Feral PvE Guide

[Myforte]

Hello there, I have never really seen any feral threads so i'm making some to help all those feral druids :)

Introduction post - Random stuff

Firstly, I'd like to introduce myself.

My name is Sebastian aka Glorsindel, I'm an 18 year old student of wine from London, but I currently live in the south of France. I've played WoW since Vanilla as a druid (except for my recent 1 year break from drood) and have been specced feral 99% of the time (I also decently play rogue and pally)
In the words of The Fat Cow : "Once Feral, Always Feral"

The post will be structured :

Introduction post - Random stuff
The Cat Section - DPS stuff
The Tank Section - Tanking stuff

Bit of random info :

Weapon Skill Rating: 3.9 rating grants 1 skill point

Defense Rating: 2.4 rating grants 1 defense skill

Dodge Rating: 18.9 rating grants 1% dodge

Parry Rating: 22.4 rating grants 1% parry

Block Rating: 7.9 rating grants 1% block chance

Hit Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1% hit chance

Spell Hit Rating: 12.6 rating grants 1% spell hit chance

Critical Strike Rating: 22.1 rating grants 1% critical strike chance

Spell Critical Strike Rating: 22.1 rating grants 1% spell critical strike chance

Haste Rating: 15.7 rating grants 1% haste

Spell Haste Rating: 21 rating grants 1% spell haste

Resilience Rating: 39.4 rating grants 1% less chance of being struck by any type of critical strike, and 2% less damage taken from critical strikes

The Cat Section - DPS stuff

This is your basic pvp and pve viable spec for feral druids. (Note that this is NOT a feral tank spec)
http://wow243.gamestool.net/druidt.php? ... 0000000000

This part explains about being a cat in a DPS role. I don't know what other role you could do as a cat, but whatever. Contains stuff like stats to go for, what enchants, gems, set bonuses and what powershifting is etc...

The Basics - Stats :

Stats and what they give you. Brackets are raid buffed values while the normal ones are unbuffed. All values are assuming HoTW and SoTF. All values are per 1 point of stat.

Strength = 2.266 (2.49) AP

Agility = 1.133 (1.25) AP, 1% crit per ~25 agility (1% crit per ~22 agility).

Critical Strike Rating = ~1% crit per 22.1 critical strike rating.

Hit Rating = 1% hit per ~15.8 hit rating [[You need ~9% hit to become hit capped, so ~142 hit rating total]]

Attack Power = 1.1 AP

Expertise = Expertise gives 0.25% less dodge and parry per point. This makes expertise a lot less desirable in comparison to the old form of weapon skill for a player that isn't hit capped, and marginally less desirable than the old form of weapon skill for a player that is hit capped.

Currently Agility is accepted as the best stat to stack lots of, with good reason (decent AP per point, very good amount of crit% per point). The value of Agility in comparison to Strength varies. There's a chart that shows that if you have minimal raid buffs, that you will always have Agility as more worthwhile than Strength. even without raid buffs, the majority of the time Agility will be better than Strength.

The issue with both Armor Penetration and Haste are that they scale a lot in comparison to what gear you have and what values you have of them. Armor penetration gets better as you get more, for example. You're best off just using something like Rawr to model how much you have/planning to have and see if the items it's on are worth it - remember you can't ever really take a particular stat as a set value, you have to evaluate the piece of gear you may want to get with it on and compare the whole stat set it has to your current/other planned item.

On hit rating: White hits will miss for full damage, as will finishing moves and OoC procs. Standard yellow hits will not be affected as heavily due to the energy use being lower on missed specials. It's more personal preference to get more hit because in a "perfect" world of simulators, agility is still worth more point-for-point than hit, and you will still have a reasonable chance to miss even with hit capped due to dodge (unless you stack a lot of expertise as well).

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Gems

From the stat analysis it can easily be seen that purely +agility gems are the best things to socket with ([Delicate Crimson Spinel], [Delicate Living Ruby]. However, you need to have 2 yellow and 2 blue gems for the [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] (generally accepted as the best meta for druids), which are best made up with either [Inscribed Pyrestone] ([Inscribed Noble Topaz]) or [Glinting Pyrestone]([Glinting Noble Topaz]) for the yellow slots, along with grabbing 2x [Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst] ([Shifting Nightseye]) for the blue slots, or (if you can get it) a [Shifting Tanzanite].

