Confusion on Equipment stats

[Bubba Grizz]

I have a level 80 Feral Druid (Cat) and a level 80 Frost Mage. I am at the point where I want to be more effective on raids and instances and have started looking to optimize my gear. I'm still finding it difficult to part with my purples. I need to know what I should be looking at more closely when presented with new gear options.

To Hit:
I know that a certain level of To Hit is required to keep from missing and such. From what I was able to gather, and I could be totally wrong, is that my Cat needs around 136 Hit rating. I have no clue for my mage.

Crit and Expertise Rating:
I have an idea on what they are but how to I judge which is more important?

Stats:
Is is alright to take items that don't offer any stats but give good bonuses to the above ratings?

Resiliance:
I know this is mainly for pvp. My question is what is the desired rating for both my chars?

Armor Penetration:
What is this and how does it pertain to me?

Can't think of anything else atm. I just don't want to be wasting my efforts getting a huge Hit Rating and letting my other ratings suffer as a result.

[Aardor]

I have a level 80 Feral Druid (Cat) and a level 80 Frost Mage. I am at the point where I want to be more effective on raids and instances and have started looking to optimize my gear. I'm still finding it difficult to part with my purples. I need to know what I should be looking at more closely when presented with new gear options.

To Hit:
I know that a certain level of To Hit is required to keep from missing and such. From what I was able to gather, and I could be totally wrong, is that my Cat needs around 136 Hit rating. I have no clue for my mage.

Crit and Expertise Rating:
I have an idea on what they are but how to I judge which is more important?

Stats:
Is is alright to take items that don't offer any stats but give good bonuses to the above ratings?

Resiliance:
I know this is mainly for pvp. My question is what is the desired rating for both my chars?

Armor Penetration:
What is this and how does it pertain to me?

Can't think of anything else atm. I just don't want to be wasting my efforts getting a huge Hit Rating and letting my other ratings suffer as a result.

I assume you mean PVE, so I am going to answer with that

Hit Rating: By far (leaps and bounds) the most important stat in regards to PVE damage dealing, for any dps class. You want to hit your hit cap (for specials) before anything else, even if doing so fucks your atk power and crit (this is a generalization, you would need to use RAWR to figure out if it's wrong, but a very good and almost always right guildline). The reason for this is because all the other calculations are made AFTER it is determined if your roll to hit was successful or not.

You'll have to look up more info on feral from elitistjerks, because i'm not sure how hit cap exactly works for them, but I assume it's similar to rogues (different cap for special moves vs melee attacks, assuming ferals get some sort of dual wield penalty). You need 9% to hit against a lvl 83 boss, before talents, so if your talents give you 5% to hit, you would need 4%. At level 80, it's 32.79 rating per 1% hit. I assume that ferals do not want to go for hit cap against the dual wield penalty (28%), since it is a minor dps increase since the changes to windfury (not that it ever effected ferals).

For mages, with elemental precision or arcane focus (the + hit talents for fire/frost and arcane, respectively), you want 368 hit rating (they only have 1 hit cap vs dual wield melee having 2)

Expertise: Useless to your mage, which you probably knew since none of the gear you get has it. For melee dps, it is generally the best stat to cap after hit rating. The cap for lvl 83 bosses is 25 (about 205 rating), so shoot for that after capping hit. (this again could be different for a feral,b ut i doubt it since it's more a melee mechanic things than class specific thing)

Crit: Generally the stat to shoot for right after hit/expertise, since it offers the biggest dps increase. There are some classes where it is important to have a certain amount of crit before even going for other stats (pre-3.0 elem shaman come to mind), but elitistjerks should say if that's the case.

other stats: after that, the other stats are all pretty blended together, but in general haste > armor pen.

actual stats: It is fine to go for an item without stats, as long as it produces an overall dps increase. You can look at the 2 items on your character in RAWR and see how the DPS changes, or use something like Ratings Buster to compare the stat losses/gains and eyeball it in game.

