- Focus on agility. If you have the choice between 10 agility and 20 Critical Strike Rating, take agility. If you have a choice between 10 agility and 100 attack power, take agility.
Erm, that’s not entirely true. Agility is undoubtedly your best stat, but not by a factor of 10:1 over attack power. For rogues, 1 point of agility is equivalent in dps potential to approximately 2.6 or 2.7 points of attack power, so if you had a choice between 10 agility or 30 attack power, you take the attack power (never mind that AP no longer exists as a stat on gear anymore). I quickly checked Elitist Jerks to see the relative value of agility vs. other stats for cat druids and couldn’t find a post that listed it, but I suspect the ratios would be somewhat similar.
ShivaX
5502
That would’ve made too much sense.
Instead they made one of each and put them on a lockout. Obviously the best answer.
maxle
5503
That’s not something he needs to worry about, though, since he’s not going to be finding any real attack power gear.
The real choice he should be focusing on is…well, mastery is best, but since that doesn’t kick in until 80, whatever. Crit and haste are the priority. Crit makes you hit harder, haste lets you hit more often (energy regen). Get agi leather with crit and haste. Try to avoid hit and expertise. When choosing a weapon, always choose the weapon with the highest dps; the normalization that occurs when you go into cat form means you don’t care about weapon speed or damage, just dps.
There is no way that 10 Agi is better than 100 AP, and I have no idea why anyone would even make that comparison - 100 AP is vastly more valuable. Primary stats are very powerful in Cata, usually 2 - 3 times more valuable than combat ratings, point for point. When levelling you definitely want to be prioritising your primary stat, but in the highly unrealistic situation that you are faced with a choice between 100 AP and 10 Agi, you would take the AP.
ShivaX
5505
Elitistjerks usually has a breakdown on stat values.
The best ones are the ones laid out like the Rogue sections, with EP.
For say an Assassination Rogue the break down is something like 1 Agi is worth 2.6 AP. Mastery is 1.4 or 1.5 AP. So if given the choice between 20 Agi and 30 Mastery you do with the Agi (52 vs 45).
Unfortunately not all classes are laid out and figured out so well, so it gets harder to determine sometimes. If your class is something like:
Primary Stat > Hit to cap > Expertise to cap > Mastery > Haste > Hit > Crit
Well then its good to know, but without solid numbers its hard to say what the best move is sometimes. Is 30 Mastery worth 20 of your main stat? Is 30 Hit (precap)? Theres no real way to know without downloading a program and throwing numbers into it.
Still knowing what stat is best is usually good enough to do somewhat decently. You reforge the worst stat into the best one and go with it.
Pre-80 it doesn’t really matter and its not like you’ll have a ton of gear choices anyway. Just go with Primary stats over everything and you’ll do fine.
This tip is due to the nature of the feral DPS rotation and the stat priority list. If you miss a rake, you don’t want to wait for the energy you lost (minimal, most of it will be refunded) to be able to try applying it again. That energy buffer will allow you to try immediately after the GCD expires. Also, one of your tasks as melee DPS will be to interrupt spells and abilities with Skull Bash. The buffer will allow you to access that move immediately, which can mean the difference between a boss-kill and a wipe.
Feral druids don’t benefit at all from straight up attack power. It was a red herring, in fact, given that Attack Power, as a straight stat, isn’t available on gear pieces at all. Agility and weapon DPS are extremely (extremely!) valuable to feral druids because of the way the class works – every point you get in agility grants you bumps in both survivability and damage, and every point of agility is also subject to passive multipliers. Feral druids get somewhere close to 30% agility added.
Given the ancillary effects agility has for druids, it is overwhelmingly the 1st stat priority for the class.
I’m not sure why the agility vs attack power thing is even an argument. Every piece of gear made for a feral druid will have agility on it, except for some trinkets. For the most part there will be no choosing between agility and any other stat.
ShivaX
5508
Theres always choices between other stats though. Even if you socket everything with Agility no matter what you’re still left with all the secondary stats on gear. If you don’t reforge to the best stats then you’re gimping yourself quite a bit.
Plus a big enough socket bonus can often be better than pure Agility. What if the socket bonus is say +30 Crit. What is better? 40 Agility or 20 Agility and 50 Crit? What if your piece of gear has Crit and Hit on it? Is that better than Haste and Mastery? Should you reforge the Crit into Haste? Into Mastery?
Edit: And AP does still exist as a stat before level 80. In fact its everywhere and Druids do get benefit from it, just like every other class. Though you could argue it doesn’t really matter before level 80 anyway.
The feral priority list looks something like this: Agility>Mastery (at 85)>Crit/Haste>Hit. While levelling, it’ll still be Aglity>Crit/Haste>Hit, to the point that it’s preferable to have 21 Agility over 54 crit. Yes, it’s just that good. The real dilemma is trinket choice, but that’s another matter altogether.
edit: AP doesn’t scale, while agility does and does much, much more for a feral druid.
How’s the Shaman class doing these days? I had a near 60 Shaman that I played for a while (way back just after the initial release), but then got a little burned out on the gameplay and left. Was thinking about giving the game another shot.
They’re a lot of fun to play, but currently they’re extremely weak, balance-wise. Their dps isn’t competitive, especially for elemental. Before the latest patch, their healing wasn’t competitive either. It got buffed in the last patch, and it’s not clear (as far as I know) if it’s currently competitive.
But all that is for progression raiding purposes. If all you want to do is quest & run five mans, they’re A-OK. I can definitely hold my own either healing or dpsing in heroics. And playing her is super fun.
Thanks. I appreciate the info.
We’re just breaking into the early bosses in raids and our enhancement shaman is pulling 15kdps (10-man). He’s usually first or second in DPS.
maxle
5514
Note that whether or not your class’ deeps or healing are above or below par is probably only going to matter if you’re in a top-tier raiding guild. If you’re not, well, it’s perfectly possible to top the deeps charts as, say, a feral. If you are in an excellent guild, your feral is going to be getting benched.
The original statement was about agility vs attack power. How many pieces of gear do you come across where you have to make the decision between the two? And what gear are you referring to that even has AP? As far as I know and as far as Wowhead can confirm, there is only some old epic raid and PvP gear with any AP on it. Yes, AP exists as a stat for every class, but that was never in question. Also not in question was whether or not it made sense to tailor your secondary stats to fit your needs. So no, you’re basically never in the position as a feral druid, or any other class that benefits from agility, of having to choose between AGI vs AP.
ShivaX
5516
Everything in Wrath has AP on it. Everything.
That was my point, as well as it not mattering since once you hit 80 AP vanishes and is never seen again.
JM1
5517
Yeah. As Enhancement I’ve been one of the top DPS in the guild for the whole of Cata. Perhaps at the very top end of the game they’re struggling, I don’t know.
You may want to look again because it doesn’t. It did in Wrath, yes, but that same gear no longer has any AP on it. That was sort of a big change that came during the pre-Cata patch that overhauled the talent system and various other mechanics. I’m surprised you missed it.
I just did more than those ferals in a 5-man heroic with less-than optimal gear so… I don’t know how accurate that chart is.
Ryslin
5520
Shaman should be looking better as of this patch, the main problem with them has and always will be that they become situational because of totems. If you are quick with totem switch and comfortable with your skill layout you can push the class to the edge.
If not , or if you do not wish to, they are more than viable for the average game.
I will say this, Unleashed weapon is awesome.
So is walking lavaburst. Sorry my shaman love is showing.
