Kitty DPS as a Bear off-spec

[Pelleas]

I am a Bear tank in my guild but due to many bosses being one tank only in Dragon Soul, I find myself using my offspec pretty often.
Currently it is resto but I dont play it that well, dont have as good gear and found out we rarely need 4 heals in our raid.

Well, I'm considering switching to cat offspec and was wondering how you guys do it.

- Do you DPS with your Bear talents or do you dedicate the second spec to it? It seems to me at least glyphs are mandatory to correct DPS.
- Do you DPS with your Bear gear or build a complete cat geatset with the same items but gemmed/reforged differently. I gem agility mostly so how much I am gimping myself if I switch a few trinkets and dps in my dodge-reforged gear?

I'm not shooting for top DPS but would like to contribute in my dps spec - aim for like 20k dps would be nice.

Thanks guys

[iceberg265]

Dedicated second spec with DPS talents instead of tanking talents. Its basically the same gear as bear gear, but it has to be reforged differently. If you are gemming agility, that is the correct thing to do for kitty.

[Scarjack]

I am a Bear tank in my guild but due to many bosses being one tank only in Dragon Soul, I find myself using my offspec pretty often.
Currently it is resto but I dont play it that well, dont have as good gear and found out we rarely need 4 heals in our raid.

Well, I'm considering switching to cat offspec and was wondering how you guys do it.

- Do you DPS with your Bear talents or do you dedicate the second spec to it? It seems to me at least glyphs are mandatory to correct DPS.
- Do you DPS with your Bear gear or build a complete cat geatset with the same items but gemmed/reforged differently. I gem agility mostly so how much I am gimping myself if I switch a few trinkets and dps in my dodge-reforged gear?

I'm not shooting for top DPS but would like to contribute in my dps spec - aim for like 20k dps would be nice.

Thanks guys

You should be able to pull off close to that just being in bear spec with bear gear and going into cat. I'm probably not as geared as you and I can pull off 14-16k in firelands normal.

[Bearshield]

Like Scarjack said, dpsing with a tank spec/gear is very much viable. On fights we're learning or where there is concern that the other tank may die, I often stay in my tank spec to dps and am usually within the top 3 on the dmg meter. That being said, my os is balance because we often run melee heavy and having another range is usually more beneficial than having another melee.

[Pavidus]

I used a bastardized Tank spec for all of Firelands Heroic, including Rag. I picked up all the talents I needed to not lose DPS as cat, and used the rest on tanking talents. Worked fine, and was able to pull off 27-30k sustained DPS (Over 40k burst DPS) while actively offtanking Rag. Granted the MT was taking 8-10 stacks before I would taunt.

So, realistically, you don't even "need" to have two seperate specs. You "can" tank and DPS with one spec, and do it well (With some glyph swapping when needed.), with gear that is Crit/Mastery based for Reforging and Agility gemmed. The DPS won't me "optimal", but it will be extremely close, and hardly even noticable, and the tanking will be fine as long as your healers aren't terribads.

I'm not actually recommending this, it's merely a very viable option if you really don't want to drop your resto spec.

Otherwise, you can keep your gear reforged for bear or cat, and have a smidgen more survivability or DPS, depending on which on you lean towards, and have two seperate specs. (And glyphs, which doesn't matter because you can swap those at any time.)

In regards to your expectations, with Normal Firelands gear you can very comfortably reach 25k DPS with a Bear optimized setup including gear and talents (Swapping glyphs). That's only if you're dedicated DPS for that specific fight. Obviously two tank fights where you may not be tanking for some time, going cat form can tentatively increase your damage, but not by much in the long run, but that depends on the fight.

Absolute best option is 2 seperate specs though. You shouldn't ever need 4 healers. Ever.

Ever. Jussayin.

[Oex]

I used a bastardized Tank spec for all of Firelands Heroic, including Rag. I picked up all the talents I needed to not lose DPS as cat, and used the rest on tanking talents. Worked fine, and was able to pull off 27-30k sustained DPS (Over 40k burst DPS) while actively offtanking Rag. Granted the MT was taking 8-10 stacks before I would taunt.

