Feral Expertise

[kiljare]

Anyone playing the beta have any idea why we would need 200+ expertise on our gear? I would think at least one piece of our naxx tiered gear should be hit rating. I would personally like about half the expertise and alot more armor pen...hell even haste. I know its great for tanking, but really do you need that much? I guess you wouldn't take the expertise talent in the tree if that's the case, but i'm thoroughly confused by that part of the itemization.

[arel00]

Anyone playing the beta have any idea why we would need 200+ expertise on our gear? I would think at least one piece of our naxx tiered gear should be hit rating. I would personally like about half the expertise and alot more armor pen...hell even haste. I know its great for tanking, but really do you need that much? I guess you wouldn't take the expertise talent in the tree if that's the case, but i'm thoroughly confused by that part of the itemization.

Expertise, as tank, prevents the mob from dodging or parrying your attacks (while as cat it's only affecting dodge, being behind).
While mobs' dodge chance is quite low, parry chance is way higher. I'm not sure about the correct values, but we're talking something on the order of 6,5% dodge and 15% parry.

The current Feral tank set from 10men Naxx (I haven't checked the 25men one yet) gives a total of 12,03 expertise (expertise, not rating! I already converted that). Making that 12, it would reduce the enemy's chance to dodge and parry by 3%. It becomes 22, thus 5,5% dodge/parry reduction, if you add the feral talent to that. As you see, the talent is still useful, since mobs can still stop your attacks.

The advantages of having much expertise as a tank are three. The first and most obvious is more threat. The second one is that when a boss parries, he has a special kind of counterattack, so less parried hit means less damage for you. The third one is a bit tricky: given the hit table, *before* you reach hitcap, expertise works exactly as hit rating your do... makes your attacks more likely to land.

As dps, consider this: you are still dodged by mobs even with both the talent and the whole set. Unless you are hitcapped, which will probably come through rogue gear, now that we're sharing it, it is a significant boos on your dps. Even after hitcap, it takes away the mobs chance to avoid hits.

Even if it seems loads, it is really not that much when you convert it from the rating to the real value. Consider that the rating/value conversion scales with level. As it is now, it's not wasted at all. It doesn't cap it even for cats, figure for bears.

[kiljare]

I understand how expertise works, but on the items its listing a % which leads me to believe that the formula for expertise isn't changing. Since its currently 4 expertise rating for each expertise point which amounts to .25% per point. This comes out to about 12.5% chance to not be parried/dodged for 200 expertise rating. This seems a bit excessive (certainly these points are completely wasted for feral dps) as there is no hit rating on any of the set gear which would also greatly help with tps. I personally think the itemization would have been alot better used in adding armor pen or hit rating on at least one more piece of the set that currently has expertise. Since we are having to spec cat/bear, it would make more sense to have the pieces be equally useful for each subset of the feral spec. This gear is almost purely bear because of that and i'm just curious if i missed something.

[ad1337]

Hopefully we'll be picking up some hit from our non-set Rogue pieces. You do have a point though, because I'm not seeing much Hit on any of the non-set pieces so far and the Rogue set only has 1 item with expertise on it.

[Maenetus]

before you eliminated dodge, expertise is twice as good as hit for tanks.

[Firebug]

I believe at 80 it takes nearly double the expertise (possibly more, haven't looked at the calculation yet) then what it would at 70 for 1%.

Besides, the 10 man 5 piece set only has 115 expertise rating (at with one of the previous poster's comments it looks like 9.5 ish expertise rating for 1 expertise skill) and the 25 man set only has 130 rating (or about 13 skill).

Personally, I would complain more about the very large amount of crit rating (218 10 man, 245 on 25 man) on the gear. Strength/hit would be much nicer.

[Maenetus]

the lack of hit is so feral DPS can better share gear with combat rogues etc..

[Bullshifter]

Yah, all that rogue gear will be swimming with hit, and we'll need far less of it than rogues, so Maenetus has the right of it.

[Smartie]

I expect as usual I will have to result in wearing non set rogue items for kitty... and my tier gear for tanking... Epecially as people are not too keen on giving you two tier tokens just so you can enchant it both ways.

[Prandur]

Yah, all that rogue gear will be swimming with hit, and we'll need far less of it than rogues, so Maenetus has the right of it.

Actually, the T8 rogue set has exactly 80 hit rating on it

So I guess they're just making hit hard to find for everyone.

[Stormrage]

untill capped expertise is better than hit for all melee classes, your yellows and whites can both be dodged, using expertise to reduce dodges is awsome. Hit also does the same thing, but overall expertise is a stronger stat because it also reduces parrys while infront.

[arel00]

I understand how expertise works, but on the items its listing a % which leads me to believe that the formula for expertise isn't changing. Since its currently 4 expertise rating for each expertise point which amounts to .25% per point. This comes out to about 12.5% chance to not be parried/dodged for 200 expertise rating. This seems a bit excessive (certainly these points are completely wasted for feral dps) as there is no hit rating on any of the set gear which would also greatly help with tps. I personally think the itemization would have been alot better used in adding armor pen or hit rating on at least one more piece of the set that currently has expertise. Since we are having to spec cat/bear, it would make more sense to have the pieces be equally useful for each subset of the feral spec. This gear is almost purely bear because of that and i'm just curious if i missed something.

Look better. Crit and hit are stating % values, while expertise states a fixed value, which is the expertise after the rating/value conversion.

Edited to add: if you do some math on the ratings/values expressed on the set, you notice easily that the conversion rate has been cut in half. You need not 4, but 8 expertise rating to get one point at level 80.

[kiljare]

Look better. Crit and hit are stating % values, while expertise states a fixed value, which is the expertise after the rating/value conversion.

Edited to add: if you do some math on the ratings/values expressed on the set, you notice easily that the conversion rate has been cut in half. You need not 4, but 8 expertise rating to get one point at level 80.

Yeah was just looking at that, it does appear that's where i was off a bit. Still wish it had some hit rating as it scales exactly the same for dps as expertise until you hit the cap for either one and its not like tanks can get away with not having hit. Maybe more of the offset pieces we have for tanking will have hit on them...granted that won't help with dps. I have no issue with the crit rating being on the gear at all as basically str was replaced by the ap bonus. At least the expertise isn't as useless as i thought it was going to be.

[arel00]

Sharing rogues' gear, we'll most likely end up with AP-Agi-Hit items on the offset slots. And switching from tank to dps jewelry basing on needs. Hit is not something I'd worry so much about, boots/bracers/belt will probably have a good amount coming from rogues' stat allocation, and I'm quite positive there will be some hit on a couple tank items too, wouldn't be a brand new thing (jewelry-wise I mean).

[ad1337]

If you look at the current list of Naxx gear there isn't a whole lot of hit on the non-set pieces, and you will find that expertise is even more common on those items. I do agree that we should have 1 or 2 set pieces with at least some Hit on them to allow us some gearing choices since we will never be using trinkets or weapons with hit and will be looking at max Agi/Sta for offset tanking pieces instead of sacrificing those stats for some inferior piece that has hit on it.