Steve: Hey, Matt.  MATT!  You know what I love?  Shhh shhh, wait.  I’ll tell you.  Just wait…  I love YOU, man.

Matt: I love you too, Steve!  I love everything.  I love money.  Don’t you wish we made money, Steve?

Steve: Yeah, what’s up with that.  11 million subscribers, all because of us, and where does it go?

Matt: Where does what go?

Steve: I… um… I forgot.  But now I’m pissed off.  You know what I hate, Matt?

Matt: Is it me?

Steve: Nah, man.  I hate mages.  Feck mages, Matt!  All magicing and shite.

Matt: Yeah, Steve.  Let’s go nerf mages again!  Weeeeee!

Steve: Shhh shhh…  No Matt, they’ll see it coming!  There could be a mage here right now, and we wouldn’t even know it!  Noooo, we gotta be tricky this time.  What do mages hate?

Matt: Um… Feral druids!

Steve: RIGHT! So, get this.  We take away druid CC breaking, right.  Right?  And then we make mages own them, without actually buffing them.  Right?  Then, when the druids can do nothing to fight back, we call imbalance, and BAM!  Class review, biatches!

Matt: Feck mages!

This is the best scenario I can come up with.  Since BC, the feral spec has seen nothing but love, and as a result has gone from a means to level a raid healer to very much its own beast, while mages are more than familiar with the tough love of a patch’s stiff backhand.  I can’t actually imagine that a sober person willingly desired to end that momentum.

Some say cat raid damage was getting a little out of hand, but looking at the patch notes, I don’t think any effort was made to stem that.  Bleeds got a minor nerf, and burst damage got a huge boost.  Without testing it myself, I can only imagine this helps the raid scene.  Kitty damage tends to drop off in fights where they don’t have time to “get in the zone”, or rather position themselves perfectly behind the target and setup/maintain their complex set of debuffs.  The improved burst emphasis can only help mitigate the damage loss in those high-mobility fights (those fights cats should theoretically be good at).

We also lost our glyph that made Entangling Roots an instant cast (technically, it became “cast time reduced by 0.2 seconds”, but you know that’s the same thing).  Honestly though, we all knew this one was coming.  I wouldn’t call it broken, but it was game changing, which sort of goes against the core intent of glyphs.  This wouldn’t go amiss as a nice balance talent for my boomkin brothers, though.  *hint hint*

But those changes aren’t on trial here.  Abilities get tweaked, we relearn our class, and we move on.  The major loss here is the removal of the ability to cancel root (immobile) effects by changing shape (and to a lesser degree the loss of fear break on Beserk).  Only by going Resto (the spec that mostly doesn’t change shape anymore, if you recall) do you get to keep this functionality.  Changing still removes slowing effects, though I’ve rarely wasted a GCD for that purpose.  If Feral Charge is off cooldown, I can instead close the gap with that, after which Infected Wounds (also nerfed, but since its constantly reapplying, I can’t see why anyone bothered) slows my opponent down to my speed.

This is an issue, because feral druids have little to no means of mitigating CC outside of these two abilities.  Okay, they’re immune to polymorph spells.  Of which there are, what, two?  Keep in mind, there are spells like Scare Beast and Hibernate that pretty much ONLY work on feral druids (and hunter pets, I guess).

Position also means everything to a kitty.  Imagine you’re some strange rogue build.  Backstab is your primary damage dealer, Hemorrhage is necessary to do proper damage with it, and your best combo finisher is Rupture.  You don’t get stunlocks, you don’t get vanish, and you don’t get cloak of shadows.  Burst damage is ultimately not your strong point, your survival tools are limited, and you don’t have too many ways to prevent your opponent from fighting back.  But feral druids have always been able to put on the pressure.  They glue themselves to your backside.  You have to offer them your completely undivided attention, because while they weren’t going to take you down instantly, they were going to take you down soon if you couldn’t sleep, stun or freeze them completely out of the fight.

But, *sigh*.  I suppose you can argue balance until blue in the face.  What really bothers me isn’t really PvP balance.  I can remember a time when a bug made PvP gear free, and the store was so packed you couldn’t find the vendors to click on them.  Things like that and that Tol Barad 1800 honor debacle exist to remind me how gear dependent and busted PvP is for a casual participant like myself and ultimately kill the fun in it.

