Continuing from the last segment, where we covering gearing a Feral Druid from a new 70 up through instances and heroics, we’re going to continue and gear your Druid up through T4 instances. This will include Karazhan, Gruul’s, and Mag’s. By this point I’m going to assume you’re able to run these raids enough times that you can get enough badges to get all the badge gear, although you won’t be able to do so immediately. It will all come in time, however. I will also include higher-end crafted items that you should now start being able to afford.
For clarification, each level of gear described below is not absolute. What I mean by that is that just because I show a row of items doesn’t mean you have to get all those items before the gear becomes viable. Go and download Rawr, install it, play around with it, and learn to use it. When you obtain a new item, let Rawr now, and then re-optimize. Rawr isn’t perfect, but it can be a tremendous help for you, and save you a LOT of time. Again, remember to tell it to keep “% Chance to be Crit” at “<= 0″ when optimizing.
Well, let’s not waste any more time, and get to it!
Okay, so you’re starting to find heroics getting easier and easier. You’ve got more than enough health and armor for any situation, and your healers love you. You’re also starting to run out of gear you can get without raiding. So you look to your guild and at other with similar interests to yourself, and you all head into Karazhan. After running that for a while, you generate enough interest for a larger group and run both Gruul’s and Mag’s. You start to see a fairly steady stream of [Badge of Justice] flowing in, and with your good gear money is starting to be less and less of an issue. This is where the game really starts to shine and you start to have your most fun tanking the huge guys with millions of health.
You’ll notice that even though we break through the T4 barrier, a few items are still from the last gear level. Another thing you’ll notice is we broke through the 30% barrier. If possible, try to have above 30% dodge (buffed) before you go into Karazhan. Just add this as another parameter to Rawr and it should do the rest, ;)
Again, keep in mind this is an optimized solution created by Rawr. In most cases (including the case where you don’t have EXACTLY the setup below), there will be items better than the ones listed below. For example, [Slikk's Cloak of Placation] is a much better cape overall, but turns out to be worse in the one instance below. Again, use Rawr yourself for your best outcome, ;)
(Note: [Idol of Terror] makes an excellent alternative for the idol below. See the comments for discussion about this trinket vs. [Idol of Ursoc])
Let’s go ahead and gear up as follows:
| Head | Neck | Shldrs | Back | Chest | Wrists | Hands | Waist | Legs | Feet | Finger | Finger | Trinket | Trinket | Wep | Idol |
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The biggest difference you’ll notice is that our health, armor, and dodge are a LOT higher. In fact, you should hit the armor cap once you’re all raid buffed up, which along with the dodge will result in you receiving a lot less damage. Your healers will love you for this! =D
If you have all of the above gear, you will find yourself with the following statistics (self-buffed with MotW):
| Health: 17697 (T) 16804 (NE) | Armor: 32730 (T) 32752 (NE) | Dodge: 36.92% (T) 38.67% (NE) |
| Miss: 6.12% | Mitigation: 73.24% (T) 73.25% (NE) | Dodge + Miss: 43.04% (T) 44.79% (NE) |
| Total Mitigation: 82.88% (T) 83.36 (NE) | Chance to be Crit: -0.06% | Overal Points: 116515.6 (T) 114211.3 (NE) |
| Limited Threat: 950.52 (T) 933.50 (NE) | Unlimited Threat: 1223.58 (T) 1206.884 (NE) |
I had finished writing up the whole T5 raid section and had picked out most of the gear we’d be using, and even built a pretty little table for it all, when Rawr crashed out when I tried Optimizing. After numerous restarts and trying a few more computers, it seems Rawr crashes if you have too many items picked out as “available.” I’ve been talking with the developer for the past two days, and hopefully will have a copy that works soon. This post was originally going to cover T4 and T5, but due to the freeze up I’ve temporarily forgone the T5, but didn’t want to just leave the T4 information sitting in my box as a draft, so here it is.
Next time, we’ll venture into SSC, TK, and ZA!
The more I play a Feral Druid, the more I realize how much is different from the DPS role I’m used to. One of the things that really struck me last night when we were cleaning up Kara was the synergies between a Tank and people in other roles.
As a Mage in a DPS role, it was almost all about the charts. I’m not going to lie, but I considered myself an above average mage. I could not only bring the numbers in a raid, but I was also aware of the situation and reacting to what was going on (as well as doing my job). However, most of the time I was staring at the DPS meters and perfecting my timing of hitting my “3″ key. Every so often hitting another hotkey to start a cooldown. I loved healers who would heal me and keep me up when I took a random hit, and got slightly annoyed when I died and no healers were targeting me. In a few 5-mans, I admit, I even looked at the healer in the eye and said that I was watching their spellcasts and they weren’t even trying to heal me (which I really feel bad about now).
However, I now know what it’s like from the other side (DPS vs Tank/Heals). There is some sort of special connection that occurs between Tanks and healers that can’t quite be explained. And one that DPS classes can’t even come close to understanding. I’ve been leading Kara runs for a few lower geared people in our guild who are trying to work their way up to T5 (where my guild’s officially at) by organizing and running Karazhan raids. One of the people I help run through is a holy paladin, who often gets the assignment of healing me (the main tank).
When we’re all in the middle of the action and I’m hitting all my hotkeys and worrying about my positioning and what’s going on and just trying greatly to keep the boss pissed at me, and pissed enough that my DPS can unleash just that little bit more without worrying, I’m also constantly watching my health bear to make sure I hit that “oh shit” buttons when I need to. Being a tank means you’re a constant magnet for heals (obviously), but it’s still sends a tingle down your spine when you see your health bar topping off and noticing that one healer giving it their all just to keep YOU alive. It’s almost an instant friendship, and it’s hard to describe.
Since then this one holy paladin and I have become great friends, and I almost cheer to myself quietly whenever he’s assigned to be my personal healer in raids. I know I can trust him with keeping me alive, and I trust him to do his absolute best at each and every raid when he’s assigned to me. He makes sure my blessings stay up, and will put me before himself. Similarly, I offer him many liberties, giving him first priorities with Innervates (though as a Paladin he rarely has mana issues), and feeling a slight excitement when I’m the lucky one chosen to throw a battle rez his way. I also happily recommend him when we need another spot to fill a raid or a group. Additionally, when the shit hits the fan, I loyally run between him and oncoming mobs, and pick up whatever I can (at one time tanking 5 elite mobs in TK since our tanks dropped and they were running for the pally keeping me up).
So I must ask you readers out there; Tanks, do you notice yourself forming this kind of unique connections with healers? Healers, is there a similar synergy that you form with tanks? What about you, DPS, do you find yourself in a similar position as I was when I played my mage, or do you find yourself forming your own connections?
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.
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:
| Head | Neck | Shldrs | Back | Chest | Wrists | Hands | Waist | Legs | Feet | Finger | Finger | Wep |
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