One simple point about druids getting more from strength than rogues:

They paid for that bonus. It cost talent points. If you then scale strength on gear down to be "fair" you've simply made druids get 56 talent points, instead of the 61 talent points everyone else gets.

Those talent points have to give some advantage, similiar to rogues getting an advantage from those +5% critical hit talent points they spent. You don't see me asking for rogue gear to get less critical strike rating, do you?

Edit: In other words, if the +20% strength is overpowered, fix the talent itself, you don't rescale every epic item in the game. Why doesn't anyone mention the +10% bonus damage from find weakness? There are so many modifers that I simply can't compare myself (a druid) to a class whose bonuses I know little about. (I hope I got find weakness right!)

Plenty of other classes also get 2AP per strength, most other stats interact differently with the various classes too - the value of +hit to those dual wielding for example or +def to warrior/paladin tanks as opposed to druids. Varying stat impact is how Blizzard have deliberately designed the game, the problem here is that a core 5 point talent is dependent on itemisation to carry out part of its intended role and that itemisation is, at various stages, significantly lacking.

Back on the original topic of Feral AP as a mechanic though I'd personally argue this is not necessarily a problem - as above, the impact of stats on the different classes varies quite wildly but what matters is the actual results produced at the end of the process. In this case that's the amount of dps being done which, at present, is generally considered to be pretty acceptable given the amount of utility provided by druids in other forms. As pointed out above should this change in future that would be grounds for a reassesment.

Sure, the feral weapon AP could be buffed up however that would either entail a small but general buff to druids or simply a rebalancing of druid combat mechanics shifting increased importance to the weapon slot (adding dps onto the weapon, removing net benefit across the board otherwise to keep the end outcome the same) which I don't personally see any particular reason to do.

What is with the facination with just one single slot? Unless you take gear+talent+synergy into account, you are comparing to apples to oranges. What's next? Should I demand the same DPS upgrade a hunter gets when upgrading from a ilvl 100 to ilvl 120 bow?

Feral druid gear, IMHO, works more like caster gear. Ferals have a static DPS for their weapons, just like casters have a static damage for their spells. It doesn't matter if they get +23 damage from a new staff or a new ring, it's +23 damage.

Umm.. yes? A hunter, upgrading to a 151 iLevel bow from a 125 iLvl gains 12.5dps. A warrior upgrading to a 151 iLvl bow from a 125 iLvl also gains 12.5 dps.

A Druid upgrading to a 128 iLevel weapon from a 115 iLevel weapon gains 6 dps. A Warrior upgrading to a 128 from 115 gains 7.8 dps.

My "facination" (...?) with the single slot is that the weapon slot is the only one which decreases in relative power as item level increases. Our chest pieces increase in power just as linearly as other classes' chest pieces do; the allocation of their points fits. To anyone who argues that it is acceptable that our weapons do not scale properly, why stop there? Why not say that our chest, leg and shoulder pieces should also decrease in relative power as well? How can you say one but not the other?

Casters don't lose spell damage when putting on class buffs (Frost Armor) whereas Druids do (Cat Form causes a loss in effective weapon DPS).

But they're losing out on all that sweet sweet caster weapon white DPS when they're stuck at siege range casting! And what about those poor hunters; they don't get any use from their big spears at ALL!

I apologize for that, but it really is hard to take this argument entirely seriously when you use hyperbole like that. You've shown that Druid weapons don't scale damage as well as they do for Rogues, Warriors, Shamans, and Paladins. You have not (yet) shown that druids overall do not scale at the same rate as other melee classes.

Realistically, Feral AP is basically identical in concept to all the new caster weapons of BC, where +spellpower is given a colossal discount because the base DPS of the items is converted into spellpower in a fairly direct way. (DPS converted * 3.5 = spellpower, roughly.) We don't say casters are being unfairly punished on itemization of their weapons into DPS, though. If anything, we see this as a tremendous bonus because for the longest time a caster's weapon was just a small part of his total power, and now this is no longer true. As well, we know from long experience all the many, many little % bonuses that a caster's damage is passed through before you see the final numbers.

"Do druids scale worse than other classes?" is the real crux of the issue. My gut says their stat advantages and relatively light reliance on "extra" stats (like %hit for all DW melee classes and spellpower/int/etc for Ret Paladins and to a lesser extent Enhance Shamans) currently can close to even out the losses from strict weapon damage across a whole suit at a given level of itemization.

If you can show otherwise, I'm all ears.

ferals might scale at and equal or better rate than everybody else, IF they were itemized properly.

Consider that there are few feral items that aren't tier gear, and that a great many of the random items and all of the tier gear features built in point sinks. Int. Armor. Stamina. Often the rogue gear parses better, but then we are losing the superior strength scaling that is supposed to be core to the class.

Also remember that others have built in scaling enhancers. SnD and flurry improve white dps scaling greatly.

My guess would be that the effect shown by the OP is caused by Blizzard 'reverse engineering' towards the item level starting from the FAP they wish to assign. I'm fairly sure that when the weapons get designed, the FAP is the starting point. But a weapon needs to have a DPS value; there is no 0 or Not Applicable or such.

Meanwhile those posters pointing out that the scaling of FAP + weapon dps in a vacuum is meaningless, got it right. It sits roughly at the level of 'shaman talent lightning mastery reduces cast times twice as much as mage talent improved fireball'. It means nothing without taking the whole class and all its talents, abilities and spells into account.

This only directly correlates to untalented white damage. We all know that different classes have a different % of there total output from white dmg. Until you show the delta from weapons for 2-3 different classes with total DPS output (including talents, and abilties), with equal tier gear, you are just spinning your wheels.

No class gets perfectly itemized gear, because perfectly itemized gear is horrible to upgrade and tends to be useful for far too long.

Druids get less dps out of their main hand slot, but I remain utterly unconvinced that their global scaling with the increase of stats is wacked.

Bingo. Some quirk of how feral items scale has zero to do with how the classes' dps actually scales. Paladin weapons scale better than Druids, OMG! Paladin dps must be overpowered (ha). Your logic is flawed. There is no evidence presented in this thread that kitty druids have a scaling problem. As others have mentioned, items are only part of the dps puzzle; you're missing some pieces. It's really not worth discussing at this point.

... bear dps ...

Right. The fact that I am swinging a 2h is most of what keeps my threat competitive. That and mangle crits. Lacerate compares with sunder armor, maul with heroic strike. Revenge blows me away, warrior HS 50% more often than I maul, and my guild MT averages shield slam threat better than my non-crit mangles.

Back to topic, given an particular amount of item points spent in a comparably efficient manner, the feral will rack up more ap/crit and need less hit than other melee classes.

However, feral gear is carrying about a 15-20% nerf from armor/int/sta. Perhaps a 10-15% nerf on no-int items, all 3 of them. I'm not real strong on item building theory, more detailed info would be great. That's not a minor penalty, and then we have to turn that AP into dps. Something ferals are notoriously bad at doing.