gearing-a-druid
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Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a new cat druid at 80
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we are proud to welcome a new generation of cats. Of the three druid specs I cover in the Tuesday column, I think it's arguably toughest to gear a cat. Bears are pretty straightforward; they want armor, agility and gobs of stamina. They're not particularly fussy about the array of DPS stats that otherwise infests melee leather, and because all three of their primary stats appear in spades on PvP gear, they've got another set of reasonable options as long as they're willing (and able) to dump some threat. Trees are even easier. If leather with spellpower drops, the rest of the party/raid groans, and you'll often get these items whether you wanted them or not. For a long time I've wondered if the continuing popularity of the tree has anything at all to do with how easy it is to build a functional healing set even when you're not trying. Cats, on the other hand, tend to face a lot more competition. They have neither the bear's indifference to DPS stats, nor the tree's benefit of playing a relatively uncommon armor/stat combination. As a cat approaching the end game, you'll probably find yourself rolling against a beggar's army of melee and hunters drooling over melee leather. Why? Two words: armor penetration. These days every Two-Hand-Harry and Shadow's-Edge-Sally has a raging lust for armor penetration, and we band of buggered restricted to melee leather are paying the price. Oh well. This article gave me an excuse to dig up a bunch of cat-related YouTube videos, and you can't stay mad for long.
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a new restoration druid at 80
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we are proud to welcome a new generation of trees whatever we're going to be in Cataclysm. Before I do anything else, I want to draw some attention to a guide on restoration healing recently published by Tree Bark Jacket that is an incredibly impressive work. It's comprehensive and fun to read, and for anyone who's getting started with the spec, I highly recommend heading both there and to Lissanna's guide to restoration healing in patch 3.3. We're continuing our updated and expanded series on how to gear a new druid at 80, and this week we're going to tackle restoration druids. Frankly, a lot of the desirability for the listed pieces depends on your spec and current level of +haste (if you're wondering why that is, you'll find an explanation in our Restoration 101 post). If you are planning to raid on your resto druid, this is a bare-bones guide to what you need to look for: If you have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are below 735 haste, prioritize haste. Look for +haste pieces and gem Reckless Ametrines. If you have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are at or above 735 haste, you can either prioritize/gem spellpower or (much better) move points into more throughput talents in the restoration tree. If you don't have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are below 856 haste, prioritize haste. If you don't have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are at or above 856 haste, prioritize/gem spellpower. As you get new pieces, it may be necessary to gem or regem to stay around the haste cap.
