Posts with tag pre-raiding-cat-gear-guide

This holiday period has been a mixed one for me. Power-leveling my shaman's inscription was a rousing success, and I put it down to all the mince pies consumed at the time. A delectable roast turkey lunch was followed by opening my Winter's Veil presents. There was snow on the ground, there was an open fire in the hearth. There was a Queen's Speech that should have inspired me to yammer on about how important team spirit and cooperation are to the shaman class.

Instead, I borrowed my mother's laptop to have a poke at pre-raid gear. Then I went to put the laptop away and, after a week of moving house, managed to do something rather nasty to my back. Ouch. Not to worry, there's nothing like a bit of Cataclysm to take your mind off the pain.

In Cataclysm, the process of gearing is much more intuitive than ever before. We no longer have to nab cloth or leather items to fill in the holes in our gearing. Look for as much intellect as possible, spirit or hit as appropriate, and then lean slightly toward all the haste gear you can find, filling in as necessary with mastery items. Don't worry about crit; it happens.

Blizzard has done a good job of allowing players to obtain decent gear through a variety of avenues, and as a result, a lot of the RNG has been removed from the gearing process. I did not make this to be a best-in-slot list, as I prefer to look at items available in terms of practicalities. Finally, you'll note an absence of PvP items from this list. There is a lovely amount of intellect on PvP gear, so in the short term, it can be worth using some PvP items. However, resilience represents a lot of wasted item budget and is not the best choice in the long term.

(Almost) every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, the second half of the Cat Druids gear guide to get you closer to Wrath raiding.

Sorry for the wait on the second half. Better late than never, eh?

/crickets

Ahem, moving on.

In part one, I covered Head, Neck, Shoulder, Back, Chest, Wrists and Weapon slots choices for gear available to pre-Wrath raiding level 80 Cat Druids. I also explained my methods, listed a recommended build and went over gems. Go read it on the initial post if you're interested. Otherwise, let's get this show on the road.

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we help Cat Druids get one step closer to Wrath raiding.

When should you, the face shredding Cat Druid, put behind 5-mans and bring your feral prowess to 10-man raiding? The short answer is when you can clock 1600 DPS more or less (you are using Recount, yes?). Grab items with Hit and Expertise, but know that you'll get more of that once you start raiding. If you really want to know the math behind those stats, Big Bear Butt Blogger's analysis is quite...thorough.

That leads to the question of how do you get DPS that high. Other than having a 0/55/16 build and learning how to maximize your DPS through keeping a number of cat abilities up as much as possible, it's going to come through better gear. And that's what this week's Shifting Perspectives is all about. If you are looking for the math behind each stat, I highly recommend Karthis' article at Resto4Life on what to look for in Cat gear.