Ok first a little background info. Leveled 1-70 Feral and loved it. Spent awhile at 70 gearing myself up about a year ago to begin raiding, when I discovered.... Raiding takes time? Between my Family and ever changing work schedual, I just couldn't commit to a raiding schedual. So I took some time off of Druid to go and lvl some alts.
I Recently came back to my Druid to focus more on the PvP scene because It seems to be a much more casual and time friendly play-style. So I specced Resto and have had a blast these past few months in the BG's and arenas. Recently I have been feeling the itch and am looking at my options on how to move back to the Feral side of life.
I still won't be raiding, but I figure I can still do all the Heroics, plus still have some fun in PvP
Ok on to my question. What would be my best corse of action to go about gearing back up Feral? One thing is even after my time in the PvP world I still can't manage a decent Arena rating. My Mage 2's partner and I are always fighting to stay in the 1500's. So arena points are slow in building for me. After checking out Emmerald's lists I see that the Dragonhide sets are actually kinda high on the charts. Higher than I thought PvP gear would rank. Should I farm up the s2 Dragonhide set + offset items? Or would I be better off Healing my way through Heroics for awhile till I get badges/some drops. Either way I figured Id be better off farming up some feral gear while still Resto, as I can heal heroics a lot better than I could tank them right about now
I see how the Itemization seems to of completely shifted with the Feral/Balance sets between s2/s3 so would the s2 set even benefit me all that much? I will try and log in my Bear gear tonight to link my armory to. If it doesn't update I had all blues of the pre kara lvl. Heavy Clefthoof set, that sort of thing.
Thanks in advance for any pointers.
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The difficulty I had in gearing a feral druid is that outside of PvP and badge gear, there are simply so few epics available that the blues you have (especially the clefthoof set) are the ones that are going to stick with you for a long, long time. There's an epic tanking belt that drops from the chest at the end of Heroic Ramparts. Beyond that, there's absolutely nothing armor-wise that you'd want from heroics. (Heroic MagT has a fantastic trinket, but not many people who don't raid are going to be clearing heroic MagT). The season 2 stuff can be great, and if you enjoy the PvP end of things that's not a bad place to start. If you're doing BGs and arena, you can split your efforts between S2 and S3 gear and wind up with a pretty respectable amount of stamina and armor, and the resilience from PvP gear is awesome for feral druids seeking to be melee crit immune.
The badge gear that people look at these days is quite frequently out of reach for the casual player. You can get an idol, a cloak, and a necklace of dubious value for a reasonable number of badges (I consider reasonable to be anything less than 40, especially if you're not running Kara). The SSO badge gear is good stuff, but it lacks gem sockets and at easily 75-100 badges each, a heroic daily/day will get you an upgrade every 2-3 weeks minimum. That's assuming you have good heroic groups and your time is spent clearing the dungeon and collecting badges and not running back from the GY :P
If it weren't for honor/arena gear, I'd say that a tanking feral druid is probably the most difficult class to gear well. Even if you were raiding, the absence of tanking leather is disturbing. Were it not for tier tokens, I'd be very tempted to say that Blizzard really did not intend for feral druids to tank, regardless of what the talents/abilities suggest.
TBC progression is so far along on most realms now that players have become exceptionally pampered. A lot of groups won't consider you geared for heroics if you're not at least half epic, which is garbage. I know there are people in my guild now who deem me unworthy of participating in the content we're focusing on (ZA and T5 stuff) because my gear is only adequate for entry level T5. They forget that the T5 gear that makes T5 content so "easy" for them came to them as a result of...running T5 content when their gear was not so different from mine. They have all kinds of badge gear because they...ran T5 content for T5 gear that made Kara farming seem like a casual jaunt through an extended Shadow Labs. Players new to the entry-level end-game scene take a little longer to get into the groove. You'll have to know your stuff as a tank and keep doing your thing for those upgrades despite some folks who might scoff at the idea of running a heroic with a tank that hasn't spent dozens of hours in raids.
You can do it though, and I wouldn't trade my feral tank for any other class in the game. I've just had to work a little harder at it than I thought.
The badge gear that people look at these days is quite frequently out of reach for the casual player. You can get an idol, a cloak, and a necklace of dubious value for a reasonable number of badges (I consider reasonable to be anything less than 40, especially if you're not running Kara). The SSO badge gear is good stuff, but it lacks gem sockets and at easily 75-100 badges each, a heroic daily/day will get you an upgrade every 2-3 weeks minimum. That's assuming you have good heroic groups and your time is spent clearing the dungeon and collecting badges and not running back from the GY :P
If it weren't for honor/arena gear, I'd say that a tanking feral druid is probably the most difficult class to gear well. Even if you were raiding, the absence of tanking leather is disturbing. Were it not for tier tokens, I'd be very tempted to say that Blizzard really did not intend for feral druids to tank, regardless of what the talents/abilities suggest.
