Feral Druids - the Bear guide

[arel00]

Hands down T10 shoulders.
Don't underestimate the 2parts bonus, it's nowhere near useless. Also, you'd want 4xT10, Marks or not Marks, trust me.

Don't buy the emblems chest. If you have time, save money and buy Sack of Wonder if it doesn't drop. Sure the trinket is useful, but I wouldn't prioritize it over T10.
Also, consider Glyph of Indomitability. For physical fights (Marrowgar, DBS, Fester, Rot...) it's extremely good.

[Deleted]

Allright. I'm in need of some advise, since i'm over the hit cap.

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...wing&cn=Yrozac

352, as alliance (always dreanei in group). Ofcourse i wanna lower this - Any advise?
Also got Distant Land, recently got this staff since i like it more. (Don't ask why:P)

So, any options? Should i swap / aim for a specific item, should i swap out something? Also, is it worth hardcapping expertise? It's not that i've got treath probs or so ever.

[arel00]

Change to Distant Land, and change your cloak to Sentinel's Winter Cloak (the Frost Emblems one). Which, on a side note, is Best-In-Slot. There you go, 130 hit suddenly vanished.
OR, change your cloak, keep your weapon, and change Abomination's Bloody Ring with Devium's Eternally Cold Ring, which is also BiS. This way you'll shed 91 hit. This is probably the best option.

Besides, armor > 22agi on cloak at that gear level.

Your Expertise is good as it is, those 3 items work wonders together. No need to go further.

[Deleted]

Oeh, arel! Thanks, that Devium's Eternally Cold Ring sounds like a plan! Going Valithera HC today, had her on 95% last week on our first try (:

Thanks for the advice! (Any more is still welcome, always up to improve.)

[Auroro]

Change to Distant Land, and change your cloak to Sentinel's Winter Cloak (the Frost Emblems one). Which, on a side note, is Best-In-Slot. There you go, 130 hit suddenly vanished.
OR, change your cloak, keep your weapon, and change Abomination's Bloody Ring with Devium's Eternally Cold Ring, which is also BiS. This way you'll shed 91 hit. This is probably the best option.

Besides, armor > 22agi on cloak at that gear level.

Your Expertise is good as it is, those 3 items work wonders together. No need to go further.

Armor is not better than agility.

The only time it is better is when the druid is taught in eng. Then you should grab the armor enchantment.

We can no longer add more armor due to green color armor stat, trinket, necklace, and rings.

With agility, we can change it to be better with raid buff, armor we can't.

[arel00]

Armor is not better than agility.

The only time it is better is when the druid is taught in eng. Then you should grab the armor enchantment.

We can no longer add more armor due to green color armor stat, trinket, necklace, and rings.

With agility, we can change it to be better with raid buff, armor we can't.

One, I was talking about cloaks. Which have no Engineering armor enchant, at all. Two, I know perfectly well how bonus armor works, probably more in depths than you, thanks. Three, let's try not to be ridiculous: the only external % modifier over agility you get in raids is Blessing of Kings, which gives you THREE more agility points over that enchant (flat talent-modifiers already included).

Armor on cloak, when we're talking about ICC, is better than agility. Period. The scaling of agility is a COMPLETE-NON-ISSUE when talking about these values. I repeat: it's 3 points.
You're usually accurate in your statements Auroro, but this time, you're way off.

[Migage]

Just a quick question regarding cat form rotation in a bear tank build. My main spec is bear, my o-spec is tree. Will be building up a third gear set for cat dps, but i'll only have the bear build. So, what's the rotation/priority for cat dps in a bear build?

[Dønut]

First off, thank you arel00 for posting such an in depth forum post on feral tanks, I enjoy this site much more than elitist jerks.

But now for the help:
I can't post my armory, but my ingame druid name is Dønut (hold alt, and hit 0248 on the numpad, release alt after those 4 keys are pressed), of the realm of Kel'thuzad (NE Druid, guild is <Is Prø>)

I know you said not to compare yourself against the best druids in the world, but I can't help but just look how close to on par with them I am (or actually how far I am).

