Ashena's Corner

A little poem that i made

2010-03-17T09:49:00.000+02:00

Buburuza mica, mica,
Aripioara si-o despica
La prima raza calduta de soare
Martie-i toata o Sarbatoare!
Desmorteste Sufletelul
Si ne-aduce Martisorul
Alb si Rosu de o ata,
Ce Ne parfumeaza Viata!

by Pascal Alina-Laura (Ashena)

WOW Druid Restoration PvE The Green Tree is waving at you!

2010-03-11T19:44:00.003+02:00

THE HEALAREATOR GREEN TREE!!

1. Tank healing – HOTs

Nourish is a spell with a 1.5 base cast time. This was designed to be our flash-heal ability (heal for a moderate amount in a short amount of time).

The effect heals for 20% more (before glyphs & set bonuses) if you have one Heal over time effect (HOT) on your target. The druids have 4 HOT spells that will increase the healing effect: Regrowth, Rejuvenation, lifebloom, and Wild Growth. The Tier 7 set bonus and the Nourish glyph increase the amount healed by nourish by 5% and 6% (respectively). With one of these bonuses, and 3 HOTs, nourish is a really incredible healing spell.

About your other healing spells for tank healing:

Regrowth: 2 second cast direct heal, with long HOT component. This is great as a HOT to put on the tank, since the HOT lasts a long time (and can be swiftmended). In 3.3, the cast time is going to be shorter because of having more haste from gear, so it may work better as a raid and tank heal.
Rejuvenation: Instant cast HOT that lasts a moderate amount of time. This should be on the tank all the time, especially since it can be swiftmended.
Lifebloom: Instant cast HOT (with a large heal “bloom” at the end). Lasts short amount of time. Can stack between 1 and three times. See lifebloom healing strategy section.
Swiftmend: instant-cast direct heal. Nice if you need some instant burst healing on tank.
Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch: large instant burst. Don’t cast Healing Touch without using Nature’s Swiftness.

Nourish tank healing strategies

Tank Healing with Nourish strategy: Using nourish with the Nourish glyph:
With the nourish glyph, you gain 6% healing per HOT you have on the target (in addition to the 20% bonus for your 1st HOT). This makes Nourish and your HOTs having really awesome synergy for tank healing. Most healers will keep at least regrowth and rejuvenation on the tank at all times, with one of the lifebloom stacking strategies described below. Then, on the remaining time before refreshing your HOTs, you can cast Nourish on the tank as a direct heal. You can use your instant heals (swiftmend or Nature’s Swiftness + Healing touch) to top off tanks as needed.

Other general tank healing advice (5’s & 10’s):

The strategies for 5-mans and 10-mans may more closely resemble the tank healing w/nourish strategy, where you will also (more regularly) cast wild growth & rejuvs on party/raid members. You will also be able to cast nourish or your other direct heals on those raid/party members (especially with HOTs on them). Tranquility is only recommended as a heal for 5-mans when everyone is taking pretty heavy damage, and has little use outside of 5-mans.What about healing touch?
Healing Touch (HT) works best if you pair it with Nature’s Swiftness (NS), and don’t cast it outside of that combo. The glyph for HT should be dropped when you hit level 80, in favor of the nourish glyph. When you need instant heals on the tank (or raid!), you will swiftmend or use the NS+HT combo

Here is the macro I use for Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch:

/cast Nature’s Swiftness
/stopcasting
/cast [help] Healing Touch; [target=player] Healing Touch

2. Tank healing – Lifebloom

For PvE healing, in most cases you will no longer be able to “roll” triple-stacks of lifebloom on more than one target, because you will spam yourself OOM without doing enough healing to be worthwhile to your raid. So, these lifebloom strategies are intended for one tank target, in addition to using your other heals on that target (see Tank healing part 1).

While rolling lifeblooms on multiple targets used to be the best strategy, the doubling of mana cost makes this less favorable for PvE healing now. There are a couple lifebloom strategies you can use, though lifebloom (in general) is a lot less popular PvE heal now.

Strategy A: Traditional rolling lifebloom triple-stacks:
This is the strategy most healers have been using lifebloom for in Burning Crusade. What you do is get three lifeblooms on the target, and then refresh it before it falls off the target. This is now a rarely used healing strategy, as it costs too much mana – though some still use it on a single tank target. You will still sometimes let it bloom, but you would also generally stack it back up faster after a bloom.
Strategy B: Slow rolling & let it fall off
This is the “slow rolling” strategy. How it works: Slowly stack it: cast 1st LB, cast 2nd right before it falls off, then cast 3rd right before it falls off. Once it has 3 stacks, let it bloom and return mana to you. Then, slowly stack it over time again, let it fall off after third application. Rinse and repeat. NOTE: You can sometimes refresh it before it falls off if you want to have more timing control of the bloom.Strategy C: Less stacking strategy

Some people may put up 1 or 2 before it falls off. This is more likely when you are assigned to raid healing and don’t want to spend a lot of time focusing on the tank. You may also want to only apply one as a way to buff nourish. You may also only cast lifebloom on the tanks when you get an Omen of Clarity proc, so that you can take full advantage of the mana return.

