[5.0 Edition] The Druid Soloing Guide

[Deleted]

Very nice guide!

[Montiele]

Druid use cat or bear to solo?

In your opinion between Protection Paladin and Bear Druid which one can solo Dungeons & Raids greater than another one?

[Deleted]

Druid use cat or bear to solo?

In your opinion between Protection Paladin and Bear Druid which one can solo Dungeons & Raids greater than another one?

It's mostly for bear, sometimes you can get cat for extra damage.

Having both a paladin and a druid, i would go with druid.
Paladins survivability on their own are pretty weak.

[Stede]

Agility>Exp. to 26>Stam>Hit>more Exp~=Mastery>Crit>Haste

Why would you ever reforge Expertise over cap?

[Jeffyjimbob]

Why would you ever reforge Expertise over cap?

Expertise softcap = 0% chance to be dodged. BUT you can still be parried. The reason why it's normally never stacked past the softcap, is because bosses can't parry from behind, only dodge. So, since this is a soloing guide, you will pretty much always be in front of the boss, which means you can be parried.

Expertise beyond the soft cap = Less times you are parried = More DPS.

[Braindwen]

^ what he said. Though I guess I should say don't go over 56, but I hope people realize when the tooltip says 0% for everything, more is not helping anymore.
It's almost always all about the DPS. Only times you'd favor the mitigation stats (or lower exp/hit) is if it helps live to the next FR (can only really think of blood princes here), if it's some gimmick like Saurfang where reducing damage=reducing boss healing, if the important targets are below boss-level (Yogg, Deathwhisper), or if DPS is completely unimportant for some other reason.

Stacking debuffs, enrage timers, and anything that can kill you in < 3 minutes strongly favor DPS stats.

[Stede]

Expertise softcap = 0% chance to be dodged. BUT you can still be parried. The reason why it's normally never stacked past the softcap, is because bosses can't parry from behind, only dodge. So, since this is a soloing guide, you will pretty much always be in front of the boss, which means you can be parried.

Expertise beyond the soft cap = Less times you are parried = More DPS.

Gotcha - thanks for explaining that!

[Jeffyjimbob]

Hey Braindwen, I was wondering if you were keeping up to date with MoP changes, and if so: What are your thoughts on soloing in MoP?

[Braindwen]

First, waiting for people is boring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ3bVoikWD8

Second:

What are your thoughts on soloing in MoP?

No item squish=yay!
New FR is just lol. No cooldown ftw. I suspect survivability will increase dramatically, I don't think there's a situation where current SD can keep up with that.
FoN is going to be awesome. I already use stuff like the engineering dummy/Yogg trinket to cheese several fight mechanics, being able to do that as a talent anyone can take will be fantastic.
And lastly, losing cat abilities like Rip makes me a sad panda. Although it could lead to soloing several fights as feral instead of guardian, which would be interesting.

Won't know for sure until it comes out, or I get a beta invite (not on the annual pass, so that's not bloody likely).

[Williee]

i SMELL another gold nerf to old content such as SSC and TK :[

[Braindwen]

Whatever, I'm already closing in on 200k gold looted. Besides, we'll just move to Wrath stuff for farming, Ulduar's fun!

[Jeffyjimbob]

First, waiting for people is boring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ3bVoikWD8

Second:
No item squish=yay!
New FR is just lol. No cooldown ftw. I suspect survivability will increase dramatically, I don't think there's a situation where current SD can keep up with that.
FoN is going to be awesome. I already use stuff like the engineering dummy/Yogg trinket to cheese several fight mechanics, being able to do that as a talent anyone can take will be fantastic.
And lastly, losing cat abilities like Rip makes me a sad panda. Although it could lead to soloing several fights as feral instead of guardian, which would be interesting.

Won't know for sure until it comes out, or I get a beta invite (not on the annual pass, so that's not bloody likely).

@bold was my biggest concern lol. The new direction they're going with bear seems much better than what it is now (not that it's bad now) but the loss of being a true bearcat was saddening.

Personally I'm hoping with the new plan of "you can do DPS, or actively tank" instead of "do DPS and get tank procs while doing so" bear gets some decent DPS, to make up for fights where we wont be worrying about survival. Obviously not enough to compare it to cat DPS, but still hoping.

[Mookah]

Whatever, I'm already closing in on 200k gold looted. Besides, we'll just move to Wrath stuff for farming, Ulduar's fun!

Hi Braindwen,

What current places would you recommend to do weekly for the best gold income?

Awesome guide btw!!

-Mooka

[Williee]

SSC and TK are both quick instances. SSC takes about 2-4 mins per boss and you can stealth through most of the trash. This will net you 250g each boss (~1.25k total excluding vashj.)

Brain... it sucks I don't solo Ulduar since I am trying to complete my Valynar. But i can see Ulduar 10 being a money mine since we can solo all of it already. In need of money, so soloing is my only money maker. The economy is pretty bad on my server atm.

ICC won't be soloable because of Gunship unless you think of an amazing strategy.

