Arguably one of the easiest classes to gear up is a Feral Druid. This is due mostly to how easy it is to obtain good gear (especially at the early raiding level). However, no Druid should leave home without doing their research. A Druid who walks into a heroic without crit immunity won’t last to tell the tale. Lucky for you, fellow Druid, I’m here to do most of the hard work for you.

For most of this research and work, I’ll be using Rawr, a phenomenal tool for Feral Druids (and quite a few other classes as well). I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t already created a giant excel spreadsheet that does all their math for them (*cough*). Not only will it rate items based on it’s mitigation and survival values (for druid tanks), but it even has a big [Optimize] button, where all you give it is what gear and gems you have available, and it finds the best combination possible! It even has a similar button for finding upgrades! Absolutely amazing, and no druid should be without it.

Each gear level below will have a title, and next to that title will be a download link for the .xml file for the character I used for that level. To save it, right click the link, and chose “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…” and save it somewhere you’ll remember. Then in Rawr just go to File->Open (or hit Ctrl-O) and select the .xml file you just downloaded.

---

Gear Level 1: Just Hit 70 (Download Rawr .xml)

We’ll start at the beginning, where all Druids have to start out. You recently hit 70, and you’re looking to run a few level 70 instances, both heroic and non. Due to the ease of obtaining gear, you can very quickly turn this gear set into a heroic set, and eventually a Karazhan set. The biggest help you’ll have at this point is either a high Leatherworking skill level yourself, or a friend with a high Leatherworking skill level. Since you recently hit 70, I’ll assume you’re completely ungeared, and won’t ask you to get anything from instances (yet). To make up for this (and to get you crit immune), we’ll be relying heavily on gear you can obtain by just PvPing for a while.

Our armor set will look like the following:

All of the PvP items together will cost you a total of 73,442 honor, 20x[item]Warsong Gulch Mark of Honor[/item], 80x[item]Arathi Basin Mark of Honor[/item], and 50x[item]Alterac Valley Mark of Honor[/item]. This is quite a sum of both honor and marks, and I highly recommend you don’t try going for all of it at once. If possible, build up your non-PvP gear and then get a PvP item or two, and then run some instances to fill in the spots of other PvP gear (see the next section for instance-level gear suggestions). Finally, throw in whatever idol and trinkets you happen to have at the time. If you still have your [item]28064[/item], that will do just fine.

If you have all of the above gear, you will find yourself with the following statistics (self-buffed with MotW):

---

Gear Level 2: Pre-Karazhan (Download Rawr .xml)

Okay big bear, you’ve gotten yourself most of the gear from the previous section, and you’ve probably already taken a shot at tanking an instance or two. By now, you’ve probably figured out that while Druids can’t parry or block, we bring lots of health and armor to the table. Soon we’ll be focusing on our dodge as well. If you have enough of the above gear to have crit immunity (0% chance to be crit or less), and you have at least 10,000 health, you’re more than ready to try some normal instances. Try and aim for some of the gear shown below and work your way up the ladder. Once you can remain crit immune and break 14,000 health and about 25% dodge, find yourself a good group and run some heroics, you shouldn’t have too many problems. At this point, save up some money and buy yourself a [item]Badge of Tenacity[/item] if you can. Additionally, try and hit exalted with CE for the [item]Earthwarden[/item]. With all the [item]Badge of Justice[/item] you get, make the first item you spend them on a [item]Idol of Terror[/item], and the second item a [item]Band of the Swift Paw[/item]. One final note, run BM enough times to hit Revered with the Keepers of Time for the [item]Glyph of the Defender[/item].

Our gear for this level will be as follows:

If you have all of the above gear, you will find yourself with the following statistics (self-buffed with MotW):

---

Next Installment: T4 and T5 Instances (Kara and Beyond!)

Remember, all of the above are merely suggestions, your own gear depends on what you run (and what you enjoy running), how much you like grinding honor points, and even if you happen to get lucky and join a T5 raid out of nowhere and grab a T5 piece. If you’re unsure, grab Rawr, tell it what items you have, and have it optimize it for you (make sure you add the limit that “% Chance to be Crit” is <= 0).

That’s all for now, in the next installment I’ll cover T4 instances (Karazhan, Gruul’s, and Mag’s), and then venture into T5 instances (Zul’Aman, SSC, and TK). Gear really starts getting fun around there, so make sure you stick around!

(Next up: Gearing Your Feral Druid for T4 and T5)