Wannabelf - Embrace the hybrid

This post is as much some information on what plans i have for Wannabelf as it is a checkoff list for myself. First of all, Wannabelf was made my main as soon as he hit 80 and attended his first raid, and that's how it's gonna stay. My plans for Wannabelf, with dualspec or not, is to be able to fill every role in the game. Resto is my main spec and will continue to be so unless we suddenly get an overflow of healers (this could happen once Naomhan gets up and Emi and Rev have each their computer, i.e. when Rev goes home to Scotland). In that case i will change to whatever role is the least poputlated. Come dualspec I will be specced mainspec - whatever that may be - and a secondary spec in accordance to population of roles, and i can then respec per request. What I've come to learn during several hours of raiding is that it doesn't matter what one does. Everything gets trivial sooner or later, and it has to be progress which drives you.
My respec cost has increased 500% in the last week, so i expect to be compensated in the following way when asked to respec, as this benefits everyone:

-For 5-man guild runs i imagine the cost to be split equally between the 5 persons - that means 20g per person (respec and back)
-For 10 man raids 10g per person.
-If one or more party members are pugged i will cover their amount to be payed, so guild members still pay the same amount.
-Come dualspecs if I'm asked to change secondary spec I'll only expect to be compensated for the respec and not the respec back again (main spec change is still respec and back) - that means that "costs" are cut in half. Same rules apply if people are pugged.

Now for a preraid gear checklist:

Resto:
Weapon:
Staff of Draconic Combat
War Mace of Unrequited Love

Offhand:
Handbook of Obscure Remedies

Idol:
Idol of Lush Moss

Trinket1:
Egg of Mortal Essence

Trinket2:
Cannoneer's Morale

Ring1:
Annhylde's Ring

Ring2:
Band of Guile

Boots:
Earthgiving Boots

Leggings:
Earthgiving Legguards

Belt:
Vine Belt of the Woodland Dryad
Sash of Blood Removal

Gloves:

Bracers:
Putrescent Bands (from raid)

Chest:

Back:
Drape of Surgery (from raid)

Shoulder:

Neck:
Vieled Amulet of Life (from raid)

Head:

Balance:

Weapon:
War Mace of Unrequited Love

Offhand:
Watchful Eye (from raid)

Idol:

Trinket1:
Sundial of the Exiled

Trinket2:

Ring1:
Annhylde's Ring

Ring2:
Band of Guile

Boots:

Leggings:
Leggings of the Winged Serpent

Belt:
Ghostflicker Waistband

Gloves:

Bracers:
Plague-Infected Bracers

Chest:

Neck:
Encircling Burnished Gold Chains

Head:

Feral(Tank):
Weapon:
Staff of Trickery

Offhand:
-
Idol:
Idol of Terror

Trinket1:
Offering of Sacrifice

Trinket2:
Valor Medal of the First War

Ring1:
Keystone Great-Ring

Ring2:
Hemorraging Circle

Boots:

Leggings:
Gorred Hide Legguards

Belt:
Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt
Jorac's Crocolisk Skin Belt

Gloves:

Bracers:

Chest:
T7

Back:
Durable Nerubhide Cape

Shoulders:
Trollwoven Spaulders

Neck:
Chained Military Gorget

Head:

Almost have the mats to craft frost resist set as well - should i do so or is that overkill?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I'll update the list with links and locations, when i get more time. If no item is listed uder a certain slot it's because there's no exact item i need - I'll just take whatever is best. Drops usable by both main and offspec will always be put towards the main spec. As for T7 tokens I'll get the badge ones for offspec and get the ones for my main spec via raids.

Any comments or ideas?

i dont mind helping u finance ur respeccs at all mate. Can't wait for dual-specs, blizz is really teasing us not releasing the feature yet.

I'll gladly pay for any respecs on the condition that you NEVER let me die while healing or tanking

Gearing for all roles is tough mate but if you are willing then I'll help any way I can, will start with a ton of all spec druid glyphs for you to stockpile.

Looking at the tanking gear you need it is closer to dps gear than resto is to balance, may want to consider dual spec tank/resto with kitty form as dps. Give me a shout if you need anything, already given away about 16000g since Wrath hit so more isnt a problem. Now I just stay 1-2k above my 0 value and waste the rest (0 value = 5k) but cant seem to run out of gold. Buying the epeen mounts wont help because it just starts piling up again.


Hopefully we can plan ahead and not make you respec constantly whatever happens you can still offspec dps with some blue gear. Would rather have you do that than have an idiot pug. Beauty of an offspec druid dps is that you can still CC the hell out of things.

unvincible wrote:

Looking at the tanking gear you need it is closer to dps gear than resto is to balance, may want to consider dual spec tank/resto with kitty form as dps.

