Given that info (% of total damage provided by Rip), I'd wonder what the actual AP value of armor penetration would be for a druid. It could still be that since 80% of our damage gets the passive bonus that the extra equivalent AP it provides makes it a worthwhile trinket.

It's complicated with Armorreduction, as the Damageincrease you will see is dependant on your targets armor (which varies from boss to boss).

Damageeffects which are modified by armor will a Damageincrease D with X Armorreduction, depending on the target's armor A of:

D = ( ( A + 11960 ) / ( A - D + 11960 ) ) - 1

This varies from 0.0084 % to 0.0040% and lower as the target's armor gets higher. It's also true, that stacking armorreduction makes it more worthwhile.

Assuming your target has around 3000 Armor, you do 18 % of your damage as rip and one point of attackpower yields 0.02 % damageincrease, one point of attackpower is worth 3.64 points of damagereduction.

I suck at maths and I suck at theory crafting, but would this put the Dragonspine Trophy (assuming approx 2 ppm (taken from a couple of WWS's)):

40+(325*1.41*20/60) = 192,75

Putting it well above the other trinkets?

Edit: And how would you rank haste rating after the nerf in 2.2?

I'd assume haste rating value would decrease by the same amount as the rating nerf (ie around 66 % of what it used to be). It still would have dragonspine as the best trinket but not by nearly as much. Currently even though haste is pretty weak for druids, Dragonspine is so overpowered that its still the best dps trinket for us.

Hello guys,

Currently I'm using 4X T6 (head, shoulders, legs and gloves) and 1X T4 (chest) for tanking. All of them are max stamina gemmed/enchanted (15sta gems) and 15 agi on the gloves.

For my cat I'm using 2X T6 (legs and glvoves), 1X T5 (shoulders, dps gems/enchants), 2X T4 (chest, hat dps gems/enchnats).

Should I use the T6 head and shoulders also for dps, although they are stamina enchanted (to get the 4 pieces bonus)?

By just swapping them I'm loosing around 50 ap, 1 crit and the 2X Malorne bonus, some hit and some extra crit dmg. Is the T6 bonus justifying it?

Thanks.

Simple answer: No.

Even if your T6 would be equally good enchanted/gemmed for dps, 2pc T4 would still outweight the stat increase of two T6 pieces.

It is hard to repro without decent gear, it might also have something to do with ping.

Natur Enemy Cast Bar works best for this as it has a by the 10th of a second countdown on your debuffs.

How it works to the best of my knowledge is that you will need to have 2 different nonoverlapping Mangle Debuffs affect one Rip before a single tick of the Rip. So you need 70+ energy with a Mangle Debuff under 1.0seconds, Rip then as the Mangle ticks off you Mangle instantly again. To keep the cycle going you need rather ridiculous luck for crits and Omen/2pT4 procs but you can usually do it once every 3 cycles pretty easily with energy saving.

So basically you make use of the fact that DoT's strength is determined when applied while still getting the bonus from the 2nd Mangle?

Edit: Just spent a good 15 minutes or so testing it on Halaa guards. I can't seem to pull it off. I Rip at 0.9sec-1.1sec left of the debuff and then I hit Mangle just as it goes off. I didn't get double Rip damage in any of my 20+ attempts, but I did notice that a number of times the Rip wouldn't even get the damage buff from the second Mangle which seems to have some sort of connection to this bug. Am I missing something or timing it wrong?
Using Chronometer to track my debuff instead of Quartz helped. I can now semi-consistently reproduce it. Awesome.


Also,

Are you sure? My calculations came up with slightly more DPS gained from using T6 head+gloves (which is where I have my t4 parts atm.) - are you taking into account the 5 energy deducted from Mangle?

Why exactly? We don't get procs in forms and white dmg is only around 33% of our overall damage, so I'm struggling to grasp why it's the best trinket for us. Not saying it's bad, but it would be of far more overall benefit to eg: an enhancement shaman swinging dual 2.6+ speed WF- and enchantment-enhanced axes.

OOC procs, trinkets proc, 2 piece malorne procs.
So we do get procs in forms.

Yes, DST is extremely powerful for rogues/DW warriors/enh shaman, less so for druids, but still very good for us.

Theres a difference between "best trinket for druids" and "the trinket is best for druids". The first means that, in the case of druids, it is the best trinket. The second means that the trinket would be the best for druids over all other classes. The first meaning is the case in this instance, as, although it is good for druids, other classes benefit more from it. This means if you're a selfish git who prefers to have good damage over your raid (or you just take it because you're top on DKP and the next person is unreliable and wouldn't make full use out of it, whatever) then take it, but it will benefit the raid more by going to a rogue/shaman/DPS warrior.

White damage is around 40% of damage at high end, and dragonspine would boost that further. OoC and 2t4 procs are unreliable and, although nice, not worth arguing compared to windfury/combat potency for other classes.

I think the real niche for a Feral Druid is in the OT/DPS role on most fights. MT works for early content, but Warriors do finally start to get gear that makes them better overall on most fights and of course some fights just require Warriors to be the MT (Kael for example). But having a Feral Druid means the raid has another tank for those fights that take a bunch (Al'ar, Hydross, Karathress, and Kael all come to mind, and there are plenty others). Then on some fights you're going to be mainly DPSing (say on Vashj or Solarian - though I use full DPS gear in Bear form on Solarian as the "tank" for her occassional melee hits).