About your HOTs (and other spells) for raid healing:

Wild Growth: Your primary raid healing tool. Will heal 5 to 6 targets (15 yards from eachother) for a moderate amount over 6 to 7 seconds. For info about wild growth’s targeting, please see Dreambound’s post.
Rejuvenation: Instant cast HOT that lasts a moderate amount of time. This is one of your primary raid heals, even though it is a single-target HOT. You can spread it around on lots of people, and it is very mana efficient. It can also be swiftmended and it buffs the healing done by Nourish on raid members.
Lifebloom: Instant cast HOT (with a large heal “bloom” at the end). Lasts short amount of time. Not recommended as a primary raid healing tool, and works much better as a tank heal. However, there are situations where it could be useful, so use sparingly and don’t spam it around.
Swiftmend: Instant-cast heal that requires a rejuv or regrowth on the target. Good for getting some fast burst healing on someone that already has a HOT (regrowth or rejuv) on them. You should use this a lot when raid healing.
Regrowth: A fairly mana expensive direct heal, with long HOT component. You can put this on the tanks while you are raid healing, and you can use it sparingly as a raid heal on the other raid members. It will benefit a lot from the haste changes in patch 3.3. This is going to be a relatively quick direct heal with a great HOT component at high amounts of haste, so it is going to increase in usefulness as a raid heal, especially since you can still swiftmend it. However, please don’t spam yourself OOM by using it too much.
Nourish: A short cast time direct heal, which is stronger when there is at least one HOT on the target. Recommended use is as a direct heal for dealing with burst damage for raid targets that already have a HOT on them (especially if swiftmend is on cooldown). You can cast it occasionally on targets without HOTs only as an emergency heal, since it is a lot weaker without HOTs on the target.
Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch I usually make a macro that pairs healing touch with nature’s swiftness (see above macro). I only use HT with that NS macro (NS+HT). I don’t have it on my cast bar otherwise. Don’t bother glyphing for the faster cast HT as a primary healing strategy, and don’t use the long/slow cast version without Nature’s Swiftness.

Primary raid healing strategy:
Cast Wild growth every time the cooldown is up and raid members are taking damage, especially if your targets are close enough for it to bounce to at least 3 people. Then, cast rejuvs on anyone else taking damage. Mix in other spells using your best judgment. Use a mix of swiftmend, nourish, & NS+HT to help top people off when HOTs aren’t enough. Some people in 25-man raids may have the majority of their healing coming from only rejuv & wild growth, though burst raid damage in some fights requires more direct healing than rejuv-blanketing.

When your targets are too far spread out: Just do the best you can with rejuv, swiftmend, & nourishes. Avoid casting wild growth if it won’t heal enough people (at least 3) at the same time. The melee in the raid are usually grouped up enough to cast wild growth on them, even if the casters are really spread out. Then, use rejuv, swiftmend, & nourishes on the range DPS that is more spread out.

Combining tank & raid healing: A lot of responses to my healer survey responded that they use a combination of tank and raid healing. Almost no one responded that they only heal raid members without also healing tanks some, too. The most common tank/raid healing combination strategy is: putting HOTs on the tank (ie. rejuv, regrowth, sometimes lifebloom) and then raid healing with the primary raid healing strategy described above.

Variations on tank/raid healing combo strategies:

It is possible to go with a lifebloom tank healing strategy and then raid heal between lifebloom refreshes. The more common lifebloom strategies for the combo tank/raid healing are: slow rolling x3 with blooms, or more sporadic stacking where it may fall off even before 3 stacks. Another variable part of the strategy is how much Nourish gets used. Healing 5-mans and 10-mans will usually require more use of nourish than 25-man healing, but even 25-man healers will vary on how much they use Nourish on the tanks or raid members. Most druid healers will use a mix of various spells, rather than 2-button (rejuv + Wild growth) healing.

5. Glyphs for raid & tank healing

5. Glyphs for raid & tank healing.

All “major” healing glyph analysis:

Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation: NEW glyph in patch 3.3. What this does is makes the same number of rejuv ticks happen faster. So, if you originally had a 3 second time between ticks, you have 6 ticks over 18 seconds. You may be able to drop that to every 2 seconds, for 6 ticks over 12 seconds. This is more useful when you need faster HOT ticks, but don’t need to cast rejuv on as many people (since it lasts a shorter amount of time). This theoretically makes the new glyph better for 5-man or 10-man healing than 25-man raids.

Glyph of nourish: Nourish heals for 6% for each additional HOT on the target. If you are doing any tank healing at all, you will want to use this glyph.
Glyph of Lifebloom – Increases duration of lifebloom slightly. It’s an okay glyph if you are planning to roll lifeblooms on your target, to reduce the amount of mana it costs you, but this has become less popular. Not recommended in 3.3, given that there are better options.
Glyph of Regrowth – Increases healing done by regrowth if your target already has the regrowth HOT on them. This is also less popular now, though some people have found uses for it.
Glyph of Healing Touch – Most useful for people level 79 or below. Has very limited use at level 80.
Glyph of rejuvenation – Requires target to be below 50%, so it has limited usefulness, too. The Rapid Rejuvenation glyph is going to be better than this one (to prevent the target from dropping that low in the first place).
Glyph of swiftmend –Swiftmend doesn’t consume your HOT when you cast it. Nice to have if you use a lot of swiftmends (or if you raid with multiple resto druids and don’t want to hurt their healing done by eating their HOTs).
Glyph of Wild Growth – Increases the # of people healed by wild growth by 1 additional target. Great for healing a group of melee, assuming you have 6 people that this would heal at one time. More useful for 25-mans than 10-mans (and incredibly useless in 5-mans).
Glyph of Innervate – Increases the effectiveness of your innervate spell. Use this glyph if you are having mana problems. (At level 80, the glyph adds and extra 3146 mana to you, and no longer scales with spirit or any other stat).

