For power shifting, i am using the macro
/cast !Cat Form

If i'm not fighting anything, i'll pop out of and back into cat form in a blur. I can test this till i'm outta mana. Works great.

If i'm dpsing a boss, i'll USUALLY just pop into caster form, and then have to hit the macro a second time to pop back into cat form. Once every 4-5 times it will go automagically...

Anyone seen this issue?

That just says that CVoS is a good helm, but doesn't really address the issue, which is: is Wolfshead helm better? For a very simple model I'm going to assume the extra energy generated gets used in a shred, because I don't really feel like coming up with a whole rotation right now, but lets say you average slightly over 2000 damage on a shred (certainly a reasonable number). Shred costs 42 energy, so 20 energy would be approx. 1000 damage, so wolfshead helm would be adding 1000 damage per powershift. If you powershift every rotation (about every 10 seconds, if I'm wrong on that someone please correct me), then that's 100 dps - same as CVoS.

Tossk's calculator actually lists wolfshead helm substantially higher than any other helm in the game, including sunwell, if you set it to powershift every cycle.

Like the other poster, though, I'd like to see a more complicated model that includes the powershift rotation that would be optimal for using this helm.

"If I set "Powershifting" to every cycle, my dps is 1374. If I set "Powershifting" to none, my dps is 1289. Just to give you an idea how huge the 100dps loss from replacing Cursed Vision is."

That's the important part. The difference between Powershifting (40 energy) and not (~5 energy) is under a hundred dps. Bumping that up to 60 energy would be ~50dps. So there's have to be less than 50dps difference between the stats on wolfshead and the stats on CVoS, which there definitely is more of.

Normal powershifting doesn't actually get you 40 energy per shift, as you are almost never at 0 energy when you shift, so the amount you actually gain is normally between 10 and 30 energy - whereas with the helm you actually do get +20 energy over the previous powershifting rotation.

I believe Tossk's calculator assumes a 17 energy average gain per powershift, if I'm not mistaken.

That's exactly why I said 40 vs ~5, not 40 vs 0.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that white attacks/mauls make up about 25% of your overall threat generation, but it is incorrect. I think you could say 50% and be a lot closer to the actual number. I got this estimate from wws looking at the dmg breakout of druids tanking brutallus. In pretty much all cases, swing+maul was > 50% of the damage done, with lacerate and mangle pretty much equally making up the rest (35% maul, 25% swing, 20% lacerate, 20% mangle was a common split). Even though mangle has a pretty substantial threat bonus, it is not generating 50% of total bear threat.

Personally, I think haste is a great stat for threat generation for tanking trash or 5-mans or Karazhan or pretty much anything except hard hitting bosses. While expertise is a great stat for threat generation, you really only have an item choice in 3 slots: neck, ring, and trinket (I think the decision to wear T6 boots is probably a no-brainer). In these cases, you should probably make the choice by either ilvl or other tanking stats (i.e. do you need stamina or armor more than threat for a particular fight). Those slots aside, it really comes down to hit vs haste for any of the other slots that really carry a much larger impact (chest, legs, head, etc.). In the hit vs haste comparison, I think there are 2 important points to consider: 1 - it is very easy to hit-cap yourself for level 71 mobs (a majority of the trash mobs) and 2 - you can gem for hit , but you can't gem for haste. That being the case, I think you can get a pretty decent boost in threat by incorporating a few pieces of haste gear into your set. While you might not use it to tank Brutallus or Bloodboil, I think that especially for trash clears, it is useful.

First off, thanks to this thread and others like it, I've gone from just above the bad dps to just below the top. So thank you all who posted helpful info.

Now, I've gotten powershifting down to a science, and I'm curious if I may be powershifting too much. Here's my thought process:

If Rip isn't up, use Rip (I always have more than enough CPs).
If Mangle isn't up, use Mangle.
If both Rip and Mangle are up, Shred.

Pretty basic thought, the only problem comes in with enough energy to support that. As far as I'm concerned, any time you are sitting waiting for energy is wasted time. Powershifting should mean the longest you wait for energy is at most 2 seconds, or else you should powershift.

Normally: 2 seconds = 20 energy.
Powershifting: 1.5 seconds (GCD) = 40 energy.

However, once you powershift, your energy ticker gets reset and ticks one second, I believe, after the 40 energy from furor appears at the end of the GCD. This means that you go from 1.5secs=40nrg to 2.5secs = 60nrg. If you assume you powershift directly after using an ability, add 1 second on. 3.5secs = 60nrg or 17 energy/second. A much better return rate than normal, and allows for a shred.

This of course isn't including OOC procs or 2T4, but as a general rule, if Rip and Mangle are up, I power shift if I have less than 22 energy, or less than 20 if either are down. With this I powershift probably every 6-8 seconds or so. The only time I have mana problems is if I die and get battleres'ed.

Is there a flaw in my thinking somewhere? This seems to me to be a better cycle than the 12-second-wait-for-energy cycle.

The powershift rotation that's optimal with that helm is shifting every single time it's possible. Essentially-- is your energy too low to attack? If yes, powershift. It'll always be a huge energy gain, thus a DPS gain.

