Unbearably HoT

If you’ve been reading this site with any frequency, you probably know that I love to collect and examine the benefits of idols. Having an arsenal of these easy-to-acquire pieces allows the intrepid feral a measure of versatility that doesn’t require re-gemming or building a second armor set—although obviously, some are more useful than others. Previously, I provided the following table as a quick-and-dirty guide for what you should pick up:

Idol of Worship < ArP 230 < Idol of the Ravenous Beast
Idol of the Corruptor ← Manglebot? → Idol of the Ravenous Beast
Idol of the Ravenous Beast ←ArP > 230 and 25 EoT → Idol of Mutilation
See Above ← Bear → Idol of the Corruptor

Currently, I’d argue that the Idol of Mutilation is the premier go-to choice for DPSing ferals everywhere. The 200 AGI proc effect has a near 100 percent uptime and remains just as useful for Manglebots as it does ArP badasses. Yesterday, however, MMO-Champion spotlighted an as yet unnamed Druid T10 Feral idol:

The periodic damage from your Lacerate and Rake abilities grants 44 Agility for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

Now wait a second! Rake? As you might be aware, Rake is getting a little more attention in 3.3; namely, the T10 four-piece set bonus gives the Rake DoT effect a chance to crit (something that, I might add, was initially part of the Primal Gore talent and was subsequently removed as it proved to be overpowered). We still do not, however, have any way to extend the duration of the nine second DoT. What does this mean for the mystery idol?

With incredibly basic math, you can ascertain that five-stacks of the new idol’s effect will provide 220 AGI. While that looks better than the Idol of Mutilation’s 200 AGI, we need to consider the following:

• The Rake DoT lasts for nine seconds after application and ticks every three seconds. This means that you can receive three stacks of the idol effect from one application of Rake (132 AGI).
• If you’re already keeping a close watch on your debuffs, you’ll probably make sure that Rake never falls off the target. If so, you should easily be able to obtain the five stacks (220 AGI) and receive the 15 second buff.
• If you can keep the proc effect at five stacks without having to start over after every 15 seconds (i.e. ensure that Rake never falls off the target), it’s incredibly useful. If, however, you need to re-stack to five every time, you might as well keep the Idol of Mutilation and receive a reliable 200 AGI with your Shreds or Mangles.
• We also don’t know what the internal cooldown is on this particular idol and what sort of uptime we can expect. If it’s anything like the Idol of Mutilation (i.e. up almost all the time), it’s potentially 110% more useful.

For cats, then, the new idol is theoretically “better,” as long as we’re prioritizing Rake and the above conditions turn out to be favorable. If, however, you’re involved in a fight that requires a lot of movement or target switching, the Idol of Mutilation will likely end up being a more favorable option as it does not require obtaining five-stacks. What about bears? Remember that in my last discussion, we concluded the following:

It’s essentially a direct upgrade. Again, we will need to make sure to reevaluate this once we have more information, but for now, I’d keep this piece of shiny in your sights.

For the past two weeks I’ve essentially been MIA as I finished up a series of massive projects at work and took a high-fiving trip to Chicago. During that time, of course, we’ve learned that in 3.2.2., the value of Armor Penetration will decrease to 110%, down from 125%. Has the so-called stat-of-the-gods fallen from its golden pedestal? Hardly. What we’re seeing is approximately a 12% nerf, if the old ArP hard cap was 1,230 and the new hard cap will be 1,399.57. Druids everywhere have bemoaned their long ride on the ever-changing stat train—from stacking STR to AGI to ArP and now to, what? Agility again? Sure, that’s probably the easy way out.

Me? I’m here to represent obsessive re-itemization. Lately I’ve seen “min/maxing” demonized, deplored as the paragon of all that’s not fun in WoW. A time waster. An exercise for elitists. A means to a picky, allegedly uninteresting and not-altogether useful end. Say it isn’t so! In a game where there’s little character progression beyond gear, tending to the fiddly-bits for even minor upgrades still feels to me like progress. Although there’s been much paw-wringing, it is still very possible to reach the Armor Penetration soft-cap if you’re a Druid with decent gear.