Minor glyphs to use:

Unburdened rebirth

Glyph of the Wild

3^rd – whatever you want.

Recommended glyphs to choose from for PvE healing at level 80:

In general, choose whatever 3 glyphs from this list of 4, depending on how it best fits your healing style:

Nourish
Swiftmend
Wild growth
Rapid Rejuvenation

For 5-man healing, you will want: Nourish, swiftmend, Rapid Rejuvenation

For 10-man healing, you may also benefit from using the nourish, swiftmend, rapid rejuv combo.

For 25-man healing, you may want to swap out the rapid rejuvenation glyph for Wild Growth.

6. Set bonuses and Idols

6. Set bonuses along with Relic/idols for Restoration druids. I’m keeping the older set info for new druids, though I expect most to be using Tier 9 & Tier 10 in the 3.3 patch.

Tier 7 restoration sets:
Hero’s Dreamwalker Regalia (10-man Naxx).Valorous Dreamwalker Regalia (25-man Naxx):

A) The 2-piece set bonus for Tier 7 reduces the cost of lifebloom by 5%. The 2-piece tier 7 bonus is nice for saving you mana, however the 4-piece tier 8 is definitely worth trading up for.

B) The 4-piece set bonus for Tier 7 makes your nourish spell heal for 5% more for each HOT that is on the target. This is great for tank healing, however the Tier 8 4-piece bonus really outshines this, too. It’s about equal to the swiftmend bonus, or maybe a little worse depending on how much small-group stuff you do.

Tier 8 Restoration Sets:
Valorous Nightsong Regalia (10-man Ulduar)Conqueror’s Nightsong Regalia (25-man Ulduar)

C) The 2-piece set bonus for Tier 8: 10% more healing for Swiftmend. Not a great bonus on it’s own, but if people are low on health, it’s nice to be able to top them off for a big heal.
D) The 4-piece set bonus for Tier 8: Your rejuvination instantly ticks for a normal tick amount instantly. This bonus is really awesome for raid healing, and is the most powerful set bonus.

Tier 9 restoration sets:

Totally Triumphant Malfurion’s or Runetotem’s Garb (Heroic/hard-mode 25-man token)

Triumphant Malfurion’s or Runtetotem’s Garb (Regular 25-man token & badges of triumph)

Conqueror’s Malfurion’s or Runetotem’s Garb (costs 30 to 50 badges of triumph each)

The 2-piece bonus for Tier 9: Increases your crit chance with nourish by 5%. Not great for raid healing, but pretty good for tank healing. However, it costs you the rejuv instant heal bonus, so we may be slow to upgrade to this (you may be keeping different raid & tank heal sets in your item-rack for a while). I wouldn’t trade the 25-man Tier 8 for the Conqueror’s garb, however, since the item-levels are too close to warrant loosing our best set bonus.
The 4-piece bonus for tier 9: Allows rejuvenation HOTs to crit. Probably worth trading your 4-piece Tier 8 for, especially since the stats will end up pretty much forcing you to need to upgrade your gear at some point. Definitely better than the 2-piece tier 8. It should also be interesting to see how this interacts (or doesn’t interact) with our talents.

Tier 10 restoration sets:

Info on the new Tier 10 armor can be found here.

A lot of resto druids will probably only wear two T10 set pieces, since three of the other set pieces have crit on them, and it may be hard to BOTH be haste-capped and keep a 4-piece bonus.

The 2-piece bonus for T10: The healing granted by Wild Growth spell reduces by 30% less over time. This means that your wild growth’s later ticks are going to heal for more than they do without this bonus. It doesn’t have any effect on the healing done by the first tick.

The 4-piece bonus for T10: Each time your Rejuvenation spell heals a target, it has a 2% chance to jump to a new target at full duration. We haven’t tested this mechanic yet in-game (as far as I know), but the assumption here would be that rejuvenation would randomly apply a new rejuvenation on other people. My bet is that a lot of people won’t pick up the 4-piece bonus just because it will be hard for them to get enough haste from gear.

______________________________

Idol/Relics for PvE healing
There actually aren’t that many choices. Your best options are likely going to be:

Idol of Awakening - Reduces the mana cost of rejuvenation. This is useful if you are having severe mana problems. Should replace with Flaring Growth (equally accessible in 3.3) if you don’t have really severe mana problems.
Idol of Flaring growth – Your rejuv ticks give you a chance to gain 234 spell power for 9 seconds. This is an awesome bonus, as it should proc all the time, even if you only do tank healing. I’m working on upgrading to this idol once I have enough Triumph badges for it. You can gain triumph badges from the coliseum 10/25-man, or from doing heroic 5-man dungeons, so even non-raiders should have access to this in 3.2.
Idol of the Black Willow – Rejuv ticks increase spell power, similar to flaring growth. Once it is stacked up to 8 times, it gives you more spellpower than the flaring growth idol. Costs 30 frost badges. Not a big priority to upgrade from Flaring Growth to this one, since you also have to spend frost badges on Tier 10 gear. Get your set pieces first and then pick up this idol.

