Shifting Perspectives: The feral gear list to rule them all

By Chase Hasbrouck

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!

This is it — the final feral list of this expansion. By following this, you'll be well prepared to take on anything Deathwing throws your way.

Some notes:

  • This list is focused on items suitable for PvE content. You may have some success in PvP with these items ... or not. To compare PvP items with PvE, a good rough estimate is to take five points off the item level for weapons and 20 points off the item level for armor. This accounts for the useless resilience.
  • This list starts at item level 378 (normal Firelands or new 4.3 5-man instances). If you've just hit 85, check the lists for items that can be acquired via the AH or crafting, then take a look at my previous gear list.
  • In general, one point of agility is worth three points of any of the secondary stats, and all secondary stats are roughly equal. Use that as a guide when comparing items.
  • I've grouped all the items into rough tiers. These typically line up with ilevel, but not always (mostly due to gem slots). You will almost always want to gem the best +agility gem you can afford into each socket, ignoring socket bonuses unless they are 20 agility or greater.

Weapons and trinkets

Weapon

Trinkets

A good weapon is the key to good feral DPS, so it's essential you get the best you can. Thankfully, unlike Firelands drops, a Dragon Soul weapon is relatively easy to come by, and an upgrade is available when you finish the instance. If you're just getting started, Ranseur's should go pretty cheap on the Auction House now, or there's a good weapon available from Well of Eternity.

The Vial of Shadows trinket is ridiculously awesome. It doesn't look like much, but the proc scales on a 1:1 basis with attack power and can crit. Yes, that means you can see procs of over 50k on this thing. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets nerfed for PvP reasons, though. Not to be outdone, Wrath of Unchaining is pretty nice as well, with a huge hunk of stacking agility. Your top two trinkets are going to be the best two versions of these you can come across.

Set pieces

Head

Legs

Shoulders

Chest

Hands

The set pieces are pretty boring. The only off-set choice available from Dragon Soul is the Underdweller's Spaulders, so expect to use that with tier for the other four slots. The VP and BoE choices seem somewhat underwhelming due to the relative lack of difficulty reported with normal Dragon Soul, but they may be useful for alts. At the 378 level, there's an off-set piece available from every new 5-man, so gearing should be very rapid.

Non-set pieces

Waist

Feet

Wrists

Back

The non-set pieces are a bit more interesting. At the 397 level, there are lots of VP and BoE options. Curiously, there's no ilevel 410 cloak, so the cloak off heroic Rhyolith is BiS, with the VP cloak close behind. I'd recommend this as your second VP investment if heroic Firelands is out of reach for you. If you're looking to spend gold, the bracers are an excellent option and will be BiS until you can land the heroic bracers.

Jewelry

Neck

Fingers

Relic

The Cameo should be your first VP purchase almost certainly, as the alternative is likely still out of the reach of most. The relic slot is also an excellent candidate to spend VPs. Rings are a little easier; with heroic Beth'tilac now in reach of more guilds, many will have near-BiS rings already available.

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 Firelands raiding, addons for cat druids and raiding strats for feral cats, as well as our feral cat Firelands boss strats.

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