Naxx

So, once again, I have created my Raiding group, only this time it is with a group of 5 friends that have been playing together for a while.  The good news is that they are all extremely well geared and know how to play their classes.  However, the rest of us kind of feel like outsiders to the group. I guess with more runs, we will all get to know each other better.  

We were able to down the 3/3 Arachnid, 3/3 Plague, 2/3 Military and 1/4 Construct.  And we got Grobbulus down to 28,697.  Argh.  But given that this was the first time that 6 of the people had been in Naxx, I think we did pretty well.

Our guild is up to 39 level 80s, which is nice, but also means that people are feeling left out of stuff. We had two people quit the guild because they didn't feel needed.  Not quite sure why, they had been going on dungeon runs and hit 80 last Friday, so they would have been invited on this weeks Naxx runs.  I don't quite understand it all, but maybe I'm not supposed to.

A friend of mine has been pretty good DPS out of going cat.  He went complete cat since at the time we had quite a few tanks.  He seems to be really liking the cat dps.  

Personally, I'm up to 28,000 armor, 33,000 health and 35% dodge unbuffed, so I'm getting there.  I hope to buy another new piece soon.  I'm getting the Savage Gladiator's Sanctuary set. I think it is better for bear than the T7.  I have the chest and should be able to buy the hands this week with honor/arena points.  That will be nice at least for arenas.  

Of course, I will be out of town for the next two weeks, so no real play time.  Kind of hard to play at the lake!  

Have a Happy Holiday!

Gear and Naxx

So we have now cleared the Arachnid, Plague and 2/3 of the Military quarters.  We would have finished the Military Quarter, but 2 of the guys had to go to bed.  I mean, it was only 2:30 in the morning there and they had to work today.  I just don't see the problem.  I'm kidding.

Overall, I think we are doing pretty well.  We now have enough people that we should start 2 10 man Naxx runs.  I will be in charge of the second one again.  I kind of wish we had gotten further with the "core" group before the split but we just have so many people ready to go.

I also got my first upgrades from Naxx.   Staff of the Plague Beast and I also got Cloak of Armed Strife  so I am pretty pumped.  I am now 6 emblems away from my new chest!  So I'm getting some nice upgrades.

Ding!

Well, we hit 80 on Saturday December 6, 2008 at 6pm.  We were 78 on Friday, but I dual boxed while she worked on Saturday so that we would be 80 for Naxx.  And then Naxx got moved to Sunday, which is fine, we ran 5 Heroics instead.  Violet Hold, Utgarde Keep, The Culling of Stratholme, Drak'tharon, The Occulus  I am now up to 30 emblems so I'm making my move.  

When we hit Naxx up on Sunday, I only had 25,500 armor; 32,000 HP; and about 35.6% dodge. However, we were able to do the Arachnid Quarter and get down Patchwerk.  Man those Hateful Strikes hurt! Steaky got three leather healing drops, she was excited!  I think it was pretty damn good for our first attempt!

I got the Handwraps of Preserved History on Saturday and Shroud of Darkness yesterday. Yeah! Now I'm sitting at about 26,000 armor, with 26,207 health and 32.16% dodge self buffed. So yeah, need some work there to really tank but I'm getting there.

Speaking of, I'm also now Tanking Lead for the guild as well as Recruitment Officer.  Now the only thing that sucks about that is that I can no longer get to the Tanking Forums from work.  It is now blocked, however, I can get to the European Tanking Forums.  Go Figure!

Stats and Conversions

All of these assume you are level 80

Agility = 0.0254% dodge. 1% dodge needs ~39.31 agility. 2.12 armor per point of agility
Dodge Rating = ~0.025% dodge. 39.35 dodge rating per % dodge.
Stamina = 15.9 health
Defense = ~4.92 rating per skill, 1 skill = 0.04% dodge, miss, anti-crit. 25 defense skill,
or ~122.96 defense rating, for 1% less crit/more dodge/more miss.
Armor = 5.17 armor in bearform if the armor comes from items. 1 armor if it comes from buffs/enchants. (for now, after patch 3.0.8 it will be 8.5822 for the 8 slot armor times)


Strength = 2.2472 AP per point
Agility = 1% crit per ~78.62 agility
Critical Strike Rating = 1% per 45.91
Hit Rating = 1% hit per ~32.79 hit rating (264 to be capped)
Attack Power = 1.06 AP per point.
Expertise Rating = 1% reduced parry/dodge chance per ~32.79 rating.  (131 to be capped)

Feral Faction Info

Factions are a great/horrible thing to have to grind.  So I'm making a list and checking it twice.

