The Ironsong Tribe - Druid

Feral Druid AoE Strategy

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 11:39:10 -0700

Purrfessor has dropped a bit of a gift on us Ferals this week.

Nganga found this on the forums as we were both researching how we can squeeze out the most AoE damage in Mythic+++ dungeons. This is probably of limited use as a Feral is likely only to worry about this after item level 850 but I wanted somewhere to post it so I could make some notes and comments to help any serious feral druids in the Tribe and ourselves.

Subject: Feral Mythic Trash Rotation

*** Repost from Purrfessor: ***
Feral is absolutely 100% viable EVEN IN M+ but first let me get this out of the way, unless it's higher mythic + many mobs simply don't live long enough for feral bleeds to tick all the way down, and burst AoE is dependent on very specific talent choices and legendaries. However feral can absolutely deal great amounts of damage in higher M+ with the correct play style. This play style however is much more difficult then just about any other melee class for the result you get. Yes you can pick easier talents and do less damage unlike other classes faceroll talents are their best. Feral in dungeons takes some serious effort, concentration, and practice to preform on a high level.

Rake is the core of your dungeon damage, when i check my overall damage at the end of the dungeon it usually sits around 35-40% over my total damage. Personally I almost always stick with the follow talent set up for dungeons.

Dungeon Talents:

Predator
Displacer beast
Balance affinity
Mighty bash
Savage roar
Jagged wounds
Blood talons

I choose these talents because it buffs your raking ability and damage, and rake being the core damage dealing ability in dungeons these talents should be the best overall offensive gain as you can play around them and adjust to the situation. Many talents such as Might Bash, and Displacer beast are situational and should be changed as you need to. Might bash offers a free, on the GCD 5 second stun, that is almost good in every situation to stop deadly casts or to help alleviate tank damage. Displacer beast just a general mobility talent that helps you get out of dangerous situations, or help you advance towards your target faster.

While it does depend on your talents and legendaries (since those significantly change your rotation) you usually want to do the following in a ROUGH order as everything changes depending on the situation:

Longer living mobs:

Keep rake up on all targets
Keep up savage roar to buff all the rakes, thrashes, and rips you do
Swipe when all targets are bleeding, or are close to death
Keep a constant check on mob HP, as bleeding low HP targets is a damage loss and you want to get as many predator resets as possible. This aspect alone on top of keeping a 100% rake uptime on every mob is CRITICAL to dealing great feral dungeon dps. If you don't properly time every single bleed, finisher, SR, and more your damage will drop like a rock.
Make sure bleeds are on targets that are about to die with either:
- Rake for a single target
- Thrash for multiple targets

To get as many tiger fury's as possible from predator. Successfully controlling your energy through the lows and sudden influx with predator is one of the keys to feral dungeon dps.

Speaking of energy, knowing when to dump energy and work around your omen procs is another substantial gain to your dps. You always want to be spending your omen procs in this rough order:

Raking when it needs refreshing
Swiping if all rakes are good on their time
Buffing yourself with SR
Thrashing if you your rake AND combo points are looking good

There are so many factors that go into knowing when to use what it's something you can only learn from practice. Wasted energy is rakes that fall off, and rips that don't happen.

Shorter living mobs:

Buff SR (from last mob 5 points)
Thrash
swipe swipe swipe swipe swipe...
Fill in energy with TF resets
Rip on priority targets (Super short live trash mobs you should save the points)
Keep up SR

If the mobs live for a moderate amount of time, such as the mobs are still going to alive before you're going to run yourself out of energy, you should buff your thrashes > focus rips > swipes with blood talons as it saves you energy while giving you roughly the same amount of damage.

Other things to note:

-Ferocious bite... unfortunately... really sucks. The damage from ONE full 50 energy bite is roughly the same as 1/6th-1/7th of a SINGLE 30 energy rip with jagged wounds. Plus many artifact abilities depend on rip being up on the target 24/7 such as ashamanes' bite and open wounds. The only scenario where bite is useful is when you can not snapshot a better rip under 25% of a mob's HP.

-Always rip higher health or priority targets, and depending on your mastery, two ticks alone of rip can out damage a bite.

