Unbearably HoT

This post is now outdated. For up-to-date information and better gear recommendations, please go HERE.

As promised, I have compiled an Ulduar loot list for all the hot cats out there. Note that this list only includes loot that’s new in 3.1 and that it’s entirely possible that more loot is yet to be discovered. If there are leather items you know have dropped and they haven’t been included, do me a favor and drop me a line so that I can add them to the spreadsheet. When considering what gear I chose as a top choice, remember:

 

• Agility and Armor Penetration are the “best” stats to stack as a Cat right now. This doesn’t mean that you won’t benefit from Critical Strike, STR, or Haste. 
• You will want your two-piece T7/7.5 and two-piece T8/8.5 bonuses.
• Best-in-slot means nothing if you’re not Hit or Expertise capped (or at least fucking close); choose the proper gear accordingly.
• In most cases, 25-man Ulduar gear will be better than 10. Sorry, kids.
• I’m not including pre 3.1 gear. There’s a good chance you’re already wearing some sweet stuff. Make sure you do your research before assuming something in Ulduar is 100 percent better.
• Where my idols at? For DPS, you’re still going to be alternating between the Idol of the Ravenous Beast (especially if you stack ArP) and Idol of Worship.
• Trinkets? Do yourself a favor and go get that Darkmoon Card: Greatness. Pair that up with something like Grim Toll or Bandit’s Insignia or the Mirror of Truth, and you’re good to go.

And without any other further ado, here’s my DPS gear shortlist! For a full rundown of gear and stats, please download my 3.1 Gear List Spreadsheet here. 

There seems to be a great deal of confusion as to why I picked up Improved Mark of the Wild in my straight-up DPS build. Before I get another comment or query sent to my inbox, I thought I’d explain in greater detail.

Check out the tooltip. Traditionally, when iMotW required 5 points, the resident raid Boomkin or Tree would pick this up to make sure that the buff was optimized. When it was dropped to 2 points, many feral Druids opted to take 2/2 iMotW and 3/5 Furor to maximize their raid viability (without sacrificing the ability to shift and have the chance Energy/Rage gain). Now, there’s really no excuse to let this go, no matter what spec you are. That 2% total attribute boost is a passive ability for the character who picks up the talent. Think of it like a mini Kings buff, minus the hot Paladin. It may not be a huge damage increase, but if you’re seriously considering the kind of damage you’ll be able to do in Ulduar, taking iMotW will serve you better in a single-target DPS race than taking 2/3 Feral Instinct (which will increase your AOE Swipe damage). 

Hope this clears things up for everyone.

There’s nothing better than stomping the Iron Council into the ground and trekking back up the staircases to see a giant Titan dude emerge from the depths of Ulduar. If you haven’t seen him yet, Kologarn is so big that you actually only get to hit his regenerating arms and his giant-ass torso. For most folks, the strat is ridiculously simple—keeping everyone alive makes the encounter difficult. As always, having stellar DPS is an absolute must; however, there is no possible way to DPS any part of Kologarn from behind. What does this mean, kittens? No Shred. This is a Problem. Although Primal Gore boosts our Rip damage enough to keep us mostly viable for this fight, the sad reality is that you will be losing approximately 25% of your normal raid DPS (depending on the idol you use) here.

Fortunately, I had ample time last night to test out a variety of things in a patently unscientific manner to determine the best ways to make the most of your frontal DPS.

For what I did, you need this shit:

1. 6.5% chance not to be dodged or parried. This is the soft expertise cap, and it’s CRUCIAL because you’re unable to stand behind the boss.  Being hit capped or close to hit capped is also important.
2. Elixir of Mighty Fortitude. EXCITING! This is only because you need a guardian elixir and it’s really the only choice.
3. Elixir of Lightning Speed. I realize that this is surprising.
4. A stack of Imperial Manta Steaks (40 Haste) or, if you’re not Expertise Capped, a stack of Rhinolicious Wyrmsteaks (40 Expertise). I used Haste food, because I’m just below the soft Expertise cap.
5. Idol of Worship. This serves to maximize your DoT damage, which is essentially the only thing you’ve really got going for you. Especially useful because your DoTs will still be ticking when you inevitably have to kite an Eye Beam or become a victim of Stone Grip.
6. Potion of Speed. Unless you really fail and will absolutely need a health pot.
7. 5/5 Feral Aggression. You want the extra Bite damage.

These buffs will also help tremendously:

1. Improved Icy Talons. This can boost your Haste (if you happen to be lucky enough to be with your DK pal) by 20% for 20 seconds.
2. Windfury Totem. No DK? Windfury Totems are still pretty awesome and provide 16% Haste.
3. Heroism. This is pretty self-explanatory, I believe.

