I haven't been able to make the link work yet, but yes, that prot warrior is almost certain to be doing 1.6k dps on Teron, who has virtually no armour. Plus ferals have been tracked doing well over 2k dps on that fight, so it's pretty silly to pick one data point and try to make an argument for prot warriors. We have 3 in the guild, although we'd never run with more than 2, and we'd definitely use another feral if a top quality one came along.

To be fair I had a couple unholy frenzy buffs during that 2500 Kaz'rogal. A fully decked out prot warrior with an ideal group can indeed put up 1800 dps. While that may sound impressive, a fully decked out druid in an ideal group can put up 2100+ and bring lotp (which by itself can be up to 500dps). Is either scenario really applicable though? At least it's far more likely that your prot warriors will get their ideal set of gear since blizzard loves to itemize for warriors.

Anyway, on to what I came here for:

1. [Grimgrin Faceguard] = 70 agi
   [Item not found!] = 16 def + 17 dodge
2. [Necklace of the Deep] = 41 agi
3. [Thunderheart Pauldrons] = 56 agi
   [Greater Inscription of Warding] = 10 def + 15 dodge
4. [Illidari Cloak] of Agility = 31 agi
   [Enchant Cloak - Greater Agility] = 12 agi
5. [Nether Shadow Tunic] = 66 agi
   [Formula: Enchant Chest - Exceptional Stats] = 6 agi
6. [Insidious Bands] = 38 agi
   [Formula: Enchant Bracer - Major Defense] = 12 def
7. [Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation] = 55 agi
   [Formula: Enchant Gloves - Superior Agility] = 15 agi
8. [Belt of Deep Shadow] = 52 agi
9. [Skulker's Greaves] = 62 agi
   [Nethercleft Leg Armor] = 12 agi
10. [Nyn'jah's Tabi Boots] = 49 agi
    [Formula: Enchant Boots - Dexterity] = 12 agi
11. [Delicate Eternium Ring] = 25 agi + 16 dodge
    [Formula: Enchant Ring - Stats] = 4 agi
12. [Arcane Loop] of Eluding = 21 agi + 21 dodge
    [Formula: Enchant Ring - Stats] = 4 agi
13. [Shadowmoon Insignia] = 36 def + 32 dodge
14. [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch] = 38 dodge
15. [Voodoo Hex-Staff] of Agility = 56 agi
    [Formula: Enchant 2H Weapon - Major Agility] = 35 agi

I have assembled everything on this list except for the pants (which I've de'd hundreds of times, sigh). However, when I plug it all into Rawr it gives me 12.633% miss and 86.4% to dodge with every single buff activated (except idol which is off). This post: http://elitistjerks.com/636595-post1841.html somehow works out to be 12.88% miss + 95% dodge with very similar gear. I'm down about 30 agi from not having sunwell loots and no night elf racial, but those aren't anywhere near 10% dodge.
If I exchange the tunic for the crafted one with 4 more agi, the cloak with the 33agi version (+2) and added 1 agi from shahraz boots, and add 10 agi from Embrace of the Dawn - Spells - World of Warcraft I hit 100.2% dodge+miss. Is this right? It seems significantly harder then all the posts floating around saying 106%+ are possible without idol.

I really don't want to blow 20 spinels to find out the hard way.

As far as prot warriors/paladins go you never really need more than 1 each, everything else is ferals since they're pretty much just as good for tanking while being able to put out good dps.
While having a protadin reduces even the ferals to mostly dps on trash (ours tanks entire waves in MH, we don't even bother taunting off, our new MT was laughed at when he tried to taunt an Abo and almost died in the process of healers being shocked by someone other than dps-ers taking dmg).
Ferals make great tanks for any fight that doesn't require spell reflect and maybe isn't a first kill (LS/SW are so good for those that a warrior MT is great) and even on those bosses that can't crush are quite common and make Feral tank a very nice thing to use (Azgalor, Archimonde).

Call me suspicious, but are YOU the GM who's against Ferals? You seem to be arguing the point here digging up some WWS exception rather than the rule report to prove something. I mean seriously this discussion is old and has been regurgitated so many times. If someone can read this thread and still not understand what a Feral brings to a raid then they do not deserve to be in charge of it.

First issue is: a geared feral is a perfectly reasonable 4th tank. If your GM doesn't understand this, track down WWS parses of ferals tanking Anetheron/Shahraz/Archi/etc and show them how effective ferals can be in terms of average/max hits taken.

Second issue: Don't forget Feral Faerie Fire.