No, I really just want the ability to break roots from an identity standpoint.  It was an identifying piece of the class.  I like getting new things, even when they suck.  I could probably count the number of times I used that ability leveling or running heroics without running out of fingers and toes, but when I got to, it felt good, because that was me using a unique capability to practical use.  It’s like a Holy Paladin using their Prot abilities.  Any paladin can click “big heal” and “small heal” and be a capable healer.  It’s using those fringe abilities that shows you’re mastering your potential.  To see an ability like that just ripped out without a second thought leaves a hole and makes the game feel a little more shallow and empty.  It makes that little voice in the back of my head cry “you’re paying for an open beta, you dip”, like someone somewhere is playing the finished WoW, and I’m the one testing it so it’ll be a polished experience for them.

Uh oh, Skip is starting to sound like a sniveling, self-entitled baby.  Time to cut this one short.

TL;DR Version: Skip doesn’t like standing around, so he played a feral druid.  Now feral druids stand around.  Skip is sad.

Your fortune cookie:

Patch 4.0.6 Notes:

Fortune cookies reduced by 50%.  This should…

WTF:

December 22 – 27 Cataclysm Hotfixes

Winning as an attacker now rewards players with 1800 Honor Points, up from 180. Winning as a defender still rewards players with 180 Honor Points.

Tol Barad

I found this along side a blue post as such:

The odds are already stacked against the attacking force. In fact, they’re stacked in favor of the defense more so than we would like at this point. We’re looking to address this in an upcoming patch so that defending Tol Barad doesn’t feel like there’s virtually no fear of loss.

In line with that design goal, we made this hotfix to ensure winning Tol Barad back for your faction feels much more rewarding.

So, alright.  We acknowledge that somehow this thing made it out of beta without noticing that one side manages to squat on it and win for days at a time.  We want to fix that, but its the holidays and we have lives, so we’re instead going to make losing that much more frustrating.

Ah, but then if both sides were to intentionally let the attacker win, both could average a few pieces of  PVP blues a day.  The scam begins.  From what I’m reading, most servers seem on board with this already.

Of course, then the queues fill to the brink.

Oh, don’t worry, you can apparently just wait at the bridge and still get credit, without even taking part in the scam.

Now, an aside.  Ever since I hit 85, I’ve been grinding my honor hard.  I started PVPing at level cap late in Wrath, so I couldn’t really get into it like I wanted back then.  Everyone else had full PVP gear and raid-end weapons.  No amount of skill could over come that.  I was paste on the ground within seconds of every encounter.  Trying to grind out the honor for the gear just wasn’t fun like that.  So I promised that when Cataclysm hit, I wouldn’t let myself get left behind like that.  I like PVP.  I wanted to have a fighting chance to actually be involved.  I always felt the system as it was felt like it was designed by an asocial twelve year old, but I was willing to play their little game.

Now, back to the topic at hand.  How in the hell was giving 1800 honor for anything a good idea?

I was at odds for a while over how to handle it.  I could get involved and get my thousands of free honor, or I could walk away.  I thought about it, and whether I involve myself or not, that goal I’d set for myself is now cheap and hollow.  It’s lost meaning to me.  I can either achieve my goal via empty means or relive the “paste on the ground” days again, as people with that empty gear slap me around for several more weeks.

No, I’m just walking away from it.

In the process of trying to re-acclimate my UI and buttons to feline fun, I noticed something.  Fairly often, my Rip duration was ending about 3 seconds before my Tiger’s Fury was coming off cooldown.  Rip has a duration of 16 second duration and Tiger’s Fury has a 30 second cooldown.  I’d never really considered them close enough to exhibit this behavior so frequently.  So, I broke down what I was doing.

1. Skip’s out of energy from spamming death.  Skip presses Tiger’s Fury for a 60 energy burst, thanks to King of the Jungle.
2. Skip Shreds with impunity.
3. After a couple of seconds, he hits 5 combo points and quickly refreshes Rip so it takes advantage of the Tiger’s Fury 15% damage buff.  This happens at roughly the end of TF’s 6 second duration (we’ll say 5 seconds in), so its cooldown has about 25 seconds to go (the cooldown begins right away, not at the end of the buff).
4. Rip lasts for 16 seconds.  My Glyph of Shred adds another 6 seconds by the end, so ends up lasting 22 seconds.
5. And so, Rip is ending with 3 seconds left on the Tiger’s Fury cooldown.  If I wait 3 more seconds to reapply Rip, I can use TF to give it that 15% damage buff.

