World of Warcraft™

A new expansion is almost upon us, and the guide @ http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2089200852 is in process of being updated to 4.3, so we can have a look at the changes that affect us (not much) and what we need to do to adapt to the changes (not much).

• The 10% Attack Power raid buff will be increased to 20%. This is supposed to close the gap between melee and ranged DPS that is very apparent for several bosses with movement. A nice little boost. Not going to change much for what we do except Agility increases its lead over the secondary stats.


• 2x Tier 13 bonus allows Blood in the Water to be used at under 60% instead of 25%, which is a substantial DPS boost. This will cause a slight shift in stat value from mastery rating in favour of critical strike rating and haste rating.


• 4x Tier 13 bonus allows Stampede to be activated whenever Tiger’s Fury is used. Note that with this bonus, there is now a slight change in our priority – You must now spend your Stampede buff (if it is up) BEFORE activating Tiger’s Fury.


• Both Tier bonuses combined will increase the value of Glyph of Tiger’s Fury to become better than Glyph of Bloodletting, but ONLY if you are not using Ancient Petrified Seed or the newer Kiroptyric Sigil trinket. This is because a huge part of the trinkets value come from being able to synchronize the trinket’s cooldown with Tiger’s Fury’s cooldown.


• Glyph of Shred has become Glyph of Bloodletting, and now works for both Mangle and Shred. The intention of this change is to reduce the penalty whenever we are forced to Mangle instead of Shred. Unfortunately, even with this change, Glyph of Bloodletting is still inferior to Glyph of Berserk, Glyph of Mangle and Glyph of Rip for mangle-spam encounters (Hi Ultraxion!), so this change really does nothing for us. This has been tested with 4T12, 2T12+2T13 and 4T13.

Rough trinket rankings, based on known data. May change before patch is released (especially since we think Vial of Shadows is overpowered and will be nerfed)

1. Vial of Shadows (E410), Wrath of Unchaining (E416)
2. Vial of Shadows (E397)
3. Wrath of Unchaining (E403)
4. Vial of Shadows (E384)
5. Wrath of Unchaining (E390), Starcatcher Compass (E410)
6. Starcatcher Compass (E397)
7. Kiroptyric Sigil, Matrix Restabilizer (E397)
8. Matrix Restabilizer (E384), Starcatcher Compass (E384), Ancient Petrified Seed, The Hungerer (E391)

Special thanks to Yawning and Mihir for the help with the information above.

Special thanks to Yawning and Mihir for the help with the information above.

Update: Removed Kiroptyric Sigil (E410), recognizes that Glyph of Bloodletting is useless

These changes sound nice :) Thank you Tangedyn, and Yawning, and Mihir!

11/15/2011 09:09 AMPosted by Tangedyn

Glyph of Mangle should be used in favor of Glyph of Bloodletting or Glyph of Tiger’s Fury for mangle-spam encounters (hi Ultraxion)

I find this weirdly interesting, and also kind of crappy. :/

How much better does agility get compared to secondaries? I know it won't really matter for the most part. But I'm curious how it might change the statement that a socket bonus should provide at least 13 agility per non-red gem used.

11/15/2011 10:09 AMPosted by Reesi

Glyph of Mangle should be used in favor of Glyph of Bloodletting or Glyph of Tiger’s Fury for mangle-spam encounters (hi Ultraxion)

I find this weirdly interesting, and also kind of crappy. :/

agreed.


thanks to yawning and tang and co for this info.

11/15/2011 09:09 AMPosted by Tangedyn

Glyph of Mangle should be used in favor of Glyph of Bloodletting or Glyph of Tiger’s Fury for mangle-spam encounters (hi Ultraxion)

Can you clarify this? Is this true for mangle-spam encounters WITH the 4pc bonus? I can understand that, since we would not need to have Shred/Mangle refreshing Rip for 60% of the fight since we'd be doing it with FB instead. Or is it true without the set bonus too?

Rough trinket rankings (based on current incomplete known loot list):

1. Starcatcher Compass (E416)
2. Kiroptyric Sigil (E410), Starcatcher Compass (E403)
3. Kiroptyric Sigil (E397), Starcatcher Compass (E390), Wrath of Unchaining (E416)
4. Matrix Restabilizer (E397), Wrath of Unchaining (E403)
5. Matrix Restabilizer (E384), Wrath of Unchaining (E390), Ancient Petrified Seed, The Hungerer (E391)

Special thanks to Yawning and Mihir for the help with the information above.

