Feral DPS and Trinkets

WoW Classic Mists of Pandaria Classic Discussion
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I’m purely a feral DPS druid, and gearing is pretty straightforward, until it comes to trinkets. Currently I’m wearing DFT from classic and Bloodlust Brooch. My BiS list shows that Tsunami Talisman and Bloodlust are my BiS for phase 2, but the BiS lists don’t take into account DFT from Classic. Its hard to let go of because the stats are so good (56 AP and 20 hit). I’ve also seen some BiS lists that show DST is my BiS.

I’m right at 9% hit in my raiding gear, with DFT on. I could get the 20 hit elsewhere if I were to swap it out, but I’m just having a hard time figuring out what I would swap it out for, if I should at all. Any tips from experienced ferals out there?

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you only need to be at 6% hit rating because you can assume that, in a raid situation, you will be getting improved faerie fire from a boomkin

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In this situation there is no boomkin (unreliable raid attendance), and its hard to rely on someone else to keep up a debuff. So lets assume that there is no imp FF.

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That is the problem with these so call BiS lists… they don’t take into account different raid comps.

you need to do is plan for no buffs… and then swap gear when you get buffs… it is really the only way. If you don’t care to min max… then just get your hit gear … and deal with it when you are over cap

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i would assume something like the hourglass of the unraveller would give you more value, and if haste is good for your class than dst or abacus of violent odds but good luck getting any of those. the best trinkets you get from quests in outland are bladefists-breadth or core-of-arkelos
so ie dft 56AP vs core of arkelos 52AP + 200AP on use if you make it so the hit isn’t an issue. perhaps if you are somewhat consistently in the same party for guild raids and you consistently have a draenei in your party then that is something to consider too for the free 1% hit. you can keep some different gear in your bag in case you don’t have draenei in party or don’t have a boomkin that week

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You’re slightly on the wrong track, but I can help.

I play in a mid-core guild (haven’t even cleared SSC yet) but my P1-P2 logs for T4 content logs orbit within the top 50 world ranks for feral cat (depending on how hard I’m pushing that week or our kill time RNG).

https://i.imgur.com/fWC6Wve.png

Technically BB/Dragonspine Trophy is your BiS trinkets, but since the upgrade for DST over Hourglass is so small, most lists skip it so that you don’t waste the “loot karma” on getting one and instead let your hunters have it (or a class that benefits a lot more). Otherwise you should be using BB/Hourglass.

In a typical run through, your cat melee attacks are ~30% of your damage in addition to your rotation only being limited by your GCD as we are not limited by energy depletion (due to powershifting), so DST is very good especially if you get good proc RNG.

In P2, Tsunami Talisman/DST is again your BiS until you reach your 4p T5, in which DST gets outclassed by BB again. It (DST) stays strongly recommended for bear form, though, as a threat trinket.

You’re also thinking a bit too much about “the hit cap”.

For a feral cat, hit is weighted like any other stat and doesn’t have as drastic an effect simply by not being at “the hit cap”. It’s weighted less than agility, actually, although it is technically the strongest weighted 2ndary stat up until your cap. However, this means that when you look at items, you are still weighing it against the alternative, and sometimes, an item with hit could potentially be worse than an item without (usually the items that are without stats like str/agi etc). Sometimes, you may be slightly under hit cap, and you’re putting on a hit item to hit the cap, and all that extra hit over the cap is wasted, making that item a worse pick than a non-hit item with simply more offensive stats.

DFT is definitively worse than hourglass, though, in every single way. Regardless of it putting you below hit cap.

Also, do you have a boomkin? You should. If so, they should be using FF, reducing your global CD load slightly and making this a non-issue entirely since your “hit cap” becomes much lower.

Trust me, I’ve got DFT, Kiss of the Spider & Slayers Crest, all hanging in the bank so I have the options and I know how tough it was to “drop them” for the new stuff, but…that’s just DPS for you.

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^how does bloodlust brooch + empty mug of direbrew h_ttps://tbc.wowhead.com/item=38287/empty-mug-of-direbrew compare to bb + hourglass for feral dps?? op may have missed his chance for it though unless he had the foresight to take 1 if he ran a direbrew

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I do have direbrew mug, just didn’t consider wearing it because of the hit i get from DFT.

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you’re in a luck then because it’s like having 2 bloodlust brooch it is very juicy

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Probably better to just use Direbrew Mug+Bloodlust Brooch.