Knights of the Ebon Blade

Darkheart Chestguard - (Exalted) Cat chestpiece

Wyrmrest Accord

Dragonfriend Bracers - (Exalted) Cat and Bear

Oracles

Glitterscale Wrap - (Revered) Bear

Kirin Tor

Mind-expanding Leggings - (Revered) Cat and Bear

Stave of Shrouded Mysteries - (Revered) Cat

Argent Crusade

Boots of the Neverending Path - (Exalted) Cat

Cloak of Holy Extermination - (Honored) Cat

Frenzyheart Tribe

Azure Strappy Pants - (Revered) Cat (but I wouldn't, go Oracles)

Sons of Hodir

Spaulders of Frozen Knives - (Honored) Cat

So I plan to grind for the Oracle belt and Kirin Tor legs.  Not quite sure what else yet, but I know those two.  And of course, I'm grind for my fishing pole!

Gear Updates

So I have been watching and reading all the links about gear upgrades for bears.  And it looks like a lot of Utgarde Keep heroic runs for me.  But just so I can keep track of everything, here are a couple of links for gear.

Think Tank

Feral Druid Thread at EJ

Karthis' Tank

Karthis' DPS

Karthis' Spreadsheet

Hit Me!

Using Rawr, and doing some of my own calcualtions, if I get most of the good pieces I need to drop, I will be sitting around 30,000 armor and hit points with 34% dodge and 80% mitigation.  I wish my dodge was higher, but I can work on that.  I'm hoping that will be enough to start running Naxx in a few weeks. 

We hit 75 last night, and since once we get home on Thursday from eating with relatives, we can just play until Monday, I'm hoping to be really really close to 80 by Monday.  

Here is hoping!

Dual Specs

Since in WotLK we are supposed to be able to have a main spec and an alt spec, I have been thinking about this.  If I had to choose one spec, I think it would end up looking like this.  But since I can have two specs, I think I will pick one for cat and one for bear.  

Therefore, I think my bear would look like this.  Not a lot of changes, but the big one is the fear reduction.  I hate being the tank and getting feared, if you are tanking a boss, it really screws everything up, and the whole raid is counting on you.  So while it doesn't help my resistance, at least if I get feared, it won't last as long.

And my cat would look like this.  I would have liked to have gotten Master Shapeshifter, but I couldn't afford the 5 points it would have taken to get it.  So, overall, I'm pretty happy with it since I really only lose a few bear abilities, but since the point is I should be able to switch specs quickly in a dungeon, I think it should work for decent damage.

Mongoose, the confusion

Okay, so we know what EJ said, but some friends and I weren't really happy with their explanation or their forumla.  So we played around a little on our own.

BEAR:

Since what we want to know is "How many times do I have to do this task with a %p success rate in order to get %r successes, we can use a negative binomial distribution with r=1 since we only care about the first success.  And we know that p=0.0417 for bear

Therefore, we get (1-0.0417)/(0.0417) = 22.9808

So this tells us that on average it takes 23 attacks for mongoose to proc the first time.

So it takes 21.5625 seconds for 23 attacks to occur.  

So since mongoose lasts 15 seconds, the total time for 1 occurance of mongoose is 36.56 which means that mongoose was active 41.03% of the time, which gives an average of 49.23 agility.  

And since once mongoose is over, we start back again at the "state" we started in, the same equation holds for the next proc.

CAT:

For catform, we know that p=0.0167 so plugging in we get (1-0.0167)/(0.0167) = 58.8802

So this tells us that it takes 59 attacks for mongoose to proc the first time, which means it takes 47.104 seconds for 59 attacks to occur.