What’s decent gear? Without being too vague, most gear from Ulduar (iLevel 219) and upwards. Consider the following before proceeding:

• What’s my critical strike chance, unbuffed, in Cat form? If you’re rocking over 50% critical strike chance, you’re definitely on the right path. Without enough critical strike, which feeds you combo points via 2/2 Primal Fury, your already complex rotation will fall apart.
• How much Hit Rating do I have? When stacking AGI, you can gloss over a few misses here and there because you have combo points coming out of your ears. When using a heavy ArP armor set, the penalty for a miss is much higher. You can get by with approximately 245 (or greater.)
• How much Expertise do I have? The Expertise soft-cap is 6.5%, which is equivalent to 213.135 Expertise Rating. Primal Precision automatically gives you 10 Expertise (81.975), which brings the aforementioned number down to 131.16. Although I place a much higher emphasis on Hit Rating rather than Expertise Rating (for DPS purposes), it’s still important.
• Do these pants make me look fat? Yes, you’re a cow.

If you’ve ascertained that the previous numbers check out and you’re willing to do some work, read on. Have some basic math, too. In 3.2, 15.39529991 ArP Rating = 1% ArP. In 3.2.2, 13.99572719 ArP Rating = 1% ArP. Thus, to now reach an ArP soft-cap with trinkets, you need the following:

Grim Toll = 612 ArP Rating (~43.72%). To reach soft-cap, you need 787.57 ArP (~56.27%).

Mjolnir Runestone = 665 ArP Rating (~47.51%). To reach soft-cap, you need 734.57 ArP.
To reduce an enemy’s armor by 50%, you need approximately 700 ArP rating.

Let’s look at a relatively easy list of gear that you could acquire, right now, to get yourself on track for 3.2.2.

Option 1 – Includes easy weapon and two-piece T8 and T9.

If you socket straight Fractured Cardinal Rubies and one Nightmare Tear, your total base ArP = 764. This places you squarely in the range of the ArP soft-cap, assuming you’re using either Grim Toll or the Mjolnir Runestone. Even without those two trinkets, you’re still reducing your target’s armor by ~54.58% (60.58%, if you have the Banner of Victory.) You’re also utilizing two-piece T8.5 and T9.232 and gear that can be entirely farmed from normal raids. Assuming the appropriate Cat talents, ~24% critical strike chance becomes 40% in Cat Form, and with the usual enchants, accidental socket bonuses (excluding profession bonuses) and various trinkets, you can expect to pick up another ~12% or so. This brings you to ~52% critical strike chance, unbuffed. Not bad, eh? This shit gets even easier if you have access to better gear. What happens if you have access to some of the best gear in the game?

Option 2 – ALL PENETRATION, NO WAITING! Includes Heroic Loot.

If you notice, even with some incredibly ridiculous gear, your critical strike chance will end up approximately the same unbuffed. The obvious difference is that you can get over 2,000 more AP from the crazy-go-nuts gear, and 934 ArP through gear and gemming alone. Here, I’d recommend dropping Grim Toll (obviously—have you seen how much Hit Rating this set boasts?) and the Mjolnir Runestone in favor of the Banner of Victory (giving you 1,081 ArP) and some other shiny trinket (even a Greatness card!) At this point, you could also use an Elixir of Armor Piercing (45 ArP) and Hearty Rhino (40 ArP) to lower the gap between your gear and the ArP hard cap to 233.37 ArP. You’ll even notice that three pieces of gear don’t even have ArP. Theoretically, if you went fishing for pieces of semi-inferior gear with ArP, you could hit the hard cap without using any special foods or elixirs.

Or, you could choose to socket Delicate Cardinal Rubies in that gear set and run with Banner of Victory and either Grim Toll or the Mjolnir Runestone. You’d be working just below the ArP soft-cap, but you’d gain ~4.93% critical strike. Blessing of Kings brings this to ~5.42%. Which is the better option? If you plug all the appropriate numbers (and raid buffs) into Tossk’s Cat DPS Calculator for 3.2.2 for both of those scenarios (feel free to use the Cat DPS Gear Spreadsheet and try out some numbers yourself), you’ll notice that you get very similar DPS numbers, with ArP only slightly edging out AGI (by a couple hundred DPS or so). However, the closer you move to the ArP hard cap (i.e. if you took that 940 ArP and added Elixir of Armor Piercing and Hearty Rhino, bringing you to 1,166), the gap widens even more.

