Hit and Expertise

[ellorien Profile]

Hi,

I know hit and expertise are considered quite weak for cats (and Mew says so, too). However, ever since I replaced my Fluid Death (and thereby lost a ton of hit), I noticed that Strength of the Panther drops off during fights due to chain misses of Mangles that were meant to refresh it.

I was wondering:
1) How many occurrences of Strength of the Panther dropping off and having to be restacked to 3 from scratch would be such a great DPS loss that it is no longer worth having such low hit? Or is it never going to be worth stacking hit for?

2) Do you expert kitties personally ever purposely leave some hit/ expertise unreforged, or even reforge to it? Is there a point at which you consider your hit/ expertise too low?

[Leafkiller Profile]

First of all hit and expertise and not much different in stat value than haste and crit. Second of all, you should be refreshing SotP 3-5 seconds early to make sure it does not fall off. You not only have to allow for misses/dodges, but also energy regen depending on where you are in the rotation and if you had been doing any energy pooling. Your goal is to not let SotP ever drop off - it is a big hit to your dps.

You will not notice a significant dps difference if you reforge to hit/expertise and if it makes your rotation more comfortable do so.

[ellorien Profile]

Okay, I'll try doing that. Thank you!

[CaptainCub Profile]

2) Do you expert kitties personally ever purposely leave some hit/ expertise unreforged, or even reforge to it? Is there a point at which you consider your hit/ expertise too low?

I do reforge to expertise specifically and reforged out of haste on the tier gloves and chest instead of hit or exp. I found that around 7% of avoided attacks, I now see very few streaks of misses and dodges and therefore see a dps increase in situations where I'm GCD-bound. At the core of our "rotation" we have narrow windows to fit as many abilities as we can (6-sec TF and 10-sec Unheeded Warning buff), more expertise (or hit) is useful in landing critical abilities, more so than would be spending these spare ratings on crit or haste.

[ellorien Profile]

I see, that makes sense. Thank you, too.

[Grenache Profile Website]

Sorry to revive this thread, but I have been reading quite a bit lately about ferals who are trying to reach the Hit / Exp caps to make their rotations more certain. My item level is only 356 at the moment, but my EXP is 19 and my hit is 3.2%. I don't have the points for Fluid Death sadly.

My guild has been working on heroic Maloriak lately (2% wipes etc!), and undergeared me has been asked to come on their next few nights on him. Because it's such a massive Swipe-fest, I was thinking of reforging or re-gearing for the fight.

My questions are:

I have Unheeded Warning and pretty much no other decent trinket. I heard it doesn't proc on swipe. If I know the cooldown is good, can I pretty much guarantee it with 1 mangle or rake etc?

Also, what stat would you suggest I reforge out of? The highest one on each item (out of Crit / Haste) I assume?

Are there any particularly good pieces with Hit / Exp that would boost me up without all the reforging?

p.s I have several druids. Grenache is not the toon I am talking about.

[Floofles Profile]

No, it procs from auto attacks and swipes but doesn't benefit swipe.

My alt druid has similar level of gear to you and i've sort of gone for hit/expertise on it. If I could be arsed to do things for valor points i'd be getting fluid death to bolster up the hit but... cba

Unfortunately there is no other item other than Fluid Death that will give you enormous amounts of hit/expertise.

[Qbear Profile]

Floofles said it all, I just wanted to add quickly that since our secondary stats are so close as far as dps increases are concerned that's how we can justify reforging for the hit/exp caps. Hit/Exp is still not a gemming or enchanting option since agi still remains 3 times more valuable then anything else. So remember when trying to reach the caps you never want to drop agi for hit or exp.

The best way to look at this that I've found is wowreforge.com you basically type in your toon and server, go to the bottom of the table it gives you, make sure the "at least" option is selected for both hit and exp then click optimize.

This will tell you very quickly if you have the secondary stats available on your gear to reach the caps. Like Floofles said though, if you can't reach the caps by reforges your pretty much stuck until you can obtain a fluiddeath.

