Finally, I have emerged from the sub-20's funk that is a lowbie druid. This is the last class I have not played past 20 so I am kind of excited.
In my reading I am seeing over and over again that Feral is pretty bad for PVP? Is there a reasoning for this?
Also, someone above says Resto is the best for PVP... I assume you don't mean Treaform do you? What's the function of the PVP resto druid other than to just spam HoT's on everything in sight (Not that I don't mind that, in fact, that's why I made a druid, I am just curious as to the tactics of it).
Am I doing this right? Anyway, my feral alt just hit 40 and the 40's fly by for alliance these days. I'm beginning to wonder if he's going to end up my second 70 (I've got a priest & shaman sitting at 60 now).
Finally, I have emerged from the sub-20's funk that is a lowbie druid. This is the last class I have not played past 20 so I am kind of excited.
In my reading I am seeing over and over again that Feral is pretty bad for PVP? Is there a reasoning for this?
Also, someone above says Resto is the best for PVP... I assume you don't mean Treaform do you? What's the function of the PVP resto druid other than to just spam HoT's on everything in sight (Not that I don't mind that, in fact, that's why I made a druid, I am just curious as to the tactics of it).
no, the function of a resto druid is pretty much to spam HoTs at everything in sight, and on some things that aren't. Also decurse, depoison...but don't go tree. For arenas, pick up feral charge and furor and charge+stun casters for lolz.
Finally, I have emerged from the sub-20's funk that is a lowbie druid. This is the last class I have not played past 20 so I am kind of excited.
In my reading I am seeing over and over again that Feral is pretty bad for PVP? Is there a reasoning for this?
Also, someone above says Resto is the best for PVP... I assume you don't mean Treaform do you? What's the function of the PVP resto druid other than to just spam HoT's on everything in sight (Not that I don't mind that, in fact, that's why I made a druid, I am just curious as to the tactics of it).
Treeform isn't used in PvP unless the enemy is afk in which case it doesn't really matter what you do.
The reason resto is so strong in peeveepee is because most of the heals are instant, lifebloom, rejuv and swiftmend can't be interrupted by kick, pummel etc. Resto druids can also against certain teams use the cc combo of cyclone, roots, feral charge and bash to extreme effect. Another bonus is travel form and if you're a night elf -> drink -> shadowmeld. A good resto druid in PvP can lock down a melee without trinket left indefinitely by cycling their various ccs AND still cast their instant heals.
The reason feral is very hard in PvP is because the entire spec is essentially a gimped rogue. Your main dps finisher is a bleed which is bollocks since it's not burst. In order to use cyclone or roots you have to shift out which is (talented) about 580ish mana on top of the cost of the spell. Take a look at the rogue PvP talents and you can see how much functionality they give, then look at feral talents and you can see it's all dps and tank talents. Sure some of those help in PvP but they don't add anything like Cheat Death.
Now there are feral druids out there with high ratings but the amount of effort you need to put into feral play versus resto play and come out with a high rating in the arenas is massive.
Finally, I have emerged from the sub-20's funk that is a lowbie druid. This is the last class I have not played past 20 so I am kind of excited.
In my reading I am seeing over and over again that Feral is pretty bad for PVP? Is there a reasoning for this?
Also, someone above says Resto is the best for PVP... I assume you don't mean Treaform do you? What's the function of the PVP resto druid other than to just spam HoT's on everything in sight (Not that I don't mind that, in fact, that's why I made a druid, I am just curious as to the tactics of it).
Treeform isn't used in PvP unless the enemy is afk in which case it doesn't really matter what you do.
The reason resto is so strong in peeveepee is because most of the heals are instant, lifebloom, rejuv and swiftmend can't be interrupted by kick, pummel etc. Resto druids can also against certain teams use the cc combo of cyclone, roots, feral charge and bash to extreme effect. Another bonus is travel form and if you're a night elf -> drink -> shadowmeld. A good resto druid in PvP can lock down a melee without trinket left indefinitely by cycling their various ccs AND still cast their instant heals.
The reason feral is very hard in PvP is because the entire spec is essentially a gimped rogue. Your main dps finisher is a bleed which is bollocks since it's not burst. In order to use cyclone or roots you have to shift out which is (talented) about 580ish mana on top of the cost of the spell. Take a look at the rogue PvP talents and you can see how much functionality they give, then look at feral talents and you can see it's all dps and tank talents. Sure some of those help in PvP but they don't add anything like Cheat Death.
Now there are feral druids out there with high ratings but the amount of effort you need to put into feral play versus resto play and come out with a high rating in the arenas is massive.
Awesome explanation, thanks a bunch. Yeah I made this character assuming I would be resto PVP so it's good to hear that that is basically the way to go.
oh my god catform is amazing. I took the 30% run speed talent before crit and honestly I think it was worth it. It's amazing the different between level 19 and level 20 O.o
Always take the speed talent first, this is something I stress. That 30% speed for those 10 levels till Travel (and soon mount) will blow by that much faster with a speed increase.
