No, it's poorly itemised, no matter how you look at it. No other feral epic has dodge rating on it, and so I hardly see it as being a deliberate decision to significantly handicap our one T5 weapon. Furthermore we have a single weapon upgrade per raiding tier, so it's to be expected that the item might do double duty, like almost every other feral epic. While it's certainly true that we get more than the other tanks out of armour, stamina, agility (and for dps strength), out ability to take advantage of those stats is limited by the lack of items, the way they're itemised for dual use (yes you can make some of that up with gems and enchants), and a lot of the tanking mechanics (lack of pots, defense scaling, crushing blows, armour cap, etc).

Feral Skill rating is slightly important for mitigating burst damage by partly removing parry. However, I don't think anyone here believes that 1 skill = 29 AP equivalent when it comes to threat/damage. The only possible argument for skill being more useful for threat is burst threat on pulls, and lets face it, that is what Misdirect is for.

We'll have to agree to disagree on some of these points, then. I try to give Blizzard some credit for understanding their own game. One good argument in favor of Blizzard being a bunch of bumbling monkeys is the recent change to T4 gloves. In the case of T4 gloves, they were definitely not in the "correct" spot for gear progression. Now that they've fixed them (finally) they just need to take care of the T5 2p. I guess I am more or less satisfied with Wildfury Greatstaff as an upgrade to Earthwarden and so I just take it at face value instead of wishing it was more than it is.

I thought Misdirect was for a good laugh when you click it off right before the hunter pulls?

Yeah well put. That was more or less what I was trying to get at but I think a lousy day of work may have shrouded my point in a layer of sarcasm.

My problem with shitty itemization like this is that it leads to the inevitable arguments of "well, Druids eventually out-tank warriors because they scale better" versus "maybe, just maybe if we had the gear"

Vykr- Stormrage was amazingly well made, as was the majority of our ZG set and non-set epics from MC all the way through AQ40 as far as healing goes. It was the set bonus's that made T3 so amazing, and the fact it was many ilevels higher than T2.

Kier- If you think druids scale better than warriors with itemization, you are sorely mistaken, our armor is essentially capped before SSC, HP honestly does stop being useful once you're past burst immunity, that leaves avoidance for scaling. As nice as 14.75 agi/dodge is, ideal itemization for warriors (which admittedly is as rare as ours) gives avoidance from 4 potential sources (though 2 is more likely). Warriors and Paladins have been talking about getting over 85% "crush avoidance" without specials like holy shield/shield block for quite some time and maintaining not crappy HP totals, I believe I was able to hit 14k health in bearform with my 90% dodge gear, this was before 2.1 (lost 90 agi and a few thousand HP with the patch). And then of course there's magic damage, while it has nothing to do with scaling, will aid in preventing druids from ever replacing warriors as tank of choice.

Judging by our T4 gloves, Skulkers Greaves (and other multitude of gear changes in 2.1), and the fact that extra armor on t6 literally acomplishes nothing, and the best bracers are still Umberhowl's ... I am very comfortable saying Blizzard does not think things through when it comes to feral gear, they just listen to the main druid forums.

Bringing this out of the complaint department.

In my quest for a Badge of Tenacity, I decided to try my luck with the summonable bosses, sadly the rewards tend to be on the sucky side and after completing their quest and getting a couple cloaks most people stop bothering. I've been trying to help casuals get their quests done just for more chances, but with work and raiding I don't have the time for more than doing 10 daily's and a couple arena games.

So I decided to Solo them. Rivendark died tonight with the assistance of a warrior that randomly showed up at 30%. I went through 3 potions and a healthstone, with shifting as he cast corruption to regrowth I was really in no danger of dying (lowest I got was 2.5k I think) They don't hit very hard, just a lot of health so it's a bit of endurance. Even with the warrior it took 9 minutes (gear in armory) Next time I do it, I'll throw in a flask of the beast from the forge, and at least get a priest to Fort me. I'll also try to remember fraps

There are so many examples of not only bad, but downright awful itemization with respect to hybrid classes in general (Druid, Shad Priests etc). Most of them only get fixed after mass wow-forum complaints (see the recent change to Feral T4 gloves as an example).

I really don't believe it's deliberate - my feeling is that whoever first creates the game items has just been given the budget formulas and the basic requirements of each class/race and then told to get on with it without having any real insight into the various hybrid builds. Maybe it's the intern's job?

Maybe for greens and blues such as quest rewards, but for Tiered Items!?

But... we dont have that.

Tier gear is 85-95% tanking, 50-75% dps, 10% healing (Melee set). It has no healing stats whatsoever, let alone nuking stats, and almost completely lacks the critical +Hit required to do a decent amount of damage on non-trivial mobs.

Not to mention, anything less than '90%' gear is an utter waste for raiding; if you aren't able to get geared for a specific role in a raid as well as the next guy, you aren't worth inviting over him unless there's another 'feature' of your class, or some massive skill gap, that makes you more valuable than the next guy.

Are you serious? Maybe I don't understand your post.

http://www.gurgleblaster.net/emmeral...DPS/Chest.html

I've been using this as sort of a guid on gearing up until I get my own spreadsheet project going. T4 is as good for tanking as it is DPS assuming you have a) Other tank gear to hit crit immunity and b) Other DPS gear to give you +hit. Tier gear is awesome for both tanking and DPS, with the catch 22 being you have to socket/enchant it one way or the other. Some pieces like hands(after patch)/chest are easy (agi/stats) but the head, pants, and shoulders are tough calls.

Lets take for example, Stag Helm. The meta socket alone makes it bounds above the Cowl of Defiance after the release of the relentless earth storm diamond (+12 agi, +3% crit damage). At ~40% crit = ~ 1.2% dps increase.

I'll agree that some 'rogue dps' pieces are the best option for us at times, but T4 is an amazing dps set, and the best for somebody at that level of progression.

Quite serious; when you want to do pysical DPS, no pieces of Malorne are better than rogue offset pieces aside from the chest. Malorne is simply a bad set for cat due to a complete and utter lack of +hit and +skill. It makes an acceptable set for putting out decent numbers after you're done tanking something but I'm not going to replace anything in my current DPS set (see armory) with a Malorne piece aside from my chest unless I pick up a lot of +Hit on non-set slots (boots, bracers, belt, etc.).

All of the AP and Crit in the world doesn't matter if you can't HIT the damn mob when you want to; missing on yellows trashes your damage output, especially when I'm looking at 35-38% of my damage coming from Shred, 32% from Melee (stupid glances), and 16-20% from Rip.

If I end up in SSC tonight, I'll get a better breakdown but that's what I recall from Gruul's & Magtheredon last night (5th DPS on Mag! (until I ate a cleave on a bounce. Damnit. Ended with 9th)).

Edit: Yeah, that list seems to severely undervalue +Hit; even at 0.18-0.19% from hitcap, it's still gives me the best bang for the buck statwise. I'll look at it some more and report what I find.

Agreed, short of SSC loot the Malorne chest, shoulders, and helm (discounting the engineering goggles) are top notch for DPS, by a significant margin when you factor in the 2pc set bonus. The four piece set bonus would also likely make either the gloves or legs an upgrade for one's DPS set. Though I agree that hit rating is both important and a bit of a pain to obtain for us ferals, grabbing Romulo's Poison Vial and a tentacle staff covers ~45% of what you need in only two slots. Add a ring, the helm enchant, and some gems, suddenly getting 8.6% while having 4 pieces of Malorne isn't too tough.