The helm would essentially eliminate the need for a finding an optimal cycle-- you are essentially mana-bound rather than energy-bound. You'll be pushing your shifting to the upper bounds of your mana pool.

Which means, spirit/mp5/int get values in the calculators... Gah, I didn't want to see that. Elixirs of mastery, flasks of chromatic wonder (or worse, mighty restoration)...

I feel this is a realm which no one wants to go, because as soon as someone does (with significant investment), it'll be nerfed.

Edit: Torel, go buy a Wolfshead and get us a parse!

Heh, my post above is completely separate from the Wolf's head idea, although it is intriguing.

I think that's more a factor of gear than anything else; lacerate is a lot larger of a threat scalar at lower gear levels.

Really though, it doesn't matter. The important thing to note is that expertise affects all of your threat-generating attacks, and it does so twice as well as hit does. Given the same amount of attacks, 16 points of expertise rating will give you 2% more attacks landed - 2% more mauls, 2% more mangles, 2% more lacerate, swipe, and swings. For every 16 points of hit rating, you'll get 1% more attacks landed. For every 16 points of haste rating, you'll get 1% more swings and mauls landed. At best, haste is equivalent to hit rating - and that assumes that 100% of all of your threat is maul and swing. Even if it is 50% of your threat, haste is still half as good as hit rating and 4 times worse than expertise for threat generation.

For trash you will get more threat, as hit and expertise do not scale as well. If you're looking for more threat on bosses though, cap expertise first, then hit, then go with haste.

I went with a similar setup, although far less PvP gear and more tanking gear, which yeilds 18k HP, 260 FR, uncrittable, and 25.68% dodge, all unbuffed. You need an FR totem or aura and a chromatic flask to hit 365. I think HP gets up to 22k and dodge to 34.43% after buffs

Head: [Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm] with def/dodge enchat
Neck: [Frayed Tether of the Drowned]
Shoulders: doesn't matter, as long as it has [Greater Inscription of the Knight]
Cloak: [Slikk's Cloak of Placation]
Chest: [Inferno Hardened Chestguard]
Wrists: [Vindicator's Dragonhide Bracers]
Gloves: [Inferno Hardened Gloves]
Belt: [Blastguard Belt]
Legs: [Inferno Hardened Leggings]
Boots: [Inferno Hardened Boots]
Ring: [Phoenix-Fire Band]
Ring 2: [Band of the Abyssal Lord]
Trinket 1: [Commendation of Kael'thas] Doesnt matter, but HP is good
Trinket 2: [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch] Doesn't matter, but dodge is good
Weapon: [Staff of the Forest Lord]

So basically 6 slots (the bolded items) of gear to hit 260 FR (last 105 come from aura/totem and flask), and that leaves 9 slots to fill out uncrittable, HP, and dodge

You're in the global cooldown. Check out some of the bear pot use macros in the first post for a /script that will check to make sure you'll shift instantly.

I don't see how this is true. Hit scales linearly as well. It might not scale with the overall amount of threat as a percentage, but taking 1% of the misses off the table does so at the first or the last percent. Over time, they'll be equivalent. Against trash, I agree - the first few percentages are better than the last. However, I wouldn't want to buy badge gear to get haste rating so I could take care of trash more easily.

And as I said before, that assumes that hit rating is equivalent to haste rating. That's absolutely not true; even if maul & swing is 50% of your total threat, that means that haste is 50% as good as hit rating.

Finally, hit rating helps with taunt resists; haste does nothing.

I am getting some confusing results from rawr.

Looking over the versions of [Band of the Swift Paw] in Rawr: cat, the bracers do significantly worse socketed for agility, rather than socketed for defense. So, I'll just ask:

Are [Swiftstrike Bracers] worth using for cat dps? I'll be spending close to 1000g for them if I make them, so I'd expect them to be on par with the Teron/Rage bracers, which i could buy for ~1500g.

Alright I did some Rawr work on the Wolfshead Helm. The gear set I used is probably not fully optimized but I made sure I had 2T4 and 2T6 and then just picked everything else to be best in slot according to what Rawr said using full buffs.

Head - [Duplicitous Guise] Relentless + Delicate Spinel
Neck - [Clutch of Demise]
Shoulder - [Mantle of Malorne] Delicate Spinel + Shifting Shadowsong
Back - [Thalassian Wildercloak]
Chest - [Breastplate of Malorne] Inscribed Pyrestone, Shifting Shadowsong, Delicate Spinel
Wrist - [Insidious Bands] Glinting Pyreston
Hands - [Gloves of Immortal Dusk] 2xDelicate Spinel
Belt - [Thunderheart Waistguard] Delicate Spinel
Legs - [Leggings of the Immortal Night] 3xDelicate Spinel
Feet - [Thunderheart Treads] Delicate Spinel
Fingers - [Hard Khorium Band], [Angelista's Revenge]
Trinkets - [Shard of Contempt], [Dragonspine Trophy]
Weapon - [Stanchion of Primal Instinct]
Idol - [Everbloom Idol]