At this point there’s no trinkets that blow everything else out of the water for Feral, just let the other dps cause drama over TT and get it when nobody cares anymore.

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You know, it’s funny, I didn’t expect those trinkets to pop-up at all so since they were rather unexpected I never ran calculations/sims for them.

However since the mug is 1:1 to brooch, as long as you get full up-time on both buffs and use them in succession, one after the other, every single time you use them, it’s likely to be better than brooch/hourglass.

Hourglass has a chance to proc multiple times within the CD of a single usage of BB/Mug, which probably lands it pretty close…probably almost negligible damage differences as long as application of the proc-usage when running bb/mug is optimal (using it to reapply high AP snapshot bleeds and during boss vulnerability or burn moments that last the full duration).

However, for a while I was using BB/Slayers crest, and slayers crest was not better than hourglass. Slayers crest is only slightly worse than BB and was out-dpsed by hourglass, but it’s entirely possible that mugs inherent increase in stats as a BB-clone, puts it ahead, as the differences between all of these trinkets we’re discussing is kind of small to begin with.

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12

Dang it my secret it out!

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So what I gathered from this, is that trinkets don’t matter as much as I think they do, but at the end of the day, DST is still my BIS but its not a far stretch from Tsunami?

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I mean they matter in so far as filling your trinket slots with decent options is important, but amongst those options available pre-TT, there isn’t as big a difference…Tsunami Talisman is definitely BiS though.

I would say that the things to take away is that hit is weighted like any other stat and “cap” isn’t as heavy a burden to hit for ferals like it is for other melee classes (though it is still good). I very frequently run below cap all the time depending on what my gearing setup is (although my gear hasn’t much changed in a bit since I’ve been in phase 1 BiS for a while now).

Ultimately the reason you’re still wearing DFT is because you like the hit pillow, but DFT is still significantly weaker than most lvl 70 options due to the weight, so the value of that hit is slightly clouding judgment, which is completely understandable, but trust me, if you swap out to mug, hourglass, or DST, you’ll notice the [positive] difference, and also like I said, none of this is even an issue at all if you recruit a boomie.

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Thanks for the info, i really appreciate it. While you’re here, I have some questions about other slots. There is a ring and cloak from SSC that is just pure stats. Strength, agil, stam. BiS lists show that the agil+hit+AP cloaks/rings are better, but in terms of pure attack power, the strength/agil/stam ring and cloak seems much higher since they scale with our 3% stats talent and kings. You seem to believe that hit isn’t that important, but I’m assuming that we wouldn’t take pure stats over zero % hit?

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TT is over rated for many classes. It’s pretty much hourglass with 10 hit added to it. Double AP trinket is way better.

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Hit has a value.

When I say that it “isn’t important” I didn’t mean to imply that it’s worthless, necessarily, just that you weight it like anything else and sometimes it makes the item better, sometimes it doesn’t.

Hit is the highest weighted stat below agility, tied with expertise, but critical strike rating isn’t too far behind. If you consider AP to be 1, then Agility is 3.14, Hit is 3.01, Strength is is 2.266, and Critical Strike Rating is 2.

Given this, sometimes, regardless of hit, the item can still be worse than another. Not all the time though. Hit does add a lot of value (when you’re below cap).

In your case though you were speaking about using DFT to be at hit cap, which implies possibly some of it is being wasted for one thing, and DFT as a whole is just worse than mug, slayers, or hourglass.

I would need to sim the cloak you’re referring to, I think it’s the razor one yeah? - but given you are at hit cap, yes, it would definitely be better, but if you are not at hit cap, it depends how far FROM hit cap you are, and if you are pretty far from it…the hit cloak will probably be better (in most cases) especially if it is an agility hit cloak.

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there is also 20 hit food available, just gotta remember to not let it drop

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The Ancestral Ring of Conquest from Lurker, and Razor Scale Battlecloak from Tidewalker. There’s also a neck from Kara Chess even thats got decent stats, but I don’t think its much different than Vile Intent, so I never bothered using it.

True, but there’s also a 20 agility food that probably outweighs the hit food unless i’m really lacking hit .

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The Mithril Battle Chain of Heroism or something, I actually use this neck :sweat_smile:

However, I have a boomkin in the raid so my “hit cap” is pretty low.