NAX is my current gold mine as well, I solo 12/15 because KT is annoying and can't get pass Gluth (~120-170g per boss and abyss crystals x2 per boss)


I like mangle generating rage for mop since it means old content will be that much easier with rage starve situation.

[Braindwen]

/boggle.

Trying out Uld-25 to see how much of it I can do... I did not know Ignis had an enrage timer.
Well shoot, this could be tougher than expected .

E: Ah, I see. After he activates all 20 constructs, his next cast won't hit any and he'll go berserk.
10:40 berserk then, and sadly, died at 3M that pull .

XT is no good either. Damn, unless Kologarn cooperates (And I REALLY doubt that, stacking sunder=bad), it's just going to be FL for solo-farming val'anyr


Is it weird to keep editing a post as I come up with more stuff to say? But anyway, Kologarn decided to cast his sunder all of once for some strange reason. Made the fight a real joke...

Until I hit berserk with the arm that would have killed him at 20k health

/rage

e:
[22:16:08.137] Kologarn casts Berserk
[22:16:10.939] Kologarn dies

Thank you for not casting stone shout in those ~3 seconds, Kologarn.

[Williee]

lol ya
Doing kolo 25 seems fairly easy because I remember my 5-6 man group died from grip and I had to solo about 35-45%. But the agony of sitting through the whole fight solo... I can only imagine haha. Pretty sure if you know 1 or 2 more people, you can 3 man the 1st quarter. I've done Razorscale (3 people, you + 2 dps or you + 1 dps + heals) as heals shouldn't be much of an issue with Razorscale. XT can be 3 man but you need a healer. I never bother with Ignis because of trash as a 3 man.

Also, I do 25m ICC to help people with Shadowmourne. Seems like most of the fights are fairly simple but Professor Putricide, Blood Queen and Sindragosa. For Professor, his green ooze caps at about 65-75% of the room. His dps enrage is fairly short if you have 5 man group (1 tank, 3 dps, 1 heal). Avoid as many green debuff ooze he tosses out as that haste debuff will kill your dps. The real fight starts at phase 3 as your group gotta push him as low as possible before you kill your raid. Your group needs to pop raid cds ~6 stacks + as the ticks will chunk your group by 1/4-1/3 of their health per tick. Last week, my group died at 7 stacks because healer was surprised at how much dmg was going out. Professor was left at ~3-4 million hp for me to solo which was tricky as I only had survival instinct. However, I pushed 3-4 million hp w/ 30 seconds left before enrage (ty health pot for keeping me up ^.^)

Blood Queen is a straight up dps race, your best dps gotta get the first bite. At times, we sacrifice the 2nd dps who gets bitten and brez him/her inorder to stretch the # of bites and fight. But the fight shouldn't be too bad.

Sindragosa is HILARIOUS... we had 6 people since she tombs 5 people. Both times we have done 25m Sindragosa, I was chosen as the only Non-blocked person. Not sure if she doesn't aim for tanks or rng. But berserk swipe your ass off and hope you free a dps asap.

Who would have thought, 4-6 manning 25m content would be as fun as soloing

[Mookah]

Brain - I keep waiting for you to log out in your feral soloing gear so I can steal your gear setup! =P

I don't currently have much different gear from my raiding bear gear, so I need to start saving up and getting a separate set.

--I know I have a lot of work to do... tried Anub'Rekhan last night and got him to about 25%.

-Mooka

[Braindwen]

But my boomkin gear looks awesome!

Anyway, logged out in it. I need to reforge back before our raids (at least undo the reforges out of mastery), though, so it'll be changing soon.
Armory in sig.

Doing kolo 25 seems fairly easy because I remember my 5-6 man group died from grip and I had to solo about 35-45%. But the agony of sitting through the whole fight solo... I can only imagine haha.

It was boring on attempt 1. The knowledge that the enrage is fast approaching can make any fight fun though, Trying to balance single target and AoE to keep myself alive on Ignis while still pushing as much DPS as possible was very fun. Now if only I had enough DPS to actually kill him...


Edit: Gave alysrazor a shot again: Managed to bring her down to about 40%, actually. If I could survive a ground phase with 4 hatchlings up, I can kill her.

Yeah, good luck doing that Brain...
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=2098&e=2579
Will probably do some more pulls later, 1 shot into the second round isn't enough to call it. Out of time atm though.
If anyone has a way to kill the hatchlings off, that'd secure a kill!

[Braindwen]

Hey there folks!

If any BiS, or close to it, geared ferals are looking for something to do, I'm a little bit help up by my gear on this one.
I've managed to bring Alysrazor down to ~10%. I know I can do a bit better (I particularly screwed up the start of the 3rd air phase), but I don't think squeezing out another 4M out of my gear is going to be easy. I'll keep trying, but if you want to take a shot at it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fi-MElrzrQ

Is a video of an attempt going to the 3rd ground phase. It should give an idea of what to do, and I can help out more if anyone's interested.

I'd also wager this is possible as moonkin, so if you can bring Alys down in 3 air phases (JUST the air phases, you won't be able to do much on the ground), you can also give it a shot . You'll have to figure out how to survive Harsh Winds yourself, though.

[Deleted]

Why aren't the humanoids casting at you?