Yea i thought about that as well... It's just that after reading various forums and such I've been left with the impression that kitty dps is still lagging behind a bit. Guess we'll have to put it to the test. In any case tanking gear has higher prio than balance at the moment.
And while we're on that subject, have i gotten the right idea about druid tanking? We get crit immune from talents so def is neglible to otherstats. I've been going for Stam, Armor, Agi, Dodge and Expertise primarily. Attackpower always follows on the side and is ofc good for threat generation. Anything I've overlooked?

Gearing for 3 roles on one char is easier than 3 roles on 3 chars =)

PvE Feral Glyphs to consider:

Frenzied Regen
Growl
Mangle
Maul
Rip

Dash and Challenging for minor slots would be nice.

Mangle is kind of a given, but what about the others? I'm leaning towards growl as second, and thinking that maybe Maul is a bit irrelevant as most of the time i will be Swiping on AoE pulls. Ofc Maul is on next swing and can therefore be used together with swipe, but question is if it's needed. I'd really like to have the rip glyph but not at the expense of tanking.
Have all the resto glyphs i want and most of the balance ones so i dont need those.

Cruxhade wrote:

unvincible wrote:

Looking at the tanking gear you need it is closer to dps gear than resto is to balance, may want to consider dual spec tank/resto with kitty form as dps.

Yea i thought about that as well... It's just that after reading various forums and such I've been left with the impression that kitty dps is still lagging behind a bit. Guess we'll have to put it to the test. In any case tanking gear has higher prio than balance at the moment.
And while we're on that subject, have i gotten the right idea about druid tanking? We get crit immune from talents so def is neglible to otherstats. I've been going for Stam, Armor, Agi, Dodge and Expertise primarily. Attackpower always follows on the side and is ofc good for threat generation. Anything I've overlooked?

Gearing for 3 roles on one char is easier than 3 roles on 3 chars =)

PvE Feral Glyphs to consider:

Frenzied Regen
Growl
Mangle
Maul
Rip

Dash and Challenging for minor slots would be nice.

Mangle is kind of a given, but what about the others? I'm leaning towards growl as second, and thinking that maybe Maul is a bit irrelevant as most of the time i will be Swiping on AoE pulls. Ofc Maul is on next swing and can therefore be used together with swipe, but question is if it's needed. I'd really like to have the rip glyph but not at the expense of tanking.
Have all the resto glyphs i want and most of the balance ones so i dont need those.

Growl, think it increases hit chance by 8%? Should maybe be used while gearing up to avoid resists but can be replaced later.

Maul - could be average or brilliant depending on its mechanics. I'd probably prefer it to mangle as the extra hit may generate the extra rage needed to make it spammable while causing more threat. If rage is an issue which it probably wont be.

Frenzied regen, if you MT then its great for absorbing spike damage. Situational, dont know if it benefits the hp gained from the skill if it does then could make a huge difference.



Remember that bonus armour on items and trinkets no longer gets multiplied and agi/dodge/def all give the same diminishing returns on dodge chance. You are right that crit proof is reached through talents and atm huge hp pools are required to compensate for less mitigation than other tanks. Go for Strength ahead of AP when possible as it benefits from the % modifier talents (I think). Respececed Eroot to feral at the weekend so will do some more research on it as I dont know all the changes.

Not sure about expertise cap but you certainly need hit as well at least until yellow attacks are capped. Really want to see if Shadow meld can be used on a boss to interrupt a cast time nuke aimed at you, dont remember if bosses stop casting or just change target mid cast. Also not sure if NE racial 2% dodge contributes towards hit cap or is above it with regards to diminishing returns

Unvincible wrote:

Growl, think it increases hit chance by 8%? Should maybe be used while gearing up to avoid resists but can be replaced later.

It is a 8% increased hit chance, however Growl counts as a spell and therefore it's cap is 17%, which means that once I'm yellow capped I'll have exactly 8% to go.

Unvincible wrote:

Maul - could be average or brilliant depending on its mechanics. I'd probably prefer it to mangle as the extra hit may generate the extra rage needed to make it spammable while causing more threat. If rage is an issue which it probably wont be.

Currently not sure how much rage one gets from dmg taken, but I'm afraid that if Maul is spammed then I'll be ragestarved. And also this Glyph gives absolutely nothing on one single target. The reason why i wanted mangle is that it contributes both to tanking and to dps.

Unvincible wrote:

Frenzied regen, if you MT then its great for absorbing spike damage. Situational, dont know if it benefits the hp gained from the skill if it does then could make a huge difference.

I agree it's situational, and actually it shouldn't be needed with competent healers.

Unvincible wrote:

Not sure about expertise cap but you certainly need hit as well at least until yellow attacks are capped.

