Entry level Kara & Gruul statsFollow

We are moving forward in my guild and as well as being GM, I am the Druid Officer. Our novices will need minimum gear to get into the guild as well as their Kara key. Then they will have to meet rough benchmarks to start doing 25mans with us. We want to make sure everyone is ready for their level of content and isn't being "carried" by the other members without making the restrictions too difficult to achieve.

So far I am roughly thinking (all stats are in form self-buffed) :-

Kara
Feral Tank - Crit immunity, 24k armor, 13k health, 24% dodge or thereabouts
Feral DPS - 2k AP & 25% crit

Resto - 1k +heal

Balance - 500 +damage & 10% crit


25 Man
Feral Tank - Crit immunity, 28k armor, 14k health, 30% dodge
Feral DPS - 3k AP & 30% crit

Resto - 1.5k +heal

Balance - 700 +damage



These are rough figures and if one stat is a bit low and the others are higher it would obviously be taken into accout. The balance & resto stats in particular are pretty much guesses, but I would appreciate any input on any of these.

Feral Kara tanks stats maybe ok as OT and some bosses but definitely low for prince and other hard hitters. The dodge is very low, needs to be at least 28% in bear for kara, it's easily achieveable.

Feral dps stats are too low, my druid who is mainly tank, beginning crappy cat dps gear put me at around 34crit 2500ish ap unbuffed. After some Kara and few tank pvp items not ideal for dps I am at 38crit 2700ap 120hit 9 expertise unbuffed. I haven't purchased a single badge cat dps item yet. I don't have any t4.


For 25 man, Bear dodge is kinda low, I'd shoot 32%, Some leeway on armor can be made, 27k is also fine when starting gruuls, etc. Also bear HP is too low in relation to your listed stats, if druid had that much armor and low dodge with that hp, it doesn't make sense. His/her HP should be a lot higher than that because relationship only tells me that that druid only enchanted/gemmed pure stamina, in which case HP should be around 15.5-16k in bear self buffed.

Cat: It should be 35ish crit at least and around 2650ap.

Cat AP is way high in relation to crit if druid achieves that AP with that crit when starting 25 mans, it only means he/she enchanted/gemmed improperly, meaning str gems and str enchants which is a common mistake a lot of druids make when they invest in their dps set. Agility is the best and undisputed cat dps stat and should be gemmed and enchanted always, only case where the rule can be broken, is when you need to meet meta socket requirement for 12agi 3% crit meta, or the item gem bonus is worth losing the agility, for example if, item bonus is 4agil, socketing 4/6sta gem 4agil/4hit gem is obviously a better choice.

Forgot to add. Add hit to requirement for cat 70+ for kara, 100+ 25.

Edited, Jan 22nd 2008 4:29am by Elustriel

For the resto component:
+900 heal is fine.
90-100 manareg while casting. doesnt matter how its achieved. spirit or mp5
and dont forget a manapool of 8000 minimum. or maybe 8500.

all these are achieved easily.

Gotta disagree with this...crappy pre-raid dps gear doesn't get you to 2500/34, imho. That's the ballpark I'm in and I've been a pre-raid feral for a handful of months, pretty focused on boosting my numbers through gear and enchants/gems, and I'm right around those numbers but in large part thanks to my 1800g Staff of Natural Fury. I blow away most if not all of the other pre-raid feral druids I party up with, and without getting defensive I'm confident my gear is beyond crappy and into the realm of respectable for a pre-raider.

That's my main perspective and point...I think I'm at the top of the food chain as far as both "pre-raid gear" and skill for both tanking and dps, and have expensive toys in my SoNF and Badge of Tenacity, so think I'm higher than what can and should be expected for entry level Kara stats.

I guess things will vary, but I found it fairly easy to hit ~15k HP in bear as a fairly new 70 druid, and I've found that 24k armor isn't so easy as currently I'm sitting at just over 20k and even getting that has taken some work. The 24% dodge could probably be upped to a simple 25% cause it's really not that hard to achieve.

As a compromise with what I've seen in past guides, I would say 14K HP in bear, 20k Armor, and 25% dodge for kara.

24k, and I've seen this number suggested a lot, to me seems like a retarded high minimum. I just don't understand how someone would reach this number without getting a lot of gear from the places that you won't even have the minimum to enter. Like I say, getting 20k seems like it's been a real chore to me, and the absolutely only thing I really want at this point to improve on the 20k I do have is the cape from mech (or the justice badge tanking cape) which should boost me up to just over 22k... still not 24k though.

