My experiences as a fresh level 80 feral DPS Druid (Patch 3.3)

[norsk]

This post is focused mainly on Feral DPS but any druid might find some of this info useful

As a heads up I debated whether to take the time to make this post as I am still fairly noobish when it comes to druids, but I figured since after googling and reading all the information I could I still had plenty of stupid questions to ask my guildmates/friends so I figured I would just post here to possibly help anyone else out that might be a level 80 blue/green mangle spamming kitten. I quit at level 74 after WotLK came out and just resubbed a week ago and hit 80 2 days ago, and wow I've completely been playing this class wrong.

So back to the thread title, you're level 80, now what? ???

Hopefully you've used the dungeon finder thing at least once, so assuming you have this will be your golden ticket to epics. Every day you can use it to get 2 free emblems of triumph from 1 regular dungeon, and as many as you have time for from heroic dungeons. Are you good enough for heroics? I don't know, I didn't think I was but I queued anyways and in a few minutes I was in my first heroic dungeon. I decided to give everyone a heads up and let them know I was a complete noob, and... no one said a thing. They mowed through the dungeon within 15-20 minutes and I was able to pick up a new blue helmet, 3 triumph emblems, and 2 frost emblems (Don't worry about the frost emblems for now, the triumph ones are what you want). I don't know if I can recommend just jumping into heroics for everyone, but at least to my credit I had decent gear from running instances from 75-80 and according to Gearscore I was good to go.

I will get into in a sec my awakening with kitty DPS, but first let me tell you what your emblems of triumph will do you for you: http://goo.gl/NCaG

All this T9 epicness can be yours for the simple price of 25-50 emblems of triumph a piece. Now take note now that you don't want to just willy nilly buy every Runetotem item for the set, as you only need 2/4 to complete the set bonus, and the quartermaster sells the Helm of Lethal Intent for 75 emblems and it is much much better. From the vendors you can pick up epic Head, Shoulder, Chest, Hands, Legs, jewlery, trinkets, and an idol. After running regular/heroic dungeons you should be able to pick up the rest (oh and PS you can use Polearms now, trainable in Undercity, /smackhead). Now I have no idea if the jewlery, trinket, or idol are something that you want to spend emblems on, hopefully some expert from the forums will read this and provide some words of wisdom, but for now pick up those 4 set pieces and the 75 emblem helm.

So where is this vendor? In the Argent Tournament Grounds. For those of you that don't know the Argent Tournament Grounds can either be flown to in Icecrown at 76,24 (NE) or there's a direct flight to there in Dalaran from another Flight Master right next to the main one (I think you have to be level 80). In the grounds there's a mailbox, innkeeper, vendors, and awesome dailies which will get you gold and eventually Staff of Feral Furries (http://goo.gl/31y1). Also I will add that you should look into getting one of the Tabards you can get now that will increase you reputation with a specific faction in any heroic you run, I'm nearly exalted from neutral with Ebon Blade now:

Tabard of the Argent Crusade
Tabard of the Ebon Blade
Tabard of the Kirin Tor
Tabard of the Wyrmrest Accord

Ok so now you have some direction for what gear to get with your kitty, but what about effectively DPSing in instances?

From levels 1-80 I basically listened to music and spammed claw/mangle followed by ferocious bite. Rake wasn't even on my actionbars until yesterday, and I don't even think I had ever used shred. What can I say? I was a noob and I didn't really care at the time about effectively using my damage, I just wanted instant flight form and stealth/healing capabilities.

