Unbearably HoT

For the duration of Burning Crusade, most questions about Feral DPS consumables could be explained with one word: Agility. LIKE IT! Unfortunately, the AGI heyday for Cat DPS is fading. Point-for-point, AGI gives us less of an AP gain than STR, and we can potentially gain more from straight Critical Strike Rating than AGI alone. A balance between AP and Crit % remains crucial for optimal DPS (more about that later), and to that end, we have a plethora of battle elixirs to choose from now. How do you decide?

For purposes of this discussion, we don’t give a shit about any stat that isn’t boosting our raw damage. Cat is for FITE! Assuming a basic Feral build that includes 5/5 Heart of the Wild (without the Alchemical benefit of Mixology), we can gather the following information about some of our favorite spirits:

• Elixir of Mighty Agility: provides approximately 52.47 AP, 0.57% Crit, 1.14% Dodge, and 95.4 AC.
• Elixir of Mighty Strength: provides approximately 116.6 AP.
• Elixir of Accuracy: provides 1.35 % Hit.
• Elixir of Armor Piercing: provides approximately 2.92% Armor Penetration (meaning that, barring other armor reducing debuffs, your target’s armor is reduced by 2.92%).
• Elixir of Deadly Strikes: provides approximately .99% Crit.
• Elixir of Expertise: provides 1.35% reduction in Dodge and Parry chance.
• Elixir of Lightning Speed: provides 1.35% Haste.
• Flask of Endless Rage: provides 180 AP.

Awesome, I threw some numbers at you like I know what I’m talking about. Let’s sort through them quickly. Usually, a combination of elixirs provides a better net benefit than a single flask—flasks are just a lot more cost efficient if you know you’re going to be dying repeatedly. But here’s a quick comparison:

Elixir of Major Strength + Elixir of Major Fortitude = ~116 AP and 350 Health (and an additional 20 hp5).

Flask of Endless Rage = 180 AP.

For a loss of 64 AP, you gain some fairly negligible health stats. Normally, I’d argue that any extra health is good health, but if your job is to be a one-dr00d assassination machine, forgo the 350 HP and hp5 and reap the benefits of half the equip value of a heroic DPS trinket (i.e. Bandit’s Insignia). Remember that a cat with 18,000 health can essentially heal herself for 720 hit points every time that iLotP procs. Trust that your healers will be able to make up for 350 HP and do yourself a favor: go for more damage.

Although the Flask of Endless Rage (and trailing soon after, the Elixir of Mighty Strength) top my shortlists for kitten drinks-of-the-year, you can potentially get a bigger damage increase by using either the Elixir of Accuracy or Elixir of Expertise. If for some insane reason you’re not hit capped at 8% or soft-expertise capped at 6.5%, using the Elixir of Accuracy or Elixir of Expertise will provide the biggest damage increase—because you’re actually able to connect with your target every time. There’s no point in boosting your AP, Crit, or anything else if you’re going to miss.

Chances are, however, that you’ve already fulfilled your Hit and Expertise obligations with gear. What about stocking up on Elixirs of Mighty Agility? For Cats, AGI is much less useful than it used to be. Despite the simultaneous increases to both crit and AP, you lose approximately 128 AP as compared to the Flask of Endless Rage or .42% Crit as compared to the Elixir of Deadly Strikes. It’s certainly not a bad choice, especially if you find yourself frequently switching from tank to DPS roles, but by evaluating the difference between your Critical Strike% and AP, you stand to potentially gain more by using a consumable to dramatically amp one over the other  (rather than a little of both).

Critical Strike is still important. You can stack AP and STR forever, but you’ll want a corresponding amount of Critical Strike (via Critical Strike Rating and AGI) to gain the largest DPS benefits. I could draw my own pictures for you, but why do the work when Tossk of Kael’thas has been doing it forever? He’s got a fantastic graph that illustrates approximately when +1 AGI is > +1 STR, and vice versa. The giant red line that marches steadily upwards represents the place where 1 AGI approximates 1 STR—your theoretical happy place you want to find eventually. You can see where you stand by plotting your position on the graph using your own data.

If you find yourself lacking in terms of critical strike (where +1 AGI > +1 STR), you may want to opt for the Elixir of Deadly Strikes rather than a flat out AP boost (since you’ll get nearly 1% Critical Strike out of it). If you’ve somehow managed to acquire an absurd amount of Critical Strike already, focus on improving your AP (via Elixir of Mighty Strength of Flask of Endless Rage). See how easy this shit is?

