Shifting Perspectives: Firelands gear for the feral cat

By Dan O'Halloran

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin!

Gear, gear, everybody wants gear! Happily, we get our first piece of visible progression gear in, well, forever. A flaming kitty is a raiding kitty ... awesome.

This update to my gear list focuses on items from new 4.2 content and bottoms out with ZA gear. If you're just starting out, the list compiled a few months ago is still quite good.

A few notes before we get to the items:

One of my most common questions is "Which secondary stat is best?" Well, the small Rip nerf, plus the eventual loss of the two-piece T11 bonus once you upgrade into tier 12, knocks mastery down a peg. The buff to Savage Roar boosts haste up a peg. Unfortunately, this means our secondary stats are pretty much even. I've tested this extensively, and at the 359 to 378 gear levels, reforging to different stats affects simulated DPS by less than 1%. Personally, I'd recommend sticking with mastery until you break two-piece T11, then try a hit/expertise cap setup; see how it works for you. As always, any fight with little to no off-boss time will favor haste, while fights with large interruptions in DPS time will favor mastery.

PVP gear and offsets

Thankfully, the leveling out of secondary stats makes rough gear comparisons quite easy. You can generally consider 1 agility to be worth about three points of secondary stats. Looking at PVP gear, then, I'd say a PVP piece is roughly equal to a PVE piece that's 1.5 tiers lower (about 20 points in ilevel). An ilvl 371 Vicious item, for example, will work about as well as a 353 item from ZA. This is not considering the PVP set bonuses; add half a tier to each PVP item in terms of estimation if you have the two-piece set bonus, or a full tier for two-piece and four-piece.

Finally, if you're planning which item to use as an offset going into T12, I'd recommend the hands or legs, due to superior socket coloration. Definitely try to stick with two-piece T11 as long as you can, though; the two-piece T11/two-piece T12 combination is very strong and only a tiny bit behind full four-piece T12 in terms of DPS.

Weapons

Let the hunters get the Ranseur, and you get Fandral's. K? K. The Witch-Hunter's Harvester is one of the new unlockable craftables from the Molten Front — don't expect to see these for a while, but as the base materials aren't overly expensive, they should come down in price pretty quickly.

Head

For what it's worth, I really dislike the look of the T12 headpiece; yay for Hide Helm.

Legs

And the BH slot machine starts up again! Note that Occu'thar drops and VP costs for T12 gear are still unknown.

Chest

I suspect quite a few raiders have the heroic Stormrider's piece (heroic Halfus is the easiest, after all), so this will probably be a lower priority spot for VP.

Trinkets

Just my personal opinions on these: Many could use more testing. UW, in particular, sims really well, but I'm not convinced of its actual value. I'm also holding off on ranking Ricket's Magnetic Fireball until I get some more info on the proc.

Hands

A good choice for (eventually) using off set, due to the blue socket on tier. I believe the recipe for the LW BoE drops in Firelands, though that's unconfirmed.

Shoulders

Unlike the helm, I like the T12 shoulders.

Waist

Congratulations! If you were one of the very few guilds that successfully defeated Sinestra in 4.0/4.1, you have a belt that's a tiny bit better than a 4.2 honored rep belt. Don't you feel accomplished?

Feet

  1. Sandals of Leaping Coals, Staghelm
  2. Treads of the Craft, leatherworking BOE
  3. Storm Rider's Boots, heroic Halfus
  4. Storm Rider's Boots, Halfus
  5. Treads of Fleeting Joy, 1,650 VP
  6. Fasc's Preserved Boots, Zul'Gurub

Yay, an offset that isn't named the same as the set! As with the gloves, I expect the Treads to be a Firelands drop recipe.

Neck

Boring neck slot, as always. The Rag gear is a half-tier higher, which is nice, I suppose.

Rings

Well, time to work on Ashen ... no, Earthen ... no, Avengers rep for a nice ring. If you can hold off until Halloween, there looks to be a new Headless Horseman one also.

Back

I believe the developers are overcompensating for the lack of cloaks in Wrath. You'll get your good cloak just by following the Elemental Bonds quest line. A better one is shortly to follow via Avengers rep, though.

Wrists

The boring slot. At least it's a BOE this time, so you can buy/sell as you need. Hopefully, it has a reasonable drop rate.

Relic

Still the last place to put VPs.

The best for now

That wraps up the gear. I haven't included heroic Firelands items, for space reasons; obviously, if you have a heroic Firelands item, it'll likely be best in slot (except for the Avengers exalted ring). Have fun in the Firelands, and remember: Friends don't let hunters roll on feral weapons!

Looking for the latest and greatest in feral cat druid guides? Shifting Perspectives has the answers! Check out our cat 101 for Cataclysm. Also don't miss gearing your cat for Cataclysm raiding, addons for cat druids and raiding strats for feral cats.

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