But I need some advice on my gear, I'm way under hit cap, exp. cap, it just seems like I'm under all caps in the game. I don't see how I can gain the stats I need to fill the caps, without getting into heroic 25 man icc's, but I've pretty much banned myself from there for I can't get into a high end raiding guild (every application I put into just /lols at me it feels like).
Is there anything you would do to what I have available to myself? What would you change (gear, enchants, gems), knowing I can only get as far as blood princes in normal ICC 25 man (Plaguewing fully down, DW down, BP actually down, leaving SIN/LK/BQ in a normal ICC 25 man left)?
Thank you for any help you can provide =D

[arel00]

Just a quick question regarding cat form rotation in a bear tank build. My main spec is bear, my o-spec is tree. Will be building up a third gear set for cat dps, but i'll only have the bear build. So, what's the rotation/priority for cat dps in a bear build?

If you're really trying to build a Cat set to DPS with it and your Bear talents, don't. Your DPS will suck so badly you'll get hurt just by watching it.

However. There ARE times when you shift into Cat with a tank build, namely, when offtanking on some fights (Festergut says Hi).
In those cases, the rotation practically identical do the normal kitty priority list, wish the exception that you don't Shred, unless you specced into OoC and have a Clearcast proc.
Goes as follows:
- keep SR up
- keep Rake up
- spam Rip up
- spam Mangle
- if you have a Clearcast proc, use Shred

Always Rip at 5Cps, SR at 4-5, depending if you crit your last attack or not.
If you have KotJ for some reason, then you can use TF under 40 energy.
I advise against Bite with a Bear spec. While you'll generate faster CPs because of Mangle's lower cost, you'll be missing a whole 10 seconds on Rip, which makes it a pain to weave in a Bite.

That's pretty much is when "cat-offtanking". Don't try to be a stable DPS with a Bear build tho. You really lose out so much it's a real pain.

---------- Post added 06-22-2010 at 10:24 PM ----------

First off, thank you arel00 for posting such an in depth forum post on feral tanks, I enjoy this site much more than elitist jerks.

But now for the help:
I can't post my armory, but my ingame druid name is Dønut (hold alt, and hit 0248 on the numpad, release alt after those 4 keys are pressed), of the realm of Kel'thuzad (NE Druid, guild is <Is Prø>)

I know you said not to compare yourself against the best druids in the world, but I can't help but just look how close to on par with them I am (or actually how far I am).

But I need some advice on my gear, I'm way under hit cap, exp. cap, it just seems like I'm under all caps in the game. I don't see how I can gain the stats I need to fill the caps, without getting into heroic 25 man icc's, but I've pretty much banned myself from there for I can't get into a high end raiding guild (every application I put into just /lols at me it feels like).
Is there anything you would do to what I have available to myself? What would you change (gear, enchants, gems), knowing I can only get as far as blood princes in normal ICC 25 man (Plaguewing fully down, DW down, BP actually down, leaving SIN/LK/BQ in a normal ICC 25 man left)?
Thank you for any help you can provide =D

This one I believe: http://us.wowarmory.com/character-sh...&cn=D%C3%B8nut

Easy to fix: you're using the wrong offset item. Switch to T10 shoulders, and use Sack of Wonder as your chest (Gunship 25, BoE even). That alone will push you over the Expertise dodge cap and will give you a total of 254 hit rating. Enough for a cap if you have a Draenei, else you can just use a 10hit/15sta gem when you have a decent socket bonus (say, your neck) and be capped completely.
You can also switch your boots to the crafted ones, which will give you even more Expertise, always nice for threat (no need to be at the parry hard-cap eh, mind it).

You can drop the Expertise enchant as soon as you have the Sack of Wonder or the crafted boots.
Also, a Nightmare Tear is somewhat wasted. A Shifting Dreadstone works as well.

