Personally, like 1200 maybe? It all depends on gear. Doing maximum TPS for your gear just depends on using every GCD effectively. Mangle every time it's up, lacerate or swipe every other GCD, except 1 for FFF and 1 for DemoRoar when they're about to fall off, and Mauling every attack. With my macros, I do that, or at least get rather close, I do mess up demo/FFF sometimes and lose a lacerate/swipe, I'm not perfect, but it's pretty close.

I'm about 1200 as well on bosses where I'm not specifically inserting swipes and don't have a special group (usually the hunter group). With swiping I can get a bit higher, but I tend to be conservative with my swipe rotation since I don't have as much hit as I'd like to (stupid lack of pendant of titans...bah). It also is very, very dependent on my gear. If I'm in high avoidance gear I tend to occasionally get rage starved and so lose a few maul hits. If I'm going more mitigation I don't have as much crit. If I go in my threat set (high expertise/hit/damage), I can get 1400-1500 depending on the group makeup. Having an enhancement shaman is a ridiculous boost; unleashed rage and strength of earth give another 200 TPS.

I was looking into breaking up my T4 set, but was skeptical in doing so, because I knew I would be significantly lower than the 35580 armor cap. However, when I finally put on some T5 pants with T6 gloves, on the defense tab by scrolling over the armor, at 33320, I was still at 75% damage mitigation. When I lowered myself below 33,000 it began to lower less than 75% mitigation.

When did this change occur (and is the new armor cap for 75% 33,000) or is it an ingame fault on the defense tab?

The character sheet shows damage reduction against a level 70 target. The cap for 73s (bosses) is still 35880.


EDIT: And by popular demand, by macros mentioned on the previous page:

Note that the Maul ones include /click lines to specific buttons, which I swap back and forth sometimes, so they aren't actually tied to lacerate or swipe specifically, but rather whichever macro is in that specific button slot. The buttons named above are the 3rd button on the bear primary hotbar (BonusActionButton3) and the 3rd button on the bottom left extra bar (MultiBarBottomLeftButton3, ie the button directly above BonusActionButton3).

Hello,

First time on the feral druid side of the forums- had a question I hope you guys don't mind entertaining. It has probably been touched on, but I searched the thread for about 20 minutes and I can't find my answer- so here it goes:

Basically I was trying to understand the differences in feral staves, and how their speeds will effect dmg output. I was curious if slower weapons were better for yellow dmg in the same way that they were for other classes. If so I was confused as to why the S4 feral staff was so fast, if a slower weapon would give you harder hitting shreds, mangles, etc. I was trying to compare S4 with Staff of the Forest Lord.

Brutal Gladiator's Staff
86 - 200 Damage Speed 2.00 (71.4 dps)
+50 Str, +66 Sta
hit rating by 26 (1.65% @ L70)
critical strike rating by 50 (2.26% @ L70).
resilience rating by 33 (0.84% @ L70).
attack power by 1197

Staff of the Forest Lord
135 - 298 Damage Speed 3.00 (72.2 dps)
+50 Str, +52 Agi, +78 Sta
attack power by 1110

Average dmg : 143 for Brutal, 216.5 for forest lord.

Are these average damages the ones that get modified? For Mangle and Shred are these the average damage numbers that are scaled percentagewise by these abilities? If so, why wouldnt you prefer the Forest Lord for PvP as it will hit and crit harder giving you more burst? Are they not scaled this way?

If this is this case, the only reason I could see wanting a faster staff is for Omen of Clarity procs, but personally I would rather take higher yellow dmg over more procs that you have no control over.

Weapon speed and damage has entirely 0 impact on damage in feral forms.

I haven't been on this post in a few days/weeks or so but I've read over the posts since my last ones on the different encounters. It seems to me that a lot of bears starting sunwell have the concept that they will need to switch to stam for all the heavy incoming damage and sunwell radiance, which could only be incorrect.

Take a look at this logic that is at the situation: "The sunwell radiance is taking out 20% of my avoidance, so I'm gonna take out even more so that I can soak more hits."