And finally, Ferals can heal! In full healing gear I'm not a terrible healer, and on nights when we are running healer-light, I don my healing gear and go to it. Sure, in a primary healing role you're not ideal, but I've served backup duty on fights like Morogrim and Vashj when we were short a healer.

Basically I don't think you have to give up Feral if that's what you love, as you certainly bring plenty to a raid in your versatility. Just don't pigeon-hole yourself as "MT or nothing," rather try to branch out and find the best use you can find for yourself, and choose a mixture of gear appropriate to that use given the fight. Sometimes its full-on tanking gear, sometimes full cat gear, sometimes a mix, and then sometimes healing gear. And of course don't forget combat rez and Innervate, which are both powerful tools on tough fights.

Yes... but reading all this topic, havent found answer. is dragonspine trophy > bloodlust brooch in long dps terms? if yes.. then how much?
asuming ooc, t4*2 procs and using haste effects from drums (3 lw in grp.. rotation make it never stop)

I m hit caped for now, and that +hit rating on DT really useful now

@Tublade:

A) DPS scales and reasonably well, just other classes (especially rogues/warriors) will "outscale" you. Going full on DPS is just shortsighted in relation to how the class works, but if you want to be full DPS on boss fights, it depends on your guild more than anything.

B) Tanking wise you should always be a viable tank, it's just not quite as viable as having a prot warrior (cooldowns, some abilities "require" warrior tanks) and when they aren't tanking they're pretty useless.

C) Every class has whiners (and a large majority of them seem to show up on the official forums). You can almost certainly find someone of every spec from every class who says that theres a better class to play or better spec to play. I personally love playing a druid, and have done in both healing (pre-tbc/tbc beta) and feral (tbc) specs. Both feral and resto are perfectly viable to the end of TBC raiding as it currently stands, and having them is a significant benefit if played well (feral = tank+dps, resto = ridiculous healing value on multi-tank fights along with "buffer" on MT in single tank fights, extra CR for both). I have no experience with balance-specced druids, so I won't comment on them.

D) If you aren't using more than one form in a fight, you're limiting yourself. There are the very, very rare occurances where the fight requires one tank and no-one screws up so you don't need to switch (innervate/CR/tranquility) but almost every fight I find myself switching multiple times for more than just powershifting. If you use all your abilities well, it's of major benefit to the raid over and above the utility of being able to tank trash well and still pull some major DPS out of the bag. You should also never rule out using healing gear, as some fights become significantly easier with one "backup" healer (I do it on archimonde normally).

@Dyvozvir: Yes, but I'm not entirely sure how much. It's generally accepted that the Dragonspine is significantly better than all other trinkets for all melee classes. Obviously with the haste nerf, this is likely to be slightly different, but I still expect it to be worth more than any other trinket, including for druids. There's no hit on the [Dragonspine Trophy] btw (I assume you mean haste, not hit). If you're thinking about taking it over many other melee classes (in which case you're likely to get whined at horribly) then read my last post.

Ye, my bad about that hit rating (its ap in fact)
I passed DT for 2 rogues already, shaman,warr and rogue to go... even if we go gruul every week- doubt I can gain it next 3-4 month, so will try to get tsunami talisman better (we wiping on vashj atm)... that trink buff all meele classes near same amount. So if will be fair if I bid on it.

Offtanking Kael's weapons (Axe, Shield, maybe something else if you have the gear for it),
MT'ing Archimonde (Then again that's only for alliance friends. At least until the spread around Fear Ward).
MT'ing Mother Shahraz (Crucial imo, as she cannot crush druid is just so much better at tanking her.) other than that 5% crit for your melee group is awsome. Even more if you have mutilate rogues.

Actually you should tell your rogues to keep their grubby mittens off of it. Warp-Spring Coil from Void Reaver is somewhat better and if they have DST already they should really go for WSC or Ashtongue trinket (once you get their) as their second trinket slot. (As mentioned before DST, even with the haste nerf is by far the best trinket for all melee classes).

A note also, that while 2pc T4 IS (from all the spreadsheets I've seen) better than 4pc T6 but only by a very slim margin. The added Sta, Armor and stats on the T6 would probably make it better to use overall than 2pc T4 and 2pc T6 (especially since the 2pc T4 bonus can get "lost" due to powershifting or lots of procs in a row etc).

While were on the subject, what 2 pieces of T4 would be best used to match with t6 or t5.

Pretty sure the Gloves and the Helm are the "smallest" upgrade from T4 to T6, not to mention the T4 non-meta socket is yellow and should be easier to socket with a good DPS gem while still retaining the socket bonus.

edit: by my calculations, the same holds for T4 to T5, the helm and gloves are the "smallest" upgrade.

In terms of item budget, the helm, legs and chest have the most points, then shoulders, then gloves. Hence it is usually considered optimal to keep the shoulders and gloves for a 2 pc bonus as these will have the least stat difference between the 2 sets.

I'd take the Helm and Shoulders. T4 Gloves are really VERY bad for DPS, even after the buff.

Just because an item is the weakest piece of an earlier tier set doesn't mean it isn't also the weakest piece of a later tier set...

Based on the damage related stats alone using AEP according to my druids gear level(i don't know yours but you can put in the numbers yourself) this is what I get.

Agi AEP value: 1.32
Str AEP value: 1.24
hit AEP value: 0.60

T5 is pretty obvious, T6 you can probably equally swap the gloves/shoulders/helm.