I am kind of annoyed at this point, am I the only one that thinks Feral Loot should be better DPS than the rogue alternative when properly gemmed and enchanted? With the changes and the nerfs to shapeshifter's now I am forced to pull out up to several rogue loots to reach the hit cap while looking for expertise that no feral gear has. Is it time for a reitemization of feral loot? Well other than sticks, cuz those have needed a fix for several months now.

I really don't understand why people want to dilute loot table further and/or cry when they don't get their drops, when they can just fix class mechanics so that at least two classes can share the same drops? Making loot just for feral means that after 1-2 people from that raid gets it, it gets disenchanted. Same thing with Rogue-specific gear. When you integrate those, at least you can get it 4-5 times and not have it go to waste.

While HoTW change still need to be evaluated, being on the test server for less than 24 hours. I feel it is a lot better fix than making the loot table freakishly huge that you're relying on the RNG more than anything else

I would currently not trust the wowhead information regarding FCSR, because it is still not clear if they can already show the expertise rating in their database.

Wait till Monday for correct information from wowhead or till I some of us got onto the test realm and have checked their equipment.

Armor pen on a feral item ....
WTF?
Do these people think we Bite in raids for dps or something?
Or did we really need more threat in bear? Admittedly, expertise is going to put paladin/warrior tanking threat up quite a bit along with devastate changes.

No ZA weapon? Not surprised. Like I said before, I predict 1 feral item in ZA. The bracers *might* be a superior tanking option to the pvp ones, depending on if you are willing to socket defense.

I'm at ptr and at least Clefthoof Hide Leggings, Earthwarden and Shapeshifter's has FCSR converted directly to expertise (ie, Shapeshifter's has 20 expertise rating)

That is good to hear, now does expertise actually do anything for druids?

i dont like the changes...
AP instead for STR will make us just scale way more less...
They sould make it Feral Strength not FAP

Uh AP is obtained from Str, Agi and direct AP (FAP as well). How will this make us scale worse?

Based on the official description of expertise, I'd say yes:

As cat you'll fight only gain one benefit, anti-dodge, unless you get your expertise high enough that the anti-parry is larger than a mob's parry value, at which point you could in principle attack it from in front (which you are not going to do anyhow, because you want to shred, but the inherent possibility is there - that particular hypothetical is probably of more interest to rogues with combat-swords build).

You'll be able to achieve a higher total reduction in attacks that don't land since the expertise substracts from other portions of the "I'm not hitting stuff" than hit rating does. That's not just good, it is potentially great, but it comes at the cost of having to achieve your 9% hit solely through hit rating gear. In conclusion, you can get a better total reduction in the number of attacks that don't do damage than in 2.2 but it makes more gear to achieve it.

For tanking or praticularly offtanking feral weapon skill was bloody marvelous, and, again based on the official description of it, it still looks bloody marvelous - just in a different way. Sure, it won't give you as many more harm-dealing blows vs a L73 as weapon skill would (3% for 5 weapon skill), but reducing the mobs ability to parry by 1.25 % is almost worth it by itself without even considering the dodge reduction. I'm pretty sure that we all hate mobs parrying us, especially those unfortunate parry streaks that occasionally do happena and can turn a merely bad situation into a nightmare.

The interesting thing is, of course, whether it works in practice the way it is described in the patch notes.

What's most interesting is that they used to want weapon skill rating to be a PVE-preferenced stat, and now it looks to be the ultimate PVP stat.

BTW-- does this change make [Shoulderpads of the Stranger] really, really good? Am I putting my Shadowprowler's in the bank so I can use my T4 chest for the set bonus instead of shoulders?

Has anyone been able to test our supposed ability to cycle forms and macro in instant pots and healthstones and such on a single button press?