Shifting Perspectives: Gearing your Cat Druid at 80 part 1 cont'd
by Dan O'Halloran 
Feb 24th 2009 at 9:30AM
BACK
Best Drops: There are four cloaks that are more or less the same. So chose your favorite instance:
- Centrifuge Core Cloak - 22% drop from Varos Cloudstrider in normal Oculus
- Embrace of Sorrow - 29% drop from The Maiden of Grief in normal Halls of Stone
- Shroud of Reverberation - 20% drop from Volkhan in Heroic Halls of Lightning
- Cloak of the Gushing Wound - 29% drop from Erekem in Heroic Violet Hold
Runner Up: If you have the cash, hit the Auction House for the Ice Striker's Cloak or the Cloak of Bloodied Waters.
Enchants: Anything on the Auction House with the word Agility in it, Major Agility if you can swing it.
CHEST
Best Drops: Custodian's Chestpiece. Krik'thir the Gatewatcher in Heroic Azjol-Nerub drops this bad boy. Alternately, you can pick up a Drake Rider's Tunic from Skadi the Ruthless out of normal Utgarde Pinnacle or the Crystal-Infused Tunic if you happen to be in Heroic Nexus and facing Keristraza's crazy split personality.
Best Quest Reward: You can pick up a Hardened Tongue Tunic or an Exotic Leather Tunic from quests, but they aren't that big of an upgrade of an Eviscerator's Chestguard you can get from the Auction House for 30g.
Best Faction Reward: Darkheart Chestguard. Not just Revered with Knights of the Ebon Blade out of Icecrown, but Exalted. Still it's worth the dailies grinding for one of the best non-raid DPS chest peice in the game, eh?
Enchants: Powerful Stats, Super Stats or Exceptional Stats depending on what you can afford.
WRIST
Best Overall: Dragonfriend Bracers. You'll have to get Exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord to get your hands on these, but who doesn't want to ride a dragon every day?
Best Drop: Advanced-Tooled Leather Bands. Drops from our buddy, Loken in Heroic Halls of Lightning. If that proves too much of a challenge, Skarvald in Heroic Utgarde Keep drops Bindings of the Tunneler.
Best Quest Reward: None.
Best Faction Reward: See Dragonfriend Bracers above.
Runner Up: You can always swing by the AH and look for a deal on the world drops Drake-Champion's Bracers or King's Square Bracers.
Enchants: Anything that increases attack power, directly or indirectly: Greater Assault, Striking, Brawn or Greater Stats. Or, if you really need it, you can boost your Expertise.
WEAPON
Best Overall: Staff of Trickery. It drops in Heroic Violet Hold from the final boss, Cyanigosa, so you'll always have a chance at it no matter what other bosses spawn in the event.
Best Drop: Lightning Giant Staff. You can try for this with Loken in Heroic Halls of Lightning. He may drop the Advanced Tooled-Leather Bands, too.
Best Faction Reward: Argent Skeleton Crusher. Revered with Argent Crusade will get you this one. Alternately, grab the Stave of Shrouded Mysteries if you're Revered with Kirin Tor.
Runner Up: Titansteel Destroyer. This is crafted by Blacksmiths and will run you quite a bit of gold, but if you can pay for it, you're well on your way to raiding.
Enchants: You can increase your attack power with Massacre, Greater Savagery and Savagery. You can also increase your Agility.
That's it for today. If I've missed any good recommendations, leave them in the comments.
Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Atros Feb 24th 2009 9:42AM
A couple of things. Troll-Woven Spaulders are made by Leatherworkers, not tailors. Also of note, right now for cats, crit is relatively weak, since a large part of our damage comes from bleeds. That being said, though, that is going to change shortly with new Cat talents announced on the PTR.
stabbington Feb 24th 2009 1:38PM
While your bleeds can't crit, having high crit will help you keep 5 CP rip ticking through extra combo point generation and will increase the chance/frequency you can work Ferocious Bite into your rotation without losing DPS.
Like other melee classes, hit/expertise generally comes first because it's more cost effective and gives > 1% DPS improvement with each 1% increase (and you don't waste energy), but crit is definitely one of your core DPS stats as a kitty.
Atros Feb 24th 2009 2:09PM
Yes... hit and expertise are very important, especially as when you put up your bleeds, you don't want any downtime on them to maximize DPS. However, trying to work Ferocious Bite into the rotation is usually a waste of energy as it delays building up points back up. The extra combo point generation is nice, but it is more likely to be useful in refreshing Savage Roar. As it is, the only places it (currently) helps your dps is white damage, shred, mangle, and the initial hit of Rake.
Winnermang Feb 24th 2009 10:15AM
You mention several times the value of hit and expertise to cats... this is a little misleading. We do a tremendous amount of our damage from yellow attacks, and get most of the energy refunded when we happen to miss a yellow attack.
This isn't to day that hit/expertise aren't both nice DPS increases, just that a cat could do exceptionally well ignoring both in place of say, strength.
As a last note, your article is pretty good but fails to drive home a key point to beginning cats. Strength > Agility (by quite a bit!). Alot of players are still getting used to this idea, and I feel it should be driven home as much as possible.
Draenors Feb 24th 2009 1:10PM
Now, I'm not a theorycrafter (why do I always start an argument with that sentence? :P), but from what I've heard, getting Hit and Expertise up till the cap will be better than Strenght. And even if you have some theorycrafting which shows that Strenght will give better DPS, you must remember that a miss/dodge will not only make you lose damage from that specific attack, it will mess up your entire rotation, thereby potentially losing tons of DPS.
I'd agree on the Agility vs. Strenght issue. In TBC, I believe Agility was the big winner, but apparently that has changed.
Stages Feb 24th 2009 3:13PM
Yay!!! You must be psychic. My favorite cow dinged 80 last night, and we were desperately searching for this very article. Thanks so much!!
eadipus Feb 24th 2009 7:02PM
in the processing of sorting my drood out with a dps set and this is a big help
Carey Mar 5th 2009 5:04PM
What ever happened to part 2?
Will Mar 20th 2009 3:23PM
I just 80 a few days ago and this is a great guide. Is part 2 in the works? I'd love to get input on the rest of the slots...thanks!
Tsuusetsu Apr 7th 2009 2:45PM
I have a question. You said that what ever the slot color, use a delicate or bold scarlet ruby. So what if the slot is colored yellor or blue? what then? It seems kind of pointless to put in a red gem since you will not get the agility or strength right?
Carrie Apr 14th 2009 5:56PM
Hopefully you've found this out by now, but gotta put it out there for completeness (and anyone else who might have the same question).
You can put *any* color gem into *any* slot, regardless of the color of the slot. You still get the effects of the gem.
What you do *not* get are any "socket bonus" effects.
So, let's say you have a yellow socket, and the socket bonus says you'll get +4 Agi.
This means if you put in a yellow gem, you'll get the effects of the yellow gem AND +4 Agi.
If you put in any other color gem, you'll get the effects of the gem, but will NOT get the +4 Agi socket bonus.
You also hopefully know by now that green/orange/purple gems count for *both* colors that make up those colors.
Green - counts as both yellow and blue
Orange - counts as both yellow and red
Purple - counts as both red and blue
And any "prismatic" gems count as all colors.
Tsuusetsu Apr 14th 2009 6:23PM
Yea, i figured that was what it was. But i wasn't sure , so i had to ask. But what i did not know is that the prismatic gems count as all three gems. That is interesting. Jewel craters get all the fun lol.