Of course, waiting to reapply Rip is bad.  Rip is easily the kitty’s biggest damage dealer, especially with our Mastery rating adding to all bleed damage.  Any downtime is lots of lost damage.

What the Flip, Skip?

What is so important about getting Tiger’s Fury and Rip together?

Well, your bleeds take advantage of your damage bonuses at the time they are applied.  If I apply Rake or Rip during the 6 second TF buff, they will get 15% bonus damage for the full duration, or until I use the ability again to refresh it.  If I gain a damage boost after the bleed has been applied, the ticks will not get stronger.  It’s all about that first hook.

Since bleeds are a cat’s biggest damage dealer, any buff you can give them will show favorably on your final damage total.  That doesn’t mean you should go out of your way to make sure every bleed is always buffed.  Cat “rotations” are far too chaotic, and you don’t need that kind of stress.  However, should the opportunity arise, you should certainly take it.  If nothing else, I try to always refresh Rake anytime I use Tiger’s Fury.  Because Rip is dependent on combo points, and should always be used with 5 of them, you kind of have to take them as you get them.

Enter Glyph of Tiger’s Fury.

I had started by glyphing Rip, Shred and Berserk.  In terms of raw, lab result DPS, Berserk is a great glyph.   It bumps Berserk from lasting 15 seconds to 20 seconds of sheer, unadulterated pwnage.  I offer this praise in that sort of “it’s not you, it’s me” kind of way, because it is getting dumped.  It just so turns out that Glyph of Tiger’s Fury reduces the cool down by exactly 3 seconds, the same window with which I keep finding myself.  Yes, please.  Berserk is probably still the better glyph in terms of numbers, but I’m a usability guy, myself.  Make my life easier!  Kitty deserves a break.

Fortune Cookie:

The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from fortune cookies.  CookieNet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Enjoy your cookie.  :)

The Fluid Druid’s Cataclysm Feral DPS Guide

Oh, and then there’s Nom Nom Nom.  (It shall always be called Nom Nom Nom.)  It really doesn’t change the game much.  If the boss is below 25% health and Rip is still up, use Ferocious Bite instead.  Tada.  One more tracker for you kitties to wire into your addons.  There’s a few more talents that make life a little easier, but I hardly feel the need to discuss them (that’s obviously a lie, I probably will out of content starvation another day).  Truth be told, I feel the word “claustrophobic” fits the bill in talking about the feral tree.  I was working with this build before I decided to take a break from feral (a cat nap, harr harr).  My usual flare for passive survival is there, so it’s probably two Infected Wounds away from a PVP build.  Do with it what you will.

Blah blah blah, durid spec talk.  Yes, moving on.

So like I said, I’m taking a feral break.  With all the pimping of the new Eclipse system for Balance and the new treeless tree in Resto, I thought it time to give casting another try.  I’m not typically a caster.  I hate going out of mana.  Haaaaaate.  So you can imagine I was less than impressed by the oomkins of yesteryear.  The problem does seem to have cleared itself up, however.

Rewind a sec.  Eclipse.  Alright, so here’s the abridged version of it.  No, wait.  Here’s the storybook version of it.  I like those better.

Once upon a time, in a kingdom many patches ago, there was a talent known as Eclipse.  Druids of the day had two primary attack spells, Starfire and Wrath, with little governing which was better.  Eclipse offered guidance using its unique mechanics.  If Wrath ever scored a critical hit, Starfire would become more powerful.  If Starfire ever scored a critical hit, Wrath would become more powerful.  As such, a druid would stack on enough crit to make a rogue blush and fire one until such time as a mystical proc occurred, then they would use the other.  Other druids would moonfare spam until they were oom, and the peasants rejoiced.

