Wintermane

I appreciate it, although I didn't mean I was having trouble with my cycles, I was just saying that they take a fair amount of attention and castsequence macros (in my opinion) are sort of worthless. I will check out badkitty, although I'll say for anyone needing addons that would prefer something else, I used cooldowntimers3 and powerauras classic, and they've worked quite well for me. The mangle/trauma tracking of badkitty is what will get me to switch though, assuming I like the rest of it's functions.

Thanks.

 

Macevaland

From mmo-champion
Do you guys think that this change is enough to place Ferocious Bite consistently in a cat rotation?

 

Boevis

This is their attempt to reduce our Burst capacity in PvP. Honestly it's ludicrous since you're better off keeping up your bleed, shredding, and then a lower energy FB except against a pally team.

 

kalbear

The only thing it might be good for is for using in Berserk, since it won't eat up as much of your energy now. Even then I suspect it's still better to shred.

 

sola5ide

I wish they had just taken out the "extra energy to damage" portion out all together. Honestly, I don't think this solves anything for raiding or pvp. We'll still be potentially wasting energy in raids, and in pvp I usually only using FB at min energy anyway after a Pounce/Maim for control (and FB still crits for 10k on cloth).

 

SkunkApe

Not surprising for them to not give it to us outright. Honestly, I'd expect them to offer up a glyph that takes away the energy -> damage portion if anything.

 

Aladonic

Did anyone notice that the energy->dmg was changes in FB. I only had time to briefly look but when I had my staff equipped it was 47 dmg for every extra energy, and with the staff was off it was it was only 30 something.

Can someone confirm this?

 

Moof

The energy->dmg conversion scales with AP and has done so since 3.0.

A quick look on wowhead gives it as [9.4 + AP / 410]

Ferocious Bite - Spell - World of Warcraft

 

loccus

I tested yesterday the new Ferocious Bite and its dmg stil looks good, even though the energy usage for improved dmg was lowered.

I usually do Rake>SR>Swipe>TF>Swipe>Swipe and I'm really happy with the swipe dmg. I hope it doesn't get nerfed...
I'm saying that cause, if u look at the wws (Wow Web Stats) u can see that the swipe dmg is way higer then the other classes AoE.

Although our AoE looks awesome, I believe we still lack some sustained DPS, cause I can hardly Top5 Bosses' DPS.

 

Vallen

Is there a reason why you're carrying 9.21% hit?

 

Cynrh

I haven't seen this posted here yet... I tested Ferocious Bite constantly yesterday doing dailies - and it doesn't seem to be consuming -any- extra energy. When I bite at 100 energy, energy went down to 65 each time. I tested many bites at 35 energy, and many bites at full energy, and they both seemed to be doing roughly the same amount of damage, so I don't think its calculating extra 'phantom' energy either.

Edit: confirmed FALSE - as a later poster points out, the energy is deducted in two chunks, 35 immediately and another chunk of 30 a second later.

 

loccus

I got an item upgrade yesterday and didn't have time to trade +16hit gem for +8hit and +8str.
Btw, I noticed you are using +16 str gems. Does it worth to go for str instead of hit at ~7% hit?

 

Balroth

I've been spending some time on the dummies and trying out different priorities and stuff and it seems like when I try to focus on 100% Mangle/Rake/SR up times my dps actually goes down compared to when I don't necessarily focus on it.

For example, say my rake will tick off soon and I have 4 CP no Rip up OR I got lucky and Rip and SR both have 10+ secs, instead of making sure I have the energy to re-apply it I might instead Shred and Rip/FB and then lose 1 or 2 seconds of Rake uptime while I wait for my energy to come back.

Another example might be Rip and Rake are going to fall off at the same time and I'm at 5CP. I'll Rip and then Rake and lose a little time on Rake to gain the Combo point.

I feel like when I'm trying to optimize my uptimes I lose combo points much more often and my DPS drops. I'm at 5k on Patch 25, I honestly don't know if I should be higher or not. I'm also very close to RAWR numbers on the dummy. I know we talk about having priority on these things but it seems like Druid dps is a very... shift on the fly type of rotation. Those of you that are seeing what you would consider good numbers for your class, are you really putting that much weight into the priority or are you changing it up like I do? Should I be putting more emphasis on keeping the 3 big buffs/debuffs up?

I would say that another problem I run into, which is purely a skill thing I'm sure, is that I end up mismanaging energy as well when I'm focusing on keeping Mangle/Rake/SR up 100%. I might have a lot of things running out soon, save up some energy to re-apply and then end up close to 100 energy, see an OoC proc and end up at 100, wasting some. Stupid stuff like that.

 

thalys

Short answer: yes.
Only slightly longer answer: use RAWR.
Even longer answer: When you figure in Savage Roar, Blessing of Kings, and feral talents, you get close to 3.5 attack power per strength. There's no way hit can compete with that except under extreme circumstances. It's worth it at 7% hit, 6% hit, or 2% hit, and that should be pretty obvious.

Disclaimer: due to some shared gear, I'm over both the hit and expertise (well, dodge anyway) caps in my cat gear at the moment.

 

Allev

It's actually pretty obvious to me that this isn't how it works at all.

Let's use an example to factor out the importance of Savage Roar on the scaling of stats. Say I never use SR, but have 10000 AP. Let's assume that adding 1% of AP adds roughly 1% of damage, and adding the last 1% hit rating is also 1% of damage (not exactly the truth but close enough for this example). If I add 100 AP, I'm adding 1% of my total AP. In a second example, let's say I use SR all the time, so it never drops. Then I effectively have 14000 AP. If I had added 100 AP pre-SR, it now translates into 140 AP-- 40 more AP is a big difference, right? Except for the fact that it's still just a 1% AP increase, so the same 1% increase in damage as hit rating would give you.