Since mongoose lasts 15 seconds, the total time for 1 occurance of mongoose is 62.1 which means that mongoose was active 24.15% of the time, which gives an average of 28.9855 agility.

Which means that mongoose is much better for bear, but really sucks for cat.

And I would like to give special thanks to Gurggy, he did the real work and Rusted for keeping on my ass with questions so we got them answered.

Enchants - Mongoose

From Elitist Jerks:

(1-0.75^ppm should be correct if I'm thinking clearly - 15/60 sec uptime is 45/60 downtime on a 1ppm mongoose proc)

You get 1.25 ppm in cat form (15 specials, 1/60 chance to proc each). 
That should mean 1-0.75^1.25 = 30% uptime for 120 agi -> 36 agi avg (+some haste).

As far as I know, you only get one try to proc mongoose per swipe, right? 
You get 2.67 ppm in bear form (40 specials, 2.5/60 chance to proc each).
1-0.75^2.67 = 46% uptime -> 55 agi avg (+some haste)

Me:

Okay, so using a little math and explaining where it came from, we start with the equation

1-(a)^b where 

a is the percent of downtime you have in a minute and 

b is the number of chances to proc in a minute.

And from Wowwiki: Proc per minute

And for catform, since energy regens at 20 energy per two seconds, you can only get 15 special attacks in a minute using all the tools in your toolbox.  So that is where you get 15 specials in 1 minute or 15 in 60 seconds so 15/60 so that is 60+15 = 75 hits per minute. And Procs per hit = Weapon speed * Procs per minute / 60 which is 1.67% for catform. So 75*0.0167 = 1.2525 = 1.25   

So now you plug that into the formula and get 1-(.75)^1.25 = .302 or 30% of the time (18 seconds out of every minute), you will have the mongoose bonus.  So we know that mongoose grants 120 agility, so that is approximately 2 agility per second, so you would get a bonus average of +36 agility plus some haste, which is slightly better than the +35 agility.

Now we can do the same math for bear.  But here you can get in a lot more specials in a minute since you are really only limited by the global cooldown. (I assume you have enough rage)  So since the global cooldown is 1.5 seconds 60/1.5 = 40.  And Procs per hit = Weapon speed * Procs per minute / 60 which is 4.17% for bearform. So you get 40 specials + 24 normals attacks in a minute which is 64 and 64*4.17% = 2.67 and so 1-(.75)^2.67 = 54% uptime. And if it is up 54% of the time, that is 32.4 seconds and so at an average of 2 agility per second, gives 65 agility average.  Can this be right?

In short, mongoose is good for bear, about equal for kitty.

Ren Fair Time!

What a bear does on weekends when not playing WOW. 

My mother is on the left, I'm in the middle and my resto wife Steaky is on the right!  

We went to the Texas Renaissance Festival.  It was a lot of fun, if you live anywhere close, you should run by if you can!

Argh....Sick Bear and Patch Ramblings

I don't know what is worse, being sick, or being sick.  I hate pneumonia.  At least I think I'm starting to get over it.

Anyway, I think that I like the new bear abilities.  I miss my armor, but I haven't found that to be a problem with tanking heroics or raiding.  What I do love is my new bear form DPS.  I was able to sustain almost 600 dps in bear form.  I'm sure others out there can do better, but wow, on our raids, none of the other tanks were able to come close.  Even a prot warrior in his dps gear only did a little over 400.  So far, I'm loving the damage I can deal in bear form.

And I love the new feral charge for cats.  I love that it works from prowling and that you jump right behind your target.  This has been wonderful to produce almost 700 dps on the HH.  Don't know what it would do to an actual raid boss where I can truly unleash.  But wow, loving some of the cat changes.  Now all I really need are more keys on my speedpad.  Oh wait, that is a keyboard isn't it.

And I love the inscriptions.  I took it on my priest alt who is now 42.  Almost up to 300 inscription.  Now the interesting thing is that in the 8 days since the patch, Yleedead has made a little over 1500 gold just selling glyphs.  Wow.  I can't believe that.  It is just amazing.  And I am lower than everyone else.  I can't believe some of the prices.  Of course, where you really make your money is with the minor glyphs since you can only discover one every 20 hours.  I now have 6 and try to keep them up on the AH.