Eclipse today is no longer a talent, but an innate trait reflected by a bar under the mana bar.  Rather than triggering on a critical hit, the druid must gather “solar” and “lunar” energy. Starfire will generate solar energy each cast until you hit a “Solar Eclipse”.  At this point, you will become Jesus Christ with feathers.  The Moonkin Messiah will then do much more damage with nature spells (aka, Wrath).  Wrath will start generating lunar energy.  The Eclipse will end when the lunar energy forces the meter back to zero.  When it makes the trek back across to the Lunar Eclipse side, you are now Arcane Zeus, and your Starfire will be the 50 megaton nuke of win.

If all of that was a lot to suck up, just know that you are essentially playing ping-pong with the little dot on your meter and do omgwtfbbq damage about half of that time.  Thanks to the talent Euphoria,  you’ll get loads of mana back for keeping the volley going.

Also, there is now moonfare spam in talent form.  The peasants will likely be slaughtered.

As fun as this little dance has been, we’ll see how long it lasts.  A sick little part of me misses my kitty and her migraine inducing debuff juggling.  I’m also still putting two points in Feral Swiftness, cuz I gotsta have my indoor travel form!  Don’t judge me!

Your Fortune Cookie:

Moonkin Messiah OOM’d for your wins.

At any rate, let me tell a story.

I was testing out one of the leveling guide add-ons that aren’t $60 and advertised in banner ads out in Wetlands, when a Hunter dropped in and insta-invited me to party.  I figured he was killing the same murlocks I was melting and wanted to speed the quest along for both of us.  I hit accept.

Silly, naive Skip.

I found myself in party with the hunter and another priest somewhere off in another area and was instantly queued for an instance.  IT’S A TRAP!  But instances are good XP, so I rolled with it.  While we waited, the hunter was being helpful and on most of the same quests as me, so I was lulled into a false feeling of comfort.

who r u

Wha’, huh?  Oh, it was the other priest.  I wasn’t really sure how to answer the random whisper and was locked in heated combat with more gnolls than someone of my limited priestly understanding should ever be, so I let it scroll away.

stop talking in whispers with him. y won’t u talk to me!?!

I should’ve figured this was my exit, but I calmly tried to explain that I was just killing gnolls and wasn’t holding any secret conversations behind his back.  The instance started!  I figured things should calm down now.  Don’t ask me where all this uncharacteristic optimism and faith in humanity came from.  I’m as baffled as you are.  But faith is a fickle mistress and I was quickly proven wrong.  Gnomer came up and the party (some of which were on their 3rd time there in a row) just wanted out.  The priest wanted to do every side-quest in the area and was quite the vocal minority on the matter, threatening to go off on his own on several occasions.

After grating the tank to the point of insanity, he was kicked with such swiftness I barely got to look at the Yes/No dialog box.  He was replaced instantly like the cheap DPS fodder that he was and the instance went on.  Shortly after, I received a whisper complaining how I didn’t stand up for him.

This friendship is over!

Excuse me?  Friendship?  Yeah.

And this forcefully transitions into my intended topic.  Real ID.  See, I’ve been seeing a lot of chatter and complaints about Blizzard’s new in-gamne chat interface, as I’m sure you have too.  To highlight a few concerns:

• Your real name is displayed. Whether it be worry of stalking or privacy, lots of people are worried about their Internet life crossing with that IRL thing.  Bloggers are worried about piercing their aliases.  People just, in general, love their anonymity and alternate identities.  They keep the Internet in the Internet.  I’m no stranger to this, myself.  One of my early Internet communities was a collection of authors and writers, and amidst that particular community it was generally considered proper to go by your real name.  I deviated and chose not to, and have written under various pseudonyms for as long as I’ve put words to media.
• Your friends know all of your characters. No matter what server you run to, what alt you play, or what corner of the world you curl up into, your Real ID friends can find you, hockey mask and machete at the ready.  One luxury of WoW was always that you could make a new character and it was a clean slate in every way.  Some make alts just to get away from guildies or other online friends, just to take a breather and play the game.  Sometimes you just need to get away.
• You can see the friends of your friends. Like any modern social networking site, you can see what people your friends have connected with so that you, in turn, can find mutual friends and add them yourself.  Remember that this is your real name, so it just manages to make itself that much further out there.  In this era of identity theft, we certainly want to covet every tidbit of info we can.
• You have to give your friend your account login name. In order to become friends, you have to share your battle.net email address.  For quite a while now, this has also been our login, and so whoever gets this is one-half of the way into robbing your account.  Sure, they say you should have an authenticator, though until they actually come shipped with the game or are otherwise offered up as a part of the existing fees, you can’t expect people to shell out yet more money to Blizzard’s monolith of income.

