 |
06/29/09, 2:17 PM
|
#61
|
|
Soda Popinski
|
Originally Posted by Kylesa
What's a good addon that you ferals use to track durations of Mangle/SR, etc? I've been speccing feral just to solo instances to farm for mounts and stuff, but now I'm using it in pug raids for fun, and find the rotation mind-numbingly annoying to keep up with.
|
I use NeedToKnow to setup nice bars for SR, Mangle, Rip and Rake.
I also use PowerAuras to track missing Faerie Fire and Mangle/Trauma.
|
Just put me on ignore, you'll be happier that way. I assure you you'll miss nothing of value.
|
|
|
06/29/09, 4:19 PM
|
#62
|
|
Banned
Dwarf Hunter
Earthen Ring
|
Originally Posted by Murna
Who says you have to be hitcapped?
|
Don't wanna have 90 hit rating under the cap.?!
Tun, probably best cat inGame, puts hit in his sockets...
And what about the macro. Using tiger's fury before berserk = waste or better than waiting a little bit and using full tiger's fury buff?
|
|
|
|
|
06/29/09, 4:24 PM
|
#63
|
|
Piston Honda
Tauren Druid
Kargath (EU)
|
Originally Posted by Batlecruiser
Tun, probably best cat inGame, puts hit in his sockets...
|
Sorry, but... no.
It has been stated several times in these forums, that tun makes some remarkable mistakes and his guide has some severe errors as well.
I am sure, there a lots of druids here that will provide better DPS values, if they have access to the same gear and buffs (tun got hysteria chained in nearly every fight)
Concerning the macro: Yes it would be better to make some moves after using TF and then let the energy pool to 90.
But you should make sure that you don't lose uptime of something.
And this is a beginner's guide. I thought cat priority cycle is complex enough, that's why I simplified the use of TF and berserk.
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 9:03 AM
|
#64
|
|
Von Kaiser
Tauren Druid
Laughing Skull (EU)
|
Regarding feral addons: I personaly prefer Droodfocus to any other buff/debuff tracker (including badkitty).
I use Droodfocus along with FBN.
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 10:31 AM
|
#65
|
|
Glass Joe
|
I was using Droodfocus, but I found that in Ulduar the CP display became a solid, white block. I am unsure if this only occurs for me, but it happened every time I entered Ulduar. I switched to FBN, which I found to be very customizable for my needs.
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 1:29 PM
|
#66
|
|
Banned
Night Elf Druid
Crushridge
|
Cat dps stuff
I use Inline Aura to track the cds and seconds left on Mangle, Rake, Rip, Savage Roar, Tiger's Fury, etc...
It displays numbers right on the actual ability icon on the hotkey bar and is, thus, very minimalist.
Also, to the person asking about why hit cap is important...
Hit cap is vital to good dps. Not being hit capped means more chances to MISS, etc.. A miss = lower dps. Get it?
I'm hit capped and I am not using hit gems or enchants. Most cat gear has enough hit that I'm always OVER the hit cap, before a Draenei is in my party.
I gem all agility, and I'm usually pulling top 1-3 dps in my 25 mans vs. Hodir, XT, Emalon, and Vesax, etc...
Pictures for proof here:
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r.../dpvsvesax.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r.../dpvshodir.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...atvsemalon.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...ngs/dpvsxt.jpg
Last edited by Nytkin : 06/30/09 at 1:52 PM.
Reason: Added information
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 1:37 PM
|
#67
|
|
Glass Joe
Tauren Druid
Smolderthorn
|
Originally Posted by Nytkin
Also, to the person asking about why hit cap is important...
Hit cap is vital to good dps. Not being hit capped means more chances to MISS, etc.. A miss = lower dps. Get it?
|
This is incorrect. Hit is good, but agility/armor pen are better.
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 1:53 PM
|
#68
|
|
Banned
Night Elf Druid
Crushridge
|
Originally Posted by blacksuit
This is incorrect. Hit is good, but agility/armor pen are better.
|
It's not incorrect that hit cap is good. Hit is especially important for applying Rip and Rake, and it seems like most cat theorycrafters ignore or don't realize this.
Armor pen and agility are fantastic and I did not say they are better or worse than hit. I said nothing of excluding any of them.
I just shared what I do and how much dps I do with that and why.
Logic, ftw.
Last edited by Nytkin : 06/30/09 at 1:56 PM.
Reason: Added information
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 2:00 PM
|
#69
|
|
Glass Joe
Draenei Hunter
Crushridge
|
Originally Posted by blacksuit
This is incorrect. Hit is good, but agility/armor pen are better.
|
Weighing raw stats against each other is only a level playing field when intangibles like a missed Rip or dodged Rake are accounted for.
