Antonetz

Being under hit and expertise also suppresses shred, rake(initial) and mangle crit chances. I could have sworn that theorycrafters had come to the conclusion we were supposed to be capped. Even if the results changed, I can't imagine not being hit/exp capped for these reasons.

Crit reduction to shred, rake, mangle and ferocious bite.
Fewer Omen of Clarity procs.
Guaranteed finishers when you need to run out of range due to an effect.

 

Celadruid

I believe he's stating that hit is wonderful, but the worst stat to gem or enchant for. With the minimal loss of energy on a yellow attack and the effect of primal precision, hit is not as important to Feral druids as it is to casters. Even more so, with the 2pT8 bonus coming, OoC procs will be even more convenient and accessable, not so much relying on our actual strikes against the target.

From what I've read on the WoW forums also is that you should take your hit on your gear and move on.

 

}DM{Mnementh

Hey guys I was wondering if I could bug you for some help. Though I am not an officer in my guild I am fairly knowledgeable in druids and am the one who asses the druids that app to my guild. Sadly since Wrath I haven't had the time due to RL necessities to theory craft and work with every spec in depth.

A feral dps druid is apping currently and I am confused really. His armory link can be found: Here

Now I don't think I have ever seen a druid go so hard into armor pen. To the best of my knowledge agility is a ferals #1 stat. I've never once gemmed for armor pen or enchanted for it. I don't want to laugh at the just to turn around and find out it is suddenly a good thing to do.

If anyone can give me a hand here I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

cwbelsomjr

It is suddenly a good thing to do.

FeralbyNight (Cat & Bear simulation tool)

 

coldbear

searched this thread and the forum but did not find an answer to:

What is the absolute most threat-maximizing early Bear MT rotation (talking the first <30 seconds of a fight). I find myself repeatedly running with people who have gotten used to just going all out from the get-go. Obviously the preferred outcome would be for them to eventually learn ...but the number of people who have learned that I don't have infinite threat within seconds of the pull - are starting to stack up. I just switched guilds and tend to run with new people way too often. If I can adjust to make up for their mistakes I'd like to at least have the option.

tank-spec: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...0&version=9704

My guess for optimal early threat rotation on boss that doesn't immediately give massive rage (e.g., Mimiron):
1. Shift until Furor is active
2. Enrage
3. Berserk, Haste potion
4. Pull, preferably during the GCD
5. Mangle
6. Maul
...repeat 5 & 6 until Berserk is out
7. Mangle when available, Maul always, use Lacerate each GCD til 5 stacks
8. FFF
9. Mangle/Maul/FFF whenever they are available, make sure Lacerate stays stacked - Swipe if nothing else.

Author of Every Boss In The Game (3.0.9), 100 Dead Death Knights, Fun In Ulduar, Guide: How To Feral DPS
Wow Wiki Feral DPS guide and Best of WoW

 

Gurrshael

His talent builds (both dps and tank) are good, his gear looks good too. He should change his idol to the shred one and maybe change gloves enchant to +20agi but that may be only a personal taste. I do not believe (and simulations back me up) that being hit capped is a crucial thing for ferals.

ArP is the best stat to stack & gem for now (not only for ferals!) once you have about 200-300 from gear. You can check my gear on armory link on the left side - I recently regemmed from +agi to +ArP and my dps substantialy increased.

 

Duilliath

I assume the pull is with FFF.
Wouldn't you rather hit a Mangle and then a Lacerate before slamming in the Mauls? R&T will bump those Mauls a fair bit.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

kalbear

You absolutely want to do at least one lacerate before berserking, as your mauls doing 20% more will make up greatly for the loss of a mangle. In that kind of situation I pull with FF, mangle, lacerate, berserk, and refresh lacerate towards the end.

 

Mijae

It will depend on your raid group. You can usually assume there will be someone else there putting up a bleed. In that case it is more burst threat to skip it at the start.