I just read on MMO-Champion: "Trinkets such as Fire of the Deep are only available through valor points at ilvl 397. They're incorrectly added as 384 and 410 on wowhead, just like all BoE items were from T11 raids."

So we won't be getting heroic Sigil :(

11/15/2011 10:12 AMPosted by Ot

How much better does agility get compared to secondaries? I know it won't really matter for the most part. But I'm curious how it might change the statement that a socket bonus should provide at least 13 agility per non-red gem used.

I just noticed that as ilevel goes up, the secondary stats seem to scale faster than agility. At 410 BIS level, agility is now only 2.5x better than the secondary stats, so the socket bonus only needs to provide 12 agility per non-red gem used. Which of course is not going to make any difference to gemming choices.

11/15/2011 10:16 AMPosted by Ot

Glyph of Mangle should be used in favor of Glyph of Bloodletting or Glyph of Tiger’s Fury for mangle-spam encounters (hi Ultraxion)

Can you clarify this? Is this true for mangle-spam encounters WITH the 4pc bonus? I can understand that, since we would not need to have Shred/Mangle refreshing Rip for 60% of the fight since we'd be doing it with FB instead. Or is it true without the set bonus too?

It's tested by Mihir to be true for 4T12, 2T12+2T13 and 4T13.

11/15/2011 10:09 AMPosted by Reesi

Glyph of Mangle should be used in favor of Glyph of Bloodletting or Glyph of Tiger’s Fury for mangle-spam encounters (hi Ultraxion)

I find this weirdly interesting, and also kind of crappy. :/

Lol, I've been too engrossed with the theorycraft and didn't realize the irony with this until you mentioned it.

Anyway I've posted a feedback regarding this on the DD and PTR forums, if anyone is interested to uprate it: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3595570016 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3595670044

3. Kiroptyric Sigil (E397), Starcatcher Compass (E390), Wrath of Unchaining (E416)

What the heck? 416 WoU's still 990 agility last I checked (10 seconds ago, on the PTR), seems incredibly weird that it's on par with 397 Sigil (458 haste/382 agility average). Yeah, the sigil will sync up nicely with TF/Berserk, but it seems very strange that it'd be close to H-WoU.

hmm, but all that weirdness is just due to the 60% BiTW, since a FB will extend rip, we don't need the glyph of bloodletting so much.

without that, mangle glyph sure as hell wouldnt be so great, no?

3. Kiroptyric Sigil (E397), Starcatcher Compass (E390), Wrath of Unchaining (E416)

What the heck? 416 WoU's still 990 agility last I checked (10 seconds ago, on the PTR), seems incredibly weird that it's on par with 397 Sigil (458 haste/382 agility average). Yeah, the sigil will sync up nicely with TF/Berserk, but it seems very strange that it'd be close to H-WoU.

It does seem weird, but I suppose it's the effect of synching with berserk too. I'll test this again when I have time.

hmm, but all that weirdness is just due to the 60% BiTW, since a FB will extend rip, we don't need the glyph of bloodletting so much.

without that, mangle glyph sure as hell wouldnt be so great, no?

As I've already mentioned it has been tested to be true even with 4T12.

Isn't Compass 397/410? It's not from Spine/Madness.

11/16/2011 01:48 PMPosted by Sinthraxis

Isn't Compass 397/410? It's not from Spine/Madness.

WHAT'S A SINTHRAXIS DOING IN MY DRUID FORUMS? GET OUT, I REPLACED YOU

Also, this should be correct. Wowhead shows nothing above 410.

game changer - Blood in the water at 60%

is it a greedy request to have it make into talent instead? ^_^

Why is the Vial of Shadows not listed up there?

Also, I ran a test, the iLvl 390 Kiril, Fury of Beasts from the LFR is a ~400 DPS increase over iLvl 391 Fandral's according to the latest Mew.

We've been getting conflicting reports about the behavior of Vial of Shadows. Currently Mew thinks it is really crap, but Mihir's latest test seems to give a different story. Will update the list once there are solid results.

I've updated the trinket rankings, thanks to Mihir and Yawning for help with that. Looks like Vial of Shadows is overpowered - the proc scales 1:1 with AP and can crit. More details on the numbers here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/775527-The-Cat-Guide-4.2?p=14284248&viewfull=1#post14284248

Interesting read. I expect Vial will be nerfed within the first week after some under geared kid gets crit for 50k by it. =/