XXL Guide to Feral PvP: Cataclysm Edition

[Balduvian]

Thanks so much for this guide! While I understand you can't please everyone--mostly other Feral veterans--I find this extremely helpful. I leveled as purely resto during WotLK and leveled from 80-85 in Cata purely by herbing (scribe alt lol), and now I'm enjoying BGs without any prior knowledge about Feral pvp with the help of your work.

Thanks! And welcome to the Feral PvP community.


Anyways! Chardev updated its database so I was able to make an Ilvl 371 as well as an Ilvl 384 set now. Link(s) can be found down below and in the guide.

---> Chardev Profiler Ilvl 371 <---
---> Chardev Profiler Ilvl 384 <---

[axxey]

Is there a reason for so much hit?

[Balduvian]

Is there a reason for so much hit?

"So much hit?"

As far as I can see, the first profiler has 5%, the second one has 5.03%.

Given the fact that the cap is 5%, I can't say it's really a whole lot more then what you should have.

[SumoSizeIt]

So after today's hotfixes, namely

• Unheeded Warning now grants 1926 attack power, instead of 680 weapon damage.

Does this change your trinket recommendations toward this item at all?

[heatrage]

Thanks alot for putting the time in to making and updating this guide!

Started playing my druid again. Not played him since mid wrath!

Keep up the good work.

[Zstr]

So after today's hotfixes, namely

Does this change your trinket recommendations toward this item at all?

I didn't even use it for pvp, thought it is waste of time waiting for proc plus savage roar for pvp at last place
I would say use the one with resilance Ruthless Gladiator's Badge of Conquest

or this Ancient Petrified Seed , have just 1 min cd really nice
nice burst dmg for killing flag carrier or arena enemy

[Balduvian]

So after today's hotfixes, namely

Does this change your trinket recommendations toward this item at all?

It does. Very much.

In fact, I don't think it's even in the top 5 trinket list anymore, but I will update the trinket section on that soon when I have the time for it. Also needs some more testing etc. Plus the fact that it's TP weekend and people want me to boost them through some BG's as flagcarrier.

Cheers!

---------- Post added 2011-08-05 at 10:57 AM ----------

Small update done for the trinket section.

Unheeded Warning turns out to be still quite decent, just not as insane as it used to be. It procs 2648 AP when you're in Cat Form, so that's still quite a lot and your numbers will actually still shoot up quite a bit (Remember: it boosts everything now, not just Mangle/Shred/Ravage). The downside on this is that the procrate didn't increase, so it's not enough to remain our BiS trinket.

Matrix Restabilizer and Ancient Petrified Seed are both a whole lot better now. Ricket's Magnetic Fireballis about to be on par from the bit of testing I did so far.

Ruthless Gladiator's Badge of Conquest means only a little bit less damage-output overall, but the controlled burst is better than the RNG-burst in a lot of cases now, and the resilience is over 5% which is pretty huge. I'm personally running this trinket in every bracket right now and I have to say, I love it.

[Duilliath]

Looks like your Ricket's link is loopy. And I honestly wouldn't compare it to either of the other two. Way lower agility and burst gain. I don't much favour RNG procs either, the only reason people tolerated it in UW was due to its insane damage boost.

Ruthless makes you a lot harder to kill, which is a decent enough trade-off in my book. More and more people are starting to realise that focusing ferals can really lower the number of insta-cyclones being thrown about.

//edit: Got my weapon yesterday... sitting @ 4k resilience suddenly due to the UW change and actually starting to feel I could drop some Resilience in favour of more Agility.

[Deleted]

Hi there. Very nice guide ! used it alot after i startet as feral, after many years as resto.

I have a question to a macro.

I would like to press "F1" and Skull bash the Arena target 1. and in same macro, press "shift - F1" and do a feral charge on arena target 1.

A macro for that ? i tried to write something i worked out . but i cant link link,images or videos unte i have write a few more post.


I will try to remove some of the "LINKS" in my macros.

/cast [(A)arena1,nodead] Skull Bash(Cat Form);[(A)arena1,mod:shift,nodead] Feral Charge(Cat Form)

I also found this:
/cast [nomodifier, (A)arena1] Feral Charge(Cat Form)
/cast [modifier:shift, (A)arena1] Skull Bash(Cat Form)

[Balduvian]

Looks like your Ricket's link is loopy.

Thanks, fixed.

And I honestly wouldn't compare it to either of the other two. Way lower agility and burst gain. I don't much favour RNG procs either, the only reason people tolerated it in UW was due to its insane damage boost.

I'm comparing Ricket's to UW, not to the HC raid ones since they are obviously better now. Ricket is imo on par with UW and they're both good 3rd choices atm. In fact, the UW nerf has been hitting HARD, but it's still a pretty nice trinket. It affects all of your abilities now, and the increase is still substantial.

Ruthless makes you a lot harder to kill, which is a decent enough trade-off in my book. More and more people are starting to realise that focusing ferals can really lower the number of insta-cyclones being thrown about.

//edit: Got my weapon yesterday... sitting @ 4k resilience suddenly due to the UW change and actually starting to feel I could drop some Resilience in favour of more Agility.

Well, the ruthless trinket is nice, but as you said - 4k is just to much for a Feral. UW clearly isn't the top-choice anymore but I still prefer it over the ruthless one.

---------- Post added 2011-08-05 at 06:53 PM ----------

Hi there. Very nice guide ! used it alot after i startet as feral, after many years as resto.