Feral DruidStats spreadsheet - discontinued

 

Pinebark

Ok. I've read this forum pretty avidly since Burning crusade, but I believe this is my first post. I love dps'ing as a feral cat, but it seems every time i get a new piece of gear, I have to change out items/gems/enchants constantly to remain hit/exp capped. I am currently using rawr 2.25, wowhead, and information found in this thread, the feralbynight thread, and a few others to help make my decisions. But, sometimes the results i get using these sources of information really make me scratch my head. For example:

Currently, I am using [Footwraps of Vile Deceit] and [Thrusting Bands] to help keep me over the expertise cap. My BP is [Winter's Icy Embrace]. I also have a 16 expertise rating gem in my belt [Belt of the Tortured]

These items and primal precision bring my current expertise to 27 (Exp rating 141), which is slightly over the cap.

If I load my char's current gear into rawr, it shows a dps rating of 6991 w/ raid buffs. So, being curious about upgrades, gear choices, I go through rawr, select other gear I have in my bags/bank, and run the optimizer. That's when I get confused. All the information I have read here has lead me to believe that ArPen is the new stat for ferals to be stacking. I know there will soon be a soft cap in place, and having more than around 550ish ArPen will be wasted. However, I am well below that point. Rawr still suggests that I regem all my gear with Agi gems. Also, Rawr wants me to change out my current boots and bracer, and instead use [Mechanist's Bindings] and [Treads of the Invader]

If I were to replace these 2 items, as rawr suggests, I would be well below the expertise cap, by about 2%. I would also be under the hit cap by about 1%. I would gain around 2.3 pct crit, lose a small amount of haste and AP would be a wash, or very small gain. This goes against everything I have read. 2.3% more crit is great. Giving up the hit/exp cap to get it doesn't "feel" right though.

Then we come to the bigger picture. If this was an isolated incident, I wouldn't care. But, EVERY time i see a possible upgrade, I have to make these decisions. "if i lose hit here, i need to change out a bear piece of gear, regem it back to cat"...etc etc etc. It is almost impossible to keep hit and expertise cap without using some inferior items, just because they have a needed stat.

Is it just me? Should I not worry about hit/expertise cap? Should I just miss every once in a while and hope my extra crit makes up for it? Or is our itemization a little screwy, especially since we need to keep 2 sets of gear for bear/cat, and that just opens a whole new can of worms. I'm sorry if i seem frustrated, I just wonder if others out there agonize over these sorts of choices as much as I do.

Thank you for any help or responses.

 

Isambaard

There are several posts which address hit/exp capping and its relative non-importance in threads in this forum. The FeralByNight thread has addressed in detail the math behind why 1% hit is far less than 1% dps loss, and Toskk's page explains quite well the relative values of these stats and why Agi and now ArP heavily outvalue hit let alone expertise.

It is counterintuitive compared to virtually every other DPS class and spec in the game that we can easily ignore a couple percent, but the math is solid and a lot of real world numbers from people in raids provides empirical evidence of the correctness of the models.

It does however require a little more attentiveness when playing that you ensure your finishers land and that you know how you'll handle a particularly bad RNG string of misses during CP building phases to avoid having everything go to hell.

 

Mijae

Rawr does not come completely pre-configured. Do your raid buffs differ from standard? Are you adding gem templates to include ArP and other gems? Otherwise it won't use them. If you want to be near hit/exp cap you can tell the optimizer that and it will find sets that meet those conditions. Rawr uses a different model than other theory crafting tools and will give different results. It has a great interface and gives decent results, but it's not perfect.

If you want absolute best performance you need to use a combination of tools and tweak results according to personal requirements. That includes specific encounter variables, your general role in a raid, and guild needs.

You definitely don't need to go out of your way to always be over the cap. However, it does become personal preference if you always want to be near the cap.

Feral DruidStats spreadsheet - discontinued

 

kalbear

Also, Rawr typically differs from FBN in how much it favors armor pen.

 

Carlos

additionally I found that you need to add a Gemming Template for ArPen gems. After you added this template it will come up with the right answer aka gemming for ArPen.

 

Influxreptile

Hi, I was wondering. Does feral instincts affect the cat form swipe aswel ? The blizzard armory page kind of shows that it's only affecting bear form while the wowhead tooltip only mentions swipe in general.

I've looked for the keywords in this thread but couldn't find any concluse answer to this question.

