The Cat Guide - 4.3

[Smartie]

Well it is cat guide thread, so doesn't really take much figuring out as to what spec I am

Thanks for the pic though, what timer bar addon are you using?

[gollie]

Fortexorcist

[Deleted]

4 pc tier with offset chest (NORMAL) or heroic shoulders (omnitron) + heroic hands (chimeron) + head tier + legs tier.

Which one will provide higher dps?

[Nathanyel]

Well, as you haven't really specified what spec you are I'm just going to post my feral ui

I don't get why people "stack" their action bars and stuff in the middle of the bottom, in your case nearly reaching the middle of the screen, making it more difficult to see events behind you...

[gollie]

Because I want all the "important" stuff close each other.My Unit frames are big so I only need to glance at em to see my HP or my energy. My actionbar only has the, again, "important" abilities I want to see. Everything else is keybound and bars made invisible.

My timers are the most important for me to keep my rotation going, so I've placed them right where I put my eyes on the screen, but not so far up I can't see if I'm standing in bad shit. The chatbox, minimap and DPSmeter are just stacked on the bottom because it looks better. Spreading them out all over the screen doesn't look as good. Plus I've gotten really used to having the chat in the middle.

I believe I've been able to save up a lot of space by stacking everything close to each other, so I have a good overlook on what's going on around me. This is how my UI looks out of combat (my unit frame would have been faded out completely had I been alive and at full health):
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/7...3111213651.jpg

[Deleted]

I'm not familiar with ForteXorcist but IMHO if you are using bars they need a fixed maximum duration so they all deplete at the same rate. In your screenshot for example a quick glance at the bars shows that SR/TF drops/comes of cooldown before Rake/Rip. The bars don't give you any meaningful info (except the ticks on rake/rip, which I like) that just the icons and time remaining wouldn't.

[Deleted]

4 pc tier with offset chest (NORMAL) or heroic shoulders (omnitron) + heroic hands (chimeron) + head tier + legs tier.

Which one will provide higher dps?

About exactly the same I'd say. 4T11 bonus is worth slightly over 400 dps, and the diff between both T11 normal and heroic omnotron shoulders, and T11 normal gloves and heroic chimaeron gloves is slightly over 200 dps, for a total of slightly over 400 dps difference. You'd probably be best off buying the T11 chest and going 4piece + omnomnom shoulders, especially since it looks like they will be the best offpiece in 4.0.6.

[Deleted]

About exactly the same I'd say. 4T11 bonus is worth slightly over 400 dps, and the diff between both T11 normal and heroic omnotron shoulders, and T11 normal gloves and heroic chimaeron gloves is slightly over 200 dps, for a total of slightly over 400 dps difference. You'd probably be best off buying the T11 chest and going 4piece + omnomnom shoulders, especially since it looks like they will be the best offpiece in 4.0.6.

Thanks, and...isn't the crit/haste from tier shoulders better then haste/expertise from chest? I know that haste is going up after new patch so still - shouldn't be chest the best offtier?

[Deleted]

Took my estimation from http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t110352-...7/#post1851903, haven't gotten around to doublechecking this yet personally tho.

[bavarcarus]

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w...211_194227.jpg

mine changed a bit since this, name font got on my nerves and I had to make health a larger proportion of the bars when I went to heal a few raids.

damn, that was dumb, I used photobucket to edit out the chat and it saved it as a smaller messed up picture.

[Raidwiper]

Is there an addon for cats that tracks bleed uptime? Like for example during an encounter I would like to see like a mini WOL parse just telling me, 80% rip uptime, 85% rake uptime, mangle, SR etc.

I used to play a Spriest and this comes built in with the addon MFclip2, but it's only for spriest dots, after every single fight, even nomrla quest mobs, statistics would pop up.

Halp!

[Laststand09]

Hey guys, so I'm reading the questions about what gear is best to get T11 bonuses and whatnot, and I have a couple follow up questions. With the next patch coming I know the 10% bleed reduction will put a small dent in the priority of mastery. I just want to know, is the damage gained from the T11 4 piece bonus going to outweigh the equip bonuses gained from say Sark of the Unwatched where you have crit and mastery over T11 chest's haste and exp...or Double Attack Handguards vs T11 hands. I know things are changing with this patch so 4 piece would be more reasonable, I'm just having trouble deciding if its worth it over some of the loot drops as far as gaining haste and losing mastery.

Thanks guys!

[gollie]

I'm sure the theorycrafting tool Mew can help you there, just insert your values with the different items and setbonuses and see which is best.

