Pawn scales for level 80 druid gear ranking

I've been skating through WotLK so far on my T6 gear, ignoring all the quest rewards. But then yesterday I got my first upgrade and decided to revisit the question of gear rankings. Theorycrafting for level 80 feral druids is better now, what can we learn?

Cat gear

First, for cat DPS, I believe Toskk is still the best model out there. I took the default settings in the calculator (5000 attack power, 40% crit) and turned on all the feral DPS talents, Blessings of Kings, etc. The result is 1989 DPS and the following ranking:

1 Str = 2.3 AP
1 Agi = 1.7 AP
1 Hit = 1.0 AP
1 Expertise = 1.0 AP
1 Crit = 0.8 AP
1 Haste = 0.7 AP
1 Armor penetration = 1.0 AP

These level 80 results are quite a bit different from the level 70 3.0 rankings I looked at before. Agility in particular is way down compared to its old position. Maybe because so much of our damage is now based on Rake and Rip DoTs? Here's my Pawn scale for the above rankings. Assumes rare quality gems.

( Pawn: v1: "Cat (Toskk)": ArmorPenetration=1.0161, RedSocket=37.312, FeralAp=1, ColorlessSocket=37.312, Strength=2.332, MetaSocket=103.21, HasteRating=0.7236, Agility=1.6992, ExpertiseRating=1.0362, BlueSocket=18.66, YellowSocket=26.92, CritRating=0.83, HitRating=1.0334, Ap=1 )

Bear gear

I've also cooked up a Pawn scale for bear gear. You have a lot of theorycrafting models to choose from for bears - Karthis has a nice writeup. In the past I've gone with Emmerald's numbers for bear gear, but he's still not officially updated for 3.0 or Wrath yet. So I looked at Toskk's new bear TTL model mostly because it's easy for me to play with it. (Rawr may also be a good choice.) Here's what I get for default stats on Toskk, with Blessing of Kings, an armor metagem, and all tanking talents. The result is a total time to live of 8216 milliseconds and the following ranking:

1 Stamina = 7.2ms
1 Agility = 3.4ms
1 Dodge = 2.7ms
1 Defense = 1.9ms
1 Expertise = 1.3ms
1 Armor = 1.1ms
1 Health = 0.4ms

Do I believe this ranking? I'm not sure. The main thing that leaps out is that stamina is twice as good as agility. Is that true? It really depends on what you're optimizing: mitigation or avoidance. The reality is you want a good mix of the both and it may be that the Toskk TTL model doesn't really capture that since it's assuming you're getting no healing. Then again the new diminishing returns system means Agility gets less useful the more you have, so maybe these rankings are right. We'll have to see. In the meantime, I'll use the following Pawn scale to help me eyeball gear upgrades, at least until the bear armor nerf comes.

( Pawn: v1: "Bear (Toskk)": RedSocket=113.7, ExpertiseRating=1.306, DodgeRating=2.685, ColorlessSocket=172.4, MetaSocket=329, Agility=3.429, Health=0.411, BlueSocket=172.4, YellowSocket=101.3, DefenseRating=1.885, Armor=1.066, Stamina=7.185 )

Comments

[dfv]

Hi Flyv - I know what you mean about the huge Stam rating on the bear formulas - it's almost ridiculous. One of things I keep hearing is that it's the number one priority till you have "enough" - and no one seems to be able to define that amount with any confidence. So, it's supposedly worth 7 points per 1 Stam, but drops fast once that point is reached. That's not something that Pawn can model though. I used your level 80 scales above and then realised that since I rerolled a new druid at the beginning of WotLK (which is now level 63)- these scales are completely wrong for me. Even the level 70 ones are probably a fair way off. I was hoping I wouldn't have to individualise them. Would I be better served using just the 70 scales as I level?

[Flyv]

These scales are going to be way off for anyone under level 80. If I were you I'd ignore it; just pick up a bunch of stamina and agility for tanking, strength and agility for DPSing, and otherwise pick the armor based on what looks best :-) Once you get to level 75 or so I'd start looking at these rankings.

The "enough stamina" thing will just have to develop, I think. I definitely experienced it in Burning Crusade, mostly through the problem of not having enough stamina after heavily agility-optimzing my gear following Emmerald's high gear list. Part of what the ranks above reflect is the diminishing returns on avoidance stats like agility and dodge. Too bad bears can't block, but we have high armor from trinkets and rings to make up for it. Oh, wait.

[Faerun]

Awesome! I'd never heard of Pawn before. How do you get the ratings for gems? Just do * stat?

[Flyv]

There's two ways to get ratings for gem sockets. The hard way is to figure out what the best gem is and do arithmetic. Ie, for tank gear your blue socket gets +24 stamina, so it's worth 24 * 7.2 = 172.4. The easy way is to just ask the Toskk calculator to show you the values for gems and plug them in. Be sure you set up Pawn the right way to respect gem values: you may well decide to put blue gems in yellow sockets and Pawn's smart enough to decide whether the socket bonus is worth it.

Meta gem sockets are trickier, I fudged it by clicking the little metagem box in the Toskk calculator and eyeballing it.

[Jeremy]

Flyv, curious to know what bear Pawn scale you use now in 3.0.8 with the armor changes. I'm really having trouble finding one online. Let me know, thanks!

[Flyv]

Jeremy, the simplest thing would probably be to use the Emmerald scale I recently posted. I could argue with details but it will generally set you right. Another option is Rawr, I believe it has a Pawn output. I cant't really recommend Toskk's Bear TTL calculator now because he hasn't put much work into modifying it in the past couple of months. Hopefully there will be an update soon.

[Jeremy]

Thanks Flyv, love the informative posts!