Feral druid, hit and exp questions...

[Taroshik]

Hello my fellow shapeshifters.
For this expansion I've decided to lurk deep into the mysteries of evolving in to a cat.

Well then on to my questions.
During my recent travels through the latest raid encounter, I happend to stumble upon 24 other people, traveling in the same direction, being the only one who had deeply practiced the mysteries of this special animal, I though it would be a breeze to quite relaxingly kill my way through. But ohh my, was I wrong, those fallen souls who summon horrible demons and frost elementals seemed much to powerful for me to handle, thus I am to ashamed to link any meters showing my damage, but well happy they were traveling with me, and not against me.

As I after this four hour traveling session decided to scout other players who have looked into the depths of the mysteries lying behind the soft fur of the cat, I noticed something strange, there seems to be some arguing among the fellow cats about the chance to hit and avoid getting dodged.

/Rp
So, Is hit and expertise worth capping or not? Cause honestly I have no clue, my nr 1 rule have always been that you should be capped in both before raiding...

Some maths as to why one or the other is better would be appreciated, If available!

Also, what do you think of the overall potencial of feral in raids? good, awesome, meh, bad, awful?

But after seeing a feral druid pulling 8k more dps than me on the same fight, when I had full uptime on rake/rip/savage roar, with less than 2% in both hit and expertise... I am very confused...

//Herrbjörn

Your friendly kitteh!

[kaiadam]

If your gear is absolutely identical in every respect other than expertise/hit capping, 8k is entirely too large of a difference that those stats can account for.

People don't seem to realize how close secondary stats are ... right now unless you're massively reforging dodge, parry, spirit, or over the expertise/hit cap, the best possible reforge is at best 500 dps better than the worst possible reforge, give or take a couple hundred. Something as large as an 8k differential is almost assuredly execution based. And personally, being a top wol parser, I'm going to say that while hit/exp cap is a mathematical/theoretical loss, it's a dps gain in practice because less attention used on seeing if you landed that rake/rip is more attention you can use elsewhere for far more damage. Like staying within range of a mob for a tenth of a second more.

Pushing for full uptime on rip is actually a dps loss (in fact, I'm almost certain that you're trying too hard on this front causing you to lose dps elsewhere. My best single target fight I had 80% rip uptime and over 70k dps), make sure you use bite when appropriate and thrash as well.

[Taroshik]

okey, now that didn't make me less confused unfortunately xD
Should I aim for hitcap or not, or should I reforge haste to hit/expertise, but leave crit/mastery alone?
Is it worth only capping hit? as dodged attacks give us energy back..
Thrash should only be used when clearcast proccs if I'm correct, right? or should I try to keep that one up more oftenly?

/Herrbjörn

[Raugnaut]

Ok...

Essentially, what he is saying is, as long as you are reforging for a dps stat, it doesnt matter WHAT you reforge to. So, yes, if you feel like reforging to hit/expertise, then reforge to hit/expertise. That 8k dps difference you are seeing is most likely NOT because of reforging, but rather because that other dps is doing a better job in his rotation then you are.