-it's 110% OKAY to wait at energy cap as long as any other choice would have made your bleed fall off. For example, with jagged wounds, rake's pandemic threshold of refreshing is roughly at 4 seconds. If you're about to cap energy and a rake you need to refresh is sitting at ~8 seconds it's completely worth it to wait. While you're sitting there keep your auto attacks rolling on something to fish for an omen proc (refer back to omen proc section), or use some CC on a mob that needs it. Refreshing rake/rip earlier even is MUCH BETTER then letting it fall off completely.

-Generating 5 combo points at the end of one pull so that you can SavageRoar leading into the next (while still stealth) is a GIGANTIC gain along with having Tiger'sFury up from the Predator reset

-Letting savage roar fall off is acceptable in a handful of situations, including but not limited to:
You will not be able to cast another finisher on the mob.
You will be casting SavageRoar again before reapply any bleeds
You would otherwise not be able to generate an acceptable amount of combo points before the next pull (usually 5)

While savage roar is substantial damaging buff, it only helps the damage you deal AFTER using roar, and outside of some very long living mobs and bosses you should almost never ever have to re-cast it mid-pull except the very first time.

-Many other talents (Such as soul of the forest, and brutal slash) are viable for dungeons and are MUCH easier to use (little more spammy) but as you get higher and higher into M+ those heavily cripple your single target damage to the point of detriment. There is a strategy using soul of the forest to rip multiple mobs and swiping to trigger ashmanes' bite procs but I personally don't find this to be overall very viable due to SoTF losing to SR in high mob or single target situations and targets tend to die eventually so you simply can't rotate between the same 3 targets turreting bleeds.

-Cooldowns should be ROUGHLY used whenever you can get the biggest use out of them while not waiting a long time on them. That means sometimes you should berserk a mob to keep rake on everything, or saving it for the next pull which may be a boss, or using Ashamnes frenzy to get combo points leading up to a huge AoE pack for a SavageRoar. Really just have to test them out to get a feel for it.

-Many of the abilities and dps gains are HEAVILY tied to how many artifact points / where your point are at. The combination of shadow thrash + luffa bracer legendary EASILY accounts for over 50% of my gigantic small mob aoe pull dps (Such as bats in black rook, early demons in Vault, etc)

-Legendaries such as Luffa Wraps (higher thrash usage ), Wildshaper's Clutch (more combo points for rips), and Ailuro Pouncers (free BT... when it gets fixed) all really change things up and interact with each other in very specific ways.

Feral dungeon dps is NOT IN ANY WAY easy, if you are careless with a single aspect you will lose the majority of your dps as every part of your rotation works off each other to increase the damage of a few key abilities. I would go as far to say that being a feral DPS in a dungeon setting is one of if not the hardest dps to play optimally.

With my current set up (50% mastery, Luffa bracers, Pouncer boots, and swapping Symbiote belt on for bosses) I am able to very consistently pull roughly or over 350k dps on bosses / 450K mobs(3-6) and spike upwards of 1.5m dps on anything bigger than that with shadow thrash slot machine luck. Here's some proof of numbers while I helped out a guildy who was streaming: https://www.twitch.tv/zatcharygaming/v/9...=22h38m00s
*** End repost ***

Granted Purrfessor runs with a *sick* amount of legendaries and swaps 1 between boss and trash. But even without the legendaries the recipe above for multiplying your damage by stacking your skills correctly is clearly something that can drastically improve AoE dps!

I created a Legend of the skills/talents/items mentioned here for quick reference.

