4.0 Feral Gemming

[Pautate]

YO.
I've had a little pause from WoW for a while, and decided it was time to start again, with the 4.0 comming up. I play kitty, so the arpen loss is a big change for me. I play on euro servers, so we haven't got the new patch implemented yet. So, the biggest question of the year. How should I gem ? Haste, AP, agi, ...Str ? >< And what about the exp and hit caps ?
If it helps, here is my armory http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...les&cn=Pautate
Thanks for you help !

[Kats]

Being logged in Resto gear doesn't help much. But so far I have gathered it up as Gemming as though you wold if ArPen didn't exist. So you are looking at pretty much straight Agility as much as possible, while maintaining the other caps (hit/expertise) I don't see how or why any Str gems would be used.

I'm sure Mihir might have a comment or 2.

[Grimgore]

I would imagine the way to do it would be to reach hit/expertise caps first. 264 hit and 26 expertise iirc. After that you'll want AGI gems in every socket, with the exception of 1 Nightmare Tear to activate your meta gem. HOWEVER... if when you take raid buffs into consideration, the massive AGI you are stacking leads to being crit capped (which is 80% crit I think, go to EJ for hard numbers but I think that's correct) then you'll want to substitute some of the agi gems for haste gems. Once hit/exp/crit capped, haste becomes your best stat.

[Huggykaze]

Haste is already better than crit when near to cap;P Because of OoC procs, also in 4.0 it will increase energy regen, I had some dummy fun on PTR's today, I could go for 3-4 shreds on 1 energy pool (no need to wait for next shred)

But I'd go for: Exp/Hit Cap->Agi/Agi+Haste/Agi+Crit depending on stats;p

[Purrfunctory]

According to my calculations the attribute priority for WoW 4.0 is:

1. Agility to (near) white Critical Strike cap (74% due to glancing blows)
2. Hit Rating
3. Expertise Rating
4. Mastery (overtakes Hit Rating and Expertise Rating once you reach minimal amounts since once a DoT is applied they don't miss and can't be dodged) (Rake and Rip appear to be > 30% of our damage even with only minimal Mastery Rating)
5. Haste

It is important to note; however, that such a simplified viewpoint isn't truly appropriate for the complex attribute system that Blizzard has implemented. In reality, you will likely have some Hit Rating, Expertise Rating, Mastery and Haste on your gear. You will want to improve all these attributes as you improve your gear because any amount of other attributes (Hit and Expertise especially) improve the value of Agility. In other words, the best thing you can do typically is use the best appropriate enchant or gem for a given piece. If, for example, you have zero Hit Rating then the value of Hit Rating in relation to Agility is very high. On the other hand if you have 164 Hit Rating (5% additional Hit chance) then unless you are nearing the Critical Strike cap for white hits via Agility then the value of additional Hit Rating is relatively low.

I also can't stress enough that one of the things that can't be modeled easily is the human interaction with the game. Haste Rating has significant value above and beyond any calculations in that Haste now increases Energy Regeneration and can make a dramatic difference in smoothing your "rotation."

Attributes do not exist in a vacuum. You should select gear, enchants and gems to carefully balance your chance to hit with the amount of damage for which you do hit. Having said that, you should be stacking Agility to absurd levels. Stacking Hit Rating and Expertise Rating have little to no value with low levels of Attack Power and Critical Strike Rating (as provided by Agility).

Here is an example:

The Incredible Hulk (1,000,000 Attack Power, 25% Critical Strike, 0% Hit, 0% Expertise) swings at
Spiderman (10,000 Attack Power, 50% Critical Strike, 8% Hit, 6.5% Expertise)

The Incredible Hulk shatters worlds but misses a lot (especially against Spiderman's 50% Dodge) - He could use more Hit Rating and Expertise Rating even if he lost some Attack Power (or even his relatively low Critical Strike Rating)
Spiderman on the other hand never misses (due to those cat-like reflexes) but hits like your grandma (at least as far as The Hulk is concerned) - He could clearly use more Attack Power and Critical Strike even if he lost some Hit Rating or Expertise Rating

TLDR

Attributes do not exist in a vacuum. You should select gear, enchants and gems to carefully balance your chance to hit with the amount of damage for which you do hit. For individuals who do not care to do the math you can go to the Druid Wiki for Toskks DPS Gear Method which has been modified by Yawning and Tangedyn with assistance from Toskk to model WoW 4.0. Sorry, I can not post links yet. You should be able to Google "Toskks's DPS Method for the website and review the forums therein for the beta version of "Mew."

[Elunedra]

Thanks for the calculations i personaly also came up whit something like that.
I am not going to post my math as there be 100 flaws in it lol.

One thing i did figure is that mastery rating scale whit agility aswel like if you rake hits for 5000 whit a 30% mastery it does 6500 damage, that is a 1500 damage increase. But if your rake hits for 5500 becase you have more AP / better gear. Then the mastery does 6650 so an increase of 1650 damage.

But yes haste rating is completly weird espcaily since we calculate our attacks in damage per enengy, I assume that if i have 20% more haste rating my enegery regeneration is 20% faster but these numbers might be totaly different. If i got time this weekend i can try to porperly test it whit an addon on the ptr.

[Casseille]

Won't there be a 4.0 Rawr out?

[Elunedra]

probely not as all development goes to rawr3.0 lol

[Mushy]

Quick question:

While gemming seems highly obvious when 4.0 comes .. what about trinkets ? Simply re-forge them ( If possible ) or seek other alternatives ? Currently sitting with 277 DBW and 271 Sharpened with 264 WFS / 258 DV etc in bank. Picked up a 277 Tiny Abom just incase for 4.0.

