PVE Cat Talents Versus BearFollow

I haven't played WoW for the last couple of months, but picked up the expansion yesterday and dove right back in. The first thing that I noticed was just have much the feral talent tree has changed between bear and cat.

I realize that a lot of the talents are purely bear or cat and since I plan on soloing almost completely in cat form (I don't really ever do instances so the likelihood that I ever tank is very, very low), I was just wondering if I could get some feedback on my talent selections.

Here's the current build I have http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Illidan&n=Slootah

I checked out the builds on WoWwiki, but was just looking for some confirmation.

Thanks in advance for any replies!

edit: edited hyperlink

Edited, Nov 14th 2008 4:02pm by sloootah

I would make a few changes.

Omen of Clarity & Beserk are 2 of your strongest DPS talents, so at 70 you should have one or the other of those then pick the 2nd one up at level 71. I picked OOC for kitty DPS first.

The other talents I have chosen that you haven't are :-

Feral Instinct :- The improved stealth is nice, but I really took this for the extra swipe damage. Swipe hits hard now and hits every target in front of you, not just 3 like it used to. It is our feral AoE and while questing there have been plenty of times I could grab 4-5 mobs at a time and swipe them down - really speeds up grind quests.

Feral Swiftness :- The bonus movement speed works indoors as well as outdoors now and can really make a big difference in leveling speed. An extra couple of seconds running to the next mob doesn't seem like much but when you are killing 100's of mobs it makes a big difference.

Shredding Attacks :- Allows me to make use of the pounce, mangle, shred, TF, shred opener which often almost kills the mob (or gives me a big head start on elites). I don't always bother with the stealth opener, but with pounce, you can make use of it every 2nd mob without having to stealth all the way to the mob.

Primal Precision :- The extra expertise means less misses, dodges and parries. Means it takes less attacks to kill a mob - always good.



The talents you have I don't take are :-

Nuturing Instinct :- Honestly, I haven't come close to dieing while leveling so far (except for alliance scum). Everytime I need to heal I have full mana again. I haven't had to eat or drink in over 1.5 levels in Howling Fjord. So these points would only be of marginal usefulness.

Feral Agression :- I find that most of my ferocious bites when I do use it, are overkill. The bonus 15% damage ends up meaning I do 40% more damage that I needed to kill the mob instead of 25% more than I needed to :)

Survival Instincts :- Our "Last Stand" ability is nice, but as I said, I haven't come close to dieing so far so this would be a wasted talent point for me.





Overall, there are not many ways you can go wrong with your talents. Some may not be optimal, but they are all useful. The main thing would be to make sure you get OOC & beserk ASAP imo. Also keep in mind that my gear is much better than yours at the moment, so you may need to take that into account when deciding on your talents as well. If you do want to look at my armory it is here. My talents aren't ideal either atm, I should probably have put points in Imp.Mangle or Predatory Instinct instead of Protector of the Pack, but i'll probably fix that as I get a few more talent points.

Have fun in Northrend :)