Predator (Talent):
- The cooldown on Tiger's Fury resets when a target dies with one of your Bleed effects active.
Tiger's Fury (TF):
- Instantly restores 20 Energy, and increases the damage of all your attacks by 15%
- for their full duration. Lasts 8 sec.
Savage Roar Finisher (SR):
- Finishing move that grants 25% increased damage to your Cat Form attacks for their full duration.
- Lasts longer per combo point (max 24 sec)
Rake:
- Rake the target for (91.2% of Attack power) Bleed damage and an additional (456% of
- Attack power) Bleed damage over 15 sec.
Thrash:
- Strikes all nearby enemies, dealing (100% of Spell power + 41% of Attack power)
- Bleed damage and an additional (146% of Attack power) Bleed damage over 15 sec.
Swipe:
- Swipe nearby enemies, inflicting 500% Physical damage.Deals 20% increased damage
- against bleeding targets
Bloodtalons (BT) (talent):
- Regrowth (RG formerly HT) cast causes next 2 melee skills to deal 50% more damage
Omen procs:
- Your auto attacks have a chance to cause a Clearcasting state,
- making your next Cat Form ability cost no Energy.
- (Recommended order for choosing clearcasted skill: Rake -> Swipe -> SR Buff -> Thrash)
Pandemic cap/threshold:
- See advance discussion here http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic...071#post-4
Regrowth (formerly Healing Touch or HT)
- Healing spell obviously, but used by BT for 2 skill +50% damage)
Primal Fury (passive):
- Every time you critically strike with a combo generating ability you gain an additional combo point.
Shadow Thrash (Proc from artifact):
- Thrash has a 25% chance to release part of Ashamane's soul,
- causing all nearby enemies to take (2 * (100% of Attack power)) Shadow damage over 2 sec.
Legendary: Luffa Bracers (Wrist):
- Increases damage output of Thrash by 25%(?)
Legendary: Ailuro Pouncers (Boot):
- Gain 1 stack of Predatory Swiftness every 15 sec.
- Additionally, Predatory Swiftness now stacks up to 3 times.
Legendary: Wildshaper's Clutch (Gloves)
- Critical damage from your Bleeds have a 40% chance to trigger Primal Fury.
Legendary: Cinidaria, the Symbiote (Waist)
- Your attacks cause an additional 30% damage as Physical to enemies above 90% health.

Moonkin Resources

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 13:00:07 -0700

Since I was asked for some Boomkin help, I figured I'd post all of it up here for everyone to see (but mainly for the links, which I couldn't pass along in WoW chat anyway):

First up, the basic guides on either MMO-Champions or the WoW Forum are pretty solid for understanding the basics.

MMO-Champions version
WoW Forum version

Both are written by Cyous, who is generally regarded as pretty good at being a druid. Also at writing guides. They'll describe the majority of what to do, when, and why. I'll reiterate a bit here, though.

Talents: Pick your favorites, for the most part.

Level 60 - don't use Force of Nature, it's weaker than the others except on exceptionally movement heavy fights. Even then, not great.
Level 100 - don't use Stellar Flare. It's a pain to use in the first place, and is also pretty lack-luster at the moment (even used perfectly, it tends to do worse than the other two which are much easier to use anyway). There's a decent chance it'll be good in later raid tiers as it'll scale better than the other two, however.

Rotation (Priority list) -- eclipse is the peak area (when you have the Lunar/Solar peak buff), phase is when Moonfire/Sunfire swaps type:

Keep Sunfire/Moonfire up. Not-Euphoria: Use Moonfire every Lunar Eclipse, and Sunfire on entry and exit from Solar-phase. Euphoria: Use Moonfire every other Lunar Eclipse, and Sunfire every Solar Eclipse (or whenever as long as you don't -- not having the lunar/solar peak buff is less than a 1% DPS loss -- keeping them up in general is more important).
Starsurge or Starfall if you have at least 2 charges (reserve 1 charge for movement if possible, but never hold on to 2 charges, since you can get a Shooting Stars proc at any time bringing you to 3 and wasting recharge time).
Starfire or Wrath depending on which phase will be up when the cast completes.

Major CDs: Use Celestial Alignment and Incarnation when you can (usually at the start with Pre-pot, and then on CD or held for Bloodlust if it'll be coming soon). Occasionally I'll hold them for specific moments (e.g. I started using 1 per grasping hands phase on Kromog so I always had 1 up to help there).

Add-ons: Some sort of Eclipse tracker with Starsurge/Starfall charges is very helpful. I'm using Weak-Auras 2 and Cyous Eclipse bars set up for it (actually, I was apparently using an older version -- I just updated to the latest today and will try it out).