You're taking 9-11k hits ... it's either you get past 27k hp or you might as well stay with your agility. Like, I mentioned a few weeks back that I tank with a very low amount of hp, and other bears commented they don't feel that safe going that low, which is understandable. But I just posted so that the bears just arriving in sunwell don't need to be pressured by their warriors to gem like them with all stam. For the bears who love the badge of tenacity as much as I do, just use that while you are tanking brutallus with a non-armor weapon such as staff of the forest lord or stanchion, and switch into pillar just for stomps. It maxes and mins your effective armor bonus and threat/avoidance.

Like Hibernicus, I have several tanking sets which I rotate through during sunwell bosses and trash (thank god for item rack). The oddest set that I have is my KJ tanking set which has my T6 cat gemmed items with steely naaru sliver and pepe's cloak. Odd combination, but it allows me to survive any random crits on the first string of adds while putting out incredible values of tps. Tanking that first add, I'm usually at 18k hp with pillar on, and then when I'm on KJ, I use stanchion. The reason for those two items, is so that I am at 141 hit and 18 expertise, which has allowed my tps to hit 4400 (haste pot, zerker's call, heroism, haste buff, 3x bm hunters, goa). I can easily sustain 2200 tps with my gear setup.

And I think there was one post about how someone uses commendation since it procs on every wave of adds for muru. You shouldn't ever be that low from either bad heals or too much damage. I typically take less damage than the sentinel tank, opposite warrior tank who has a sheep, and I MT entropius. I've really been just pushing for a very high static amount of avoidance to eliminate rng. Waiting on the chest, legs, and helm and I'll have my sunwell set completed. Currently, those items have been going to our dpsers to speed up our sunwell farm nights. It hasn't been that much of an issue, since none of the bosses wreck me, and my tps has been high enough to keep them content with omen. I am going to start socketing more hit into my gems such as glinting pyrestones for red slots to compensate for the lack of hit in sunwell items.

Astrylian, I haven't taken a look at the newer versions of rawr, but does it break down how much arp factors into threat? All I ever hear from other ppl when I ask how it factors is that it scales with the more you have. But I was just trying to figure out a value that I can gauge it to test how big of an increase it is. I am currently running at 973 arp, last I checked.

There have been 20 posts like yours. Gearing for stamina when you don't have access to sunwell loot yet, aka progressing on brutallus, is arguably a good choice. When progressing further people switch back to agility.

Thanks for the reply guys. I understand cats and bears attack at the same rate regardless of actual weapon speed. I guess I was asking more along the lines of modified dmg attacks, like shred getting a 225% bonus. With a harder hitting slower weapon will your shreds hit harder because dmg gets more of a gain from percentage based modification, or is weapon dmg range completely irrelavant and is shred dmg based completely on AP(obviously other factors go in as well, but im speaking of the percentage bonus increase).

Weapons have 0 bearing on a Druid's attacks. Stats are the only thing that count.

For all purposes (ignoring the stats on the weapon for a minute), it makes no difference if you're holding a Torch of the Damned (3.8 2hander) or a Level One Club of Swiftness (1.0 speed 1hander).

It does absolutely nothing, nada, bugger all.

Thankyou Astrylian for posting the macros. I have tried them as Main Tank in a Tempest Keep run and found them to work very well. The reset time is critical to it functioning properly but one must take into account how often the key is pressed in combat; and that is a user preference.

I attached the /cancelaura blessings to my simple Enrage macro as i do not feel it needs to be included in every swing I make with the bear, just shaving off a few milliseconds of code makes me feel warmer and fuzzier.

Thanks a ton for the explanation- appreciate you guys helping me out, I get it now.

So when you get a percentage based buff on a yellow attack does it increase your feral AP by that percentage? (Like 225% for shred)

This ones got some pretty simple maths behind it, AP ratios are constant as you level.

For 14 Attack power (there about) we gain 1dps.
Cat form weapon speed is 1 attack per second, so 1 dps = +1 weapon damage.
So for any given weapon we effectivley gain 1/14th of its FAP as +damage to our main hand cat weapon.
Then given that shred is 225% damage, the increase is simply a multiplier on that increase.