So my question is, to any of the PTR kitty's .. do we reforge or replace ?

[Elunedra]

ill keep my DBW i want the form chances lol

as for my other trinket i gues ill reforge it to hit rating so i can drop my 2 hit gems andget agi instead of them ^^

but i am not even sure if reforging is posable in 4.0.1 isnt that in cata ?

[Sylar Hao]

I think Agi+Haste is the way to go, because of the tests I've done on the ptr. With mastery rating you only increase Bleed damage, but with Agility you increase both your whole damage and your whole critical strike chance.

I'm jewelcrafter, and I do a lot of pvp so I have lots of gems in the bags (purchased with honor). When I've transfered my char to the ptr I've been able to fully regem and make tests. I'm full 264 gear (yeah, not the best gear, I know) and I've tried reforging and regeming in both ways: full mastery and full haste, so I could check them both well. Testing on dummies with full mastery I barely could reach 7k dps :S, but with full haste I could easily reach 10.5k (around 1.1k haste). Energy regeneration is crazy this way so you can shred-spam and see lots of numbers. I really like it.

Of course patches, level 85 gear and so on may change all of this, but atm this is my two cents ^^

[Mushy]

ill keep my DBW i want the form chances lol

as for my other trinket i gues ill reforge it to hit rating so i can drop my 2 hit gems andget agi instead of them ^^

but i am not even sure if reforging is posable in 4.0.1 isnt that in cata ?

That's where I'm not sure. I have acces to the beta and have obviously changed stats accoridngly, but am unsure as to weather reforging is available in 4.0 . If it is, then there would be no problem, if there isn't .. then my question still remains .. would we go back to HC DV / HC WFS etc to make up for the lack of desireable stats on the trinkets ( Read Crit ) Logging in on beta for the first time and seeing 90% crit on cat form is just depressing at lvl 80.

[Elunedra]

meh i only had 74% unbuffed, but where is that reforce npc anyway ? i can try to see if he is there on the PTR?

[Deleted]

http://code.google.com/p/mew-wow-druid-model/

Suggests to go agi >> mastery > haste > hit/exp > crit, with hit/exp getting more important when you hit the crit softcap.

[arel00]

Quick question:

While gemming seems highly obvious when 4.0 comes .. what about trinkets ? Simply re-forge them ( If possible ) or seek other alternatives ? Currently sitting with 277 DBW and 271 Sharpened with 264 WFS / 258 DV etc in bank. Picked up a 277 Tiny Abom just incase for 4.0.

So my question is, to any of the PTR kitty's .. do we reforge or replace ?

I hardly see the problem. While I'm not sure about STS, DBW will see its passive ArP turned into crit rating. Essentially giving you WFS bigger, meaner brother.

[Deleted]

I hardly see the problem. While I'm not sure about STS, DBW will see its passive ArP turned into crit rating. Essentially giving you WFS bigger, meaner brother.

Same for STS really.

[Purrfunctory]

Thank you for posting the link to Mew, Mihir. I can't recommend Mew enough especially at this critical stage. The more input on the accuracy of the model they have the more accurate the model will be for everyone! So, please use "Mew" then test your dps to verify the accuracy. Report any results good, bad or otherwise with your configuration.

With the recent change to Mastery the value is increased dramatically which in turn increases the value of Haste. I was using the older value for Mastery although I still had the caveat that even low levels of Hit Rating and Expertise Rating would improve the value of Mastery.

The key point is that Hit Rating and Expertise Rating don't matter much if you hit like a wet noodle; if, on the other hand, you hit like worlds colliding then a single miss has a dramatic impact on your overall damage.

Keep in mind that these relative statistics weightings are for the current Public Test Realm build and the relative values will likely change.

For "playability" you will definitely want some Haste since it smoothes your "rotation" quite a bit but I recommend being careful with Haste as there appear to be plateau values where you need to stack significantly more Haste for a significant benefit (due to Fury Swipes). Additionally, Haste >40% is almost unmanageable with Berserk, Omen of Clarity and/or Tiger's Fury and with the Global Cool Downs you can't dump energy fast enough (in my experience).

[Elunedra]

With the recent change to Mastery the value is increased dramatically which in turn increases the value of Haste.

hmm what was chanced then >?

[Dedweight]

but am unsure as to weather reforging is available in 4.0

According to the PTR Reforging will be available with 4.0.1, it's possible they will change that at the last minute but I somewhat doubt it.

Where is that reforce npc anyway ? i can try to see if he is there on the PTR?

Near the Enchanting trainers, though you may not get the normal conversation cursor(or any change to the cursor at all) but right clicking on the NPC should allow you to make the stat changes.

[Purrfunctory]

Elunedra,

I read the patch notes and I didn't see the change to Mastery myself in WoW 4.0.1 Build 13082. Apparently, Mastery was buffed from 2.5% per point to 3.1% which is incredible since Mastery is not impacted by Hit Rating or Expertise Rating. This means that as your Mastery improves even to absurd levels its relative value as compared to Hit Rating or Expertise Rating doesn't change much lowering the relative value of Hit Rating and Expertise Rating much further overall.

I have been able to Reforge statistic values since the PTR has been Live for this round of testing. Thus, I believe this is intentional and will almost certainly be available in when WoW 4.0.1 is placed on Live. I also noticed that the Reforger in Darnassus now has an icon when you mouse over him.