Feral Druid Gear

[faust]

First off let me just share this great list someone on the Druid forums pointed out to me: Feral Druid Gear

I dinged level 70 today, and I have been thinking for a while now what role I will play end game.

Leveling up I was hoping to tank, but as I approach level 70 I see a lengthy list of protection warriors and other feral (bear) specced druids. Not to worry though, I rolled a Druid so that I could be flexible... so flexible I will be.

As of late I spend a lot of my time as a cat form druid. I am learning that role (as I mentioned most of the time I leveled up using bear form), and I am sure I still have much to learn about when how to maximize my dps and utility as a cat form druid. One thing that does concern me is that I have not seen a lot of cat form druids who were outstanding sources of dps.

I have lead many a run on the dps charts, but after an unsucessful run in Black Morass the other night I question just how good my dps truly is (I currently have just under 1.8k AP in cat form, and about 27.5% crit rate).

I just got ahold of this gear chart, which I will study to see how I can go about improving my cat form dps. So right now I will try to remain optimistic.

Other options are of coarse going moonkin or restoration specced. Both would require a lot of regearing, which is a bit more difficult once you have already reached level 70 and have acquired a lot of the feral gear from quests that give blue quality gear. This is certainly doable if I went back and ran a lot of outland instances after respeccing and acquiring some solid gear from the AH.

To be frank, I am not particularly interested in speccing moonkin at this time. Who knows, maybe later I will feel differently... but for now it's a toss up between Restoration or Feral.

One other issue is the group I currently have been gearing up with and playing most with as of late:

Rhys (DPS warrior)
Matt (Prot warrior)
Allen (Holy/Disc Priest)
Myself
Others (this tends to change a fair amount, though we commonly play with Shane and Nick on their rogue and warlock respectively).

If I tried to respec as restoration, this would leave me often times competing for gear from Allen, not to mention that having two healing specced players in 5-man heroics may not be the best choice (in fact it may be disasterous).

Also respeccing as restoration would require that I buy a lot of greens, and perhaps a few blues from the AH and then run a lot of instances over again so that I could catch up gear wise with the rest of this group.

To sum up, I am left with a somewhat complicated situation. I doubt I will get many opportunities (nor should I over protection specced warriors) to tank in Kara. I question whether or not I can gear up well enough as a feral cat form druid to provide the kind of sustained dps that would be expected from someone filling a melee dps slot. I don't see how I can respec to restoration without me breaking up the group I currently play with, and enjoy playing with. As I mentioned before I am not particularly interested in playing a ranged dps role as a druid.

/sigh

Now that I have stated things as I see them, I was wondering if anyone could offer any thoughts or suggestions?

Maybe I am making some assumptions I shouldn't make?

Perhaps I am not seeing things clearly and I have made some mistakes somewhere?

Perhaps some ways I could gear up as a feral cat form druid to contribute to our guild's attempts to get through Kara?

Perhaps some suggestions as to how I could retool myself for restoration without breaking with the group I currently play with (Allen has no interest in playing a shadow priest)?

Perhaps some insight as to how I could contribute as a teddy tank?

Thanks in advance!
-Mike

 

[Kagnus]

To have noticeable dps in cat, it is all about gear. Your choice of combat moves are limited and of course you only have 1 tree to choose from (as opposed to a rogue who has 3 talent trees that really are for the same end - dps)

To be effective in a group while being kitty dps though you can't focus being at the top of the dps charts. You have to be willing in a split second to go to bear to off tank something unexpected or to back up heal.

Kitty dps if left to do pure dps can keep pace with the best dps classes, if properly geared. That means you need high everything, including a high hit rating.

To be honest, unless the people you group with know you and your kitty dps, most are wary about assigning a druid a pure dps role in a group and will seek out other "recognized" dps classes.

 

[faust]

To be an effective kitty dps though you can't focus being at the top of the dps charts. You have to be willing in a split second to go to go to bear to off tank something unexpected or to back up heal.

Totally agree. I do this all the time too, really helps out a run. I would like to think that I have saved a few runs from wiping doing this. Yeah I don't play my druid as just a cat, or just a bear... I like to take advantage of all my abilities when I need to. I find that being cat form allows me to use more of my class too, which is really great. When I tanked all the time I couldnt' pop out to do a much needed tranquility or even safely do an innervate much of the time.

Kitty dps if left to do pure dps can keep pace with the best dps classes, if properly geared. That means you need high everything, including a high hit rating.

