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Shifting Perspectives: Amazing addons for feral cat DPS
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our weekly feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin! Over the last few weeks, we've covered how to properly gear your cat for raiding in a Cataclysmic world. Unfortunately, all the gear in the world won't help you if you can't establish a good rotation. Today's column looks at some addons that will help you maximize your performance. Custom buff/debuff trackers Let's face it: The default UI is pretty horrible for tracking buffs and debuffs. The interface has vastly improved over time, but it still uses an icon-based scheme, and it appears in the top corner of your display, drawing your attention away from the action. As the feral rotation is very dependent on maintaining a self-buff and enemy debuffs, having a good way to track this information is important.
Shifting Perspectives: Starsurge and the balance druid outlook for patch 4.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday. Learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant lazer turkey! Questions, comments, or something you'd like to see? Email tyler@wowinsider.com. New patches -- I'm still not sure how I feel about them every time that they come around. Sometimes, you get the overjoyed feeling of being buffed; other times, you get the heart-wrenching experience of nerfs. I'm not quite sure if the pleasure is always worth the pain. All in all, though, I am not seeing 4.1 as being a major class balancing patch -- if Blizzard is to be believed -- so this should hopefully be a quick, short rollercoaster ride. As of right now, there aren't too many druid changes in the patch notes, but what there is seems to be rather disheartening for balance. More specifically, though, I want to brush up on the hot button issue of the day: the nerf to Starsurge. There are a lot of opinions floating around out there and a lot more misinformation. Although I wanted to avoid posting about the patch notes until there was more to tell, I think now would be the best time to go into this issue before something gets out of hand.
Shifting Perspectives: Bear weapons, trinkets, and relics
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we continue to enjoy getting hit in the face. Greetings, druids. This week, we'll finish up our bear gearing guide with a look at weapons, trinkets, and relics; the first section of the guide covers everything else. If you're on the lookout for a more general-purpose guide to the spec, complete with a list of recommended enchants and glyphs, you'll find that in Feral Druid Tanking 101.
Shifting Perspectives: Entering The Bastion of Twilight as a balance druid
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday. Learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant lazer turkey! Questions, comments, or something you'd like to see? Email tyler@wowinsider.com. And so it finally comes to an end -- or rather, a beginning. If you have been following my strange tangent, then you would already know that we have tackled Cho'gall and his devoted Council, leaving only the first two guardians left. In comparison to the end bosses, the first two encounters can be a bit hit or miss depending upon your raid composition. As always, certain encounters are easier in 10-man than 25-man, while some are actually more challenging in 10s. Whichever raiding style you choose to run with, both are going to have a running head start in this instance -- they have you! Balance druids are a force to be reckoned with in PvE right now. There are very few niches that we cannot fill, and our utility is rather useful during this tier. So, let's show these beasties a good what for.
Shifting Perspectives: Do restoration druids need a cooldown?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration, and balance druids. This Tuesday, we equivocate on whether a point made in Shifting Perspectives: Healers, selfishness, and trouble ahead was prescient or just another beneficiary of Allie's usual dumb luck. The title of today's Shifting column is maybe a little misleading. Strictly speaking, restoration already has a cooldown -- the still-controversial Disco Soul Patch Groovy Tree that has wildly gesticulated its way into all our hearts (well, some peoples' hearts) -- but now the developers are considering other possibilities in light of some data from tier 11 raids. Not that we have access to said data (or anything to go on besides our usual rampant speculation), but a few trends have emerged from tier 11 that make the possibility of getting a big cooldown a bit more likely.