A lot of this is easy to achieve if you grab the PVP Head, Shoulders, Wrist, and Waist which are quite honestly insanely easy to obtain doing BGs for a few hours (3 or 4) a day for a MAX of two weeks. Outside of those few PVP pieces the obvious clefthoof pieces work great.

Druid in my honest opinion has it great for intro to tanking with so many easy access PVP pieces that offer a very large amount of armor rating and stamina. I don't think any other tanking class can pick up so many PVP pieces and tank in them without someone telling them there's better options that are fairly easily obtainable. But for druid, some of that PVP stuff is just killer nice for tanking. Just don't replace the clefthoof slots with that S1 stuff.

but seriously, I've read a number of guides suggesting the Assassin Shoulder piece from I think seth halls? or what was it, helm of the claw? I actually took the time to get those based on previous guides I've seen only to be introduced to BGs later by someone with far up to date advice... and those Gladiator shoulders simply own a lot of the shoulders referenced in so many "getting started" guides and they are probably easier to obtain than many other options too. Same for the gladiator head piece and some of the vindicator pieces like wrist/waist.

I seriously believe that after the change in accessability to S1 gear that the S1 Head, Shoulders, Wrist, and Waist should all be placed in these "getting started" guides for tanking druids. All these pieces are pretty easy to get, they completely own anything you would get from most 5 mans, and will cost you less repair bill to get than anything in 5mans. And to add to that, BGs apparently used to be local to the server only, making BGs more of a chore if someone didn't put together the group, but the automated groups pulled from several servers these days make BGs very accessible.




For this, I too feel that the 2k AP and 25% crit is pretty low. I've only done Kara a few times and most of that was only partial runs and even so, I'm at nearly 2600 AP, and just over 37% crit. 2200+ AP is insanely easy to obtain assuming you use almost any of the Feral-Type weapons. Myself, I'm using a tanking weapon for my dps set... Earthwarden. And for the crit rate, I think a much better minimum would be 30%, have to keep in mind druids that are specced half way right will have a flat +5% from leader of the pack.

And as said above I'd definitely add a +hit for dps druids, for kara I'd think a minimum should be 100.

12k HP sounds really, really low. I had 14.1k HP on dinging 70, and that's without my Heavy Clefthoof chest and leggings, which I'm gonna make once I get the leather. Conversely, 24k armor seems high. With my gear, I'm sitting at 20k armor. I imagine I can easily get it to 22k or so, but higher than that, and I don't know if I'll be able to do it pre-Kara / heroics.

I didn't mean to say crappy, I meant attainable pre raid. I did get Shadowprowlers bp with blue agil gems etc and hourglass of unraveler as well as crystalforged trinket and other mix of heroic and dungeon blues best suited for cat dps and enchanted with best suited for cat dps and of course gemmed with blue gems best suited for cat dps.

Basically my ball park of crappy may be not crappy to others. I just like to have best I possibly can, and go from there and judge.

24K armor seems really high. I have all s1 (and an s3) gear and vind gear and with my badge of tenacity and tanking stuff I'm barely at 20K. Granted I don't know what I would be with the Clefthoof set on, but I can't imagine that would get me to 24K. The dodge does seem a bit low too, I'd up that a point or two.

We are currently clearing Kara weekly (sometimes 2 groups) and have now downed Gruul the last 3-4 weeks, so this is only for the newer members that come along. We don't want them in Gruul's if they are only doing 300dps. :)

I assume you mean Manimal's Cinch (quested shadowmoon valley)
348 Armor, 23str, 12agi, 24stam


I wouldn't use it over Vindicator's Dragonhide Belt (obtained through honor/BGs)
300 armor, 30str, 29agi, 42stam, 20int, +21crit, 26resil

The armor advantage to me isn't enough to warrant my use of it.

More HP = bigger buffer to be kept alive
More agility = more dodge (small armor increase too)
More strength and agility = more damage and in turn more threat
More +crit both through raw +crit and the agility = more rage because of crits
The resil while often looked over for PVE stuff will help more than just as anti-crit

Without bringing heroics into this, belt of natural power is nice too (crafted)


___________


For the wrist I assume you mean Umberhowl's Collar (quested shadowmoon valley)
281 armor, 20str, 10agi, 22stam

And again, I wouldn't use it over Vindicator's Dragonhide Bracers (obtained through honor/BGs)
236 armor, 22str, 22agi, 29stam, yellow socket (put the stats you want here) with +2resil bonus for appropriate gem, +21crit, and +17resil




To me, my armor rating isn't the end-all-be-all stat, and maybe I'm wrong for having this opinion, but between those two pieces of gear I'd gladly take an armor rating sacrafice that's fairly small to get the +42crit off these two pieces of gear, the +25stam, 29agility, etc


And if there are any others out there who are in the same boat as myself in that logic, then no... 24k armor rating isn't that easy to get.