[Migage]

If you're really trying to build a Cat set to DPS with it and your Bear talents, don't. Your DPS will suck so badly you'll get hurt just by watching it.

However. There ARE times when you shift into Cat with a tank build, namely, when offtanking on some fights (Festergut says Hi).
In those cases, the rotation practically identical do the normal kitty priority list, wish the exception that you don't Shred, unless you specced into OoC and have a Clearcast proc.
Goes as follows:
- keep SR up
- keep Rake up
- spam Rip up
- spam Mangle
- if you have a Clearcast proc, use Shred

Always Rip at 5Cps, SR at 4-5, depending if you crit your last attack or not.
If you have KotJ for some reason, then you can use TF under 40 energy.
I advise against Bite with a Bear spec. While you'll generate faster CPs because of Mangle's lower cost, you'll be missing a whole 10 seconds on Rip, which makes it a pain to weave in a Bite.

That's pretty much is when "cat-offtanking". Don't try to be a stable DPS with a Bear build tho. You really lose out so much it's a real pain.

---------- Post added 06-22-2010 at 10:24 PM ----------

Great, thank you. That's what I was after. Not for building a stable dps setup, but for the times when I'm not required to tank but have been brought to the raid as a tank. Cheers

[Cortano]

If you're really trying to build a Cat set to DPS with it and your Bear talents, don't. Your DPS will suck so badly you'll get hurt just by watching it.

I pretty much disagree there; you can do this with only a 4-8% loss in DPS.

For example:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...c,wry3Oq,12213

You are giving up NSS/MSS, but not a lot else... so a ~4% loss. You have all of the important bear talents. You will want to swap glyphs around for specific fights, they are the new flasks, but the defensive glyphs are not very good for bears, so you can leave the cat ones in (roar, rip) on times when you are just farming things.

You can swap points around if you want; one variant that picks up improved mangle and iLotP. (To improve soloing and questing)
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...2,wrM3Oq,12213

Gearing Up:
Items like Wodin's Necklace and the Vendor DPS cloak are solid tanking items as well; those work well for both cat and bear form, so represent good early picks if you are limited on points. The 4p set, sack of wonder, vendor belt, AH boots all represent really good cat and bear items.

Agility is a solid stat for both cats and bears; not as good as stamina for survivability, nor as good as armor pen for DPS... but its in the region of 85% effectiveness for both. While you are sharing items between sets gemming for agility, agility/stam, or agility/hit in the shared items is an option you should consider (it depends a lot on your other gear, your role in your guild, etc.)

Rotations:
If you have shredding attacks, you'll follow the same priority as other cat druids. The only tricky concept is that you often need to wait before applying rake, rip, or roar or if you have 5 combo points. (If you have Impr. Mangle + Glyph it is still the same, except replace shred with mangle.)

0. Keep Mangle, Faerie Fire up
1. Keep Savage Roar up (use however many cp you have available)
2. Keep Rip up (use 5 combo points), don't clip
3. Keep Rake up, don't clip
4. Shred to build combo points

The Big DPS Sekrit: if you have 5 combo points, aren't at max energy, and rip/rake/roar are ticking along happily, wait.

[arel00]

a 4-8% loss in DPS is huge, and there is really nothing more to say about that.
You want to have an idea? Play with cat gear and a normal Cat spec, but don't take Naturalist. We'll see after your first raid.
Just for thumbnail math, when you're doing 12k DPS, 8% means losing 960dps.

As I was saying, one thing is doing DPS during "tank downtime", like, as mentioned, while fighting Festergut. Another is trying to be a DPS when you need less tanks (say, Saurfang if you run the rest with 3) and while keeping a Bear build.

Everything is fun while you idle and PuG. But as far as "serious" raiding goes, hybrid feral is DEAD.

[Auroro]

One, I was talking about cloaks. Which have no Engineering armor enchant, at all. Two, I know perfectly well how bonus armor works, probably more in depths than you, thanks. Three, let's try not to be ridiculous: the only external % modifier over agility you get in raids is Blessing of Kings, which gives you THREE more agility points over that enchant (flat talent-modifiers already included).