Armor Penetration is a little more complicated, but a basic formula is as follows: to increase your melee DPS against a target by 1%, you need to lower a target’s Damage Reduction from Armor by 1%.

DR%=Armor*100/[Armor+(467.5*AttackerLevel – 22,167.5)]
Which simplifies to:
DR% = [Armor / (Armor + 16,635)] x 100
A target with 10,000 armor would have a DR% of ~37.54. Great.
2.92% of 10,000 AC = 292. 10,000 AC – 584 AC = 9,708.
The new DR% = ~36.85.

Your elixir has thus increased your total physical DPS by .69%. This isn’t altogether significant. What if you have more? With 15% Armor Penetration (~231 Armor Penetration Rating), you will have a DR% of ~33.81, which brings your total physical DPS up by 3.73%. That’s much more significant, but we’re forgetting something pretty important here: your personal Armor Penetration applies after armor reducing debuffs are applied to a mob, making your own Armor Penetration less effective. Let’s use that same monster with 10,000 armor to illustrate.

Five Stacks of Sunder Armor = -3,925 AC
10,000 – 3,925 = 6,075 AC
New DR% = ~26.75
2.92% of 6,075 AC = 177.39. 6,075 AC – 177.39 AC = 5,897.61 AC
New DR% = ~26.17

After all’s been said and done, your little orange elixir has only increased your physical damage against the target by a pitiful 0.58%. Physical damage. Bleeds, like the DoT applied by Rip and Rake, ignore AC entirely and thus two major sources of our damage don’t even benefit from this shit. TL;DR—MATH IS HARD AND ARMOR PENETRATION REALLY ISN’T WORTH IT.

This leaves us with the Elixir of Lightning Speed. As I’m sure you know, Cat single-paw attack speed is normalized at one second, which is pretty quick already. Think about it like this: if you’re attacking with two weapons and dealing only physical damage, Haste sounds pretty great. The faster you hit, the more white damage you do, the more DPS you do. Unfortunately, we animal-types run into the same problem with Haste that we do with Armor Penetration—a good portion of our damage is dealt via Bleeds, which aren’t affected by Haste at all. Additionally, the lion’s share of our damage is dealt via yellow damage, whereas Haste speeds up the time between white damage attacks. Get the picture? It’s not a useless stat if you happen to have it, but there’s really no reason you should make a point in obtaining it.

Conclusion? If you’re a Hit and Expertise capped Cat, you’ll likely benefit the most by a Flask of Endless Rage or an Elixir of Deadly Strikes (with an Elixir of Mighty Fortitude). Base your decision on what you need more to balance out your stats: Critical Strike or Attack Power. Now go get drinking!

Thanks to Kalon for proofing a few sections of this for me!

Now that myself and many others are actually able to log into their respective realms, it’s time to go through the arduous process of updating add-ons.

In the past, WoWAce made it easy via their handy updater, but insane usage and server loads have since made their efforts impossible. This leaves us with the ever popular Curse and WoWInterface. But before you start downloading and installing your new toys, a few pro tips to keep in mind:

1. Update manually, at least the first time you clean out your old mods (see #2). Until the newer updaters such as WoWMatrix and the Curse Updater have been thoroughly vetted and verified, I’m going to pass on the lazy updates. Why? 
   • The Curse Updater is a little too intrusive for my tastes, and wants to run as soon as you start Windows (but that option can apparently be shut down now). Curse also requires a login ID that needs to be set up with their site, but feel free to use whatever bullshit info you want. Additionally, there have been multiple reports of Curse overwriting updated newer add-ons with older ones. Not cool.
   • WoWMatrix, on the other hand, totally ganks the latest files from Curse, but doesn’t want to run 24/7, doesn’t require a login, and doesn’t even require an installation. But just to make sure, Lycentia and I will each try to run a different auto-updater for a week and see what happens.
2. Delete everything that isn’t standard in your Add-Ons folder before updating (but leave the Blizzard UI shit). This is important for multiple reasons, number one being that simply copying a new add-on folder into an old one only means you overwrite files with the same names. Older files that may be broken, dated, or unnecessary will still be there. Additionally, if you used the WoWAce updater, getting rid of your old add-on folders basically guarantees that “nothing specific to the way that WoWAce did their mod packaging carries over and potentially causes problems” (Lycentia). 
3. Look before you leap. In all seriousness, if you’re downloading add-ons from Curse, do not click the massive orange DOWNLOAD button. Why? For some reason, it tends to load up old add-ons rather than the newest versions. Scroll down to the “Downloads” subheading, check the dates, and click on the newest version of your mod. You get the idea.

