Is that really true? From what I can see mangle glyph should be better than rip glyph (unless you have a mangle/trauma bot) since mangle glyph adds a higher duration and it costs more energy. And Savage Roar glyph will be a must.

Here is some math on why, as far as I can calculate, savage defense will be a big nerf..

Assume raidbuffed, you have 6000 AP and 40% crit. This is not too bad numbers anyways. Yours may vary, but you can always redo my calculations with your own numbers. Just because I've calculated my own armor mitigation numbers, I'll use mine. These are 34928 raid buffed in 3.0.9 and will become 29013 in 3.1.0 if they go ahead with nerfing SotF from 66% to 33%.

Mitigation factor with PotP and my armor in 3.0.9 = 0.323 * 0.88 = 0.28424
Mitigation factor with PotP and my armor in 3.1.0 = 0.364 * 0.88 = 0.32032

Extra damage taken in 3.1.0 due to lower mitigation: (0.32032 / 0.28424 - 1) * 100% = 12.69 %

Since Savage Defense don't scale with incoming damage, we need to know boss DPS and attack speed in order to calculate how much damage we mitigate with the shield. I ignore avoidance, and calculate as if all attacks hit. My calculations follow:

Savage Defense Factor = (Boss damage per attack - Average damage blocked by Savage Defense) / Boss damage per attack
Boss damage per attack = Boss DPS * Boss attack speed
Average damage blocked by Savage Defense = Damage blocked by Savage Defense * Chance of critting between boss attacks
Damage blocked by Savage Defense = Attack Power / (4 * Mitigation factor)
Chance of critting between boss attacks = 1 - (1 - Crit chance) ^ Average number of hits between boss attacks
Average number of hits between boss attacks = Boss attack speed / Druid auto attack speed + Boss attack speed / Global cooldown

Here are the average damage mitigated by savage defense been calculated from various test boss damage scenarios:

Boss DPS 70000, 1s attack speed: 2.81 % reduced damage (Patchwerk)
Boss DPS 40000, 2s attack speed: 4.27 %
Boss DPS 20000, 2s attack speed: 8.53 %
Boss DPS 10000, 2s attack speed: 17.1 %

And retried with 100% chance of shield being up:

Boss DPS 70000, 1s attack speed: 6.68 % (Patchwerk)
Boss DPS 40000, 2s attack speed: 5.85 %
Boss DPS 20000, 2s attack speed: 11.69 %
Boss DPS 10000, 2s attack speed: 23.39 %

We need a boss with less than 20000 DPS for this to not be a nerf (More than the 12.69% mitigation lost in armor). Even if we assume the shield is always up. Isn't that an easy encounter anyways? Doesn't sound like an encounter where healing is an issue. On top of this, not only is the shield crap unless you're taking very little damage, but it's unreliable avoidance instead of reliable mitigation too.

According to my calculations, based on a TTL rating of stats (World of Warcraft - Evaluating druid tank gear), even, assuming 10000 boss DPS, 1 AGI is worth more than 10 AP or 5 crit rating with my current gear level. At patchwerk levels, 1 AGI is like 75 AP or 25 crit rating with my current (but not awesome) gear level.

This makes AP and crit really bad stats for survival purposes, compared to their item budget values.

Why does your armor mitigation factor come into this calculation at all?

Every single shield effect currerntly in the game works after damage reduction - theres no reason to assume this won't.

Exactly.. It's to calculate the raw damage from boss we end up blocking..

If boss does 1000 damage and we have 50% reduction from armor, we take 500 damage. If a shield blocks 100 of the 500, it actually blocks 100 / 0.5 = 200 of the 1000 raw damage the boss outputs.

Thus, I divide damage blocked by shield by the reduction factor, to be able to compare it to the Boss damage prior to any mitigation.

Edit: Instead of calculating savage defense block of raw damage, I could instead just have added mitigation to the boss damage instead. It's just a matter of preference.. This would create the same result:

Savage Defense Factor = (Boss damage per attack * Mitigation factor - Average damage blocked by Savage Defense) / (Boss damage per attack * Mitigation factor)
Damage blocked by Savage Defense = Attack Power / 4

Also note that boss attack speed is a bit confused in the formula above. When calculating Boss damage per attack, boss attack speed is used as normal, but for calculating chance to crit, boss attack speed modified by infected wounds is used. It is calculated correctly in the numbers I gave above, but I shoulda used another name for the modified boss attack speed part in the formulas

This a blue post, from a PvP discussion section on moonkins.

