Curious (Disc/ Feral Druid)

[Tiger]

Ok so me and a friend will be starting a 2v2 team and I was just curious on what gear I should get.
My priest will be using full pvp gear with about 800-1000 resil I believe.
Now my question is what should I gear towards?
Right now I have a full PVE set.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...+Peak&n=Trigor

Right now I have no pvp gear, I however have many emblems and some arena points (about 1400) so I should be able to get a full set of deadly gear fairly easily.

Should I use PVE gear while hoping that the dps goes after my healer?
Should I get a mix of both pvp and pve gear for some resil?
Or should I get a full set of pvp gear?

Im also curious to hear from others? Ive been reading that I should be in cat form most of the time?

[Nõ]

Hi Tiger. This is Nõ from Demon Soul-US and we run your comp at around 2500. I usually run as much resil as I can without gemming or enchanting for it with a few exceptions for trinkets and maybe a ring or two. At the very least that set bonus from 4 piece pvp (run speed in forms), and the glove bonus (-15 energy on maim, it lets you kick) are great. You just want to use as much as you can get away with really. If you get blown up by a 2 dps team like mage rogue and you think you played it right, you need some more resilience. Also, when we were lower than this rogue teams (which are the biggest issue for our comp) would typically get on, and stay on my priest letting me race them to trade healers. In this case youd want some pve gear.

The issue is if youre talking about furious though, thats a very marginal difference between that and t7.5, or t8.5 even. Typically youll be trading something like 30 or 40 AP and a wealth of haste or crit rating for 50 or 60 resilience and stam which isnt all bad. To answer your question, I would go for as much pvp gear as you can as it will make it easier. with root, cyclone, innervate, and shadowfiend its hard to out of mana your team, so you can afford to be lower dps than the other guy, but to be able to tank him in cat.

There are a few reasons you need to stay cat if you want to win. Bear form has its place, but for this comp 2s is not it. Bear has a built-in MS if you consider some math to taking damage in it and then trying to get topped up. Due to nurturing instinct 2/2 you have an effective 25% less healing incoming anyhow. If you jump into bear at 40% and then catch a penance your hp will rise to maybe 75%, as opposed to being in cat and catching that penance and going to full. Also, cats run speed advantage, especially in a 2 dps situation where you probably have dash up for the whole fight, or at least the important part of it where your healer catches a cc and youre getting blown up, can make it really easy to dive behind that pillar and avoid an auto-crit frost mage frostbolt or an 8k chaos bolt followed by a 10k conflag.

The only time ive found going bear is good is if your healer is sapped and you open on the priest, get maybe 3-4 combo points as fast as you can to use savage roar off of later, then jump bear and get ready to tank til his sap falls off. Hope this helped!

[talrob]

As a team facing druids I'm not so sure about just staying cat, I've seen some ferals do some sick stuff with charge and bash quick shifting.

[Ordin]

Thanks for the info about cat vs bear, that's very helpful.

I've started running disc+feral 2v2 with my brother and we've been running into issues with 2 dps rogue teams and he's always wondering if he should go bear or stay in cat.

Our biggest problem is Unholy DK+Paladin (either prot or holy). We cannot do anything to this team and it is the cause for about 80% of our losses.

If you have any advice for dealing with this team, it'd be very appreciated.

Paladins basically have infinite mana and it is so easy for a paladin or DK to turtle if they ever get into a bad spot, we never get close to a kill. We try to put the druid on the dk and cc chain the paladin with a cyclone+psychic scream, but that is typically only enough time to get him to 20-30% and then he just gets healed back to full right away.

[feraldruid_1]

Hey Nõ or any other ferals who run this comp,

I run this comp with a buddy of mine (disc priest) and we are hovering around 1900. I'm currently mangle spec since I found it more difficult to position myself behind the enemy target since new changes to maim.

Do you have any tips on handling rogue/mage. Normally, I try and wait for the rogue to show himself and bleed him to death while throwing on a cyclone to stall the mage. I'm always interested in hearing how the higher level folks do it.