This is the perfect time to clean out your entire add-on folder and start from scratch. While the default Blizzard unit frames still make me grit my teeth, starting from the default UI and building on that can help you accurately assess what you really need—and what’s superfluous (yes, I still had StinkyQueue ). To help you out, here’s a list of the add-ons I’m currently using, and where to find them. Make sure to check your versions! These are current as of the morning of Thursday, October 16th:

• Bartender4: My go-to add-on for all my action bar needs. My favorite feature of the newest version allows you to select the “Keybinds” option and simply hover over any button to customize the binding. Super easy. 
• BigWigs: Boss Mod. I still prefer Deadly Boss Mods and might go back to that.
• Cartographer: Lightweight map mod that allows you to access your world map inside your regular interface and track profession specific nodes. Make sure you pick up the appropriate plug-ins you need for this (i.e. Fishing, Mining, Gas Clouds). As of last night, it was a little buggy.
• CastYeller: Potentially going the way of the buffalo. I used to use this mod to announce when I had a Growl resist, specifically on Brutallus, but now it mostly serves as an annoyance to everyone else. I’ll probably keep it and tailor it to very specific abilities. No one cares how many times my Mage uses Conjure Water.
• EQCompare: Pairs nicely with RatingBuster. This mod allows you to compare items you have equipped to linked items and items in your inventory. 
• Livestock: Definitely superfluous and basically allows you to organize all pets and mounts and summon them at random if you so choose. 
• NeedToKnow: This mod functions similarly to the old HoT Candy, except it monitors any other cooldowns/abilities you tell it to. It’s especially useful for rogues trying to keep track of Hunger for Blood, Rupture, and Slice and Dice, but will also be useful in timing Mangle, Rip, and Savage Roar. 
• Omen: My threat meter of choice now works in conjunction with the built in Blizzard threat monitor, ensuring incredibly accurate TPS reports. 
• oRA2: An unobtrusive raid assist mod that is compatible with and also replaces CTRaid. Allows you to monitor certain raid cooldowns, set MTs, and a ton of other things that I rarely do.
• Outfitter: The quintessential Druid add-on. I have so many different sets of gear that if I didn’t have this, I’d probably be fucked. The newest version is slicker than ever, but remember when you load it to go to the new “Options” menu and turn off the “Outfit Bar.” Otherwise, you have a parade of giant outfit icons marching across your UI. 
• PallyPower: As of last night, PallyPower wasn’t working, but nearly everyone who has a Paladin knows how easy this makes it to coordinate buffs with the rest of the raid. This may not be necessary anymore, although it does provide handy “time remaining on buffs” information. We Paladins don’t have all the Blessings we used to, and in a smaller environment (specifically 10 mans), I don’t imagine there will be a lot of overlap. 
• PerfectRaid: It’s a very lightweight set of unit frames that you can customize to your liking and place in a generally inconspicuous portion of your screen. When I’m tanking or DPSing, I have all the bars lined up neatly on the left side of my screen and have them set to display any sort of debuff I can dispel (think: horizontal bar graph).
• Quartz: Essentially, Quartz is a lightweight casting bar add-on that allows considerable customization. You can display target buffs, focus bars, see your casting time for spells, crafting, and gathering, and perhaps most importantly, displays your latency in such a fashion as to let you know exactly when you can start casting your next spell for maximum DPS—even when your first cast isn’t over.
• RatingBuster: Converts combat ratings into easy-to-read percentages and allows comparison between two pieces of gear (read: what does this piece have that the other doesn’t?). This is super handy for a quick gear assessment, but it’s important to remember that you the player are responsible for knowing what combat ratings are most important to your class. 
• SCT: Scrolling Combat Text. This goes with SCTD (the damage portion), and allows for incredible customization of all scrolling combat text. While the regular Blizzard SCT does a pretty decent job of displaying what you need, SCT and SCTD go above and beyond the call of duty. 
• SCTD: See above.
• simpleMinimap: A vanity add-on, but one that really allows you to clean up the look of your UI. This allows you to change what’s displayed on your minimap, how it’s displayed, and where you’d like to position it. 
• X-Perl: Unit and Raid frames. Highly customizable and easy to use, and easily my favorite for when I’m doing any sort of healing. Yes, I prefer this over both Grid and Pitbull.
• Violation: Violate me! Modular and lightweight damage meters. Displays a wealth of information quickly. 

