Okay going back into SSC and TK along with Gruul/Mag and ZA. And I need some advice on DPS gear upgrades from both instances. Here's my armory link, plz post anything u feel maybe an upgrade to me and why.

DPS Gear (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lothar&n=Kaillon)

Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom.

First off, it is absolutely insane that you are not using 2 pieces of T4. That will be a bigger upgrade than anything you could possibly get from SSC/TK. I'd recommend going with the helm and the gloves (given how bad your gloves are).

The biggest upgrade is likely Belt of 100 Deaths from Vashj.

Tsunami Talisman is pretty nice, and would be an upgrade over DMC:crusade. (Leo)

Gloves of the Searing Grip are good from Al'ar and much better than T5.

Boots of Effortless Striking are better than BoNG, and drop from Lurker. Though better yet are things like Nynjah's tabi boots.

Ring of Lethality from Hydross isn't so bad either.

Thalassian wildercloak from Kael is good. So is Razor-Scale battlecloak from Morogrim.

Also, your gemming is all weird for DPS. Why stamina in the helm instead of agi/hit? Why str/hit in the shoulders instead of agi/hit? Why dodge/hit in the bracers instead of agi/hit? Also, in general don't get the socket bonus if the socket bonus is only +2, especially if it's not +2 Agi.

To some of these questions I'm sure the answer will be because you use them in your tanking set as well.

Also it is wise to cap you hit rating to 142 ...

Capping hit isn't nearly as important as it is for other classes. It's a good stat, but don't kill yourself getting it and most of the time don't gem for it over agility unless you get a yellow socket that you need to fill.

BoNG

:buttrock:

Yes I do agree with stacking agility and other stats but when fighting raid bosses my misses went from 8% when I was at around 130 hit rating then now at 147 (I know thats its over) its down to 3.8% .... So I do recommend that if you will be fighting bosses to cap hit rating.

Capping hit rating is good. It's just not as good as stacking other stats is, at least for a kitty. If you can do it, great. Reducing misses is a good thing.

It's not about capping hit rating; it's about capping hit rating while giving up other things. 8 agility is more valuable than 4 agility and 4 hit rating. 10 agility is more valuable than 5 agility and 5 hit rating. If you can get hit rating without giving up other things, that's good. But otherwise ,stack agility.

Hello :>

Kalbear is right that agility is more useful than hit rating, however when it comes to mid-late game raid dps hit rating becomes very important indeed. When you reach 3000 attack power and 35% crit, hit rating becomes very very important it is very wise to stack it all the way to 142.

I faced exactly this dilemna when I was teching up from karazhan/gruul into TK/SSC. I decided midway through SSC that I would start to stack hit rating and try to reach the cap. I regemmed and changed a lot of gear around to reach it, and my dps stats did suffer a little, but I got the hit rating and low and behold WoW web stats showed a dps increase of 10-15% from what I had previously.

So I would argue that there comes a point when stacking hit rating is pretty crucial. Beyond that, stacking expertise rating is something else you can do to further increase your dps by a flat percentage.

Never missing your attacks is also very nice because it allows you to get all your rotations perfectly, and you don't have to continually watch for misses on mangle etc, meaning that you would need to attempt the mangle a second time to keep the buff up.

Simply put, once you start hitting SSC and TK I would strongly recommend working on your hit rating. The cap is 142 rating, which is 9% chance to hit. This will mean you never miss an attack, even against raid bosses.

Due to the table based nature of World of Warcraft damage mechanics, stacking hit rating also effectively increases the amount of crit chance you can usefully use, however you're unlikely to ever hit that cap so at that point it's just theorycrafting for the sake of theorycrafting ;)


-Annikk

When I went through SSC/TK I was always tanking and never got the opportunity to actually dps in cat form so I never really worked on my cat gear but after we got into hyjal and BT I realized that for trash I would be tanking but for the bosses I would most likely be dpsing in cat form. At that point I had around 3200 AP and just over 35% crit but was sitting on only about 40 hit rating in my cat gear. To make a long story short one particular night I put on my dps gear and went toe to toe with one of our other ferals who had very comparable gear but had 148 hit rating on the Najentus fight- he beat me by about 100k dmg that night and I decided that it was time to invest in +hit and have been pumping out much better numbers since then. Moral of the story is: If you are raiding the t5 content it probably isnt that important for you to focus on hit however once you get into t6 content you will need to make your hit cap for cat form.

