dukes

Introductory Post

Introduction
Due to the previous situation of having three (or four?) feral druid threads and another general one that has been taken over by ferals mainly, this post is meant to be a consolidation of all the knowledge that we currently have about feral druiding; what's good, what isn't, and what's new. As of making this, it's entirely a Work In Progress, so 'bear' with me (groan, etc). Hopefully by splitting into more than one post it won't hit the character limit too easily and there'll be plenty of space for additions and things.

The structure of this multi-post is as follows:

• Introduction post - random stuff.
• The Cat Post - DPS stuff.
• The Bear Post - Tanking stuff.
• The News, Changelog, and Summary post.

Unfortunately the forum scheme isn't always the clearest for seeing links so (at least if I remember) I'll italicise all links.

I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank both everyone who has ever done any work previously on druid theorycrafting and all those who are likely to contribute in the future. This post wouldn't be here without you.

Feel free to use this post as the main discussion thread for feral druid stuff. I'll keep up to date with it and update the main posts with anything interesting to the population at large so that (hopefully) we have less posts of "is this item worth it?" or "so what IS powershifting?" and the like.

Be warned that there is likely to be some opinion in the following posts. I'll try and keep opinion out as much as possible.


Making Posts
Please please PLEASE read through this post and search this thread for information on any topic you're looking for before posting about it. If you don't and there's already information, people will probably be polite and point you to the relevant section, but it's much easier for everyone if you just search for it. At least check the main posts first. Ctrl+F is your friend and generally better than the search function on the forums in my experience.

If you are asking about how good an item is, check the spreadsheets or Toskk's gear generator (DPS) or Rawr (Tanking). If you must post about it, use the tags (without the spaces) to make it show up properly. It's much easier to have a mouseover than have to go to an external site. Most of the time people will just point you to one of the spreadsheets/simulator things anyway, so it's best off actually using them rather than expecting someone else to do it for you. Don't be scared about using them - if you screw something up it doesn't matter (although obviously if you get a result that you think is significantly wrong, question it with the author of whatever you're using). They're all designed to be user friendly so you shouldn't get stuck with any of them.

Additional to this, you need to follow the forum rules, paying attention to both this post and this post. Deciding you're above these or just ignoring them is likely to get you into an arguement with the mods/banned very quickly.


Random Info

One of the standard abbreviations/shortenings I use is: 2t4 = Two pieces of Tier 4 (Malorne). Similar numbering for other sets (2t6, 4t6, etc)

This post here will be referenced quite a few times, as it has all the rating conversions for level 70 players explained. It is important to note that (as of patch 2.3) both Melee and Spell haste rating conversion is now 15.7 rating per 1% of haste, not the values stated in the link. Other values are subject to change in future patch notes, and I will try and make sure this stays up to date.
If you're wondering where I pulled some random numbers from while talking about how stats are affected by things, chances are that this thread or the talent tree will be the best places to look.

Talking of talent trees, if you're looking for a good feral spec this should be your base spec. It includes all the important things you need for being a feral druid. The spare points can be put into many different things. The talents I recommend to put the rest of the points into are:
Brutal Impact
Savage Fury
Primal Tenacity
Natures Grasp (and possibly Control of Nature for a PvP oriented build, although other points may shift around for that. I'm not good at PvP so I won't even try and tell you how to do it).
Natural Shapeshifter
Intensity
All are good talents with usefulness dependant on what you like to do.

If you've read through the main posts and haven't found what you're looking for, have a quick look again and then ask in the thread. Asking repeat questions which are already answered is likely to get people annoyed, while posting new questions that need answers is likely to get people interested in finding out what's going on.


Useful Mods
Some form of energy tick mod is very useful whilst DPSing, as is a timer bar for Mangle/DOT's. Personally I use Pitbull and Quartz (from wowace.com) but there's a lot of other options out there.


Useful Links
A list of those threads that this information has been pulled from. Some of these are quite old and information in them may be out of date.
Elitist Jerks Threads
Cat DPS - Powershifting
Cat DPS - Value of +hit
Cat DPS - General
Cat DPS - Feral AP Scaling
Bear Tanking - Item Comparisons
Bear Tanking - Pre-Raid Gear
General - 3 roles, 5 stages of grief
Outside Links
WoW-Blues - Blizzard Post Track (Druid section)
The Druid Wiki -->> Main Page