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing your feral cat for raiding, part 3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our weekly feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin! In this final installment to our feral cat gearing series, let's take a look at augmentation. No, not that kind of augmentation, silly -- the ones that make your character better at laying down the smack, DPS-wise. A word to the thrifty: A character with no enchants versus a character with full enchants loses about 10% DPS potential. If you don't use consumables, that knocks off another 10%. A 10-20% shortfall is certainly significant but not critical. I wouldn't worry about enchanting gear for tackling solo content or normal-mode dungeons. Once you get into heroic dungeons and raids, though, you're doing your fellow group or raidmates a disservice by not putting forth the best effort possible, and that effort includes fully maximizing your potential.
Shifting Perspectives: Balance druids vs. the Twilight Ascendant Council
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday. Learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant lazer turkey! Questions, comments, or something you'd like to see? Email tyler@wowinsider.com. Greetings, most beloved druids. I find myself in an unfortunate circumstance this week in that I am slightly under the weather, which may be a bit of an understatement -- but I refuse to believe I am actually sick. So if the article is a bit more light or difficult to understand this week, then I do apologize in advance. My medication is being a little harsh on me. Personal issues out of the way, last week's column saw the fall of the exalted Cho'gall. Continuing with our strange, backwards running of the instance, this week brings us against the Twlight Ascendant Council, a rather vicious combination of elemental lords that will do anything it takes to prevent you from reaching their master. Prepare yourself for a rather difficult encounter with this one, folks, and the best of luck to you all. It's dangerous out there alone, so take a friend -- I'm all out of kittens.
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing your feral cat for raiding, part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our weekly feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin! In this continuation of my previous article, I'll look specifically at the items that drop from the various tier 11 raids. Your first priority is getting two pieces of tier 11 gear, as the two-piece set bonus is a nice DPS increase. The four-piece set bonus isn't quite as good and complicates your rotation a bit, but it's still better than just stacking off-set pieces. For normal mode gear, your best off-set slot is the head, specifically, Tsanga's; for heroic modes, the best off-set slot is shoulders. I won't be including any epic PvP items here, with a couple of exceptions. With the patch nerf to the four-piece PvP bonus, wearing PvP gear is generally suboptimal. An epic PvP item is usually roughly equal to a rare PvE item. I'm also not listing the few 379 items; chances are good that if you can beat Sinestra, you probably don't need to use a gear list for help. Finally, the items from Throne of the Four Winds are randomly enchanted, with four possible combinations: Stormblast (crit/hit), Windflurry (crit/haste), Windstorm (crit/mastery), and Zephyr (haste/mastery). This makes them tough to rate. Your best choices are the pieces with mastery, but any epic will be better than a rare.
Shifting Perspectives: Balance druids vs. Cho'gall
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday. Learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant lazer turkey! Cho'gall? The ending? But where is the beginning? Oh, you silly druids, why do anything in sequential order? That's so ... 2010. It's a new year, a time to do things differently! And I say that we start by going backwards through an instance. Yeah, yeah, I know, not really that exciting, but bear with me on this one; I promise it will be an epic adventure of grand proportions. This introduction is going to have to be cut a little bit short. Before going into boss information, there are a few unmentioned changes from the patch that need a quick review.
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a bear druid at 85
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, we prepare to get hit in the face. A lot. All right, folks -- time to gear your tanks! As with our previous series on gearing a restoration druid at level 85, we'll be going slot by slot to show you the best available options and where you can get them. I've listed recommend enchants previously in Feral Druid Tanking 101, but I've listed them here as well for convenience. I received some criticism over the restoration gear posts that they were a bit too thorough, and it was (I think) a correct assessment. I'd been aiming for an Emmerald-like opus, but it wound up being an unwieldy mess in blog format. Here, we'll generally avoid gear below ilevel 333. Why? Because you don't want it. I'm sure it's very nice and it has a great personality, but trust me, I've been down that road. It is the way of pain. I've listed the normal versions of some heroic drops here as a courtesy to anyone who's still leveling up, but items are otherwise ranked according to the desirability of their heroic versions. This week, we'll do the helm through ring slots. Weapons, trinkets, and relics require a bit more discussion, so we'll tackle those next week.
