Malazaar

I came to the conclusion that you are above the hit cap with endgame gear no matter what.

Helm Enchant (16)
Insidious Bands (12)
Belt of Deep Shadow (18)
Thunderheart Leggings (27)
Edgewalker Longboots (13)
Ring of Lethality (19)
Ring of Deceitful Intent (19)
Merciless Gladiator's Maul (18)

Totals to 142 Hitrating (136 is the cap i believe) so it's not worth even looking at hit set boni or gems.

 

Valerian

If you're over the hit cap with that gear, it stands to reason you should rethink some of it. Edgewalkers are not superior to Den Mother's without the hit rating so if not all the hit rating is being used on Edgewalkers, it would make sense to switch them to Den Mothers.

 

Liar

I usually export the google spreadsheets to .xls and open them via Excel but when I do it with this spreadsheet it crashes Excel. I can't seem to be able to edit the numbers in Google docs either. Can anyone help me out with instructions please?

 

Malazaar

Although i would rather swap Deep Shadow for the Money Belt, you are right. I only wanted to demonstrate that you shouldn't bother with hit gems in my opinion. There's so much of it on endgame gear that it's hard to NOT reach the cap.

 

Solstice

It's the same deal with rings, if you're at the hit cap then unstoppable aggressors and ancestral ring of conquest are both superior. Don Alejandro's money belt and the LC helm enchant are a little better for pure dps too. Which makes me consider passing some +hit items to dual wielders and making up the deficit with gems although it's hard to know if this would be optimal without plugging the numbers into a spreadsheet.

Here's an .xls of Tunah's spreadsheet - it doesn't crash excel but it isn't functioning correctly. I don't have the know how to fix it but it's probably something pretty simple.

On an aside, what are anyones thoughts on items with "your attacks ignore xyz of your opponents armor"? Seems like a pretty solid stat to me as it scales with AP and crit to effectively increase your dps by a percentage, which would depend on your opponents AC. I'm wondering how it shapes up against other dps stats though.

 

Meddler

I did a few really rough calculations back a page or two in this thread, assuming my numbers were in the right league it's a pretty mediocre stat given the amounts of it found at present/current feral dps levels. Has a lot of potential to scale of course/depends what you'd be giving up in each individual case though.

 

angral

I really like the reduced armour buffs on items. Normally those items have other dps stats on them as well, and it's a self buff so we don't have to share it with smelly rogues and hunters. :]

N.B. The rogues in my guild have gotten wise and are acutally giving something back! Yes, hard to believe but true, two of them now use the Drums of Battle! So I really should not be so harsh on them.

 

dukes

Armour penetration is a nice bonus, but will never beat direct stats for damage imo. Rip is a large proportion of DPS at high end (~250dps from 1200, or 1/5) and armour penetration doesn't affect it.

I would also always take the [Shadowmaster's Boots] over the Treads, partly because of gem sockets which means you can customise how much hit you want to fit the rest of the gear you have.

 

• Vykromond

Liar & Solstice:

Click "Edit this page (if you have permission)"
Click "File"
Click "Copy this spreadsheet..." (requires a Google account, not a huge deal, gmail is a nice perk too)

This will save a local, editable copy in your Google Docs & Spreadsheets bin. You can then edit the gear, formulas, whatever suits you.

Not sure why his spreadsheet doesn't work in .xls but he commented on it a couple weeks ago, seems to be a Google Spreadsheets issue.

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Liar

Thanks, that helped. I could now fill in my values but now I have another problem. The Stat Values sheet just will not update. It stays the same regardless of what stats I put into the Gear section.
Am I missing some sort of "Recalculate/Execute" button somewhere? :|

 

• Vykromond

Is the "Cycle DPS" number at the top left of the Stat Values sheet changing? If not, there's some sort of bug. If yes, then you have to follow the instructions posted beneath it by putting 1 into each column just below the stat name (ie below "STR," "AGI," etc.), noting the new Cycle DPS value, putting it into the cell below, and then deleting the 1. This will cause the stat values to recalculate, once you finish doing at least one stat in addition to AP. It's a little silly but it works.