1. Typhoon needs some PvP love, and it may get it
2. This appears to confirm the earlier math in another thread that we have already gotten the starfall buff.
3. Owlkin Frenzy will remain a confusion to many PvE moonkins that think it is better than other talents.
4. Eclipse RNG may be getting a look? I think this is the biggest part of this post, just imagine if our Wrath had more than a 60% chance to proc Eclipse, I know moonkins are pretty happy right now, but just thinking about this makes me excited.
5. Maybe even an IS buff, it is already decent with t7 bonuses and glyph if they buff it it may be worth it to consider rotations closing in on 100% uptime (instead of just applying it before wrath spam)

I am pretty happy to see moonkins being talked about at least, hopefully we will see some more on this for 3.1 and not a future patch.

I've update my post with the new boss armor values and the new FF & Sunder Armor. The net armor gain after armor pen is about 900 armor. The new armor makes Armor Pen our best stats after agility (and exp-hit cap).

I've finished the update of cat simulator (bear simulator coming soon).
The simulation is a DIRECT simulation (putted inside stats, combat table, a random number generator and a decisional algoritm).

STATS (best in slot or near it, regemmed for agility instead of str), fully raid buffed with all the buffs avaiable, flasked and food:

Cat (crit% vs. a boss (-4.8% added)): 51.96%
Cat (AP): 10745
Expertise: 26
Hit: 7%+1%(draneo)
Armor Penetration: 11.17%
Haste (from equipment): 8.2%
+weapon damage: 0


Boss base Armor (before penetration and debuff): 11900
Boss modified Armor (after penetration and debuff): 7928
Boss Damage Reduction (after debuff and penetration): 34.2%
Weapon Speed Reduction % (Total without Bloodlust but with Improved Windfury totem): 25%
Missed % (Total): 0%
Dodged %: 0%

--------------

Stats value (hit and expertise are computed subtracting hit and expertise because I'm at the cap):

Hit 42.0

Expertise 42.0

Agility 25.8

Armor Pen 24.3

Feral AP 12.0

Strengh 23.8

AP 10.0

Crit 19.8

Haste 14.3

Basically hit, expertise>>agi,Armor Pen,str,ap,crit>>>haste.

------------

DPS computed using a manglebot
The DPS maximum for a 6 minute fight (2 berserk + 1 heroism) is: 6172
Pre patch from my simulation was: 5325
The difference is: +16%

Glyph used: Shred, Savage Roar, Rip + 2T7

Important things about glyphs: if you don't have a manglebot (so you need to mangle) you lose about 100dps, using mangle glyph instead of shred glyph reduce your dps by another 100 dps. So shred glyph > mangle glyph also if you need to mangle. Avoid using FB into rotation make you lose about 150 dps.

Note: I've simulated a 100ms latency inside cycles.

-----------

Fight breakdown:


DPS: 6172

White: 29.1%
Shred: 28.8% (Avg dmg: 7346, #/cycle: 7.3)
Rake: 16.0% (Avg dmg: 10862 #/cycle: 2.8)
RIP: 19.6% (Avg dmg: 35245, #/cycle: 1.0)
Ferocious Bite: 6.5% (Avg dmg: 14863, #/cycle: 0.8, Average Energy Usage: 40)

Bleed debuff uptime: 95%,
Average Cycle Time: 30.2


--------------

The Cycle is based on a priority list (simplifying it):

If SR_timer<=0 & cp>=3
then SR

If energy<35 -> Tiger Fury (if possible)
If energy>75 -> Berserk (if possible)

If RIP_timer<=0 & SR_timer>=0 & cp=5
then RIP

If RIP_timer>=10 & SR_timer>=0 & cp=5
then FB


When OOC proc -> Shred
Use mangle if mangle debuff is down and you don't have a manglebot
Use rake if rake debuff is down
Use shred at shred.energy+rake.energy and rake debuff is up

--

Difference with previous pre-patch cycle:
- SR need to be used if cp>3 instead of cp>1
- FB vs RIP was previosly computed based on RIP and FB average damage x energy used, now it's simply set at 10 seconds on rip due to the fact that previosly you were basically sure that using FB -> RIP expire, now it's not always the case. Basically what really changed was that while previosly the question was: "Is using FB instead of waiting RIP to expire and reappling it a better overall damage?" now the question is: "What's the time at wich I can FB without losing too much RIP uptime?".
- Setting an SR_timer condition over FB usage always made a lower dps from 2 seconds left to 10 seconds left.

-----------

So you use one in a 6 minute fight. Where is the problem?

20000DPS is actually quite decent for bosses incoming damage. There aren't many bosses that hit harder physically. The only one that comes to mind is Patchwerk.

But yeah, it's been known for a while that SD is a nerf against signficantly harder-hitting bosses like Patchwerk. It's about even on most normal bosses.

It makes AP really crappy for boss stat survival purposes, I agree. At least compared to agi or crit. However, they're about twice as good as that when doing multimob tanking or any kind of thrash mechanic. This is basically analogous to how good block value is against Patchwerk (not good at all) compared to how good it is against other mobs.