The list continues, but I think I hit the high points.  And as such, I’ve read that many people have chosen not to use the Real ID system.  And to those people, I congratulate you for making an informed and intelligent decision.  Your reasoning may be slightly off-tilt, but you’re hitting the right targets.

For everyone else, I started with the story I did to emphasize a point.  The priest in that story was an extreme example, and probably just some kid looking for attention, but it’s not an isolated incident, even among mature adults.  I feel that the Internet, particularly social networking sites, have skewed our definition of “friend”.  I’ve met people with over 500 friends on their FaceBook/MySpace/Friendapocalyspe/etc.  Are they all really friends?  Friend has plenty of definitions, and someone you’ve met only briefly and made that interaction enjoyable can certainly be a friend.  But I feel that maybe the phenomenon of collecting friends like stamps has further depersonalized the meaning.

I could debate on that for far longer than a paragraph, but its a topic far better suited for dialog than just me waving my finger and saying “back in my day, we had to walk 50 miles, in the snow, up hill, both ways, to get friends, and we were happy!”  The point I guess I wanted to get at was that Real ID is not a “friends list” as we have come to know it.  If using it concerns you, than you are completely in the right for dismissing it.  In fact, those concerns can be made into a bit of a checklist.  Or better yet, a Choose Your Own Adventure book!

• [Page 1] Does this friend know your real name?  If not, would you be comfortable with them calling you by it?  If so, turn to [Page 32].
  If these are people who you only interact with on a guild or blog level, and you do not want them behind that veil, turn to [Page 102].
• [Page 32] Would you be comfortable with this friend having your address and cell phone number?  If they showed up uninvited to your door, would you be happy?  If yes, turn to [Page 58].  If these thoughts make you uncomfortable, turn to [Page 102].
• [Page 58] Would it be alright if this friend talked about you with their other friends, even the ones you don’t know?  Would sometimes meeting their other friends not be too much of a put off?  If all of this is fine, turn to [Page 93], else turn to [Page 102].
• [Page 93] Would you trust loaning this person things on occasion?  Maybe you would loan or spare them a little money from time to time.  This person would be respectful and thankful of that which your share.  If this is the case, turn to [Page 105].
• [Page 98] The room quickly fills with water.  Unable to escape your weighted shackles, your last gasp of breath fails you and everything fades to blackness.  You’ve learned all too late the dangers of taking candy from strangers.  Also, you shouldn’t read ahead in Choose Your Own Adventure books, cheater.
• [Page 102] Perhaps this friend is not a good choice for a Real ID companion.  They may be a perfectly upstanding person and maybe one day your relationship will blossom into befitting this union, but for now, you should stick to being regular WoW-based friends.
• [Page 105] Congratulations, you have met someone truly worthy of your Real ID friendship.  Cherish this bond for all time and it will give you many happy memories and raids.

Yes, I’m being a tad extreme and silly with it.  I admit that I’m just having a little fun in order to take a go at a far simpler point.  If features in the Real ID system have you on edge, it’s very possible that what it is peddling isn’t particularly aimed at your needs.  It’s certainly possible to have deep and fulfilling relationships with people with which you would never get more personal than letting them hear your real voice over Vent.  My main point is that you shouldn’t feel the need to shoehorn this feature into that life, nor blame the feature for not catering to your needs.  I only know two people playing the game who I’d share IDs with, both people I know face-to-face, and only the one has shown open interest in the idea.  He plays on a completely different server and is moving away in a couple months.  I’m happy that Blizzard has come up with a system to fit that singular need for me.  For the rest, the old system has worked just fine.

I didn’t forget.  Your fortune cookie:

[Page 61] After much debate over the dangers of recursive anomalies, you decide to pick up the Choose Your Own Adventure book from the dusty library shelf and begin reading.  Turn to [Page 1].