TBC progression is so far along on most realms now that players have become exceptionally pampered. A lot of groups won't consider you geared for heroics if you're not at least half epic, which is garbage. I know there are people in my guild now who deem me unworthy of participating in the content we're focusing on (ZA and T5 stuff) because my gear is only adequate for entry level T5. They forget that the T5 gear that makes T5 content so "easy" for them came to them as a result of...running T5 content when their gear was not so different from mine. They have all kinds of badge gear because they...ran T5 content for T5 gear that made Kara farming seem like a casual jaunt through an extended Shadow Labs. Players new to the entry-level end-game scene take a little longer to get into the groove. You'll have to know your stuff as a tank and keep doing your thing for those upgrades despite some folks who might scoff at the idea of running a heroic with a tank that hasn't spent dozens of hours in raids.
You can do it though, and I wouldn't trade my feral tank for any other class in the game. I've just had to work a little harder at it than I thought.
You more or less laid it out like I was afraid of. MY druid used to be a tank 1-70. I lvled a pally 1-70 Prot. and also have a war in the 50's. I've done my fair share of tanking. I know the deal, know the ropes... But without full purple gears I get laughed out of heroics. But thanks for the advice. I'm definitely not opposed to working hard for my slot. Just trying to get my foot in the door is going to be the tough part it seems.
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Edited, Aug 26th 2008 9:59pm by kawainui
Edited, Aug 26th 2008 9:59pm by kawainui
I am actually looking to upgrade my shoulders, chest and gloves to the S2 honor gear atm. Either way, what I have on right now get me into any heroic I want and I actually tanked Heroic BoT the other night with a no cc group (priest healer, shadow priest, ret pally, enhance shammy and myself) and the only death we had was when the shammy ran in front of me with auto attack on after a pull and got 1-shotted. Other than that we cleared it in a little over an hour. In that gear, even with the blue clefthide set and crappy *** trinkets I was (buffed with Fort, Kings, Agil elixir and +30 stam food) 18.5k hp, 26k armor, 32% dodge and on single target fights hitting 1200-1250TPS.)
Everything I have is if not easily attainable, at least moderate. I used about 70 badges for idol, bracers and ring. Everything else is crafted, rep or drop from instance.
To be honest, our gear is very, very similar, i just have a little more agility/stam and you have a little more strength
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thorium+Brotherhood&n=Galenmoon
Good luck!
Everything I have is if not easily attainable, at least moderate. I used about 70 badges for idol, bracers and ring. Everything else is crafted, rep or drop from instance.
To be honest, our gear is very, very similar, i just have a little more agility/stam and you have a little more strength
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thorium+Brotherhood&n=Galenmoon
Good luck!
In all honesty, being on a newer server helps for tanking. Everyone is looking for tanks or healers on Ysondre. I'm in one of the best raiding guilds for the alliance and we're only on the beginning of the t5 raids.
I've seen a lot of druid tanks epic fail on tanking because they just dont have the right gear, a lot of them are in some sort of feral dps gear which makes it entirely way too hard for myself as a healer. I really suggest just getting some of the s2 pvp gear because it seems to scale better off. I've only got 4 pieces of feral tanking gear that have dropped from various raids/instances I've done. I have attempted some moonkin tanking just messing around and I've gotten around 16k armor between cloth and some leather tanking pieces. So really hitting the armor cap shouldnt be much of an issue.
Or... Just find a guild that does Kara on a day or night you can get too and your badge build up could go up pretty fast. Plus you can find some pretty decent gear off of it.
Edit:
Here is the armory of our druid tank, Luptator.
Edited, Aug 4th 2008 6:05pm by ArexLovesPie
I've seen a lot of druid tanks epic fail on tanking because they just dont have the right gear, a lot of them are in some sort of feral dps gear which makes it entirely way too hard for myself as a healer. I really suggest just getting some of the s2 pvp gear because it seems to scale better off. I've only got 4 pieces of feral tanking gear that have dropped from various raids/instances I've done. I have attempted some moonkin tanking just messing around and I've gotten around 16k armor between cloth and some leather tanking pieces. So really hitting the armor cap shouldnt be much of an issue.
Or... Just find a guild that does Kara on a day or night you can get too and your badge build up could go up pretty fast. Plus you can find some pretty decent gear off of it.
Edit:
Here is the armory of our druid tank, Luptator.
Edited, Aug 4th 2008 6:05pm by ArexLovesPie
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