As I wrote below I respecced Yáshimá to feral yesterday. Now I have been feral before and enjoyed playing the spec a lot. There is just one problem. She is an Enchanter. What do Enchanters do with gear they don’t think they’ll need anymore “because I’ll just level her Moonkin for a while?”
So now I am in need of any kind of item to replace items with Spellpower.
Here’s my selected (Alliance) quest + quest reward for the easiest route to have a full feral equipment again within hours of arriving in Northrend. I’ll choose a single quest reward for each slot, I will also try to choose the easiest quests to achieve this. (Basic WoWHead search I am using for this). Many of these quests involve short chains … because most often a reward is only given after doing 2 or 3 things for a person.
Note: There are no idols available as quest rewards in the Fjord.
There are quite a few quest chains involved. Especially if you “lust” for the blue trinkets you will have to complete 2 complete quest hubs. Personally I will probably do all quests in the Fjord a second time (Yashima has already completed them and now Yáshimá will), maybe I will just switch the order of some of the hubs I’ll do a bit now that I know where I can expect which reward.
Most often you can also try a few other ways to obtain loot: do an instance run or two, contact your favorite crafter, scan the AH or hope for world drops that fit you. This is just a list of stuff that you can get without need for lucky rolls or farming mats which should be fine for all you Alts out there.
If you manage to get into a group for a run on Utgarde Keep, there are two quests you should take with you:
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| Yáshimá |
Yesterday I started playing a bit with Yáshimá and quickly noticed that I wasn’t having much fun soloing with an under-geared, low-level moonkin. [And yes: Alts are mostly for solo-play - especially when I don't know how long I'll be in the game.]
I had to drink a lot, take breaks, I wasn’t able to choose a lot between abilities and damage cycles.
In a group with Tenobaal her big sister Yashima is able to use a lot of her different abilities. With a Hunter and a tank pet we’re effectively a nice 3-man group and can take on many challenges. We AoE a lot, try large pulls, big elite mobs etc..
As solo Moonkin I noticed I had to really try and pull mobs solo because the most mana efficient – and therefore fastest – way to kill them was
/castsequence Starfire; Moonfire; Starfire; Starfire; Starfire
Becomes boring quickly. So … without waiting for more feral quest rewards to appear or level 70 to “just happen”, I beamed over to Moonglade and told my teacher “I’m not a chicken at heart, please let me be a kitty again!” I took me then about an hour to spend my talent points and configure my macros and buttons.
The talent spec is probably not particularly bright, I just looked real hard at all talents and decided wether they were good for a solo-ing cat druid or if they were supposed to be bear or group talents. I didn’t even buy Shredding Attacks (yet …) because in my mind I wasn’t using Shred much for solo-ing. I quickly noticed how sorely I missed the talent.
I bought some gear on the AH and was happy to see I had a little stash of high level items hidden away on an alt for later use. 2 Enchants later I was good to go.
My theory of endless energy being faster for solo leveling proved true and it is also much more fun to stealth around. Added Bonus: being one of the papery professions – Scribe & Enchanter – I can always use the Humanoid Radar in Cat Form as I have no Herbs or Minerals to look for.
Druid Hit Rating Gear Part III
This is the third part of my guide to Hit Rating gear for Druids. In the first part I listed all Leather gear with Hit Rating. The second had a list of non-Leather gear Druids might want and is also suitable for other melee classes
This last installment will contain all possible ways to enhance your gear with Hit Rating or to use Consumables to improve your Hit Rating temporarily
Gems
Gems with Hit Rating are either orange or yellow. So you need either red or yellow Gem slots on your gear if you strive to keep the socket bonusses. At this moment there are no Meta-Gems that improve Hit Rating.
Orange
Yellow
Enchants
There are no Armor Kits or Leg Armor enchants that give a bonus to Hit Rating. There is just one single Enchant that grants Hit Rating: Glyph of Ferocity. You need to be Revered with Cenarion Expedition for this Head Enchant.
Consumables
There are no Elixirs or Flasks that grant Hit Rating. There is however buff food that does:
The first is a recipe that can be obtained from the daily cooking quest in Shattrath and the other two can only be obtained during the respective holiday events.
Part I – All Leather Gear
Part II – All Non-Leather Gear for Druids
Druid Hit Rating Gear Part II
This is the second part of my guide to Hit Rating Gear for Druids. Because it is for Druids I only included weapons that have Feral-AttackPower on them. Everything else can of course be worn by all other melee classes as well.