Come on ..

.. it's possible to get some pretty nice numbers with tank-specc - but 27-30k @ rag? The top-100-average for Feral (full DD!) is 27,5k @ 25 man heroic&normal ..the top-100-average for 10 man hardly reaches 25k ..

[earthwormjim]

I went with a similar set up for my guild's H Rag kill, and I was mainting 26k DPS until we hit phase 4. I finished with 21k DPS though.

He probably is exaggerating and going based off of what his recount meter was saying. Recount doesn't penalize you for inactive time.

I used to be an all stam/dodge bear for most of Firelands. I made the switch to all agility with expertise soft capped and mostly mastery reforging. I haven't looked back since. Savage defense uptime is great, quite close to a warrior's shield in most parses.


I would definitely have a dedicated DPS spec though. No reason to spec into pulverize unless you are actually tanking on that fight.


I seriously hate how limited mmo-champions new poster rules are. I can't even quote you Oex...

[tangedyn]

I've been using a single hybrid feral spec for most of Cataclysm, based on my article: http://theincbear.com/hybrid-feral-guide
But since my raid doesn't require me to heal at all, I've replaced my Resto spec with a pure Cat spec, but kept the hybrid spec for tanking.

For reforging, we hybrids usually do Mastery > Exp > Crit > Hit

[Navene]

I recently ended up in the same position. I'm resto / bear, and got told a couple of minutes before a Firelands run that I was going to be DPSing. I setup a kitty spec, and replaced one of my trinkets, but otherwise left my gear as is (I stack agi). It wasn't ideal, but most fights were still around the 20k mark in dps, and I haven't played a kitty in 6 months or more. My bear spec is around the 378 ilvl, and everything is reforged to dodge.

[earthwormjim]

I recently ended up in the same position. I'm resto / bear, and got told a couple of minutes before a Firelands run that I was going to be DPSing. I setup a kitty spec, and replaced one of my trinkets, but otherwise left my gear as is (I stack agi). It wasn't ideal, but most fights were still around the 20k mark in dps, and I haven't played a kitty in 6 months or more. My bear spec is around the 378 ilvl, and everything is reforged to dodge.

If you're agility gemming I'd just reforge for mastery. You are probably quite far into diminishing returns with your agility, master has no diminishing returns.

Helps out if you have to go kitty dps anyway.

[Zheryn]

I'm a feral DPS, and when I have to tank I just click my ReforgeLite button to get dodge on everything and switch in to my tank spec and I'm good to go.

On Madness I made a new spec, without interrupt, perseverence and pulverize to get blood in the water, improved healing and feral agression and played in full DPS gear and glyphs since I was DPSing the entire fight except for taking an Impale on 3d platform and tanking adds twice in p2.

[Healarious]

On my second druid, I only have one spec, the feral hybrid. I use it to tank, dps and pvp, and it does alright in all. I probably can do a bit better at each role with a more dedicated spec but the spec allows me to go above 40k dps in the lfr (Zon'ozz), tank without any problem in 4/8 DS normal and reached 2k rating last season in 2s. I just gem full agility in most slots and stack mastery/crit. Like I said before I could probably do a bit better by reforging, regemming and respeccing every time I change role but I really like the fact that I can perform two roles close to their full potential with just one spec.From what I read, you can do ~95% the dps of a dedicated dps feral spec as a tanking feral spec.

[Reape]

Im reverse of you but what i could advice will still apply.

My specs are 1. Cat form DPS 2. Bear tanking.

My gear is primary Cat, Secondary Bear. What i do with my gear is Best gear is always cat, so a new item will be reforged and gemmed to dps spec. When an item is replaced the old item then becomes tanking gear and gets regemmed and reforged to tanking spec (currently im running an agi rich tanking spec so it usually jsut means reforging the haste into dodge)


By doing this im currently running ilvl 382 DPS gear and ilvl 377 tank gear with only a couple of overlapping items (fandrals flamestaff)