The DPS staff from Naxx-10 is off of KT. All the KT items have a higher itemlevel. First 16 Naxx-10 bosses drop ilvl 200 stuff. KT drops ilvl 213. First 16 Naxx-25 bosses drop ilvl213 stuff, and I assume KT drops 226 or something, haven't seen any KT-25 loot yet.

So yes, of the 4 staves, the two DPS staves are both ilvl213. The low end bear staff is the only ilvl 200 one.

Sorry, that's not the link I meant to post at all. Don't know what happened there. I certainly wasn't planning to take Infected Wounds. They really shouldn't let me near these online talent calculator things, I always fuck them up.

Here you go: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Makes sense. The 36 AP I thought it was missing just ended up being a typo as well. Its somewhat unfortunate the KT staff is likely overkill in the expertise department though.

Regen here is replying to a pessimistic TimWischmeier and he tries to shine the good sides.

This fact angers me even more.

Blues stated that we will be forced to change spec to change role (as every other class). Anyway having to respec when performing a different role is not only fair, but is the reason that will put us together with rogues and mages (if not above em) as top single target dps.
In fact, there aren't more excuses that prevent us to reach them. The "supreme raid utility" (brez and innervate) that we bring is underpar (or maybe just "different grade of usefullness") to the utility that those 2 classes bring.
For those that still don't know, mages bring

Focus Magic - talent - tier 3, arcane (it requires 10 pts, but pretty much all the mages were goin for AT LEAST 18 pts in arcane)
Increases spell power of all raid members by 150. Last 1 min or until 50 charges are expended.


while rogues got

Tricks of the Trade - spell - trainable
The current party or raid member becomes the target of your Tricks of the Trade. The threat caused by your next attack and all actions taken for 6 sec afterwards will be transferred to the target. In addition, all damage caused by the target is increased by 15% during this time.

We're still not sure about the final version of these spells, but surely the utility is looking HUGE. Prolly better than innervate and brez.


Adding to this that they both have some aoe dmg ability, while we have noone, we should have also the right to be ABOVE em as single target dps.



Now, i really don't understand why other classes and even druids still state (in this forum and also in others) that kitty dps should be raised, but only to 95% of rogues'. Someone to 90% (?). Someone else to 80% (!?!). I can understand the random ebayer mage. But other druids... even other ferals!


Did 4 years of "master-of-noone" made us so masochistic?

Just a point of clarification, the only Mages that will go that deep into the Arcane tree are the Arcane Spec'd Mages, it's currently viewed as a gimmick talent that was added to give a raid buff to the Arcane tree.

That buff does not stack with similar buffs provided by the following classes:

Disc Priest, Improved Divine Spirit, 23 talent points
Shaman, All spec's Flametongue Totem, level 28 spell
Elemental Shaman, Totem of Wrath 41 talent points
Demonology Warlocks, Demonic Pact 50 talent points

On subject, from what I've seen, other then the odd loss of +hit/expertise(feral staff exception), the sets aren't looking too bad, and I'm looking forward to playing my Druid in the expansion. My druid is on a second account, so I'm not able to test him in Beta.

I was looking for a pre-raid tanking set for WotLK, and somewhere around Mijae's post I came up with :
Hewn Sparring Quarterstaff
Scabrous-Hide Helm
Amulet of Wills
Spaulders of the Careless Thief
Flowing Cloak of Command
Crystal-Infused Tunic
Shackles of Dark Whispers
Sidestepping Handguards
Ley-Whelphide Belt
Constellation Leggings
QR ZDBlue6 Leather Physical Boots
Titanium Earthguard Ring x2


Is there an update to this list or is it still the "top" to aim fort ?

Thank you alot on your feedback.

I'm working on making all this Theorycrafting available to french furries on my blog.

A few updates from that list I'd make now:

Witch Doctor's Wildstaff
Hood of the Furtive Assassin
Ring of Earthen Might

However, note that there are many level 70 items that are better than the highest blues right now. This include some slots as low as badge gear items like [Footwraps of Wild Encroachment], [Tameless Breeches], and [Handwraps of the Aggressor]. Some of these will change when bonus armor is removed, but there are others that don't have bonus armor (like updated T6 boots). In addition, many helms will be better due to Austere Earthsiege Diamond and the lack of meta sockets in new blues.

All of the level 80 blue arena gear pieces (except shoulders) are technically better than these as well.

A fifth feral staff from Naxx: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...mas_25_152.jpg

In fairness, there are 3 from Naxx 25 (bear, cat, cat(K)), and 2 from Naxx 10 (bear, cat(K)). I wouldn't be at all surprised if another cat focused staff not from KT were to be discovered from Naxx 10. In fact, if the overall loot layout wasn't pretty similar, I'd be more surprised.

