Feral have a 15% chance to resist fear with talents and a 15% chance to resist AoE effects with talents. I know it use to be that you then had a 30% chance to resist AoE fears. Now that we get Fear ward on both sides, but it has a longer cooldown. Would a resisted fear eat a fear ward proc or would the fear ward go off before you had a chance to resist it?

I never saw any testing on the AoE fear being effected by Predatory Instincts but I do remember people asking if it would, can you enlighten me or are you being hopeful about how it works?

If you have a fear ward active on you when you are feared you are immune to the fear and it consumes the ward, I have never seen a resist in these circumstances.

If you go feral without Primal Tenactiy and play on an AoE fight. You'll be experencing a much higher resistance rate than the normal resistance rate from a boss ability (for best results, don't buff yourself with MoTW)

Granted, I have not test this to a large sample scale, I have been at least looking at the resist rate of the Nightbane kills very early on, and more recently, the Archimonde ones.

hi, ive been looking at the modified kitty - calculator for 2.3 patch The Druid Wiki » ToskksDPSGearMethod
and i dont quite understand how the expertise rating can be valued as high as it is....

negating dodge and parry in catform wont realy help much since you should be attacking from behind the target, thus making the stat only work for doges since mobs can't parry from behind.
Am i missing something here? The stat is prolly one of the best tanking stats, but for a druid in catform it seems to me like any other stat would be better almost

For most dpsing its very slightly worse than hit rating due to caster mobs being unable to dodge while casting. I guess also if you can somehow stun a mob you're dpsing hit rating is better since you can't dodge when stunned either.

you cant compare it directly to hit rating though?
you need 142 hitrating to remove all chance of ever "miss" wheras expertise rating never negates the chance to "miss", only "dodge" and "parry", which in turn only affects "dodge" since you should be attacking from behind the mob...

If it affected your chance to miss aswell id say its worth it, otherwise its a tank stat.

It all comes down to itemization. It's not too difficult to get the necessary hit rating to remove misses off the table, even for the majority of druids at level 70 who are in Karazhan / tier 4 gear. Now Expertise gives a clear stat to remove dodges off the table as well; even for the odd feral druid who only ever does cat DPS, that's still worthwhile.

As the numbers keep increasing for hit rating and such on gear, it becomes increasingly easy to reach the hit cap; if they put in more gear with Expertise, that can be fit into outfits as well. Of course this is all reset with the next expansion, with higher levels and new numbers that have to be reached. But until then, at the very least, there's no reason not to try to get gear with Expertise, while still reaching the hit rating cap.

So, quick review of the combat table.

Misses, dodges, and parries are all separate events. To eliminate "misses", you get hit rating. Expertise does nothing to mitigate misses. You "miss" 9% of the time against a boss, and thus you need 142 hit rating to reach that 9%.

However, even if you mitigate the misses, you still get dodged. the current theory on the amount dodged by a boss is somewhere between 4 and 8 percent (I haven't kept up with the exact number, but the last one I heard was 5.5%). You would need 5.5/.25, or 22 expertise, which is 22 * 4 = 88 expertise rating to reach 5.5%. This is completely separate from misses and Hit Rating.

However, a miss and a dodge are effectively the same: each is a non-hit, with the same energy penalty for not hitting the target, and are thus often categorized the same in things like Recount.

I have seen, multiple times, a resist on a fear while warded and it did not consume the fear ward. I think it will be easy to keep fear ward up on a druid with about 3-4 priests in most encounters. Easier than a warrior, although the warrior could stance dance if he's not warded, of course.

I was thinking about Expertise, and I realise that we are the only class whithout a talent with it.
In 2.3 patch, Prot warriors will have expertise through Defiance.
Fury warriors will have Weapon Mastery (and Precision for +hit).
Rogues have Weapon Expertise, Mace Spec (Precision too).
Enhance Shamans, well... no Expertise, "just" 9% hit through talents.

And we have nothing similar. Neither for tanking nor dpsing.

In addition, all other classes have lots of items (armor that we could wear, but mostly weapons) that add Expertise and hit.

Our feral itemisation is really poor regarding those 2 stats.

My point is, we have 2 talents that are useless (Nurturing Instinct) or not that usefull (Predatory Strikes). Why not adding to one of those, or simply changing them, into a Expertise bonus or dodge reduction ?

This will help filling a hole in our crappy itemisation as well as keeping us more in line with other dps classes.

What is your point about that ?

I'd say we get 6% and we share 5%.