Opty on
0
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2008
Yup. Feral Swiftness is one of the better leveling talents in the game.
Yeah this is just amazing. I got my crit talent maxed out too, so I am up to 12% crit.
That plus the holiday buff... there are some enemies that are dead before I even see the damage numbers tick.
I'm assuming that my finisher is basically useless in soloing? The shamefully slow tick of moderate damage doesn't seem to be worth the energy when I'm mowing down opponents faster than my prowl can cooldown.
This is the fastest leveling I have ever experienced.
If you're killing mobs before you're able to stealth again, Rip as your last attack and run to the next mob and start wailing on them instead of restealthing. It may take a couple of tries to figure out the sweet spot for each mob, but once you've figured it out you can basically not drop combat for over 30 minutes. Using this method's how I farmed Consortium rep: Manglex3->Rip->Move to next. As long as there weren't more than 3 people farming I didn't have to stop except for when I needed to heal due to double pulls or whatever.
Ok, so my druid is juuuuuust about to hit 40, because I left him to get rested xp for a few weeks while I messed around on other characters. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0ZxGMscrkxz is what I'm going to be when I ding. What should I grab after that?
Also, Cat form, does it gain AP from strength? Or just pure Agility and AP?
Cat gains AP from strength (twice as much as from agi, roughly.) RatingBuster is extremely useful for feral, because it will crunch all the numbers for you and show you the derived stats you're actually getting, in each form.
Edit: as to your build, survival of the fittest is an excellent talent. Imp. LotP isn't fantastic, but it's nice for grinding. Shredding attacks is also decent, but not critical, and once you have mangle a lot of it's leveling utility goes away. I would remove the point from nurturing instinct if you can; it's just not that useful. Once you have the 35 in feral, just fill out predatory instincts, get mangle, and go far enough into resto to get omen of clarity.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Survival of the Fittest is pretty important when it comes to tanking, but for levelling you probably don't need to worry about it. The first thing you'll want is Improved Leader of the Pack. That gives you survivability out the ass for soloing when you go into bear form. After that, I suppose you can finish Nurturing Instinct (not sure how useful that really is), and put one point pretty much anywhere. Then, straight through Predatory Instincts to get Mangle. After that, start investing in Resto: that 10% bonus from Naturalist is huge.
As for str vs. agi. Druids get 2ap per point of strength, so it's good. However, agility is hands-down the best stat for feral druids. It does everything.
On a per talent point basis, survival of the fittest gives you almost as much attack power as heart of the wild.
You probably won't have enough agility to get much use out of nurturing instinct; it'd be a decent talent to take if the feral tree wasn't full of other good stuff, but hey, it is.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It looks like the only reason he has Nurturing Instinct is because he needed a point to get to the HotW tier, he just chose it instead of Shredding Attacks which would have been my first choice. If it weren't for the point restriction I'd tell him to put it into SotF instead.
For levelling I'd say go 2 Imp. LotP -> 2 SotF -> 5 Pred. Inst. -> Mangle -> 5 Furor -> 5 Naturalist -> OoC and then fill in the holes from there however you want.
Edit: I know one of my friends was saying to try to aim for 30 dodge, but I have no clue where I can squeeze that in without sacrificing a lot of health or armor.
You're massively overstacked on defense an resilience. Obviously, you're not going to give up your pvp gear (your only epics) so you need to get rid of as much defense rating as you can: you only need 0.11% more chance to not be crit from defense, which means +3, I think. You've got +61. Replace all your +defense gems with +hit/+agi if yellow, or +agi/+sta if blue. Grab the Thoriumweave cloak from Mechanar, either heroic or not (but if you do it heroic you'll get badges, which you need, and those upgrades are obvious).
Without heroics or Karazhan, though, you're reaching the peak of where you can be. Replacing that Heavy Clefthoof set is going to be a big upgrade, once you can do it.
Oh, I just replaced those, it just hadn't shown up on the armory yet, I had those from before getting the pvp gear.
I put in agi/sta for all the blue slots, and stam/crit for the yellows because those were going for 15g a pop on our server vs 100 for hit/agi. I'll probably replace them with agi/hit when I get the cash though, as well as getting agi for hands.
I also need to pick up vindicators bracers from honor. After that everything else seems to be more work than it's worth or a sidegrade.
I have exactly 2 badges now though, so I guess it's time to get started on that.
Edit: Oh I've also been running MgT, I thought that would be better to focus on since it has a nice ring drop and a cloak drop.
Extremely well. I'm honestly not sure how I'm going to replace my two pvp pieces since the resilience on them and the two piece bonus make up a huge chunk of the uncritability needed.