As soon as I’m finished rearranging my UI (which tends to differ ever so slightly on each of my characters) I’ll post screenshots. Questions or comments? Go for it. I’m always looking to see what I can improve or replace. 

Let’s face it—not all bosses are created equally.

Although we arguably have different tanks best-suited for particular encounters (a paladin AOE tank for Felmyst, a bear mitigation tank for Brutallus or a warbot with a shield to take Illidan’s shears), you can get the most out of your toon by min/maxing different gear sets. “What!!!” you say, ready to sucker punch me and shake your lack-of-inventory in my face, “I already have a resto set, a cat set, a PVP set, a bear set, and a super awful boomkin set! Between all that, my potions, my tokens, and my pets, I don’t have room for anything else!”

While I’d firstly point you to this post, suck it up, get a mod like Outfitter to manage your accessories, and start planning—being prepared for any and all scenarios will make you a better bear. Since I just recently wrote about the importance of hit-rating and expertise rating for tanking, I’m leap-frogging into a discussion on how to incorporate gear pieces and accessories that lend themselves to more TPS (threat-per-second) generation into your standard tank set.

Nocturneus writes:

I am one of the few Bear tanks I know that actually went the route of Defense over Resilience. I like the fact that Defense gives you avoidance as well as makes you uncrittable (provided you hit the magic number.) Being able to get enough Defense at end-game Raid level was rather difficult, which is why most take the easier route of Resilience.

I am currently uncrittable, have just under 40k Armor, 42% dodge and 20k health. The problem I have is trying to squeeze Hit Rating in there somewhere. Any suggestions? Most of my gems are Agility and Stam, Agility or Stam, along with a few epic Defense gems in there from Heroics.

Firstly, the use of a program such as Rawr or a few Post-It Notes can help you keep track of how any major gear changes affect your overall mitigation stats. I can make recommendations, but it’s up to you to check up on your math. Secondly, since I don’t have any sort of armory link for Nocturneus, I’m making suggestions based on my own experience; not all items are easily attainable.

Fortunately, gearing up as a low-level druid is ridiculously easy, and there are plenty of other great bloggers out there who’ve outlined how to do that. The Heavy Clefthoof set takes care of nearly all your chance-to-be-crit issues, allowing you to socket almost anything you please, and the Earthwarden, a great entry-level tanking weapon, is the only druid weapon to date that has expertise rating on it.

Back to the question—I’m sure Nocturneus knows his numbers, but for the rest of us out there, here are some basics:

2.6% = The chance-to-crit reduction necessary to avoid being critically hit by boss mobs; you can achieve this with 415 DEF or 267.8 Resilence, assuming all points in Survival of the Fittest and base DEF of 350, or you can use a mixture of RES and DEF to reach it.
2.36 = The defense rating necessary to achieve 1 DEF skill.
39.4 = The amount of RES rating necessary to yield 1% RES.
35,880 = The amount of armor necessary to reach 75% mitigation; any more armor beyond this point does not offer substantial protection.

Quick Math:
~176 defense rating = 415 Defense Skill
~103 RES rating = 267.8 Resilence

As Nocturneus mentioned, stacking Resilence is easier, especially at high levels when DEF rating isn’t present on our regular armor pieces anymore. Generally speaking, druids tend to pick up the lion’s share of their DEF rating from accessories like necklaces, rings and trinkets or from enchantments. RES rating, however, is present on just about any piece of PVP gear you pick up—and can be fairly easy to get your paws on. Why use DEF then? Each point of DEF skill gives you 0.04% to be missed, to block, to dodge and to parry—but for the purpose of our furry selves, the Miss and Dodge are the important parts. Basically, you’ll probably have to end up using a little bit of both. Here’s why.

Because you need less RES rating than DEF rating to reach crit immunity, a little RES goes a long way and allows for a little more socket/enchant play. Nocturneus clearly has a classic mitigation tanking set—great for repelling enemy attacks and for all-around-mob-bashing, but (as he says), lacking in the hit/expertise department. More than likely, this means that even though his attacks hit for quite a bit, they’re getting dodged, parried or missed more often than they should, potentially wrecking a normal tank rotation and diminishing the amount of TPS he could be generating. Nocturneus doesn’t need to get rid of his sweet mitigation set—he just needs to build other pieces to switch in for maximum threat generation when he needs it.

