feral and haste ...question

[multhor]

I'm brand new to feral druid. I was reading another post which stated that feral weapons (regardless of the weapon speed) is at 1.0 in cat form.

That was really good to know, but that leads me to the subject of haste. Is haste even effective for us. I.E:
1.) do windfury totems help us out at all.
2.) if gear has compareable stats, but one has haste while the other might have a tad better stats. Should i take the haste one? example : titanium impact band vs. ring of invincibility. (sorry i didn't link items. Just realized i only have a minute left before i gotta leave)

Thanks for any help / advice you all give

[Amarosos]

It works, but don't prioritize it.

Hit, Crit n' Attack Power. I've also found that Armor Penetration aint that bad either. - Personal oppinion.

(I'll leave the rest to those cunning in the art of 1 Agility = X amount of AP + Crit)

[Hots]

Arm pene is a very good stat for kittys:P though from my personal exp the difference between agility and arm pene arent that much.

To get to the haste question. First of all your ooc does ofc proc more often the faster you hit(which means haste is good since you basicly get more CP and dmg). You can also see it like this

Agility gemmed kitty: Does most dmg from dots
Arm pene gemmed Kitty: Does most dmg from shreds and white attacks

So my own opinion if you gem with arm pene(as you should, atleast when you got quite nice u25 gear) haste is becoming very good since your dmg is from hard hits, haste gives more hard hits and increases your dmg.

[darkwarrior42]

I don't have the math to back this up, but I remember reading a post somewhere (maybe on EJ) that discussed haste for ferals. The bottom line seemed to be that a little bit of haste wasn't all that great, but a *lot* of haste was awesome, making it a stat that became better the more of it you could get ahold of.

Please don't quote me on that, it's been a while and I can't find the post off-hand, so I could easily be wrong.

[Luaavin]

I don't have the math to back this up, but I remember reading a post somewhere (maybe on EJ) that discussed haste for ferals. The bottom line seemed to be that a little bit of haste wasn't all that great, but a *lot* of haste was awesome, making it a stat that became better the more of it you could get ahold of.

This statement is true for Armor Penetration, because its scaling curve is not linear. The more Armor Penetration you have, the more you benefit from the next point.

Haste on the other hand scales linear like crit, but the truth is, haste is the worst stats for kitties to get.

The best stat for starter kitties is agility, paired with expertise and hit to get near the cap.

Edit: For the OoC proc, its just not worth it. OoC has a PPM of 3, and getting one extra per minute you need to get 33% melee haste, which should be something around 800 haste. Ofc there is no windfury included in that example.

[multhor]

right on. that does explain some things. I guess it's not as easy to determine the effect of haste due based on weapon speed like it is on other classes. But that's good to see that we at least 'benefit' from any haste we can get.

As far as the OOC proc. I've got my rotations down good,( in fact I did 6700dps last night on loatheb and took 2nd on total dmg...which was my first attempt at feral since i've been resto my whole druidic life)... but I can't determine exactly when my ooc is proccing. I know I'm supposed to use shred for the proc. But i'm so busy trying to keep my mangle / sor / rake / rip up that I tend to use the ooc for one of those shots.

Do you use an addon or is there a sound it makes to listen for. what can you suggest to help me out with my ooc problem?

[rated]

Do you use an addon or is there a sound it makes to listen for. what can you suggest to help me out with my ooc problem?

I use MikScrollingBattleText. I get a nice big blue message across my screen every time it proc's. Also good to track damage/incoming heals, buffs etc.

[Cheezee]

Badkitty or Feralbynite are the two addons of choice (one or the other). I use Badkitty to keep track of debuff timers.

It's very easy to see the effects of haste for a feral druid. For every 1% you increase your haste, your attack speed will drop by .01 seconds in cat and .025 seconds in bear. In effect, it's not worth the loss in stats to actively stack haste rating as a feral druid.

[osutimmers]

droodfocus is also fairly good for tracking debuffs/buffs.

agi agi agi is the way to go for gemming, crit and ap with some nice hit and expertise on gear. Dont even think about arpen until you have one of the arpen trinkets (grim toll/mjollnir runestone) and around 250-300 passive arpen.

[Asgard]

Good stats :
- ArPen (the n°1, from far distance)
- Agility
- AP
- Crit
Stats you don't bother :
- Hit (we're hit capped @ 8%/7 w/ draenei, so you shouldn't have any problem reaching the cap)
- expertise (same)
- haste

Go for ArPen if you use that piece of gear only for you dps set. If you happen to switch between tank and dps, agility might be better