A Great Kitty Gear Tool
I wanted to let everyone know about a great working gear tool for Feral Druid DPS.
Take a gander at Ask Mr. Robot.
This tool is similar to RAWR but available online in a web interface. You will need to install Microsoft Silverlight for it to work.
Let me start by saying why I am pimping this tool on my site.
You can run a simulated battle by pushing the simulate button and it will give you your theoretical DPS based on the latest and greatest Feral Kitty Theorycraft models.
In my particular case after importing in my gear the Simulation reported back my theoretical DPS of 10,419.6 +/- 56.8.
Now take a look at my Normal Mode Saurfang fight, which is a completely stationary fight and a good way to test your DPS max.
6 DPS off from the projection… WOW!
Now there is a trick to getting this to work correctly.
Instructions for using Ask Mr. Robot
- Import Your Character from the armory in your raiding gear. You need to log out of WOW with the right gear on.
- Settings button – enter your Latency and the length of the fight. Leave the rest at default.
- Buffs buttons at the top – Select CUSTM and then use the fill boxes below to pick your food, flask, and the buffs you will get during the fight. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. If you don’t know all the buffs you will be getting use the MMO-Champion Raid Comp Calculator found HERE.
- Leave the ROTATION set to Auto. It does the perfect kitty rotation which hopefully by now you know and understand. If you do not use the latest Feral By Night Addon from Curse or a custom Ovale script. (Ovale is like FBn but allows easy to understand user tweaks to the underlying IF(Then) code and works for all classes). IMHO, use FBn if you are new to kitty dps until you learn more about the fights and your particular style of play. You could theoretically create a custom Ovale script for EACH fight, I have a life so I don’t do that.
- TALENTS – If your talents are not 00/55/16 or really close to it you are doing something wrong or you logged out in the wrong spec.
- MAJOR GLYPHS – Shred, Rip, SRoar. If it’s anything else you aren’t doing it right. (Unless you glyph switch between fights, this is a pro strategy that I am not going to cover at this time… mainly because I can’t afford it)
For now this really looks like the best tool for gearing up your feral kitty. A new RAWR (Version 3) is on the horizon as well, when it is officially released I will announce it on the site and let people know.
Lich King not a big fan of the Kitteh
Before…
After…
On a positive note we did clear the Frostwing Halls, move into #1 in 10 man progression on the server, strengthen our hold on #1 in 10 man achievements rank on the server, and get phase 1 of Arthas down. We had a real fun night of figuring out the best way to handle Sindragosa and now that she is down we can focus our efforts in downing the Lich King.
Today I am going to try and get my gear page updated, at least my kitty gear… I currently am dabbling with a dual spec of Kitty / Balance so an update of my bear gear will have to wait.
Boom Chicken is fun but is not as rewarding from a damage standpoint if you master your rotations… that bonus is still the kitty upside.
Visit back soon as I am going to try and get a post up summarizing kitty DPS in ICC up to Arthas.
Awesome Vid and song.
Apparently Alpacaa is also a writer and singer… who knew. This video of our Yogg +0 fight from last night deserved it’s own thread.
So RAWR didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.
I followed the instructions for the last post and determined what I already knew.
- Get Distant Land
- Get Deathbringer’s Will
I mean thanks for the Toskk’s Maximized Wristguards a month ago Saurpuss but what have you done for me lately.
I think I would prefer Hersir’s Greatspear… I mean I can already hit high Crit % so I would prefer less crit from rating and agility and pick up ArP and Hit to get to the ArP hard cap and to make up for the lack of Hit on our T10…. I dunno, maybe I just don’t feel good about seeing Distant Land fall… /sigh
Lastly, we scored another server first last night and a server 2nd… Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion… (10) and Full House (10). As the only guild to manage both Herald of the Titans and A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity (10) on our server we are kinda bummed of the lack of a similar gear limiting Achievement for Icecrown… being the title whore I am probably bummed more than the rest… it won’t be long before more than 10 people are running around with my Argent Defender title.
I still believe Blizzard has done a great job appealing to all the players out there between 10 and 25 man raids and corresponding achievements with heriocs and hard modes there really does seam to be everything for everyone at the moment.
Using RAWR to determine gear upgrades.