Hit rating is useful for avoiding missed white attacks and specials like Shred, yes. But it's huge for applying the crucial debuffs of Mangle, Rip, and Rake. Every time you miss one of those specials, you've just wasted a GCD to reapply that should've been a Shred.
In that situation, how is 20 armor pen rating better than the 20 hit rating you'd need to avoid the missed debuff completely?
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 2:28 PM
|
#70
|
|
Don Flamenco
|
Originally Posted by Justinian
Weighing raw stats against each other is only a level playing field when intangibles like a missed Rip or dodged Rake are accounted for.
Hit rating is useful for avoiding missed white attacks and specials like Shred, yes. But it's huge for applying the crucial debuffs of Mangle, Rip, and Rake. Every time you miss one of those specials, you've just wasted a GCD to reapply that should've been a Shred.
In that situation, how is 20 armor pen rating better than the 20 hit rating you'd need to avoid the missed debuff completely?
|
20 armor pen on the other 99% or whatever of your attacks that did land is more damage than the less than 1% of the time 20 hit rating would make you hit rather than miss. Tons of simulations and in game data have shown that 20 arpen or agility (depending on your stats to pick which) is better than 20 hit most of the time. Countering that with out some sort of actual data, math, combat logs, or anything is a lot like saying people should stack hit because God says so.
Edit: Missing mangle, rake, rip or whatever isn't intangible and is accounted for by rawr, tossk, FBN, Simulcraft, and every other model. Intangibles would be the adverse effect on your dps of how a miss demoralizes you as a player and causes you to make silly mistakes like how playing my hunter in BT back in the day I would flip out on vent when feign death would resist against gorefiend every single time I got to play my hunter after finally getting 4t6. That's an intangible effect of missing. One second of downtime on mangle isn't intangible.
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 2:35 PM
|
#71
|
|
Bald Bull
|
|
Hit rating is useful for avoiding missed white attacks and specials like Shred, yes. But it's huge for applying the crucial debuffs of Mangle, Rip, and Rake. Every time you miss one of those specials, you've just wasted a GCD to reapply that should've been a Shred.
|
This is incorrect. You don't tend to waste a GCD unless you're in unlimited energy mode, which is typically only in berserk. So hit is better if you're berserked, but that's 15 seconds out of every 180 seconds total.
The rest of the time, you don't waste a GCD most of the time as you're operating at or close to an energy deficit. In other words, you're waiting on doing that attack anyway, so all it means is that you aren't applying the rip or rake as fast as you could. That's not optimal, but it's not 'missing a shred'. It's delaying a shred, at worst.
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 2:36 PM
|
#72
|
|
Glass Joe
Night Elf Druid
Doomhammer
|
Originally Posted by Justinian
In that situation, how is 20 armor pen rating better than the 20 hit rating you'd need to avoid the missed debuff completely?
|
Because for the rest of the fight that you didn't miss the debuff, that 20 armor pen was helping you more then the 20 hit.
Kitties are not GCD locked in our dps cycle. CP gen and energy are what limit and determine what kind of cycle we strive for. That 20 armor pen would apply to all of your non bleed attacks for the whole fight, while that 20 hit to not miss ( I'll assume like you did even that the 20hit is all you need to cap hit for the sake of this argument ) has maybe lost you over the course of the fight 1-3 OOC procs ( I am being ridiculously generous here, missing even 1 is rare that close to cap ) and maybe a grand total of 2-3 seconds of debuff down time.
Primal precision and energy refunded from a special attack make it so that a miss / dodge / parry is for most intents and purposes simply a gcd loss to reuse the last attack that missed, and if it was a finisher its 20% energy lost from the cost of the finisher which just for example is only 6 energy for Rip.
Now does this mean I think hit is useless, definitely not, but the goal is to never gem or enchant for it, and to simply use pieces that are good due to armpen / agi that also have hit and expertise. This way you get close to the caps while still gearing for the desired stats.
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 3:06 PM
|
#73
|
|
Banned
Night Elf Druid
Crushridge
|

Originally Posted by lairpie
20 armor pen on the other 99% or whatever of your attacks that did land is more damage than the less than 1% of the time 20 hit rating would make you hit rather than miss. Tons of simulations and in game data have shown that 20 arpen or agility (depending on your stats to pick which) is better than 20 hit most of the time. Countering that with out some sort of actual data, math, combat logs, or anything is a lot like saying people should stack hit because God says so.
