Feral Druid 5.2 (Throne of Thunder) Gear List

  13 Responses to “Feral Druid 5.2 (Throne of Thunder) Gear List”

1. 

   aggixx says:

   March 3, 2013 at 2:48 am

   It’s worth mentioning that things are very different when you’re running Rune of Re-Origination. Generally speaking you’ll want whatever has the most agi (for example, you would take the Polearm off of Lei Shen if you can use the expertise) because secondary stats don’t matter much.

   Your goal for secondaries is to do what you can to keep your hit and expertise around the caps (2550 each), and the try to get your remaining secondaries as close as possible while keeping mastery on top. At that point secondary stat selection of each individual piece does not particularly matter, but generally you’ll want to avoid hit and expertise unless you specifically know you can fit the piece in.

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2. 

   Joliet says:

   March 5, 2013 at 2:31 pm

   Bookmarked! Thanks for doing this.

   Reply
   • 

     Alaron says:

     March 5, 2013 at 2:33 pm

     You’re welcome!

     Reply
3. 

   Shandrîna says:

   March 8, 2013 at 11:00 am

   Love it bookmared hope we get the triket stats runing soon and where we can get a hold of the bis staff :)

   Reply
   • 

     imepic says:

     March 8, 2013 at 12:53 pm

     Hey guys im a lvl 89 feral druid and i dint know how i will buy pvp gear will it be with honor ? How do arenas work
     thanks

     Reply
4. 

   Spryng says:

   March 8, 2013 at 1:00 pm

   First off, I’d like to thank all of you who have been active bloggers and posters on feral druid dps topics. Before reading your words, I was considering rerolling as I never saw ferals above middle in any raids, where I was firmly planted. In a few weeks time, however, reading your thoughts has helped me move from middle of the pack to top 3, and often #1. Thanks for giving me hope and lighting the way . . .

   Having said that, I don’t follow the stat weighting recommendations as given on this and other sites, and so my recent success has made me want to share my experience for critical review.

   I’m a NE feral HoW/SoF druid with ilvl 484 including 2 set pieces and using the 471lvl spear of xuen. I understand that stat weighting evolves as ilvl increases, so maybe what I’m reading doesn’t apply as well to me since I’m a bit undergeared. Nonetheless, thinking about the relative value of mastery and crit leads me to strongly favor crit over mastery.

   My thinking is that mastery is relatively weak because although they both cost 600 rating per 1%, mastery affects only bleeds, which on my logs typically only accounts for less than 30% of damage. In fact, my last run of Terrace, even though I was #2 on the damage meters, and my bleeds totalled only 26% of my damage.

   The practical bleed % is much lower than I see estimated on various sites, I think for the following reasons:
   1. Boss Mechanics which break bleed uptime and demand reapplication.
   2. The fact that I am stacking crit which potentially takes about 4800 rating away from mastery which obviously leads to the bleed dmg being a lower % of my overall damage. (If I switch all the crit to mastery, that would have only raised the bleed % of total dmg to about 28%, btw)
   3. My bleed uptime could be better if I had the 4 set piece bonus, although I think it is pretty good as I am focussing on it and near the top of the meters.
   4. The Wrath and Hurricane dmg of my spec lower the relevance of bleeds/mastery compared to the total – together they accounted for 23% of my dmg.

   Nonetheless, even if you assume the up to 50% bleed damage that some sites say, crit wins over mastery (for my spec), because crit effects every bit of damage (except I think the Wrath/Hurricane part which neither effect).

   In addition, crit is generating combo points which at my ilvl are still less available than I would like.

   Haste is less clear to me vs crit. Although EJ has it above crit because of the casting phase, haste is not affecting the bleed component of damage. Purely considering damage, I believe haste is better than mastery, because even if bleeds were %50 of dmg, 1% of haste only costs 425 rating. For every 2% of mastery you buy, you can buy ~3% of haste. In addition, the haste effects the very valuable casting phase of my spec.

   I’m looking forward to reading any comments you all might have on this.

   sincerely,

   Spryng-Drenden
   (I pvp so I don’t know what gear would be there if you look me up)

   p.s. I know it would be useful to know my bleed uptime in order to evaluate what I am saying. I thought it would be fair to assume that I’m doing pretty well with it since I am consistently near or at the top of the meters, and well above any other druids in the raid. I’ll look for an add-on to do that in the meantime (unless there is a feature of recount that someone could point me to).

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5. 

