Very, very lofty ideas. Poster above me summed it up well by saying Yeah, thats not going to happen anytime soon. The versatility that everyone seems to overlook with Feral spec is that we are afforded the ability to tank, DPS, and even heal (gear dependent) within the same spec. That is already a bone of contention with many other classes, especially warriors. I don't see Blizzard compounding the gripe by adding an all powerful set of armor, or even too many more caster oriented Feral talents (like N.I.). I am sure we could put together a true "hybrid" set of gear, it would probably look alot like S2 Gladiator, in that it affords us all the nifty stats we are so dependant on. The only problem with that is we will be thrust into mediocrity in every facit.

I would rather work hard farming/raiding to build min/max sets that optimize my role for a particular fight than to roll around with a single set of gear that lands me middle-of-the-road in every regard.

You're wrong. Against Bloodboil, I can wear "mostly" DPS gear (switching a ring, trinkets, belt, boots to tank), switch to heal with an 8k mana pool if he enrages against a particularly squishy raid member and make the difference between him living and dying, switch to tank if one of our tanks go down and catch up enough on aggro enough to save the raid, and end up in the top 10 in DPS, all in one gearset.

As a druid, you can only "sustain" one role for a fight-- in the above case, DPS. You'll only be good for about a minute pumping out max heals, you can't really sustain tanking the whole fight, but you can definitely be the difference-maker between wiping and winning, in every aspect of that fight.

Well I am Top DPS in my guild, and Top Tank, so the guild puts me in DPS whenever the online Tanks are good, I have a Cat DPS gear and a Tanking one.

On my Cat DPS Gear, I have a trinket that wasn't posted here [Abacus of Violent Odds] in conjuntion with [Skyguard Silver Cross].
I would like to know if the Abacus trinket is better than the [Crystalforged Trinket].

And if I should try to replace either with [Bloodlust Brooch] or [Hourglass of the Unraveller] (these last 2 I don't have but I can get them easy)

In Cat form I have 3140 AP with 39.83% Crit Unbuffed(only Motw), I wonder if I should change Strength Gems/enchants I have for More Agility to Achieve more Crit, or there is a Crit Cap?

Fully Raid Buffed I get around 3550 AP and 46% Crit with [Elixir of Major Agility]

Well I leave the Armory link to my character where u can see the Gems and Enchants and Gear I currently have equipped. > The World of Warcraft Armory

Looking forward to keep Improving myself

DragonMaster

Yeah, it was a "wish list," however, my point was that I'd like to change how we function overall. I'd like less focus on primary tanking (feral talents should just provided an improved armor modifier which allows us, in full DPS gear, to offtank) in exchange for more flexibility and hybridization.

We shouldn't need to have two separate sets to offtank and DPS. If we're stuck full-time tanking something designed for a shield/plate-wearer, ie. Bloodboil, our competitiveness should come from purely from our stamina pool (via more stamina oriented gear, possibly offset items). However, for almost every other scenario, we should be able to primary DPS and effectively offtank in the same gear.

"You're wrong," I'm not exactly sure what you mean -- however, what you stated is basically exactly what I was saying above. Our primary role should DPS, and we should have the ability to either offtank or emergency heal. We are far more flexible in the DPS role, than in the tank role, however our primary raid role is offtanking.

In high-tier gear, in the DPS role, its much more viable to shift bear and offtank something (especially in T6) or shift caster and heal something. However, while tanking in DPS gear, our stamina pool is pathetic, our overall damage mitigation is spikey, and we're susceptible to crits. While healing in DPS gear, we have zero mana regen and no "hybrid" way of restoring it (see my idea above about "aspect of the viper" while in feral forms). In equivalent/traditional tank gear, our Cat DPS is significantly lower (due to wasted budget on defense, resilience, extra armor, and avoidance) and while active tanking, we're for the most part unable to heal (and still suffer from the same mana problems).

Overall, I'm pushing for something exactly like the S3 arena set for my "wish list" single PvE set. Amazing stamina and ideal for Cat DPS (agi, str, crit, hit, armor pen) except with armor values almost double their current PvP values. Remember, I want to completely abolish the idea of armor-laden weapons, rings, and trinkets (its a pathetic bandaid as mentioned above and completely goes against the idea of tank/dps hybrid). Our only primary tanking stat should be stamina if we're stuck in that roll for an entire fight.

Just look at the complete failure Blizzard gives us in terms of Armor progression:
-- Trinket: Badge of Tenacity, 308 armor, BoE available pre-kara
-- Rings: #1 is from exalted kara, #2 is from Magtheridon, the 2nd 25-man instance in outlands
-- Weapons: Earthwarden, a purchasable exalted cenarion reward, has the same armor as our best tanking weapon
-- In terms of our 5 pieces of tier gear:
T4: 16247 bear form armor, 158 stamina
T5: 16373 bear form armor (126 more armor), 196 stamina (38 more stamina, +1 socket)
T6: 17336 bear form armor (963 more armor than T5; 1089 more than T4), 217 stamina (21 more stamina, +1 socket than T5; 59 more stamina, +2 socket than T4)
[note: I ignored agility so the values would be a little higher but within ~100 armor]
-- Our only true armor upgrades for Feral came from our Belt and Boots.