It’s been a fun little dance thus far, though I have to admit, it hasn’t always been an easy write when my interest in WoW tends to phase with the moons.  That’s not really what made me fall off, though.  In truth, the time I typically dedicated to writing became filled in with work.  That probably has something to do with the fact that I wrote most of my articles at work.  Funny how that pans out.  Nope, there’s only so many months an employer will let you goof around aimlessly on the Internet before they cautiously put down their foot but not too hard and ask gently if you could maybe work on a project if it’s not too much trouble thank you.  That’s government for you.

Now summer is arriving, and with it comes the potential for a little personal project time.  I’ve strongly debated on it, and I think the time would be better spent on more diverse endeavors, like my WoW-less parent website.  I’d point you to it, but Skip isn’t about the wanton self-promotion.  That’s not how he rolls.  Wait, yes it is.  Skip rolls that way all the time.  But this one time, I’ll go against the grain.

Fortune Cookie:

This isn’t the last you’ll hear of Skip.  You’ve just become family now.  That means you get calls on holidays, birthdays and when he needs money.

Wait, what?

Making guilds!  Right.

So you want to make a guild.  Maybe you’re tired of your guild leader’s inability to cater to your every whim.  Maybe you don’t want to be bothered by people offering for you to join their guild.  Maybe you accidentally took a few extra Celexa this morning and rational thought has taken a backseat to manic impulse.

Whatever the reason, I’ve put it in your head, and now you want to make a guild.  But how?  Don’t worry, Jimmy.  Skip will tell you how.

Step 1: Acquiring a Guild Charter

For the simple price of 10 silver, you can acquire a guild charter.  If you don’t know where to get one, go into any major city and spam trade chat until someone tells you.  Don’t bother with proper grammar or spelling.  People who need for you to spell out your communication in full, well structured sentences to understand you obviously aren’t smart enough to know the answer anyways.  However, many people have difficulty seeing or paying attention.  They may be old or watching TV while they play.  Be sure to repeat yourself often.

Step 2: Picking a Name

Now that you have a charter, you need to pick a name for your guild.  Think carefully.  Whatever you pick, you will be stuck with until next week, when you give up and start a new guild. Blizzard has a strict naming policy when it comes to guilds.  But they’re also lazy and probably won’t care what you pick.  I mean, the expansion has been out for like a year, and paladins are still OP.  So, pick something cool, like <TeH gAy VaMpYrEz>, or <TRANNY SHAMMIES>, or <asdkghldhfsa>.  If they make you change it, remind everyone that Blizzard is gay and how horrible this game you play 12 hours a day is.  What have they got against Shaman Transmission Specialists, anyways?

Step 3: Getting Your Charter Signed

What, you don’t have a guild yet? That’s right.  In order to become an official guild, you have to get your charter signed by 9 people.  A common tactic is to enter a starting area and offer new characters a few gold pieces for the service of signing your charter.  This gives them very beneficial starting capital at little actual cost to them.  A less common tactic is to actually have 9 friends ready to join and run a guild with you.  You aren’t going to do either of those things.

Instead, enter a crowded capital city and run up to every individual without a guild you can find, prompting them immediately with the guild charter signing window.  Most people are dicks and won’t sign, but keep doing it and you’ll eventually succeed.  Don’t talk, just charter.  Talking wastes valuable signing time.  Some people consider this rude, but you’re a rude person.  If they don’t figure this out now, it’s just going to create issues later when they’re in your guild.  It’s better you weed out the soft-skinned pansies now.

Step 4: Guild Management

You’ve done it.  You now have your own guild, complete with new members.  Your responsibilities have ended.  Chat with your new peons.  Remind them that this will be the best guild ever.  The more everyone says that, the better it will be.

Pro-Tip: Promote all of your new members to officers.  Just like in real life, people will do things for you if you make them feel important.  Yet really, all you’ve done is given them the ability to do all of the work for you.

Now, just sit back and enjoy your new guild.  It probably won’t be as exciting tomorrow, but you can always just take the good stuff from the guild bank and /gdisband later.  It’s good to be the guild leader.

Your Fortune Cookie:

Your guild is going to be the best guild ever!

(I’m also putting it here so I have it for later.  >.>)

Melee Hit Table FAQ – The Fluid Druid

Thus, this article will be about focusing on keeping your fuzzy kitty butt alive. There are those who will disagree with my points of view here, and given my experience, maybe they’re right. Still, I think it’s a meleer’s responsibility to be as self-sufficient in their survival as possible, and that’s the attitude we’ll be going into this thing with.