As a side note, Weak Auras 2 (or Power Auras) can be very powerful for setting up a variety of UI effects that can help just about everyone. Always miss when you have some debuff from a boss? You can set up an aura to alert you. Always forget to hit one of your CDs? Have it pop up an aura to let you know it's ready. Have some buff or debuff you need to keep up but don't want to hit too often? You can set up an aura to track it. Power Auras, from what I remember, was easier to do setup in, but Weak Auras 2 appears to be more versatile and have more configuration options.

Feral Druid cataclysm resources

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 08:20:09 -0800

http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/11/30/shift ... oad-to-85/

Troll epic bat flight form

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:48:46 -0800

http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/11/10/troll ... #continued

(Also: worgen druid flight form: http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/11/03/worge ... m-wowhead/ )

Fuzzy Druid Question

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:08:51 -0800

I've finally gotten back onto Kaerrah after a very long hiatus and a pile of alts. I'm GOING to get her to 80 and geared up. Now my question is, with the below kitty spec would I still be able to tank 5 man heroics? Assuming I gathered tanking leathers of course. Or are the bear specific talents a must?

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGMcfr ... czb:pcVmzM

Feral resources and philosophy

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:24:29 -0800

For budding kitties and bears, I thought I would share a few of the places I haunt when I'm looking for gear advice and raiding tips. My links and comments will be shaded towards the cat-specific, but almost all of these places also have equally good bear information. I won't repeat the work of others who have written about cat dps/bear tank procedures; this is more a compilation of where to go to get to those people.

The Granddaddy:
Elitist Jerks Druid forum: The Cat DPS guide is quite good, and the discussion is ongoing in the later pages. This forum also has a number of links to simulators which can help with spec, gear, gemming and other variables. Has info for all Druid specs.

Simulators and such:
Rawr: I've never been able to use this, since I am on a Mac, but it gets a lot of recommendations. The creator of Rawr now has ICC gear named after him. [item]Astrylian's Sutured Cinch[/item]
Toskk's DPS Gear Method: I use this a lot to try to generate upgrade paths. [item]Toskk's Maximized Wristguards[/item] is also an ICC item. Toskk's forum is good too.
SimulationCraft and Team Robot are simulators linked from Elitist Jerks. I've never used them; they seem a little too mathy and geared toward the TheoryCrafters more than being for actual play, but owno.
Simulators should be used as guides only. Temper the outputs from these idealized situations with actual play, and with discussion forums and other research.

Great Blogs:
I've found tons and tons of useful and interesting information in the world of Druid Blogs. Several of the oldest and best have left us this year, but luckily for us, others have tossed their paws in the ring. Many of these blogs have great posts about early gearing up for raiding. Obviously since you can now get 245 gear simply by running random heroics all day, take the philosophy into account more than the actual gear lists. See what stats are important at your current gear level.
Feral Aggression: Excellent information and theory. He also writes guides to soloing old instance and raid bosses.
The Fluid Druid: also excellent discussion.
MMO-Champion: general wow site. Great tracker of Blue posts and excellent links for loot on raid bosses. The forums are often clogged with fools, but you can occasionally dredge decent information or a good link out of them.
Feral DPS Guide: looks like a really nice basic guide with good links.
The Coldbear Report: Lots of pvp stuff, but also some raiding info and sometimes fun links. He's very grumpy, but that can be amusing. One of the best Druid pvp videos I have ever seen is linked from his site. Makes me laugh every time I see it.

Less-active but still excellent archived information:
Unbearably HoT: Very good guides to Ulduar gear and earlier.
Of Teeth and Claws Basic Kitty DPS Guide: Very good for beginning kitties.
ThinkTank: Very good for both cat and bear. Gear lists, discussion of relative stat values (which change for kitties with very high-end gear).