Still, 1 Agi to 75 AP is not a compelling reason to skip PvP gear, and that's a real shame.

So, I'm confused-- I didn't see a mechanic change which would positively impact the value of hit/expertise, and those values are far higher than I expected. Does your sim typically rate hit/expertise higher than Toskk's/Rawr/Mijae's sheet?

I think it's due to higher amount of ferocious bite and generally more finishers in these cycles. For more finishers you want more combopoints generated and less misses overall. OVerall my experience is that these cycles have far more effective use of cp's and energy, whereas Rawr (can't comment on Tosk) wants your skills to hit harder.

Especially rawr's default cycle allows for a lot of cp overflow.

Nightcrowler, do you mind editing your simulator? Preliminary testing shows boss armor at 11900 and that armor pen and the new sunder/FF are additive. This helps push armor pen pretty much to the top of stat rankings assuming hit/expertise capped. Also, is there a place to download your simulator or is that a private program?

I think the desperate cries over the "omg nerf" of regrowth are pretty ridiculous.

I for one am pretty excited about this change. I will certainly still use regrowth for the purposes of raid healing, adding the hot to the tanks etc. I am pleased that I will actually have a reason to use nourish now. nourish is going to rock. it's going to have something like 40% crit rating unbuffed and heal like a healtruck on tanks. =P

is regrowth being nerfed? sure, slightly. but you're moving the spamming of iregrowth to the spamming of something else, while still keeping it for raid healing and using it for laying hots. so is the"nerf" really that damaging? in my opinion, not at all.

blizzard wants healers to make more choices, and one of those choices they want us to make is "which heal to use on who and why?" and these changes actually create the question "should I use regrowth or nourish" where currently there is only "use regrowth because nourish is kinda lame."

edit because i forgot how to use my words.

Yes, not that much (for istance with pre 3.1 value I have 26 for str and 34 for hit and expertise). The reason is simple, this is a direct simulation and I also use FB so I must hit basically always to be sure an high enough dot uptime. Also I'm pretty sure that many "a priori" method of theorycraft didn't take into account the time wasted for a missed hit, because usually are energy-based calculation.

Surerly I was just waiting for that info. I'll do it as soon as I can.

My math on the PTR says imp mark stacks multiplicatively with SotF. 4/5 Furor is starting to make a lot of sense to me.

I know for a fact that Toskk's takes into account the wasted DOT time on a miss. It logically makes sense, though, that that isn't a big part of the math-- if you have 99% chance to hit, for instance, you have 100% uptime 99% of the time, and the other 1% of the time you miss a GCD (and another 1% of that time, you'll miss 2 GCDs). In other words, in a 3-minute fight, you have 180 seconds; that's 20 applications of rake, and 9 applications of rip. So, you'll miss 1/5th of a GCD of rake uptime and less than a 10th of a GCD of rip uptime at a full 1% hit, on average. So, even if Toskk's didn't account for it, it's not the substantial difference we're looking for.

I'm discounting energy as a factor because all our attacks return 80% energy, properly talented, and that energy is regenerated in the GCD-- we never have to wait on energy when bleeds miss. It will reduce future yellow damage, sure, but that's definitely accounted for in Toskk's. Are you not refunding energy on attacks somewhere?

I'm going to assume that's all properly done (no idea where I can get my hands on the sim.) So, let's assume it's all in the FB cycle. Is it CP generation that's the issue for hit? In other words, point-for-point, hit rating does increase CP generation more efficiently than any other skill; but are CPs as important as they're made out to be here? If so, why doesn't crit scale better here than on Toskk's?

Anyway, I'm still lost as to an explanation of the disproportionately high hit/expertise your simulator gets.

I've update my post with the new boss armor values and the new FF & Sunder Armor. The net armor gain after armor pen is about 900 armor. The new armor makes Armor Pen our best stats after agility (and exp-hit cap).

To Allev:
- Part of the high hit/expertise things is surerly due to FB cycle.
- Being a direct simulation I can't evalue point x point damage increase because simulation error are in the order of 3/4 dps. -- - Also I'm not really interested in a x point simulation, I prefer to see the large scaling factor. In my simulation I used a 0 to 8% hit change for example. To test if that's the problem I've increased by a factor 100 the sample fights (ye.. 30 minute simulation...) and tested only the last 1% hit (from 7% to 8%) the resulting value for hit rating is: 40 +/- 0.5 so really similar to the one I've wrote up (as I've tested in previous simulation that's ok, hit vs damage scales about lineary).
- Yes I take into account 80% refound on misses.
- The main things that makes hit and expertise important is not the energy miss but the GCD miss/dot up-time miss. If you don't use a tight cycle and don't use FB (for istance u use a 3SR/5RIP or something like this) you will always have wait time before you can reapply rip for example and have enough energy and time to refresh SR, a missed hit is only a GCD damage miss. Using a "close to GCD limit" cycle and using FB already make a less than 100% uptime rip and rake cycle, but you gain something avoiding wait time. But the avoided wait time is exactily where you will be with about 50% crit and no misses at all. Having a miss will surerly make you lose a rip tick and some SR uptime while for other kind of cycle it's more probably only a shred or mangle miss.
- Missed hit also decrease OOC proc rate.
- I've already tryied to remove hit for agi/str and change the cycle, It's an overall dps loss.

