Would it be worth the hassle to ask a dps warrior to keep thunderclap active if I'm the mt? Granted it would help reduce damage a lot and just about free up a healer but would the warrior lose too much dps? Just curious if that's a common practice or even if it's worth approaching the dps warriors to do.

Absolutely, it's 20 rage every 30 seconds for them, unless they're 2h Slam spec, this is likely taking the place of a cleave or heroic strike and probably less than 10 dps loss.

More than the Rage cost of the skill itself, I think most Warriors balk at the requisite stance switch (DPS is typically done in Berzerker Stance, which Thunderclap cannot be used in). This requires the Warrior to actively keep on top of the skill's duration, whether it got pushed off due to debuff limits etc and then timing a Rage dump (if needed) before switching stances to use Thunderclap. Superlative DPS Warriors will do this as a matter of course, but many are lazy sods =p

But yeh, you should definitely pull ears to make sure it's up on any mitigation sensitive encounter (I'd recommend the mod Demon, to monitor uptime).

If I understand it correctly, the 2t4 set bonus is amazing and only ever replaced by the 4t6 bonus. This does present a little problem for my "catch up" character, though. Gruul/Magtheridon aren't really done anymore on the server, so getting those pieces of T4 will be difficult at best. Would it be possible to have a competitive gear setup without using any tier pieces? I might have to just wait until I start getting tier 6 and jump over the tier 4 gear completely.

With S3 Dragonhide being an option, the preferred slots for T4 are Shoulders and Hands. And though I find it very hard to believe that absolutely nobody on your server is running Gruul's Lair anymore, both it and Karazhan are very puggable if you were so inclined.

It really depends how far you want to take your min/maxing. To give you some perspective, using Toskk's sim with 4000AP, 40% crit, 142 Hit Rating, Everbloom Idol and no exotic stats (Expertise, APen, Haste, Weapon Dmg) gives the following AEP values:

Str = 2.266
Agi = 2.857
Malorne 2pc. Set = 349.852

My guild barely runs Kara and doesn't run Gruul anymore.

All Kara runs are done with Alts and the odd main that is looking for easy badges or the odd item they never got (like that blasted healing chest from Nightbane for me...)

If you are in a raid guild just collect some alts. If not, try to pug it through /2 or realm forums. Whilst the prefered set pieces are Shoulders and Gloves, I personally stuck around with Helm and Gloves, simply because of what other gear I had.
Getting one item on a druid quite often involves intensively shuffling the rest of your gear around to be able to fit it in...

I appoligize in advance for the SLIGHT derail, but it is kinda related. My question is for feral pvp/arena would you guys trade off the 2t4 for 4s3? the 2t4 is absolutly amazing when it procs in pvp for incredible spike damage, however the increased run speed helps with every snare as well as letting you get away in cheetah to heal up.

As an addition to this question if you were to sacrifice 4s3 for 2t4 what pieces for t4?

If you can't catch somebody, you can't spend all the energy 2t4 would give you. With our problems with the feral range bug, I consider the arena 4-piece bonus pretty much mandatory for feral PVP. (Such as it is.)

The only reason I don't use 4piece Arena set is because 2t5 outweighs every other option to me.

The one fun time you might have with Bloodlust proccing is when you pounce someone and get an OoC and 2t4 proc. With a bit of luck you can get someone down far enough (and maim them) that they'll be an easy kill.

Other than that... Nah.

In PvE, you get to spend that energy. In PvP you just don't get enough options to burn all of your energy, let alone procs.

Mandatory for resto PVP as well.

And yes nothing is better than catching a runner going at 45% run speed to get an extra shred or two in.

I have another question along the lines of PvP... since the season 3 set seems to be so good for PvE, how are people going about getting it? Do you respec to resto and use PvE gear in the arena? Respec resto and buy restoration arena gear so you can do better in the arena to buy feral gear? I'm contemplating griding honor for a month (oh god why) to get the season 1 healing set just so I don't get instagibbed in the arenas while I try to earn points for vengeful gear.

Not to totally derail the topic of this thread, but I'd like to chime in on this question.

I'm one of the ferals that does not raid high end content so must rely on badges and arena for gear. The way I handled it was to suck it up and respec like all the non-MS warriors and go PVP resto. I felt it better to invest a small amount of time derailing my pve gearing to ultimately prosper later (granted, at this time, it was before s3 came out and I was already almost full feral s2 for my pve set). I initially had my 4 piece s2 feral set and mixed and matched that with pve healing gear to get by. You really do need resilience because even at the 1500 bracket, some people are running around with Deep Thunders or s1/s2 weapons and will kick the crap out of you. Eventually, I gathered enough arena resto gear which effectively boost my +healing/regen while maintaining (or slightly increasing) my resilience. Now I'm in a great position to collect s3 feral gear to upgrade my 5 pc armor set because I have a very adequate resto pvp gear in order to properly arena with.

