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!
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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All of the PvP items together will cost you a total of 73,442 honor, 20x[Warsong Gulch Mark of Honor], 80x[Arathi Basin Mark of Honor], and 50x[Alterac Valley Mark of Honor]. 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 [Idol of the Wild], 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):
| Health: 16657 (T) 15814 (NE) | Armor: 22554 (T) 22576 (NE) | Dodge: 21.67% (T) 23.43% (NE) |
| Miss: 6.20% | Mitigation: 65.35% (T) 65.37% (NE) | Dod |
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