So it's pretty clear, Blizzard has the same idea I have -- bear form should just be innately powerful for offtanking -- however they failed to implement proper itemization and insisted on requiring additional armor be gained through stupid items like armor rings, trinkets, and weapons. When clearly, a stronger Feral armor modifier should of been the solution. (I'm sure some of this failure relates back to the big stamina, armor, and damage nerf.)

I really don't see how any of that gear would be considered a failure. You in essence want us to be able to wear pure DPS gear and have talents that somehow modify our stats in bear form to up our AC...and stam...? I don't see why wearing "tank gear" to tank a mob denotes a failure on Blizzard's part in terms of itemization...

So you decided you don't like carrying two gear sets around/being forced to tank when you'd rather dps/etc, and went something like this:
"OK, so I don't like how druids are, lets buff this bit, and this bit, and this bit, that should do fine".

Sorry to say it so bluntly, but what the fuck were you thinking?

It's a failure because the net armor gain from 5 pieces of T4 to T6 is only ~1200 bear form armor. Hell, a Warrior gains 6750 armor in T4 and 8156 armor in T6 -- 1406 armor, ~200 more than we do, and they don't get the bear form modifier!

Only a full-time OT role should require additional gear (ie. armor/gems/trinkets loaded with stamina). Every other encounter should let you DPS and tank in the same gear. Defense and resilience should never enter the equation, nor the need for defensive enchants.

This would all be possible currently, if, through feral talents, we could get -5.6% crit (instead of -3%), tiered gear provided more significant armor upgrades, and a stronger bear form modifier.

I'm struggling to understand the specifics of how a boss' parry mechanic works. I'm chalking this up to my lack of theorycrafting skills, so if anyone can dumb this down for me a little I'd appreciate it.

What I think I understand is that when a boss parrys you, their next swing gains a "haste type" buff making it land sooner. In Dukes' example he's looking at a 2.0 swing speed gaining a 40% speed buff. In my mind, this means that the melee hit is still going to hit for the same amount of damage it always does, it's just going to happen sooner. But then Dukes' says "you gain 20% damage per parry on an attack" which seems to mean to me that the next melee swing will do 20% more damage than the normal melee hit. Maybe it's just a wording thing, but to me this seems like two different things.

So my first question is, what should I be seeing when looking at parrys? The same amount of damage per melee swing, but more of them? Or, a slightly bigger melee swing after each parry?

Looking at my WWS stats from Morogrim last night brings me to my second question. I'm wondering if someone can clarify what these two separate columns in the WWS hit table for a mob are for?
So we've got the Normal melee swings and the Landed melee swings. Seems pretty straightforward, except I'm not sure what buffs, spells, abilities make his melee swings land for more than the normal. Is this a direct reflection of the damage he's gaining due to parrys? Or is it displaying the difference due to other factors?

Thanks very much if anyone can help me with this.

J

I am not a raiding druid and do most of my shape shifting in various Battle ground situations. lately I am finding that my shape shifting skills are extremely compromised. Up until the last few days, or current patch possibly, I was able to shift multiple times one after the other. I used this to good effect while in combat with mages who liked to drop ice all over the place.

The last few days when ever I try to shape shift I am getting stuck out of form and my macro seems to be nearly worthless. I did some macro modifications which helped a bit but still it's so annoying and at times fatal.

Am I alone in seeing this?

what I have tried is a basic macro with only one line: /Cast cat form. This has been effective in the past but I have also used the two line version: /cancel form /cast cat form.

In an attempt to see if I could do better I also tried /cancel form /cast cat form /cast dire bear form. This 3 line verison was handy because it seemed to work better and had the effect of working like a toggle switch. Each time I worked the macro if I was in cat form I switched to bear form and vice versa.

Perhaps I need to rework my macros or there really is a problem. I would like to know because I really enjoy this feral druid now and dont want to put him away waiting on a fix.

I realize that I may be on the squishy side still with barely 200 resiliance and a mixed bag of s1, s2, s3 and even some green gear but I am working my way down the list. I at least now have enough for the set bonus but still a ways to go.

please let me know as I am pretty sure I am not alone in this.

Thanks,

Horzy

It's the wording you are tripping over, you have the concept down I think.

Given an encounter with a set time, let's say 2 minutes, and a set swing speed of 2 seconds, you can figure out exactly how many times you will be hit. Now, when you parry a boss he receives a reduction in the time it takes for him to make his next attack. Ugh, I wanted to avoid math but here goes...

Based on our scenario you will be hit 60 times. Lets assume it is for a static amount, and in an effort to keep it easy on my brain lets say the boss hit's for 1000.

So, in the course of that fight, assuming either you do not parry, or their is no parry mechanic you will take 60,000 damage.

Now, when you parry and it speeds up his attack you are increasing the amount of swings that the boss can take in that 2 minute window. Using dukes math
5 parries (each parry providing a decrease in attack time of 0.4 seconds) will provide enough time (2 seconds of time saved) to add an extra attack inside our 2 minute window, thus increasing the damage dealt by 1000 over that 2 minute window, and an effective DPS increase of 8.333.

What bar mod do you use?

I would recommend bartender3 because it allows you to bind shapeshifting to keys and eliminates the need for macros. Actually, you really shouldn't need macros even with the default UI because of the addition of direct shifting 2 patches ago, so if you are getting stuck in caster, definitely get away from your macro's and go with the default shift keys.