First thing’s first—eliminate all DEF or RES gems. I know we often rely on that one Seaspray Emerald to throw us over the cap, but in my opinion, you’re better off modifying your gear with RES or DEF enchants. Why? You can’t enchant for melee +hit, but you can socket for it. Putting 12 DEF on your bracers, 15 RES on your chest or 12 DEF on your cloak can give you the edge you need while still allowing for a reasonable amount of STA and dodge.

Next, evaluate how much more DEF or RES you need to reach crit immunity, and bring in one or two pieces of PVP gear or a RES based cloak. The notion that you need to PVP to PVE may not be a palatable one, but it’ll help round out your armor sets. Think about it like this: even if you despise PVP, you can dick around in arena every week, take home some welfare points, and still find yourself able to pick up a T6 comparable chestpiece in a few weeks. What pieces of PVP gear will you get the most out of?

Nearly every piece of Vengeful Dragonhide armor (S3) has hit rating on it. The pieces with the highest resilience on them, however, are the legguards and chestpiece. As you can easily make the socket bonus on the chestpiece and add another +4 Critical Strike rating to your gear (nevermind enchanting the chestpiece), I consider that the best piece to incorporate into your arsenal. Previously, bracers were also an easy addition, but the new rating requirement (while still an easy grab at 1575) may be prohibitive to some players. Still, the RES rating on the bracers virtually eliminates the need for enchanting with DEF, and with another Glinting Pyrestone in the socket, you pick up the 4 RES socket bonus. I’ve offered up S3 comparisons here because they’re now cheap pick-ups free of rating requirements, but if you have the opportunity to pick up the Brutal Dragonhide Tunic (at 1600, also a fairly easy grab), go for it. Let’s quickly compare the Vengeful Gladiator’s Dragonhide Tunic and the Thunderheart Chestguard.

Ultimately, our biggest losses switching chestpieces are in the STR and AC categories—and we stand to gain an awful lot more: hit rating, armor ignore, and critical strike rating, all stats that will help increase your TPS against an enemy target. I chose Glinting Pyrestones for every socket, but I’ve also seen folks stack straight AGI, hit, or a mixture of both. Remember: the point of adding this piece of gear is to enhance your threat generation. While AGI does nothing for hit or expertise rating, it offers a buffer to your critical strike rating, your armor, and your dodge—nothing to sneeze at. With one piece of gear, you can pick up an extra 25 hit rating, the TPS stats previously mentioned, make up the AGI difference (36-31) in gems, and pick up 25 RES rating, all for the price of 23 STR and 252 AC.

Make sure you’re watching that 35,880 armor cap though, keeping in mind that raid buffs such as MotW will also affect your final tally. PVP gear can offer similar stats to tier gear but is often lower in armor and STR. If you’re someone like Nocturneus who is already above and beyond the armor cap, supplementing your gear set with one or two PVP pieces will not drop you below your cap (in Noc’s case, 40k-252 = 39,748, still way above cap) . If you do, remember that you can set up a potion macro and take Ironshield Potions whenever the cooldown comes up—when wearing my TPS gear on Brutallus, I used that particular strat.

Other useful hit rating items include:

Brooch of Deftness = 21 expertise rating, 22 hit rating; badge reward
Pendant of Titans = 20 hit rating; drops off the Reliquary of Souls
Thunderheart Waistguard = 23 hit rating and 1 red socket (potential for 5-10 hit rating); token drops off Brutallus

Now, expertise. As I mentioned in “I want you to Hit me as hard as you can,” the only expertise we druids gain from set pieces is on the Thunderheart Treads. If we want any more than that, we have to look toward items such as trinkets, necklaces, and cloaks. I pointedly exclude rings from that list, because rings are usually items that carry a significant portion of our armor and DEF rating—generally, substituting one of those puts us at a much bigger loss than substituting say, a trinket. The three most easily attainable items that can net you expertise rating for tanking (there are other leather expertise items that are suitable for DPS) are:

Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve = 18 expertise rating; SSO rep item
Brooch of Deftness = 21 expertise rating, 22 hit rating; badge reward
Shard of Contempt = 44 expertise rating; drops in heroic MgT