Feral Weapons
Drops
PvP & Quest Items
Amulets
Drops
Badges & Crafted
Cloaks
Drops
Rings
Drops
- Stormrage Signet Ring (30, BT – Illidan)
- Band of the Abyssal Lord (21, BT – Supremus)
- Ring of Deceitful Intent (19, BT – Shade of Akama)
- Band of the Ranger-General (18, The Eye – Kael’thas)
- Ring of Lethality (19, SSC – Hydross)
- Ring of Reciprocity (15, Kazzak)
- Ring of the Overseer (12, Shartuul)
- Ring of a Thousand Marks (19, Kara – Prince)
- Garona’s Signet Ring (18, Kara – Curator)
- Shaffar’s Band of Brutality (19, Heroic MT – Yor)
- Crystal Band of Valor (22, Heroic MT – Tavarok)
- Resounding Ring of Glory (15, Heroic CoTI – Epoch Hunter)
- Ring of the Shadow Deeps (13, Heroic Underbog – Ghaz’an)
Faction Rewards
Trinkets
Drops
Here’s the whole series:
Part I – Hit on Leather
Part II – Hit Rating for (nearly) everybody
Part III – Consumables are the Hit
PS – Expertise Rating Gear for Druids may interest you as well.
Hit Rating caps out at 142 in PvE. It’s basic function is to decrease the possibility that you have a “Miss” when hitting any mob. So for any character that melees it is very helpful to have a bit of Hit Rating on their gear. Especially when raiding or doing Heroics it can provide a nice damage boost. Even for tanks it can be important – a missed Taunt can wipe your group and Aggro is also easier if you don’t miss on that first Mangle. For some more in-depth theory crafting visit BBBs Shifting Perspectives on the topic.
I want to list all Level 70 Leather gear Druids can wear that has Hit Rating on it to help you find items to supplement your Feral gear. I will add the value of Hit Rating and where it can be found to each listed item.
Chest
Drops
Crafted, Badges & PvP Gear
Boots
Drops
Crafted & Badge Loot
Hands
Drops
Crafted & PvP
Head
Drops
Crafted, Badge & PvP
Legs
Drops
Crafted, Badge & PvP Loot
Shoulder
Drops
Badge, Faction & Other
Belt
Drops
Crafted & Badge Loot
Wrist
Drops
This will be a 3 part series when I am done:
Part I – Hit on Leather
Part II – Hit Rating for (nearly) everybody
Part III – Consumables are the Hit (a list of all possibilities how you can pimp your gear with Gems and Enchants)
I already made another guide on Expertise Rating Gear for Druids.
The latest Shifting Perspectives column reminded me of my personal quest to optimize my combat ratings to improve my tanking/cat performance. BBB does a lot of math and theory crafting – which I skipped, don’t hit me – to present us with three magic numbers that represent the cap for each rating.
Defense Skill 415, Hit Rating 142 and Expertise Rating 91. This would make you uncrittable and unavoidable against raid bosses. So what do we Druids do with these numbers? We go looking for gear of course. Here’s the really short list of items with Expertise Rating, that a Druid can wear.
Expertise
Expertise Rating is rare, ultra-rare. There are – besides weapons – only a handful of items in the game that have Expertise Rating on them and can be worn by a Druid. It is possible to reach 91 if you use those items and most of them are not even hard to obtain:
The question I am posing myself is: is it worth stacking Expertise Rating as a tank? I experimented for a bit with the 3 combat ratings and found that it is indeed possible to max out all three ratings with items from low-end raiding. This comes at the expense of mitigation: items that have Hit Rating and/or Expertise are usually not really good for mitigation and to max out Expertise you would need to let go of some armor, health and even avoidance.
Of course it is important to always hit that boss but hitting the boss does not reduce the damage you take (except for those who hit harder or more often after they avoided your attack as BBB mentions, for an example take Prince Malchezaar). Hitting a boss helps with aggro and bear tanks usually do not lack for aggro. The specialty of a bear tank is high mitigation. Hit rating and expertise rating contribute nothing to that.
So after some evaluation I will refrain from building a tank set to max out Expertise and Hit Rating and stack for mitigation primarily. But I will keep those rare items with Expertise Rating, they may still come in handy.
Update: Patch 2.4 will add a few new items with Expertise Rating for Druids to use
Now that I am feral again I’ve been practicing my fighting style as kitty again. I used to farm the Ethereum mobs for the keys to get a bit of rep when not instancing. They are good practice. Since getting a few upgrades in Kara (yay Terestrians Stranglestaff) I have also been practicing on the Horde. I have always been terrible in a 1on1 situation. I knew part of it was a question of equipment. The other day I tried my favorite technique in the Eye of the Storm and was very happy to succeed on a bunch of different players … so here’s my favorite way to kill:
1. Pounce (bonus points for watching your energy tick for best timing)
2. Fairie Fire
3. Mangle
4. Shred
5. Maim
6. Shred
7. Mangle
8. Rip
9. Bearform (normal mobs should be dead by now)
10. Bash
11. Mangle (this is the point where players start dying)
I love improving on it, timing it better and keeping my target stunned 
Of course in PvP many classes can get out of my stuns or are not impressed at all by my damage or fear me. But these are the basic steps I try to follow. It does not work against multiple targets of course unless their damage can be ignored and they don’t heal. It does not work if you have help (Maim breaks on damage). It’s my little solo dance – not really optimized. Just the way I like to fight or farm.
The only real cooldown this uses is Bash with a minute so I can use this quite a bit.
I’d love to see other people’s sequences for druids or other classes.
PS: I am not using a macro / castsequence for this.