Resilience: Useless in PVE, unless you're a tank who is below being uncrittable, then it is just as good as defense. In pvp, I have no clue since arena is pretty retarded right now (i wear 217 res on my rogue, but only cause those pieces gave me more crit vs haste/armor pen/hit (hit cap in pvp is lower).

For a general inequality regarding pve stats:

hit (to cap) > exp (to cap) > atk power > crit >> haste > armor penetration

I didn't include normal stats since those can be directly translated into atk power and crit.

Hope that helped, a bunch of the knowledge here is based off of WOTLK rogues, and pre-wotlk mages, since they're the only two i've extensively looked in to.

RAWR: http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr/Release/Pr ... seId=21366 . Rawr is a pretty neat DPS modeller which has a GUI vs spreadsheet, and has an easy way to select and change gear. I highly recommend using it when trying to maximize dps/compare items, assuming your DPS class is there (feral druids and mages are the main two classes modeled in RAWR).

So, for an inequality you have

[Fairweather Pure]

For Bear - Expertise > Hit

For Cat - Expertise < Hit

You'll see that bear vs cat gear pretty much mimic the importance of these stats for each particular spec.

Also, for Cats keep in mind that Attack Power > Crit

My Current Bear prioriety (in order of importance):
1. Stamina
2. AC (for legs/head/chest/bracer/belt/gloves - anything else is buttah on other pieces, but not giving up other stats for them due to the upcoming AC nerf for ferals)
3. Agility
4. Expertise
5. Hit
6. Crit
7. Attack Power
8. Strength

My gems are almost all Stamina and Expertise. Once my Expertise is capped, I will go back and replace gems with pure Stamina. I saw a horde druid in Wintersgrasp that had over 65,000 HPs. He must've been a pure stamina build with Survival Instincts popped, but goddamn! Everyone was talking about him, lol.

Cat priorities:
1. Attack Power
2. Hit
3. Expertise
4. Agility
5. Crit
6. Haste
7. Strength

My gems for cat are all Attack Power.

These are my personal rules of thumb. Obviously, if an item has an insae amount of AC and a minimal loss of Stamina, I would choose that item.


Interestingly, I have Mongoose for my weapon enchant. Due to the unreal amount of AEing going on during Heroics, it is up almost all the time, which gives my bear 2% more dodge and about 1.5 crit which helps with aggro. This enchant, while not optimal for cat right now, will eventually do the same thing once cat swipe goes live. I gain 1.5 crit and my attack speed drops to .93 in cat, making Mongoose very effective for both forms. I half suspect this will get looked into at some point since it refreshed on each hit and has no internal cooldown. Basically, it's up almost all the time.

[Zaelath]

My gems are almost all Stamina and Expertise. Once my Expertise is capped, I will go back and replace gems with pure Stamina. I saw a horde druid in Wintersgrasp that had over 65,000 HPs. He must've been a pure stamina build with Survival Instincts popped, but goddamn! Everyone was talking about him, lol.

If there's more of one side than the other, they get a massive stat buff...

[Bubba Grizz]

Wonderful information guys. Thanks a lot. I have a better understanding now.

In Wintergrasp, if the sides are uneven by a certain margin, the lower side gets a huge buff that gives them a boat load of hitpoints. That may explain part of the 65k hitpoints.

[Aardor]

Wonderful information guys. Thanks a lot. I have a better understanding now.

In Wintergrasp, if the sides are uneven by a certain margin, the lower side gets a huge buff that gives them a boat load of hitpoints. That may explain part of the 65k hitpoints.

They were probably hitting you for 20k too. Yesterday we did WG with a raid of 30 people, and everyone in our entire raid had 10 Tenacity buff. We rolled the alliance so hard, despite their overwhelming numbers. It's pretty awesome to be able to kill people with a single mutilate (I think tenacity is a horrible bandaid, but it's fun).

[Psyloche]

Sit in WG before the zone starts, sometimes I've gotten up to 95k hp with 20x Tenacity. I was romping crap for about 5 minutes before people actually zoned in.