[Unstoppable Aggressor's Ring]

36 str = 107.68 AP with all buffs
30 crit rating = 1.36 % crit
Total: 107.68 AP, 1.36% crit

[Ancestral Ring of Conquest]

32 str = 95.71 AP with all buffs
21 agi = 26.17 AP with all buffs
21 agi = 0.95 % crit with all buffs
Total: 121.88 AP, 0.95% crit

Exalted Hyjal ring: 29 agi, 43 stam, 60 AP, 160AP proc(10secs).

29 agi = 32.85 AP with all buffs
29 agi = 1.31 % crit with all buffs
60 AP = 66 AP with all buffs
Assume proc rate of 1/minute (still 1k rep short of getting mine, but it's a reasonable enough assumption imo) for ~26.5 AP
Total: 98.85(125.35) AP, 1.31% crit.

I'd definitely pick Unstoppable Aggressors and the exalted Hyjal ring out of the three. At the levels we're talking about, 0.4% crit will easily outdo even the 25 AP difference between the reverred version and the ancestral ring of conquest. Will have to make sure I actually get an unstoppable aggressors next time it drops, been passing on it for ages thinking that the crit from the Ancestral was more than it actually is (possible our last one actually got d/e'ed, which would suck).


I also think it's quite a shame that out of all of that gear, the only properly end-game druid-designed pieces are tier pieces. Razor scale is an SSC drop, the weapon is from PvP (so wasting a significant amount of budget), and everything else is rogue-designed primarily (apart from maybe Unstoppable Aggressor, which is warrior designed really). Proper itemisation would be nice.

Please let me know if you know anything conclusive about the proc. I'm unfortunately far away from it (missed a couple of hyjal runs and just past revered).

An increase to the scaling modifier of AP/iLvl would certainly be appreciated - every bit helps. It seems unlikely that it'll be increased enough to significantly impact high-end scaling though - from the WWS logs people have been producing, the issues there are not something that a few hundred extra AP will make up for. If it was increased enough to make a truly significant difference in total PvE damagedealing at the high end, it would probably have to be coupled with a reduction in the shred and ravage percentage multipliers to avoid giving cats too high burst damage in PvP. Ah, well, "wait and see" shall be our watchword as so often before.

Is Dragonspine Trophy still that good?

It has a 60 second internal cooldown with a 10% procrate according to my guild leader who got it in the last week or so (source).

BTW, I had almost the same list for my endgame gear with two notable exceptions.

For the 2pT4 bonus, I went for Shoulders and Hands instead of Shoulders and Chest. From my own calculations, the difference between the two chestpieces is about 0.1% dps higher than the difference between the two Hands pieces.

Secondly, Choker of Endless Nightmares and Choker of Serrated Blades (using the information from the Raid Boss Armor Values thread for Armor Penetration) look to me to do more dps than Telonicus's Pendant of Mayhem, by about 0.2%.

Could you post what numbers your script comes up with given those two changes?
It really is. Without going into a bunch of formulas, I'll just say it's still about 20% better than the next best trinkets (Madness of the Betrayer and Tsunami Talisman). Maybe more with 2pT4 bonus.

Yes, DST is still the best feral trinket although not by much.

A few hundred extra AP will make all the difference in that it'll fix the issue with feral weapon scaling (discussed in this thread) which does indeed need to be addressed. Personally I'm pleased that the dev's seem to be listening to the druid community and are finally doing something to scale feral weapons in line with other melee classes.

It won't of course change the fundamentally flawed scaling mechanics of ferals. I agree that giving catform DW would go a long way to solving the problem without having to add new feral specific itemisation. In standard ~t6 gear you could expect to see a ~25% increase on white damage i.e a ~5% total dps increase. While this doesn't seem too spectacular, it would bring our itemisation more in line with rogues/shaman/warriors in that stats like hit, armor penetration and haste would become more desirable, and switching gear to incorporate more of these stats would likely bring our dps to about where it should be. The downside is that 2 x 1.0 weapons would most likely be imbalanced in pvp as casters would have a hard time dealing with the pushback.

Nice work with the list Malazaar, pretty useful seeing as Emmerald's list is somewhat obsolete these days. Just a query though, I notice you dropped shapeshifter's and I'm just wondering if you've accounted for the extra crit and -dodge it gives - I'm a bit surprised it's not better to keep sss, swap out some of those Glinting Pyrestone's for Delicate Crimson Spinels and maybe take the LC helm enchant instead.