To be honest, I could use some help on overall big picture strategies that you implement from a feral's perspective. I also noticed that you put 2 in the shapeshifting reduction. Do you find that primal tenacity is not enough given your gameplay style.

Thanks all for any help


Any overall tips would be

[Nõ]

Yeah when i said cat was the form to be in for 2s I didnt mean that you dont do offcharging and bashing heh. You just want to stay out of bear if you have a rogue, war, or dk on you because its easy for those teams to just keep on top of you, make you stay bear, and play offense on your healer for the rest of the game while you never get topped back up. Dk/Holy Pally is nearly free points for this comp if you do it right. Truth be told, its what we like to see the most now. Run a raid dps rotation of bleeds on the dk, and if you ever see a big holy light coming and you have full bleeds up and a good amount of time on savage roar you feral charge the HL. Once you feral charge that HL let your healer know you need help killing the dk. Cyclone the pally you just charged, and then you go cat and get back on the dk with bleeds on him. TF and berserk and try to shred him out while your healer heads to the cycloned paladin for a fear. Once pally is feared, DK is bleeding out and being berserked on, your priest can now turn around and holyfire SWD the dk. If pally bubbles try to get a cyclone on the DK as soon as possible. With no MS if the pally gets to spam heal the dk while you just drop damage into him, he'll catch a crit and youll be back to step one. 3 cyclones on the dk here with a mass dispell on the pally and now you just have to clean up. Thats a pretty optimal situation, odds are youll catch a mind freeze or strangulate but at least at this point his bubbles down.

We play pretty offensive against that comp, fearing both at the same time will win games if you can work that out. Some stuff ive noticed about the comp. If im going to start on the other teams healer I rarely will open up on it. I usually will start on the dps class as it heads to my priest, get 5 combo points on it, and depending on that DPSers healer, put a cc on it and head to its healer. If its healer can dispell root like a pally or priest, the cc is cyclone, if its healer cant like a resto druid, its a root. They will either trinket the cc to start on your healer, letting your healer psychic scream if it has to to stay up, or it will sit in the cc letting you get a nice ten second lead on their healer. Now maintain that dps as your target as you head to the healer and you get to use your 5 CPs on their dps to savage roar, and then start up some dps on the healer. Its good to never let combo points go to waste. If you know you need to switch targets to help peel in a bad spot, or let your healer drink, its good to just roar off your "wasted points" and start peeling.

Mage/rogue is a bear for this comp, so you kind of have to try and cheese it in my experience. We will usually ride a pillar really hard, try to have your priest shadow word death the incoming polymorphs, shift as many freezes as you can, and slowly but surely keep dots on the rogue (rake, faerie fire, rip, lacerate). If its a really great mage rogue and they get the opener perfect I dont get to take much action, but you can still win if youre cheesy. Your priests reflective shield, your thorns, and shadow fiend are more than enough to kill their rogue in 15 seconds or so. Use those, hug pillars, profit. If youre a tauren,running around a pillar away from the rogue and then queuing up a warstomp is pretty good because theyll usually run right into it and then you get a free rake, or cyclone.


Oh also, the reason I have two into cheaper shifting is mostly druid dk. The amount of times youll have to shift to get a kill in that comp is incredible. In order to avoid catching hibernates, roots, and sit in chains of ice if youre not in melee range your probably just shifting cat to cat to cat to cat to get into melee range, if theyre doing it right. If you run out of mana in arena you have to sit and drink, and that means their team gets to go crazy on your priest, which wont take long to kill, so yeah, cheap shifting ftw.

[Ordin]

Thanks a ton. I forwarded your reply to my brother since the advice is primarily about what the feral druid needs to do.

Sounds like we were on the right track with the cyclone into a fear and chain cycloning the dps when the paladin bubbles. But we just have to work on the timing and using our CC at the right time.

Also sounds like the druid needs to drive the team as far as when to CC. We tend to plan our CC around my psychic scream cooldown, but it sounds like we should plan it around the druid's combo points and dps cooldowns.

Does your priest assist in DPS in other situations? I struggle with knowing when I should dps, mana burn, dispel spam, or heal.

[feraldruid_1]

Thanks for the info No,

It was very helpful.