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Enchants

Enchants are generally pretty easy to work out. Cenarion Glyph for the helm (16hit/34AP) or the Lower City (17str/16int) if you're hit capped, Aldor/Scryer AP/crit enchant for shoulders, +6 stats for chest, +12 strength for bracers (possible to use +4 all stats if you prefer), +15 agility for gloves (unavailable at the moment, so +15 str is the best to go for) , +50ap/12crit for legs, +12 agi for boots, +35 agi for weapon. Some of these are interchangable with more tanking oriented ones dependant on your exact role in the raid/what piece it is on.

For Ring Enchants, +2 weapon damage is very marginally better in terms of pure DPS to +4 stats when fully raid buffed, however +4 stats will also give you extra stamina, int and spirit so is probably more worthwhile when taking everything into account.

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Set Bonuses

Two pieces of tier 4 is good. Very good. So damned good you probably won't believe it. The only thing that comes close to it is four pieces of tier 6, and even then that's personal preference really. I personally prefer 4t6 to 2t4.

The upshot of 2t4 being so good is that 4t5 is practically worthless. 2t5 is nice to have, but 4t5 means you give up 2t4. 4t4 is also rather good, but it depends on what you're upgrading to as to whether it's worth upgrading and needs to be taken on an individual basis. Using the stat "weights" above you should be able to work out whether it's an upgrade or not.

For the 2t4 bonus, it depends on what you're using in other slots as to which pieces of t4 are best. Using the 2t4 bonus should still be considered as best regardless of what pieces you're giving up - it's only T6 set pieces with the 4 piece bonus or the new Sunwell loot that is better than keeping the 2 piece bonus. The best way to work out which pieces of t4 are best to use is to use one of the DPS spreadsheets/calculators linked at the bottom of this post to see which parts are best for your own situation. In general, the shoulders and helm are the best pieces to keep for the bonus.

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Idols

The main idols for comparison are [Everbloom Idol], the [Idol of the Raven Goddess] (when it is added to the vendors ofc) and the [Idol of Terror]. All other idols are pretty sub-par, mainly because of switching an idol in combat causing the loss of a white attack (reset of the swing timer) which is a lot more damage than an idol swap will gain within a short period of time.

(Not really important to read since it's not in the Vendor, but it's here anyway) Idol of the Raven Goddess gives +0.9% crit to everyone in the party. Assuming an average person in your party does 1500 DPS with a direct 1%crit->1% damage ratio (which isn't far off), it's a gain of ~13.5DPS per member of your group, or 54 DPS + your own gain (more likely to be 12-13 or so). Remember that it's ~13.5DPS per physical DPS member of your group! Still, you only need 2 other physical DPS people in your group for the Idol of the Raven Goddess to come out as the best idol for RDPS.

Everbloom idol is 88 damage per shred. Assuming you shred once per 4 seconds (general average based on using some energy for mangles/rips, losing some through dodges/etc), that gives 25-30 DPS factoring in crits and armour reduction and everything else.

The Idol of Terror is another wonderful idol, and is almost as good for personal DPS as the Everbloom but is also useful for tanking. Personal preference again prevails, so some people use the Everbloom and some the Terror. The disadvantage of the Terror is that it is chance based, although it does have a very high % chance, so it's always possible to get very low uptime on a fight which may make it look bad in comparison to the Everbloom.

You should use the Idol of the Raven Goddess if in a tank/melee/hunter group with more than 2 other physical DPS. If you aren't in a group with other physical DPSers, using the Idol of Terror or Everbloom Idol is more of a personal choice than a pure DPS choice. (When it is added ofc)

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Trinkets

This section has trinkets that were removed from the trinkets vendor untill further notice

The main options for trinkets are (listed top to bottom in approximate order of goodness):
[Living Root of the Wildheart] - Bad. Very bad for where it is. Not even really worth it if you're going to be in bear form half the time really (which is very few fights anyway).
[Ashtongue Talisman of Equilibrium] - Quite good, but not quite as good as some of the other trinkets. There's been a lot of discussion in the past about it, because it depends on how much/when you mangle as to how effective it is. Because of the standard DPS cycle meaning that it's not possible to have it active when you're about to rip, it loses some of it's effectiveness. It's still alright trinket though, but probably not one of the best.
[Darkmoon Card: Crusade] - Quite good. How good it is depends on fight more than anything (lots of movement = bad). (If it works ofc, i havent tested it)
[Tsunami Talisman] - Very good trinket.
[Berserker's Call] - Excelent trinket.
[Shard of Contempt] - Very nice for the Expertise available - proc is similar to Tsunami Talisman.
[Madness of the Betrayer] - Hard to get but very good, as long as you aren't hit capped. ((not sure on proc rate)) (You need to do Heroic MGT to get it)
[Dragonspine Trophy] - Still the best around. Be warned that you may recieve some skepticism from other physical DPS classes if you express an interest in it.