WotLK Talents

So I have been reading and studying the talent changes coming with Lich King.  I think I have decided on the following build.

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=0ZxGGsfbzceocGuAo0E0z

However, I still am not happy.  I would like to put one more point in Infected Wounds so that if it stacks twice, that is a 50% movement reduction, but really, that is a grinding talent, not a raiding one, so I can live with a 34% movement reduction.

I have tried to make my choices so that I am a viable tank, but so that I can do very decent damage if given the opportunity.  One thing I miss currently is being able to cat DPS more. When I first started tanking Kara, I got to go cat a lot more.  Now since I'm the main tank in the guild, I don't get to go cat that often.  But in choosing my talents, I am hoping with the expansion, I might get to cat around again for a little bit.  

I hate not being able to take Primal Tenacity, but I just can't afford the points for the fear duration reduction.  I might have sacrificed something else for it if it was a 15% chance to resist fear, but since it is just a reduction in duration, I am not going to waste my points.  

The only other thing that I am missing that I have now is Brutal Impact.  Well, it only adds 1 second to my stuns in either cat or bear form.  Again, I just don't think it is worth sacrificing something else for those 2 points.  I am still going to be able to stun them, it is just not going to last quite as long.  Not a deal breaker.

Well, these are my thoughts at the moment.  They might change in the next month.  Heck, who knows, I might not be the main tank of the guild and can be more catty, but I just don't see that happening any time soon.

What the hell were they thinking?

Okay, so I have been running heroics with some guildies of mine.  We have quite a few new faces lately, and so I have been running with them to get to know them.  This is sad.  We have a mage, who doesn't know when to sheep because he sheeps too close to a patrol instead of waiting until I pull the group back around a corner.  And then he goes to refresh his sheep with the Boss standing there, and wouldn't you know it, he pulls the boss.  This was in Ramps with the first boss.  Argh. What amazes me is that he is supposed to be a great tank on his paladin, so what gives?

Next up we have the dps warrior that refuses to quit using whirlwind "because my dps would be too low" even when he is next to a sheep or a trap.  I typically run with my wife (resto druid), BM hunter and a frost mage.  So we have lots of sheeps or traps on most pulls, and if the warrior got remotely close he didn't care.  His dps was more important to him than a smooth run.  What the hell?

I am really starting to think that I want to go back to the rule of no one under 18 in the guild. Both of the people in the above statements are teenage boys.  WTB maturity.  And I am one of the more patient people in the guild.  I would just like everyone out there to remember, a smooth run is the most important thing, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR DPS IS if everyone wipes because you broke CC.

Bear Stats and Conversions

What is the armor cap? The armor cap is the point at which you hit the maximum damage reduction from armor (75.00%). The cap depends on the level of mob you’re fighting:

• For a level 70 mob, the armor cap is 31,673
  
• For a level 71 mob, the armor cap is 33,075
  
• For a level 72 mob, the armor cap is 34,478
  
• For a level 73 mob, the armor cap is 35,880
  

What are my stat conversions?

• 1 strength = 2 AP in all forms
  
• 1 agility = 1 AP in cat form only
  
• 1 agility = 2 armor in all forms
  
• 14.73 agility = 1.0% dodge in all forms
  
• 25 agility = 1.0% crit in all forms
  
• 1 stamina = 10 HP in all forms
  
• 1 int = 15 mana in all forms
  
• 79.97 int = 1.0% spell crit in all forms
  
• 1.8 spi = 1mp5 not casting
  
• 6 spi = 1mp5 casting with 3/3 Intensity
  

What are the Combat Ratings conversions?