Ultimately, it comes down to playstyle, as Kalon recently discussed. But my take on ArP? I’m going to be milking it for as long as I can.

I realize that the tables are so big that they break in the browser window. If you’d like to download these tables, along with the rest of the article, click here.

As promised, I’ve gone through the 3.2 DPS Gear Spreadsheet and updated it with all the new Coliseum items, including the crafted Leatherworking pieces. You’ll also find that some of the numbers look a little different than before—that’s because some of the stat values changed. Remember:

• Please to brain. Although gear is first sorted by the number of sockets, the number of sockets do not necessarily guarantee the best piece of gear.
• Armor Penetration is currently the best stat to stack at higher gear levels, so long as you have at least 50% Critical Strike chance and approximately 230 ArP. Generally speaking, your goal is to pick up ~600 ArP via gear and gemming and then pair that with Grim Toll, Mjolnir Runestone or the Banner of Victory.
• Because ArP requires varying quantities to hit the soft-cap (based on what trinket you have, for example), the spreadsheet prioritizes AGI over ArP. ArP is still awesome, so make sure you’re paying attention to that column.
• There may be errors. If you find any (or have another suggestion), please shoot me an e-mail via my Contact page so that I can fix the spreadsheet as soon as possible.

In the near future, I’ll also be providing four different gearing options (with and without tier gear and/or heroic loot) which prioritize ArP without sacrificing the rest of your stats. I’m holding this up until I can make a proper suggestion for 3.2.2. as well. For now, here are a number of other posts from around the blogosphere detailing different takes on ArP in 3.2.2. Please note that I am not of the “Fuck it, gem AGI” camp.

• The Fluid Druid’s ArP FAQ Part 1 and 2. This has a very accurate depiction of how ArP performs at varying gear levels and is generally where I’m leaning.
• Vallen’s “3.2.2. ArP Nerf & You.“
• Kalon’s “Cat’s 3.2. Coliseum Loot Ranking.” No, it’s not really about ArP, but it’s a similar loot ranking list. Relevant, I swear.

In a shocking turn of events, Blizzard has already posted details regarding the next patch—three months in advance. How does this affect us Druids? Unless you’re super pumped about Onyxia (and presumably didn’t farm her for eight thousand years in vanilla), there isn’t much on our horizon save this:

What’s great about this change is the fact that it will be baked into a fairly essential Feral talent: you won’t need to spend extra points to take something gimmicky. Now, although this is seemingly designed to give Ferals a PVP utility boost, how helpful is it really?

Say, for example, you’re participating in an arena match. You’ve managed to get five combo points on a Mage (without having to switch targets), and you hit him with a Maim. Your pocket healer is busy kiting an Enhance Shaman. At that point, you have a few choices. You can pop out of Cat form and hit yourself or your teammates with a cast-free Regrowth, Healing Touch or Nourish. You could also use that instant cast for a Cyclone or Entangling Roots—note that the blue post specifies “Nature spells.” It’s essentially Nature’s Swiftness. So fully talented, you’ve got a 20%/40%/60%/80%/100% chance to get an instant cast per combo point.

Is this useful in a PVE scenario? Situationally. If you’re going through a normal rotation, find yourself with five combo points and realize you’re about to die, you’ve got nothing to lose giving yourself (or anyone else, including the tank) a cheap, instant heal. It does, however, require that you’re paying attention to your combo points and thinking ahead. Bottom line? It’s a gimmick you’ll seldom pointedly use in PVE but may actively pursue in PVP.

Just three more months.

Let’s provide a little background. We Druids have had a stormy relationship with our Idols—they were either tiresome or difficult to obtain, and their equip effects haven’t always been ideal. Even after Wrath came out, Bears either suffered through content using a Level 70 item as best-in-slot or participated in a series of daily PVP quests to pick up the threat-boosting Idol of Perspicacious Attacks. It wasn’t until Ulduar that Bears cheered the Idol of the Corruptor—and then simultaneously booed when they realized it dropped off of Heroic Vezax. For Cats, life was a little simpler: just pick up the Idol of the Ravenous Beast for a few Emblems of Heroism and then hope you could eventually snag the Idol of Worship from Naxxramas.