 

Isambaard

WoW -> Patch Notes -> 3.0.9

Scroll down to 3.0.8 and see:
"Swipe: Swipe (Cat) has now been added at level 71, dealing 260% weapon damage, costs 50 energy with no cooldown. All talents affecting the Bear Form version affect the Cat Form one as well."

The detail on the wowhead talent also says affects cat, bear, dire bear and apply aura % damage boost.

 

Boevis

So in the end, if you spec into Feral Instincts and Ferocity, Swipe does 338% weapon damage and costs 45 energy. It's fairly spectacular when you need it.

 

Viridiz

I was wondering, as this has been vaguely discussed, whether picking up the 4T8 bonus is better than the stat loss using 2T7 and 2T8, or even if 2T8 and other non-set BiS's are better.

(For DPS)

Also, I'm currently at 207 hit rating (6.31%), I was wondering whether it would be a DPS increase to swap out [Mirror of Truth] for [Titan-Forged Rune of Accuracy].

 

foxglove

I believe the consensus is that 4t8 > 2t7/2t8 (but they're close) >> 2t8 + nonset or 4t7. See the FeralByNight thread for more details: FeralbyNight (Cat & Bear simulation tool).

The Mirror of Truth is probably better than the rune. See this thread and Cat DPS Rotation for ample discussion of why you should not go out of your way to get hit-capped as a cat.

Also, use Rawr. It will answer these sorts of questions for you. http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t21713-r...leased_1_30_a/

 

Soph~

I was hoping someone might be able to shed some light on this. While in cat form is there any disadvantage to popping Berserk while under the effects of Heroism/Bloodlust. I recall reading a while back that it was better to use them separately. However I can't find any info here to support that which leads me to think it not to be the case.

 

Phoa

On the topic of Bloodlust/Heroism + Berserk, I believe most feel that using them together can lead to waste. This is because the haste granted by those abilities lead to more OoC procs, which in turn do not use energy. While under the effects of Berserk using a OoC proc, while not hurting your damage, is limiting it. You Shred an OoC instead of using one for 21 energy. While the OoC procs are not really controlled, under the influence of that much haste I think you could potential waste several shreds you could have used had you held back on Berserk. Same with Potions of Speed.

 

HaklePrime

The only problem with this line of thought is the consideration of other Raid buffs/debuffs. Typically guilds will save things like Shattering Throw and the like to align with Bloodlust/Heroism. The key is to maximize those windows of enhanced debuffs.

My only rules regarding Berserk usage involve the combination of Hysteria (Assuming your guild understands that Warriors and Druids are the only classes that benefit 100% from it), and the coinciding window of Shattering Throw being applied. Under those ideal conditions, maybe even a spare TotT, I will typically pop a Potion of Speed to enhance the OoC procs. This allows me to freely dump 5CP FBs, assuming a rolling max-power Rip.

 

cwbelsomjr

Night assigns a value of 27.1 to ArPen, and 25.9 for Agility. It is generally accepted that ArPen is more valuable the more you have - as opposed to Agility (and other stats), which scales linearly.

So my question is whether the 27.1 value is for the 1st point of ArPen rating, or for the last point, or something in-between? (Last point being best in slot gear? Perhaps the soft cap of 566? Or the cap number during a trinket proc of ~1232? This would be a secondary question I suppose.)

 

alarge

On the first page of the FeralbyNight thread, Night mentions that the crossover point (where ArP > Agi) is at about 350 ArP if you are using the rip idol and 200 ArP if you are using the shred idol. He also mentions that the shred idol starts beating the rip idol at about 230 ArP.

Given this, I'm sticking to the rip idol and gemming for agility until I get 200 ArP natively from gear (I'm only at 97 right now, not counting the Grim Toll proc). At that point, I plan to switch over to ArP gems and the shred idol. Does this seem like a reasonable strategy to folks?

 

Solux

It is a reasonable strategy and there's a figure of 50% crit (unbuffed) which is also thrown around to go with the 200 ArP as the point to gem for ArP. If you're not over the 50% crit, it's suggested you maintain enough Agility gems to remain there, even if you're over the threshold for ArP.