   JimJones says:

   March 20, 2013 at 3:49 am

   Spryng, you’re absolutely correct. All those statistics saying mastery is better are based on simulations, not real world boss fights. That means they’re assuming 100% uptime on all dots, always being able to be behind the boss, all raid buffs/debuffs applied 100% of the time, etc. Same thing with DoC over HotW.

   In the real (virtual) world, things are not so straightforward. There are exactly zero patchwerk-style fights in the game, and haven’t been any for a good long while. That means we’ll never be able to stay on a single target the whole fight – there are target swaps in every boss fight in the game. This is hard to quantify, but it definitely means that extra combo points when you need them to quickly refresh rip or savage roar are MUCH more valuable than can possibly be simulated.

   Additionally, they tend to forget that when we’re trying to max our dps, we’re usually working on progression, which means we’re still learning the fight. If it’s on farm, who cares if your dps is high or not? Sure I like to top the meters in LFR as much as the next guy, but does it matter? Not one bit. So while we’re trying to learn the fight, not stand in fire, etc., the less we have to worry about dots and buffs falling off the better – for the whole raid, not just our personal dps.

   Finally, the difference in the (theoretical) max dps between mastery, crit and even haste, is very small. Small to the point that you won’t see it at all between any two fights on the same boss. (That’s why they run 20k+ sims to get these numbers.)

   Long story short, simulationcraft is fun for people who like numbers. For people who like to play the game on the other hand, crit is just as good or better in almost every situation in the game as it exists today. Plus, who doesn’t like to see huge CRIT numbers on the screen?

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6. 

   Lunasah says:

   March 21, 2013 at 9:38 am

   I find there is almost a soft cap on crit. If I drop below 28% ish, I really start to notice a loss of combo points. On the other hand, mastery just always gets better and better.

   Reply
7. 

   Neverpulout says:

   April 12, 2013 at 10:22 pm

   Because of the nature of feral, bleeds are always going to be the main part of your damage. Also this gives us a leg up vs other classes that lose a high amount of damage during movement while we as ferals have bleeds that continue to tick away. Also because of the buff to rip in 5.2 and the multiplicative nature to our activated +dmg abilities, stacking mastery is always going to trump not stacking it. (Minus the changes that can be made when you throw Rune of Re-Origination into the mix)

   Think about it. You can either get A: slightly more energy regen giving you a few more 5 CB abilities each fight, or B: bleeds with upwards of +80% from mastery stacked with DoC/TF/SR. If you went for a build optimizing abilities other than your bleeds you would only get the +25% dmg on the immediate next two shreds/mangle/ravage/FB. But instead you get to take advantage of it by throwing it on with rip/rake and extending that damage increase for 14+ secs. This doesn’t even factor in snap-shotting your bleeds at the peak of certain trinkets or at the end of their activation to essentially “extend” their use.

   I do agree with you though people using simcraft as if it is the bible makes no sense. It a mathematical equation that pertains very little to real world application. The only argument I can make against simcraft currently, is that it is siming haste over crit. In the real world I feel this would be a loss in DPS due to the fact you HAVE to hit 4CB before using up your predatory swiftness to take the DoC buff. Crit plays a big part in making it to that point a lot of the times. If you miss a 5 CB rip with all those +%dmg increases because you were only able to make it to 3CB before “having” to cast NT, it is a HUGE dps loss.

   Nice write up tho

   Neverpulout – Blackrock

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8. 

   Rob Cornell says:

   April 25, 2013 at 3:09 pm

   I’ve just come back to the game after about a year, back in the Cata days. Right now I’m running balance, but I’d like to swap my off spec from resto to feral to give it a try for leveling through the Pandaria material. Is there somewhere you can direct me to get some info how to get the gear I need to even begin to compete in the new world as a newly minted feral?

   Thanks!

   Reply
   • 

     Alaron says:

     April 25, 2013 at 3:29 pm

     Rob, try the Adventuring Supplies vendors to get an initial set of gear. http://www.wowhead.com/news=206813/mists-of-pandaria-pre-raid-gear-guide

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     • 

       Rob Cornell says:

       April 25, 2013 at 6:43 pm

       Wow! This is perfect. Had no idea these vendors existed.

       Thanks a ton!

       Reply
9. 

   Maruka says:

   May 2, 2013 at 5:59 am

   Do you have any information about the value of the legendary vs. the “standard” meta gem with agi+crit dmg? I have actually the legendary meta gem equipt but I am not sure about it if it’s realy the better choice.

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