Now, just about everything is purchasable with the right sort of currency—if you know what I mean—including the Idol of the Corruptor and the Idol of Mutilation. But which do you really need, and should you have more than one on hand? The short answer is: YES, ALL OF THEM. But if you’re not crazy, don’t raid very much, or only have the means to obtain one in the near future, the below information will help you get started.

Idol of Worship < ArP 230 < Idol of the Ravenous Beast
Idol of the Corruptor ← Manglebot? → Idol of the Ravenous Beast
Idol of the Ravenous Beast ←ArP > 230 and 25 EoT → Idol of Mutilation
See Above ← Bear → Idol of the Corruptor

What if I swing both ways? Is there a quick answer for Bears?

If you function in any capacity as a Bear tank, I strongly recommend spending the Emblems on the Idol of the Corruptor. For a full and complete breakdown, please see Kalon’s post (and his whole blog, really:) “Don’t get Idol of Mutilation for Bear!” But wait, you say, doesn’t the Idol of Mutilation give you 200 Dodge Rating for 9 seconds every time you use Swipe or Lacerate? Well, yes. At first glance, it sure does sound better than the Idol of the Corruptor. If you break the numbers down, however, it looks a little like this:

Better than you thought, right? Fuck yes, kids. The Agility proc is enhanced by Blessing of Kings, Survival of the Fittest, and Mark of the Wild. With a near 100% uptime for every time you Mangle, you can gain nearly as much Dodge as the Idol of Mutilation boasts, in addition to threat and mitigation boosting stats. And, since the Idol of the Corruptor rolls in at the bargain price of 19 Emblems of Conquest, it’s a steal.

I’m already sick of looking at the ass end of my bear. Let’s get back to DPS.

Despite all that shit I just said, you should still buy the Idol of Mutilation—but for DPS purposes. Why? Even at a basic level, it makes sense: the Idol of the Ravenous Beast, which most top-end Druids use now, only benefits Shred damage. Previous incarnations of Idols required a Mangle to proc the AGI effect, and with the advent of other abilities that provide bleed augmentations (read: TRAUMA), Cats really weren’t (and still aren’t) Mangling very much at all anymore. The best option was thus to gem for ArP and boost your main damage dealing ability as much as possible: Shred.

The Idol of Mutilation allows you to proc the 200 AGI effect for 16 seconds when you Mangle or Shred. Rather than increasing Shred damage by 203, the Idol of Mutilation amplifies all of your damage dealing attacks by the 200 AGI proc effect. In addition, initial reports suggest that this Idol has a near 100% uptime—if you’re Shredding and/or Mangling. Presumably, if this functions similarly to the Idol of the Corruptor, the 200 AGI is also affected by Survival of the Fittest, Mark of the Wild, and Blessing of Kings. Thus, that 200 AGI gives you:

So is the Idol of Mutilation better than the Idol of the Ravenous Beast?

This is where it gets complicated, and you’d be best served by taking a peek at one of your most recent damage breakdowns. As a Cat, your goal is to make sure that you keep Savage Roar, Faerie Fire (if you don’t have anyone else who can apply it), Mangle (if you have no bot), Rake and Rip up at all times—without clipping DoTs. In between all those fun things, you Shred like a mad beast and use Ferocious Bite when you’ve got five combo points and extra time on all your other debuffs/buffs. That’s the basic version, anyway.

The idea is that the AGI proc effect will give you the most kapow if you’re spending a reasonable amount of time micromanaging those debuffs/buffs—which will apply to most of us. There is speculation, however, that using two-piece T8 and two-piece T9 (which extend the durations of Rip and Rake, respectively) gives you more time to kick back and Shred. A lot more. If that is the case, the Idol of the Ravenous Beast may once again edge out the Idol of Mutilation.

Additionally, you need to take a look at your total %Crit. Remember Tossk’s DPS Gear Methodology? At some point, AGI (contributing to %crit) loses value to AP. If Coliseum gear pushes Cats (raid buffed and all) well over ~60% Crit, again, the Idol of Mutilation may lose value to the Idol of the Ravenous Beast (which will provide a raw damage increase).

Tentatively, I want to say that the Idol of Mutilation is better than the Idol of the Ravenous Beast. I obviously do not have the capability at this point in time to test those two prior theories out. Once everyone starts acquiring more gear and there’s a healthier portion of data to dick around with, we’ll have to come back to this—and please, if you’ve got some sample numbers and corresponding stat information, send it on over!