Now that we have you geared up, how does a druid who is lucky enough to be doing DPS go about doing it well? Let’s look (briefly) at talents and then some practical combos.

Blizzard kindly collapsed the bear and cat talent branches into one “feral” line many moons ago, so most of the talents we discussed back in the bear guide remain relevant and useful for cats also. The talent that is most cat-centric, IMO, is Shredding Attacks, which reduces the energy cost of your cat’s Shred (backstab) as well as the rage cost of Lacerate. This talent stacks nicely with Brutal Impact, which increases the stun effect of your Pounce (and bearslap) by 1 second.

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Having covered bear tanking in a previous set of posts, I thought I might this week turn my attention to the other aspect of a feral druid – cat form. Cat form operates under roughly the same principles as a rogue. You gain energy over time, your special attacks use this energy and build combo points. You have a variety of “finishing moves” that use the combo points – the more combo points you have built up on your target (to a max of 5) the more effective the finishing move will be, in general. So let’s get started!

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As promised, this week I shall cover some recommended items for the up and coming druid tank. It is possible to get a nice beginner tanking set without ever setting foot in a raiding instance or a heroic. I’ve found that while cat gear is plentiful in raid and normal instances, Bear gear is a lot harder to come by, so some of these pieces you will come to know and love (or hate)…thus says the raider druid still wearing her Heavy Clefthoof Vest for oh…six months now?

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I’ve had a request to do a guide on Bear tanking. To that end…here we go! We have a lot of ground to cover, so I’m going to split this up. Generally speaking, a bear tank works a lot like a warrior – we have a rage bar just like them, and our special attacks cost rage, just like theirs do. Rage is gained both from taking and giving damage as well as from special talents.

Lets talk about those talents first. If you want to tank, you are going to have to put 41 points into the Feral Tree. At least 41. Because you will require Mangle as a bear to keep your threat up. When tanking, threat generation should be your biggest concern, because that it what keeps the baddies mad at you and not at your DPS and healers. So, on the way to getting that 41 point talent, there are some other things you really should pick up to help maximize your tanking capabilities.

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So I’ll join the fun and share one (ok two) of my newb moments. It’s my studied opinion that you can only TRULY be a newbie once. For me, I was a newbie in Everquest. I remember running around Faydark at about level 5 with my little Cleric, and a clothie ran by trailed by a sword and shield hanging in midair. I was like…wow, did you see the invisible warrior? Kinda cool how you can still see the weapons. It was of course an enchanter’s pet. For my more on topic WoW related newb moment…

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