This is exactly what I was hoping to hear. Thanks.

To be honest, unless the people you group with know you and your kitty dps, most are wary about assigning a druid a pure dps role in a group and will seek out other "recognized" dps classes.

Fortunately the group I tend to run with most I don't have this problem.

Thanks a lot though, very good to hear.

 

[Tinie]

One thing that does concern me is that I have not seen a lot of cat form druids who were outstanding sources of dps.

There are not a lot of any class who are outstanding at what they do. The thing to do is find one who is, and model after them. May I suggest a kitty model for you?

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#character-sheet.xml?r=Terenas&n=Azolas

That is the feral gear/enchant list you need Azolas is very effective at dps.

With Az's ability to do high dps, and then to shift out to off-heal, or shift out to off-tank, he is a very important part of any group.

Start working on 3 gear sets Mike. Make your spec the one you like the most, but then have the gear sets to be able to do what is needed by the group to beat an encounter. Az is kitty spec'd, but he is a very viable tank and healer in his gear specific sets. That is the cool thing about being a druid

 

[Kagnus]

/blush

 

[Daire]

Seeing the group you run with, you probably would usually be near the top of the charts. To get a better feel for where your dps lies, I would suggest getting into a run with Esua, Durruck, Ambryana, or any freakishly high dpsers. I suspect you would probably find unless you have some really good gear your dps is not as high as you think it is from playing with a steady group of people.

Being a kitty druid is/can be a very valued member of a group/raid. I am usually a bear and for me to come out of bear form to battlerez or innervate is often not possible. As a cat spec, you should also be aware of when healers are struggling or if healers go down.

My druid has some pretty good tanking gear, I have good mitigation and good overall stats. I also have a very good healing set and dps set. Many runs to all the different instances have given me a chance to have a set of gear for any spec i think I might like to play (even balance). One of the best places you should run is botanica, there is a staff there with super stats, especially for kitty, and a nice pair of leather leggings that come from the last boss i believe.

good luck figuring it out

 

[faust]

I don't think I am solid right now as a dps class; quite the opposite, I am concerned that I won't be able to produce the sort of dps that will be expected form a dps slot in a Kara run, even after gearing up from the other lvl 70 instances.

If that was the case staying feral druid would be a pointless venture... because the tanking slots are all filled.

This is the very reason why I brought up this thread in the first place. Az has given me the kind of hope I was looking for. Also the list I posted earlier has me working on trying to focus my search for improved gear.

I will try for that staff from Botanica, but in the meanwhile I also plan to pvp here and there so that I can get the pvp 2H mace: Grand Marshal's Maul. That staff seems like it is about as good as I can get outside of some of the better epics in the game.

I have pretty much geared up from ever instance below OH, and even in OH there is only one item that drops that is an upgrade dps wise for my druid. Outside of seeking a one or two quest rewards, I need to start running other instances to get improvements.

 

[Tinie]

Seeing the group you run with, you probably would usually be near the top of the charts. To get a better feel for where your dps lies, I would suggest getting into a run with Esua, Durruck, Ambryana, or any freakishly high dpsers. I suspect you would probably find unless you have some really good gear your dps is not as high as you think it is from playing with a steady group of people.

Who was this to Holly?

 

[Daire]

the gnome person with all the gnome names, i think he might be a mike?

 

[faust]

the gnome person with all the gnome names, i think he might be a mike?

Yep me (Mike F)... and come to think of it I do have a lot of gnome names for my characters.

Heck if gnomes could be druids I would be one. I am only night elf by requirement on my druid.

Az (Connor right?) just out of curiosity what is your AP and crit rate when in cat form? I noticed that you stress crit rate a lot, and I am wondering if I should work to increase mine further.

After last night's effort I am up to around 1.86k AP and 28-29% crit rate (self buffed, sorry I am too used to having MotW up all the time). I am trying to figure out how what I should be shooting for... I figured short/medium term my goal is 2k AP and 30% crit rate unbuffed, before I could consider myself ready for BM and beyond. Am I thinking correctly here?

If anyone wants to offer any suggestions my charcter's armory link is here.

I am going to replace my green ring first, but I know that I have a lot of other gear upgrade needs: gloves, belt, and wrists are most glaring... but my boots could use an upgrade as well.

I got the fel leather set now, but I think in the case of the gloves I need to put in some highish grade gems in order for that to be a true upgrade for me. Same goes for the boots.