The idea is to increase your melee Haste and boost your white damage—your auto attacks. The more auto-attacks you do, the greater chance you have to proc your Clearcasting ability. But hey, we can’t Shred! Why bother? Although you will ultimately have so many Clearcast procs that you won’t know what to do with yourself, here’s how how you can use up all that Energy:

1. Mangle spam. No joke. You’ll (mostly) be using Mangle to build combo points.
2. Savage Roar for four combo points. To start your rotation here, SR at two combo points.
3. Keep up Rake. But don’t clip it. Refresh this only when it’s about to run out.
4. Keep up Rip at five combo points. Same rules apply. Don’t clip your DoT here because you’re only going to lose out on damage. Refresh this only when it’s about to run out.
5. Ferocious Bite like it’s your goddamn job. You will OFTEN have five combo points and seemingly nothing to do with them. Use that to your advantage.
6. Use Tiger’s Fury and Berserk as appropriate.

So why does this work so well? I am also running at a flat, unbuffed 265 Haste Rating, which many of you other cats in similar gear may have. With onlythe Elixir of Lightning Speed and Imperial Manta Steaks, I’m bumped up to 350. I’m also gemmed for Armor Penetration and run with approximately 197 ArP unbuffed. If you count Grim Toll’s proc in there, that’s more like 809. When you combine the strategy outlined above (that has an emphasis on boosting physical damage done) with a significant armor reduction, now we’re talking.

Questions? Good luck with Kologarn!

Now that the days of so-called “utility” classes are over and hybrids should be doing nearly as much (if not the same) amount of damage as pure DPS classes, it’s time to start thinking like a pure DPS class. Have you taken a talent that doesn’t amplify your damage? Does that talent greatly increase the damage of the raid group? No? Skip it. You want to start every rotation hearing that dude from Crysis saying “MAXIMUM STRENGTH” in your head.

The 0/55/16 build effectively gives you all of the high-damage tools you need to rock out and omits any sort of general survivability. You can arguably move a few points around to customize your build to do exactly what you want to (ex. drop Improved Leader of the Pack for Feral Instinct). If you’re exceptionally concerned about Swipe damage on trash, you can make a macro like the one below to give you a little more of an edge and bind it to your Swipe button:

/#showtooltip Swipe (Cat)

/equipslot 18 Idol of Perspicacious Attacks

/startattack

/cast Swipe (Cat)

And then switch back by binding your other idol of choice to an ability you primarily associate with single target damage, such a Shred:

/#showtooltip Shred

/equipslot 18 Idol of Massive Boners

/startattack

/cast Shred

Notable DPS talents that have changed substantially:

• Heart of the Wild. The DPS part of this talent hasn’t changed; however, 5/5 Heart of the Wild will only give you a 10% STA boost in Dire Bear form now, meaning that if you decide to be a total retard and pull aggro during a trash pack, going Bear and hoping for the best will make you a squishier target than you remember.
• Rend and Tear. The FB critical strike bonus has been reduced down to 25% from 50%. This may diminish the effectiveness of working FB into a regular rotation; however, using the Idol of the Ravenous Beast while stacking at least 200 Armor Penetration may prove to bump up the usefulness of FB beyond DPS simulations. To that end, this build also maxes out Feral Aggression.
• Primal Gore. Completely new. Although this talent now only boosts our Rip and Lacerate DoT damage (rather than Rake as well), it is a substantial damage multiplier. Have the Idol of Worship? You won’t be disappointed.
• Improved Mark of the Wild. If you didn’t already have this worked into your build, you should. 2/2 IMotW now acts like a baked-in Blessing of Kings and increases all of your total attributes by 2%.

Glyphs to have on hand (once they’re available):

• Glyph of Savage Roar
• Glyph of Shred
• Glyph of Berserk
• Glyph of Rip
• Glyph of Mangle

I never had the opportunity to test Glyph of Berserk, although I tend to think that you’d be better off with Glyph of Savage Roar (a veritable no-brainer), Glyph of Rip, and Glyph of Mangle. Obviously, if you have some other form of manglebot available (like a Bear tank or a Warrior with Trauma), you won’t be using Mangle and can substitute that Glyph for something else. 

All other talent choices should be self-explanatory. Questions? Drop me a line.

As I was checking in with my RSS feed and browsing MMO’s latest fodder, Karthis happily informed me that they’d updated their Ulduar gear list and added a pretty awesome DPS staff: Twisted Visage. Supposedly this drops off Megatron in Heroic Ulduar and offers very competitive stats when compared to the previous victor: Lotrafen, Spear of the Damned. 

In fact, for anyone who hasn’t gotten lucky with Dawnwalkers, Belt of the Tortured, Tunic of Indulgence, or Leggings of the Honored, Twisted Visage offers a superior Hit Rating solution. If you’re already over-budget on Hit%, start setting your sights on Lotrafen for the boosted Armor Penetration. These totally sweet weapons almost make up for the tragedy that’s our Tier 8 armor set. 

On a more personal note, my focus will likely swing more toward Feral DPS in the near future rather than tanking because it’s what I’m going to be doing exclusively for awhile.