Also I'm curious as to how being in a non-optimal group changes things as I (like most ferals probably) usually end up in the leftovers group with bm hunters, spriest and resto shaman if I'm lucky. It probably won't make any difference wrt to gear selection but it's just a thought.

Edit: url

Choker of Endless Nightmares isn't better if you're hitcapped.

having passive haste (SnD and flurry) will probably help a lot. Ret Paladins and Feral Druids are suffering in this case

The set of gear Malazaar was talking about only has 6.1% hit on it. You'd need a Moonkin casting IFF on everything for it to be over the hitcap (9% against a L73 last I looked). In which case you'd use the Choker of Serrated Blades instead.

I will look into the Hit issue.

If i swap out Telonicus' for Serrated Blades and T4 Chest with Gloves i end up with only 1537.46 DPS, a noticable drop (T4 Gloves are REALLY bad for dps, i think you have overlooked something if you take them).

If that's correct what you posted about the BotEC, then it's of course better than ARoC.

Edit: Seems like i had the Critrating and Hitrating of the Shadowmaster's swapped so i accidently ended up with more Hit than i actually had.

Ok sorry for the misinformation and thanks for pointing out the error, with the corrected values and the BotEC as an option this would be the best (though i have to say, using different Necks/Rings/Trinkets to get the last +Hit yields a pretty minimal difference):

Cursed Vision of Sargeras + 34ap/16hit
Choker of Endless Nightmares
Mantle of Malorne + scryer enchant (it's possible to use the sapphiron enchant)
Razor-Scale Battlecloak + 12agi
Breastplate of Malorne + 6stats
Insidious Bands + 12str
Thunderheart Gauntlets + 15agi
Don Alejandro's Money Belt
Thunderheart Leggings + 50ap/12crit
Shadowmaster's Boots + 12agi
Merciless Gladiator's Maul + 35agi
Unstoppable Aggressor's Ring + 4stats
Band of the Eternal Champion + 4stats
Madness of the Betrayer
Dragonspine Trophy

Gems: Relentless Earthstorm Diamond x1, Shifting Tanzanite x1, Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst x1, Glinting Pyrestone x1, Inscribed Pyrestone x1, the rest is Delicate Crimson Spinels.

Miss: 0.0 %
AP: 4973
Crit: 52.10 %
Average Autohit: 573.38
Average Manglehit: 1679.03
Average Shredhit: 2798.52
Average Ripdamage: 3928.95
Attacks to 5cp: 3.5211
Energy per second: 13.2141
Average Cycle Length: 13.18 seconds
Average DPS: 1558.04

I see where I went wrong now. It was the gem in the T6 gloves. All the other slots have the same number of gems (and sometimes type), so I missed it.

I still have my eyes on [Choker of Serrated Blades] and [Stormrage Signet Ring]. Putting those in place of [Choker of Endless Nightmares] and [Unstoppable Aggressor's Ring], would let you replace 10 hit rating in the gems with something else and should give a small damage boost (and a small health boost). It will only be superior when the target has full armor debuffs (5x sunder, faerie fire, curse of reckoning), but the minor loss of dps in non-raid conditions would be acceptable to me.

I think you're forgetting that we need 2 yellow gems for the RED meta. The option other than 5hit/5agi is to go for 5crit/5str, not 10 agi (which is 29.92 AP and 0.45% crit against 25 AP and 0.9% crit, which is a fair difference).


The thing is, all these gains are very marginal. When you compare the different gearsets that people are using at high end, the DPS difference seems to be coming out to less than 30 or so in perfect conditions. Group setup, lag, human error and other factors are easily going to affect DPS in these situations, and if particular items aren't going to drop there's not much you can do. We've never seen a Madness, for example, which means I have to find 20 more hit than the "perfect" gear setup shown (part of the reason I use the belt of deep shadow instead of Don Alejandro's), and only ever seen one Dragonspine drop (not done Gruul since we killed Illidan too).

It's nice to have a "perfect" list, but it has to be taken with a pinch of salt, circumstances dependant.

I also agree that armour pen isn't worth it in context of the items available. I'm still using Haramads in the neck slot, because it's better than anything else available for me as it currently stands.

I disagree on the Choker not being close to as good. You can't value hit or crit as 1:1 for a damage % increase. No matter what your hit or crit or AP rating, a reduction in armor gives a set percentage increase in damage due to the way armor works. However, it doesn't work that way for hit or crit or AP.

Excuse me for the incoming wall of text as I explain my reasoning.