If it weren't for the druid/DK combo, would you not have taken the 2 points in cheaper shape shifting?

Also, are you constantly killing hunter and lock pets in each arena fight?

[Nõ]

@ordin
If my priest has open GCDs with which to play offense but isnt in range to set up fears, rather than damage he will either be dispelling or burning. Priest damage spells are expensive and this is a comp that should dominate the mana game once you take into account fiend, innervate, and mana burns. If we cant burst the dk with the rotation I layed out above, we can usually run the paladin oom without using innervate. Dont get to overzealous though. Spamming mana burn on a shaman whos good about dropping grounding is as bad as getting burned yourself, since its taking mana off you to cast, and taking nearly nothing off him to drop a ground.

@feraldruid_01
I would probably still have taken the cheap shifting due to rogue/druid which is now prevalent, and just dk/healer. Being able to shift at a whim and never go oom is great. As an arena feral you have a lot to think about so adding a mana bar into the equation by not speccing for cheap shifts is only going to make it worse. If I were constantly facing hunter/healer and warlock/healer I would be constantly killing pets, but due to blizzard not really giving those classes or specs what they need those two comps have seemed to fade out of the spotlight. Our strat versus hunter healer is drag pet around and kill it while line of sighting as much damage as possible and cleansing every viper and wyvern (if youre really good you can pre-abolish wyvern, try it XD). Against lock/healer try to run the pet around with your priest and kill it til he makes a void, once they make a void they have really softened their edge by taking out their pet purge and silence so then you just train the warlock and dominate the mana game. If it gets scary dont be afraid to just start stunning him and holding him down with cyclones instead of a raid dps rotation because like i said, once he has a void out and youre feral is on top of him you should do terrible terrible things to their mana while leaving them no oppurtunities to get a kill.

[feraldruid_1]

Hey Nõ

Thanks again for the tips. I plan to try play with all pvp gear at 760 resi instead of the current 490 that I have been running with. I was using two piece Valorous for the rip bonus and throwing in some raid gear for rings and neck.

Going full pvp I drop about 200AP and 3% crit. Would you say that the t7.5 bonus is less important than the 4 piece pvp set bonus? And if you have any last tips to throw in about playing with a survivability mentality, I'd appreciate it.

[Nõ]

I wouldn't worry about that rip bonus too much. Rip is plenty long with the shred or rip glyph anyhow. The run speed is great because it puts you up over ghost wolf and cheetah form so you can save your intercepts for more important things than catching up to people. Also, its good for stealth speed so you can get on the other teams priest before they sap and fully dispell then jump on yours. Run speed really is one of the best things we have going for us. As far as surviving, put barkskin on a good bind that you can click quickly, as well as survival instincts. Dont be afraid to cyclone melee that are on you either. If they spend a GCD locking your nature school thats a gcd they didnt spend dropping damage into you. If your healer is cc'd and near a pillar dont be afraid to dive behind it. Lets see...in mage rogue a lot of times your priest will have images or an elemental attacking him, and if hes doing it right hes near a pillar. If things get ugly you can feral charge to one of the things on him and get out of line of sight from the middle of the arena where the mage or rogue tried to drag you. Same thing with felhunters and succubus. If youre trying to run a paladin or priest out of mana spam FFF on em when you have 0-20 energy because a lot of them will chain dispell this not realizing its not on a cooldown and in turn will spend a lot more mana trying to heal through your damage. If your healer has to fear the dps and not both people on their team you can also use FFF to give his fear some dispell protection. If youre worried about having your innervate dispelled you can use it the same time as pain suppression to give it some of the dispell protection PS provides. I think im out of tips, If I think of more i'll add em in.

[feraldruid_1]

Great tips.

I haven't been using FFF as an offensive weapon at all. I'll toss it on a rogue or druid to prevent stealth but I was certainly not using it as often as I should have. Generally when you are below 20 energy as cat, are you spamming it on whoever you are fighting?

I had a few more questions that was looking to get answers for.

If you've ripped a warrior, do generally still put roots on him even though with each tick the root may break? Or do you make sure that there are no bleeds on the warrior before you root.

