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?

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?

As long as the Glyph and 4t7 stack, no one would take a newer set, unless it provides either better set boni or the additional stats outweigh 4t7 (which will take a while)

Yeah, The Glyph+New Imp. Regrowth+ changed Living Seed is better than 3.0.x Regrowth ever was.

It isn't exactly "negative feedback". It's more the fear of regrowth going back to it's nearly useless state and us druids replacing it with nourish.

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.

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.