For Crit, only about 80% of your damage can be crits (since Rip doesn't crit). On top of that, the higher your current crit rating the less of a % increase in damage you'll get. Including the effects of Predatory Instincts and the Relentless Earthstorm Diamond, you get a calculation for the change in dps that looks like this:
Increase = Crit%Increase*(1/(1+CurrentCrit%/100)*1.13*CritableDamageFraction)

If we input a ballpark current crit value of 41% (raid buffed) and 1.23% crit increase, as well as 0.8 for the critable damage fraction we get a 0.7886% increase in total DPS.

For hit, it's more complicated.

Firstly, our white damage is only about 40% of our total damage. So 40% of our damage can be increased by hit in a normal 1:1 fashion. 1% of 40% is 0.4%.

For the yellow damage it's a completely different story. We normally get about 5 yellow swings (maul, shred and rip) in ~14 seconds. With the GCD that takes up about 7.5-8 seconds (human reaction time), but it still leaves us with 6 seconds worth of repeat attempts on swings if one misses. You'd have to be incredibly unlucky to miss 4 yellow attacks in 14 seconds, so we can assume that you'll always have time to make attacks. Therefore, the worst that can happen from a miss is the 20% energy loss or losing a tick of Rip uptime.

In energy terms, a missed Rip, Maul or Shred causes you to lose ~8 energy on average. If you miss 5.2 of those, that's one less Shred you can make that fight. In most boss fights, you'll shred about 40-60 times, for ~30% of your total damage. So there is a 1% chance to lose 30*0.02/5.2 = 11.5% of total dps or a loss of 0.115% dps.

Depending on the number of skill crits you miss and your current energy total, this may also cause you to miss a tick of rip. The chance of this is relatively high if you powershift on every other cycle (maybe 25%). If you don't powershift at all, the chance is much lower (maybe as low as 5%). So lets say 1% of the time, you have a 15% chance to miss 1/6th of your rip damage. That's 0.005% dps loss.

A missed mangle also means a single rip tick loses 23% of it's full damage. That's a 1% chance to lose 23% of 1/6 of 20%. That's a loss of 0.0077% total dps.

As far as Rip attacks go, 1% hit would also save you from a 1% chance to lose a tick of uptime. A tick of uptime 1/6th of your maximum Rip damage lost. So 1% of the time, you'd lose 1/6th of 20%. That's 0.033~% of your total dps lost. There is also a chance that you'll miss another attack after that, but that's only accounts for a further 0.0018% dps lost. Adding the two together you get 0.035% dps lost.

If you add all that together, 1% of hit is really worth 0.53% more dps. 1.36% hit then is a 0.7208% increase in total DPS. That's based on the formula DPS%Increase = Hit%*0.53

As far as AP goes, the formula is: DPS%Increase = APChange/(CurrentAP/100)*FractionOfAPAffectedDPS
The Fraction of AP Affected DPS is somewhere around 0.60 for a character with about 4000 AP as far as I can tell (the rest comes from free damage on skills and the damage of your base feral weapon). With the gear listed and full AP buffs, you'd have over 4000AP, but I'll take 4000 as the best case figure (ie. it favors AP being worth more). So 2/(4000/100)*0.60 = 0.0300% increase in DPS.

So, wearing the gear in question, you'd only gain about 0.7208% dps from the hit%, 0.7886% from the crit and 0.0300% from the AP for a total of 1.5394%. That's really close. ~0.15% is not a lot. Not stacked up against an extra 37 stamina.

Disclaimer: All these derived values will adjust back and forth on a fight by fight basis. I'm just using values like 40% of all damage is white damage as best case figures (the higher the fraction of damage that is white, the more valuable hit is).

Edit: Error in my calculation. Makes CoEN about 0.1% better than I got first time. I'll take Dukes point on the needing 2 yellow gems. However, I don't think using a pair of 5crit/5str gems is actually all that bad. I find those gems to be a 0.35% dps increase vs 0.28% dps increase for the 5hit/5agi ones. Which is not at all what you'd think it would be, but there you go. No real gain in dps overall, but still a gain in HP.

Although that is a good analysis of crit/hit/ap, you miss out the factor that crit will have on combo points. Even with the 52% crit raid buffed that I've occaisionally ended up with (shaman twisting goa/windfury, or in the hunter group) you still find yourself point-starved occaisionally, and extra crit will always help that. I'm not saying that this is a major factor in increasing the crit% function, just that it should be mentioned even if it isn't taken account of in the calculations.

Your total critable damage goes up as you gain more crit, but if you get more rips of uptime due to more combo points, then the total rip damage goes up as well. It doesn't seem like the relationship between the two will change to a significant extent (I would consider a change of 0.05% or less per 1% of crit to be insignificant in this sense).