I assume if you don't have a feral for raid-optimization purposes, then you certainly don't have a moonkin. And resto druids need to shift out of tree to put up Faerie Fire, so most likely, if you don't have a feral it isn't up. Checking Toskk's real quick, I get a 30 DPS difference between keeping it up and not, for a T4-geared druid. It'll only be better from there.

So your raid buffs are:
(Faerie Fire):610 armor penetration to every melee in the raid-- at least 30 DPS x 7-9, or about 250 raid DPS
5%-6% (depending on idol use) crit rating for your group (typically around 80-100 DPS for every melee), so somewhere around 300-400 raid DPS.
Mangle for all bleeds (a 30% buff to each rogue's ruptures, which is 10% of their DPS, assume DPS around 1500, then rogues get .3 * .1 * 1500 = 45 DPS), plus bonuses to deep wounds for DPS warriors. This could be a 150 raid DPS buff or more.
Healing to your group (won't save a life most likely, but will save the healers mana; would you ever NOT spend 2 talent points on it?)
An extra battle res in the raid-- if a DPS class dies early because of stupidity/lag/"bad luck", you can res them. At that point, you can essentially claim all their DPS post-death as DPS which the raid wouldn't have had if you weren't there. Even if you're doing the res instead of a tree, it just means that the heals on tanks don't get interrupted.

From the above-- you'll be bringing around 800 raid DPS that's not on your personal meter by being in the melee group, before you res someone, and not counting healing for your group. Probably 600-700 DPS in a hunter group, and possibly 500 + more threat + minimal healing in the tank group. Even if you're in a hunter group, their LOTP DPS is increased even more by not having to Mend Pet as much; you're also increasing time on a survival hunter's on-crit buffs, if you have one.

I don't know a gear level where the first feral druid is being out-DPSed by 800 by anyone except mages/locks on AOE (having just started full clears of Hyjal/BT, I tend to be only 200-300 DPS behind our rogues; you could argue the DPS they beat me by is almost all DPS from the buffs I give them; no warglaives yet, though).

Plus, the feral can tank.

A quick check shows that you're actually 52 agi (you list the [Illidari Cloak] as 31, and I had it as 33; was I wrong on that?) below the max on that list (see also my earlier list, pre-2.4), plus missing the Night-Elf racial talent, and I wonder (yes, I haven't used it myself) whether Rawr includes the unlikely [Moonglade Cowl] set bonus.

I'm curious to see what other's opinions are for feral pvp itemization if the proposed change to NI goes through (assume 50/100% of agi to healing, 10/20% of ap to healing received in kitty(and caster?). I realize other numbers have appeared on the PTR tooltip but lets assume those for now. Although I'm using myself as an example the overall point/question is more general in nature. I currently have around 500agi and 3000ap in pvp gear (so +500 healing and +600 to getting healed) and my resilience is only around 220.

I'm far from a hardcore pvp'r (just do casual 2s and 3s) but would like to improve and perhaps make more of an effort. Right now my pvp gear isn't so hot as you'd expect from someone who only got in the arena game a couple weeks into s3. I have s1 in 3 slots and the s3 bp (prioritized this for pve purposes). I am currently using the deathblow goggles for my helm and I have about 2000 arena points saved up...which helm should I get or how should I spend them?

Relative to my deathblow goggles (+48 to healing before gems) I could get the S3 helm and have improved survivability, similar offense/burst and +31 to healing (net -17). Or I could get the S2 helm for cheaper and have improved survivability, less offense/burst (although not horrible) and +78 healing(!) (net +30). Is s2 gear more valuable again? I am no longer sure how to evaluate the tradeoffs now that feral healing is somewhat viable. Item budget (ilevel) doesn't seem to really help since we can now add agi to healing and that basically gives us 'free' item points we did not have before (ignoring current NI). What is a new pvp'r to do?

This doesn't even address the fact that the 2.4 engineering goggles will have 61 agi (+61 healing!) before gems. How do we weigh that against the added survivability of the existing pvp helms? I see similar hard decision in other slots as well. Weapon for example...badge staff with much higher dps and 52 agi or s2/3 weapon with zero agility?

How 'valuable' has agi become now relative to other pvp stats?

That said, work blocks the wow forums (and many other gaming related sites) so I apologize if there has been a definitive change to the PTR NI again since I last checked.

edit: fixed accidental note of healing as +10/20% of agi (which would be worthless)

My understanding (haven't checked PTRs personally but have been following developments fairly closely) is that NI has been changed for a while now to 100% agility as + healing and a 20% bonus to healing done to you in Cat form. At present this 20% bonus also seems to apply in caster form as well, whether that's a bug or not though isn't clear.

Edit: Just to clarify this 20% bonus to healing received is just a straight multiplier to incoming healing. Not based off agility in any way.