Proper Attire

You’re a lucky sort. Almost all gear these days seems to come with Stamina. Most Critty Kitties will be using Rogue-ware, as its the latest trend in dominatrix fashion, so you’ll be getting primarily Agility and Stamina. You can actually afford to go balls-out offense. If you find you’re just not staying alive, you do have options, though. A wealth of tanking leather and druid weapons are available. If a few good ones fall to you for being the feral in the party, save them just in case. You’ll probably only have to compete with the Survival Hunter for them. Your group and your DPS may not approve of your clothes, but in an undergeared situation, it might just be better to go in doing less damage than spending the fight face down dealing zero damage.

Talented Survivor

While you do have a cornucopia of tanking talents to boost defense, many of them are Bear-only. Boo. Bear is greedy. But, all is not lost. Kitty comes equipped for the job too.

Improved Mark of the Wild – We’ll start off with a minor off-spec talent. You probably won’t bother if you’ve got a Resto tree in your usual raid group, but if no one else has it, this has good all-around bang for its buck. +2% more to all of your own attributes in addition to improving one of the best buffs in the game. More armor, attributes, and the ever-elusive resistances. If no one else in your group has it, you can’t go wrong with it.

Thick Hide – The Thick Hide vs. Feral Instinct debate is a raging, axe-wielding, possibly menstruating one. You’ll probably take one or the other, and when leveling, I always took Feral Instincts. But, the stealth element is somewhat underplayed in group instances, and whether Swipe (Cat) is worth buffing is arguable. +10% armor isn’t going to make Azeroth move, but it might be worth more than Feral Instincts to you.

Feral Swiftness – I consider this one mandatory. The speed buff gets you out of harm’s way and back into the fight. Your mobility is both extra damage and defense in a sexy little bundle of death. +4% dodge is an extra ounce of defense that the average platey has to spend 4 talent points to match.

Survival Instincts – Identical to the Warrior’s Last Stand, except that you don’t have to go down a different tree to get it. It can still be a stubborn beast to fit into a build, and I’ll admit, it’s often one of the first things I cut out. It’s more worth your while the higher your HP gets, since it heals based on a percentage (and thus will always be of more use to a tank than you). The other problem is remembering you have it.

Predatory Strikes – You’ll be taking this one anyways, simply for the raw attack power. But I tossed it in because of the instant-cast heals it makes available. They can be a life-saver.

Nurturing Instincts – There are those who refuse to take this talent. I refuse not taking it. I consider it irresponsible, really. They see the +healing, and go “*scoff*, I’m a DPS, not a healer, thank you very much.” But the part we want is part Beta: +20% bonus to all healing you take as a cat. A lot of small heals fall around a busy battlefield. The more often you’re topped off with quick or stray heals, the less attention you need compared to your party members. This also improves Improved Leader of the Pack, which may just keep you topped off on your own.

Survival of the Fittest – We discussed this earlier, we did we did. Crit Immune and +6% to all attributes. Probably your single best durability talent. You want this, you do you do.

Improved Leader of the Pack – Either the single best group buff you can offer, or worthless. If you have a Bear tank in your regular group, she probably took this, and yours doesn’t stack with hers. Since you can easily crit once every 6 seconds, this will be a steady source of small heals for you. Nurturing Instinct will improve that heal by 20% (but won’t improve it based on your +healing), giving you an extra 0.8% of your HP each time.

Primal Tenacity – This is primarily a PvP talent, and probably won’t make it into your regular builds. There are bosses that make heavy use of stuns and fear, so you might bring it along conditionally. Probably not, though.

Predatory Instincts – Extra damage is always welcome in my home. You’re probably looking at maybe an overall +1% to 1.5% increase per point, depending on your crit chance. The focus here is the 30% less damage from AoE attacks. Sometimes, you’re going to stand in the fire briefly. Sometimes, bosses blast all the melee around them to knock them back. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that poor kitty is going to get caught in some mess. This applies to a lot of the damage you can expect to take, and 30% is no small dip. Don’t ignore this one.

Berserk – I’m posting this one mostly as a no-no. Berserk makes a great fear-breaking trinket in PvP, but if you save it for that in an instance, you’re wasting it. It creates a HUGE burst of damage, and should be popped off on each and every boss that can afford the aggro spike. I learned this one from experience. Even when the situation arises to use it to break fear, I have to spend a second or two of potential super-damage running back to the target. No bueno.

