Showing posts with label Bear Glyphs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bear Glyphs. Show all posts

Friday, January 21, 2011

Feral talent builds (4.0.6)

This post might not be as pretty as it could be, but I want to relay as much information as efficiently as possible.

I've divided this post into three sections. First is Bear spec, second is Cat spec, and third is hybrid (Bear/Cat, Cat/Bear) spec(s).

As a precursor so I don't have to keep mentioning it later on:

Brutal Impact is really nice to have in 10m, there are times when you simply don't have another interrupter readily available to help interrupt or for some other reason it's just easier if you are interrupting which is impossible without this talent.

Fury Swipes, Stampede, and possibly Feral Aggression are all talents that vary by preference. I would never have a build without Feral Aggression (more on this down below), Fury Swipes is really nice for threat/rage generation (but doesn't proc Savage Defense), and Stampede is situational at best.

Part 1: Bear Build
The only option for a full Bear build is the points between Fury Swipes, Feral Aggression, and Stampede. Personally I max everything except Fury Swipes. Even doing this you still have 2 spare points and they fit nicely into Fury Swipes (no other option).

Feral Aggression is extremely important as hit is not that valuable for tanking currently. If you are low on hit you might see abilities miss and miss often. It's best that when your Faerie Fire (Feral) does hit, it immediately stacks up to three. And also, like I said, you don't really have any other obvious choice for the points..

Talents:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfMrbRubzrckMcu:qr00zVzMm

Glyphs:
Prime - Berserk, Lacerate, Mangle
Major - Frenzied Regeneration, Maul, Rebirth (optional), Feral Charge (optional), Faerie Fire (optional)
Minor - Challenging Roar, Unburdened Rebirth, Dash (all minor glyphs are preferences)

Part 2: Cat Build
I don't have much to say about the Cat build other than you have plenty of points to get everything that is a DPS increase. You end up with one extra point if you take every DPS increase and I throw it in Nurturing Instinct as it's probably the most useful if you use Tranquility and because it makes your healers stronger when they need to heal you.

Talents:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfbGfRzddbfzMcz:MzfVsimz0

Glyphs:
Prime - Rip, Shred, Tiger's Fury, Savage Roar (I believe Tiger's Fury is better than Savage Roar, check EJ Forums for more info though)
Major - Rebirth, Entangling Roots, Feral Charge, Ferocious Bite, Faerie Fire
Minor - Dash, Unburdened Rebirth, Aquatic Form (all minor glyphs are preferences)

Part 3: Hybrid Builds
I've always hoped that Blizzard would eventually offer tri-spec, what...a Druid can dream can't he/she? Given that isn't going to happen anytime soon or at all, it's sometimes necessary to delve into the realm of hybrid talent builds. The nice thing for me is I hardly ever DPS on my Druid so I can lean a bit heavier onto the Bear side.

There are two different mentalities one might want to use when designing a Feral hybrid spec and they can most easily be described as these:
  1. Bear/Cat - Pick up everything you need to be an effective Tank, sacrifice some DPS
  2. Cat/Bear - Pick up everything you need to be an effective DPS, sacrifice some Tank talents
Pretty obvious. For me I easily fall into the first camp. I need to be the best Bear I can be for progression and because I rarely DPS, for others maybe it's different. So first lets focus in on Bear/Cat and build a spec around that mentality.

Bear / Cat
For this spec we want to complete our Bear talents to be the most effective tank we can possibly be and then pick up as many Cat talents so we can effectively DPS.

The cat talents that you have to sacrifice to be the best Bear you can be are Predatory Strikes (not a huge DPS increase), Blood in the Water (unfortunate, but you need the points to mitigate spell damage), and Stampede (situational DPS increase). You also only have the option for one spare point after getting everything you need for Bear, so I suggest throwing that point into either Fury Swipes or Stampede.

Talents:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfMRfoubzrckMcu:Mz00zVMzm

Glyphs:
For hybrid specs you can always min/max depending on what you are doing in a given encounter. The only cost is the 10 gold for Dust of Disappearance. Overall I'm suggesting glyphs that will be the best of both worlds, but ideally you would change them to be appropriate on a per encounter basis.

Prime - Rip, Shred, Mangle (Lacerate, Tiger's Fury, Berserk are all suitable based on role)
Major - Frenzied Regeneration, Maul, Rebirth (nothing really important for Cat)
Minor - Challenging Roar, Unburdened Rebirth, Dash (all minor glyphs are preferences)

Cat / Bear
For this spec we want to complete our Cat talents to be the most effective DPS we can, but at the same time we need to have all of the essential Bear talents so we are a logical choice and not a risk to the raid when tanking.