I think Blizzard are covering their bases here, assuming that because the 10 man raid isn't a separate instance (like Kara is) but another version of the existing one, people will generally do one or the other. At the moment it looks like I'll be doing raiding in WotLK in the 10 man instances with a few friends who are still playing because we can't be bothered with the 25 man stuff, so this makes sense; it is also what a lot of people who experienced Kara / ZA without doing 25 mans have been calling for. Those who do 25 mans can potentially do the 10 mans too (I assume they aren't on the same lockout ID or anything) for some extra stuff that's a bit lower level.

at least no exp. rating on this 1
but now we know 5 weapons, and all they have 0 hitrating,
0 of 10 set items have hit rating aswell

Still no blue post explanation about such itemization move for a feral.
As we see now, expertise rating is somehow overcaped for us, i expect it will be swaped to hit rating on 1-2 set pieces.

0 of 10... You mean the two 5pieces-sets, right? There are still plenty of items ferals will share with rogues, which will have hitrating on them. I think someone mentioned that already here, it is a very smooth way Blizzard goes there: giving us only expertise on set/weapon slots, so we won't get useless hitrating-values with rogue-gear.

Yeah, but the problem is that they're flooding us with expertise. Expertise is pretty much just equal to hit rating for cat. In addition, our cap for expertise is much lower if we still want to be using Primal Precision. If we don't put points in primal precision, we have two points that can't go anywhere for better cat DPS.

The hit cap for a rogue seems prohibitve, and prolly a rogue will be near that only at the very end of the wotlk content.
Still rogues doesn't seem much worried about that (according to the post i read).

It's obvious that we need less hit to get the cap. But 70% of our dmg comes from specials, while rogues rely much more on white hits (and missing a special is worse than missing a white hit). Does this imply that hit rating is MORE important (before the cap) for us than for rogues? I'm not sure about this. Anyone got the numbers?

Prolly at the start we will share jewelry with warriors (wich need HUGE +hit to touch something with 2x2handers), then we'll move to rogues jewerly when also the tiers items got some +hit. At the end we'll share trinkets and necks with DKs.
Doesn't seem bad.

Another question: how much is the hit cap for us at 80?

Didn't know the new energy system made FB better than shred. Is it near rip?

Also, are you sure we can get 15 cp (or even 12 with 4/4/4 rotation) before rip expires? (maybe thanks to glyphs, i dunno)


Edit: you also replyed to my previous post: according to your model, hit is not THAT important for us.

I'm not sure, but for what i see all the buffs you quoted increase crit or haste or increase spellpower for less than mages. Thus the utility of Focus Magic remains.
Ofc you can raid without that particular buff, provided you have some of the other classes/specs, but you can also live without many brez and innervate.


A clarification: my starting post wasn't a whine at all. I like the way Blizzard is moving to.
I just want to make sure that (at least) all the ferals start thinking that there are no "utility" excuses to gimp our dps. Neither by a little bit.

Hit really isn't that important for Ferals because of the Energy refund on missed specials (and with talents on finishers). Last I read about that, 1 crit was better than 1 hit for Cats even though crit itself isn't that great of a stat to begin with. I used to cap it anyway because I liked predictability as to time powershifts but now that this is not possible anymore, you might as well treat hit as just 'a' DPS stat until you cap unlike all the other classes where hit and expertise are 'the' stats to cap first.

I am talking sustained PvE DPS here obviously. You want to be hit capped in things like PvP for example.

I can see the following pieces with hit:

Tunic of Indulgence - Chest (42)
Dislocating Handguards - Hands (50)
Belt of the Tortured - Waist (50)
Thrusting Bands - Wrist (36)
Strong-Handed Band - Finger (28)
Fool's Trial - Finger (28)
Heritage - Neck (28)

Which gives us a total of around 8% hit (assuming 32.79 per %) however this does assume we'll want to use that neck as it's itemised for the other tanks and the bp and gloves replace over the tier pieces. Am I missing any other desirable pieces from Naxx?

This refers mainly to a subject touched upon a page back or so.

Hybrids in general
With TBC blizzard started adding massive amounts of raid synergy, mainly focused around the hybrid classes. To appease the pure dps classes, they also made sure that hybrid performance was slightly lower than their pure counterparts. The basic premise was that you'd be gaining so much from the hybrid synergy, that it would only be fair that they didn't do as much damage.

With WotLK Blizzard has revamped this model. Raid synergy is no longer focused around bringing the perfect setup of hybrid support classes. Instead both pure and hybrid dps classes have something to bring to a raid. Most likely several players will be bringing any particular buff, which means noone get the extra damage "attributed" to their presence. This in turn allows Blizzard to equalize dps outputs between all classes and dps specs. This change will affect druids too, but for cat dps, and for balance dps.

Hybrids or rolechangers?
The direction Blizzard is taking the druid seems to be one of dual hybrid roles. We now get to be either a caster/healer hybrid, where our talent emphasis will determine which task we excel most at, or we get to be a tank/melee dps hybrid, again with our talent choices determining which task we excel most at. The second thing blizzard is doing is waiting with the druid pass until they are finished with most of our related classes. Warriors have had their major pass, DK seems to be solidifying, Paladins are up next, best I can tell. That means it will be our turn soon.