Addons:
BadKitty: I used this until I got a handle on keeping up multiple timed abilities. A similar addon is: CatRotationHelper, which I have not used but which looks more compact than BK.
NeedToKnow: Very lightweight tracker for abilities, even ones that are not yours. So if you want to see if Trauma is up on a target (meaning you don't have to waste energy Mangling *glee*), you can set it to track this. Yes, usually you can see the Trauma icon on the target, but sometimes it gets lost in the fray.
MikScrollingBattleText: Nice HUD-style setup, with very useful alerts for ability timers and OOC procs.
OmniCC: Adds cooldown timers to your buttons. Very very handy, especially if you are not using BK or another cat rotation addon.
Inline Aura: Used in conjunction with OmniCC, lights up icons that are on a particular target. Works well for healing too.
Omen Threat Meter: Very very good, since Cower is complete crap (lowers threat less than what is gained by one autoattack). It is your responsibility to chill out a bit if you are accruing threat way faster than the tank. Dead kitties do zero dps. Turn off autoattack for a bit, ask for Vigilance from a warrior, or do whatever else you can do for a couple of seconds to dump a little aggro. Blaming the tank does no good: you have to adjust your output to their abilities and gear level.
Recount: Mentioned early and often in other posts, the DPS meter can be really handy for gauging your own performance. You can see how often you missed/dodged/parried etc, and see how well you're keeping up your various debuffs/bleeds. Note that cats are at their best when on a static boss you can hit from behind. Fights with a lot of target switching, targets that burrow and drop your precious 5-point Rip instantly, and targets that spin around so you are hitting from the front a lot will all screw with your theoretical max dps, so don't stress out about how you are in comparison to others on every single fight. It's also fun to see you pulled 15k dps on a trash pack, especially if the rogues popped everything too early and got smooshed in the first 2 seconds and you didn't. :wink:
DBM or BigWigs: Bosses are complicated. If you are standing in the fire, failing to run out of range, blowing up your allies, or missing a target switch because you aren't watching the boss's every move, emote, glow, or spellcast, please get one of these mods. You cannot rely on someone calling out in vent for every single thing you need to do. If you want your UI to remain "pure," then please pay attention to the boss and react accordingly. If you can't do that, then take a little responsibility for yourself and download one of these addons to help you out.

Things to consider when gearing your cat:
Agi Agi Agi Agi Agi. Don't gem hit, expertise or strength, unless you have ilvl 264+ gear everywhere and are white crit and armor penetration capped. When you hit a certain level of armor penetration on your gear (which varies whether or not you have an armor pen-proccing trinket), you can start gemming for armor pen. However, the difference between agi and arpen is not quite as huge since the big arpen nerf of '09, and making the change will affect your playstyle quite a bit. If you are more comfortable with lots of combo points and smooth Rip applications, you may want to stay with Agi for longer.

Armor pen is quite good when you have some, and fantastic when you have a whole lot. Deciding when to make the switch from Agi is the subject of many a forum post and blog. Rip and Rake ignore Armor already, so the TL;DR difference is between gearing for constant bleeds, or gearing for large white hits. ToC favors Armor Pen due to boss mechanics. Of course, I never had an arpen trinket during all of our ToC time. Sigh.

Current cookie cutter cat is: 0/55/16 (shows 1 extra point left over to play with). I don't have quite this build; I like to solo things and pvp on occasion, but I also am bringing small raid heals with Improved LotP, and better aoe with Feral Instinct. With 3.3.3 I have taken my points out of Improved Mangle and put them back into Infected Wounds, but I haven't decided if they will stay there yet.

Make sure Primal Precision is in your talent build. This is why cats don't need to stack expertise or hit until you start capping other things. It gives 10 expertise on its own, but also refunds 80% of the energy cost if you miss a finishing move. This lessens the impact to our rotation when we miss or are dodged. HIt on gear is fairly easy to come by until you get to high ICC gear level; expertise is very very hard to find. The current theory is that we'd lose more dps by gemming or struggling to get expertise/hit gear than we do by missing or being dodged. Of course, there is also a vigorous opposition to this idea which wants to get hit/exp capped before anything else. Your milage may vary. I ignored hit completely until about ToC-level gear. At that point I got a flood of hit and am now currently way over the hit cap. I've never had any gear with expertise on it. I may have to start worrying about it again in tier 10, we'll see.