Slightly more difficult to obtain:

Collar of the Pit Lord = 29 expertise rating; drops off Brutallus
Thunderheart Treads = 20 expertise rating; token drop from Felmyst
Crimson Paragon’s Cover = 28 expertise rating; drop off the Eredar Twins

If you mouseover the tooltips for each of the necklaces (a gear slot where expertise seems to be stacked), there are reasonably clear trade-offs for each one: some have defense rating (a bonus to be sure), high STA, or dodge rating—I happen to have all four for different occasions, but I generally default to the Collar of the Pit Lord for the DEF rating, expertise and 68 STA. Additionally, the proc on the Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve is reportedly more useful (for tanking) if you’re a Scryer; an expertise capped warrior, for example, can apparently become “unparriable” for the buff’s duration.
Recap
To allow for getting the most out of your gear’s sockets while remaining crit immune, utilize PVE and PVP gear that combine DEF rating and RES rating—without gemming for it. The sockets you free up can be used for AGI/HIT gems, and the addition of one or two pieces of arena gear will net you itemized hit rating and a plethora of other TPS boosting equip stats. Finally, keeping a myriad array of accessories such as different necklaces, trinkets, rings, and cloaks can allow you to customize your gear on the fly and better equip yourself for different encounters. Keep track of all your new armor-sets using an equip mod such as Outfitter, and make sure you remain crit immune and at your armor cap with a good ol’ pen and paper or a program such as Rawr.

Before I start making any frenzied posts detailing why I worry about feral tanks in WotLK, let’s take a step back and address the now.

Just about any melee DPS class fully invested in damage will explain that +hit and expertise is invaluable—or at least important. Four thousand spell damage or eight million attack power can be rendered useless in a raiding environment unless you can actually connect with the mob you’re targeting. The same situation can apply to a PVP scenario as well: pesky cyclone or root resists can cost you an arena match. A simple armory search can pull up gear-listings for many high-end Restoration druids, and if you take a good look, many of them stack those lovely +10 spell-hit gems, along with Spell Penetration on their cloaks.

But +hit and expertise rating isn’t just for damage classes—the more you connect with the target(s) you’re tanking, the more TPS (threat-per-second) you’re generating. I might even add that it’s even more important for bears than our cat counterparts. I can sit around in front of Brutallus wearing every piece of my super don’t-die-gear, but I guarantee that I’ll miss maybe 2 out of every 3 mangles or have my Lacerates dodged or parried—you get the idea. If the specials with the highest threat multipliers aren’t landing, DPS will be perilously riding your ass.

Let’s clearly outline what we’re talking about here:

According to WoWWiki, “hit” can be defined as “the physical damage that occurs as a result of an attack made with a melee or ranged weapon. The chance to hit increases by 1% per 15.77 hit rating points at level 70.”

For druids (single-wielding, mind you), you need approximately 142 hit rating to increase your chance to hit a level 73 mob by 9%—this is your “hit cap”. When I reference a “cap”, it’s the generally accepted limit at which adding any more of a certain stat doesn’t actually help you. Exceeding 9% to hit won’t help counter dodges or parries (that’s expertise) or even misses; in my opinion, you’re actually better sitting just below the hit cap and chewing on some Spicy Talbuk Steak to bring you up to par rather than over-gearing or over-socketing (when you could be stacking more AGI or AP, etc.). Additionally, you can plan to take off a piece of gear with lots of hit on it and exchange it for a piece with more AGI if you know you’re going to have a Draenei in your party (passively increasing your chance to hit by 1%). While there never seem to be “absolutes” with Blizzard, a 9% chance to hit virtually guarantees zero misses against a target of level 73 or below.

Do you need 9% to hit for trash mobs? No. It rather goes without saying that you need less chance to hit when the level of the mob decreases and the gap between your weapon skill and its defense skill closes. Therefore, if you want to be a super dr00d (or rogue, or whatever), you can actually itemize two different DPS gear-sets: one hit-capped set (9%) for the boss, and one set (~5% for level 70s) that stacks more AGI for trash mobs.

What about expertise?