AP translates directly to damage per landed attack, and scales slightly differently with every attack. It also scales proportionally to your other stats-- if you have a 0% chance to hit a mob, more AP will not do anything. So there is at least a point -- even if it's not possible in the game -- where hit rating is infinitely more valuable than AP. In fact, unlike what I said in the previous example, 1% hit is actually worth more than 1% damage (for white hits), it's worth (1/chance to hit)% damage. 2-roll mechanics are slightly different, but the premise holds.

Think of it another way-- 50% chance to hit versus 99% chance to hit. A point of AP in the first case applies to 50 out every 100 swings. In the second case, a point of AP applies to 99 out of every 100 swings. So, AP in the first example is worth roughly half of what it's worth in the second example. But adding 1% hit rating in both examples scales identically if you have the same amount of AP (throwing out complicating factors like combo points). So, if AP is worth twice what hit is at 99% chance to hit, it's about equal at 50% hit. At that point, it's a how-much-rating-is-worth-1% question.

Now, the above is full of inaccuracies, doesn't take into account things like crit damage talents and multipliers, combo points, and so on. That's why things like Rawr and Toskk's exist: it's too much math to explain. I'm just illustrating some concepts of scaling. My point is, what you think is obvious is actually deceivingly wrong. As more tiers of gear are released and you get more AP, the factors that scale with more AP (hit, crit, etc) will pull closer to, and in some cases overtake pure AP.

I find it funny, though, that your second answer references Rawr. For my gear and set of buffs, it says my gearset would see a higher DPS increase from hit than from strength!

I'd personally stick with the hit gems, as their "intangible" benefits (landing hits when you try to land them) are enough to tip the scale in that direction if it isn't tipped already. Plus, they're way cheaper.

 

Cuer

Missing big attacks on bosses can definitely throw a rotation out of order, which ends up hurting DPS in the long-run, especially on movement fights where it is already difficult to juggle the entire cat DPS buff/debuff/DoT roster.

From a gearing standpoint, the ideal seems to be having one item with a lot of hit ([Grim Toll] is great for this) to swap in on boss fights, while having a non-hit item for that slot (like [Mirror of Truth] or better) to use for trash. That way you don't end up with a lot of +hit gems that are "wasted" some of the time, providing too much hit on trash mobs where you don't need it.

 

Nalera

I try to keep my total hit rating around 200ish before stacking Strength and it's been a good balance for me. Unfortunately, with tier pieces replacing other gear, I have to gem for hit. Hopefully [Grim Toll] will drop someday and I can gem for Strength again. One thing I hope we all agree is obvious is that it is NOT worth it to get hit-capped at the expense of precious gem slots. Gemming for Strength at only 2% hit does seem a little ridiculous though. At that point even the loss of gcds trying to get a Shred to hit would be hurtful, since they won't hit hard enough to make up.

Also--gems being too expensive should not be a huge factor. Would you like to see yourself 2nd on dps thinking, man, if only I had done more dailys and gotten that expensive strength gem! I could be beating that hunter! It's worth it mate.

 

Allev

It depends on the value of gold to you. In my case, I'm sure saving up gold for a Nobles deck is more important than the at most 1-2 DPS difference per gem-- especially on my not-best-in-slot gear.

Not that I don't have +16 str gems, mind you.

 

BeldDD

I wonder if any of the cat dps modellers have any idea how much our dps would be buffed by allowing rip/rake to crit. Ive been thinking of some ways to improve our pve dps without affecting pvp too greatly as that seems to be what the blue posts indicate they are searching for. Seems like if rip + rake make up for somewhere around 30% of my damage, allowing for dot ticks of rake and rip to crit based on melee crit rate might do the trick.

 

Melthu

I think that would overshoot their mark a bit. For me, on standard fights about 35% of my damage comes from Rake and Rip. With a tighter cycle that would probably push closer to 40%. Raid buffed I reach over 50% crit and my dps gear neither ideal nor gemmed/enchanted for dps, so full time cats will easily pass that mark. If Rake and Rip could both crit for 2x damage that would be a 17-20% increase in dps, and push upwards of 22.5% if the crits also benefitted from Predatory Instincts and the Relentless meta. If Blizzard felt that we were behind that much on dps we would have been buffed at the same time elemental shamans were.

 

loccus

Guys, it sounds strange to me that you are telling me to forget about Hit e go for Str...
From my point of view If i lose an attack, lets say a 5combo FB, I'm losing DPS...

Anyway, how much hit you recommend before going for str?

 

a civilian

It's still consuming extra energy for me, but there's a slight delay. It first subtracts 35 energy instantly, and then a short time later is subtracts the extra energy (presumably waiting for that information from the server). It's also definitely doing more damage at 100 energy than at 35.

 

Balroth

For the 4th freakin time, just use RAWR. Stop posting about your gear on here, that's really not what these forums are for.

 

BeldDD

Could be that that would overshoot the mark. My guess is they are aiming for something like a 10% or so boost. So maybe it wouldn't be both rake and rip... just one.

 

thalys

I don't think you can handwave out crit% from your argument, Allev, but in any case, other than the extent to which your rotation is affected by misses, dodges, and crits, itemization is off the topic. I shouldn't have taken the bait, or at least not before I had some caffeine.

One thing I'm curious about that's actually germane to the thread is whether people simplify their rotation in certain fights, i.e. Sarth+drakes, where there's a lot of movement and chaos, or just try to stick to their original plan as best they can. Almost makes me want to go back and get myself 4T6 for some of these fights.