 

tunah

Yeah, I'm really sorry about the excel thing. I don't own a copy of excel - there's one at work, so I've verified it crashes, but as much as I'd like to spend my time at work debugging it, I don't have that option

Yeah, it's a pain. I'm not sure how to do it - given that spreadsheets are supposed to be all about 'if-then' I'm kind of shocked there's no function to take say the derivative of C3 with respect to B1.
I think it might be possible to hack around this with array formulas, I'll have a go sometime.

It should be pretty easy to see how good armor penetration is - what's the current formula for armor mitigation? I keep seeing one i thought was pre-2.0. And any guesses at armor on a 'typical' boss after debuffs?

 

Malazaar

Depending on the Armorvalue of the Target, you gain ~0.40 - 0.84 % Damageincrease for every 100 Armor ignored (on attacks that are modified by Armor).

Assuming the average Raidboss has around 4000 Armor left after FF and Sunders (25 % Absorb) you gain 0.63 % Damageincrease for every 100 Armor ignored.

So it's about 0.50 % overall Damageincrease, considering Rip usually makes up about 20 % of a Druid's total Damage.

 

ShadowKntSDS

After searching around for conclusive answers to Feral Combat skill, I came across this post on wowhead:

Shapeshifter's Signet - Items - World of Warcraft

(look at the comment by konra)

Summary:
Defense greater than FCS by 11 or more - Weapon skill grants 0.2% hit, 0.1% lower chance to get dodged, 0.6% lower chance to be parried, 0.2% higher chance to crit.
Defense greater than FCS by 1 to 10 - Weapon skill grants 0.1% hit, unknown chance to get dodged, unknown chance to be parried, 0.1% higher chance to crit
Defense lower than attack - Weapon skill grants 0.04% hit, 0.04% to be dodged, 0.04% to be parried, 0.04% chance to crit.

i.e. the first 5 points of feral combat skill are the most valuble against a lvl 73 mob, and the returns once you have equal weapon skill vs defense are extremly low.

This is somewhat verified here:
WoW-Europe.com Forums -> The idea behind weapon skill?


This appears to be the most complete explaination, and does not nesisarily contradict the previously known information on +def/+weapon skill. Essnetially breaking it down into a peicewise function based on the difference in weapon skill and defense, it incorperates all of the esstimated/quoted values for effects of +wep skill. It also fits in well with blizards mechanisms that drastically reduce your chances against a higher level mob (the penalties double if the difference is great enough)


This can also explain many of the differences found in hit% testing, where people got slightly off the expected results.

It also makes the Shapeshifter's Signet epic quality, if you aren't using any other +FCSR items.


Anyone else have any info on this?

 

Valerian

I think it requires testing. On the Rogue spreadsheet thread, parses allowed them to more or less conclude that weapon skill gave 0.1% to hit and that was all.

That said from the conclusions reached in that thread, it seems that there is either confusion in how hit actually works or that there are two different models for +hit for dual wielders and non-dual wielders:

Dual wield: 5% (base) + 19% (dual wield penalty) + (Mob Defense - Char Weapon skill)*0.1 = 25.5% miss chance vs a 73 mob. This is the agreed upon number for the dual wielding miss chance.

Non-dual wield: Here it gets a bit iffy. The number is almost universally agreed to be 8.6% but its unclear how that is reached. Some theories:

5% (base) + 1%* (Mob level - Char level) + 0.04* (Mob Defense - Char Weapon Skill) = 8.6% for a 73 mob.

5% (base) + 0.2*(Mob Defense - Char Weapon Skill) = 8%. This is the theory using the wowwiki numbers, as quoted above. Now if the 0.2% per point when the Defense 10 or more above Weapon skill, is a penalty, the standard 0.04*(Mob Defense - Char Weapon Skill) gives the extra 0.6% needed to hit the 8.6% Standard.

