Bear form
I've decided that I'm going to get [Reins of the Raven Mount] as my primary land mount.My main spec is and always will be resto and my comfortable offspec is Balance. I leveled as resto and did some [0/30/31] in TBC pre heroics but I have never ever played as fully feral and I'm not updated with all feral changes in Wrath but now I've changed my secondary spec into some custom 'I have no clue' feral bear spec which looked ok to me for my purposes (0/55/16). I spent quite a bit of gold on enhancing my feral set with the intention of being able to solo most TBC heroics and especially Anzu. The gear is a mixture of Naxx, heroic and Ulduar pieces with 2 T7 and a T8 head. It's my offspec offspec set, I mean give me a break if it wasn't enchanted or gemmed! ;)
I've easily soloed Anzu twice now with no mount so far and I've also soloed Mana Tombs, Auchenai Crypts and Underbog heroics and it's really awesome. Playing bear is very fun but I'd never dare to tank an instance for real. I'm not updated on numbers like defense and expertise etc.
Here are my numbers in bear form self buffed with no food or elixirs/flasks:
29 377 health
27 351 armor
411 defense
40,16% dodge
5576 attack power
135 hit rating
46,43% crit
28 expertise
Doing ok for TBC heroics but probably a way to go until raid capable. Sorry all you true ferals if I let you down. I guess I'm critable and have too little avoidance and need more hit and defense.
Hard modes
Three new 10 man hard modes completed tonight:Orbit-uary. First time for me in a Siege engine so that was fun. I died right before the kill but it wasn't hard to complete it.
Heartbreaker. We tank him to the west as you can see in the picture. Everyone clumped up, Death knight tanks adds, gravity bombs go left, light bombs go right. Easy.
Stokin' the Furnace
I also went and got [Leading the Cavalery] done. 50 seemed like a nice number.
16 comments:
I tried to go in and solo anzu as resto.. and I promptly died on the trash.. repeatedly. evil fears, and always into the other groups..
I'm sure I could make it through just one group, I had some creative ideas with roots, cyclone and sleep.. but it just didn't fly with the fears into other groups. left me feeling fairly sad about my abilities as a druid.
I'd be curious how much better it'd be as boomkin. I'll go back and try it someday I imagine. What I want for a mount is the orange tiger from ZG though... such a pretty kitty.
Grats on the hard modes. good luck on the mount.
I've tried as resto too but those Prophets will fear you and some packs have two of them. It's not about your ability, it's just that some encounters doesn't favor all specs.
You won't believe how incredibly easy it is as feral. You can just berserk/mangle down anything and hardly take damage.
If you really, really want to try resto I suggest clearing the last pack in front of Ikiss. If you can get them down and then kill Ikiss you can pull all groups into that room and then the fear won't pull any other groups. It would still be rough going but perhaps doable.
Thank you and good luck to you too!
It's actually quite easy to solo Anzu as Resto, it just takes a while. You Prowl in cat form, and can sneak all the way up to the first boss. If you hug the wall, you don't have to pull him. You can proceed to sneak up to the room with the Raven's Claw, cast Soothe Animal on the wind serpent guarding the claw, and set the moonstone without worries.
Then, you re-catform and re-stealth, and position yourself roughly on the back part of the Eagle Spirit, and proceed to keep it alive with HoTs until Anzu's HP drops low enough from Eagle's Spite that you're guaranteed to kill him in 1 hit. Cast Starfire, kill him, loot corpse.
The only downfall is that the damage is being dealt at about 300 DPS, so it takes nearly 3/4 of an hour to do this. Still, for people who are pure resto and can't afford dual-spec, this is a way to possibly score a Raven Lord without competition.
If you've used a cookie-cutter tank spec, you're probably already uncrittable. Raid bosses have a base 5.6% chance to crit. We have a talent (I forget which one) that reduces our chance to be crit by 6%. So we don't actually need any defense on our gear, although you'll inevitable pick some up.
Just in case you decide you want to give tanking a try!
P.S. It took me 22 tries to get Reins of the Raven Lord. Good luck!
Thank you for that info! Is it Natural Reaction you mean? It's not exactly cookie-cutter tank spec because I just put it together on my own from what looked good based on my needs. I updated my post to include a link to it on Wowhead. I realized that the addon Talented made it easy to export.
Thank you, I've soloed Anzu 3 times so far with no mount yet.
I've also heard about the eagle spirit HoT thing but I think that's considered an exploit.
It's Survival of the Fittest, about 1/2 way down the feral tree. With three points in it, it:
"Increases all attributes by 6%, reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 6%, and increases your armor contribution from cloth and leather items in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 33%"
Kinda a little bit of everything talent, but the crit reduction is essential.
Glad I could help!
Ah, yes I had that talent included in my build as it seemed pretty important for a tank :)
Oooooh - good luck with Anzu! My guest poster bear, Aeman, posted a guide on my blog on how to solo him, if you need any tips =P
Thanks Averna but I got it all figured out now. It's just a matter of time and patience from here on ;)
Agreed with Anonymous... a feral druid needs no +defense gear to become uncrittable, only the 3 points in SotF :)
Good luck on your raven mount!!
I annoyed one of our main Druids last weekend - I got the Raven Lord mount after around 15 clears. He's been working on it since WotLK release and he hit 80.
Good luck to ya. :)
Thank you!
That's good to know about the defense gear part. It should still be a good stat though as in adding to avoidance etc? I've got some reading to do if I ever want to tank ^^
8 kills no mount so far.
Defense isn't a BAD stat, but it's not one to prioritize. It improves your chance to block, dodge and parry. Since Bears don't block or parry, it's kinda 2/3rds useless for us.
I feel like your lurking feral advisor.
Congrats on Anzu!
Thank you! Every druid should have a lurking feral advisor! ;)
Just a tip - Anzu is easily soloable as resto with insect swarm without using the Eagle Spirit exploit. There's two difficult parts:
1) the two guards guarding the entrance to Anzu's room (I clear them incase I'm feared into them, they may not be necessary)
2) the prophets. what i do is first root any melee in each group, then immediately insect swarm and moonfire the prophet. then run back to a corner of the room and wrath spam the prophet - you will interrupt his fears by wrathing him and once he is down the rest are easy. Sleep the birds, root the melee, and kill the prophets first.
As for Anzu, he is cake. Simply insect swarm and moonfire him, and heal yourself and hot the bird spirits in the meantime. When he summons his brood, just tab target insect swarm.
Using insect swarm, you will have more than enough mana to last.
I was in PVP gear when I did it, with about 25.5k health, but it is also soable in PVE gear with 20k health - you just need to be more heavy on the hots.
Thanks for the tip John! It's impressive that you got it done as resto, even if I do think it's making it harder than it has to be.
Once I tried it as feral I was amazed at how easy it was so I went ahead and finished it as bear in the end. Nice to see that it can be done as a tree too!
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