With expertise talent it's 132 expertise to push dodge off the table and 443 for parry. So i should AT LEAST hit the dodge elimination cap

Unvincible wrote:

Really want to see if Shadow meld can be used on a boss to interrupt a cast time nuke aimed at you, dont remember if bosses stop casting or just change target mid cast.

Hadn't even thought of that. Might be risky, but would be fun to try =)

This is the tanking spec I'm thinking of trying - what i wouldn't give for 5 extra points for rend & tear. Not sure if the predatory instincts AoE dmg reduction applies to bear form. If it does i might max it. Edit: Doesn't according to wowwiki

Shadow meld while tanking is the reason my DK is Night Elf, mainly so I can kill my party though.

Think I read somewhere that infected wounds counts as a disease and boosts DK dps (unholy) is that nonsense? Might have read it in beta so probably not implemented.

Remember: if you tank in resto gear you can heal yourself too!

Lol i'll keep that in mind - no nead to gear up then

Yup some DK damage abilities depend on the number of diseases on the target.

unvincible wrote:

Think I read somewhere that infected wounds counts as a disease and boosts DK dps (unholy) is that nonsense?

DKs scale off their own diseases only. Not even other DK's diseases.

Updated, though still without links and locations!

Today i got:

War Mace of Unrequited Love
Ghostflicker Waistband
Sash of Blood Removal
and
Feral T7 Chest

I need a glyph of eviscerate for Crux. Send it COD

Been struggling to choose a role for eroot which is why I havent bothered levelling. Finally settled on Feral MT specc, will try to reach 80 soon and gear fast using every craftable epic plus the easy HC drops. Also think it would be interesting to try feral dps, looks to be the hardest to pull off (even tougher than affliction) and requires good gear just to compete but I would like something a bit less common.

Crafted Goodies:

Trollwoven Spaulders
Durable Nerubhide Cape
Polar Vest (ludicrous Sta to start tanking, pugs judge a tank by HP)
Trollwoven Girdle
Polar Boots
Titanium Earthguard Ring
Titanium Impact Band
Figurine - Monarch Crab
Darkmoon Card - Greatness (90 agi version although str would be best for dps)
BS Titansteel 2H mace (Staff of Trickery from VH is probably better)

Not sure about Titanium Earthguard Chain as it is an armor necklace and dont know where it ranks atm plus the 25 badge neck might be better.

With these and quest blues plus a few other gaps to fill in I should be able to start pugging HCs quickly and gearing up. Unvi is almost fully geared in 10 man content so I'm going crazy without something to work towards.

Should hit 80 this weekend and want to get my tanking together quickly, been reading EJ forums etc for some of the gearing theory but could still use a bit of advice given my lack of melee/tanking experience.

Bear mitigation:

Armor/Sta/Dodge
Was thinking about trying to get some decent HP to start but then immediately focus on stacking Agi for dodge. This should help my threat and give the best survivability while naturally increasing HP with gear thereafter.

Armor will increase with gear level and due to the bonus armor nerfs I wont be trying to deliberately stack more by sacrificing other stats. Also since the 12% (Protector of the Pack) damage reduction is applied after armor reduction this means it will give increasingly diminishing effects as it gets to higher levels.
Unmitigated hit * Armor reduction% * 88% = damage received

Stamina needs to be fairly high to serve as a healing buffer (may help at start if I am running with overgeared healers) and I will need to keep a seperate set focusing on HP rather than mitigation for heavy magic damage fights. Would rather not start out with the polar set, it might help but I'd feel like a nub.

Dodge - Main stat to stack will be agility. With regards to the diminishing returns on dodge from all sources (each 1% dodge takes xx% more stats) I assume that this means the mitigation from dodge scales linearly instead of the way it worked previously?
For example:
at 0% dodge gaining 1% will be a 1% damage reduction
at 50% dodge gaining 1% will be ~2% damage reduction
Although 50-51% may take twice the required stats to achieve it has the same mitigation effect. Is this right?

Will immediately reach the soft expertise cap then work up to parry cap although it may take longer and wont be my top priority. Will also try to keep a respectable amount of hit as well.

Defence wont be a useless stat as it slightly affects dodge and chance to be missed (screw parry), will become my best option at gear levels far far away.


How accurate is this plan and have I made any mistakes? Also anything else I should pay attention to? Right now I'm thinking that maintaining threat should be ok without gemming/enchanting for it at all.

I think youre plan sounds very good, not that I have any experience with druids and their tanking.

/xath

bears belong in a cage in the zoo, end of story!

omg HATER! Buuuuuurn the HATER or kill the bear maybe?... meh whatever

Elysia wrote:

omg HATER! Buuuuuurn the HATER or kill the bear maybe?... meh whatever

Extreme to polar extreme to ambivilance, impressive range of opinions in 1 line of text

Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.

Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.


http://www.mmo-champion.com/


Those two changes could completely throw my plans out of synch in a good way. Guessing agility and strength will be even more important now.

Hopefully tomorrows patch will add dual specs so I can have a tank and dps build available.

Did a load of heroics over the weekend and got almost every single drop possible so my gear is far better than I could have hoped at this stage.

My unbuffed tanking stats are (not exact):
>30k armour
30k hp
36% dodge (stacked a lot of agi and have an extra 10% or so dodge from trinkets/mongoose/idol)
Expertise ~9% so only soft capped
Hit almost capped

Could throw on some polar gear for an extra 2-6k health but I prefer trying for mitigation first.

Dps gear is looking ok so far but gemming for Agility instead of Strength is holding it back. Think I can break 2.5k on a boss now depending on fight and buffs but still really bad at kitty rotations/priorities. Definitely the hardest char/role I've ever tried to play if aiming for best performance 1 mistake and can lose me 700dps on a minute long fight. Using BadKitty addon to track all the cooldowns and bleeds but will take me longer on the practice dummies to master. Dosnt help that there is no predictable rotation as I'm dependent on procs and crits so completely changes with the gear I use. Going to spend a lot of time on this because I'd love to be a viable feral dps just for the rarity value, seems like anyone can do well enough in raids now without having any class skill.

Want a char that can tank while doing 2kdps or 3.5k dps in cat form plus CC, combat rez, emergency heals, innervate and great buffs, am I asking too much?

We dont have any ferals in guild but maybe the ex-rogues have some pointers or advice I could use for pve dps. Or do you guys know any really good ferals on the server?

Really enjoying the class mechanics and math behind this class, nothing left to really improve on unvi apart from getting 25 man gear so needed a new challenge.

Rambling post for my own benefit, can refer to it when I get home.




Free Tibet!

Glad you like it =) Looks like the rotations are fun. Tried a simulator and it was pretty hard, so I'm guessing they're right up there with affliction locks. As for my own hybridism i just cba gathering new gear anymore Got 4 sets (resto, boomkin, tank, feral dps) of HC epic quality (bit less for feral dps) or above, but I'm almost never needed for anything else than healing anyway, and without progress to urge me on that's beginning to bore me. Never see a meter where i aint on top, so trivial game is trivial. (and no this isn't some epeen-shizzle... just stating the facts)

I've begun lvling horde and selected a class that can neither heal nor tank, and that's probably what I'll be doing most of the time (unless i get bored with that as well), as there are new quests and such. I'd like to confirm or deconfirm the social myths about horde vs. alliance as well. I'll ofc still be raiding when we get raids going and I'll help with whatever, if any of the danes sms me and I feel like it (depends what it is). Maybe this is just a phase, maybe not See ya in game

Sorry to hear you are getting annoyed by the game again mate

Hopefully we'll have harder content soon and more reliable raiding, cant believe there hasnt been a 10 man raid since we killed malygos. Could understand if we kept failing but not this.

Seen this coming for a few weeks with yourself mate, when you started clearing dungeons with Luth for achievements I knew there was a boredom problem. Dont know what to tell you, dont think you want another allie alt to gear up and right now there is no real challenge in the game. Your gear is probably too good for any available content so it gets trivialised, we really shouldnt be 8 manning most of Naxx although it is fun.

Might be an idea to take a break for a couple of weeks instead and let your enthusiasm come back.

If you do choose an alt I vote for warlock, can either be mind numbing or interesting depending on play style. Determined to see someone actually use Doomguard and Infernal in a raid soon even if I have to level Imperaton to make it happen. Plus it would give you a pure dps so only 1 gear set required.

We are a "casual"ish guild but there are a few members like yourself who put in more study, commitment and training than many hardcore raiders. I dont doubt you would earn a place in any top end raiding guild with full elitist min maxing.

Making a thread to get ideas for you.

I still wasnt sure what the diminishing returns on dodge meant so I did some calculations to work it out.

Point for point agi gives the same level of avoidance at all the levels I looked at (only to about 48% dodge). I dont know if actual lesser returns for the amount of item points invested occur at higher levels.

Tested by only changing Agility values on eroot and looking at respective dodge given, my results were not based on linear sample points but on the gear changes available (irrelevant). This was napkin math and very messy, didnt even use a spreadsheet but from what I saw ~36-38 agi means you will get hit 1% less whatever your current dodge%.

Think I was confused as this is linear return and NOT diminishing, do you guys know if there was a static value of agi = 1% dodge rating in the Pre-Wrath system?