The only difference between this build and the Bear / Cat build above is you can free up some points from Perseverance and put them in Blood in the Water and Fury Swipes.

Talents:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfMrfoubzrfkMcz:Mz00zVmzM

Glyphs:
For hybrid specs you can always min/max depending on what you are doing in a given encounter. The only cost is the 10 gold for Dust of Disappearance. Overall I'm suggesting glyphs that will be the best of both worlds, but ideally you would change them to be appropriate on a per encounter basis.


Prime - Rip, Shred, Mangle (Lacerate, Tiger's Fury, Berserk are all suitable based on role)
Major - Frenzied Regeneration, Maul, Rebirth (nothing really important for Cat)
Minor - Challenging Roar, Unburdened Rebirth, Dash (all minor glyphs are preferences)

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Let's chat about talents (and glyphs)

I'm still trying my hand on informative posts. I'd like them to be more frequent than less because chatting non-stop about less useful stuff is just that - less useful. I'm choosing talents (and glyphs) because it's an easy subject and I have a solid reason to back up (most of) my talent and glyph choices.

Talents

There is not a whole lot of controversy in my talent choices to be honest. The only thing I've seen in full on bear specs that varies is removing points from Shredding Attacks and King of the Jungle in place of points in possibly Improved Mangle and Feral Aggression.

I've never been a fan of Improved mangle, I remember reading a post by the oh so knowledgeable and semi-retired Kalon on the value of improved mangle and although the article is from January it's still correct (unless for whatever reason you are using the Mangle glyph, maybe?). The points I save from using Improved Mangle are helpful in Shredding attacks. More often that not if I know I'm only DPSing a fight (very rarely) I'll switch to my second feral spec which has Shredding Attacks, but with feral tanking there are more than a few occasions where popping into Cat Form and shredding for some extra damage certainly doesn't hurt, also on the extraordinarily rare situation where I'm rage starved, 2 rage off lacerate doesn't hurt.

Now Feral Aggression on the other hand is a bit trickier. To simplify things let's completely ignore the cat aspect of the talent because I'm far away from needing to worry about filling my cat "rotation" with spare ferocious bites. Back in patch 3.2 (I think) they updated the four main attack power reduction talents to be on equal footing in terms of strength. Here are the possibilities:
The real change here was Vindication was reworked to apply the same debuff to bosses as the talented improved version of the other three. If you have someone in the raid with any of these and they are fully talented into improving them, then your regular Demoralizing Roar is no longer effective or necessary. For 25 mans it's almost a given that someone will be able to put up the attack power reduction debuff; however, in 10 mans it may be something to consider using and even improving via talents since every boss nowadays hits like a semi carrying a truck with a load of nails in it's bed.

So if I were to remove points to get Feral Aggression - what would I remove? The only controversial talents I could give up easily are the 3 points in King of the Jungle. Here is my justification though for King of the Jungle in a full on bear spec. First the burst energy for cat is great when I get to pop into cat for a bit of DPS. Normally I can get in cat, put up rake, shred to 5 cps, and throw up a rip before popping back into bear to taunt. The best example of this is Saurfang when you get the Rune of Blood debuff. The second reason for having King of the Jungle is for the damage increase when using enrage. I don't really need it until I have 4 piece set bonus of tier 10, but even now when I'm at no risk of dying, enrage is a decent bit of extra damage and threat while in bear form.


Overall I'm pretty happy with my spec and it's served me well till now. The only talent I don't get that I wish I could have is Brutal Impact. Come on...everyone LOVES stuns.

Glyphs

Here are your options for tanking glyphs:
If you are using one of your two (or you only have one) trees for tanking and kitty DPS I'm afraid you will have to take into consideration different glyphs - and possibly a post to follow will give some insight on how to tackle that. For those that are going pure bear for one spec I would suggest Survival Instincts, Maul and Frenzied Regeneration. It's also a good idea to carry around a few or a stack of both the Maul and Growl glyph to switch when taunt resists can spell disaster. I don't really think the Mangle glyph is necessary unless you are having threat issues, but even then ask the rogues and hunters of your raid to use Tricks and Misdirect more often.

The combination of Frenzied Regeneration Glyph and Survival Instincts is extremely potent when you use them in sync and Maul is useful for all situations with more than one mob.

The hardcore min/maxer in me says to swap out the Maul glyph for Mangle on single target bosses, but that can become costly and it's not an enormous increase in threat anyways.

10 man ICC starts up tonight, hopefully we can clear past plague and blood in one night, but we'll see how it goes!

Staying efficient while still having fun is a balancing act of sorts, but unavoidable things like people having internet issues and maybe not one shotting everything could slow us down tonight.