Armor on cloak, when we're talking about ICC, is better than agility. Period. The scaling of agility is a COMPLETE-NON-ISSUE when talking about these values. I repeat: it's 3 points.
You're usually accurate in your statements Auroro, but this time, you're way off.

Armor is not that helpful where with agility we get dodge, crit, and armor.

MoW, King effect the stat.

(22 agility+37 agility)*(2% (IMoW)+10% (BoK)+6%(SotF))= 69.62 agility

without IMoW, SotF, and KIng you would have 59 agility.

That is 10.62 agility which can help with Crit, Dodge, and Armor.

Armor does not get any other boost but bear form and blizzard remove the armor % modifier toward green color armor. So that armor does nothing else but sit there.

Are you telling me that you skip Survival of the Fittest, and Improved Mark of the Wild when you did your math?

Armor does not help with threat. It only deal with survival and that it. You need threat and survival to be a good tank. Choosing survival can bite back on your raid when you have no threat however choosing agility would not since it help a lot more with both threat and survival.

[Yohassakura]

Armor is not that helpful where with agility we get dodge, crit, and armor.

MoW, King effect the stat.

(22 agility+37 agility)*(2% (IMoW)+10% (BoK)+6%(SotF))= 69.62 agility

without IMoW, SotF, and KIng you would have 59 agility.

You're adding the base motw onto the agi-cloak enchant. To make it fair you'd also have to add the base motw onto the armor enchant.

It's 2.15~ armor per agility (unbuffed in bear form).

22*2.15 -> 47.3 armor (unbuffed, but talented, bear form).
22 agi -> 0.30066666...7 (unbuffed, talented, bear form) dodge %.
22 agi -> 0.286 (unbuffed, talented, bear form) crit %.

vs

225 armor

...

Armor pl0x!

Armor does not help with threat. It only deal with survival and that it. You need threat and survival to be a good tank. Choosing survival can bite back on your raid when you have no threat however choosing agility would not since it help a lot more with both threat and survival.

The amount of threat that you'd gain from that tiny bit of crit is so minimal that the effect is negligable. You'd have more of an increase by enchanting armsman on your gloves.

[Cortano]

a 4-8% loss in DPS is huge, and there is really nothing more to say about that.

TOTALLY ABSOLUTELY AMAZINGLY WRONG!

There is a great deal to say about that, so lets put that into context.

Damage against Marrowgar, average of 50 guilds fights (that went on to kill the Lich King) in the last two weeks:

			Average		StdDev
Warrior	Fury    	14,955		  928
Rogue 	Combat 		14,771		1,072
Mage 	Fire 		13,795		  854
Rogue 	Assn 		13,783		  445
Paladin Ret 		13,516		  705
Druid 	Feral 		13,377		  776
Mage 	Arcane 		13,247		  833
Hunter 	Marks 		13,147		  454
Warlock Affl 		13,075		  804
DK 	Frost 		12,912		  776
Warlock Dem 		12,896		  625
Shaman 	Enh 		12,888		  628
DK 	Unholy 		12,853		  668
Druid 	Balance 	12,823		  381
Shaman 	Elem		12,759      	  440
Priest 	Shadow     	12,646		  703
Warlock Destruct 	12,307		  630
Hunter 	Survival 	11,721		  492
Warrior Arms 		11,659		  567
DK 	Blood 		11,657		  777
			------ 		-----
			13,039		  678

For a feral druid, a 5% loss in DPS is a 670 DPS loss; less than the standard deviation of druid DPS. It is not a completely trivial loss, but you wouldn't be able to detect it without averaging it across multiple fights and doing some statistical analysis.

That DPS loss is 40% of the DPS loss you take by bringing a feral druid instead of a combat rogue or fury warrior. The DPS loss we are talking about is a significantly smaller than a gap that raids already accept for bringing hybrids.