I have a question to a macro.

I would like to press "F1" and Skull bash the Arena target 1. and in same macro, press "shift - F1" and do a feral charge on arena target 1.

A macro for that ? i tried to write something i worked out . but i cant link link,images or videos unte i have write a few more post.

/cast [nomodifier, (A)arena1] Feral Charge(Cat Form)
/cast [modifier:shift, (A)arena1] Skull Bash(Cat Form)

The one you made is nearly perfect, but (A) doesn't work. Change it into "@" in both cases and it should work like a charm!

[apepi]

TheSkull Bash Macro does not show the tooltip, to fix this change #showtooltip Skull Bash (Cat Form) to
#showtooltip Skull Bash(Cat Form)

[Balduvian]

TheSkull Bash Macro does not show the tooltip, to fix this change #showtooltip Skull Bash (Cat Form) to
#showtooltip Skull Bash(Cat Form)

Aye, lil' typo. Thanks!

[Stealthedbear]

Just read through your first post again. Was thinking that post 4.2 crit would be better after the buffs to shred, CP generator, and helpful for during burst stages (if you're lucky). I guess I'll try going back to mastery again see if I do better.

Also, is there a reason for 3/3 furor? I am usually not out of cat form that long (unless I've gone bear) and feel like 1/3 might be better?

[Williee]

Just read through your first post again. Was thinking that post 4.2 crit would be better after the buffs to shred, CP generator, and helpful for during burst stages (if you're lucky). I guess I'll try going back to mastery again see if I do better.

Also, is there a reason for 3/3 furor? I am usually not out of cat form that long (unless I've gone bear) and feel like 1/3 might be better?

I've switched to crit reforge, with my comp (hpal, feral and frost dk), I find having the bigger burst over the sustained dmg with higher bleeds is somewhat better. Using a tiger's fury frecious bite along with some burst from the dk usually results in cooldowns or dead opponent. But ya rly depends on your comp.

[Balduvian]

More damage on bleeds always stays good, while Crit has diminishing returns. The higher your crit, the less it's worth per point.

I find myself critting all the time anyway, and the loss of damage on bleeds is actually quite high if you reforge to Crit. According to basically every Feral Druid I talk to, and according to nearly every high-rated Feral Druid, they see a lot more damage while going with Mastery. It also helps a lot in those situations when you're being CC'd etc.

Also, with full 371 gear and 5 x 384 items I'm already sitting near 40% crit, with FB critting 65% due to talents. This will only get more as more 384 items come. I personally just don't feel like I need any more then that.

Also, is there a reason for 3/3 furor? I am usually not out of cat form that long (unless I've gone bear) and feel like 1/3 might be better?

Anything less than 3/3 means RNG. This results in a chance of not being able to use Feral Charge or Bash right away when you enter Bear Form, due to not having 10 rage. For Cat, it means that you'll lose up to 33 energy per point that you do not spend on this talent whenever you shift out. (in your case you'll even lose up to 66 energy every time). Since you'll often shift out for Cyclones, Roots, Heals, other forms and whatnot more, you'll lose energy basically every time.

There's no reason NOT to take 3/3 Furor. It's a 200% must-have talent.

[Williee]

Ty 4 the info, ima try reforging bac to mastery and see how it goes in 3s.
Didn't really notice all the crit rating only gave me ~4-5% crit which could have been ~12% bleed dmg.

[Balduvian]

Ty 4 the info, ima try reforging bac to mastery and see how it goes in 3s.
Didn't really notice all the crit rating only gave me ~4-5% crit which could have been ~12% bleed dmg.

Just looking at those numbers it should say enough tbh.

Bleed damage decreases way to much for the Crit you'll gain, and 4-5% crit on top of 37-40% isn't that great.

--> More opinions about Crit vs. Mastery <--

[Williee]

Hey I want some insight about this cloak
http://www.wowhead.com/item=71415
I use 22 agility on it because of pve
Do you think the ~100+ agility gain is worth it while holding 150 spell pen (3 blues) instead of 170 spell pen (cloak chant+ 2 gems)?
My resilience goes from ~4100 res -> ~3900 res

[Balduvian]

I'd say with that amount of resilience it's at least worth trying out.

Last season, most Ferals were running with around 3.3-3.4k resilience, and our survivability didn't feel bad at all. Now, nearly no one uses Unheeded Warning anymore but picks the Resilience trinket instead, while the Resi from the rest of the gear keeps going up as well. With full gear we'll easily be sitting on 4.1k+ (AT LEAST. This is without a single gem/enchant for it), and I don't feel like anything more than 4k is what we should go for. Therefor, try it out. The damage increase is pretty big, while I doubt the survivability loss will really be a problem.

I'm personally going to try and get the HC/Normal Ragnaros trinket, which will keep my resi below 4k as well. I really don't think we should aim for full PvP gear this season.

[Duilliath]

You can even drop the third Spell Pen gem. Won't make much difference. You burn through MotW with 2 gems already. You won't reach soft-cap with 3 gems so it'll still be RNG.

That said, a cloak wouldn't be where I'd be looking to go PvE. Possibly the weapon if it's heroic, possibly a trinket. Even with 4k I can feel a bit squishy against casters. I'll probably stick to the PvP trinkets, which is furthered by quitting raiding altogether. Did one raid to help out the guild which reaffirmed my stance on raiding :P
(Killed Staghelm that raid, no one else for the Firekitty staff there, so naturally it didn't drop. QQ muchly.)