When I went through SSC/TK I was always tanking and never got the opportunity to actually dps in cat form so I never really worked on my cat gear but after we got into hyjal and BT I realized that for trash I would be tanking but for the bosses I would most likely be dpsing in cat form. At that point I had around 3200 AP and just over 35% crit but was sitting on only about 40 hit rating in my cat gear. To make a long story short one particular night I put on my dps gear and went toe to toe with one of our other ferals who had very comparable gear but had 148 hit rating on the Najentus fight- he beat me by about 100k dmg that night and I decided that it was time to invest in +hit and have been pumping out much better numbers since then. Moral of the story is: If you are raiding the t5 content it probably isnt that important for you to focus on hit however once you get into t6 content you will need to make your hit cap for cat form.
You say he had comparable gear but with 148 hit rating to your 40 hit rating. Of course he's going to do substantially more damage than you. A valid comparison would be if you both had similar AP, he had 100ish more +hit, and you had 100ish more agility than him. I'd hazard a guess that you would both be doing similar DPS.

Hit rating is great because it makes your damage more consistent and predictable in your rip/mangle rotation. But take it where you can, don't sacrifice for it.

It is my understanding that our white damage gets the biggest benefit from +hit. And given that white damage is 40-45% of our damage, +hit should provide quite a bit of boost to our total damage output.

Again - hit is great. Hit is very, very great.

But it's debatable whether it is as great as agility is on a per-point basis. In other words, given 10 agility vs. 10 hit, agility seems to win in overall DPS. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go after hit or expertise. It means that it's just not as good as agility, so don't regem everything.

That being said, I'm finding that I do more consistent damage on a regular basis with more hit and expertise gear, and will be stacking it more as I get better gear.

I think the general sentiment is that hit rating isn't really worthwhile in lower instances but becomes increasingly important as you progress.


-Annikk

Eh. It's not really any more special. Why would it be? You're still going up against skull mobs, you still have the same chance of hitting them or not. That doesn't change at all.

Now, what does change is the damage per hit you do, which means that hit scales as your gear scales. The problem there is that so does agi - as your gear scales, you'll get better and better crits. But the fights themselves are pretty melee-dps friendly. In MH/BT, for instance, there's no fight that is really a 'run in for a few seconds and dps' kind of fight save Illidari and Illidan, and neither of those are particularly DPS races. The rest allows you to stay in for at least a minute, usually more, and DPS to your heart's content. In those kinds of fights is where Agi trumps hit.

Well its also true that the amount of +hit on the gear goes up as you enter higher level dungeons so its easier to attain your hit cap which means that yes, stacking agi is certainly better once you get to that level of gameplay. It seems to me that every missed attack is missed dps and wasted energy so if you have the opportunity to maximize your hit % I suggest take it.

Regarding hit rating vs other stats.
Eh. It's not really any more special. Why would it be? You're still going up against skull mobs, you still have the same chance of hitting them or not. That doesn't change at all.

Because more attack power and to some extent crit chance increases your damage in a relatively linear fashion. There comes a point when your damage has become so high that it is more efficient to increase it by a percentage instead of a flat value - that's where your chance to hit comes in.


Suppose, for the sake of argument, 50 attack power increases your dps from 100,000 to 100,005. Wouldn't it be better to instead get some chance to hit, increasing your dps by say 3% for about 50 hit rating. That way you end up doing 103,000.

Extreme example, but hopefully you get what I mean.



-Annikk

Regarding hit rating vs other stats.


Because more attack power and to some extent crit chance increases your damage in a relatively linear fashion. There comes a point when your damage has become so high that it is more efficient to increase it by a percentage instead of a flat value - that's where your chance to hit comes in.


Suppose, for the sake of argument, 50 attack power increases your dps from 100,000 to 100,005. Wouldn't it be better to instead get some chance to hit, increasing your dps by say 3% for about 50 hit rating. That way you end up doing 103,000.

Extreme example, but hopefully you get what I mean.



-Annikk
But AP is such a poorly scaling stat for ferals, whereas crit scales so much better. That's the whole crux of this: crit scales so much better for ferals than anything else, including +hit. Which is my point in this discussion: don't sacrifice stats to get +hit capped. If you have a piece of gear you are wearing just so can stay +hit capped, and passing on or not wearing gear for the same slot that has superior stats, you're gimping yourself. IE, don't continue to wear Garona's Signet Ring from kara just so you can be +hit capped, when you have access to Angelista's Revenge/Signet of Primal Wrath/Hard Khorium Band/etc.

Because more attack power and to some extent crit chance increases your damage in a relatively linear fashion. There comes a point when your damage has become so high that it is more efficient to increase it by a percentage instead of a flat value - that's where your chance to hit comes in.
I'm not talking about AP. AP sucks for ferals by comparison. Even Str isn't that great. I'm talking about agility, which absolutely scales with gear as it increases crit chance. Agility, haste and hit all scale as gear improves. Of the three, agility is the best to stack due to the crit mechanics of a feral and how the combo system works combined with it being efficient for crits and adding AP.

Now, there are times when hit is going to be better than agility is on a per-point basis - notably when you're very low on crit. There are points when str is better than agi is as well (when your damage is low). Most of the time these things aren't applicable.