The Strat: HP > 0

I harp on this a lot, but I’ll say it again. As Kitty Kit Kitterson, you have two traits to hone to a razor’s edge: Awareness & Mobility^TM. It’s really easy to get tunnel visioned when staring at those buffs and bleeds, but you’ve also got to find the backside of your target, get there, recognize threats, and get away when necessary. Your #1 survival tool is your own head. A few pointers to further the point:

Stay Out of the Green Sh** – It may be self-explanatory, but we all seem to forget from time to time. Those flames/fumes/tentacles on the floor hurt. You’re probably more resilient than many to them, but hurting yourself is still bad. Get out!

Optimal Attack Location – To get off your Shred and to improve your accuracy, you want to be behind your target. However, many many large enemies like dragons and giants have rear-attacks. Some also tend to do instant 180 turns from time to time, just to annoy you. The optimal spot is typically on the side, just slightly to the rear. They won’t hit you with their tails/back-kicks, and if they flip-flop facing, you’re a tiny side-step from being in position again.

Billy Don’t Be a Hero – More basic knowledge, but worth repeating. One of the worst things you can do for your own safety is to pull aggro. Attack the target that the tank is properly tending. Don’t feel its your job to pull things off of the healer, cuz you’ll just get in the way. Don’t rush the enemy healer in the back, just because you think you’re the only one smart enough to notice it. Call it, get the tank on it, then shred with the peace of mind that comes with not having your skull caved in with two blows.

Back of the Class – This is more a tanking issue, but it’s spelled my doom a time or two. A good tank should face enemies away from the group. One reason is so everyone gets the nice juicy backside exposed to them for the rocking and the socking. The other reason is because if there are more enemies ahead, they will be… well… ahead. A wandering patrol is far more likely to come in from the front. If you’re the furthest ahead because you had to go there to get behind the enemy, you’re the first thing they will see, and it won’t be pretty. It’s not something you have a lot of control over, but be aware of the situation and watch your own back.

Barkskin – You forgot you had it, didn’t you. Ah-aah-ah-aaah (yes, I am five years old) , I knew it! It’s not just for casters anymore. Barkskin works in all forms, doesn’t have a painfully long cooldown, doesn’t trip the Global Cooldown, costs nothing, and offers a short burst of very good damage reduction. If you can’t be bothered to remember you have it, I suggest macroing it to an ability you will remember, like:

#showtooltip
/cast Runic Healing Potion
/cast Barkskin

You’ll at least pop it every time you go to use a potion, which is probably an appropriate time to assume you’re freaking out. If you have any other defensive abilities, like Lifeblood from Herbalism, go ahead and macro it to that too. Basically, anything you already use to mitigate damage.

I Will Survive

Melee damage has a bit of a stigma. People picture us primarily horizontal. It’s a challenging role and we get a lot of hate for it. But respect can be earned. Stand tall and proud. Or, er… As tall and as proud as a kitty can. Come to think of it, we are always horizontal…

Ugh. Long, wordy, potentially informative… where’s that delete button? Alright, alright, I’ll leave it, but under one condition! I want to see related posts for Death Knights, Ret Paladins, Rogues, Enhancement Shaman, Fury/Arms Warriors, and, heck, even other ferals. Lots of people talk about how to maximize your damage, but it seems somewhat glazed over in the area of staying alive. How do you keep your melee DPS alive? Then I can sit back and read them while posting random topics about how casual I am. Your challenge is posed!

Your fortune cookie:

As long as I know how to love, I know I’ll stay alive!

Edit: Haha, awesome! I have become the BlogAzeroth shared topic of the week! >>Forumeth Posteth<< Okay, so I did post it there, meaning I wasn’t exactly nominated for my blinding brilliance so much as I was the only person to make a suggestion for that week. (Running unopposed ftw) And as I hadn’t really planned to be omnipotent topic of an entire week, I hadn’t paused to consider that Melee DPS isn’t exactly a universal topic. Whoops. Still, the bloggers of WoW-land are resourceful, and so be sure to watch that space for creative individuals adapting the topic to their interests.