I haven't decided what I will do for my wrists yet. I would like to find an item that can either be bought of the AH (crafted/world drop), or is a quest reward, so that I can expect to get the upgrade before too long (that is before I am asked to dish out dps in an instance that demands it from me).

As I mentioned before I am working towards getting the pvp 2H weapon: Grand Marshal's Maul. I think that mace alone would make a noticable difference in my dps. Once I get it I will definitely be putting a nice enchantment on it (+25 agi maybe?).

Though looking over Az's gear I see that his staff comes from a quest... hmm...

 

[Kagnus]

Az (Connor right?) just out of curiosity what is your AP and crit rate when in cat form? I noticed that you stress crit rate a lot, and I am wondering if I should work to increase mine further.

Actually, I am more of a fan of hit rate than crit rate Self buffed, I am at 2201ap and 32.85% crit rate with 194 hit rate (sometimes 207 but I got a new cloak I am trying out, which has no hit rating)

Yup, my goal with to hit 2k ap before any other stats, but when you work on ap, sometimes the other stats naturally increase too.

I am going to replace my green ring first, but I know that I have a lot of other gear upgrade needs: gloves, belt, and wrists are most glaring... but my boots could use an upgrade as well.

For replacing that green ring I would recommend Overseer's Signet which you can only get if you are going for Aldor rep. The ring comes from this quest - Shutting Down Mana Forge Ara

I got the fel leather set now, but I think in the case of the gloves I need to put in some highish grade gems in order for that to be a true upgrade for me. Same goes for the boots.

I haven't decided what I will do for my wrists yet. I would like to find an item that can either be bought of the AH (crafted/world drop), or is a quest reward, so that I can expect to get the upgrade before too long (that is before I am asked to dish out dps in an instance that demands it from me).

Windslayer Wraps are considered the best feral dps gloves out there. I can make them on Azolas, but they take a primal nether to make. An excellent replacement and the best feral tanking gloves out there, there is Verdant Gloves, which is from a quest called Akama's Promise

Holly is right about Botaninca, plenty of druid upgrades in there, including Boots of the Shifting Sands and other dps goodness.

As I mentioned before I am working towards getting the pvp 2H weapon: Grand Marshal's Maul. I think that mace alone would make a noticable difference in my dps. Once I get it I will definitely be putting a nice enchantment on it (+25 agi maybe?).

Though looking over Az's gear I see that his staff comes from a quest... hmm...

That PvP reward mace is nice, but I have played around with all kinds of staffs available to a 70 druid, and the one I am using now Fleshling Simulation Staff I have found to be the best overall. Other feral staffs sometimes have better stats, but this one has ALL the stats and makes for a very effective dps staff. For me, the +26 hit rating on it I just don't want to lose until I probably can get an epic feral dps staff (not a feral tanking staff)

 

[faust]

Interesting... +hit. Never really focused on that, though I think that I have around 5-6% hit.

I thought I read somewhere that once you get to 8.5% hit rate, that any more doesn't help. Apparently that's the amount of hit rating required to hit a lvl 73 mob w/o any level related additional miss. Can anyone confirm or deny that?

 

[Kagnus]

The main reason I focus on hit rating is I hate missing on a 5 combo point finishing move. I am not talking about a dodge or parry, just a plain miss. At around 130 hit rating (which would give you your 8.5% or so) I know for a fact I still miss. In fact I still miss every once in a while at 194 hit rating. I did so last night in a Black Morass run.

One thing to remember is that some combat numbers out there are base line for a mob that has nothing special about them. Bosses however, can be tuned in many different ways, including increasing the chance to be missed by a melee move.

While gearing up for feral dps, I am not focused on how well I do against trash mobs, I focus on how well I do against boss mobs.

I have had some gear upgrades, primarily with hit rating, since the last time I ran Black Morass with Tinie, and Tinie can tell you that last night she had a hard time keeping aggro off me, as I kept pulling it, to a severe extent (imho, Tinie is one of the best geared tanking warriors out there with non-Karazhan gear). My crit since previous runs has been about the same (~31-32%), ap has gone up some (2050 to 2127, unbuffed). But hit rating went up from 139 to 194.

I don't do number crunching, I do trial and error testing. During runs I sometimes switch out gear to see how things are affected. In my experience, hit rating is crucial to dps and if there is a cap amount, I bet it is around 400, given the design of of the current combat system.