With the DPS loss we are talking about, a feral would do average damage on par with demonology warlocks, enhancement shaman, unholy DKS, balance druids, elemental shamans and shadow priests. Which is to say, you are doing DPS competitive with the bulk of the DPS on a raid.

You are also somewhat better off than survival hunters, arms warriors, blood DKs ... and not even mentioning the absolute foolishness of bringing a BM hunter, frost mage, or subtlety rogue along (although many guilds do, and somehow manage to progress just fine!)

So, to come back to the point.

The loss is not 'huge'; it is a loss you should feel rather comfortable with. It is a loss to be sure, and if you are 100% focused on DPS, probably not worth paying. On the other hand, if you were trying to decide whether to swap to your 100% boomkin DPS off-spec, knowing that you can do the same damage as a feral in your tanking spec is a very valuable thing to know.

You expect some loss for having a more flexible spec. You are not going to be able to do everything as well as a highly focused specialist. You need to decide whether the loss of DPS is worth the flexibility.

From a tanking point of view, picking up the DPS talents is pretty attractive: there is almost no downside to picking up the talents to do 95% of the DPS of a focused DPS spec. From a DPS point of view, that difference is sufficiently small that you could reasonably consider using your off-spec to do something different entirely.

[bavarcarus]

I didn't know there was another post when I lazily didn't quote who I was responding to. TBH, I didn't even read your post due to the complete lack of interest in hybrid speccing.

You're adding the base motw onto the agi-cloak enchant. To make it fair you'd also have to add the base motw onto the armor enchant.

It's 2.15~ armor per agility (unbuffed in bear form).

22*2.15 -> 47.3 armor (unbuffed, but talented, bear form).
22 agi -> 0.30066666...7 (unbuffed, talented, bear form) dodge %.
22 agi -> 0.286 (unbuffed, talented, bear form) crit %.

vs

225 armor

...

Armor pl0x!



The amount of threat that you'd gain from that tiny bit of crit is so minimal that the effect is negligable. You'd have more of an increase by enchanting armsman on your gloves.

I'll take the dodge crit and armor XD

[Cortano]

I'll take the dodge crit and armor XD

That seems REALLY shortsighted... only spending a dozen of your talent points. I think you might be able to improve your game slightly by spending the rest of them.

[arel00]

Armor is not that helpful where with agility we get dodge, crit, and armor.

MoW, King effect the stat.

(22 agility+37 agility)*(2% (IMoW)+10% (BoK)+6%(SotF))= 69.62 agility

without IMoW, SotF, and KIng you would have 59 agility.

That is 10.62 agility which can help with Crit, Dodge, and Armor.

Armor does not get any other boost but bear form and blizzard remove the armor % modifier toward green color armor. So that armor does nothing else but sit there.

Are you telling me that you skip Survival of the Fittest, and Improved Mark of the Wild when you did your math?

Armor does not help with threat. It only deal with survival and that it. You need threat and survival to be a good tank. Choosing survival can bite back on your raid when you have no threat however choosing agility would not since it help a lot more with both threat and survival.

Don't make me shout at you. Just don't.

First, Mark of the Wild, or Strength of Earth, or any other STATIC modifiers don't count when comparing enchants. Adding those values is just plain retarded. You get MotW agility and SoE agility REGARDLESS of your cloak enchant.
By your reasoning, I should have added 37agi from MotW to the armor enchant as well. Let's not be stupid, shall we?

What you count in are the %-based modifiers. ONLY THOSE. Which means, as far as raid buffs go, only Blessing of Kings.
OF COURSE I've taken into account SotF and Imp.MotW, that why i said "flat talent modifiers already included".
Since you can't grab it by reasoning, let's type it down: 22 * 1.02 (Imp.MotW) * 1.06 (SotF) * 1.1 (Kings) = 26.17
It's 4 points from the base value. If you take into account that we always have those talents, strictly the "raid" impact is 3, since you have 23.79 post talents.

It gets down to choosing roughly 170 extra armor versus 0.3% dodge and 0.2% crit.
I'll take the armor, hands down, anytime.

