two trinkets I believe are [Dragonspine Trophy] and [Tsunami Talisman] (though Im unsure on the math behind the armor reduction trinket from BT). The DST is the best phsyical dps trinket there is, and despite it being worse for druids than most other classes (such as Rogues/Warriors) it is still most likely the best trinket available.

Also, Im curious about the idol switching. Does the buff stay up if you switch gear? Most gear buffs get removed when you switch the item out.

The buff stays active once you take the idol off. 94 attack power results in about 142 damage in a 12 second rotation, which is less than a single white attack. Thus it is a net loss in damage by trying to idol-swap this trinket due to GCD.

Its very minorly better than Bloodlust since bloodlust is an average of 118 AP whereas the Blessings deck is very very slightly less than 120 AP (due to the buildup). Bloodlust may actually be slightly better since you can time it well and get 2 big rips going over the duration.

That's very true, the fact Bloodlust/Crystalforged allow you to time your bonus AP to when it's most effective (2 Rips, 2 Mangles, 4 Shred's and 20 white for Bloodlust every 2 min, 1 Rip, 1 Mangle, 3 Shred's and 10 white for Crystalforged every min)

Plugging the Blessings deck into a spreadsheet using 33% Crit and 8.6% Hit (no misses) it works as 406.59 damage/15 sec cycle = 27.1 dps

Crystalforged is 256.46 damage/15s cycle plus 613.78 damage/min = 27.33 dps

Bloodlust is 243.95 damage/15s cycle plus 1485.74 damage/2 min = 28.64 dps

That's with Unleashed Rage giving 10% more AP,

Thanks for all the replies. After doing some math and looking at boss tables I've came to look at gear choices in terms of being currently optimal. I'll make a post on it later since I'm limited on time to make a decent enough post with numbers.

Another trinket i've come to look at is the [Madness of the Betrayer]. I have not checked out the actual proc rate on that thing. But with the 20 Hit Rating as well as the 84 Passive attack power boost, it seems to be a very solid item for DPS as well. I especially like the hit rating since it is particularly lacking in terms of feral gear (namely the set items). Some of the hit items I see being decent are:

Chest: [Nether Shadow Tunic]
Bracers: [Insidious Bands]
Leggings: [Thunderheart Leggings]
Ring: [Ring of Deceitful Intent]

That totals to be 93. If this trinket is included, that puts hit rating at 113, which is pretty close to the cap (13x i believe?) After socketing the yellow sockets with 4agi/4HR gems (again, the ones with decent socket bonus, to maximize benefit if viable) that should put us at hit cap without using non-optimal gear. The transition from [Terestian's Stranglestaff] to [Pillar of Ferocity] really hurt in terms of losing the 25 hit rating.

Seaons 2 Gladiator Weapon is better than the Pillar AND has hit rating on it which is nice.

I did a couple of searches, so forgive me if there is information elsewhere about this.

I'm looking for a feral DPS spreadsheet that's current with the new gear from BT & Hyjal, but I don't have very much (read: any) experience creating one myself. The few I've been able to find are very old, and most of the online lists are using much lower base stat values than what I'm raiding with. Emmerald's list is a good basic guide, but I'm interested in crunching numbers based off of the stats I have now rather than guessing.

Thanks in advance.

All of the items you list are good, but keep in mind that it was shown in the +hit for ferals thread that hit rating really doesn't deserve as much credence as you're giving it in this post. It's nice but not usually an optimal choice for increasing DPS.

I really like tunah's spreadsheet. It does not come with gear values "pre-plugged" but you can put whichever stats in as needed. It also produces Pawn values that you can use for lootzor et al, based on your own setup.