With some example numbers:

1000 Attack power ~ 71dps.
71 dps = +71 damage on kitty weapon.
71 damage = 159.75 damage on shred.

As far as applied order to multiplication effects, the sensible order would be:

(Base attack power + additional attack power bonuses from armour and talents ) * Attack power multipliers including cat form = total attack power

(Total attack power * weapon speed) = weapon damage bonus from AP

(Base weapon damage + Weapon damage from attack power + Add additional weapon damage effects) * physical damage multipliers IE from talents) = Total weapon damage for ferals

This total weapon damage can then be multiplied by special attacks such as Shred.

If anyone has any corrections feel free to post them. I'm sure this is also handled in about 50 other places on the forum.

"Total AP / 14 * weapon speed = weapon damage bonus from AP" you mean Otherwise that's correct.

So the 1110 FAP on [Staff of the Forest Lord] adds 1110 * 1.1 (HoTW in cat form) = 1221 ap
1221 / 14 = 87.21 additional weapon damage * 1.1 (Naturalist talent) = 95.94 total bonus weapon damage per attack
95.94 * 225% (Shred damage bonus) = 215.86 Shred Damage from 1110 AP on the item.

So I've been wondering is it better to be concerned with being hit capped for feral dps or just to stack more agility? Right now I am at 109 hit rating with 3886 AP and just picked up Madness off Illidari Council.

so that puts you to 129 hit or 109 with madness? If its 129 maybe eat hit food and stack the rest up on agi, put you over the cap. If not maybe think about switching a couple +10agi gems to some 5hit 5 agi, what ive had to do recently.

White hits will miss for full damage, as will finishing moves and OoC procs. Standard yellow hits will not be affected as heavily due to the energy use being lower on missed specials. It's more personal preference to be hit capped because in a "perfect" world of simulators, agility is still worth more point-for-point than hit, and you will still have a reasonable chance to miss even with hit capped due to dodge (unless you stack a lot of expertise as well).

It is also possible to "waste" hit rating by being over the cap. There is no cap on agility, but any point of hit over 142 is wasted against bosses.

The agility vs. hit/expertise argument really comes down to how well you personally can react to misses in your rotation. More hit/expertise allows for a more stable cycle but is lower theoretical dps than using an equivalent amount of agility. If you are good about not immediately mangling after a missed rip then agility becomes closer to the ideal. I prefer to stay somewhat near the hit cap without going too far out of my way and a missed/dodged omen of clarity attack still irritates me to no end.

Hey guys and gals, i've been following this thread for a short period of time and was wondering if you all could help me out a little bit. Last night i was tanking Hyjal 3 and 4 and hear a mage say "can we put a Misdirect up on the tank?" Now i found this incredibly annoying and almost shameful and came here to look for some help. It seemed i was having trouble actually getting a mangle up on the target, are there any suggestions to switching my gear around or something to maxamize TPS? i was sitting at about 1000-1100 sometimes dropping to 990 when the mangle wasnt up or i was reapplying FFF or demo roar. Also, Hyjal 3 stuns me over and over...making it supremely difficult to really get a cycle down. My cycle is usually opening w/ a FFF when he's being pulled to me then opening with a mangle, 3 lacirates, mangle, stack to 5 lacirates, magle, and spam swipe and maul until mangle is off GCD and lacirating again with about 5-6 ticks left on it in case i miss. Am i doing something wrong? Or is my gear off? Any help would be greatly appreciate it.

In terms of Hyjal 3, you can pop [Free Action Potion] prior to the pull to save yourself a bit of the opening grief.

Kaz is a DPS race - so having max threat gear + having misdirects is a good thing. Misdirects are good for hunters anyway - it lowers their threat and raises yours. Kaz isn't that hard of a hitter either, so you can skimp a bit on armor and be okay, still.

I'd strongly recommend getting some expertise on your gear ([Shard of Contempt] is great here), possibly a dps staff like [Staff of the Forest Lord] and go nuts. Also you can probably maul earlier than what you're doing unless you're really low on rage. I usually start with an enrage, FF before he reaches me, maul+mangle and then go into the cycle.

Your gear is not good enough for swipe spam on single target. Your rotation should be (Mangle + Lacerate x3) in limited rage situations. Add Maul when you have no problems with rage.

You need average swipe damage > 250 to make swipe spam better than lacerate. And this probably come true when you have 4T6 . More details here: Feral Druid Megathread#3217