• 15.76 Expertise Rating = 4 Expertise (-1.00% dodge and -1.00% parry)
  
• 15.76 Hit Rating = -1.0% miss chance
  
• 12.62 Spell Hit Rating = -1.0% spell miss chance
  
• 22.08 Crit Rating = +1.0% crit chance
  
• 22.08 Spell Crit Rating = +1.0% spell crit chance
  
• 15.76 Haste Rating = +1.0% haste
  
• 15.76 Spell Haste Rating = +1.0% spell haste
  
• 18.9 Dodge Rating = +1.0% dodge chance
  
• 2.4 Defense Rating = 1 defense skill
  
• 1 Defense Skill = +0.04% chance to be missed, +0.04% chance to dodge*
  
• 25 Defense Skill/60 Defense Rating = +1.00% chance to be missed, +1.00% chance to dodge
  
• 39.4 Resilience = -1.0% crit chance, -2.0% crit damage, -1.0% DoT damage
  

* 1 defense skill also grants +0.04% chance to parry and +0.04% chance to block, but bears can't parry or block, so we don't receive these bonuses. Growl!

Hard Core Raiding Guild?

I met some guys on the elevator at work the other day, I overheard them speaking about The Hinderlands.  So obviously, I had to ask what classes they had, what server they were on and so forth.  I said I had a 70 Tauren Druid.  They mentioned I should roll a toon on their server and I responded that I couldn't really do that since I was an officer and a raid leader in my guild. Then they mentioned that they don't even have enough 70s in their family/friends  guild to do Kara. They asked if I was in a hard core raiding guild.  My answer was "No, we are a friendly, familyish guild."

Now, while I still agree with this assessment, I have started thinking about this more and more. Last week, I lead the 2nd Kara group, and we did ZA and Gruul's.  This week we have Kara, Gruul's,  ZA and Mags on the schedule.  That is really a lot of raiding in one week.  But we are still friendly to people, and we are accepting new members all the time.  It has gotten to the point recently that I am not quite sure who all the new members are.  And I try to make sure that I know all the new members since I am an officer.  So my question is, are we a hard core raiding guild?  How do you make that determination?

Gruul is down!

So, Band of the Hawk goes into Gruul's for the first time last night.  We had to pug about 5 people to make it, but we got enough people to go!  We had done our research, knew how it was supposed to go, and went in.

3 tanks - Bear and 2 warriors

6 healers - 2 trees, 2 pallies, 2 priests

Assorted DPS

We start deciding the job roles, and low and behold, I am main tank!  Woot!  I start working my way through the trash pulls, no problem!  

We get to the first boss.  The High King.  We make the assignments, and we have me on the HK, a warrior on Olm and a warrior on Blindeye, and then a frost mage on Krosh and two hunters on Kiggler.  

On the first try, Olm gets loose and we wipe.

On the second try, mage misses spell steal, we wipe.

On the thrid try, Olm gets loose and we wipe.

Here we decide to let the dps warrior tank Blindeye and put two tanks on Olm.  This method works and we down the group on try four.  Woo hoo.  It was tons of fun.

On to more trash pulls.  And then to Gruul.

On the first attempt, I'm tanking, doing my thing, and half of the dps dies on one of his Shatters.  Ouch, not fun.  

On the second attempt, a Ret pally joins the group to replace a shaman that has to go to bed.  And the ret pally rushes in before I do and grabs aggro and starts running around so I can't catch up and get aggro.  Argh!

On the third attempt,  everything goes as planned.  I'm tanking him in the center, except when I have to move him because of a cave in, but I respond pretty quickly since I'm running Deadly Boss Mobs.  I feral charge after he tosses me, and we work together as a group to get him down.  It was a beautiful thing to see 25 people come together and succeed.

I didn't get any loot, but my off tank for Kara got two T4 upgrades so that is nice.  He was very excited and I'm happy for him.

All in all, it was a great night.  I got to MT, and Steaky (my wife) was first in healing.  She was also very excited about that.

Zul'Aman and Guild stuffs

So, I have been to ZA a few times, but last night was the first time we got the first two bosses within the timer. Woo Hoo. I didn't get any good loot, but that is fine, others in the guild did. We attempted the Dragonhawk boss for the first time. And we wiped twice and weren't able to try again as it was getting late and people had to go to bed for work. Things are really coming together for our guild.