[Grenache Profile Website]

Thanks so much. I managed to reforge without touching gems to get to 26 and 7.95 and realised that I still had Infected Wounds from doing 5 mans, so like another poster recently, I dropped it to get Master Shapeshifter, which should make up for some of the Crit I lost.

I'm hoping this makes quite a difference on Vile Swills and Adherents in Green Phase now. I guess the question is whether I stick with it once Maloriak is down and we go back to Magmaw or the next heroic boss.

[Konungr Profile]

Thanks so much. I managed to reforge without touching gems to get to 26 and 7.95 and realised that I still had Infected Wounds from doing 5 mans, so like another poster recently, I dropped it to get Master Shapeshifter, which should make up for some of the Crit I lost.

I'm hoping this makes quite a difference on Vile Swills and Adherents in Green Phase now. I guess the question is whether I stick with it once Maloriak is down and we go back to Magmaw or the next heroic boss.

I ran Mew about 2 weeks ago and came up with the fact that having just under 7% Hit and 25 Expertise is barely, and I mean just barely a 100 dps loss on a static Mew fight. My guild is working on Heroic Valiona/Theralion and ODS and I have to say, the extra Hit and Expertise makes the rotation so much less frustrating, especially with target switches, of which there are a lot of this tier. I only wish that my guild could grasp the basics of a transition phase so we can stop sitting at 5/13 HM.

[Grenache Profile Website]

I guess the extra 4% crit should make up that 100+ dps difference for me then.

One more vile swill question though. I presume that I should try and keep up SR for the duration of the 30+ secs of swipefest. What do people suggest, a single rake reapplied? Presume I should try and conserve most of my energy for the swiping...what about FF tabbing and swiping without SR maybe?

[Konungr Profile]

I guess the extra 4% crit should make up that 100+ dps difference for me then.

One more vile swill question though. I presume that I should try and keep up SR for the duration of the 30+ secs of swipefest. What do people suggest, a single rake reapplied? Presume I should try and conserve most of my energy for the swiping...what about FF tabbing and swiping without SR maybe?

Well the 100 DPS was with me already having th +4% Crit. I'm not sure how your talents are laid out or why you would have ever skipped it. Are you using Brutal Impact while never interrupting? Are you using Primal Madness, with such a horrid mess of a talent that it is? Are you using 3/3 Furor? Any Tanking Talents? Think Hide, Natural Reaction, Pulverize. Infected Wounds and Perseverance are quite good depending on what you are doing though.

SR is good, since its just extra damage, and since you want to keep your T11 4 PC bonus active, using a Mangle to get the Combos for it works great. Rotating FF is pretty decent to help them die faster. If you are planning on something like that, I would take a look at the new default UI feature for Nameplates, there is a Stacking Option, instead of Overlapping, or the spread out one. Try the Stacking, its quite nice for having to target individual adds.

[Grenache Profile Website]

Hmm I dont have 4 x T11 sorry. I might just have to ignore SR and use FF and Swipe only for this I think. Thanks for the nameplate suggestion though.

[Grenache Profile Website]

Oh wow. I reforged to the hit and exp caps as an experiment for Maloriak and Halfus heroic, and it was very strong for those AOEfests, but man did my single target take a big dive. I am going to make Fluid Death a huge priority as the lack of haste was really noticeable. I was last on the Valiona meters...yikes. Either that or I just had a terrible night.

[Konungr Profile]

Oh wow. I reforged to the hit and exp caps as an experiment for Maloriak and Halfus heroic, and it was very strong for those AOEfests, but man did my single target take a big dive. I am going to make Fluid Death a huge priority as the lack of haste was really noticeable. I was last on the Valiona meters...yikes. Either that or I just had a terrible night.

Your single target should have barely suffered, let alone taken a noticeable change in DPS. Do you have World of Logs reports from Before and After to show maybe something that went wrong. Why would your haste levels have gone down?