7. Consumables and enchants

7. Consumables and enchants:

For flasks, your options are:

Flask of pure mojo (gives you mana/5)
Flask of the frost wyrm (gives you spell power)

I use the Flask of the frost wyrm, since I haven’t really needed the extra mana/5 for a long time.

Potions:

Runic mana potion – You can only use one per fight, but more mana is always better.
Super Mana potion – For easy content where you need a little boost, but don’t want to spend all the gold. Don’t use these when learning newer content, or in fights where you’ll really need the extra mana that runic potions give you.

Gems:

With the new haste changes in patch 3.3, you will probably want to gem for haste in some slots, especially yellow slots. HOWEVER don’t just put yellow haste gems in every socket. You should at least go for orange (Sp/Haste) gems & such. I’m only listing the epic gem versions. You can also find the “blue” versions for less gold if it better fits your playstyle & budget.

For red sockets: Spell Power (SP) Runed cardinal ruby.
For jewelcrafters, you get to put in 3 Runed Dragon’s Eye into red sockets.
For yellow sockets: If you are below haste cap, you should put in a haste gems: Quick King’s Amber. Or, the haste/SP one: Reckless Ametrine. If you don’t need haste, use SP & Int: luminous Ametrine.
For blue sockets: SP & Spirit Purified Dreadstone,
Meta-gem (for head pieces): Insightful Earthsiege Diamond for 21 int and a 5% chance to restore 600 mana on spellcast. Ember Skyflare Diamond for 25 spellpower and 2% int.

Enchants: (not changed from 3.3 – let me know if I should adjust something)

Legs: Brilliant Spellthread is the best, but youc an subsitute this with any other spellthread with spellpower for gear that you won’t keep as long.
Shoulders: Greater inscription of the crag or lesser inscription of the crag (if you aren’t exalted with Hodir). NOTE: you should be able to mail these from characters with high rep to characters without rep as Heirloom items.
Head: Arcanum of Blissful mending or Arcanum of burning mysteries if you want crit more than the mana/5 (but Blissful mending is better for healing if you have that rep high enough). The head enchants should also be heirloom items that you can mail across your characters.
Cloak: Subtlety for reduced threat, Wisdom for spirit, or greater speed for haste.
Gloves: Exceptional Spellpower
Chest: Powerful stats gives you +10 to all stats, or greater mana restoration for +8 mana/5.
Bracers/wrists: Superior Spellpower (30 spellpower) or Greater spellpower (only 23 spellpower)
Boots: Greater Vitality for 6 mana/5. or greater spirit for 18 spirit.
Weapon: For 1-hand weapons: Enchant weapon: Mighty Spellpower for 63 spellpower or Enchant Weapon: Exceptional spellpower for 50 spellpower. For staves: Enchant Staff: Greater Spellpowerfor 81 spellpower, or Enchant staff: Spellpower for 69 spell power

WOW Druid Feral DPS

2010-03-11T19:17:00.003+02:00

Feral DPS

Post updated for patch 3.3

Agi - Agility
AP - Attack Power
ArPen - Armorpenetrationrating
BiS - Best in Slot
CP - Combo Point
iLotP - Improved Leader of the Pack
FB - Ferocious Bite
SR - Savage Roar
Str - Strength
TF - Tiger's Fury

1. Speccing your Cat

Maximum Single-Target DPS: > click <

This spec takes every talent, that increases single target DPS. You've got one point left, possibilities could be: 4/5 Furor, 1/2 iLotP or 1/3 Feral Instinct

Maximum AoE-DPS: > click <

This spec only has 5 different points. You've got 3/3 Feral Instinct here and 2/2 iLotP. You could aswell take the two points out of iLotP and together with the last left point skill 3/5 Feral Aggression.

Actually Feral Swiftness and Survival Instincts don't directly increase your damage. But they offer very significant survival tools. Additionaly, both allow you to DPS for a second longer here and there.

2. DPS Rotation

As there is no real rotation, we speak of a "priority list" for cat DPS. Try to follow the following instructions in the given order.

1. Keep up Savage Roar
2. Keep up Mangle
3. Keep up Rake
4. Use shred for CP regeneration (remember, that points 2 and 3 are more important)
5. When at 5 CP and Rip is not up, use Rip
6. When below 30 Energy, use TF
7. Use Clearcast Proccs for Shred
8. When at 5 CP and Rip and SR are running with 8 seconds (might be longer, depending on your gear) or longer each, use FB
9. When Rip and SR will drop at nearly the same time (with less than 3 seconds difference), try to recognize it early. Then use SR with a small amount of CP to desynchronize both timers.
10. Use Berserk only at high energy, (but not higher than 85) not directly after TF and as often as possible. If you will get Hysteria or some boss mechanics will enhance your damage, save it for these situations.