After awhile, for me anyway, arena really became fun as resto and it grew on me. I actually enjoy arena a lot more as resto than feral. For the feralness inside you, there's always world pvp (if you're on a pvp server) and BGs.

Hope this helps you.

For further discussion on pvp resto though, I highly suggest the PVP forum - Resto thread to avoid getting reprimanded by the mods. =)

Most Feral Druids use rip as a finishing attack when they dps a raid boss, however has there been any research into fercious bite being a viable finishing move on raid bosses that are not immune to bleed?
However due to AP not scaling between 4cp and 5cp rip
also taking into account the ferocious bite talent(15%more)
Having a high %crit and ap.
Is their any point when it would better to use Ferocious bite?

i know their is some skepticism because it dumps all your energy but you can time it right around the 35 energy mark it might be already

i was playing around testing damage today ons ome level 67 elites outside gruul's lair, with 3000 AP
Rip ticked for 542 (5)times (once in it did less damage like 437 couldn't figure out why)
and ferious bite was landing for about 1400 (non-crit) so rip right now is certainly better,

but possibly once you have very high AP and crit around 5000AP raid buffed and 50%crit or so it could be better? anyone have to gear itemization that could run a few tests?

i've looked around couldn't find any math or other threads on this idea

I don't personally use FB on any of the fights with bleed immune mobs due to the fact that I'm shredding for ~3.4-3.5k and FB seems to do around 4.5-5k tops, but can consume a bloodlust proc and actually hurt your DPS.

Edit: Ideal situations I'm sitting at 52% crit/4.6k AP and the highest FB I've seen is ~5500. My GM is sitting at around 48% crit and 5k AP+ and had a 6k FB the other night.


My question is about grips of damnation. I just picked these up as none of the rogues need them anymore and I've been toying around with the thought of using them. According to Toskk's they're very good, however the 2 pieces of t4 that I still use are shoulders/gloves. I've been considering convincing my guild to run mags so I can get the t4 chest to use for DPS (currently using Shadowprowlers). I just picked up the S3 helm or I would have gotten shoulders/head for the 2pc. But I'm curious as to what pieces you think are the best to use.

I read some of the topic, including whole starting post and i could not find an explanation for this: what does it mean when i have about 32k armor in bear form and it says ''75% mitigation towards all physical attacks''? Did they change it or is there a typo or something in the topic, since it says that 37k armor is 75% mitigation? Very odd.

Also is this absolutely sure that defense DOES NOT affect crushing blows by any way? Because I am kind of in a situation where we've basically got 2x druid tanks in the guild, me and an other chap that i am slightly better geared of. The deal is each time he has tanked Morogrim they have one-shotted him, and each time i have done it - well we ended up switching for a warrior tank (well we downed him once with me tanking). And no i do not get crit at all because i am capped, crushing blows are the issue here.

Differences in our gear: I am wearing s3 chest, he is wearing heavy clefthoof. He is wearing s2 shoulders, i am wearing t4 shoulders. He has earthwarden, i have wildfury greatstaff. Otherwise our gear is fully the same (the parts that have defense/resilience on them are: violet signet of the great protector, shermanar great ring, veteran's dragonhide bracers, he has juggernaut's decklase and i have the one from maiden.)

Also a few differences: i have +33ap and +16 hit rate enchant on my t4 head, because i am waiting to get s3 head and make that my tanking head along with changing veteran's dragonhide bracers to the badge-bracers, and slap the s3 head with +16 defense and +17 dodge.

Also, in his s2 shoulders, he has +10 dodge and +15 defense, while i am still not exalted with aldor so i only have +13 dodge.

So, the final line is - he has way more defense than i do due to earthwarden, heavy clefthoof chest and the enchants on his shoulders and head. He can survive morogrim, i get crushed to death very often. Someone explain please.

Actually, i can link our armory-profiles, we both mostly wear our tanking-gear so should be alright:

This is me: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...sus&n=Marazuga

This is the other guy: The World of Warcraft Armory

About using fb on bleed immune mobs its been shown that it is more dps to simply shred and mass powershift, while refreshing mangle when necessary.