In terms of feral PVP discussion I must admit I've been wondering whether it was worth a seperate thread in the PVP forum. I don't personally have the experience to put something together to kick things off unfortunately but trying to include a detailed PVP feral discussion in this thread which has been heavily PVE focused generally would seem a bit on the messy side.

Fixed my post w/re to bonus healing.

I thought about posting this in the pvp forum but I could almost hear the crickets chirping already. I know that some pvp'rs do post here and I didn't want to create a really broad topic. It would appear that feral viability would increase with this change...might spark some more interest. Two feral 2s teams actually sound pretty nice (as well as other feral combinations).

Despite what people are trying to say otherwise, there is really no evidence to suggest that using a druid to fill a pure DPS slot is at all optimum. A good hunter, warlock or rogue has the potential to add significantly more RDPS than a dps druid. Using wwsscoreboard for some quick comparisions, if you comparing Antarin (ranked 2 druid) to Intriken (rank 2 hunter) to Mitski (rank 2 rogue) it looks like: Antarin - 1347, Intriken - 1776, Mitski - 2846. In fact, Antarin's 2500 DPS on Kaz'Rogal is the only example of a druid cracking the top 50 for any fight in either MH or BT. Not only that, the dps drop off between positions is much greater for druids, suggesting that it is not easy to deliver this high level of DPS (requires lots of experience and a favorable setup). There are 30 rogues that average 1700dps or more, but only 15 druids that average 1000 or more. Although, this is probably also due to the fact that very few feral druids actually dps every fight.

All that being said, I have a feeling in 2.4 that feral druids will become the premiere tank for trash, with protection paladins being a close second. This is actually a fairly important role as when you are doing multiple farm instances a week, how fast you can clear trash really determines how much you can accomplish.

In any case, I think my main point in this post is to recommend to any feral druid trying to get a raid spot to position themselves as an offtank and make your case based on threat gen, durability, raid-wide dps buffs like mangle and FF, and the ability to quickly transition to a reasonably efficient dps'r. I would say that trying to get a pure dps slot is only for a small amount of feral druids with the experience, gear, and raid leader support to pull it off.

Sorry, I may be missing something here, but what exactly is happening in 2.4 to make Druids the premiere trash tank? Surely you're not basing that on the Lacerate change alone. High threat is a non-issue, Warriors aren't exactly struggling for threat these days, and Paladins are amazing for multimob pulls. I'd make a case for us for our versatility and adaptability as opposed to things like high threat and durability.

Your comparison of 'top rogue dps' with 'top druid dps' is just wrong for so many different reasons. NO rogue is going to do 2800 dps consistently, not by a long shot - in fact, the highest dps of a rogue ever achieved on teron is 2794 according to wwsscoreboard (Mitzki has so high dps because it's average and he has several fights with 5000+ dps due to unholy frenzy in MH).

From my experience, a decently equipped feral druid does about 1800 dps (decently meaning he lacks the more rare dps items he passed for in favor of rogues etc.), a perfectly geared one can reach 2000 dps.

I know there are reports for druids topping 2200 dps but that is really situational and usually involves proc- and critluck or bloodlust stacking.

A perfectly geared rogue does around 2400-2600 dps. Yeah you can do 2800 or even more but that effectively the same as 2200 dps ferals.

So, granted they have the same gear, the difference is about 400-600 dps, add about 200 to that if the druid passed on some items - but then again, a rogue without top equip does less damage, too.

So it really comes down to a difference of about 500 dps on top gear level. LotP, Mangle, FFF alone are worth about that, battlerez, innervate and tankability are just the icing on the sweet feral cake.

Relying on a WWS of an entire run comparing a pure DPS class and a hybrid utility class is supposed to prove exactly what? I also noticed that the top two rogues (3k+ and 2800 odd) are the exceptions whereas the rest of the pack sit at 2200 down. I'm guessing best gear setup possible + best group setup but using them as the rule for comparison is deceptive.

If the raid leader doesn't believe a feral druid would be useful, *shrug* you are stuck. That doesn't change the fact that they are useful on many levels, do supplement a significant amount of DPS if in a well setup group and give you a lot more tactical flexibility.

keep cool, i'm a feral too

This argument is old and done. A guild that's using more than 2 Prot Pally + Prot Warrior isn't getting his money's worth. A Feral Druid is worth it in a raid overall (excluding we-swap-people-every-pull), they don't even have to be that good to surpass the 3rd warrior/pally in terms of value. Any raider that hasn't realized this by now hasn't been paying enough attention to warrent being allowed to make decisions when it comes to raid makeup (likely also think Rogues/Hunter/Shaman is a good group) Yes, a top geared fury warrior is going to do better DPS than a Feral Druid, and a top geared prot warrior is going to be a better tank on many fights, but having the Fury tank or the Prot DPS is just stupid.

