Heroic/Kara ready as feral DPSFollow

Edit: Rewriting the post for clarification.

You've got very little health, but amazing stats otherwise (hit rating and crit rating, plus expertise are just yummy). I'm in the process of gearing up for heroics myself, but I think I might've overdone it with some stats. I'm wearing part S1 and part Vindicator's, with a mix of greens and blues from quests and drops.

I'm only at 50-some hit rating and ~30% crit, but I have 2500 attack power and 9500 health. I know I have a lot of health and wearing PvP epics isn't the best for pure DPS, but is it worth switching out the S1 items for items of "lesser quality" if they have more hit rating/agility/crit rating? It feels silly going into an instance in blues when I have epics lying about, but if the health isn't needed and the resilience isn't either...

Not to hijack your thread, Brisin. Just wondering.

Edited, Feb 19th 2008 11:12pm by Mazra

I think the lack of health is emmerald list fault, since it gives more value to DPS stats than other stats.
This and the fact that I only used one type of gem, the one that gives +8 agility.

PS. I dont want to Off-tank, unless it's an emergency. I don't want to be the "official" offtank, if you know what I mean.
But, in the case that I wish to be or have to be in an especific boss, I can switch equipments before the fight. I think that if I switch to the Heavy Clefthoof stuff and put Earthwarden, I got plenty of stamina to be an Off-tank.

Edited, Feb 19th 2008 7:32pm by Brisin

13.5k armor, 12.8k health and crit immune in DPS gear.

And I know it's simple logic that the best gear is the best, regardless of color. Just seems odd, that's all. I'll see what my crit, dodge and attack power lands on when I resocket. Need to fill out with hit rating gems as well.

Glinting Noble Topaz should do the trick.

Edited, Feb 19th 2008 11:53pm by Mazra

DPS druids still need hit rating, and there isn't a lot of it in S3, and it isn't on S1/2 at all. Starting with probably Maiden in Kara, DPS, especially melee DPS, needs to have a decent un-buffed HP pool. 7500ish is pretty much the minimum unbuffed HP I'd go into a heroic or Kara with as DPS. If you've only got 7500 with Imp Prayer of Fort and BoK, you need more stamina. Ded droods put out remarkably low DPS.

Edit: Checked your sandbox link... you should look for some gear that's maybe a few points lower on Emmerald's list, but has more Sta. A lot of the choices are good, but one thing stands out as glaringly bad. The easiest to get and probably best blue DPS helm is Helm of the Claw. All you have to do is clear normal SV.




I really, really hate hearing Feral druids say this. The biggest strength to the spec is that you can actually pick up all the really good melee DPS and tanking talents with one spec. It's not a big deal in 5-mans, where there are few, if any, real uses for an off-tank.

In Kara and beyond, there are a lot of encounters (boss or trash) that you need multiple tanks. There are also a lot of fights where a single tank is all you need (or in the case of Shade of Aran, no tank). As a feral druid, you can get out the tanking gear and off-tank Midnight and Moroes, switch to DPS gear for Maiden, either DPS or off tank in Opera (depending on the event), etc.

Especially when you're new to Kara and putting out max DPS is important (to beat enrage timers and to keep your healers from going OOM), you're going to have the problem of having extra tanks in some fights. 3 ways around this:

1) Swap out the extra tank for a DPS class. This means one DPS toon is gonna be sitting around waiting for his turn to get in, and the tank is gonna be sitting around waiting until you need him again.

2) Suck it up and try and beat the encounter with a tank spec'd character trying to DPS. If your tank has really good DPS gear, he might put out 50-60% of what a DPS spec/class would put out. If it's mostly greens/blues or just tanking gear, it could be as low as 25-30%.

3) Bring a feral druid with tanking and DPS gear. There's nothing in Kara that a druid can't tank in Kara-level gear. And Feral DPS through Kara is just as good as any other equally-geared DPS spec.

I've gone on a lot longer than I meant too, but to me, using (dire) bear form isjust like using Battle Rez or Innervate. It's something we do. And if you're not using it, you're not playing the whole class.

Edited, Feb 19th 2008 8:13pm by AstarintheDruid

Earthwarden. has + 20. it is also one of the better general all round equipment (not quite as high damage but also works for soloing, tanking just not for moonkin) damage is 100 ap lower though.

ps. personally why bother with focusing only on feral dps. we're druids which means we can kick that rogue or arms warrior out of our slot by the FACT WE CAN OFFTANK AND DPS WHEN NEEDED. and bring that much viability to any raid. if you only collect dps gear. you're going to see people passing you over for that hunter rogue or mage in the same gear who does = damage to you + cc.

