Tuesday, November 25, 2008

[Druid] Emblem of Heroism badge gear for cat & bear

Mitch brought up an interesting point in the comments of one of the guides - why no emblem gear? At the time I did the lists I wanted to do it to get gear as quickly as possible for people, and I figured most folks wouldn't be grinding heroics to get gear they'd be replacing in Naxx-25...but would they?

The answer is definitely yes. Especially since you can get T7.10 items from badges. It was an omission from the earlier guide and I apologize. I've updated the guides to have this information and their ranking as well, but felt like y'all deserved another post that specifically highlights these things.

I'll also be listing the Emblem of Valor rewards and how they compare against other Naxx and pre-Naxx gear levels, but that's a post for another day.

Emblems of Heroism rewards:

Heroes' Dreamwalker Rainments
- Bear score: 82.35 (ranks a slight #2 on list). Cat score 37.33. (ranks #1, #2 is 35.77 on list)
- this is only behind the PvP arena gear for bears, so it's definitely valuable to get. And it is about 16 points higher than the next available PvE piece from WotLK. That makes it a very good upgrade and probably the best choice to get first. For cats, it is the best DPS chest before Naxx, though it's not that big of an upgrade over some heroic rewards. I'd probably skip it for a while.

Heroes' Dreamwalker Handgrips - Bear score 52.16. (ranks #3 on list) Cat score 25.24. (ranks #3 on list)
- the hands are very disappointing; the best bear hands still come from a CoT Strat quest, and the cat hands are better in heroics. Upgrade this if you really want the set bonus for some reason, but otherwise wait.

Jorach's Crocolisk Skin Belt - Bear score: 49.23. (rank #4 on list). Cat score 28.18 (rank #1 on list; #2 is 24.71.)
-The crocolisk skin belt gets a bit more highly ranked by Rawr due to the ability to put even more stamina on the belt along with expertise, but my ranking favors agility a bit more. I would recommend buying the trollwoven belt instead if possible. For cats, it's a very big upgrade and likely worth spending the badges if you have them.

Chained Military Gorget - Bear score: 32.95. (#2 on the list) Cat score 9.66 (rank #8 on list)
-this is a very good avoidance neck but still not as good as Titanium Earthguard Chain is. Still, TEC is going to be expensive. I would probably avoid spending the badges on this though, as Amulet of Wills even post armor changes will be very close to this value, and should be easier to get.

Pendant of the Outcast Hero -Bear score: 26.91. (#4 on the list) Cat score 18.13 (rank #1 on list; #2 is 15.40)
- Clearly a cat neck, and (thanks to poster Mitch) the best cat neck pre-naxx that you can get. At only 25 badges this is pretty cheap too. For cats this is the biggest value upgrade, possibly second only to the trinket depending on what you have.

Valor Medal of the First War - Bear score: 14.53. Cat score 0.
-Post armor change, this is going to be a very solid trinket choice for a lot of ferals, especially on fights where avoidance is desired. I would honestly prefer Darkmoon Card:Greatness and Essence of Gossamer as my two trinkets, but this certainly is good for various fights. A bit more expensive though.

Mirror of Truth - Bear score: 0. Cat Score: 11.04
- A really stellar cat trinket, especially given how well cats scale with AP and crit.

Idol of the Ravenous Beast
- Bear score: 0. Cat score: ?
- I mentioned this in the original post. It should be a strong but not best DPS idol, especially if you are not using 2pT6 and are doing a primarily shred-based cycle. This will likely end up being the top DPS idol until more armored bosses are faced.

9 comments:

Phil Jackson said...

Awesome thanks for the update.

Anonymous said...

Thanks again for your work. I guess you spare a lot of ferals to browse through all those items.

BTW, did you catch the news that cat form will get Swipe as well, to be not so lousy compared to other classes in AE situations?
Upcoming AE DPS Changes

Kalon said...

Thanks for the kind words, Phil. :)

And Olvar - thanks. I did catch that cats are going to get some kind of swipe, which is awesome. Honestly it can be as simple as swipe is now and that'd be fine. One thing to note is that swipe will not generate combo points - but presumably it will be affected by savage roar. In AoE situations I would imagine you'd want to mangle/rake your first target to 2 CP, SR, then swipe as much as you can.

Should be fun...these days for multiple mobs when I"m dpsing I go as bear and just swipe. If I draw aggro, chances are I can take a hit or three.

Mitch said...

Thanks for the update =D

And swipe will be interesting. We really don't know how much energy it will cost or how much damage it will do. To be honest when I go bear and swipe I get high on aggro, so if we're doing this in cat and doing more damage this could only be a recipe for disaster, I think. I guess it's great we have our shadowmeld (I have to remember to put that on my cat bar!)

We'll see how it works out. Either way Blizzard has at least been sticking to their guns and giving everyone an option to fill some type of role.

Mitch said...

Well, you have shadowmeld if you're a nelf. Sorry to the moo cows out there >.>

Anonymous said...

Indeed, my current strategy with AE groups is also to switch to bear an Swipe. I already warn tanks and healers that I'll probably pull aggro of at least one mob, and they shouldn't care too much about it. My equipment is good enough to mitigate a lot of damage in such situations.

But I think it's far better to have some AE damage in cat form as well. Getting combo points as well would be too overpowered, so I'm fine with not getting them. But your idea to get a Savage Roar buff first is a good one, depending how much pounding it takes to down the mobs.

As for pulling aggro with cat Swipes, I guess with 29% threat reduction that's less likely than with the bear.

Anonymous said...

You did a post a while ago asking what Pallies would like to see - how about the same list for Prot and perhaps Ret? =D

Fedaykin98

Kalon said...

Hey, Fedaykin - thanks for coming by. :)

I can do a prot list for Wrath - but like I listed elsewhere, this has been done elsewhere for Paladins and fairly well, I think. Zamach's guide is very well done, and Honorshammer's guide has WotLK and BC rankings (at least some). I've not seen anything hugely wrong here, but I can look into it some and see.

For ret though...I've had that request a couple times, but really I don't think I'm the man. I've never done Ret and I really don't know the theorycrafting. Cromfel's the best ret crafter around, and he's got a ton of good gear guides on his forums.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the awesome work. This list makes life of all us feral druids 10x easier.

I'm looking forward to red more entries on this blog.

Take a bear hug. /hugs