Visited the Druids Info Center forums over at Emmerald’s this morning and found this Gem of a post from poster RareBeast… thought I would share.
Download Rawr from http://rawr.codeplex.com
Useful Settings
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(1) Tools => Options => General Settings – I click “buff sources”, “Gem Names” & “Item types”
(2) Tools => Edit Gemming Templates – I set it to only show the top gemming template as it is simpler than seeing multiple versions of each item
Setting up your Character
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(1) File => Load Character from Armory
(2) Make sure the “Enforce Gem Requirements” is checked on the “Stats” tab
(3) On the “Buffs” tab, select all the buffs you want – I select all buffs except the Draenei & potions (I usually save it for a health pot)
(4) Change any settings on the “Options” tab – this is different for each model – I usually set a 5 minute fight, but you may want longer.
(5) In the “Comparisons” pane (right hand side), for each slot, left click on the little diamond next to any other items you have that weren’t equipped when you imported your character from the armory – there should be a green diamond next to each item you own
(6) Similarly, mark any other enchants you have access too that weren’t on your current gear (I normally select the top 1-3 for each slot).
(7) Tools => Edit Gemming Templates – make sure the correct gems are selected – usually it is ok to use the default but for poorly geared alts I often change it to the rare gems. (Doesn’t have to be every possible gemming!! Just the fairly common ones)
(8) In the “Comparisons” pane mark any other gems available that you might need that didn’t appear in any of the templates. For Feral I make sure I mark the Nightmare Tear, 20ArPen & 10Agi/10Haste gems.
(9) File => Save!!!!
Optmising Your Character
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(1) Tools => Optimise
(2) Select what you want to optimise for – For Feral, I optimise for DPS rating (Selecting overall for feral would include survivability)
(3) Add any additional requirements – You might like to select “Avoided Attacks % < 0" if you want to be hit/expertise capped. I DON'T do this as enforcing the caps may(often) give you a result which has a lower DPS score. Also, for tanks you might like to set "Chance to be crit < 0"
(4) Thoroughness - Time take to optimise varies greatly with which model you are using and how good your PC is (and how many items you have marked). Try an optimise at the default setting to see how long it takes and then adjust this slider accordingly. Greater thoroughness will often give you a better result - I use max thoroughness for my feral and it doesn't take too long - make sure you don't have silly items marked ie. don't have T7 or T8 stuff marked if you have T10 gear - trinkets "may" be an exception as things like Darkmoon Card, ArPen trinkets are OP for their ILvl.
(5) I would suggest ignoring most of the check boxes at this stage. It can be useful to let it pick the best food/flask for you, but I usually leave all these unchecked.
(6) Hit "Optimise" and let Rawr do what it does best!!
Using the Build Upgrade List
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Say you are running 10man regular Icecrown Citadel tonight. You can use the "Filters" in the "Comparison" pane of Rawr to select only the 10 man reg Icecrown loot. Then select the "Slot" dropdown and select "Direct Upgrades". You may think that it is then showing all items that are an upgrade for you in 10 man reg Icecrown but this may not be the case. If your current gear is Hit Capped, then +hit items in the lists will be devalued and may not show as an upgrade. But you may be able to fiddle around with gems/enchants or switch in a piece or two that you have sitting in the bank and find that those items which aren't showing as upgrades may actually be significant upgrades. The "Build Upgrade List" allows Rawr to take all these things into account and show every item that will be an upgrade for you. (Often this will fairly closely match what is show in the comparison pane, but you do get a few suprises).
** A warning: This option takes significantly longer to process so it is important that you are fairly strict with your filter settings to reduce the number of items Rawr has to process. Don't just select Icecrown. Select 10 Man regular Icecrown. Or even better (at the moment) select only "The Lower Spire" & "The Plagueworks". **
(1) Tools => Optimise
(2) Your options remain basically the same as what are discussed under “Optimising Your Character” above
(3) Once again, try on a lower “Thoroughness” setting until you see how fast/slow it is with the options/gear you have selected (I use max on my feral)
(4) Hit “Build Upgrade List”
(5) After it has finished you get a new window with a list of the upgrades. If you hover over each one, then the tooltip shows what combination of gear/gems/enchants give you the best results with the potential upgrade.