We have gotten several new members recently that seem to be really good additions, and we almost need 3 Kara groups now. Almost, we are short on healers and tanks for that, but have ample DPS.

To night we are scheduled to attempt Gruul's for the first time. I have been there before with a PUG, but others in my guild have not even set foot in there. I can't wait to give it a try with the guild, I know it will be better than the PUG was.

On a sad note, we are losing one of my good friends in guild. She has scheduling issues and is changing guilds to one that has more people online during the day since she is now going to be working in the evenings. It is sad to see her go, but I understand that it is for the best.

Gear upgrades

Yesterday was very fruitful for me. I got two very nice upgrades on my gear. Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm and I got my Darkmoon Fair card, Vengence! Now while I really needed the new helm, I am most excited by my Vengence card. I love the extra stamina it gives. It should really make it a lot easier on my healers!

And I think the Badge of Tenecity is a joke. I have farmed for hours for the depleted badge, and I have yet to get it. I haven't found it on the AH either. Oh well, at least I have my new Darkmoon Card!

Now, all I need to do is work on getting my Lunacy Deck together for my next card!

Bad Kara Runs

So, my wife and I are leading our guild's second Kara runs last week, and they were driving me crazy. Let me break who we had down for you.

1. Me - Feral druid
2. Prot Warrior
3. Wife - Resto Druid
4. Holy Priest
5. Rogue
6. Warlock
7. Mage #1
8. Mage #2
9. Shaman #1
10. Shaman #2

Night 1.
Okay, so we are kind of slow the first night, as there are too many brbs, but we finish maiden. This took way too long, but we had a couple of new people, so we had to explain things more.

Night 2:
Romulus and Julianne. Never done it before, we had to learn as we went. Once we understood what to do, it was going smoother. What kills me is we had to keep telling shaman #2 he was attacking the wrong target and to switch targets. Argh.

Okay, so we move on to curator, no problem, one shot. Then Illhoof, we wipe once when warlock goes down even though it was the priests only job to keep her up. Then we move onto Shade. Here is where I want to kill people, the holy priest isn't dispelling the slow, and to top it off, Shaman #2 moves EVERY single time we have a flame wreath. We finally give up and go to bed. If I hadn't, I would have killed someone.

My wife found a website that everyone doing shade needs to have playing during the fight!
http://shadeofaranchant.ytmnd.com/
But this is hard to understand over the mic, I played it for the group on night 3.

Night 3: Shaman #2 is replace by Hunter #1 and Rogue is replaced by dps Warrior #2. And Shaman #1 is replaced by Priest #2. Priest #2 is in charge of dispelling slow, and after 2 attempts to down Shade, we get Priest #2 on voice, and we down Shade. We do Chess and we attempt Prince. Notice I said attempt Prince.

First attempt, bad infernals.
Second attempt, Priest #1 is replaced by Hunter #2. Bear tank dies in Phase 2.
Third attempt, Bear tank dies in Phase 2.

Now the thing is, the resto druid has over 50% of the healing for these fights. I reset between each fight. And the priest is down at 25-30% healing. And as a bear, there is no way for me to take a potion and not take massive damage. As a bear, I have over 20,000 HP, over 25,000 armor and dodge at 36%. I should be able to tank Prince and not die. I don't know what the heck keeps happening. We finally quit last night, but damn, I am frustrated.

Okay, this should not take 3 nights. I know this, you know this, but what the hell went wrong. I am now checking and double checking to make sure that people are Kara ready. And being Kara ready, does not mean you are Kara able. See shaman #2. His gear is Kara ready, but I was out damaging him on fights, even when I was tanking. That should not happen with an enhancement shaman.

Long story to say, make sure your people are Kara ready and Kara able, as these are two different things. Some people will never be raid ready, they just don't have the skills to raid. But if you are going to take them, you better make sure that everyone else is on the A game to compensate!

Anyone have any suggestions or comments?

What You Wearing?

There are tons of places that you can find gear lists for starting druid tanks. Emmerald's , Adventures in Azeroth and Big Bear Butt. Let me just say this, the heavy clefthoof set is going to be your best friend to start out. Get it and get it early. And gem it!