Out of simulation and going back to real game: being hit and expertise capped it's also better than the weighted stats posted above for a simple reason. Fights are not always statics, usually there is a 30/60/90 sec timer for some bosses ability (vortex,carion swarm, etc...) having an exact 30 sec time cycle make the dps loss marginal in those fight (for istance on malygos I usually can use a finisher exactly when he's going to make me fly) having a single miss in a cycle can increase the time very little, but that little can be enough to completly miss a RIP or a FB and then being unable to reapply it.

Edit - Note:
Another things that increase hit/expertise value is latency. Inside my simulation I've putted a 100ms latency. The net effect is an increased GCD time = more wait time due to a miss. Redoing the simulation with 0 latency reduce hit value by about 2 points. So assuming 0 latency and you are already near the hit/expertise cap hit should value 38 points instead of 42. Still a lot higher than agi.

I really hope it's unintended or we will have really and hard time. Please, if you are on PTR post it under bug forum.

I would definitely trust simulation results over estimations (assuming the simulator is correct). Any application that does not perform full simulations is just an estimator. They are not expected to be exact. Some mechanics are assumed super-human (like zero latency). Usually most mechanics are averaged out, so RNG differences for specific cycles are not accounted for (like crits, OoC, and procs). Even a simulator cannot accurately account for specific fight mechanics and non-stationary encounters. Do raid buffs actually have 100% uptime? Total stats can drastically change relative values. Most people already accepted that hit/expertise is undervalued in estimations. The biggest question is if it is always worth capping (and possibly going over) or if just getting close to cap is good enough. I'm not sure it can ever be answered mathematically.

It is also difficult to weigh stat values based on any "average encounter". For example, it could very well end up that ArP is best for a stationary fight like Patchwerk, but not for a fight with high movement. There are already encounters where I'll swap between Idols. I'll also swap in a little more expertise for Thaddius since I usually end up attacking from in front very often. Yes crit gives higher average CP, but AP gives more consistent damage (similar to avoidance vs armor). So stacking crit could lead to your damage swinging by a large amount from one attempt to the next even on the same boss. What is more important? Yes, it's fun seeing big numbers in SCT and damage meters, but for progression content consistency is probably best IMO. If you had great dps the first 5 attempts, but RNG sucked on the kill shot.. which meter will be looked at?

Hopefully people know to not take any numbers as law. For any items that come close in value, relative worth can change from fight to fight and overall stats.

Agreed. On single-target boss fights (where fights are supposed to be balanced around) Savage Defense and the loss of armor from nerf in SoTF just break even. In the 10% nerf to stamina for HoTW is real then we will fall behind. I would guess they did something to the coefficient while adjusting SoTF, since those two talents are next to each other.

I would also test this when I'm on ptr next time, but has people checked if they also screwed up the first part of SoTF and only give 3% to all stats? I'm pretty paranoid at this point that they would accidentally touch other talents, or other portions of the same talents.

Sotf gives 6% stats on both live and ptr

I can confirm the bug. The tooltip still says 20%, but it is only giving 10%. I tried a few old items with low stam and some new ones.

Base stamina in bear form: 148

[Drakefire Amulet]: 162 sta (10*1.06*1.02*1.1*1.25 = 14.8665 + 148 ~= 162)
[Silent-Strider Kneeboots]: 192 sta (10*1.06*1.02*1.1*1.25 = 44.5995 + 148 ~= 192)
[Staff of the Plague Beast]: 348 sta (135*1.06*1.02*1.1*1.25 = 200.69775 + 148 ~= 348)
[Pattern: Polar Vest] (stam gems/patch): 533 sta (259*1.06*1.02*1.1*1.25 = 385.04235 + 148 ~= 533)

It's almost certainly intended, and needed as well. The health advantage of druids was always going to make balancing encounters almost impossible without giving druids a huge advantage (see Sarth3d - druids and DK's had massive advantages, and I wouldn't expect that to continue). We may get more changes to compensate, but I'd be amazed if they let the health difference stay as it is (and get to be a bigger and bigger problem).