Actually, most of the point behind that maths was to show that armor penetration can be worth a heck of a lot more than it's being given credit for. Haste is better for Rogues and Warriors too, but that doesn't stop a particular exceptional item with lots of it being the best in slot.

I know that crit/hit and ap eventually scale worse than armorpenetration. However, this is an ultimate list, it's not going to be better for some time. So if you want the chocker to be better you need better gear than the game can offer (by a fairly good margin).

Ultimately, the Chocker will be better than the Supremus or Kael'thas necks, however you will need something like t8 gear for it - it which point there will likely be better necks available.

I also agree with dukes - you take what you get. It's nice to know what to aim for though.

Edit: Also worth noting is that the additional combo point generation you gain from more crit is a noticeable factor on you dps, so the difference between both necks is a bit bigger than you illustrated, i get a difference of 5.21 DPS when i use my formulas.

I'm not saying you can't use the Chocker - it's a nice neck and it got stamina on top of it. However, in terms of maximizing your dps down to the last point, it's not the best option.

Every other day I wish cats would get switched to a DW system with HotW affecting AP. It's just easier.

But I'll settle for feral pvp gear with no + healing on it. I do wish they'd start cutting int and adding spirit. I need 9k mana in feral sets less often than I find myself running just a bit short after a period of frequent shifting and casting.

If Cats were swapped to DW and HoTW affect AP, we can pretty much share drops with Rogues, for better or worse. This helps a lot in consolidating the loot table. On a more selfish note, I do wish they just improve the current feral loots and add them to the loot table, but progression wise that just dilutes the loot table too much.

Right now, revamping Tiger's Fury seems to be something that'll be most reasonable. Make it last longer and modifies your ap percentage (as opposed to 40(?) weapon damage) or haste.

Are you using 4cp or 5cp Rips ? Because, statistically, you need more than 60 % Crit to keep a 5cp Rip up, consistently. And that's even with Powershifting and 2t4.

Of course you can have "bad luck" and have 5cp so quickly that you either waste energy or shred once or twice into your 5cp. However, that should not happen consistently with 5cp Rips.

after reading most of this topic the last weeks, im still in question of one issue:

You guys did compare different idols with each other, but i didnt read sth. about:
"does idol swap only give you a GCD or does it reset your swingtimer?"

i have thougth about this quite a time now, but im not sure, how to prove that its value or misscalculated:

asume this:
You are using this macros: (the syntax issnt the problem, im sitting her without accsess to wow^^)
1.
/cast mangle(cat)
/equip Everbloomidol

2.
/cast shred
/equip idol of "rip damage" (to lazy 2 look for right name^^)

3.
/cast rip
/equip idol of the white stag


we start at 4-5 CP trough normal start rotation, waiting until nearly 100 energy then start with
3.
1.
normal rotation till 3-4 CP
2.
3.
waiting 4 energy...
redo the cycle

( i know, that i muste use a second shred hotkey)


mhm i hope you understand what in try to say^^
But nevermind, the lose of Gcd is no problem, since i have enough time xD
i tried these the last days an it looks likle idolswap after instant seems to increase your gcd in cat from 1 sec to 1.5 sec (might only be due to lag)

these brings me to the question:
does idolswap reset our autoattackswingtimer?
or is it a substained way to increase our dps by a little amount trough perfect use of idolrotion?

btw edit just told me my english sucks, plz dont complain about that^^
edit 2: heard about some advice about, my how do you call "u, ur an those stuff" english?^^

Switching Idols in combat eats up a white hit and the conclusion was that sticking with the Shred idol usually offers the best DPS.

Friendly advice Taroon, get Firefox or some sort of spell checker, poor English is forgivable, things like "u" instead of "you" "2" instead of "two" "suxxs" instead of "sucks" shows that you are just being lazy with your typing. To quote one of the admin, if you aren't going to spend the time to make it readable, we aren't going to spend the time to read it.

That being said, the first problem I see with your macros is that you'd need an extra Shred button otherwise your Shred Macro will swap to the Rip idol after the first Shred, making you lose the 88 damage on each of the next 1-3 Shreds. That's really beside the point though, since Weapon Swaps put everything on the Global Cooldown including swing timer. When you're looking at a 400+ average auto attack, that's really not something you want to be giving up. Only the Shred Idol actually adds more than that, so there's really no reason to be swapping unless you're changing roles or can't attack from behind for some reason for a while (really should never occur unless there's an AoE centered just behind the mob)