Edit: Also brax staff = 550 armor and is a staff a lot of newer 70s will be using (not saying the above poster was using), but for me, brax staff was something I traded out for earthwarden (500armor) because of the 24 exptertise, higher AP (712), 27 defense rating and was glad I spammed SV as often as I had even though I lost 50 base armor

Edited, Jan 24th 2008 7:46pm by Torzak

I've been looking at some of the Justice Badge rewards as well, and so far I've only been able to pick up the Idol of Terror and a DPS neck (I should have just waited 10 more badges and got the cape I was wanting for tanking but I was in the mood of just having to have a new dps neck like now and the badges were staring me down!).

Anyway, I definitely agree that there are nice options through Justice Badges, but I don't believe those pieces of gear should quite be passed for judgement in an "Entry level kara/gruul" thread. Not saying that's what you're doing by any means, you obviously have a game plan and you're using something pretty decent until you can upgrade later.

It's just that to me *anyone* can get the PVP pieces if they applied the effort (argueable that you could get with no effort too I guess), and while I agree that the wrist you mentioned is rather nice, it would require Heroics (which from a tanking perspective are probably just as hard as kara outside of the more intricate boss fights in kara) or doing kara itself just to get the badges.

I guess my whole point of this reply is that I just can't honestly see myself and nor would I be able to understand someone else's making of a stat requirement based in part or whole on Justice Badge rewards or a few quest rewards that offer nice armor but little of anything else... and given my above arguements for some of the PVP options being better overall pieces but offering less armor rating, it makes more sense to me to not have a 24k minimum armor requirement but instead lower it to 20k.

Anyway, the OP has already stated some place above:



which works for me /shrug


Really the only reason I came back to this thread was the:



Which kinda struck a nerve I guess...

Just because it's possible to hit 24k armor so soon into hitting Lv70 doesn't mean it should be the minimum requirement... I could use the same logic and say that a minimum health should be 15k unbuffed because it's possible to do that pre heroics/kara. Or maybe a minimum of 33% dodge because that's a possibility too. Just because it's possible to hit a certain height in one stat doesn't mean it should be a minimum base line.

Edited, Jan 24th 2008 9:40pm by Torzak

And maybe they are, but that still doesn't warrant your commenting of 24k minimum armor just because you had that amount a week and a half into Lv70. There will be a number of players who will choose alternate gear options with less armor rating than those pieces because of other stats they offer. And because they choose a number of pieces they believe to be better they should suffer because 'oh too bad if you have more dodge, more HP, more crit, or more of other stats than our requirements... you don't have 24k armor so no'?

Seriously, I wouldn't be on this tangent if it wasn't for the way you said it. It was like this implied "I had 24k armor after I hit 70 so everyone should"

I mean the difference of 20k armor vs 24k armor is what? 4.35'ish% damage reduction? So if an opponent is hitting you for 1k dmg per hit you get to shave off 43'ish damage per hit... someone correct me if I'm wrong please.

While yes, every little bit adds up, it's not hard to come to a realization that you might be in no worse or no better shape using other forms of mitigation like more agility for more dodge... or having more max HP so your healers can keep up with the attacks... or more crit so you have more threat both directly and indirectly (directly because the crit will do more damage, indirectly because the crit will give you more rage)

Outside of that, your linking of your druid bugs me...

That druid isn't a week and a half into Lv70 so I'm not real sure what's the point to post it other than to show off? This is an "entry to:" post... not a I've been doing kara for X long and already have an upgraded violet ring... already have the Justice Badge reward Neck, the Justice Badge reward back piece, etc and more etc...

Seriously, this particular thread would have been fine without the link to your druid character as it certainly doesn't fit the profile of an "entry to" build as an example for everyone to see, and it doesn't look fitting for a week and a half Lv70 as you went on about above so I'm having a hard time to see the relevance.

If the relevance is that of a defensive position for you in that you use gear for more than just raw armor rating... honestly, I don't care. More specifically because it's too obvious that your druid is geared well beyond the scope of this conversation and that you should expect more of yourself than what this thread is trying to detail.

Torzak, I Only linked because you were implying I was one trick pony.