Defense, Hit Rating and Expertise

Defense

So the optimal defense rating is 415 assuming that you have Survial of the Fittest. However, if you have resilience, you can get it at 103. Now the question becomes if you have a combination of the two. There are formulas out there that will calculate it, and I have played with them, since I am a mathematician, but the easiest way to determine if you have the 2.6% reduction to be crit is to open your character profile and go to the defense tab. Hover over defense and it will tell you that you have A% reduction and then hover over the resilience and it will tell you that you have B% reduction. So if A% + B% > 2.6% then you are uncrittable. Easy as killing a gnome.

Hit Rating

The goal for a feral is to get your hit rating to 142. This is the magic number. If you are catting around, you need to make sure you are at 142, otherwise, you are losing dps. Don't bother stacking tons of it as there are many other useful things to stack. Agility for instance. I use +hit rating and + agility gems until I get to 142, then I stack all agility for better crits.

Expertise

The goal here is to reduce the number of your attacks that are dodged or parried. The optimal number is 92 for expertise. Now what I find most interesting is the lack of gear for ferals that has expertise on it. There are only 13 leather items with expertise on them. You can get it on Earthwarden, but finding a leather piece that has expertise on it that isn't a step down or available to a starting Feral is quite difficult.