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Feral Druid
This guide is intended for someone interested in being feral, at least until level 45. Are level 60 feral druids underpowered? I'll let you know....
I am almost completely a feral druid, and at 45 do not feel the forms are weak (my icon isn't updating). My other two points are in Nature's Grasp.
Third party DPS calculators will not calculate DoTs, ignore them, which are the cat's primary weapon. This is why cats often score low with these add-ons.
I am quite successful with my druid in both PvP and PvE, feel quite powerful. I play on a roleplaying server with standard PvP rules, though I played on a beta PvP server as a lower level feral. I know many druids find their feral talents lacking, and this may be true for some builds as well as player types. But not me.
*WEAPONS*
One must first understand how your caster weapon will affect your forms. If you have two weapons, you can switch between them and look how they affect your attack power stats on your character pane. Unless you like the stats, take the more powerful weapon for your attack ratings.
Weapon types aren't particularly important for forms, for example a dagger that gives you higher attack power than your 2-handed mace will be better for your bear, vice versa. We get no benefit from procs, or effects that go off at random (ie., occasionally shoots a fireball), but gain stat benefits. We grow claws, and fight with those, so we will not even gain experience in the weapon type while in forms. It's easy to train up a lagged skill with a weapon, though, just drink an intelligence potion and fight something in caster form, low skills goes up so fast they're practically spamming. It's like we're wielding a different weapon in forms, because we are. So we're immune to disarming effects, as well as polymorph spells.
Druids, to be sucessful, are simply less dependent on their weapon. A weapon is very important to someone like a warrior, not us. This is good, if you think about it.
*DRUID AND PRIEST*
We are healers, foremost. We are every bit as competent in this as our sister class, priests. Druid and Priest are like two sides of the same coin, we complement each other well. Someone gets hit, Priest handles the magic/disease, I take the curse/poison. Most of our abilities are like this with a priest, why a tweak to them will invariably affects druids, too. A Developer Tweak made it so priest now can only soothe humanoids, not animals. Our soothe always only soothed animals. The way it should be, actually.... The Druid res is on a 30 minute timer, yet can be cast in combat. It's the complement to the Priest's ressing ability.
The ideal group will have a priest and a druid. Two complimentary classes like our's are designed to share healing responsibilities.
*PRIMARY HEALER*
If you don't want to be a healer, I wouldn't recommend Druid. It's expected of us.
I have adventured with other druids, more traditionally specc'd for healing and or casting. High mana, usually high health. Not me. This doesn't make me a poor healer.
I was in an instance with a full group. I was partnered with a warlock, rogue, shaman, and another druid. My druid friend stayed in caster form, mainly, taking advantage of his huge mana.
As the battle would start he'd be hitting moonfire, I'd be putting up some regrowths. I'm low on mana, roar in as a bear. As the rogue gets low I'm roaring and drawing group aggro while the shaman and the druid throws off healing touches. The fight rages on and I'm losing most of the aggro, concentrate on one foe.
Creatures are falling, but the fight goes on, a fresh couple creeps join in. My druid friend's mana is about spent, and everyone's wounded.
I was waiting on using the stun, so I use it. Then I pop out of bear and start laying regrowths and rejuvenations on everybody. With my rogue buddy stepping in to assist, I lost enough aggro to do it clean. Regrowth has amazingly low threat for its mana usage, while casting Mark of the Wild seems to drive creeps wild with anger. Tranquilty is situational, but I've succesfully channeled with it mid-fight, both pvp and pve.
It's like a wave I'm riding, can drop to bear and wait on my mana again, estimate how long I should fight before I can start healing. It makes impossible battles seem possible. I fight like this as main healer and with another healer in the group. As the only healer in the party, feral druids must be more careful.
Groups desperate for any healer, times like these it's good to have any spare gear with you so you can switch to "caster gear," favoring intelligence. I hear high level druids do this, but any feral druid pre-45 should not really need to.
*STATS*
Which comes to what stats to look for on weapons and armor. Druids, depending how they are played, can benefit from any one of the stats. Druids will argue about it endlessly. For me, the stats I look for, in order: Agility, then Spirit with Strength a close second. Agility gives me my criticals, very important to me. You can see your criticals by hovering your mouse over the attack icon in the spellbook. I favor the cat in my feral tree, though bear is not ignored.
As a feral druid spec'd for cat, I still use my bear about half the time. Soloing, I often start as the cat, get the DoTs, heal, wipe up the mess as a bear.
I do think even feral druids favoring bears should put agility as their number one stat, because bear criticals are so nasty. Strength should be number two, or like me, Spirit. Spirit makes jumping out of forms to heal with full mana much more impressive....
Though our talents aren't as sexy as some other trees, they're necessities. Feline swftness makes us the fastest class on foot, when coupled with Dash. Cheetah form is fast for long trips, but I have caught up with Cheetahs as my Catform coupled with Dash! Quick root, now I'm the cheetah, back out for a moonfire to say hello with root again. Then they don't expect the catform to suddenly hurt so much.... ;D
Other guides can give you more on stats and argumets about talents. I went with improving my pounce and getting the mana discount for casting a shift. I may not have been in love at first sight, but now I couldn't live without them!
*THE KEY TO CAT, IS THINKING LIKE A CAT*
I know many of you don't play on roleplaying servers, but that doesn't matter. I'll be out prowling the dam out in the dwarf lands, spot someone flagged for PvP, much lower level than I. I let them know I'm there, I /growl at them. Roleplaying? Maybe... Sometimes I can trick people, stealth around and growl from a perch, they don't know where it's coming from. They think it came from the field, but I jumped off the mountain and am doubling back behind them. My prey, he has friends who show up, they're looking for me in the opposite direction, and I can slink off, come back for him after judging how long his friends have been gone. He's puttering about again, but this time I know how distant his friends are, how long it will take them to get back. I /growl again....
The key to winning as a cat is to be patient. Patience will give you more than any stat or talent, honestly. Wait until they get distracted or weak, then pounce, like a real cat would.
Even in duels! The other night, I'm in Gadgetzon waiting on guildmates as they're getting things done, we're all just meeting there for later adventures. A level 58 mage challenges me, a level 44 druid, to duel. I may as well not even bother, but I have time to kill.
Things start out with her making me a chicken. But I manage to get out of that one soon enough, get in cat and high tail it. I guess she had had her laugh, and was getting tired of looking for me as I hid in a doorway. So I stalk her across town.
Her first mistake was underestimating me, her second mistake was having low patience. I follow her back to the bank and destroy her in there. I stunned her, backstabbed her, backstabbed her, maybe even a third, and a slash, she froze me but I broke that and started a heal, she hit me but I moonfired and back to cat. Then it was over for her, as she tried freezing me. She was distarcted, made mistakes. I was sure I wouldn't.
I don't know if my guildmates were more impressed with winning against someone 14 levels higher or in how long it took me. We were getting ready to move out and I obliged her with a rematch... she deserved a rematch! Course she killed me off the bat that time, no matter, as she should.
My real power comes from thinking like a cat. Yes, and that means knowing when to run.
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