Edit: Missing mangle, rake, rip or whatever isn't intangible and is accounted for by rawr, tossk, FBN, Simulcraft, and every other model. Intangibles would be the adverse effect on your dps of how a miss demoralizes you as a player and causes you to make silly mistakes like how playing my hunter in BT back in the day I would flip out on vent when feign death would resist against gorefiend every single time I got to play my hunter after finally getting 4t6. That's an intangible effect of missing. One second of downtime on mangle isn't intangible.
|
I think the argument about gemming/enchanting for hit vs. ArP is moot because so much cat gear comes with enough hit to put you over or near the cap.
The more interesting discussion for cats is really gemming/enchanting for ArP vs. Agility.
I like this statement in this thread regarding that:
"As far as the current theory is concerned, once you reach the trinket soft cap on ArP (556), you want to start gemming agility (while maintaining the soft cap, of course). It's certainly possible to do well by simply gemming agility because you end up with a broader and consequently higher range of potential DPS than if you had gemmed ArP (Nightcrowlers work is a worthwhile read, the section about DPS dispersion is about halfway down his OP). Also, there is a school of thought that values gemming agility on fights were burst DPS is important (like yogg)."
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 3:23 PM
|
#74
|
|
Glass Joe
Draenei Hunter
Crushridge
|

Originally Posted by Sephon
Because for the rest of the fight that you didn't miss the debuff, that 20 armor pen was helping you more then the 20 hit.
Kitties are not GCD locked in our dps cycle. CP gen and energy are what limit and determine what kind of cycle we strive for. That 20 armor pen would apply to all of your non bleed attacks for the whole fight, while that 20 hit to not miss ( I'll assume like you did even that the 20hit is all you need to cap hit for the sake of this argument ) has maybe lost you over the course of the fight 1-3 OOC procs ( I am being ridiculously generous here, missing even 1 is rare that close to cap ) and maybe a grand total of 2-3 seconds of debuff down time.
Primal precision and energy refunded from a special attack make it so that a miss / dodge / parry is for most intents and purposes simply a gcd loss to reuse the last attack that missed, and if it was a finisher its 20% energy lost from the cost of the finisher which just for example is only 6 energy for Rip.
|
Granted, druids have ways to recoup the "wasted" Rip miss and ArP as a stat is helping for the rest of the fight. The reason I commented in the first place is that people often automatically parrot 'x stat' > hit without considering things like the fight length or moving out of range.
Simulators are fantastic and I'm a big big fan of Rawr, but even Rawr cannot fully account for how much it hurts to miss a Rip as soon as XT's heart drops or missing a Rip .2 seconds before running away from Emalon towards an overcharged add.
There are some situations where either the fight is extremely short or where your window of hit-it-like-you-mean-it is so narrow that missing becomes much more impactful than a simulator can extrapolate.
Originally Posted by Sephon
Now does this mean I think hit is useless, definitely not, but the goal is to never gem or enchant for it, and to simply use pieces that are good due to armpen / agi that also have hit and expertise. This way you get close to the caps while still gearing for the desired stats.
|
I agree completely. Gemming for hit is a waste of item budget.
However, keeping an eye on your hit rating and utilizing pieces like Grim Toll, Cindershard Ring, and Fluxing Energy Coils will allow you to maintain the best of both worlds and then stack ArP or Agi to your heart's content. 
|
|
|
|
|
06/30/09, 4:59 PM
|
#75
|
|
Von Kaiser
Tauren Druid
Shadow Council
|
Originally Posted by Justinian
Granted, druids have ways to recoup the "wasted" Rip miss and ArP as a stat is helping for the rest of the fight. The reason I commented in the first place is that people often automatically parrot 'x stat' > hit without considering things like the fight length or moving out of range.
Simulators are fantastic and I'm a big big fan of Rawr, but even Rawr cannot fully account for how much it hurts to miss a Rip as soon as XT's heart drops or missing a Rip .2 seconds before running away from Emalon towards an overcharged add.
There are some situations where either the fight is extremely short or where your window of hit-it-like-you-mean-it is so narrow that missing becomes much more impactful than a simulator can extrapolate.
|
This is all very true, but this forum is about min-maxing to get every ounce of possible DPS. Hit is not the stat that will deliver the most bang for the buck, and thus why it is devalued from a max DPS perspective. Now, this would be very different if more fights included mechanics like Emalon, XT, etc. but the reality is they are in the minority.
The secondary argument to these kinds of fights are that we build secondary and tertiary sets just for this very reason. Yogg definitely requires more burst than sustained DPS, at least until phase 3 (depending on how one's guild handles phase 3) which would value hit and agility far more than ArP. In this case a secondary set becomes more optimal than gearing for hit in just one cat set.
The point has been made that hit and expertise are not bad stats by any stretch of the word. However, mathematics and in game testing have proven that they should never actively be sought after. As Nytkin mentioned, they will often come by default when grabbing Agility/ArP gear.
|
|
|
|
|
|