[Sylvaneart Profile Website]

I went hit/exp cap last week and didnt get to test in a raid until last night. Over all my DPS was up on the BoT fights(tanked Halfus).

[Zaxxan Profile]

Oh wow. I reforged to the hit and exp caps as an experiment for Maloriak and Halfus heroic, and it was very strong for those AOEfests, but man did my single target take a big dive. I am going to make Fluid Death a huge priority as the lack of haste was really noticeable. I was last on the Valiona meters...yikes. Either that or I just had a terrible night.

Why would your haste levels have gone down?

Probably due to reforging out of it, as Crit and Mastery are still more desirable to keep.

[Konungr Profile]

Oh wow. I reforged to the hit and exp caps as an experiment for Maloriak and Halfus heroic, and it was very strong for those AOEfests, but man did my single target take a big dive. I am going to make Fluid Death a huge priority as the lack of haste was really noticeable. I was last on the Valiona meters...yikes. Either that or I just had a terrible night.

Why would your haste levels have gone down?

Probably due to reforging out of it, as Crit and Mastery are still more desirable to keep.

Yes, but if Crit and Mastery were more desirable, he would have very little Haste anyways.

[Floofles Profile]

You won't notice the difference between 2% and 10% haste, honestly.

[Grenache Profile Website]

It just shows that a lot of this is just a perception issue on my part. When I went back to compare my Magmaw WoL from a few weeks ago with last night, my dps had gone up slightly (not as much in comparison to some others), so I was lower on my guilds dps list. It's more likely to be lag / addons / awareness issues that are contributing to my frustration than the haste / crit reforging.

Thanks for the comments folks.

[Flidis Profile]

Floofles said it all, I just wanted to add quickly that since our secondary stats are so close as far as dps increases are concerned that's how we can justify reforging for the hit/exp caps. Hit/Exp is still not a gemming or enchanting option since agi still remains 3 times more valuable then anything else. So remember when trying to reach the caps you never want to drop agi for hit or exp.

The best way to look at this that I've found is wowreforge.com you basically type in your toon and server, go to the bottom of the table it gives you, make sure the "at least" option is selected for both hit and exp then click optimize.

This will tell you very quickly if you have the secondary stats available on your gear to reach the caps. Like Floofles said though, if you can't reach the caps by reforges your pretty much stuck until you can obtain a fluiddeath.

Is it just me or is wowreforge.com somewhat whacky now when you try to go for the hit/exp cap? I try it and it has hit/exp capped but it seems to dump all else into crit. I thought crit was lowest in stat priority.

[Konungr Profile]

@ Flidis, you can change the stat weights around to make the stats you want. Personally I go Exp/Hit Caps > Mastery > Crit > Haste.

The top row, where it shows the weights in boxes where you can input the numbers, just change them to 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 for what you want to do.
So on my WoW-Reforge page I do this:
Hit: 1.3
Exp: 1.3
Mastery: 1.2
Crit: 1.1
Haste: 1

[Triplebuses Profile]

I'm now applying to a new guild and having a debate with a Feral druid of this guild. He seems very annoyed to see that I have reached my exp/hit caps.

I runned a few Mew simulations :

Hit/Exp Cap > Mastery > Crit = Haste : 24825 +/- 10 --- StdDev : 533
No reforging : 24959 +/-10 --- StdDev : 527
Full Mastery reforging : 25062 +/- 10 --- StdDev : 543

So for this druid I'm making a big mistake, and I should go for a full mastery reforging in order to gain a "theorical" 237 DPS. I'm not a pro at statistics but it seems to me that a difference of less 1% is not significant especially with a StdDev more than twice this difference ?

Anyone to enlighten me ?

Tri.

[monxide Profile]

Ignore him and beat him on meters.

[Konungr Profile]

The Feral Druid you are having this debate with is a blind follower and does not realize that with time everything changes.