---------- Post added 2010-06-24 at 09:46 PM ----------

Added a response: flexibility is not worth the loss in a real raid environment.
You'll cover one or two roles, and guess what? Dual spec allows for two different setups. And don't tell me you'll be covering three different roles in a single raid, because that's utter bullshit.
All-roles-druidism was fun, back in 1.8. It died with TBC, and it won't come back. Pick your role(s), specialize on that, and top your stats. That's what raiders do.

It doesn't matter how you look at it Cortano: a 5% loss is extremely relevant. As I said, try to convince you raid leader you can live skipping Naturalist on your talent build, "because that is less than the standard deviation". I'd like to see the answer, really.

Again: it's all fun and games, while you're just slacking and PuGing. Don't expect high end progression with gimped stats tho. Ain't gonna happen.

[Cortano]

It doesn't matter how you look at it Cortano: a 5% loss is extremely relevant. As I said, try to convince you raid leader you can live skipping Naturalist on your talent build, "because that is less than the standard deviation". I'd like to see the answer, really.

Propaganda: Straw man
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

No one has ever suggested going without naturalist, stop bring up idiotic ideas that no one but you has suggested simply because you think you can win an argument that no one but you is having.

Flexibility is often worth the trade off; it is not the choice that everyone will make, but understanding the trade-offs, and making an informed decision is at least a valid way to approach a raid set-up rather than the small-minded dogmatism that you seem to love.

Pick your role(s), specialize on that, and top your stats. That's what raiders do.

First, raiders don't specialize on their OFF-SPEC. They focus on their MAIN spec, there are plenty of raiders who don't even have a viable off-spec, let alone one 95% as effective as the main spec players.

Second, good raiders will also look at how to fill in gaps in the raid, add value outside of their narrowly defined "main" role. You don't need to stop with a main spec, as you seem to be implying, and refuse to do anything else.

There is always a challenge at getting the right people to do the job. A 25-man raid might need 3 tanks, but on many fights, the third tank will be DPSing. (and you have have obscure cases like festergut, where one of the tanks can DPS for large stretches of time.) Because attendance isn't 100%, you need several extra tanks to ensure you have enough tanks on all nights. and you need at least 4 tanks for 10-mans.

Every time I have 5 tanks at a raid and not one of them has with a viable DPS spec because they "picked tanking" and are "specialized" at it... well, what you describe really goes against what raid leaders want. It is OK to have a couple really focused guys, but you also want a couple that people can use to fill in the gaps.

try to convince you raid leader you can live skipping Naturalist on your talent build, "because that is less than the standard deviation". I'd like to see the answer, really.

As someone who has led raids for a very, very long time I don't really see why you expect a raid leader to be that demanding on secondary roles and off-specs. My experience is that when you get someone where you can actually use them in a secondary role with ONLY a 5% lack of effectiveness it is superb. Slightly unusual though, and not having a 100% effective secondary role is definitely not a recruitment red-flag, let alone something I am going to kick a long-term raider out for. (That is not saying that some guilds may have these kind of requirements on off-specs, but that is not the usual case; typically, an raid-useful off-spec is a bonus, not a requirement. For feral tanks though, it is kind of a freebie.)

[arel00]

Naturalist was a random example of losing a comparable amount of DPS. If you don't understand what a metaphor is, then don't bother answering.

Guilds policies are different. You've been raid leading for a while, so have I. I've been both a RL and an officer in my gaming history, so I do have my share of that as well.
If you're down with cutting some slack to people, all is good. Don't take that for granted, I assure you that's not the case in all the guilds. When you're making alt raids on a regular basis just to get around limited attempts and so on, expecting secondary roles from people is nothing strange. Often, it is more attractive than switching around raiders in between bosses, another thing that I'm sure you know it's a very common habit.

You call it small-minded dogmatism, I call it optimization. Granted, I don't expect you to agree, so it's merely a clarification. The main point asked by that poster has been solved, so this is the end of it.