The overall talent sweep
With build 8926, Blizzard went through a lot of talents and evaluated their individual value, buffing some and nerfing others. This was to ensure that you got a more equal return for your buck, for every talent point spent. The thing worth noting here is that most new changes were done in the balance and resto trees for druids. Right now were are seeing additional bloat, as the designers are brainstorming about new talent features, and seeing how they work out. Every class gets to see this, before a streamlining sweep is made across the talent tree, generally reducing the amount of "mandatory" talents, and allowing for more customization. I'm pretty sure we still have that overall pass of the feral combat tree waiting for us.

The dps balancing
Blizzard has already stated this, but might as well say it again. While they are working on the talent trees they care more about the general feel of the class, than how it actually performs. Sure, performing great also feels good, but as most warlocks will attest, even if you are rocking the meters, just casting shadowbolt for 4 hours every raid night isn't all that fun.
Once they get the talent trees into a state they like, they can more or less just increase base damage and possibly scaling components as they like. Basically it will turn out in the end.

If you spec for bear, you will be a viable main tank, if you spec for cat, you can beat the rogues on the dps meter. I think Blizzard has more or less learned their lesson in that department.

The only concern i really have is: Will tanking in WotLK be fun? It was cool to be a viable tank in TBC, but both Druids and Paladins were pretty lacking in options for interactiveness while tanking. That is my main concern at the moment.

Getting barkskin in bearform, usable frenzied regen and Berserk might be enough, but I won't know until i've tried it.

I was talking aboout PvE DPS too. But your point around PvP raise me other questions: is also expertise worth something in PvP? (i think not because few classes parry)

(with your whole post you made me happy: i'm not the only one that is confident in seeing more kitties in raids, but back on topic)
I think the excess of talents in our tree is necessary, but also good. It will help the specialization and the differentiation between bears, cats and pvpers.

I fear that this will bring to a situation where only a particular build is worth using for a specific role, and homogeneity has more disadvantages than anything.

Expertise is nigh useless against half the classes in PVP, because most of them can't parry, and no one can dodge while stunned or casting. Miss chance is always there, so it's always useful.

All classes can dodge. Unless you are sacrificing loads of stats for expertise I would use it til the dodge cap anyway (which is around 5%). But as has been said, it's not a big deal in PvP if you fight casters or with a partner that can stun for you, but having a Bash or Maim dodged is going to suck (and you cannot always do this from behind because of server desynch).

What exactly is the rotation at 5 Rip / 5 FB / 5 SR? Clearly you don't put 5 SR up each rip cycle since it now lasts 34 seconds at 5 combo points. I'd have to assume 5 Rip and 5 FB would need to be done in one Rip timer which also seems a tad tough to pull off combined with the need for at least some SR.

That is exactly my concern as well. I used to love tanking as I found it to be the most fast-paced and challenging thing to do in a 5-man on my warrior in vanilla, especially thanks to charging around while having hamstrung mobs follow me or using one of my powerful cooldowns to save the day when it was necessary. I felt a great sense of accomplishmend to be able to "play" with those mobs as I made them look like the stupid AI controlled creatures they were and I actually had to give my best to make them do that. The fun didn't just come from outside challenges. Sometimes, you felt like you accomplished something against all odds. The tanking was fun in itself.

However, in BC i tried tanking as a druid and it was completely dull. Yes I could charge every once in a while, but apart from that it was basically: spam swipe on trash, spam maul+mangle on boss (yes I oversimplified a little but it was basically enough to press those 3 buttons randomly in 5 mans...). No emergency cooldowns, no challenge, no variety, no fun. I want to see that skill matters, even if only to a small degree. I am fine with average people doing 80% of what the best tank can do but I need that feeling that I still have room to improve my playstile, otherwise I am bored pretty fast.

Thats why PvE gets old so fast when you run out of content: There is no more challenge and little room for improvement. Nobody likes spamming the rather simple optimal rogue rotation for hours when they don't have more interesting, additional challenges to overcome.

I seriously doubt bearform, frenzied regen and Berserk will be enough to make bear tanking as engaging as warrior tanking used to be but maybe I'm asking too much and maybe people who don't want a challenge as much as I do, would be turned off. But I really hope they give bear something more fun. Shockwave for warriors for example is very nice as you actually need some skill and thinking to use it properly. I also really like how warriors can charge around like crazy now, as it allows a somewhat creative playstile.

I've uploaded an initial version of my spreadsheet (available in my sig). I'm not in beta so I have only been going off information found on forums. With the PTR coming up I might be able to get in and do some testing now. I haven't seen final numbers on stat diminishing returns yet either. So some of my crit and dodge values can be off.

A 5/5/5 rotation does not assume full Rip uptime. An average cycle will be 32-33 seconds, giving full SR uptime. Each finisher takes about 11 seconds, requiring a Mangle roughly every-other finisher. With entry level blues it will be more like 4/5/5 or 5/4/5 instead, depending on crit of course. With the right gear and exactly 35-energy FBs, a 5 FB / 5 FB / 5 SR cycle actually becomes higher damage.