Pre-raid early cata feral info

[Oilslick]

First off, I'm not going to make this one nearly as in depth as the wrath guide.  It's far too early for that.  Blizz blue posts have hinted at several imbalances that still need to be adressed between the various classes.  I expect to see the majority of large changes to classes, talents, and glyphs take place before the midpoint of the first cata arena season, at which point I may put together a more comprehensive guide to feral juicyness.

I have noticed a few things that should be pointed out for those die-hard ferals out there...huge changes to our playstyle and where/how to gear up have taken place between the end of wrath and the early days of cata.

I cannot emphasize this enough:  go out, enjoy the new content, landscape, quests, cinematics, storylines, and professions.  Believe me (and i'm a great example of this directly), if you're worried about gear from quest rewards being somewhat "lesser" than the gear from dungeons, don't be.  If you spend the time to enjoy all the great new content on your way to 85, blizzard will reward you.  You will be JUST AS if not MORE geared than any person dungeon grinding their way to 85 as a feral.  So don't worry about it.  Go, enjoy the game for a change!  Quest with a party, go dig up some fossils, take on that 85 rare elite you come across swimming through the dark depths!  If you can't enjoy this new content, then I don't think blizz intended this xpack for you.

Down to the nuts and bolts:

Talents, they're obvious.  Both bear and cat specs are fairly obvious with anywhere from 3 to 5 points to spend as you see fit.  It's also totally feasible once again to spec bear and spend the extra couple talents in dps spots to be able to freely hop back and forth between bear and cat and still put out a formidable amount of damage as a cat without respeccing as we were able to do back in bc.  This should free your second spec however you want - any combination of specs is viable now, including the wrathlike strict bear/strict cat combination.  Personally, I may go with the hybrid cat/bear in one, and resto in the other - time will tell.

Feral glyphs are pretty obvious as well - as a cat the only thing i'd really change from the lvl 80 glyph set we had is to swap berzerk for tiger's fury.  You may be tempted to try the new ferocious bite glyph.  If you find yourself being the person regularly stunning/interrupting (i.e. having to pool energy) get it.  If you aren't, it's up to you.  It's considered a dps loss at present to have it.  As bear I'm leaving the glyphs as they were in wrath for now.

Now for the major changes:

You should NEVER get hit or expertise capped with the gear in the game right now if you play cat.  Don't even try.  Blasphemy?  In fact, hit and expertise are the lowest weighted stats for cat of all the melee stats...and by more than an order of magnitude.  They are so far below our other stats that hit and expertise should be the first stats you reforge out of.  That's the case now anyway...things will more than likely change as we get deeper into the cataclysm content and changes.

Cat stat weightings:
AGI >>> Str > Mastery > AP > Crit > Haste > hit = expertise
You should probably read that as:
Agi > Mastery > Crit > Haste > hit/expertise

That being said, it wouldn't be a bad idea perhaps to pick up some of the crafted pvp pieces with hit on them, and hold onto instead of selling some of the gear you replace along the way JUST IN CASE you are designated an interrupt bot on a particular fight - where not missing an interrupt is far more important than personal dps.

Bear stat weightings:
This is quite a bit more complex and heavily heavily gear dependent at the moment.  This serves as evidence to me that bear mitigation and survivability still needs alot of work.
There currently exist two schools of thought floating around: Agi is King and Stam is King schools.  I belong to another school of my own, called Balance is King.  Depending on the gear you have, and not even the iLvl, just the gear itself: either agi or stam are going to be first or fourth place in the stats charts - and it's not a small spread b/w the two, it's huge.  Anyway, combining agi and stam into the list together:

agi/stam > armor > expertise = dodge > agi/stam > mastery > crit

You can already tell by the way these stats line up that blizz' bear changes and internal mechanics are not in line with their thought process behind the changes.  They didn't like us having gobs more stam than everyone, yet it's potentially our #1 stat.  They wanted our new shield proc mechanic to put us in line and on par with block mechanics, yet mastery and the crit that causes it to proc are at the bottom of the list.  Our dodge is abysmal at 85 now, but the amount we'd need to get us up to par with plate classes dodge+parrry is so huge that it's quite literally not worth the effort when crunching the numbers.  In a nutshell, the scaling and internal mechanics are not at all what blizz was aiming for with the changes - so I'd expect some pretty drastic changes/hotfixes/talent resets to take place before bears are totally viable again.  That being said, we can tank now - no problem - just we seem far more squishier to healers than other classes at the moment and you'll more than likely NEED to keep your cd's on constant rotation to ease the pain, even on trash.

