Nearsight

[Masakii]

So i was armorying you to compair where i stood and im at a loose to how you can get away with only 126 hit raitting and 80 exp. 263 hit is our hit cap and 26 exp (same for all melee) is are exp cap. i ended up having to gem hit to maintain my hit ratting (270) and im not sure how i feel about that. (cuts my armor pen by 80 raitting). Is there somthing i missed in our spec or built into our class that lets us get away with not being exp capped or hit capped?


Masakii

[Lohkay]

I'm sure nearsight will answer this but yes, you are right in aiming for these soft caps. its 263 hit rating but 16 expertise due to your Primal Precision talent. I think this is made even more important since feral druids have such a thight rotation, missing a skill might screw it up.

[Fiddlesticks]

As Lohkay said, Near will answer this when he has the chance. Anyway, I agree, you do want to shoot for the soft cap of both those stats, but I've found through personal experience that it's not entirely necessary to be capped. Granted you'll sit there swearing under your breath when have to spam your abilities a couple times to get them to hit, but I was told my other stats would make up where I lacked in hit/expertise, and for a long while I was still able to pull off top DPS (or in the top 3) on my Rogue being under-capped. I had 3 expertise on my Rogue from ToC up through midway in ICC. Hurt my DPS a little, but it didn't make enough of a difference to really make a significant difference.

Looking at both of your profiles, there's not much different in your builds, other than Near going with Improved Leader and taking points out of Improved Mangle, and you taking Feral Charge. So there's nothing you're missing out on that he has. I recall Near mentioning his hit rating being low, which is partly due to the itemization of his gear pieces.

[Lohkay]

You're right and wrong fiddle. First of all, hit is more important than exp based on when they're taken into account in the calculations. Also, both stats get better as you gear up.. for exemple, in blues, your primary stat (agi in this case I guess) will increase your dps more than hit but as you progress in gear, increases in primary stat will account for less and less dps increase. Hit on the other hand will remain stable which makes it preferable the higher your gear level is.

Also, another point to take into account, missing a skill as a rogue doesn't affect your dps much (50% of your dps comes from flailing your melee weapon anyway). Missing a skill as a feral druid will mess up your dps.

[Fiddlesticks]

Also, another point to take into account, missing a skill as a rogue doesn't affect your dps much (50% of your dps comes from flailing your melee weapon anyway). Missing a skill as a feral druid will mess up your dps.

You're very right about that. If I mess up my rotation on my Rogue, too bad, so sad, nothing comes of it. But if Feral misses an ability, yeah, they've just screwed themselves out of a lot of DPS. But that comes more from knowing a rotation (well..as much of a rotation as a Feral Druid can have), not so much being undercapped in stats.

And on that subject, Mas, was is your concern based more on just the hit/exp stats in general, or are you inquiring more along the lines of it affecting your DPSing? I know that even though Near's undercapped, he tends to have outrageously huge numbers in raids. If that's more where your concern lies, I would even ask Near for some rotation ideas. He gave me a lot of useful tips for my Druid.

[Masakii]

i more or less am asking how he gets away with it. ive seen his huge numbers and im jealus. I know the rotation like i know my girlfriends every sexy curve. we do have a rather ridgid rotation. never let savage roar fall never let rake fall or mangle fall. Nevr shred unless mangle and a bleed are on the target. other whise its just shred to 5 rip shred to 5 bite repeat.

My problem is more i had to gem for hit to maintain my hit cap of 263(270 is where im at) this re gem drops me 20 crit 50 attack power and 60 more armor pen. Exp cap im not worried about becasue im at 32 with just gear no gem or enchants for it. I just am sitting here scratching my head as to how nearsight pulls such massive numbers being so slow under both caps? Im struggling to keep up with him and our gear isnt that big of a gap (think hes got like 150 gs on me?)

[pewpewinface]

There's a lot of other things that people take for granted that can contribute to your dps, like timing your CD's in accordance with each boss's strat, efficiently moving around so you spend as much time on the boss as possible, etc. And I'm not a feral expert, but in general, comparing gearscore is dangerous, since that assumes that all items are itemized the exact same way-- a hunter wearing all 264 gear where every piece of gear has haste on it is in much worse shape than a hunter wearing 245-251 gear where every piece has armpen; so what I'm saying is maybe he's picking gear with more optimal stats than you maybe?

Also, I would venture to guess, although I haven't done any research or math on this, that Near would actually find a dps increase if he gemmed to the soft caps, at least for hit (although keep in mind you can take ~33 hit off by being in a group with a draenei)

[Masakii]

ive even taken in account the 1% he'd get from heroic pres. It wasnt a compair to gear more or less a compair to see how he made up hit gear as i said. I was upset for having to gem to for it. Id say i am pretty itemized given i hit all my caps with gear (aside from hit) and still maintain over 1000 armor pen raitting.
Its not an issue of time on target or dps ect. i was just intrested to know his logic to why hes so fare under the hit and exp cap. Possably somthing i missed to that reguards or somthing in the spec i over looked. However i spoke to him last night on this. He simply states hes not verry itemized and is to close to the hard armor pen cap (1400 hes at 1290ish?) wich means if he gmed hit or exp hed loose out dps rather then gain.

[Lucas]

Because armor pen scales logarithmically, correct? i.e. 99% armor pen is more than twice as good as 50% armor pen.

[pewpewinface]

Well, I don't have this on hand, but what I'd recommend doing is going into Rawr (or even better, the spreadsheet) and seeing if it really is a dps increase for Near to be gemming armpen instead of hit. Each point of armpen is worth a lot at his level (especially if he's eating armpen food), but I'd imagine hit is still probably better, considering that it only takes 33 hit to raise his dps by ~1% (and at 10k dps that's about 100 dps, which would be about 60 dps for each +20hit gem-- that's a lot of damage for a single gem!)

Who knows, maybe you could've noticed something to help him improve his dps even more

Because armor pen scales logarithmically, correct? i.e. 99% armor pen is more than twice as good as 50% armor pen.

It's not quite logarithmically, but it's also not quite really any word like that, but the basic idea is right-- armpen definitely does get significantly stronger the more of it you have.

[Masakii]

I think its more to do with DR. The idea stated on elites jerks is that the last 1000 armor matters little over teh first 1000. So the way i udnerstood this is say i have 50% armor pen. I hit you as if you had 50% less whatever you base armor happens to be at. The next hit because of dr i hit you for 55% then 60% then 65% ect. Wich is how i understand armor pen being more linear then attack power or agi.