The three main types of trinkets listed are Activate trinkets (which sometimes have a passive effect), Random-passive trinkets (which also sometimes have passive effects), and purely passive trinkets. The majority of trinkets in the Burning Crusade are of the first two types. Active trinkets are preferred by some because of the controllability of the effect, while random-passive are preferred by others because they don't have to worry about activating them. Random-passive effects generally have a "hidden" cooldown, and then a good chance to proc giving them approximately a 1 proc per minute total proc rate.

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Powershifting

Many people ask what powershifting is. The basics: Furor gives the player 40 energy when they switch out of form and back in. This means you can shift out and in for a net gain of 40 energy, every time. This is essentially a conversion of Mana to Energy, as it will always cost you mana to shift. By timing the shift you can make it so you lose as little energy as possible (from the residual energy in your bar when you shift and the energy you lose while out of form), and this is essentially the skill of Powershifting. By doing it correctly you should be able to gain about 30-35 energy, and even doing it badly the gains should be in the region of 20 energy or so, although it is possible to gain no energy or even lose energy if you do it badly. By doing this you can gain a decent amount of DPS, a general analysis of the DPS gain you can expect follows:

Over the course of two minutes or so, you should easily get around 125 energy (5 shifts worth, minus a few per shift for "imperfect" shifts) if you pay attention. 125/42 = ~3 extra shreds (126). 3 shreds at around 1500 damage each = 4500 extra damage without crits, or ~10000 damage with (40-80 DPS or so), plus 3-6 combo points (probably another 20-30 dps on it's own). Total DPS gain of around 70-80 or so, which is pretty nice.

It's now possible to powershift instantly. The following macro will shift you out of form and back in to form with no "lag" as it's all client side:

/cast !Cat Form

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DPS Cycle

The standard cycle is:
Mangle -> Shred to 5 combo points -> Wait for 70+ energy (preferably 80+), Rip->Mangle, start again.

Due to the way Rip scales with combo points, a four combo point rip is almost as effective as a 5 combo point rip (there is a static gain, AP doesn't scale between 4 and 5). This makes it quite effective to use a 4 combo point rip if your mangle has already run out (as a non-mangled shred is pretty pathetic in comparison to a mangled one).

Extra Strength Rips
There is currently a bug with the Mangle debuff and Rip. If you apply Rip at the correct time then you can get a Rip that gains double the mangle benefit. I have found that it works on and off, and it's all about timing.

To do this apply Rip at the point that Mangle wears off. Think of it as trying to replace the Mangle debuff with the Rip debuff. Then apply Mangle as normal. This should give you double the Mangle benefit on that rip.

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The Tank Section - Tanking stuff

to be continued when i'm not as tired as hell...

Sorry for the lack of Color etc at the moment, but i will buff it up when i finish the second part of the pve section. :)

[Endania]

/cast !Cat Form

Don't use this macro. It will just get you stuck in catform without being able to do anything unless you rightclick the cat form off.

[Myforte]

It works for me =/

[Smoke]

Wow, great guide right there. I'm loving it. You really should write a feral PvP guide with Arena Strats & Stuff.
Still, I have the same problem as Endania that I am stuck in Cat form when using that macro.
Meet you ingame, as soon as I'm back home.

[Endania]

Wow, great guide right there. I'm loving it. You really should write a feral PvP guide with Arena Strats & Stuff.
Still, I have the same problem as Henhouse that I am stuck in Cat form when using that macro.
Meet you ingame, as soon as I'm back home.

Endania != Henhouse

[Smoke]

Oh lawd, sorry. Whenever I see this Snowman jumping up and down I automatically think of Henhouse (no offense). Sorry again. Fixed.