Important Feral Questions

[Cougarfang]

Hello Paragon,

first of all I searched nearly everywhere and in each and every guide to find answers for my questions, but I couldn't. I really hope you can help me.
Since I am from Germany I also asked these questions to For the Horde, but I think they're busy competing to you guys and finishing off the first tier of raiding, too, so since you've already done that, I thought I could ask you now.

This is my druid: Cougarfang - EU Sen'jin

First I ask you to tell me if I'm doing anything wrong with enchantments or sockets. In my guild I'm one of the best DPS. Only Survival Hunters and Boomkins are able to send me to the third place. Maybe also a fire mage, which has pretty the same DPS as I have, so we're competing for the third place :)

Anyway, that's not my real problem.

With the upcoming patch 4.0.6 and the changes regarding Mangle, Shred, Rip and Rake, how much DPS does the T11 4-Pc Bonus gives me now? Up until now I always thought I better not go for the 4-Pc, since Mangle is really weak and I didn't thought that these 3% attack Power could compete with the loss of damage while I'm always keeping this buff on me and not shredding or DOTing the target.
So, should I go for 4-Pc?

Then another important point for me is: Is there a haste cap for feral Druids? I mean, you know that haste regenerates energy a lot faster, but is there a cap where the regeneration rate cannot rise?
I have 1423 Haste rating at the moment. Is that too much? Or still not enough?

Oh, and if you're asking why I'm reforging on hit, I'd like to explain: Together with the rogues in my guild I am responsible for disrupting. So to do my job good, I need my Skull Bash to always hit. I know, this means a little DPS loss, since I can't reforge all of my hit to mastery or crit, but it's important for my guild.
Since I'm on the hit topic now: Will hit become more important again with 4.0.6? What about Savage Roar? Since our DOTs get hugely nerfed, I would think it does, but I'm not such a pro-gamer as you are. I've not reached any heroic encounter, after all :)

Phew, yeah, this should be all my problems for now. I really hope I can get some help here so I can raise my DPS.

Oh, yeah, one last question: It seems that Feral DPS must be really low and so useless in heroic raids, because if I look at the DPS meters I always see druids at the top of the damage. But it's Boomkin damage, not feral. I can look at each and every top guild heroic encounter and always miss the cat in the "Damage done" part. That makes me kind of sad and I'm beginning to get afraid if I'm going to lose my raid spot, because my DPS is not, or will be not enough for Heroic encounters.

So, that's all, really.

I hope to hear from you guys soon!

Yours,
Cougarfang

[Cougarfang]

Hey guys,

I wanted to ask if someone could answer my questions, I really want to get better and cannot find any answers to these questions ^^

[Xodan]

Hello,

4-Pc bonus should be around 300-400 dps upgrade depending on gear level both now and after the patch, so it definately better than any offpieces you might get. One mangle once every 30sec is not that big of a dps loss compared to 3% AP gain. Although it does make the "rotation" a bit annoying especially if you already have a manglebot. Poor itemization from Blizzard's part when comparing to other similar set bonuses, but that is nothing new.

If you want to look more closely how much of a upgrade 4-Pc is to you, I recommend http://sites.google.com/site/yawninglol/webmewpivot. It's very good cat calculator and fairly easy to use too.

Gear seems to be in order mostly, only in Cloak 22 Agi enchant from wotlk is actually better than 50 crit and in Hands 35 Str is better than 50 mastery. There is also 50 Str for Hands, but that is a expensive one. Oh, and for legs there is AP/Crit armor kit available. :)

Haven't heard about any haste cap and I doupt there is one apart from fairly theoretical cap, where you regen more energy than you can spend within a GCD. That is probably somewhere along several tens of thousands of haste rating. Certainly not relevant in this tier.

Hit doesn't really get better at 4.0.6. The DOT nerf/Mangle Shred buff just shifts damage more to the direction of direct yellow attacks (Mangle and Shred). But we still get 80% energy back per missed yellow attack, so relative value of hit stays the same. Haste gets a bit better though. Savage Roar stays the same too. Keep Rip up and after that SR.

Feral DPS do seem to drop once other classes get better gear and many of the heroics do favour ranged DPS quite a lot, so you might drop a few ranks, but if you already are in top 3, while interrupting I think you have nothing to fear. But Hunters, DKs, Rogues and Mages (and ofc boomkins) should top feral quite easily at similar gear levels once decked in 359/372 epics.

Hope this helps.

[Xique]

I Cant really understand some Basics: how much increase the itemlvl the dmg Output ?
Mastery is a realy nice Thing but is agility really so much better ? How much dps bring's severage Roar more ? I have itemlvl 350 and make 14,5k dps in baradin hold at the pvp Boss. If i use sr how much dps more ?

[Cougarfang]

Thank you really much Xodan!

This helps a lot, I will re-enchant my gear tomorrow first thing :)
Now we sucessfully defeated Maloriak, Halfus and the Council in Throne of the 4 Winds and I got a few more epics to get better DPS :3

Could you maybe tell me why Strength is better than mastery? Since mastery increases our DOT's damage, I thought that's the best there is, and on feral gear I can't find any other strength, so why enchanting strength?

[Xodan]

Primary stats (Agi, Str, Int etc.) got hugely buffed in Cata compared to ratings. Agi is the most desirable stat now by a large margin, but also Str isn't all that bad as we still get 2AP(+modifiers) per point of Str. Hands enchant is in a unique position as there is Str-, but no Agi-enchant available. Here are my stat-weights from Mew a couple weeks back:

DPS per point
Weapon DPS 3.92
Agi 2.83
Str 2.18
Mas 1.22
Cri 0.90
Has 0.87
Hit 0.80
Exp 0.80

As can be seen 35Str is 2.18*35 = 76DPS and 50Mas 1.22*50 = 61DPS. Same for cloak enchant, 22Agi beats 50Crit. It feels a little weird, but thats how it goes.

I Cant really understand some Basics: how much increase the itemlvl the dmg Output ?
Mastery is a realy nice Thing but is agility really so much better ? How much dps bring's severage Roar more ? I have itemlvl 350 and make 14,5k dps in baradin hold at the pvp Boss. If i use sr how much dps more ?

Ilvl in itself doesn't increase dmg, but higher ilvl gear has more Agi and ratings, which leads to more dmg. How much more depends on the items in question as each of them have different ratings, but as a rule of thumb a higher ilvl item also increases your dmg output unless you are breaking an item set bonus.

Yes, Agi is just that much better. If you look the numbers above Agi is about 2.3 times as good as Mastery and 3.1 times as good as next rating Crit. Always go for Agi in your gemming and enchanting. SR increases your white hits by 50%. If you go to Character panel and multibly your Melee DPS by 0.5, it should give you rough estimate how much SR increases your DPS. I'm guessing around 800 DPS or so with your gear. But if SR and Rip are dropping at a same time, always refresh Rip first. SR is decent, but it's still a way behind Rip in damage done.