This priority list is quite hard to maintain. Cat DPS is one of the most complicated ones in PvE WoW. Try to remember these rules:

1. Remember: Savage Roar buffs everything; Mangle buffs bleeds and shred; Bleeds buff shred. That means, never shred without applying mangle and at least one bleeding.
2. It doesn't matter how many CP you use for SR. Just make sure it never drops!
3. Use Rip and FB only with 5 CP
4. It is very tricky to squeeze in FB's in your rotation. At first you should try to maximize SR, Mangle, Rip and Rake uptime (in this order). When you get more experienced, try to FB more. You need to guess how much time is needed for building up 5 CP's - this depends on your crit chance. Usually, a FB is worth dropping Rip for 4 Ticks approx (8 seconds). Remember that after using Rip, you need energy for building at least one more CP to refresh SR if necessary.
5. FB is most efficient when used at 35 energy. It gets worse when you spend more, thus making it least efficient when using with 65 energy.
6. A 5 CP FB is always more efficient than a shred, even when used at 65 energy.
7. When using the shred glyph: When rake and rip are about to expire and you could shred to extend the rip duration for 2 more seconds at the cost of letting rake drop for 1-2 seconds - do it.

3. Facts, Stats and Numbers

Assuming all important feral talents and cat form . Numbers in brackets include Blessing of Kings.

Strength
1 Str = 2.37864 AP (2.616504 AP)

Agility
1 Agi = 1.18932 AP (1.308252 AP)
1 Agi = 0.0129744% Crit (0.01427184%)

77.05 (70.07) Agi = 1% Crit

Stamina
1 Sta = 10.812 (11.8932) Health

Critical Strike Rating
1 CritRating = 0.022% Crit
45.91 CritRating = 1% Crit

Crit Caps
4.8% of our white Crits will always be converted into white hits against bosses. We can't reduce our chance to normally hit with white attacks below 4.8%.
Our Critchance with Yellow Attacks is reduced by 4.8% against bosses. But we actually CAN convert all our hits into crits.

76% - White crit cap (+ 24% Glancing Blows = 100%)
79.8% - Ferocious Bite Crit Cap (+ 25% Crit from Talent - 4.8% Crit Suppression = 100%)
104.8% - Yellow Crit Cap (- 4.8% Crit Suppression = 100%)

You have to subtract any avoided attacks from these caps. For example: If 4% of your attacks are avoided due to not reaching the Hit- and/or Expertisecap, then your white crit cap would be 72%.

Haste Rating
1 HasteRating = 0.030% Haste
32.79 HasteRating = 1% Haste

Hit Rating
1 HitRating = 0.030% Hit
32.79 HitRating = 1% Hit

Hit Cap vs lvl 80 targets: 5% Hit = 163.95 HitRating
Hit Cap vs lvl 83 targets: 8% Hit = 262.32 HitRating

Expertise Rating
1 ExpertiseRating = 0.030% less Chance of getting parried or dodged
32.79 ExpertiseRating = 1% less Chance of getting parried or dodged
8.2 ExpertiseRating = 1 Expertise
1 Expertise = 0.25% less Chance of getting parried or dodged

Expertise Cap vs lvl 80 targets: 5% (Dodge) / 5% (Parry) = 20 Expertise = 163.9 Expertise Rating
Expertise Cap vs lvl 83 targets: 6.5% (Dodge) / 14% (Parry) = 26 / 56 Expertise = 213.13 / 459.1 Expertise Rating

Since you should always attack from behind, your target can't parry. Therefore you only need 26 expertise or 213.13 Expertise Rating.

But every serious Cat skills Primal Precision, which gives 10 Expertise or 81.97 Expertise Rating. So if you skill this talent, your cap will be:

Expertise Dodge-Cap vs lvl 83 targets and with Primal Precision: 16 Expertise = 131.16 Expertise Rating

Armorpenetration Rating
1 ArPenRating = 0.07145% ArmorPenetration
13.9957272 ArPenRating = 1% Armor Penetration
Hard Cap 1399.57272 ArP = 100% of the target's armor are ignored

So, what stats are important? Generally I strongly advice you to use RAWR or Toskk's DPSGearMethod. The value of every stat depends on the rest of your gear.

The Value of Hit / Expertise

A question very often asked is, whether we need to be hit or expertise capped. The answer is: It depends on your DPS. Hit and expertise scale directly with your DPS. The better your gear gets, the higher the value of Hit/Expertise gets. When in blue gear, both contribute very little to your DPS. With Ulduar BiS, they are quite important, but still not the best stats. The same holds true for T9, although both are more important when you have really good T9 lvl Gear. When you have a lot of iLvl 264 Gear or higher from ICC, they turn out to be extremely good. Try to reach the caps then. Only ArP will be better (and only if you're near the hard cap). Also, there is no such 'magic threshold'. Both stats always have the same value (as long as below the hard cap), no matter if you have 0% hit, 3% hit or 5% hit. That means the two stats scale linear.
BUT - for a beginner it could be quite confusing missing a lot. Our DPS priority is already hard enough even without our attacks being dodged. It could mess up the DPS of a beginner, if his hit and/or expertise is too low. If you consider yourself weak at maintain a stable cycle, then more hit/expertise could help to stabilize it.

