4.0 Feral Gemming

[Azz]

Ofc once cataclsym hits mastery comes into play but, for just the WotLK 4.0 patch that's the best way to go prolly

You should be able to Reforge to mastery when 4.0.1 comes out from my understanding.

[xzbbzx]

How is it some say haste will be the second stat, and others say it will be mastery?

[utopianh]

How is it some say haste will be the second stat, and others say it will be mastery?

Because they're so close in value atm there's no clear answer as to which is the correct way to go. In some raid environments, the mastery stat will outweigh haste, while in others haste will outweigh mastery, however most math on a single target is showing mastery outpacing haste by a degree since haste is not independant of hit/expertise, while mastery is.

[exochaft]

Man, so much got derailed since my last post, it'd take several posts to clarify everything. Most people against my stance on hit/exp is because they lack seeing that the relative value of DPS stats are created in a vacuum. Once I suggest intrinsic value of a stat outside of this vacuum (specifically for hit/exp is having the knowledge that everything you intend to hit WILL hit), suddenly I don't know other stats will have intrinsic value outside the vacuum... of course I know that they do.

You could say crit increases combo points in some cases, haste will let you proc OOC more, etc... we could honestly go all day about it, but the intrinsic value of hit and expertise is much easier to see, plus it actually HAS a cap that's relatively easy to reforge to... the only other stat that has a cap would be crit, and a guess what, the 4.0.1 changeover probably has most feral druids insanely over the crit soft-cap. If you get crit/hit/exp soft-capped, it just makes all other stats even better.

The OP was asking about his/her gear at the changeover, probably for continuing raids or what have you. While every stat has an intrinsic value, hit/exp is the easiest to understand/see in action and it has a cap. This will allow easier choices in terms of gems.

*edit* - I'm staying away from lvl 85 gemming on purpose, since that's a whole different beast.

[utopianh]

Man, so much got derailed since my last post, it'd take several posts to clarify everything. Most people against my stance on hit/exp is because they lack seeing that the relative value of DPS stats are created in a vacuum. Once I suggest intrinsic value of a stat outside of this vacuum (specifically for hit/exp is having the knowledge that everything you intend to hit WILL hit), suddenly I don't know other stats will have intrinsic value outside the vacuum... of course I know that they do.

You could say crit increases combo points in some cases, haste will let you proc OOC more, etc... we could honestly go all day about it, but the intrinsic value of hit and expertise is much easier to see, plus it actually HAS a cap that's relatively easy to reforge to... the only other stat that has a cap would be crit, and a guess what, the 4.0.1 changeover probably has most feral druids insanely over the crit soft-cap. If you get crit/hit/exp soft-capped, it just makes all other stats even better.

The OP was asking about his/her gear at the changeover, probably for continuing raids or what have you. While every stat has an intrinsic value, hit/exp is the easiest to understand/see in action and it has a cap. This will allow easier choices in terms of gems.

*edit* - I'm staying away from lvl 85 gemming on purpose, since that's a whole different beast.

Every stat except for mastery has a built-in cap right now; it's just hit and expertise are within range. Considering how fast ferals will be changing their gear out with initial leveling, or if a guild stuck is suddenly able to progress again post ptr patch, advising putting yourself right up at cap of the lowest capping stats (which also, just so happen to be lower increases in static dps in most encounters), means less flexibility and more reforging every single time that player gets an upgrade. If their gear level is high enough right now that they're at the crit soft cap, they probably already know enough about the mechanics and/or use toskks to see where they're pushing up against it and know to switch out pieces for a bit of hit.

Clearly we all agree that reforging their excessive crit and regemming their former ArP gems is the first note all of us should be doing once the patch hits; I just don't think they should immediately be reforging for hit/expertise cap. Now padding a little bit of hit/expertise or swapping out some of our old BiS for crit/hit or crit/expertise pieces and then reforging the crit portion to haste or mastery would not be a bad idea entirely if it nets overall more dps stats and agility, but it will be smallish gains versus the entire goal of reducing your excessive amounts of crit on gear for stats like mastery, haste, and hit/expertise below cap.

[Mushy]

With all thisb eing said, and the way haste will effect energy regain .. is there a possibility we could defect from STS / DBW / WFS as BiS trinkets ? Perhaps taking a look at TiAJ or Herkul ?

[Purrfunctory]

The relative value (or Instrumental value) approach is specifically designed to weigh one stat against other stats rather than a vacuum. The Hit and Expertise cap approach specifically ignores the value of other stats which is the definition of intrinsic or inherent value.

I would argue that Agility, Mastery and Haste are much easier to see since your Damage Meter will demonstrate better results.

Agility is an amazingly easy stat to understand. Agility provides 3 Attack Power per 1 point of Agility prior to with modifiers (Armor Specialization, Aggression, Heart of the Wild and Mark of the Wild) additionally each 1 point of Agility provides 0.1333% Critical Strike. A mere 2,000 Agility would provide 6,000 Attack Power and 26.6666% Critical Strike.

Mastery is fairly easy to understand as well. Mastery increases Feral bleed damage at a rate of 15 Mastery to 1% additional bleed damage. Considering that bleeds are >30% of Feral damage for Ferals this is a relatively large increase in damage overall.

Haste may have the easiest effect of all stats to see since the "feel" of the Feral "rotation" is much smoother with even modest amounts of Haste. You don't even need to crunch numbers to know that your energy is replenishing faster and you are increasing your dps as a result.