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing your feral cat for raiding
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our weekly feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin! So you've read my previous column covering the basics of feral DPS in Cataclysm, and you'd like to give it a try at endgame. Awesome! Let's get you equipped for the task at hand with the gear you'll need to begin raiding. Most of the items I'm listing are item level 346 and typically come from Cataclysm heroic 5-man instances. You'll have to acquire a mostly full set of ilvl 333 gear to be eligible to enter heroics (via the dungeon finder); questing through Twilight Highlands should get you most of the way there, but I'll include a representative ilevel 333/325 item for each slot to help fill out any holes. Also, since our best stats (by far) are weapon DPS and agility, ilvl 352 honor PvP gear is a perfectly acceptable substitute until you get the heroic drop you're looking for. Until the patch, four pieces of PvP gear are actually more powerful than equivalent PvE gear, due to the overly strong four-piece set bonus. After the patch, PvP gear will be weaker, but not by much. Finally, our secondary stats will be very close in value to each other, so don't worry too much about which ilvl 346 item you get. Generally, though, mastery > crit/haste > hit/expertise, for reforging purposes.
Shifting Perspectives: Balance in Throne of the Four Winds
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. This week, we'll fight a giant blob of wind ... or air ... or something like that. It'll be totally awesome guys -- I promise! Greetings once again, my druidic companions! In the previous weeks, we valiantly struggled once again to end the life of two of Deathwing's children. It wasn't an easy victory, to be sure. This week, we put ourselves against a new foe: the elemental lord of air Al'Akir. The elemental lords have always been quite chaotic in nature, once serving as a part of the Old Gods' armies when they ruled Azeroth. It comes as no surprise, then, that the wind king (much like the fire lord) has thrown his lot in with Deathwing. On a side note, I think this creates the perfect opportunity to bring up why this proves that druids are vastly superior to shaman. Sure, both groups may harbor some control over the natural forces of the world, but the shaman rely upon the elements in order to perfect their art. These elements are quite fickle. Oh sure, they can beg and plead to have the elements bless them, but what do they do when the elements say "no"? Druids don't have this weakness. We control nature itself; we are the rightful caretakers of this world. Personally, I say the next war should be between the Cenarion Circle and the Earthen Ring. We've pretty much fought against all of the elemental lords in one form or another; I think it's high time we targeted the root of the problem. I'm just sayin'.
Shifting Perspectives: Feral DPS changes in patch 4.0.6
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Today marks the beginning of our new weekly feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin! The rate of PTR changes has slowed to the point that we can reasonably expect patch 4.0.6 to drop soon, so let's take a look at its effects on feral cats. Unfortunately, there's more bad than good to report here. The day the cat stood still Shapeshifts: Entering or leaving a shapeshift no longer cancels root effects. It continues to cancel movement slowing effects. This is an immense change to a mechanic that has existed since beta, which I'm somewhat at a loss to even begin to discuss. Many PvPers rolled druids solely for this mechanic; I didn't personally, but my absolute favorite part of playing a druid is their mobility in both feral and restoration specs. The loss of this ability (and the attendant loss of mobility) completely mystifies me. It removes one of the most fun things about playing a druid, it guts a spec that was already fairly rare in arenas, and it wasn't necessary for balance. If I'm spamming shapeshifts to break roots, I'm not doing any appreciable damage or generating any CPs for an instant Roots/Cyclone. If this change has to go live, I'd like to at least see a deep feral talent or glyph that enables shapeshifting to Root break on an ICD, or perhaps buffs the mostly harmless Stampeding Roar with a reduced CD and root-breaking abilities. If not, we'll need a new ability of some sort to defend against spells, something akin to Anti-Magic Shell. At least it doesn't affect PvE overmuch (we have to jump on Asaad now! Darn).