490 is the magic defense number for tanks to be "crit proof" mathematically, but on Kagnus I can tell you 490 really does not cut it. Defense adds to your dodge, parry and block, all of them damage mitigation skills, and Kagnus sits around 510. At that number, I feel comfotable tanking heroics or even Karazhan. Though when I did tank in Karazhan, at the time I was at around 495 and felt very squishy.

I feel the same is for +hit, or any stat. You really can not have enough of it. I am sure someone can mathematically show me that maybe you can have enough, but I think especially with bosses, you cannot be happy with just sitting at one number in a crucial stat forever if you expect to progress content. I think when you have enough of any stat, it is when there are just no more upgrades available. And I think Blizz tunes encounters with what gear is available for a character to reasonably reach taking on the content.

That's my two cents, anyhow

Edit: Doing some reading, it looks like rogues need a hit rating of about 380 to cancel out their miss-rate on their off-hand weapon. Since with TBC, hit rating really has only been on gear found in the outlands, I am sure hit rating is a consideration of boss tuning, and some bosses (Black Temple and beyond) are going to be tuned with the fact that some rogues may have a hit rating of 380. If you plan on playing kitty dps, your hit rating will need to be up there too, maybe not as much, but your dps contribution against such tuned bosses will not be worth the group slot you are taking.

 

[Durruck]

Edit: Doing some reading, it looks like rogues need a hit rating of about 380 to cancel out their miss-rate on their off-hand weapon.

I read somewhere a long time ago that any character that dual wields has a ~15% penalty to +hit on their OH weapon - that includes rogues, DW warriors, Shammies, Hunters, etc. That number may have changed since then, but I'm sure that it's still a significant penalty. Kitties most likely do not have to have the 380 - they don't have an offhand weapon, so Az's 190+ is probably a pretty good place to be.

 

[faust]

From what I have read every character has a 5% miss rate on same level mobs. If your character dual wields, then that miss rate increases by 19% to a total of 24% miss rate (on both weapons).

Interesting though... I should like to run some experiments sometime. Are there damage meters that count miss rates? That might not be a bad thing to use to prove one way or another if the alleged 8.5% miss rate is a myth or reality.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but I thought it was impossible to completely mitigate all misses. I thought no matter what you got 5% miss rate. What the 8.5% bonus to miss rate is supposed to do is remove the additional miss rate you get if the mob you fight is 3 levels above you (which is supposedly the highest level mobs you will fight in an instance run).

 

[Daire]

My apologies to you Mike F. if what I said about dps seemed like a slam. It really was not meant to be one. What I was simply saying is people who play together steadily may have weaknesses in their group, but they will also have certain strengths as well, which they can use to their advantage of coming out on top.

My comment really was only geared directly at you wanting to figure out YOUR dps, not the people who you play with.

 

[Xandar]

With respect to hit rate - for even level mobs there is a standard 5% miss rate. For boss mobs, the miss rate is 8.64%, as they are automatically 3 levels hgiher than you. Assuming you are not dual wielding for either of course.

Based on this information and what I have been able to read up on, any hit rating higher than about 138 (excluding dual wielding again) results in the best possible hit rate. Anything above this value won't help any more, but doesn't hurt you.

I understand Conner still saw misses with a much higher hit rating. I can't pretend to explain this, other than maybe there always is the possibility of missing regardless. Either way, 138 is a great target to shoot for (especially if your a hunter) (oh come on that was a little funny wasn't it?).

 

[faust]

My apologies to you Mike F. if what I said about dps seemed like a slam. It really was not meant to be one. What I was simply saying is people who play together steadily may have weaknesses in their group, but they will also have certain strengths as well, which they can use to their advantage of coming out on top.

My comment really was only geared directly at you wanting to figure out YOUR dps, not the people who you play with.

I have the thick hide talent in the game... and fortunately in real life. Nope taking offense never crossed my mind. I just got the impression that you thought I had the notion that I was actually good at dps right now. Nope, I have no such notions.

Oh, and Ron... puns ftw! Nice one.

 

[Daire]

Okay, I was just suggesting alternative ways for you to gauge where you lie within. goodluck getting that gear.

 

[Woven]

I don't do number crunching, I do trial and error testing. During runs I sometimes switch out gear to see how things are affected. In my experience, hit rating is crucial to dps and if there is a cap amount, I bet it is around 400, given the design of of the current combat system.

+hit is king. The more you hit..the more you..dmg. It's worked very well for my DW fury build..(That nasty penalty..) And It's not getting left behind on my rogue.