Wow.. Rawr updated with cat support.

Now Rawr is the only program you need for Bear/Cat gear optimization. I think it even supports automatically polling your own Armory profile to make it easier to tell it what you're currently wearing.

http://druid.wikispaces.com/Rawr#tocRawr2

New Update!! I know, I'm 4 months late.....

First off... an apology for my absence. I actually didn't play Wow for a long period between November 07 and January 08... I went on a month-long vacation, and had a lot of work I had to do in preparation for my long absence (as well as a lot of work I had to do after I got back). Any free time I had was spent managing my guild... which left this blog untouched.

Anyways, back on topic...I have some things to post about.. mostly druid mechanics type stuff...

In summary I'll explain : 1) How to get a double mangle rip (Instead of Mangle giving a 1.3x multiplier on your Rip, you can get a 1.3*1.3*Rip dmg, or 1.7x multiplier on your rip!!). 2) Update on gear rankings. 3) How to min/max your DPS gear.

1) I won't take credit for this, as it's been gone over in the Feral Druid Megathread on Elitist Jerks (although, this thread is up 62 pages long, so coming here for a concise summary on the cool things is pretty smart):

The trick is to apply rip in the last second of the old mangle, then reapply mangle before the frist rip tick. This is very possible as rip ticks every 2 seconds, and cat form has a 1 second gcd.

The entire rip is then affected by both the old mangle and the new mangle.

N.B. You can reapply mangle later and all subsequent rip/lacerate ticks will be affected, but since the main use of this trick is to boost your dps, the best option is to use it as soon as possible.

So I hope that was clear enough... what this causes is your Rip gets double the mangle effect, b/c of the order in which the game is calculating the mangle effects. When you apply your rip at the last second of your mangle, the game has queued a +30% bonus dmg to your rip... Then your mangle falls off, but the rip is already queued to do 130% dmg. Then when you reapply mangle before the 1st tick, the game is mistakingly recalculating it again, and in essence queueing in another 130% dmg modifier to your rip. So when your rip finally ticks, it'll tick for 169% dmg!

This is why if you look at say, this log of me:
http://wowwebstats.com/weltsd1vlqsgw?s=10997-11246&a=95

You can see a rip tick of 1059!! (Just look at the rip tick.. ignore the fact that I was doing really crappy dps.. I was too busy trying to practice getting double mangle rips down).

2) Gear rankings... Emmerald is a popular gear ranking thing... and I don't think most people know he moved the address of his gear rankings. The new address is:

http://www.emmerald.net

But... the reality of the situation is that gear rankings are actually VARIABLE based on what you're currently wearing... which means that a static gear ranking like Emmerald's isn't completely accurate. Which leads me to point #3...

3) Min/maxing your gear. There are 2 neat little programs out there for this purpose.

Rawr is for tanking.
http://druid.wikispaces.com/Rawr
You input your current gear (it can even look it up automatically on Armory), then calculates your best upgrades.

Toskk's Gear Lister is great for Cat DPS.
http://druid.wikispaces.com/ToskksDPSGearMethod
You input your Cat AP + Crit + Hit

Actually... a better offline resource might be this:
http://www.speedyshare.com/947504333.html
It's an Excel spreadsheet which has all the relevant information there. You just plug in your numbers/gear and it'll automatically search for gear upgrades + give suggestions, and mathematically show you how certain gear upgrades would affect your dps.



Anyways, I hope this post has been informative. As for me and my guild, if you're really curious, you can look us up @ http://www.mediocrityguild.com

We're currently recruiting a good resto shaman if you know one ;)