Topic: Armor penetration rating

Armor is a stat with diminishing returns. Meaning: the more Armor you have, the worse it gets in terms of damage reduction percentage. The first 1000 armor are far more valuable, than the last 1000 armor. That is the reason, that ArPen scales better than linear. When you have only a little bit ArPen, you reduce your target's armor only a little bit - but we know that the last 1000 armor are not that important. But if you manage to gather more ArPen, you will reduce your target's armor more and more, which gets more and more valuable.
Short story: ArPen scales better than linear - the more you have, the better each point of it becomes.

At about 400 - 500 ArPen, ArPen becomes the best stat
The exact amount depends on your gear (especially the trinkets). Use RAWR or Toskk to find out, when exactly ArP overtakes Agility. Also remember, that the value of both is very similar at that low lvl of ArP. The difference is extremely small and only gets bigger, when you gather more ArP.
As soon as you can reach these numbers, regemming all Agility gems for ArP gems would improve your DPS.
Our goal is to come as close to the ArP Hard Cap as possible.

And now it's time for mentioning the three ArP trinkets currently ingame:

[Grim Toll]
[Mjolnir Runestone]
[Needle-Encrusted Scorpion]

Wearing two of these trinkets is quite useless since they have a significant shared uptime and then there would be ArP wasted (assuming you've got some ArP on your gear). The goal is, to reach the ArP soft-cap. Soft Cap means: you have exactly 100% Armor Ignore when your trinket proccs.

ArP Soft-Cap: 722 ArPen, if wearing [Needle-Encrusted Scorpion]
ArP Soft-Cap: 735 ArPen, if wearing [Mjolnir Runestone]
ArP Soft-Cap: 788 ArPen, if wearing [Grim Toll]

For clarification, I will try to explain this. Let's say you don't have one of the two trinkets and x is the ArP on your gear (and with Hearty Rhino, the +40 ArP food buff):

x < 400 -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it
400 < x < 1400 -> ArPen is the best stat, gem for it
1400 < x -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it

Now finally Grim Toll drops off Gothik the Harvester and you are lucky enough to get it!

x < 400 -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it
400 < x < 788 -> ArPen is the best stat, gem for it
788 < x -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it

Just replace your soft-cap with 735, when wearing Mjolnir Runestone instead of Grim Toll and with 722, if wearing the Scorpion.

If you are wearing a lot of ICC items and manage to get about 1000 Passive ArP, it's better not to wear one of the 3 ArP Trinkets and instead going for the Passive HardCap!

4. Gear

Again, please use RAWR or Toskk. Although neither of both are 100% accurate, it's probably the best way to determine gear upgrades for you.

Some questions often asked:

Which idol should I wear?
The best Cat Idol for single-Target DPS is [Idol of the Crying Moon]. But it takes 15 seconds after applying rake to reach its full effect. This is bad for encounters with DPS interruptions, like Anub'Arak or Lady Deathwisper. Additionally you normally don't use rake on AoE situations.
The next best Cat Idol is [Idol of Mutilation]. This is only 20 Agi worse and there are many situations where it's the better idol (like AoE or Trash).
After that, it depends.
If you have to mangle yourself, [Idol of the Corruptor] is BiS for you. If not, then it depends on your ArP. If you are below approx 250 ArP, [Idol of Worship] would be your choice, above that the [Idol of the Ravenous Beast] becomes better. But actually the Rip and Shred idol both grant very similar DPS - the difference is really low.

Which trinkets should I wear?
The [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] is in most gear setups one of the best trinkets. This will not be a useless investment, as it is an extremely good tanking trinket aswell. Although it's quite old and has only iLvl200 it's still really good and easily obtainable.
Some upgrades to the Card are [Herkuml War Token], [Death's Choice] (or [Death's Choice]), [Whispering Fanged Skull] (or [Whispering Fanged Skull])
The 2nd best Cat Trinket is [Deathbringer's Will] and of course the best one is [Deathbringer's Will]

In the second slot you should wear one of the three ArP trinkets mentioned above ([Grim Toll], [Mjolnir Runestone] or[Needle-Encrusted Scorpion]).
If you can reach high ArP numbers (About 1000 or above), try to swap your ArP trinket for one of the above mentioned (even the darkmoon card).

How good are our set bonuses?
The 2T7 bonus is very good. Although there are better items in every slot, the bonus outweighs this by far.
The 4T7 bonus is very bad.
The 2T8 bonus is extremely good. You really need to have this.
The 4T8 bonus is about as good as 2T7.
The 2T9 bonus is very good.
The 4T9 bonus is mediocre.
The 2T10 bonus is good.
The 4T10 bonus is extremely good.

Try to collect 2 T7 items first. Head and shoulder would be the best choice.
If you're entering Ulduar, your first aim should be to get 2T7 + 2T8, which is VERY good.
If you can choose between 2T7 + 2T8 and 4T8, choose 4T8. You should notice a very small DPS increased, based on the higher iLvl of T8 (the 4T8 bonus is actually of the same value as 2T7).
Similar holds true if you enter Coliseum. 2T8 + 2T9 will be an upgrade to 4T8. And although the 4T9 bonus is worse than the 4T8 one, the higher item level of two more T9 items outweighs this.
But because the 4T9 itself isn't that good, it's probably better to wear 2T9 and some offsetpieces instead of 4T9.
The T10 bonuses are both really good, especially the 4pc. Combined with the high iLvl it means you really should wear 4T10.