Being at/near the hit cap is a very good thing overall, but you don't need to go nuts over it. Once your bleeds are on the target, they can't miss. Arpen gearing makes hit and expertise more important than an Agi/bleed build. Bears need hit and expertise gear far far more than beginning Cats do. If you are missing enough that your bleeds and buffs fall off a lot, add more hit.

At ICC gear levels, you are nearing the white crit cap (~71%), which means every dodge, miss, or parry is pushing a crit (rather just just a hit) off the table. This makes gearing for hit and expertise much more valuable than they were earlier. However, most cats are still trying to hit the armor pen cap (either 750ish depending on your trinket proc or 1400 if you are going for hard cap with no trinket proc) and the crit cap before going for expertise cap. Haste becomes very good at this point as well. Stat weighting is pretty complicated at the moment. Just remember that you really can't go far wrong with Agility.

Do not let Mangle fall off the target. It boosts all of our special attacks. If at all possible, get an Arms Warrior or another Feral to put up your bleed debuff (Trauma/Mangle). If a kitty has someone else applying that debuff, it's a large boost to your dps. Regardless, it needs to be up 100% of the time. And if you're the lowbie kitty in the raid, guess what? You're the Mangler. Due to 3.3.3 patch changes, Mangle now stays up for 60 seconds. This lets us dps with a much looser timing factor, and basically rocks. It still needs to be up 100% of the time, but it's far easier to make it do that now.

Stay behind the target if at all possible. Not only should you be there for strategic reasons (lots of frontal-cone boss abilities plus parried frontal attacks), but our main combo point generator requires it. Shred is going to be your default attack button. On fights where you have to be in front, or where the boss is moving/rotating a lot (or where the DK casts Army of the Dead..grrr), your dps will be lower across the board due to lack of shreds. When there are tank swaps, try to stay in a position where you'll still be hitting from the back after the boss changes to face the other tank. Sigh for having the last main attack with a positional requirement. Thanks Blizz!

Glyphs:
[item]Glyph of Savage Roar[/item], [item]Glyph of Rip[/item], and [item]Glyph of Shred[/item] will give you the best DPS, even if you are applying your own Mangle. In cases where Berserk + Swipe is a larger damage component than extending Rip on a single target, swap out [item]Glyph of Shred[/item] for [item]Glyph of Berserk[/item]. Glyphs are cheap (don't buy them, get the mats instead), so do not be afraid to swap them out as needed to buff DPS on any given fight. It's a possibility now that [item]Glyph of Mangle[/item] could be used in place of Shred on specific fights with adds or lots of movement, such as Lady Deathwhisper and Valithria Dreamwalker. You'll strictly lose dps because you don't have the chance to Shred very much, but you'll gain some of it back by increasing Mangle damage.

And finally:
Kitty DPS Flowchart. Scarily accurate. Warning: does have two adult words in it.

Sorry for wall o' text. I'd be happy to update the link list if others have sites to recommend.
Edit: Added some more links and some other ramblings.

Druid Idols in 3.2

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:39:57 -0700

I don't know if all the druids are aware, but it seems the new idols that have been introduced for purchase with emblems of triumph are being considered "must haves" by the general druid community.

[item]Idol of Flaring Growth[/item]
[item]Idol of Lunar Fury[/item]
[item]Idol of Mutilation[/item]

All have procs based off of commonly used spells for their respective specs that have incredibly high chances of proc and *no internal cooldown*. So basically you can have the buffs from these idols on you >95% of the time while in combat. Needless to say, they outstrip any of the previous idols by a pretty wide margin. For 25 Emblems of Triumph they may be one of the first emblem purchases you'll want to make.

Druids of Azeroth Reskins. (image heavy)

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 08:00:03 -0700

These are amazing..

What our non-level distinctive, terribly outdated and boring forms look like now:

What they COULD look like with a little AWESOME rework:

Bear Form:

Cat Form:

Travel/Cheetah Form:

Moonkin Form:

Tree of Life Form (I WANTS!):

And for an awesome alternative to Cat/Bear, Worgen Form:

------- A video of them all in action. <3<3<3

The above images are borrowed from the development page of a reskinning mod/tweak which will cosmetically change the way your differing forms look to YOU in game (use at your own risk, a change to your installation folder of this kind could warrant a ban -- although said bans happen VERY rarely). There are some other awesome alternative skins as well on it (Stag, Furbog, Lynx).