Expertise is a combat rating that decreases the chance your attack will be parried or dodged. Because druids don’t have any special racial talents (human sword/mace specialization, for example) or class talents (i.e. rogues) that increases expertise (this is changing in the expansion, however), we can calculate the amount of expertise needed to negate dodge as follows:

Boss mob’s base dodge = 6.5%
1% Expertise = 15.77 Expertise Rating
6.5 * 15.77 = 102.505

So realistically, you’d want approximately 103 Expertise Rating to completely negate a boss mob’s ability to dodge your attacks. If you’re melee DPS, you should theoretically be standing behind a target anyway, which theoretically eliminates parries.

Capping hit and expertise sounds like it makes a lot of sense, right? Connecting with your target generates more damage and more threat. The problem is getting there. It’s hard to bitch about getting hit capped when a dual wielder like a rogue needs twice as much as we do, but Blizzard doesn’t itemize hit and expertise for druids. Not specifically, anyway. If you look at the entire Thunderheart Harness, Sunwell items included, we net 50 hit rating (3.17% to hit) and 20 expertise rating. For the record, that’s pretty miserable, especially since 23 of that hit rating is on the belt, which is arguably inferior for tanking to the Belt of Natural Power, a T5 crafted item. Thus, if I’m wearing my “TPS” set for tanking (which is, by the way, beneath the armor cap), I have approximately 4.5% chance to hit and 4.62% dodge/parry reduction.

Lycentia, in his tanking gear picked up from similar raid instances, has approximately 6.34% to hit and can reduce the boss’s chance to dodge or parry an attack by 15.75%. We have to remember that Lycentia is a human wielding a sword and is also receiving the human sword specialization bonus, but that’s considerably more chances to connect with the boss and thus generate more threat per second. Even though druid threat is largely generated by high damage, if you’re not able to cause that damage, you might have a problem. Add Windfury to that equation, and now you’re looking at a chance to proc an additional attack that will, more than likely, connect as well. I’m a little jealous, and I’m looking forward to receiving the bonus from Windfury Totems (so long as I don’t have to give up Gift of Air).

My point is that druid tanking itemization is currently flawed, and that it should be a little bit easier to maximize your chance to hit and chance to reduce parry and dodge without sacrificing our bread and butter stats of AGI and STA. It’s that important. The more damage you, as a tank, put out, the more damage your raid can produce without worrying about pulling aggro. By not pulling your own weight, you’re threat capping your raid’s DPS and severely limiting the speed at which you can destroy a boss. If you can afford to wear a Shard of Contempt and a necklace such as the Brooch of Deftness, Pendant of Titans, Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve, or Collar of the Pit Lord, I recommend it. To remain above your DEF cap, you can supplement your armor with the S3 chestpiece and socket with the AGI/HIT gems. This will likely drop you below the 35,880 armor cap, but if you set up a clever potion macro, you can join the ranks of warbots and slam down Ironshields with the best of them.

But those are (mostly) set pieces. As a cat, you’re probably wearing two pieces of T4 at least, and if you’re lucky, two pieces of T6 as well. Since most of the DPS gear we pick up is rogueish in nature, climbing to 142 hit rating isn’t too difficult at all. This is important because a successful cat DPS rotation relies on heavy crit for combo points and bleed debuffs; if one doesn’t “stick” or “hit”, you’re essentially blowing your whole cycle. A simplified DPS rotation (assuming high crit and ignoring powershifting for the moment) might go as follows:

1. Mangle
2. Shred
3. Shred
4. Shred
5. Rip

Because Mangle amplifies Shred damage and bleed effects, you will not want to Shred or Rip unless your Mangle debuff is up on your target. If you miss your Mangle or your Mangle is dodged, you’re a step behind in your rotation. If you miss it twice, you’re two steps behind and now you’re just wasting energy.

In Cat Form, I’m hit capped but not expertise capped. Some of this is based on the item slots I’ve chosen to use for my two piece T4 and T6 bonuses, but it’s also not quite as easy to get without sacrificing a lot of high-end stats. Often, I only run with the Shard of Contempt, which reduces a mob’s chance to dodge my attacks by 2.79%—not too stellar, but nearly 3% is much better than 0. If you’re not quite as worried about set bonuses or exchanging a high level item without expertise for a lower level item with, here are some easy expertise grabs:

Shard of Contempt (Heroic MgT): 44 expertise rating
Shapeshifter’s Signet (Lower City Reputation): 20 expertise rating
Grips of Deftness (Karazhan Trash): 15 expertise rating
Total: 5.00% dodge reduction

Slightly more difficult to obtain:

Shoulderpads of the Stranger (Hydross): 10 expertise rating
Belt of One Hundred Deaths (Lady Vashj): 25 expertise rating
Gloves of the Searing Grip (A’lar): 18 expertise rating
Total: 3.36% dodge reduction

Total with the best items combined: 7.41% dodge reduction, effectively negating a boss mob’s chance to dodge (6.5%) your attacks. You could even take a piece or two off.

