This discussion of hit reminds me of a really interesting test a shadow priest from my guild tried on the PTR. He stacked nearly 1000 haste so he could fit 3 mind flays in between his mind blast cooldown (and have like 3.8 sec mindsears), the problem was that without him stacking SP and crit into the slots like priest Sims tell you you should that extra mindflay couldnt make up for the extra damage done throught the full rotation or the ticks off MS.

For Druids a similiar thing happens, hit is important but no matter how much you want your attacks to hit at the right times, your total damage done (and as a dps thats the ONLY stat that matters) will come out greater stacking armour pen and agil over hit, almost 100% of the time.

Please don`t forget that Arpen is our best stat in simulations.

Yes hit, str, agi, and expertise are good stats, they will improve your dps in whatever way.

You are never able to say which stat is the best stat in a real fight. If you get very very unlucky in the heartphase of XT and you miss/dodge every attack. Then it would have been bettet to gem for expertise/hit. But if you hit everything when his heart is active arpen is the best stat.

Arpen gives you 3-5dps per gem over agi in a simulation. If you have 10 Arpen gems that would be 50dps. Could be more, could be less.

Now you are in a fight, a healer needs your innervate and another one needs your BR. The improve you gain from your gemming is lost when you are done with both.

So if a simulation shows us Arpen is the best stat in that simulation this stat will probably be the best stat for this Tier, for all bosses not just for one maybe two bosses.

If you have enough gems then you could simulate each bossfight in Ulduar an regem for every Boss. If not then just trust people like night who put alot of effort in those calculation.

I am new to feral DPS and am a little confused about some of the discussions/recommendations on this thread. The OP recommends using Rawr to determine what gear choices are best for me and he also states that between 200 ArP and the ArP cap of 1200 or so, ArP is the best stat and to gem for it. Where my confusion comes in is that Rawr seems to rate gear higher when I have Agi gems in them than ArP gems. Here are my current stats with kitty gear, spec, and normal raid buffs that I get (shammy totems, flask, might, kings, etc.):

Agi 1455, Str 435, Crit Rating 613, HitRating 57, Expertise 82, Haste 314, ArP 247. I do not have any of the ArP on proc trinkets.

Should I ignore Rawr and start re-gemming for ArP or stick with Agi gems?

Also, I think Rawr is telling me that replacing my T7 helm and breaking my 2 piece bonus (helm/chest) with Guise of the Midgard Serpent (iLvl 219 helm) would be a slight dps increase. Does that seem right?

Well this is the problem the cat community suffers at the moment. RAWR used to be our reference. We used to trust RAWR.

Now there are two different concepts - FBN and RAWR have some difference results here and there.
The author of RAWR, Astrylian, says that the FBN simulator has heavy flaws. Though, nightcrowler did some incredible work there and his code has been checked by many other druids and I can't see mistakes being made.
On the other hand, the theory behind the RAWR dps calculator is unclear.
Remember - the FBN suggestions to stats are only true, if you follow the FBN Addon Move suggestions.

The fact is: Cat DPS is very very complex. Slight adjustments will lead to different results. There's so much that can change the outcome. There is no rule for every playstyle. It depends on your rip and rake uptime, on your shred and FB usage and many other things.

My experience is, that RAWR will start to suggest ArP gemming a little later, at around 350-400 ArP. But then again there seems to be some hidden "magic thresholds" where the stat value table changes completely, when only one item is changed. I noticed some very odd behaviour. Sometimes Haste Rating jumps from fifth to first place in the RAWR stat value table and Str getting better than Agi, when only slight changes are made to my gear.


At the moment my personal decision is to trust Nightcrowler. Since nobody knows the theory behind RAWR we can't check which of the two models displays real bossfights more realistic. Perhaps they both work but assume different Cycles.
However - RAWR has had a great history and for a very long time could be trusted completely. It is still a very good tool and has by far the best user friendly interface.
So I tend to follow the RAWR item suggestions, but have in mind, that ArP is probably a little more worth, than RAWR suggests.

@Aangus: First of all, there's no Aangus on CC on the armory. Regardless, I don't feel like answering a "this is what I have, help me not suck" post by telling you what to do. You can see that the resources are there (Rawr, Toskk, FbN) If you choose not to believe them, then don't. I really don't get why people feel the need to ask why the generic blanket-statement advice in the "for Dummies" thread is telling them something different from a personalized and specific program.

Rawr is telling you to gem agi because your hit/expertise/crit is pretty low, thus your CP per Energy is low. Rawr is trying to increase your CP Generation so you can generate enough CP for Rawrs cycles. Trust Rawr, or don't.

From posting of damage breakdowns I've seen white attacks do roughly 30% of your damage. Druid dps specials are instant and not affected by haste, so x haste % will increase your damage by ~ x/3, right? I find myself waiting for energy more often than the global cooldown, so seeing as hit & expertise will linearly increase ALL of your damage until you reach the cap, and 1 point of haste, hit & expertise rating all use the same factor (1pt = 0.03%) shouldn't hit and expertise be prioritized above haste until capped, at which point haste would of course become better? I apologize if this is wrong.

Do haste, hit and expertise scale differently with level so that the 0.03% per point factor @ 80 is different for each stat at lower levels?

More haste - more OoC proccs.

As far as I know of, the internal CD on weapon procs do not benefit from haste. Same on any procs (cloak enchants, glove enchants, trinkets, etc.)

I'm sure it's been said before, but to reiterate: Haste does not affect the global cooldown of physical attacks/abilities. Only spells GCD's are affected by haste, so GCD reduction is generally irrelevant to feral dps.

Both mongoose and berserk appear to be independently valued proc rates that are only determined by your base weapon speed. In which case, both do benefit from haste, albeit in a very marginal way.

@grezgorz:
there is not a general consensus on it. They are based on PPM but pre-Wotlk was found that the number of PPM doesn't change with haste. With wotlk they changed OOC to vary with haste (basically it has a fixed chance to proc so more attack = more proc) and it's not yet find out if they also changed weapon enchant in the same way. The difference will be small indeed.