5x Ferals in Battlegrounds (Cataclysm)

[Ualaa]

I took a look at the mmo-champion talent calculator.

With the intent of five druids, primarily focusing on battlegrounds...
All five have dual-specs, so will probably go (Bear-Tank, Resto-Healer, and possibly 3x Boomkin as their PvE specs).

Anyway, for PvP I was looking at this spec as the base: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...G,MYq3O-,11927

And then have three of them, spend points like this: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...h,MYq3O-,11927
Which gets them:
- Feral Aggression 5/5... +15% Ferocious Bite damage.
- Rend and Tear 5/5... +25% Ferocious Bite critical chance.
- Possibly one less point to one of these two (for 4/5) and then Primal Precision from 1/2 to 2/2 for +5 expertise.

With the other two speccing something like this: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...b,MYq3O-,11927
Which gets them:
- Improved Leader of the Pack 2/2... party aura, 4% heal on a melee crit.
- Infected Wounds 3/3... Mangles snare opponents to 50% speed and debuff haste by 20%.
- Primal Precision... 1/2 (5 Expertise) to 2/2 (10 Expertise).
- Brutal Impact... 2/2, for the Pounce (Cheap Shot) opener from Stealth.
- And two more points somewhere.

The basic idea of slightly different specs... Three of them get bonuses to Ferocious Bite. The other two provide the party buffs (Leader of the Pack) and opposition debuffs (longer Pounce duration and Infected Wounds); same idea as only one Shammy speccing into Totem of Wrath, extra points elsewhere. With two providing the LotP/Infected Wound benefits, and all five identical in appearance, the buffs/debuffs should be safe.

The two who do not spec into Ferocious Bite can do the Dot and Stun finishing moves, or possibly the Stun x2 more as an interrupt then for the stun. Each of them will have a Kick like mechanic, probably work it into the attack sequence so one of them kicks the target every second or so.

The team is spec'd away from Shred, as blues have posted Mangle will be much closer to comparable damage, even if its not as good. I'll take 80% (not sure what close means) of the damage from the front or back, and not have to worry about facing and such.

I like that all five of them will have Nature's Swiftness, with Healing Touch, Cyclone and Battle Rez as the primary nature spells. They also have 3/3 Predatory Strikes, for the 20% chance per combo point of their next Nature spell of less then 10 seconds casting time being an instant cast.

What do you think?

[Nghtmr9999]

I think 5 feral druids would tear up BGs, regardless of how their points are spent XD

[Tim]

So when you say you are focusing away from shred, you mean that you aren't going to use it at all? So you are going to use swipe on all the kittys for DPS, and swipe/maul on the tank?

Also, for PVE, are you doing 5x Druids or 4x and 1x Shaman?

I leveled 5x Druids to 80 myself and they were absolutely amazing! The only downside is no real way to mitigate fear, and that sucked a bit.

[Ualaa]

For battlegrounds, will run 5x Cat Form.

Will probably do a click priority dps system.
Something along these lines:

Click #1
Mangle,Null (reset=target)

Click #2
Rake,,,, (recasting every 9 seconds)

Click #3
Savage Roar,,,, (recasting every 24 seconds)

Click #4
Finishing Move,,,, (commas to alternate with Savage Roar as the finishing move)

Click #5
Mangle as the fall-through

Also want to work the Kick/Pummel move which they'll be getting, somewhere into the click rotation, ideally evenly spaced so one druid is interrupting (and locking that school of magic out) every 1.5 to 2 seconds.



For PvE, they are all dual-spec'd; at the moment Cat/Resto.
One will switch to a Feral Bear spec, in addition to the Cat spec.
One will stay Resto Druid spec, as the secondary spec.
The remaining three, not sure if they'll go Boomkin, Bear or Resto for their off-specs.

In Cat/Bear, they have Berserk (which I have glyphed)... so 20 seconds of Fear immunity, which can be activated while feared. Plus the PvP trinket, which will be equipped for PvP but likely not for PvE.

[Tim]

Snaps you are making me consider busting out my 5x Druid team.

... or, leveling a new team when Cata comes out!

So what does the "null" do in your macro?

Also, for PVP, why not go kitty on all of them and just use swipe for AOE dps?

[Ualaa]

Null, is basically "do not advance past this point".
It would work as well, as "cake".

#show Hunter's Mark
/assist TankName
/castsequence reset=target Hunter's Mark, Cake

There is no "null" or "cake" spells in the game, so the sequence cannot advance beyond that point, and gets stuck.
With reset=target, it will reset to the first spell (and any other valid spells after that) any time your target has changed.



Druid DPS is heavily based off of bleeds. Swipe will work, and is a valid tool against masses. Not sure how useful Cleave/AoE attacks will be in the expansion. It will depend on health pools and how quickly five toons can DPS one target down. The "mastery" bonus on Feral Talents (while in Cat Form) is increased bleed effects. A mangled target counts as bleeding, and Rake/Rip are the bleed powers.

The basic idea is Mangle initially, as the highest priority spell, but not recasting since this is the fall-through and will periodically recast whenever every other castsequence is on a comma stage (no cast).

Feral Cat dps is stupidly complex at the moment, but they want to simplify it quite a bit in Cataclysm.

They've also said, they want to increase the damage of Mangle, not quite to the level of Shred, but enough that when Shred is impossible the druid is not gimped. Even at 75% effectiveness, Mangle from any direction is preferable to Shred from the rear arc only, at least when playing multiple toons which makes the rear attacks hard to manage.



I've found, aside from Elites, mobs are dead long before I have five combo points per druid. So the Feral talent, which gets you a 20% chance per combo point of your next nature spell being instant cast, is unreliable. It is also hard to track, as druids get 1 CP on each move, or 2 CP with a crit.

The Nature's Swiftness (without giving up Berserk), gets a guaranteed instant cast nature spell per druid. Which is a Healing Touch, Battle Rez, or possibly a Cyclone as an instant cast. This will help out a little bit. Need to work out a round-robin effect, where both Healing Touch and Battle-Rez advance to the next caster on any cast... so its more of a round-robin Nature's Swiftness.

[pinki104]

the points will most likely go to the new talents anyway