3.8 Skill Rating = 1 Skill

2.4 Defense Rating = 1 Defense

So yeah, you had a 3% chance to miss, roughly.

There's a pretty common latency or client/server sort of issue where you'll get parried while behind the mob. I've definitely had shreds parried on my druid and backstabs on my rogue. If I weren't behind the mob, I shouldn't even be able to do those attacks.

It's not common enough to put into a model of the mechanics, but it's certainly common enough that almost everyone who plays a positional melee character will have seen it at least once.

Greetings folks:

Recently I came across the Braided Eternium Chain pattern and sent it to a jewelcrafter. Gurgleblaster has given this item a Kitty point raiting of 23.78, which seems way off.

Wouldn't this item (+5 Weapon damage; 21 hit rating) be slightly better than Natasha's; ~70 AP or am I missing something here?

Great forums here and thanks in advance for any reply.

5 weapon damage is worth slightly less than the apparent 14*5=70 AP due to the fact that the extra damage from AP works into the scaling in Rip/FP while the +5 weapon damage does not.

I value Natasha's slightly higher due to the crit you get from 15 Agi on top of the 70 AP vice the +hit from braided eternium. In addtion, Natasha's gives 15 stamina.

Malazaar, what cycle do you use on Aran ? Since he is so hard to position for Shred, I usually Mangle then Rip at 5 CP. Seems like an obvious question, but I haven't been on enough kills to get good data.

Actually, shred positioning isn't that bad. It takes more work than a stationary boss, and sometimes, aka flame wreath, you simply can't reposition before it hits and/or he is constantly changing his targets, sometimes even you! That said, mangle if you would otherwise waste energy, otherwise, just wait til you can get in position to shred again. Also, as his armor is fairly low, FB might work better if you have gotten the hang of power shifting.

It's really not that easy to keep the cycle running on aran - positioning is hard, especially if you happen to hold aggro. If i can't shred and can't move behind him (due to flame wreath, explosion or aggro) i just save energy up to 81, at which point i just use mangle (less damage is obviously better than no damage).

On the other hand - aran's total lack of any armor (or so it seems) makes more than up for it. I just recently got to dps in karazhan (i usually have to tank) so my experience in that instance is limited as dps.

On that subject - has anyone worked out the point at which a shred is better than an untalented bite ? I usually just go on shredding til mangle wears off before biting - it just seems to be a total waste of energy (sometimes 5cp noncrits around 1000 damage).

Edit: @Maratai: Actually, you'd have to have around 70% crit for FB to surpass Rip (even on a zero armor target and exlusively using 35 energy FBs).

i don't have my numbers on me, but i sat in 2 classes one day and did rough theorycraft on comparing hourglass vs dragonspine for a feral druid.

assumed 2600 Ap 33% crit ( 35% w/ hourglass ), T4 2pc bonus, OOC; I found that dragonspine would be about equal with 2ppm, 1-2% dps increase with 2.5ppm , and 5%+ increase with 3ppm ...

the benefits assume that more white hits with haste allow more chances for OOC and T4 to proc, since they both seemingly have no internal cooldown. Also, since Hourglass does have internal cooldown, our high crit is "wasted".

As well, I'd like to comment that I use abacus along with dragonspine, so I attempt to stack +energy / +free attacks, and in my experience it works well. There are times when I have "unlimited energy" and am more or less waiting on global cooldown, or get to throw an extra shred out while waiting for my last 5/5 Rip to drop.

Using this bias, I stack agility over AP, and hang betwen 90-110 +hit.

I have been #1 dps on prince kills over a flasked hunter, a flasked shadow priest ( only +900ish shadow though ), and assuming I don't die, can be top 5 on Gruul effortlessly. I understand these numbers can be meaningless without considering the rest of my raid, but I do not understand for a second why people have beliefs that druids can't top dps meters.

EDIT: I'd like to add that even with Abacus + Dragonspine + Bloodlust up, Tiger's Fury still blows.

Perhaps I'm just more of an excel n00b than I thought I was, but is there a way to take Emmerald's spreadsheet and update it to include higher base stats? I'm way off from the stats he uses.

Unbuffed: 2500ap 34 crit 5.7% hit

Also, I am still a bit confused on the relative usefullness of feral weapon skill. I have 91 hit rating as well as 18 feral weapon skill from Clefthoof Hide Leggings. I'm trying to determine if the Lower City ring would be better than Band of Ursol (23str 12agi 22sta).

From:
http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/en/166546791.htm

Feral weapon skill is a lot better than a lot of people think. Assuming the blue post is correct, 1 FWS gives the following against a +3 lvl mob:

+0.2% hit
+0.2% crit
-0.1% chance to be dodged
-0.6% chance to be parried

That may seem like a lot, but Kalgan has said WS is the "'best stat' you can get against a target 3 levels or higher than you",http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...207273&sid=1#1

So the Lower City ring with 20 FWS rating would give you 5 FWS resulting in: + 1 hit, + 1 crit, -1 mob_dodge, -3 mob_parry. -Mob_parry should only come up while tanking, and I'm not sure how the -mob_dodge works, but at the minimum you could consider 1 FWS rating = .8 hit rating + 1.1 crit rating for item comparison purposes.

I plugged your stats into Emmerald's spreadsheet and with the FWS rating conversion:

Shapeshifter's Signet = 111.4 Kity points
Band of Ursol =83.9

The Shapeshifter Signet got buffed in the last PTR patch.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/images/n...lower_city.jpg

25 AGI (+2)
18 STA (+2)
+20 Feral Skill (unchanged)
+20 Dagger Skill (unchanged)