[Deleted]

Is there an addon for cats that tracks bleed uptime? Like for example during an encounter I would like to see like a mini WOL parse just telling me, 80% rip uptime, 85% rake uptime, mangle, SR etc.

I used to play a Spriest and this comes built in with the addon MFclip2, but it's only for spriest dots, after every single fight, even nomrla quest mobs, statistics would pop up.

Halp!

Skada can do this.

---------- Post added 2011-02-02 at 12:41 AM ----------

Hey guys, so I'm reading the questions about what gear is best to get T11 bonuses and whatnot, and I have a couple follow up questions. With the next patch coming I know the 10% bleed reduction will put a small dent in the priority of mastery. I just want to know, is the damage gained from the T11 4 piece bonus going to outweigh the equip bonuses gained from say Sark of the Unwatched where you have crit and mastery over T11 chest's haste and exp...or Double Attack Handguards vs T11 hands. I know things are changing with this patch so 4 piece would be more reasonable, I'm just having trouble deciding if its worth it over some of the loot drops as far as gaining haste and losing mastery.

Thanks guys!

There's some post on EJ saying the Omnotron shoulders will be the new best offset piece. but as before there will be almost no difference between using shoulders, chest or gloves as non-set piece (or BoE helm at non-heroic level). It's generally best to just go with the nonset item you can get your hands on first out of those 4.

[Laststand09]

Gollie/Mihir thanks for the help

[Danii]

Hi, i have a question about the hit and expertise.

I have never played a druid, but got one to lvl 68 now and i am starting to like the cat spec a lot!
So i started looking around the web for some info on the cat spec in lvl 85, and from this guide i read that hit cap and expertise cap is not worth gemming/reforging for?
To me it seems that 100% chance to hit is still better than 80% returned energy for missing.
So my question is, how much dps will one loose if going for the hit/expertise cap?

[Deleted]

Worst case, about 0.6 dps per point of avoidable hit/expertise rating you are reforging, and 2.5 dps per point of hit/expertise you are gemming.

Since we are only using about half of our GCDs, and since we can refresh bleeds during the last tick, it's no dps loss at all to have to recast a missed ability.

[Paskgotsheal]

Worst case, about 0.6 dps per point of avoidable hit/expertise rating you are reforging, and 2.5 dps per point of hit/expertise you are gemming.

Since we are only using about half of our GCDs, and since we can refresh bleeds during the last tick, it's no dps loss at all to have to recast a missed ability.

Explain what you mean you can refresh during last tick. So if you refresh during the 9.1-12 sec duration of rake you won't lose that last tick orrr?

Sorry haven't been keeping up with kitty theory crafting, to busy getting my !@#$ pushed in by bosses as a bear =)

[Acidd06]

I like turtles

[Deleted]

Explain what you mean you can refresh during last tick. So if you refresh during the 9.1-12 sec duration of rake you won't lose that last tick orrr?

Sorry haven't been keeping up with kitty theory crafting, to busy getting my !@#$ pushed in by bosses as a bear =)

Correct. If you refresh during the last tick, the new rake/rip will have an extra tick added to it, and the next tick will be exactly when the tick you replaced would have happened.

For example,

[19:11:58.772] Maloriak afflicted by Rake from Mihir
[19:12:01.773] Mihir Rake Maloriak 8685
[19:12:04.789] Mihir Rake Maloriak 8686
[19:12:06.399] Maloriak's Rake is refreshed by Mihir (tried early refresh with tiger's fury up, missed by 0.1 sec ><)
[19:12:07.767] Mihir Rake Maloriak 9531
[19:12:10.761] Mihir Rake Maloriak 9531
[19:12:13.791] Mihir Rake Maloriak 9530
[19:12:16.759] Mihir Rake Maloriak 9531
[19:12:19.791] Mihir Rake Maloriak 9531
[19:12:20.424] Maloriak's Rake is refreshed by Mihir
[19:12:22.757] Mihir Rake Maloriak 9609
[19:12:25.781] Mihir Rake Maloriak 9608
[19:12:28.504] Maloriak's Rake is refreshed by Mihir (early refresh with TF up)
[19:12:28.749] Mihir Rake Maloriak 11050
[19:12:31.798] Mihir Rake Maloriak *22100*
[19:12:34.791] Mihir Rake Maloriak *22100*
[19:12:37.800] Mihir Rake Maloriak *22100*
[19:12:40.797] Mihir Rake Maloriak 11050
[19:12:43.823] Mihir Rake Maloriak 11050
[19:12:43.823] Mihir's Rake fades from Maloriak