With hope for WoftLK, as more mods of these types are developed and QQing about our silly forms on the forum goes on, Blizzard will get a hint to go back and relook at some stuff. *crosses her fingers*

signed,
I dun wanna look like a Tree of Decay anymore! :>

Druid Raid Class Spec Lead (Feral). Behr or Mew Mew.

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:18:39 -0800

Love me or hate me, I will be your guide for all things Bear/Kitty.

A Feral Druid is a very fun class to play but is unfortunately the hardest class gear wise to get ready to raid so I will start there. You NEED to be uncritable with a decent ammount of HP. Once you start getting Heroic/T4 items and increase your dodge, your HP can go down but you must remain uncrittable. To be uncrittable as a Feral Druid you need 5.6% crit reduction. You get 3% from talents and the other 2.6% will come from 415 defense to start or a combination of defense/resilience later on. Some good numbers to shoot for are 14-15k HP, 415 defense, 25-30% dodge, and 25k+ armour. All these values should be achieved self buffed.

Behr - Heroics/Karazhan:

Head - [item]Stylin' Purple Hat[/item] Always on the AH, easy to get a hold of.

Neck - [item]Mark of the Ravenguard[/item] Quest called Brother Against Brother you get from Isfar ouside Sethekk Halls.

Shoulders - Anything you can find with 200ish armour and has both stamina and agility. Quite a few 5 mans have decent shoulders that drop off a boss or even get some blue PvP shoulders for honor.

Chest - [item]Heavy Clefthoof Vest[/item] You will want the whole clefthoof set. Will require some material/gold farming.

Wrists - [item]Umberhowl's Collar[/item] Quest reward from The Cipher of Damnation questline in Shadowmoon Valley.

Hands - [item]Verdant Gloves[/item] From the quest, Akama's Promise which is the last part of the Tablet of Baa'ri chain in Shadowmoon Valley.

Waist - [item]Manimal's Cinch[/item] You will get this doing the same quest chain as you started for your bracers.

Legs - [item]Heavy Clefthoof Leggings[/item]

Feet - [item]Heavy Clefthoof Boots[/item]

Rings - [item]Iron Band of the Unbreakable[/item] Dropps off of Lieutenant Drake in Old Hillsbrad. It is not unique so you can get 2 or get a "of the Monkey" for your 2nd for the stam/agil or you can go for the [item]Mok'Nathal Clan Ring[/item] from the chest in the Ramparts.

Trinkets - [item]Badge of Tenacity[/item] is 'the' Druid tanking trinket. It drops in the plateaus of Bladesedge off of any of the mobs there. It could take a little bit to get but it is well worth it. Other than that, any trinket that has stamina or defense/resilience to help get you uncrittable will work.

Weapon - [item]Braxxis' Staff of Slumber[/item] World drop, usually cheap on the AH.

Idol - Whatever you want until you can get your [item]Idol of Terror[/item] which should be your first Badge purchase.

That will get you going for now, I will edit this post with needed enchants, gems, kitty gear, consumables and stratagey.

Druid Raid Class Spec Lead (Restoration) Yes, TREES!

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 06:06:25 -0800

Hello, my lovely little trees! I will be your tour guide today and please don't hesitate to ask me anything at all, if I don't know the answer to a particular question then I will find it out for you! My alts are Chaska, Simra, Jaeyla, and Shaey, please feel free to send me a tell on any of them any time.

Sound is a very knowledgeable tree too. She knows A LOT about tree stuff...and doom So, if I'm not around, please ask her too!

There are not many of us trees, and that is unfortunate. Trees are exceptional healers. One reason is because of our HoT's (heal over time). HoT's make it possible to heal a lot of people at the same time. Granted it doesn't have the big BOOM heal that Healing Touch does, or to a lesser extent that Regrowth does, but you can toss Rejuventation on as many people as you like and keep them topped off. Lifebloom is much the same, but it ticks faster for a smaller heal amount with a small BOOM at the end. Anyway, if you're wanting to raid and have gotten to 70 then you already know all this so I'll shaddup about that.