Right now resilience may be better for tanking with druids, because you get more bang for the buck. IE it takes less resilience than defense to reach crit immune, letting you add in other useful stats.
Supposedly in WOTLK that will change, however. Looks like they are boosting our crit reduction talent up to 6%, which should in theory make us crit immune without any Defense or Resilience. Meaning in WOTLK we can focus on Stamina, Agi, and Strength. Not to mention in WOTLK resilience will stop working in dungeons altogether.
MuddBudd on
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
as a druid tank your first goal is to get to the point where you can't be crit any more by mobs, specifically against mobs 3 levels higher than you, so you need 5.6% crit reduction, 3 of which you can get from talents, the rest you need to get from either defense or resilience
edit: this is really just for druids at 70, while leveling you can tank whatever without being uncrittable
Basically, defense is a crappy stat for druids. It lowers your chance to be crit, and adds dodge, parry and block. Druids can only take advantage of the dodge and the -crit, though, so a lot of the item budget is wasted. Druids get a better return from wearing enough resilience to become uncrittable, and stacking agility from there.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Ok, so my Druid is 69 and will be 70 soon, I am enjoying being cat for solo and tanking occasionally, I am planning on staying beartank, and blocking looters with my big bear butt. mwahaha.
Here is me currently, in my kitty gear most likely. I am planning on sticking my last point in naturalist. Will this work as a good tanking spec? I've searched and it seems pretty standard.
What gear can I pick up before I can start farming badges? And what are good stats to have before hitting kara and heroics? I have Belt of Natural Power, and once I get my leatherworking to 375 I will be able to craft Boots of Natural Grace. I'm planning on farming CE Rep to get Earthwarden, I have a nice long list of badge gear, but are there any pieces I should try and get early, either from instances or badges?
Also, I'm at about 5000 gold, should I drop the 2k g to max out leather working (clefthoof leather is hella expensive on my server) or buy my flyer and go mine stuff?
Trinkets....Bade of Tenacity is a good one if you can get it. There are ring drops from Ramparts and Old Hillsbrad that have armor on them. Fill in the rest with Heavy Clefthoof and pvp rewards.
Earthwarden is good, heavy clefthoof is good. Any feral pvp gear you can get your paws on is likely to be good; even the blue vendor -bought gear is relatively high in stam/agi/armor, and the resilience will help you get uncrittable.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
What flasks do you guys use for raids? I do both kitty DPS and offtanking, and having to switch flasks annoys the shit out of me. And the 120 AP from Relentless Assault ain't all that much for a feral druid.
What flasks do you guys use for raids? I do both kitty DPS and offtanking, and having to switch flasks annoys the shit out of me. And the 120 AP from Relentless Assault ain't all that much for a feral druid.
120 AP ain't all that much for pretty much everybody. But you know, if everyone takes one step less you end up falling short.
Posts
In my reading I am seeing over and over again that Feral is pretty bad for PVP? Is there a reasoning for this?
Also, someone above says Resto is the best for PVP... I assume you don't mean Treaform do you? What's the function of the PVP resto druid other than to just spam HoT's on everything in sight (Not that I don't mind that, in fact, that's why I made a druid, I am just curious as to the tactics of it).
Am I doing this right? Anyway, my feral alt just hit 40 and the 40's fly by for alliance these days. I'm beginning to wonder if he's going to end up my second 70 (I've got a priest & shaman sitting at 60 now).
no, the function of a resto druid is pretty much to spam HoTs at everything in sight, and on some things that aren't. Also decurse, depoison...but don't go tree. For arenas, pick up feral charge and furor and charge+stun casters for lolz.
Treeform isn't used in PvP unless the enemy is afk in which case it doesn't really matter what you do.
The reason resto is so strong in peeveepee is because most of the heals are instant, lifebloom, rejuv and swiftmend can't be interrupted by kick, pummel etc. Resto druids can also against certain teams use the cc combo of cyclone, roots, feral charge and bash to extreme effect. Another bonus is travel form and if you're a night elf -> drink -> shadowmeld. A good resto druid in PvP can lock down a melee without trinket left indefinitely by cycling their various ccs AND still cast their instant heals.
The reason feral is very hard in PvP is because the entire spec is essentially a gimped rogue. Your main dps finisher is a bleed which is bollocks since it's not burst. In order to use cyclone or roots you have to shift out which is (talented) about 580ish mana on top of the cost of the spell. Take a look at the rogue PvP talents and you can see how much functionality they give, then look at feral talents and you can see it's all dps and tank talents. Sure some of those help in PvP but they don't add anything like Cheat Death.
Now there are feral druids out there with high ratings but the amount of effort you need to put into feral play versus resto play and come out with a high rating in the arenas is massive.
Awesome explanation, thanks a bunch. Yeah I made this character assuming I would be resto PVP so it's good to hear that that is basically the way to go.