BiS set without ICC Hardmodes

Slot	Item
Head	[Sanctified Lasherweave Headguard]
Neck	[Sindragosa's Cruel Claw]
Shoulders	[Sanctified Lasherweave Shoulderpads]
Back	[Sylvanas' Cunning] or [Vereesa's Dexterity]
Chest	[Sanctified Lasherweave Raiment]
Wrist	[Toskk's Maximized Wristguards]
Hands	[Aldriana's Gloves of Secrecy]
Waist	[Vengeful Noose]
Legs	[Sanctified Lasherweave Legguards]
Feet	[Icewalker Treads]
Ring 1	[Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance]
Ring 2	[Frostbrood Sapphire Ring]
Trinket 1	[Death's Choice]
Trinket 2	[Deathbringer's Will]
Weapon	[Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger-General]
Relic	[Idol of the Crying Moon]

ArP Food Hearty Rhino. Gems used: 13x [Fractured Cardinal Ruby], 4x [Accurate Ametrine], 2x [Glinting Ametrine], 1x [Nightmare Tear].

227 / 263 Hit Rating
132 / 132 Expertise Rating
1284 / 1400 ArP
180 Haste Rating

Feel free to use more [Fractured Cardinal Ruby] instead of the orange gems to come closer to the ArP Hardcap. On such a high ArP level, ArP is worth more than any other stat. The downside is, that your rotation will get more complicated because you will miss more often.
Theoretically, it should be a DPS increase to use 5 more ArP gems to reach 1384 / 1400 ArP.

BiS Set with ICC Hardmode Loot

Slot	Item
Head	[Sanctified Lasherweave Headguard]
Neck	[Sindragosa's Cruel Claw]
Shoulders	[Sanctified Lasherweave Shoulderpads]
Back	[Sylvanas' Cunning] or [Vereesa's Dexterity]
Chest	[Sanctified Lasherweave Raiment]
Wrist	[Toskk's Maximized Wristguards]
Hands	[Aldriana's Gloves of Secrecy]
Waist	[Astrylian's Sutured Cinch]
Legs	[Sanctified Lasherweave Legguards]
Feet	[Frostbitten Fur Boots]
Ring 1	[Frostbrood Sapphire Ring]
Ring 2	[Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance]
Trinket 1	[Deathbringer's Will]
Trinket 2	[Herkuml War Token]
Weapon	[Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger-General]
Relic	[Idol of the Crying Moon]

40 ArP Food Hearty Rhino. Gems used: 13x [Fractured Cardinal Ruby], 5x [Glinting Ametrine], 2x [Accurate Ametrine], 1x [Nightmare Tear] .
Enchants as usual. Weapon Enchant Berserking. Icewalker on Boots. Precision on Gloves.

161 / 263 Hitrating
126 / 132 Expertise Rating
1382 / 1400 ArP
287 Hasterating

REMEMBER!

BiS lists are not perfect. There may be items, which are bigger upgrades for you than items listed in this BiS list, because the rest of your gear looks different. Also some may consider Hit/Expertise more important and will gem for them in the yellow slots.
Don't stick to this list without adjusting them for your own situation...
Both BiS lists were created with Rawr v 2.3.8.

5. Professions, Glyphs, Enchants, Gems, Buffs

Professions

Alchemy: +80 Attack power through mixology, when using Flask of endless rage
Blacksmithing: 2 more sockets. Assuming epic ArPen gems, the bonus is 40 ArP.
Enchanting: 2x +40 AP ring enchant. Bonus: +80 Attack Power
Engineering: On use 340 Haste Rating for 12 seconds, 1 min CD. Averages out to 68 Haste Rating. Otherwise you would enchant +20 Agi. On the Cloak you get 1 additional Agi. Total Bonus: +68 Haste Rating, -19 Agi
Herbalism: 3600 self-heal for 5 seconds, 3 min CD
Inscription: +80 Attack power because of the enhanced shoulder enchant
Jewelcrafting: 3x +34 ArPen gems instead of +20 ArPen. 3*14 = 42 ArP.
Leatherworking: + 80 Attack power because of the enhanced wrist enchant
Mining: + 60 Stamina
Skinning: +40 Crit Rating
Tailoring: Swordguard Embroidery grants 400 AP for 15 seconds, roughly once a minute. This averages out to approx 100 AP. You miss out the +22 Agi for this. Total Bonus: +100 AP, -22 Agi.

Glyphs

Major Glyphs:
1. [Glyph of Savage Roar]
2. [Glyph of Rip]
3. [Glyph of Shred]

Alternatives
4. [Glyph of Mangle]
5. [Glyph of Berserk]

Minor Glyphs:
1. [Glyph of Dash]
2. [Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth]
3. [Glyph of Challenging Roar]

Enchants

Head - [Arcanum of Torment]
Shoulder - Master's Inscription of the Axe > [Greater Inscription of the Axe]
Back - Swordguard Embroidery > +23 Agi (Engineering) > +22 Agi
Chest - +10 Stats
Wrist - Fur Lining - Attack Power > Greater Assault
Hands - Hyperspeed Accelerators > +20 Agi
Legs - [Icescale Leg Armor] or Nerubian Leg Reinforcements
Feet - Icewalker (when below Hit Cap) > 16 Agi
Finger - +40 AP
Weapon - Berserking > Mongoose > Massacre > Executioner

Gems

There is only one Meta, you always want to have this one activated: [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond]
The [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] is coming close, but it require 2 Blue gems and this requirement is worse than one yellow + one blue.