To clarify, I am not suggesting that you should remove any and all Hit and Expertise. Quite the opposite in fact; If a Agility/Hit gem will provide a socket bonus then use the gem. If your rotation "feels" good ala Haste and an Agility/Expertise gem or a Hit/Expertise gem will provide a socket bonus then by all means use it. If you are low on Hit then perhaps you should use the Icewalker enchant and if you are low on Expertise then maybe Expertise is a better enchant on your gloves than Agility.

What I am saying is that "capping" a stat simply because it is easy to cap is just about the worst advise you can ever give a Feral. Hit and Expertise are near the cap even if you do not have any since your chance to Hit without any Hit Rating is still 92% and your target will not dodge 93.5% of your attacks form behind. Overall, if you attack a target from behind and you have absolutely no Hit or Expertise you will still hit your target 85.5% of the time.

[utopianh]

There's certainly a possibility of the War Token overtaking the WFS, or 264 DBW/271 STS, but I doubt it'll come close to the 277/284 trinkets. As for Tiny Abom, unless Fury Swipes or something like Infected Wound proc it enough to justify the proc portion there's almost no way for it to compete. On live it's worth less to us than non heroic Death's Choice due to how bad the proc is.

There is the potential with our increased levels of haste, increased white damage through SR's change, and fury swipes 3 second cooldown, there's definetely going to be an increased value on the proc, but whether it's enough to offset the ridiculous AP on the Scale, or the extremely high uptime DBW procs, I doubt it.

I wonder if DBW is still proccing Str for us; because that will seriously diminish the value of the proc.

[exochaft]

What I am saying is that "capping" a stat simply because it is easy to cap is just about the worst advise you can ever give a Feral. Hit and Expertise are near the cap even if you do not have any since your chance to Hit without any Hit Rating is still 92% and your target will not dodge 93.5% of your attacks form behind. Overall, if you attack a target from behind and you have absolutely no Hit or Expertise you will still hit your target 85.5% of the time.

The one thing I've purposefully left out (just to see if anyone would bring it up otherwise) is how hit and expertise increase you crit chance. Normally, most people haven't bothered because most people haven't been able to get arpen capped and crit capped at the same time, and there's a reason why hit/exp became really good at this point... glancing blows. From the nature of how the hit table works, no matter how high your crit is, your crit is capped by your miss + dodge + glancing blows rate.

With arpen out of the picture, at lvl 80 crit is going to be super high, most likely well over the normal crit cap. Now, unless you've been hoarding gear, you can safely say most people will not have the luxury of switching out completely different pieces... be that as it may, if you start switching out all your formerly-arpen gems for agi, you'll probably find yourself way over the crit cap. So what's left in terms of secondary stats if we have way to much crit rating? We have haste, hit, expertise, and mastery. Unfortunately, haste does not make our bleed tick faster or reduce our GCD, so it offers faster autoattacks and energy regen. Hit/expertise provide more contact and boosts your crit cap higher if you're below the hit/exp cap. Mastery increases the damage done by your bleeds.

What's the answer in terms of reforging? It's still rather tricky, but it depends on how high your crit is.

If you had zero hit/exp rating, your autoattacks would artificially have a 14.5% less chance to crit roughly (stealing your numbers). Point for point, hit rating would yield more crit % for white attacks than crit rating, in all irony (as would expertise). The lower your hit/exp are from being capped, the lower your crit cap is going to be... and isn't the point of this discussion to stay at crit cap w/o devaluing as much of it as possible? Otherwise, I think we'd be hearing more "reforge all your crit to X stat or Y stat, who cares if you drop to below 50% crit chance"


Am I saying that haste or mastery isn't a good thing? Of course not, they're both good stats. If anything, Mastery might edge out ahead of everything on average. Again this falls back on intrinsic value, and that's why many people opt for hit/exp cap... because it adds consistency to one of the toughest rotations out there (even if other stats yield slightly better DPS on average, it's still an average, and you run the chance of doing less DPS than if you chose hit/exp). Plus, I didn't say to pick it because it caps, I just mentioned it has a cap (being able to cap it is just a bonus)

[Purrfunctory]

Nice post and everything you said is absolutely correct.

I will say that after swapping all those ridiculous Critical Strike Rating gems for Agility gems I had not only very high Attack Power but extremely high Critical Strike as well. With Precision on my gloves and Icewalker on my boots along with the Hit and Expertise on my gear I was doing fairly well. Gemming for Agility and opportunistically for Hit and Expertise is a very different argument than we have discussed previously but should yield good, sustainable damage. Certainly more than sufficient for leveling a Feral from level 80 to level 85.

[Elunedra]

crit gems arent so good for leveling anyway as they massively drop in value each level lol

[galaniDC]

Here is my two bits:

From my research and from using it in game:

Gems:
Red= Agi
Yellow= Crit
All others = Agi (unless you have to socket for your meta gem to be active)

About Mastery:

When reforging Items always add mastery we are one of the few classes that will do this. 49% bleed damage increase off the go and then add another 3.1% damage per point. This is a huge boost to our damage. When reforging an item try to reforge so that you can keep any crit bonus. this means that usually haste will be forged over.

I haven't adjusted my hit or expertise and really don't plan too, my ideology is simple....Agility, Mastery, Crit, Haste.

I had a 6 month break from wow and came back this patch, I am keeping up with my guild mates and they are impressed with the damage I am putting out. That is to say that I am no longer at the top of the guild in equipment... I say crit is important becuase I clear cast about every 6 secs.

Galani Azuremyst

[scorch109]

hit and expertise slightly outweigh haste, it's red - agi yellow - agi/crit if socket bonus is more then 6 agi, and blue - agi/hit if socket bonus is more then 6 agi

[axxey]

Most of this thread is outdated from over a month ago which galaniDC just revived, take it with a pinch of salt and ignore his post.