Playing any hybrid class requires a veritable balancing act of trying to make the best of subpar itemization, but while you’re min/maxing for DPS and TPS, remember that you’re gimping yourself if you’re ignoring your hit and expertise ratings.

For a discussion about spell hit and spell damage for moonkin, visit Gray Matter.

As many of you may know by now, the NDA on WotLK information has been lifted and the beta will be going live shortly. Official patch notes for the beta are available, and I’ve listed the druid changes below, highlighting anything I was particularly excited about. Basically, stuff I thought was even cooler than the other stuff. Even the boomkin shit looks fantastic.

I opted in for the beta, but it’ll be anyone’s guess if I get in. Expect to hear more—a lot more. Oh, and Phae? Pretty sure the developers heard the leaves rustling:

New Spell: Revive - Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. (Ranks 1-7 added)

Druid

• Brambles (Balance): Now increases the damage done by your Treants, and also damage caused from your Treants and Barkskin has a 5/10/15% chance to Daze the target for 3 sec.
• Celestial Focus (Balance): The stun proc now works with Starfall.
• Entangling Roots: Can now be used indoors.
• Faerie Fire (Feral): Now an 11-point talent, down from being a 21-point talent.
• Feral Charge (Feral) is now a 21-point talent, up from being a 11-point talent.
• Feral Charge (Feral): Can now be used in Cat form.
• Feral Instinct (Feral) no longer increases threat generated in Bear form, but now increases damage done by your Swipe ability by 5/10/15%.
• Focused Starlight (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.
• Force of Nature (Balance): Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3.
• Hurricane: No longer has a cooldown (was 1 minute).
• Improved Faerie Fire (Feral): Now also works with spell hit, in addition to ranged and melee hit %.
• Improved Mark of the Wild (Restoration): Now a 2-point talent, down from a 5-point talent.
• Improved Tranquility (Restoration): Now also reduces the cooldown of your Tranquility spell by 25/50%.
• Mangle (Feral): Now increases the damage done by Maul in addition to Shred.
• Moonglow (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.
• Moonkin Form (Balance) no longer increases your attack power or causes you to regenerate mana off melee attacks, but now has a chance to cause you to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana every time you critically hit with a spell.

• Nature’s Focus (Restoration): Now a 3 point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Also moved to Tier 1, up from Tier 2. Now also includes Nourish.
• Nature’s Grace (Balance): Now also reduces the global cooldown of your Wrath spell by 50% while in effect.
• Nature’s Grasp (Balance): Can now be used and can proc indoors.
• Nature’s Reach (Balance): Now also reduces threat generated by Balance spells by 15/30%.
• New Spell: Revive - Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. (Ranks 1-7 added)
• Omen of Clarity (Restoration): Now a passive spell. Now also works for spells (healing and damage). Proc rate is roughly 6% with a 10 second internal cooldown.
• Primal Tenacity (Feral) now reduces damage while stunned by 5/10/15%, and reduces the duration of fear effects by 5/10/15%.
• Remove Curse can now be used in Tree of Life form.
• Soothe Animal can now be used on Dragonkin as well as Beasts.
• Soothe Animal is now instant cast.
• Subtlety (Restoration): Now a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Also moved to Tier 2, up from Tier 3. Also now only reduced threat for Restoration spells, and reduces the chance that your healing over time spells (Lifebloom, Regrowth and Rejuvenation) will be dispelled, rather than all Druid spells. Threat management for Balance can now be found in the Balance tree, within Nature’s Reach.
• Survival of the Fittest (Feral): Increased to 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.
• The mana regeneration penalty when in Bear Form, Dire Bear Form and Cat Form has been removed.
• Tranquil Spirit (Restoration) now also includes Nourish.
• Tree of Life (Restoration): 30% snare penalty has been removed.
• Tree of Life (Restoration): Can now cast Dispel Curse.
• Tree of Life (Restoration): You can now cast all Restoration spells (Healing Touch) in the form, but Tree of Life now only reduces the mana cost of your healing over time spells (Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Regrowth and Flourish) by 20%.
• Vengeance (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.