Red socket: [Fractured Cardinal Ruby]. If you have less than 400 ArP or just a little more than your soft-cap of ArPen, use [Delicate Cardinal Ruby].
Blue socket: Put [Nightmare Tear] in the blue socket with the best available bonus. Put [Fractured Cardinal Ruby] in every other blue socket (or [Delicate Cardinal Ruby] if Agi is better than ArP for you).
Yellow socket: If the socket bonus is weak (less than 4 Agi), put [Fractured Cardinal Ruby] or [Delicate Cardinal Ruby] inside. If the bonus is good, choose one from [Accurate Ametrine], [Glinting Ametrine] or [Deft Ametrine]. Even though the socket bonus is good, [Fractured Cardinal Ruby] is better when at very high ArP level (above 1000)

The Red gems are far superior than the blue ones and better than the yellow ones aswell. Therefore the best you can do is:
Fill every socket with red gems except of one. There you put [Nightmare Tear]. Of course you choose an item with a good Socket bonus, you would otherwise miss if you use the normal red gem instead.
Only if some yellow sockets got good bonuses (4 Agi or more), you can choose to gem one of the mentioned orange gems.

Buffs

You should use a [Flask of Endless Rage] and [Hearty Rhino]. If you are below than 400 ArPen or above your soft-cap for ArPen, then [Blackened Dragonfin] would be your choice.

It's again hard to tell you, how important each buff is as this depends on your gear. But the order should be roughly the same.

+20% Physical Haste -> Enhancement Shaman (imp. Windfury Totem) or Frost-DK (imp. Icy Talons)
+10% AP -> Blood-DK (Abomination's Might), MM-Hunter (Trueshot Aura) or Enhancement Shaman (Unleashed Rage)
+Agi / Str -> DK (Horn of winter provides 155 each) or Enhancement Shaman (imp. Strength of Earth Totem provides 178 each!)
-20% target armor -> Debuff applied by Prot-Warrior (Sunder armor) or every rogue (Expose Armor, Finishing move)
+AP -> Warriors (+548 AP when not skilled, +685 when skilled in Commanding Presence) or Paladins (+550 AP when not skilled, +687 when skilled in imp. Blessing of Might)
+4% physical damage -> Debuff applied by Combat Rogues (Savage Combat) or Arms Warrior (Blood Frenzy)
+10% Stats -> Paladins (Blessing of Kings)
+3% Dmg -> BM Hunter (Ferocious Inspiration, their pet buffs this) or Retribution Paladin (Sanctified Retribution)
Traumabot -> Another Feraldruid or Arms warrior applying Mangle/Trauma for you so you can skip it from your DPS Cycle
+3% Crit -> Debuff applied Elemental Shaman (Totem of Wrath affects all targets within 40 yards of the totem), Retribution Paladin (Heart of the Crusader, the Paladin has to judge a single target) or Assassination Rogues (Master Poisoner affects all target that the rogue has poisoned; he can spread this with Fan of Knives)
+ Stats -> Every Druid (Yes, this includes yourself!) through imp. Mark of the Wild
-5% target armor -> Feral and Moonkin Druids (Fearie Fire and Feral Fearie Fire, you can apply this yourself without losing DPS), Hunter (if they have a wrasp as pet) and warlocks (Curse of Weakness would mean a DPS loss for them)
+3% Haste -> Balance Druid (imp. Moonkin Form) or Retribution (Swift Retribution)

Topic: Hysteria

Cats are the best target for Hysteria:

Arms Warrior - Does not stack with Wrecking Crew. Besides, they don't have strong Cooldowns to blow while Hysteria is up.
Death Knights - A significant portion of their damage is elemental and not physical. Dancing Rune Weapon scales only half with Hysteria, summon Gargoyle doesn't at all
Enhancer Shamans - A good portion of their damage is elemental. Feral spirit, their Cooldown, is not affected by Hysteria
Fury Warrior - Although all of their damage is physical, they cannot blow their big Cooldown Death Wish with Hysteria, because it doesn't stack.
Hunter - A good portion of their damage is elemental and their pet wouldn't benefit from Hysteria.
Retribution Paladins - A very big portion of their damage is elemental.
Rogues - A good portion of their damage is elemental.

Cats benefit by far the most from Hysteria. As long as you are quite close to the top DPS in your raid, try to convince your Blood-DK or your raidleader, that you should get Hysteria!

Movie Guide

This movie guide, created by Coldbear, is a good summary of most aspects for cats. It's quite fast and a little hard to follow, but otherwise has a high quality.
Movie Guide

Changelog

Patch 3.3:
- Third ArP Trinket added, some additions to ArP usage.
- T10 bonuses added
- New Idol added
- Crit Caps added
- Trinket section updated

Patch 3.2.2:
- Value of ArP has been nerfed by about 12%. Adjusted Soft Cap, Hard Cap and Instructions accordingly

From Patch 3.1.3 to 3.2:

- Profession bonuses increased
- Note about ArP added: Possibility of ignoring ArP Trinkets and go for passive ArP
- T9 bonuses added
- New idol as BiS idol added

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