As for the gear part - not much to say here yet.  The quest gear is REALLY good, don't feel like you're missing something if you aren't dungeon grinding...you aren't.  Those dungeon grinding are missing all the good stuff.  I've only got a couple of tips as far as what quest gear to keep an eye out for.  Keep every relic (idol) you pick up via questing.  If you look at the top 4 or 5 in the game right now - number two and three are ilvl 316 greens from quests.  Most of the heroic 346 drops aren't as good.

As for a weapon, which has typically been the bane of most ferals.  Finding and obtaining one can be tough.  Tol barad reputation can get you a great one - but alas, their tabard does not award rep.  It's a bit of a pvp grind but for those who really enjoy that sort of thing, maybe this is your ticket.  For everyone else though, and maybe even you pvp junkies so you don't feel so weak when stealthing around in tol barad, there's an absolutely fantastic weapon to pick up at lvl 84 from the Twilight Highlands.  Clear the area, have fun escorting barrels of   around town and playing matchmaker to a charming dwarven wedding.  When all is said and done you'll end up with [item]Staff of Draconic Pacification[/item].

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In conclusion:  changes will be coming for bears, don't worry about gear, enjoy the game, what's "hit" - and most of all, have some fun and do things with your guildies!!!  Help them level, help them with professions, so on and so forth.  You'll enjoy this bit of early cata goodness far far more if you do.

If you've got any questions regarding rotations or anything I haven't put in this little intro of cata-feral-isciousness, just drop me, or any of the other helpful bearbutts a line in game.

Cheers,
Oil

[Raif]

Awesome and insightful as usual oil





WOOOOO

[Oilslick]

Okay, a little bit about rotations:

Kitty is new...not what many are used to.  We no longer open with mangle.  Instead, it looks like this:
feral charge or stealth > ravage > mangle > rake > rip

You then use shreds as filler combo point generator while making sure to keep all your bleeds up.  If you can't reapply the rip at 5 cp's due to a proc or something making the previous one "more powerful", then ferocious bite.  After a mob gets to 25% hp, your finisher is always bite as it refreshes rip at that point.  Toss in rake's as needed to keep it ticking as it is oru largest sustained dps contributor.

Ravage is huge, in a fight with any movement that would allow you to kitty pounce - use it...unless there are threat issues...then don't.  It hits seriously hard as an opener and will be killer in pvp...but don't be surprised if a boss turns around and one shots you in a raid if you do it.


For bear things are opened up a bit in terms of rotations.  Mangle and Maul are still our big one's, with laceratex3 > pulverize being our filler.  I don't really notice any difference at present b/w letting that third lacerate tick some before pulverize or not.  YMMV.  It's also advisable to toss in a thrash even if only a single target to dump rage if you've got rage to spare.  You will find that on single target, your rotation will be almost entirely dictated by ability cd's.  Use what's available and you'll be fine for the most part.

Not much change so far...however, the pulls are different for initial threat gen, and aoe tanking is a bit different.  For initial max threat gen, you want to enrage, barkskin, feral charge, maul, mangle.  If multi mob tanking, pop berzerk, mangle before maul, and when all the mobs you want are within 8 yards, thrash then swipe - then spam mangle while berzerk is up (changing targets on each mangle if more than three mobs).  After this initial burst, you're a warrior now.  Get used to using your skull bash to silence pull a target in with the rest of them...get used to using bash as a mitigation tool to stop getting hit by one of the many mobs smacking you.  Rotate those cd's, trying to keep at least 2 available for those "oh snap" scary moments.  And most of all, until dps become somewhat disciplined in five man randoms like they were in bc as far as target assisting and cc go - get very very used to watching threat on multiple mobs at once.  I find it very helpful to keep enemy healthbars up (press V) - it lets me see if the health of something i'm not directly targeting is dropping faster than it should.

In the end though, nothing is cookie cutter for bear anymore - you've got alot more tricks up your sleeve (a silence for one!!!) and how and when you use them SHOULD be entirely situational.  Frankly, I'm welcoming the "heads up" style of play that appears to be the intended standard once again instead of the simple grab-em-up-aoe-em-down mentality of wrath.  The same can be said for cat as well - you can either be the guy in the five man that tops the charts every pull - or you can be the guy that uses his procs and skull bashes more effectively than the best cc man on a five's arena team making a dungeon seem to go smooth as butter.