Shifting Perspectives: The druid of 2010
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, Allie chugs cough syrup and hallucinates while sprawled on a bathroom floor. Truly the stuff of great literature, folks. It has long -- or, okay, over two years -- been a tradition at WoW Insider for me to exploit the germs conveyed by my relatives to the domicile in the interests of writing a yearly druid post. How does this work? I get sick, go out and buy cough syrup, get trolleyed on the devil's own brew, and then stagger to a computer with no one on the editorial staff able to stop me from publishing in time. This year, I didn't get sick around Christmas, nor immediately after it. In the interests of not disappointing our readership, which seems to enjoy articles written while under the heady influence of dextromethorphan, I secured lodgings on the floor of a bus station bathroom overnight and came back trying to restrain myself from barfing up a lung. Holding my head above the toilet was a certain semi-but-not-entirely-fictional person by the name of Letitia, whom you will have met earlier in Shifting Perspectives: Fun with race choice. Keep in mind that no small portion of this article was written from that position.
Shifting Perspectives: Feral cat druid DPS 101
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Today marks the beginning of our new weekly feral cat edition brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin! Tired of being a laser chicken or green-glowing broccoli? Just got your druid alt to 85? Mostly a bear, but want to up your DPS during non-tank phases? This guide's for you. It will cover the basics of the feral druid DPS spec at level 85 for you Cataclysm cats, including rotation, gear stats, talent and glyphs. I'll be focusing on PvE -- but don't worry, I'll address the many sorrows of feral PvPers soon. Feral DPS strengths Strong single-target DPS Currently just a bit behind that of assassination rogues and unholy DKs. Excellent survivability With Survival Instincts, Barkskin, and Nurturing Instinct, we definitely don't overwork the healers. Excellent mobility Most melee have a passive +15% run speed buff available to them, but we're the only one that gets +30% via Feral Swiftness. Combined with Feral Charge, we're typically the first melee DPS to reach an add. Lots of raid-wide buffs, including +5% crit and some small raid-wide heals via Leader of the Pack. Also +30% bleed damage via Mangle and -12% armor reduction with Faerie Fire. Tranquility is awesome and not just for restoration-specced druids. Often overlooked, it remains a great raid-wide party heal when paired with Nurturing Instincts. My feral Tranquility has healed for over 200k. That's a lot of healing for 8 seconds. Between LotP heals and Tranquility, I'm often the largest source of raid-wide heals not coming from a dedicated healer. Battle rez Not as overpowered now that you're limited to one rez (or three in 25-man), but still game-changing. Hybrid spec potential A shared talent tree with bears makes a combined DPS/tanking spec very viable. A challenging, interesting, and dynamic DPS rotation
Shifting Perspectives: Raiding late Blackwing Descent as a balance druid
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. This week, we'll be mopping up our adventures into a dragon's lair. That's always a fun task ... assuming you don't get eaten. Remember, you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup, so be careful. Welcome back to another week of basking in the glory of being an overweight hybrid space create that probably belongs in a zoo. Love me some Moonkin and all, but, let's face it people, we're a tad on the fantastical side; and I don't just mean the fact that we shoot crazy green balls of something that only the flying spaghetti monster knows what. In case you missed it, last week's part 1 of Blackwing Descent can be found here. As an aside, I should say that I am stoked to be a raiding balance druid for the first time in the history of WoW. It was a blessing to be one of only a handful of balance druids raiding back in vanilla, but I always felt that I was really only there because the guild liked me as a player and to prove that it could still be done. TBC was an improvement, but it was never about damage then; we were just group buff bots that offered an increase in group damage while only being mediocre ourselves. Wrath got a lot better where balance was finally recognized for the damage that it could pump out, but we never really had a moment in the sun where we were considered to be a powerhouse DPS spec to the point that a guild felt they were missing something by not having us. Now though? Now I cannot fathom to be a guild without a balance druid, and it's even worth it to have two sometimes! Our damage is more than acceptable; we're far more viable than we ever have been for raiding, and I love it. So let's talk about downing some bosses, shall we?