AP=6071
Avoided Attacks = 2.45%
Yellow Crit = 52.11%
Shreds Per Cycle = 2.442
Cycle Time = 12s
Mangle Damage = 8.31%
Shred Damage = 32.6%
Melee Damage = 40.9%
Rip Damage = 18.18%
DPS Points = 1920

Using the above DPS number and percentages we can get the average mangle/shred/rip/white damage numbers.
Melee=785.3
Mangle=1914.34
Shred=3076.2
Rip=4189 (Over a 12s cycle)


Removing the head piece to simulate replacing it with the Wolfshead (which you can't actually remove the piece in Rawr btw you have to start a new profile) gives:

AP=5829
Avoided Attacks = 4.61%
Yellow Crit = 48.13%
Shreds Per Cycle = 2.46
Cycle Time = 12s
Mangle Damage = 8.43%
Shred Damage = 32.62%
Melee Damage = 39.66%
Rip Damage = 19.28%
DPS Points = 1764.96

Using the above DPS number and percentages we can get the average mangle/shred/rip/white damage numbers.
Melee=700.06
Mangle=1785.89
Shred=2811.99
Rip=4083.39 (Over a 12s cycle)

Using the above cycle I posted you have 12 white hits, 2 mangles, 3 shreds and the full rip damage.
Melee=8400.72
Mangle=3571.78
Shred=8435.97
Rip=4083.39
Total Damage=24497.86 (2041.49DPS)

The Wolfshead Helm data also ignores regemming for more hit, 2T4 procs, OoC procs or even swapping 2T4 to get 4T6. Can anyone spot some obvious mistakes in what I did? If not under "perfect" circumstances it looks like a gain when you optimize your cycle for the Wolfshead and compare to the Rawr's default cycle. I don't exactly think the optimum Wolfshead cycle is obtainable since you are using 8 out of 12 globals and a miss/dodge throws it all off not to mention a moving target.



Note: The average melee damage is going to be slightly less because I just multiplied the melee dps by 12 which ignores the haste from DST, Clutch of Demise and other gear which will give you more white hits in a 12s window but since I divided by 12 later it makes no difference.

Double post but I wanted to answer some previous ones without messing with my data post.

Part of why I think it might improve is because you can actually change your cycle to account for the extra energy that otherwise wouldn't be fully useable except in a I have 5combo points and am going to cap energy situation. The cycle I proposed has 2 shifts per cycle instead of 1 so an additional 80 energy while only wasting 14 of it. In my standard cycle you waste 11 so the net energy gain is ~75 or so considering you don't get the full 20 when shifting. I'd have to think a little more on 2 powershifting cycle without the Wolfshead.

While essentially true it's the same situation of an arcane mage spamming Arcane Blast but with a much higher mana cost and smaller mana pool. You also want to minimize the amount of energy wasted or else you are defeating the point of wearing the Wolfshead in the first place.

(see my armory for reference, this should be my bear gear)

Here's something I'm wondering about. I have an excess of badges, so I'm thinking of buying [Embrace of Everlasting Prowess] to replace my [Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Tunic] for tanking. In theory I gain about 1000 armor and 1.5% dodge, and lose about 50 health. Great upgrade, except for one thing: I suddenly lose crit immunity, to the tune of 12 resilience short if I enchant for +15 resilience, 27 with +6 stats.

I can fix this by using a Steady Seaspray Emerald for the chest gem, enchanting +15 resilience, and changing my cloak from 12 agility to 12 defense, BUT that would reduce my dodge gain. OR I can leave the cloak as is, enchant +6 stats on the chest (and gem with, oh, whatever the +5agi +7sta gem is), and use an Elixir of Ironskin all the time. I was thinking I'd just skip the Ironskin for trash to save gold (woohoo I got crit by trash! oh noes!) and use it for bosses. Great for farm content, but lousy expensive for progression, since I can't flask.

So I guess I'm gonna ask for an opinion: is this a good idea? Do any of you other bears do this sort of thing, and find it tolerable? Or do you find it too expensive to maintain? Or is there some other reason it's a bad idea?

I Ironskin for progression, they're worth it IMO. Not that expensive.

In an unlimited rage situation Maul will make up roughly 55% of total threat. As others have stated, expertise gives the largest increase followed by hit rating. While I generally hate to use AEP, here is approximate values for my current MT gear (5t6):

Expertise - 6.58
Hit Rating - 3.34
Strength - 2.00
Haste Rating - 1.79
Agility - 1.69
Crit Rating - 1.49
Attack Power - 1.00
Armor Penetration - 0.31

*fine print* Of course, these values vary depending on set totals.

Considering the need for as much DPS a raid can crank out in P2 vs 3+ tanks in P1...

We'll see as more killshots come in, I guess. I'll admit I was pretty disheartened when SK-Gaming's raid makeup for world first became known.

Yeh, current guild issues will probably slow our progress so I'm unlikely to see Muru soon, but I'm assuming that the dps requirement isn't as urgent as the tanking advantages of a Warrior. It's all speculation though until I see the fight for myself.

Ferals are still excellent offtanks there, the only thing we can't do is the Sentinels where good old Spell Reflect is required. Not made it to phase two yet but I definately don't feel like a dead weight in P1.