Monedula

I am slowly leveling my alchemist and found she could make elixirs of expertise. 45 expertise.
Now whenever I felt the need to use an elixir I was using agility elixir to get more dodge. 45 agility.

Agility is straight forward: more dodge, and more threat (more AP and more crit).
Expertise however does the same, mitigation (passive, because the boss will not parry as much and will not get the increase in damage buff) and threat (you miss less).

Dodge gives diminishing returns. Te more you have the less valuable agility becomes.
Expertise cap is somewhere around 15% on bosses. Might be higher or lower, but 15% is somewhat the standard now as I understand it. No more expertise needed after the "cap".

Now lets say that 45 expertise rating from the elixir gets you to the cap, or closer to the cap. You can use all of it and still don't hit 60 (= 15%) expertise.

Agility gives less and less dodge the more dodge you have.

Looking from an offensive point of view, if the boss parries less you do more damage. I tend to think (did not do math) expertise is worth way more then agility in generating threat. Threat is not often the issue, but if it is expertise is a good way to keep those dpssers below you on the threat table.
Now, purely looking from a defensive point of view, thus not counting the extra bonus of the threat to "how good the elixir is": less damage gotten due to less boss' parry vs hits dodged; at what point (dodge percentage) is 45 expertise better (if at all) then 45 agility, due to the diminishing returns agility gets.
Of course it depends per boss and the total damage you get during that fight, but is there anyone who is a math wizard and has some data from some naxx 25 bossfights to use in a calculation?

 

kalbear

Expertise is worth far more than agility for generating threat. It's worth less than agility for survival though. Agility provides both armor and dodge. 45 agility provides 1% dodge before DR, and about .7% dodge after DR on a normally-geared feral. 45 expertise rating is worth 1.37% reduction of parry.

A simple way to model parry survival is the following:
A boss has a 15% chance, base, to parry. This means that 15% of the time, they will have increased their attack speed by (on average) 30%. This means that with 15% parry, they will do approximately 4.5% more damage over a fight.

Every 1% parry reduction reduces that damage by .3%. So that 45 expertise rating, assuming that you aren't expertise capped, is worth .41% damage reduction. Thus, the expertise flask isn't as good for reduction of damage compared to the agility.

ETA: that also assumes that the boss can be parry-hasted. There are a lot of hard-hitting bosses (such as Patchwerk) where parry haste has been turned off. In those situations, expertise is worth 0% damage reduction.

 

halmmar

Strength is a better threat stat than expertise and you get more strength (50) than expertise from elixirs. Use that if you think threat is an issue and you didn't reach the soft expertise cap (6.5% dodge reduction).

That also assumes all of the bosses damage comes from auto-attacks (a lot of it comes from skills).

 

kalbear

That's true, but that can't be controlled, and only sometimes can it be mitigated. The auto attacks are the majority of the damage that a tank can control or deal with in some way. In practice though, it means that expertise is even less valuable as a mitigation stat; the .3% is about the best you can hope for.

 

Mijae

My estimates put expertise better than strength for threat even after the soft cap. Before the cap it's around 2.5 times better. Agility is by far our worst stat for threat.

Feral DruidStats spreadsheet
v3.2.0.0.xls - updated 8/4/2009

 

Rathyr

One thing to quickly point out, but Idol of Worship does not seem to be working. I've done tests on dummies and the Rip amount does not go up with the Idol on, thus Shred Idol is the only viable DPS idol atm.

Several Wowhead comments also confirm this. Hopefully 3.0.8 will fix this.

 

Artemi

It was my understanding that Pre-Wotlk, haste wasn't much use for cat dps, but from snippets i've read in some posts it seems to be different for Wotlk. I've tried looking over the forums for info regarding the benefit of haste for cat dps but can't seem to find any or I must have missed it skimming through all the posts. So if anyone could help it would be appreciated.

 

kalbear

Haste is still a pretty meh stat for druids. It's gotten better, but not significantly so.

Haste improves white attack speed. White attacks are roughly 30% of total damage. In addition to that, it increases the amount of OoC procs from white attacks, which increases energy regen and the amount of yellow attacks. This is harder to model, but basically you can assume approximately 2 OoC procs in 30 seconds, and 1% haste will increase that to 2.02 OoC procs in 30 seconds.

 

Monedula

It is my understanding haste also decreases CGD. But since we mostly have to wait for energy anyway... Great for anyone not using energy

 

unitsinc

So I got [Hood of the Exodus] tonight. My main role is tanking, but I do dps a decent amount. My main question is deciding a meta. Using Rawr, at the absolute highest end of gear, the [Austere Earthsiege Diamond] gives about 700 armor which comes out at that point to be about .3% mitigation(73.65% down to 73.31.) The other option I was looking at was the [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond] which gives about .3% dodge.

Any thoughts?

 

halmmar

Haste reduces GCD when casting spells, not when using physical attacks (this applies more for people using rage).
For feral, haste is most useful for a bear tanking 2 mobs. Depending on talents and gear it's slightly worse or slightly better than crit rating for kitty dps. This is because crit doesn't scale well at high crit ratings. Haste on the other hand scales well at high AP and crit due to more OOC procs and auto-attacks doing more damage on average.

 

Zure

You really want two helms: one for tanking and one for dpsing. Enchant and meta are very significant on the slot, and so even being a full tier behind but with those two customizations optimized will in the end benefit you. The decision to use this helm for dps or tanking will depend on your guild's needs, your available gear, and ultimately your goals from wow (dps meter v progression).

 

Celeras

Rawr says swift skyfire(42ap) is the best meta for DPS, but I thought it was generally accepted that relentless(21agi 3%crit) was? Thoughts?