Also, what's are some things for me to consider in pre-abolishing Wyvern sting.

Lastly, are there any macros that you use that allow you to shapeshift from bear to bear or cat to cat when stunned. Currently, I'm just pressing the keybind twice which unfortunately, opens up the door to getting caught in human form.

Thanks for the help

[Keelie]

Good tips, No. We play the Feral/Disc comp at about 2100, and we use essentially the same strats as you. We've only played about 200 matches, but we'd like to work our way up to Gladiator range, so it's comforting to know that we're doing it right.

We sometimes do have trouble with my Feral getting trapped in Bear against Rogues, Warriors and DKs (not so much) - it's a losing match if the Feral is Bear, so we've been trying to CC the melee and training the healer in that situation. I usually try to knock the melee with a Fear or just Pain Suppression my kitty to allow him to get back to doing damage. I've been trying to use other CC like Mind Control in that situation, but I don't do it often, right now.

Rogues are usually the worst in terms of them being able to control and peel, because they can put out enough damage while continuously applying Wound and Crippling, whereas a Spamstring Warrior or a Chains of Ice-ing DK cuts into their damage by spamming snares that my Feral is Powershifting. The DK doesn't have a MS, and since Unholy DKs do a lot of spell damage, I'm not worried about the bear/cat versus DKs. The Warrior can be tricky, but he is easily CC-able with Cyclones, Roots and some Fears. So that just leaves Rogues. In lower brackets, the Rogues used to go on me, which was a win for us, but now they sit on my Feral, so it can be a tougher fight.

Against Rogue/Priest, we usually train the Priest. My Feral opens on their Priest immediately and stuns him up a bit to prevent the Mana Burns and Dispels, because I usually get Sapped, despite my best efforts to get in combat. He goes Bear and controls the Priest a bit, until either the Rogue opens on him or me. If he opens on me, my Feral goes kitty and just destroys him. Otherwise, we try to burn some of the Rogue's CDs and trinket, then CC him and kill his Priest.

I'm pretty confident about Rogue/Priest matches now, but for awhile, they were hard for us.

Thanks.

[Nõ]

@feraldruid_01
If you want your root to stick on a warrior, yeah I would watch out for bleeds. It doesn't take much at all to break root and I would bet a savaged roared crit rip and rake tick would be more than enough. As far as trying to pre-abolish a wyvern on yourself the biggest thing to look for is when the last time they used it was (and when it comes up again), or if they ever get a "lock and load" and get an opportunity to burst one of you two down. Hex is similar this way, but you'll never be the candidate because you can shift it. For your third question, im double tapping for cat cat and bear bear as well, and yes, if im trying to double tap to drop snare and eat a kidney, im stuck in tauren taking loads of damage. Maybe someone else can address the issue and help us both.

@Keelie
Mind Control is really high risk, I would try to stay away from it. Your rogue strat seems solid. Well, as solid as a strat for rogues is going to get for this comp anyway.

[Ordin]

@feraldruid_01
For your third question, im double tapping for cat cat and bear bear as well, and yes, if im trying to double tap to drop snare and eat a kidney, im stuck in tauren taking loads of damage. Maybe someone else can address the issue and help us both.

If you change all of your shape-shifting key binds into macros that look like this:

/cast !Cat Form

then you will shift from cat to cat without ever entering tauren form (and it will do it in 1 key press instead of 2). I'm not sure if this will prevent you from accidentally shifting out of a form while stunned though, haven't tested it.


The other option would be to have a "power shift" macro that you hit anytime you want to shift in and out of whatever form you are in. To have 1 macro that instantly shifts you out and back in to whatever form you're in you'd make a macro that looks like this:

/cast [stance:1] !Dire Bear Form
/cast [stance:2] !Aquatic Form
/cast [stance:3] !Cat Form
/cast [stance:4] !Travel Form

[feraldruid_1]

No,
What's an effective way to handle totems?

And also, do you have any suggestions for keeping your warrior off of your disc priest. Many times I'll double cyc and then throw in a root. Any additional thoughts would be much appreciated.

Thanks!