About the armor, read the tooltip better. It states 75% mitigation against lvl70 mobs. 75% mitigation against lvl73 boss mobs is 37k. Defense has no bearing on crushings, its 15% always for us becuase we dont have a way to push them off the hit table via sheild block. If there are so little differences between you and the other druid its you being unlucky or something is false on your account. Crit immunity is 415def rating which is 2.64% with 3/3 sotf talent or an equal amount of resilience (around 100+). If you both are indeed crit immune then the only difference between the two of you in damage terms is the amount of armor/dodge you both have. Or maybe you tank with 4k less hp lol


EDIT: Just saw your tank gear, your not crit immune. Problem solved
EDIT2: And just from a purely technical standpoint you in no way shape or form outgear the other druid.

Where was this shown? FB CAN use up too much energy but using it when you're near 35 energy at 5 combo points is more DPE than Shred. It makes sense to keep shredding until you get to a situation where your energy is near 35 to use FB. Not using it at all is not maximizing your DPS against bleed immunes.

There are still a few ways you can mitigate crushes:

- get over 85% avoidance against the boss. In tank gear I can occasionally get above that level by popping two avoidance trinkets; it's possible the other feral druid reacted to 2 crushes by popping double avoidance trinkets.

- get parried less. You can do this by gaining more expertise, and once you get a decent aggro lead, take lacerates and swipes out of your attack cycle. Since you're not focusing a ton on movement/etc on Morogrim, you can probably wait to only lacerate/swipe/mangle at close to 100% health. If you're not at 100%, you should be at the ready for your emergency buttons.

- use bear potion/healthstone macros if you aren't already.

About being crit immune: If a boss normally hits for 6k, you need at least 9k health to survive a crush, but 12k to survive a crit. If you're above 9k before 90% of boss hits but only above 12k on 80% of boss hits, 1% crit reduction will save your life every 1000 boss swings; assume a boss swing every 2s, that's 2000 seconds, or about 33 minutes of active boss tanking.

Obviously you'll have to adjust for your raid scenario (ability of your healers keeping you topped off, crit reduction you still need, particular boss), but even a tenth of a percent of missing crit reduction will lead to a wipe per week if you tank every boss.

And that's only looking at the crit as the potential killing blow; nevermind the fact that you'll more frequently get in low-health situations if you occasionally get crit.

Feral druids are chosen to tank boss fights by their ability to mitigate spike damage. If you're not crit immune, you're giving away your best (only?) class advantage over other tanks.

You really should work on crit immunity. You say you got unlucky with crushings, that can be. But why even add more chance of burst damage by just shrugging off getting critted?

My advice is to fix that first. Get the tanking enchant on your helm and reenchant your bracers with 12 defense rating.
Chance your cloak enchant to 12 agility instead of 12 dodge rating.
If you can get the badges for [Necklace of the Juggernaut], then do that.

I guess doing all that you will be slightly ahead of the other Druid's gear.

Question about T4-2pc.
I've recently gotten my hands on the tier 4 gloves (only one that could use them) and I've heard how great the 2 piece proc is for cat... but how good is it for bear? I had originally planned to upgrade by arena/badges and then work my way forward from there. My dodge isnt all that great yet (as I am missing some things and I'm waiting for upgrades before using bigger gems and enchants) compaired to our MT druid (he is somewhere about 45-49% dodge).

Anyways I was wondering if at high avoidance level, how much can you feel the extra rage?, right now I get hit enough to have to spam swipe to bring my rage down on Nightbane/Prince in kara. But once I get some upgrades (and proper enchants/gems) will the T4-2pc shine on certain encounters in bear? The S3 gloves certainly does on some fights when you are low on interupters(cat), and once I get another T4 I will use them as cat (when interupting isnt needed). But I am unsure about using them in bear.

For raid tanking I find it to be a minor benefit, not worth worrying about, but for 5mans, or even 10 mans it can definitely provide benefit. The "once I get another T4 I will use them as cat" is somewhat bizarre. There is no reason to have 2 pairs of T4 Feral gloves. Either tanking or DPS you should use the same enchant. (15 agi) Both 15str and the stam enchants pale in comparison.

And Deep has now given up on Feral Arena and does so as Resto or Balance/Resto. The fact of the matter is Feral is not really arena "viable" it can push to the high ratings, but it requires some absolutely exceptional play to do so. Resto, or even Balance have much higher, and easier reached potential.

hehe meant another piece of T4 so I got the set bonus, I am currently staying with the S3 gloves as I only have one piece of T4. Thanks for the answer