Depending on what quests you've already done you could make a few improvements to that list.

Stealther's Helm of Second Sight - I've gone with +8 agi, +4 agi 6 stam, and +4 agi 4 crit. Partly to meet the socket bonus, partly because I couldn't be bothered to change the warcrafter search funtion from agility to a different type of gem. Could change the yellow to +4 str +4 crit as you're hit capped.
Add a glyph of ferocity from CE revered and that's set.

Natasha's Pack Collar - Quest in BEM, says it's a group quest, but can be soloed.

Enchant your shoulders with whichever faction you went with (so plus crit for scryer, plus AP for aldor)

If you're Scryer do the quest line ending in Turning Point for Socrethar's Girdle, if your Aldor do the equivalent quest (Deathblow to the Legion) and get Kaylaan's Signet. Also for Aldor do the quest shutting down Manaforge Ara for the Overseer's Signet. The first quest line will need 4-5 players, the latter one you can solo (I found it quite hard to do this on my druid) or you can duo it fairly easily.

Get a cobrahide patch for your legs, and the +10 stam patch for your boots.

Get Bladefist's Breath from the short chain in Hellfire instead of the green trinket.

Get +12 agility on cloak (or farm mech for Capcitus' Cloak of Calibration).

+6 stats on chest

According to warcrafter (changing the belt, but ignoring other aldor/scryer rep rewards) this should land you on:

2548 AP
140 hit
37.5% crit
And 7k hp

Which are decent enough stats for heorics and staring Kara, not much difference to your original list, but every little helps.

Next you'll need to get around the following issues:
a) Lousy people who think everyone needs full epics for heroics
b) People who think you need lots of cc for heroics
c) The slightly harder one which is dps druids don't bring a whole lot to the table, particularly if you don't want to tank. Most raids will want a druid to off-tank and dps only when one tank is needed, also they don't scale that well for dps at higher levels, so whilst you might be fine in Kara a guild that's thinking further ahead probably won't recruit a regular dps kitty.

I just want to ask what all the hating is for the S1 gear. I tank in my S1 gear with just some minor changes in rings/trinkets and do just fine. My AP is over 2700 and my HP is over 10k, with over 37% crit. I'm not talking about alot of difficult to get stuff either, just S1/vind gear and some gems and enchants. Not to say some of that other stuff isn't fine, but if you can get some decent gear by running AV once or twice a day, why not?

Funny that you say this, considering a lot of tanking druids use a few(often somewhere from 1-3 pieces) to become crit immune.

S1 gear is actually really good for (druid)tanks, you just need to mix it with some other gear too, because otherwise you become crushable, or have to low hit.

Edited, Feb 20th 2008 1:25pm by NeroSeekerOfSouls

Druids can't get enough avoidance to be immune to crushing blows*. And PvP gear is good in a lot of slots for tanking, since Resil is just as good as Def for crit immunity.


*Just for laughs, I played with the sandbox and stacked Agi>Dodge>Def, ignoring any other stats. Final tally was 990 Agi, 59 Def, and 104 Dodge Rating, giving a total of 76.85% dodge and 82.81 total avoidance. Idol of Terror, Badge of Tenacity, and Moroes' Lucky Pocketwatch could (temporarily) push total avoidance over 102.4%, so for 10 sec every couple minutes, a druid could be immune to crushing blows.

First, I'm hit capped just because the equipment gave me hit cap, I didn't even looked into it.
Second, I think you are wrong when you say:

At least when we are talking about sustained dps. I may be wrong, but I remember quite vividly seem a discussion about this at the elitistjerks forum, and they came to the conclusion that the majority of cat sustained dps comes from white atacks.

Third, please, let's get back on topic, shall we? This's about DPS, not tank. =]

Edited, Feb 21st 2008 10:42am by Brisin

Hit rating cap for white and yellow attacks for druids is 141-143 (depends who you ask). The miss % vs level 73 mobs is ~9% for special attacks and non-DW regular attacks (feral druids, arms warriors, hunters). Dual-Wield has a much higher base miss % to compensate for the extra attacks, that's why it's more important for rogues and fury warriors.

Only to update again, I got the T4 helm and the Terestian Staff. My dps went up quite a bit.