Shifting Perspectives: Raiding early Blackwing Descent as a balance druid
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Triple moonkin! All across the sky! It can only mean one thing, that's right kiddies: It's raiding time. Strap on your big boy pants -- things are about to get serious. Seriously. OMG, OMG, OMG it's here! Yay, I actually did something that I said I would do. This is such a drastic change for me that I think I'll write a whole article on how important this momumentous event is, instead of actually writing about boss tactics and annoying things like that. No? Not feeling it? I suppose I can go ahead with the normal plan, although I think the other idea was much better. Raiding thus far has been rather hit-or-miss, in my opinion. Perhaps I'm jaded, but many of the encounters feel a tad ... simplistic, or at least far easier than they should be. Certain encounters, and especially the end encounters of all three raids this tier, are tough and fun, but the in-betweens seem a little weak at times -- but again, that's just me. For example, I spent more time wiping on the first boss of Grim Batol when it showed up as my first heroic ever than I did on Magmaw. Maybe that's just us; I don't know. Whether or not you agree, raiding is about being prepared. We've covered gearing yourself up for raids to death, so let's get on with the second part of those preparations.
Shifting Perspectives: Feral Druid Tanking 101
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, sum durids is still bare, despite it all. Players who have been around for a while will recognize this as an update on Shifting Perspectives: Bear 101, written in February 2010 after the Icecrown Citadel patch had gone live. The spec feels like it's in a weirder place than it was a year ago, consequence of some early improvements on the beta followed by a few unpopular developer decisions. As far as I'm aware, bears are still the least-played tank, and I'm not really optimistic that our numbers are going to rebound as things stand. As with our earlier 101 guide, I'm addressing this to people with no prior knowledge of the spec who want the tools to become a reasonably competent tank quickly. Readers looking for an extended and mathier version of this article should look for the Feral Bear -- Cataclysm Release guide recently published at Elitist Jerks.
Shifting Perspectives: PTR 4.0.6, balance and you
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids.This week, I'm going picture hunting. If you happened to send any in last week, chances are I didn't get them. Our emails over here recently changed, and I can now be reached at tyler@wowinsider.com. So send your pics! Okay, okay, so I know that I had originally promised to start doing the raiding guide this week, and I was so totally going to do that, but the information that's currently up on the latest PTR is just too juicy to pass up. Like the mythical GC pony, the raid guide will come next week, I promise. The PTR doesn't hold a lot of information for balance druids overall, but what it does hold is amazingly amazing. (Props to those who know where that one comes from.) There are a few nerfs, and they come in areas where we really needed buffs instead, but there are quite a number of buffs out there as well that can certainly whet the palate. There are also some important profession and general changes that will help everyone, including balance druids. I'm normally not a fan of huge balancing patches such as these that come out so soon after an expansion is released -- rage, what good was beta, and all that -- but at least we are finally getting these changes now. And what changes are those? Oh, why, I'm so glad that you asked.
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a restoration druid at 85, part 3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, we finish our series on how to gear a restoration druid at level 85. Hello, folks. This week, we're going to finish our series on gearing a resto at level 85, and next week, we're going to change course and address bears with a Cataclysm 101 guide and then gear post. For the kitties out there, Dan O'Halloran will be splitting off a cat-oriented Shifting soon, so we'll eventually have three Shifting articles per week -- one for bears/resto, one for cats, and one for moonkin. I'm so rarely DPS these days that it's a bit of a relief to focus on the two specs that get my play time, so I hope I'll be able to bring a bit more depth to bears and resto in the Tuesday Shifting column. On that note, the low-level Tank Watch project continues. I regret to say the numbers are slightly more depressing than last week if you'd been hoping that the bear population would rebound this expansion. So far, this is the tank representation I've seen in dungeon finder groups between levels 15 and 40: Paladin: 66% Warrior: 23% Druid: 11%