That plus the holiday buff... there are some enemies that are dead before I even see the damage numbers tick.
I'm assuming that my finisher is basically useless in soloing? The shamefully slow tick of moderate damage doesn't seem to be worth the energy when I'm mowing down opponents faster than my prowl can cooldown.
This is the fastest leveling I have ever experienced.
Later maim+shred is a bit more damage.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0ZxGMscrkxz is what I'm going to be when I ding. What should I grab after that?
Also, Cat form, does it gain AP from strength? Or just pure Agility and AP?
Edit: as to your build, survival of the fittest is an excellent talent. Imp. LotP isn't fantastic, but it's nice for grinding. Shredding attacks is also decent, but not critical, and once you have mangle a lot of it's leveling utility goes away. I would remove the point from nurturing instinct if you can; it's just not that useful. Once you have the 35 in feral, just fill out predatory instincts, get mangle, and go far enough into resto to get omen of clarity.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
As for str vs. agi. Druids get 2ap per point of strength, so it's good. However, agility is hands-down the best stat for feral druids. It does everything.
You probably won't have enough agility to get much use out of nurturing instinct; it'd be a decent talent to take if the feral tree wasn't full of other good stuff, but hey, it is.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
For levelling I'd say go 2 Imp. LotP -> 2 SotF -> 5 Pred. Inst. -> Mangle -> 5 Furor -> 5 Naturalist -> OoC and then fill in the holes from there however you want.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Azgalor&n=Mucau
21888 armor
13623 health
27.08 dodge
uncrittable
With Motw up.
Good enough for kara/harder heroics yet?
Edit: I know one of my friends was saying to try to aim for 30 dodge, but I have no clue where I can squeeze that in without sacrificing a lot of health or armor.
Without heroics or Karazhan, though, you're reaching the peak of where you can be. Replacing that Heavy Clefthoof set is going to be a big upgrade, once you can do it.
I put in agi/sta for all the blue slots, and stam/crit for the yellows because those were going for 15g a pop on our server vs 100 for hit/agi. I'll probably replace them with agi/hit when I get the cash though, as well as getting agi for hands.
I also need to pick up vindicators bracers from honor. After that everything else seems to be more work than it's worth or a sidegrade.
I have exactly 2 badges now though, so I guess it's time to get started on that.
Edit: Oh I've also been running MgT, I thought that would be better to focus on since it has a nice ring drop and a cloak drop.
Supposedly in WOTLK that will change, however. Looks like they are boosting our crit reduction talent up to 6%, which should in theory make us crit immune without any Defense or Resilience. Meaning in WOTLK we can focus on Stamina, Agi, and Strength. Not to mention in WOTLK resilience will stop working in dungeons altogether.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
edit: this is really just for druids at 70, while leveling you can tank whatever without being uncrittable
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Sadly, druids can never make full use of Resilience and Defense. Which is why WotLK is fixing this.
Thank god for that too. I'll be able to condense my tank and DPS sets down to one relatively decent hybrid set focusing on Agi, Stam, and Str.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Pounce > Shred (crit) > Shred > Ferocious Bite.
The end. So much fun.
Yeah, I'm lucky if I get two ticks from a Rip before the target dies. Might as well do a Bite and get the most out of your CPs.
A question that's probably frequently asked: Will that new Infected Wounds talent stack with Thunderclap?
Here is me currently, in my kitty gear most likely. I am planning on sticking my last point in naturalist. Will this work as a good tanking spec? I've searched and it seems pretty standard.
What gear can I pick up before I can start farming badges? And what are good stats to have before hitting kara and heroics? I have Belt of Natural Power, and once I get my leatherworking to 375 I will be able to craft Boots of Natural Grace. I'm planning on farming CE Rep to get Earthwarden, I have a nice long list of badge gear, but are there any pieces I should try and get early, either from instances or badges?
Also, I'm at about 5000 gold, should I drop the 2k g to max out leather working (clefthoof leather is hella expensive on my server) or buy my flyer and go mine stuff?
Here are a few quest rewards to keep an eye out for:
Mark of the Ravenguard
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29336
Cloak of the Valiant Defender
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29777
Supple Leather Boots
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31532
Verdant Gloves
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30943
Manimal's Cinch
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30942
Trinkets....Bade of Tenacity is a good one if you can get it. There are ring drops from Ramparts and Old Hillsbrad that have armor on them. Fill in the rest with Heavy Clefthoof and pvp rewards.
Also check out:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28182
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25680
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25691
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25689
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25690
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32508
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31186
In addition to the stuff mentioned above.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It's nice because it's also pretty decent for DPS, for fights when you have to do both.
120 AP ain't all that much for pretty much everybody. But you know, if everyone takes one step less you end up falling short.
*This is a lie.