I had mine ready and waiting for me when I hit 70. I had also done quite a few BGs so I had the merciless gladiator shoulders and hands waiting for me. My wife and I were able to hit 70 on a Tuesday night, and run Kara on Thursday with our guild. I was off tank (OT) and she was off healer (OH). Were we just a little low, maybe, but we did it.

The point is, plan ahead and get the gear before you turn 70. Don't wait until you hit 70 to decide, "hey, maybe I need good gear to run Kara or heroics".

Now, keep in mind that there aren't that many Bear Kara drops as far as leather goes. You will have to get badge gear or 25 man raid drops. So you will be keeping some of your gear for a long time. Keep a list of what would actually be an upgrade for you. You don't want to take something someone else could use if it really isn't an upgrade. I recommend getting the Rating Buster Addon. It is quite useful to evaluate quickly whether or not something is better for you.

Also, use Rawr to plan ahead. You can get a lot of information for both your cat and bear forms using this tool.

As far as cat gear goes, speak with your guild about the Kara drops. My guild has the rule that you only roll for your main spec and if no one wants an item, then people can roll for an off spec. This has caused some issue since I say my spec is feral and should then roll on both cat and bear items, since I do both in the runs. However, my guild disagrees and I had to pick what I wanted to roll on, Cat or Bear. I chose Bear because I want to tank, but it is a discussion you need to have with your guild leaders and raid leaders. Don't let it become an issue, find out what the rules are before you go.

Overall, for a feral, gear is important, and you will be spending a lot of time getting it. But if you plan ahead, you can be ready to roll when you hit 70.

Do Over!

Okay, now that I have mentioned a few things you should do, let me tell you a few things not to do.

1. Never start a pull with no rage. Duh, right? Well, I can't tell you how many times I have pulled and forgotten to generate rage first. I normally start off with a mangle or a swipe, and guess what, you can't do that with no rage. LOL, so just fair warning, try to remember to use Enrage before you start.
2. Never get too close while marking. You can mark your targets from surprisingly far back. You don't need to get close. The first time I tanked Kara, I kept getting too close and accidentally pulling the group before it got it marked. Ouch. Remember, you can always mark in stealthed cat form!
3. Always ask if everyone has done the instance and if not explain how it works. Don't assume and have someone in the wrong place because they don't know.
4. Don't accidentally hit your button to switch in and out of bear form right as you start tanking Nalorakk, the bear boss in Zul'Aman. And hope like hell that you don't cause a wipe. If you are lucky as I was, your wife will battle rez you and you can tank his bear form (instead of his normal form) and no one yelled too much. I did have to do alot of bark kissing to the wife after the battle rez though! ;P I just felt like a bear ass noob!

I know I have done a lot more stupid things, but I just can't think of them at the moment. All in all, remember it is a game, and that you can always get a do over!

Marking

Now becoming a good tank takes practice. And it takes research. Because while other members of your group can go into the instance knowing what they can and can't do with their class, you will be in charge of pulls. This means that you should have researched ahead of time to find out which mobs (i.e. bad guys) can be crowd controlled (CC) and which ones can't.

This is very important as you don't want to ask your mage to sheep a target that can't be sheeped only to then have the mob attacking your cloth wearing friend. This can spell disaster because now you have a loose mob running around. Therefore, it is your job as tank, since you should be marking, to know which mobs are in the instance and how to mark them.

I recommend setting your marks up on your number pad. This way they are easy access and you can mark during battle. You can set this up in the keybindings menu. Mine look like

Numpad 1 - Skull
Numpad 2 - Red X
Numpad 3 - Green Triangle
Numpad 4 - Purple Diamond
Numpad 5 - Yellow Star
Numpad 6 - Moon (used for sheep)
etc.

Now the interesting thing to note is this is also the kill order that I use. I also use this to make a macro with kill order on it. This way I can quickly explain the kill order if I am grouping with new people. It looks like this:

/party Skull - kill first
/party Red X - kill second
/party Green Triangle - kill third
/party Purple diamond - kill fourth
/party Moon - sheep (if we have a mage)
/party Blue Square - trap (if we have a hunter)
/party Yellow Star - sap (if we have a rogue)
/party Orange Circle - shackle or mind control (if we have a priest)

This will cover most of your situations.