So as you may have read, in order to maximize DPS you need to use more than just mangle and ferocious bite. Boss fights are different than trash mobs, and trash mobs differ by instance, and in every instance you have a different tank and different group make up. The basics, reiterated from many other posts, are:

• Fraerie Fire!
• Keep Mangle up to maximize your DPS abilities: Rake, Shred, Rip
• Keep Rake up as it is 35 energy and does good damage when mangle is up
• Keep Savage Roar (SR) up as this increases all your damage by 30-33%
• Keep Rip up, but don't use rip unless you have SR active (Mangle boosts bleed damage regardless of when it was put on the target)
• Use Shred to build up combo points, shred does more damage than mangle as shred's damage is increased by mangle
• Don't use Shred unless mangle is active
• Attack from the NPC's back whenever possible as this increases your chance to hit
• SR is most important, watch this buff
• If Rip is up, Rake is up, Mangle is up, and you're sitting on 5 combo points, now you can use Ferocious Bite

This is generally what I do with bosses, and somewhat what I do with trash mobs. With trash mobs it depends on how much health they have, how many of them there are, and how geared your group is. Often times in heroics I'm struggling to get even 5 combo points on a mob, so usually I just open with Mangle, Rake, Savage Roar, and if I can get off enough Shreds to get to 5 combo points I will Savage Roar again if there are more mobs left, or Ferocious Bite. Other times I just spam swipe (with SR active!) since the tank is able to pull basically the entire dungeon and keep aggro on him while all the mobs are AoEd away.

Gearscore tells me I'm sitting at a score of 3327 right now, and before using the above methods I was doing crap DPS and was always far below on recount. After changing my attack strategy completely, I can consistently pull off 1500 DPS and depending on the instance 1800+. Without changing my gear and using my old methods, I was around 1100-1300 DPS.

Well that's all I have to say. Sorry if I wasted your time, but don't worry because that also means I wasted mine =) Hopefully some information in here will be useful for those new to patch 3.3, or Druids in general.

If you're so inclined, you can check out my current Armory Link for spec/gear: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...9;arak&n=Norsk

Feel free to update/change/delete my post, or offer suggestions for my post or my Druid

[Elunedra]

m8 your post is to long u wont get a lot of help like this ^^

i however got a level 80 paladin like 5 days ago was 2.6K gs when i dingned and now i am 4.3K whit simpely farming herroic and buying T9

[Deleted]

I am fairly sure he is trying to write a guide. Problem is, nobody is going to click into a guide looking like that, because you have no idea what the topic is really about from reading its name.

Then again, its not really a guide, since half of it is a "I think i can.." and ending with asking for tips.

Very strange..

[Sunix]

Wall of text crits you for 9001.

[fuknfreak]

^ It's over NINE THOUSAND

[schyter]

text to long i will just say, yeah go for it dude

[Simixiz]

Well written, I must say. But as mentioned, the topic might be a bit confusing.


(For the guys that can't be bothered to read "long" posts, just don't read forums, kkthxbye)

[getefix]

Is this a guide?

Guides should rarely have any first person references in them. You're not writing an autobiography, you're supposed to be telling other people how to do something.

Guides should also be split into sections so people can ignore what they don't need and jump to what they do need.

This guide is bloated with a lot of things that are already in the other stickied guides. A list of starter gear would be very useful and where it comes from. DPS priority system is listed in the Cat Guide already.

If it's not a guide then new cats probably won't read it.

[norsk]

Was just posting about what I experienced when I turned 80. If it was helpful great, if it was interesting great, if it was none of the above and you hate me for wasting your time then woopsies.

I thought the thread title was pretty self-explanatory... especially if once you opened the thread you at least read the first line to find out it was about feral dps.

I basically made the thread I wished I had found after I turned level 80, since the only info I found with ease was a spec to use and a good rotation for DPS.

I guess I could have just named the thread 'My experiences as a fresh level 80 feral DPS Druid (Patch 3.3+)'

[nwo]

If you're doing only 1k dps then you should not be dpsing heroics until you are geared. You can easily heal any heroic with a 3k gear score or even less. Go heal until you collect enough badges to spend on gear for your main spec.

[Elunedra]

If you're doing only 1k dps then you should not be dpsing heroics until you are geared. You can easily heal any heroic with a 3k gear score or even less. Go heal until you collect enough badges to spend on gear for your main spec.

whit 3K gs u can realy heal since the tank intantly leaves whne he ses your gear

i got 4.3K gs now and soemtimes they stil whine

[Deleted]

People looking only at gearscore aren't really worth playing with. If you get into a heroic, you must have adequete gear for it, and you would obviously not sign up for heroics if you knew it was beneith your skills - right?