I will be adding more to this forum once I get my scrambled egg thoughts together!

Druid Raid Class Spec Lead (Balance) Discussion

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:16:29 -0800

The RCSL for the Balance Spec is Shantow. If you have any questions regarding the BOOMkin spec/gear please feel free to track me down. If I'm not around as Shantow, you can often find me under the alias of Krell, Salisha, or as of recently Grushnak.

There are many things to consider when attempting to function as a gigantic chicken-hawk thing...and this is the place to find out as much as possible about it.

In the near future, I hope to be posting a couple of useful sites, as well as some gear and enchanting links.

** Insider Tip**

Please give the profession of Leatherworking -serious- consideration if you intend to play a BOOMkin. The 3 pieces of epic scale armor you can make will be most useful to you, and Shantow has only replaced one of them at this point. They are comparable/better to anything I've found in Karazhan and Zul'Aman. In fact, I am having trouble replacing them with the badge reward pieces added in the Zul'Aman patch.

Target Numbers (These numbers are target numbers to reach for, and it does not mean if you cannot hit these numbers you will be passed over for inclusion on a trip to Karazhan)

MANA- 9000 Unbuffed

As a MOONkin, you will find out that in a relatively long fight you will burn through your mana fairly quickly. In most raiding situations you may be required to earmark your Innervate for a healer, thus leaving you with very few options for regaining mana. There is a reason we are affectionately known as OOMkin. That said, be prepared when going to Karazhan or Gruuls by carrying a couple of stacks of mana potions.

MANA REGEN- 100 in Combat, 250 out of Combat

This number goes hand in hand with your mana pool, and you will not want to neglect it. The more mana you can periodically regen, translates into more mana to Moonfire spam bad guys! Initially, I went with high +Damage, high Hit or Crit rate gems, but I have sense taken the Shaman approach and started to regem my gear for +MP5. (mana per 5 seconds) It has cost me a fair amount in gems, and I hope by typing this I can save a few people this costly mistake.

+ DAMAGE- 600

I feel this is a low/medium number and should be able to be attained fairly easily with the gear thats already present out there. However, this means that you may be (YOU WILL) initially wearing a lot of CLOTH gear. Also, the recent patch which allowed +HEALING to also provide some +DAMAGE has helped to ease the burden on BOOMkins in my opinion.

HEALTH- 8,000-9,000 Unbuffed

Obviously, this is one of those numbers that you will want as high as possible. 8,000 sets the bar so that you will not be 1-shotted by some of the bosses in Karazhan. (hopefully)

Congrats, Shantow!

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 08:59:09 -0700

Omg were his words, but I say DOOMkin is stornger!

A nifty little site to check out if anyone's bored or curious: http://www.gankbang.com (it sounds naughty, but 'tis not.) I know some may be highly against this kind of thing and ranking other players, but it's nifty to look at none the less. :]

As a side note, I'm unsure how often it pulls new info from the Armory (and if you log out in, say, feral gear, it throws it off entirely), so no getting upset if your stats are amiss. :X

Patch changes - 2.1.2

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:26:06 -0700

Druids
- Druids in Swift Flight form can no longer loot herb nodes.
- Force of Nature: This spell will no longer causes players it is cast
on to enter combat with nearby creatures. All of the treants
summoned will now attack a neutral creature they are summoned on.
- Tree of Life: The bonus-healing aura from this talent will
reactivate when a Banish effect wears off a Druid in Tree Form.

Tanking High End Instances

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:30:03 -0700

I am just wanting to get some feedback on tanking in high end instances.
Right now my stats are below in bear form;

12400 Health
18600 Armor
395 Defence

These stats are all self buffed with MotW.
Just want to find out how much more I need to do well in tanking.

To Moonkin?

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:34:50 -0700

I have been pondering lately trying out Moonkin with Cloud. Was wondering if any of the other guild druids have tried this and if they liked it?