If the pull doesn't go according to plan, or if it is one of those pulls where you can only mark one or two of the mobs beforehand, be prepared to mark on the move. Always let your group know which mob you have targeted so they can be targeting the same one and not pull a secondary target off of you.

Also, research and understand how to do line of sight pulls. These can be very useful when you have a caster in the group you are pulling. You can pull around a corner and make that caster come to you. This way you are less likely to get adds (additional mobs) with your pull. And if you get feared, you should have pulled back to a place that you have already cleared so you don't have to worry about getting feared into an different group of mobs.

Overall, tanking is a lot of work. And there are a lot of people out there who don't do the research or put in the effort to learn the pulls, and it shows. If people find a good and competent tank, they will regularly invite you to run things and want to group with you. And this is the best compliment a tank can get. (Although sometimes, I would love time to do my dailies! :D)

Kara Feral Drops

I have labeled items as Bear or Cat depending on which form the item should be used for. Keep in mind that if you are MT/OT you should give first dibs on cat leather items to rogues, as they can't tank. (or shouldn't I should say)


Trash Mobs
Zierhut's Lost Treads - Bear

Attumen the Huntsman
Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation - Cat
Worgen Claw Necklace - Cat

Moroes
Edgewalker Longboots - Cat
Lucky Pocket Watch - Bear
Royal Cloak of Arathi Kings - Cat

Maiden
Barbed Choker of Discipline - Bear
Bracers of Maliciousness - Cat

Opera Event
Romulo's Poison Vial - Cat

Curator
Garona's Signet Ring - Cat
Gloves of the Fallen Defender - Both

Illhoof
Terestian's Stranglestaff - Cat

Shade of Aran
Drape of the Dark Reavers - Cat
Rapscallion Boots - Cat
Saberclaw Talisman - Both
Shermanar Great-Ring - Bear

Chess Event
Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless - Both
Girdle of Treachery - Cat
Mithril Chain of Heroism - Cat

Netherspite
Cowl of Defiance - Cat
Mithril Band of the Unscarred - Cat
Skulker's Greaves - Cat

Prince Malchezaar
Farstrider Wildercloak - Cat (but if someone else wants it, give it to them, you need agility more)
Ring of a Thousand Marks - Both
Helm of the Fallen Defender - Both

Nightbane
Chestguard of the Conniver - Cat

Defense, Hit Rating and Expertise

Defense

So the optimal defense rating is 415 assuming that you have Survial of the Fittest. However, if you have resilience, you can get it at 103. Now the question becomes if you have a combination of the two. There are formulas out there that will calculate it, and I have played with them, since I am a mathematician, but the easiest way to determine if you have the 2.6% reduction to be crit is to open your character profile and go to the defense tab. Hover over defense and it will tell you that you have A% reduction and then hover over the resilience and it will tell you that you have B% reduction. So if A% + B% > 2.6% then you are uncrittable. Easy as killing a gnome.

Hit Rating

The goal for a feral is to get your hit rating to 142. This is the magic number. If you are catting around, you need to make sure you are at 142, otherwise, you are losing dps. Don't bother stacking tons of it as there are many other useful things to stack. Agility for instance. I use +hit rating and + agility gems until I get to 142, then I stack all agility for better crits.

Expertise

The goal here is to reduce the number of your attacks that are dodged or parried. The optimal number is 92 for expertise. Now what I find most interesting is the lack of gear for ferals that has expertise on it. There are only 13 leather items with expertise on them. You can get it on Earthwarden, but finding a leather piece that has expertise on it that isn't a step down or available to a starting Feral is quite difficult.

Howdy

Just playing around and contemplating starting a blog. I'm a feral druid on Terokkar that has started raiding Kara, Gruul's and Zul'Aman. I am also an officer in my guild. And this is going to be a spot where I discuss Feral and guild officer stuff. My personal goal is to put all of the important feral information on this site for my personal use, and if someone reads it and finds it useful, so be it.