 

◊ Abradix

Going from 73.31% damage reduction to 73.65% is a 1.13% decrease in physical damage taken, going from 40% to 40.3% dodge is only a 0.75% damage reduction. On top of that the armor increase decreases the total damage done by a worst case scenario, whereas the dodge gives a slightly lower probability of said worst case scenario happening. And then there is the fact that [Austere Earthsiege Diamond] gives you over 500 extra health as an added bonus. It's really by far our best tanking meta, and if you want to DPS you'll really just need to get a seperate helm for that.

 

halmmar

My rawr ranks 42 ap at 19 dps, Relentless at 78. Did you enforce metagem reqs?

 

Blazefire

Furthermore, GCD caps at 1sec even for spells and for kitties, our GCD is already at 1 sec, just like rogues. In either case, no haste won't affect our GCD at all.

 

coldbear

Necromancing this post, but the comments are intriguing, contribute to the discussion and do not seem to have been replied to in this thread - which is why this isn't a PM.

Your armory three weeks later in apparent cat dps gear has an average ilvl of 211 (max 226) via http://www.quickarmory.com/?n=wind&r=Dark+Iron, and you have the +90 Agi Greatness card as well as being min/maxed with LW/JC. Rather than duplicating your research, could you tell us at what gear level you found Agi > Str for pure dps purposes? You currently seem to be gemmed/enchanted for both Str/Agi, I'm assuming you're right on the cusp of Agi = Str?

After reading through http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t36999-feral_druid_numbers/ I'm not seeing why either. Care to elaborate? Reason why I'm so interested is that I'm sitting on the Nobles deck and was planning on going with the Str card for dps purposes. I would love to be proven wrong, as the Agi version would serve better dual-duty for tanking as well.

Author of "Every Boss In The Game" (3.0.9), "100 Dead Death Knights", "Fun In Ulduar", "Guide: How To Feral DPS" videos:
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/pv.php?t=3&l=parl2001

 

Habba

While I don't speak for Wind, I believe I can help shed some light on this for you. The following link is to Toskk's DPS Gear Method. On this page Toskk has updated his Strength vs. Agility graph to reflect the new WotLK mechanics. In a raid setting we can assume that we will have Savage Roar up almost 100% of the time. With that said in my DPS setup (4pT6 I'm a primary Tank) I'm able to hit 11,000 AP pre-consumables. Referencing Toskk's graph and assuming a 40% critical strike chance the point that agility becomes better point for point than strength is somewhere between 13000 and 13100 attack power. This means that I'd only need to gain another 2,000 AP after Savage Roar to hit the point where agility overtakes strength once more. So this means that I'd need to add about 1500 attack power before Savage Roar. Again this is coming from the standpoint of a 4pT6 user so I'm fairly certain it isn't that far fetched that Wind is currently sitting at the break point.

 

Mijae

The main issue in my mind is that even if agility doesn't become better than strength, it is definitely close. While not ideal it is possible to tank bosses even currently in dps gear. There have been a few times I've picked up tanking in dps gear and saved a wipe. Next patch the difference will be even smaller. Switching 16 str gems to 16 agi is maybe sacrificing 1-3 dps for about a 0.25% gain in dodge (and a small amount of armor).

It might come down to raid composition and guild leader's stand-point on min/maxing. I basically have the same role I had in BC as OT/MT/dps depending on fight. A hybrid spec is still possible and agility is key to maintaining it. Of course some items can be tailored to the encounter, but anywhere I can reduce gear I will.

Feral DruidStats spreadsheet
v3.2.0.0.xls - updated 8/4/2009

 

Mysticum

You are actually way off. As clearly stated in the text, "The total Attack Power and Critical Strike Chance axes of the graph represent your character sheet raid buffed stats without Savage Roar.". That means won't find yourself having Str < Agi in the nearest future.

 

tr33hugger

Hi, i'm switching from beeing moonkin to feral again. I already have a nice set for tanking and want to improve my kitty gear. I try to create a wish list with "best for slot" items while keeping 2t7 but i'm not sure how to weight dps stats. I've been looking for up-to-date lootrank stat-rankings for kitty but could not find any. So i entered my raidbuffed stats into Toskk's Calc to get the rarings. Right now, str is valued way over agi which does not surprise me. What i'm curious about is the ranking between haste/crit/arPen/hit ratings (for me it's 1.10/1.09/1.26/1.46 in that order). I always thought that haste is a very poor stat for 3.0 feral dps, but it's rated above crit. Also armor penetration seems quite high to me. The stats i entered were ap : 8000, crit 45%, hit 30 ( yeah i'm low), haste 80, arPen 100 and all buffs/debuffs/talents/glyphs that would improve dps except bloodlust. These are not my actual stats but should be close once i start to resocket/enchant for dps.

 

Rannasha

You're already at 45% crit, adding 1% crit would (in the most naive estimate with 100% crittable damage, a 2.0 crit-multiplier and no on-crit effects) improve your DPS by only ~0.7%. On the other hand, your haste is almost zero, which means that adding 1% has a larger impact than if you'd have been at 45% haste already. Add to that the fact that you need less haste rating than you need crit rating per 1% (~33 vs ~46, see the combat ratings thread in the general class mechanics forum) and the numbers you posted are quite reasonable, qualitatively speaking.

 

Carlos

Toskk has made a posting to discuss haste for cats in the discussion part of the wiki.

Source: The Druid Wiki ToskksDPSGearMethod discussion Armor Pen vs. Haste...

 

iammrfluffy

I have been playing around with RAWR 2.1.6 and the best DPS number i could come up with was 3023 dps points. Anyone else have any better luck? I am using a mangle spam rotation and wondering if i have finally come up with best gear set up.

-fluffy

 

Melthu

That's extremely low. Do you have the proper talents, buffs, and rotation all checked?