These two theories, for 73 mobs result in the same thing and we can see they are analogous as well. There is the base miss chance, the 0.04*(Mob Defense - Char Weapon Skill) and a factor that takes the mobs Level into account (one case directly, the other indirectly through a penalty based on Weapon Skill).

To determine which would be correct, the solution, I believe, would be to test them on a level 72 Mob. Against a 72 Mob, the first theory gives:

5% (base) + 1%*2 +0.04*(10) = 7.4%

Whereas the second theory gives:

5% (base) + 0.1*(10) + 0.04*(10) = 6.4%

Technically a test with anywhere between 6.5% hit and 7.3% hit (and no weapon skill) against a 72 mob should allow verification of this theory. Any misses mean that the first theory is correct, whereas no misses at all mean that it would be the second. Granted it could also mean its another, third theory we dont know about, but it would at least let us determine which of these other two can be ignored.

 

Kaelis

It seems like energy regen is changing in 2.2.

If I'm not mistaken, this will make it impossible to pounce->mangle->shred with untalented pounce and no OoC proc. The total energy cost of the skills is 132, and the change will make it impossible to regen more than 30 energy in the 3 second stun. Only really matters for grinding though, I guess.

 

Valerian

Hmm I'd be concerned as to the ramifications of this on powershifting. If I shift in and out quickly now in the middle of a 2 sec tick I can get back into form and "catch" the 20 energy from the tick. Will that 20 only be 10 since I shift back in essentially half way through a tick?

 

Krag

Posted in the 2.2 thread also, but it's a direct answer to this.

Trying this on the PTR today, I was able to consistently do Pounce -> Mangle -> Shred with no points in Brutal Impact. Energy gains from timing first attack felt exactly like it does on live (apart from me having ~500 ms ping to the test servers).

 

Septus

Can anyone give me some tips on how to handle mangles with two feral druids in the raid? I'm not sure how to best maximize mangle uptime, and it doesn't help that mangle's duration still seems to be a bit buggy, and I usually can't see how much time is left on a mangle when I didn't apply it.

 

Crowbite

Designate one druid to be mangle bitch and watch for the mangle debuff. don't shred while mangle isn't applied. Unless mangling druid is messing up royally, I can't really see how you would miss more then one tick of a mangled rip. The extra damage from a mangle/shred should more then compensate for the loss of dps on the rips.

 

Septus

That's what I figured. I was hoping to avoid needing one druid do every single mangle.

 

HaklePrime

Debuff Filter is amazing for tracking Mangle, and other debuffs/buffs you may need to keep track of. I very rarely see it screw up, and usually, it's user error with switching focus target or whatnot.

World of Warcraft Addons: Debuff Filter | World of Warcraft @ Curse

 

dukes

I use a combination of Pitbull with debuffs filtered (to show when it's up) and Quartz timers (to show how long is left when it's mine in a prominent position).

If you always run with the same ferals, whoever has the worse gear should be designated as "mangle bitch" and spec to have savage fury. I can't be arsed to sort it for us, we just do our own cycles both using mangle because normally one of us is tanking on a boss whatever happens (theres 4 I can think of where both ferals DPS - Lurker, Vashj, Najentus and Teron).

 

Moraelda

According to the research I've done, Shapeshifter's Signet actually provides 2% +hit against level 73 mobs. From Wowwiki:

Shapeshifter's Signet provides that +5 weapon skill sweet spot. Following posts by excellent WoW forum poster Faewen, his tests show zero misses across thousands of attacks geared with 6.6% +hit and +5 FCS.

 

Valerian

Do you have a link to his actual data? I've seen his posts but the only screenshot I saw was vs. trash mobs which I dont believe are level 73. As I said in my post (several posts up) its unclear on how exactly weapon skill works, but for dual wielding it DOESNT work the way thats shown on Wikipedia (as seen in the rogue spreadsheet discussion) so it doesnt logically follow that it would for non-dual wielders.