Since 4.0.6 is dropping tomorrow, I’ll run through some theorycraft and see what’s changing. (For the other changes I analyzed previously, see my WoW Insider column.)

Stats

After much thought, I’ve decided to drop the table of relative stat values I had calculated, and point you towards a calculator instead, such as Mew. That said, things are mostly the same: Agility as your preferred primary stat, and Mastery as your preferred secondary stat. Crit and Haste are very close in value, but in general, the value of crit drops as your gear level improves:

• ilvl 346: Prefer crit to haste
• ilvl 359: Crit/haste roughly equal
• ilvl 372: Prefer haste to crit

Either way, you’ll want to avoid hit/expertise (unless tanking/interrupting). These figures assume you are using one of the new metagems with +3% crit damage; if not, haste definitely comes out on top.

Socket Bonuses

1 Agility is worth slightly less than 3 Mastery and slightly more than 3 Crit/Haste. Essentially, you should ignore all socket bonuses and gem straight +40 agility, except for socket bonuses of +20 agility and better.

Glyphs

Rip/Shred/one of Berserk or Tiger’s Fury look to remain the best three choices. Berserk remains my preference.

Rotational Changes

• FC -> Ravage on CD: This isn’t a change, necessarily, but the newest Mew has math to confirm that this is a DPS gain. If you can run out to charge back in and lose no more than 3 seconds of melee attacks, do it. For bosses where you can FC in place (Valiona), the DPS gain is roughly 3-4%, with a percent off that for each second you spend not attacking.
• No more FB above 25%. I’m still testing this one, but Biting above 25% is of little to no benefit now with the buff to Shred. My general recommendation is to stop worrying about bites. CP’s remain on a target until you start generating CP’s on another one, so just leave them there. (Remember you can actually SR from range, if you run out.)

If you have any other questions, just ask. (Well, except about PvP gear. In short; yes, Individual Vicious pieces are worth using over heroic blues. Individual Bloodthirsty pieces are not. Anything more detailed requires a calculator, so please just go plug your own gear into Mew.)

Oh, and since it appears that the feral PvP nerf is going live: I can’t wait to PvP another feral, have both our Nature’s Grasp effects proc at the same time, and engage in a slap fight. That’s about all I can look forward to enjoying.

As Heli noted in the comments, Yawning has posted an alpha version of Mew that supports the changes in 4.0.6. I decided to do some stat modeling, and came up with some interesting results. (WARNING: Alpha version of simulation program based on subject-to-change data with off-the-cuff profiles used to generate analysis. I’m certain it’s reliable.)

RSV’s by Item Level, 4.0.6 PTR (to .05 error)

Ilvl	372	359	346
WDPS	4.5	4.69	4.28
Agi	3.12	3.02	2.58
Str	2.36	2.3	1.99
Mastery	1.29	1.12	0.88
Haste	1.18	0.95	0.86
Crit	1.04	0.97	0.78
Hit/Exp	1.04	0.92	0.73

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Current Live Data for reference: (ilvl 359)
WDPS: 4.11
Agi: 3.03
Str: 2.32
Mastery: 1.24
Crit: 0.96
Haste: 0.91
Hit/Expertise: 0.86

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Analysis: Essentially, my initial thoughts were correct. Mastery is coming down and Haste is coming up, but not enough to significantly affect current priorities: either haste/mastery or crit/mastery is fine for most. Cats pushing into heroic-mode content (and 372 gear) will want to go haste/mastery. Also, with mastery’s drop in value, the dps loss for prioritizing hit is not as severe.

More to come once I play with Mew a bit more; I’ll be relooking glyphs, trinkets, socket bonuses, and the new logic to use FC->Ravage on cooldown.

Welcome WoW Insider readers! If you’ve come here after reading my first column, feel free to browse my other posts (my most popular ones are linked on the sidebar). If you have questions, feel free to post a new thread in my forums. Enjoy the site!

The future of TFD

Fear not, loyal readers. I will continue posting here; much of the material on WoWI will be more introductory in nature. If not for you guys, I wouldn’t be where I was today. Heck, half of what I write is based on tools other people have created…Yawning and Astrylian should get the real credit. My posting has been light because I’ve been cramming for my CISSP, but that’ll be over (for good or ill) in a few weeks.

EDIT: Apparently the go-live time was pushed back a bit…if you followed the link from here, call it a sneak preview. :)

Interesting quote from Aldriana on the rogue EJ forums: (For those that don’t know, Aldriana is one of the most prominent WoW theorycrafters, and had an item named after him in WOTLK.)

I’d argue that the problem with Sub in 4.0.x has never really been the damage output. I mean, it was behind, and that was a problem, but it wasn’t so far behind that you couldn’t imagine people playing it. The problem with Sub is and always has been that the cycle is so monstrously painful to maintain. Rolling 3 selfbuffs/DoTs is a serious nuisance and very hard to get up on a target in the first place. Shadow Dance is a miserable DPS cooldown to need to use. The reliance on Vanish/Ambush type mechanics to boost DPS is a nuisance. The complete and utter lack of any filler points means you don’t get quite the same utility that you do from other specs. And so on.

In short: the problem is that Subtlety is miserable to play, not that the DPS is bad. Even if it were theoretically, say, 5% ahead, I wouldn’t play it – situational awareness is too important to need to be worrying about a complicated cycle and hard-to-use cooldowns and random fluxuations in CP intake. If they expect PvE Subtlety to catch on in any meaningful way, they need to make it so we can drop Recuperate, Rupture, or SnD from the cycle and have a more typical 2-DoT cycle. They need to make Shadow Dance either less important from a DPS perspective or less painful to use. They need to allow room in the tree to take a few points of filler – which won’t always matter, but sometimes will. They need to fix the way the spec *plays* if they want to see widespread PvE adoption of the spec. Tweaking the damage up or down a bit simply won’t do it for most players.

Sub seems very comparable to feral, actually. Sub has Recup/Rupture/SnD; we have Rip/Rake/Savage Roar. They have Shadow Dance and Vanish->Ambush as DPS cooldowns; we have Berserk/TF/FC->Ravage. We have to Mangle, also. Admittedly, Shadow Dance kinda sucks to use, but the survivability buffs that Subtlety brings are very nice. Is there something I’m missing, or are all the rogues just going Assassination because it’s easier? (I don’t want to be trollish, I’m honestly asking. I just read this post over the weekend and the first thought I had was “complexity never stopped the ferals!”)

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Had a pretty productive week of raiding. Killed Maloriak (thanks for the suggestions, all) and will start actively working on Atramedes next week. I snagged Malevolence off of Halfus, which is my first Cataclysm raiding epic. (Yes, even in 25man, you can have bad loot RNG. We’ve been sharding 1h weapons left and right.) Followed that up with a GREAT 19.5k DPS parse on V&T, where everything just clicked. (WoL link). I wasn’t too excited about having the ranked Halfus parse, since the only way to get up there (now) is to play selfishly. This was clean, though.

Which reminds me of something. Someone asked me the other day “Why do you care about the numbers so much?” I see it as validation of the theorycraft. I’m wearing blue PvP gear, deliberately using a blue trinket…choices that a normal raider would not make, or if that was all that was available, claim “oh, I’m not geared enough to pull good numbers.” I used it and placed in the world top 200 for my spec. That feels great.

(Of course, before my ego gets too inflated, I should mention that I got tunnel vision and died in the fireballs on our first Halfus pull 30s prior to enrage. We wiped at 1%. Go me.)