Can we get back to talking about how no one cares about PvE Mutilate yet Blizzard continues to Itemize Daggers better than Feral Staves, and I'm sick of Badge Loot > any other idol.

You'd probably still want to reposition in 25 man raids (Blade Flurry and Whirldwind aren't explicitly mentioned, could be oversight or intentional) but this will make 5 mans a lot less irritating. Magister's Terrace especially can be annoying in some of the tight corridors towards the end.

Ironically, this is exactly what happened on the last 15% of our Kael kill yesterday, our prot warrior ate shit because of vapors and we had to play aggro ping pong (ice block, feign death, etc) until we got to someone who could hold aggro. It was badass.

(but I digress)

The other night we were talking about tanks being hit capped and how two of our prot warriors both happen to have 142 hit rating. I was wondering if there are any druid tanks who are hit capped or over 100 HR? I am pretty sure we need the HR for the first Sunwell boss, don't we?

At least for Brutallus and Kalec, Hit is only as important as in every other fight - therefore I would say nobody uses more than the usual hit from the T6 legs and RoS neck, which is ~3% Hit.

Though our warris aren't somewhere near 9% hit in their usual tank gear.

I think that's being more than a little bit generous, at least on the buff to rogues. We typically have 2 or 3 ferals in the raid, so I think it's safe to assume I get the benefit from mangle, but my rupture damage only ranges from 3-5% of my total. So if it's 5% *after* mangle, and I'm doing 1500 DPS, mangle is only responsible for 17.3 of that.

Now if I look at the last time I got to spank a boss unfettered, I did 2090 on Rage Winterchill Tuesday(yay for good luck with death and decay on ranged, suckers). 4% of that was rupture, so if all of my ruptures were boosted by mangle, I got 19.3 DPS from it. Still a far cry from 45.

Maybe if you had a sub rogue with serrated blades prioritizing rupture over SnD it would be 10% of his damage. I dunno.

LotP also doesn't give me anywhere near 100DPS. I wanna say more like 40-50, but I haven't got a spreadsheet on hand at work to check the exact numbers.

I'm not saying the buffs aren't good, and I have no problem with well-played ferals in the raid, but it seems like you're over-estimating the buffs just a touch.

Rawr Beta 12 posted!

DOWNLOAD: https://www.codeplex.com/Release/Pro...eleaseId=11411

Beta 12:
* Rawr now includes models for Moonkins, Mages, and Warlocks!
* Many more stats are tracked about items, for use in new and upcoming models.
* Fixed a bug in the options for Cat, so that it updates the label for the value of expose weakness.
* Icons now pull from the more reliable wowarmory.com instead of the old flakey armory.worldofwarcraft.com.
* You can now safely run multiple copies of Rawr at the same time by duplicating Rawr's folder. Each running copy of Rawr must be in its own folder, with its own cache xml files.
* Fixed some bugs that would cause Rawr to crash.
* The Splash screen has finally been redone! It now has a background image, and an icon for each model that is loaded, along with the version #s of each model, Rawr's UI, and Base.
* Tooltips on the calculations should really last a long time now, for everyone, I hope.
* The ItemCache should save faster, load faster, and take up alot less space, per item.
* There's a menu item now, to reload the character data from the Armory for the current character.
* The Projectile and Projectile Bag slots will now be hidden if they don't apply to the current model.
* Improved how Rawr handles requests for data from the Armory.
* When unable to access the Armory will now handle it much more gracefully. If you see blank icons, anywhere, that's probably the case.
* There's now an options dialog. More will come in there, but for now, there's customizable proxy settings. If you were previously unable to use Rawr due to being behind a proxy that was different from your IE settings, or required different authentication, give this a try.

The only disadvantage of our tank-quality gear lacking +hit/expertise is MTing bosses or heaving hitting trash (the guys before Teron are about all I can think of...). Other than that, its relatively easy to keep 9% hit and moderate expertise (I wear 4% worth of -dodge and parry) while tanking trash. This makes a ridiculous difference in terms of our threat generation.

Presently, I'm having a lot of fun playing with 4/5 T6 + S3 Helm + ZA Staff + S3 Bracer + Expertise Neck + Expertise Belt + Expertise Ring + Hyjal Ring + Treads of Den Mother + Madness + Shadowmoon. While it only rings in at about 26k armor, this is more than enough to handle any trash mob in the game and easily gives me the highest single target threat of any tank and swipe threat considerable to very well geared prot Paladin.