CAT vs BEAR...Follow

I solo w/ my druid... and only solo... Feral rocks, but its come to the point where I need to decide CAT or BEAR... which is better for soloing? And where to start dropping my talents... soo.... Imp. Shred, Pred. Strike, Bloody Frenzy, or Primal Fury??

Ive got to shift back to Elf form to change to bear from cat right??

As annoying as it is, the answer is yes.

Shifting back to caster form doesn’t cost manna, but each time you shift back into an animal form it does. If you do that very much during a fight you’ll quickly use up your manna. There is a talent you can buy that will reduce the manna cost for shifting, but I’ve never used it so I can’t tell you how effective it is.

One thing you can do before a battle is cast Regrowth on yourself just before you pull. The spell will continue to heal you for the first part of your combat which may allow you to pull the next mob without needing to shift out to heal. Then by the end of your second combat you may be at full manna.

Cat or bear - depends who I'm fighting.

If I'm fighting squishies, I'll go cat form and tear them to pieces in nothing flat.

If I'm fighting warriors, I'll usually go bearform - it takes much longer to kill these guys, so they do a lot more damage to you in return.

Mid-range classes like rogues (PvE, not PvP) I'll usually go cat over bear. Yes I take a lot more damage and will need to heal at the end of it, but the fight's over in half the time!

That's the general template I use, but it changes according to situation; put a priest behind me, or give me mobs a couple of levels lower than me and I'll go usually bearform and take them 3 at a time.

Here's 3 examples which *may* help (I'm a lvl 60 feral druid, btw, with fairly decent gear - armour around 8500, attack power around 700 [both in bear]):

I can solo Deadmines easily; I used to go bearform and gather them up in bunches of 8 or 9 at a time, and just pound my way through them. I found it's actually quicker in catform to take them one at a time.

I can also solo the whole of Scarlet Monastary. I do the library in cat form (mostly squishies, generally 1 or 2 mobs at a time). I do the armoury in bearform (multiple mobs, generally warriors). The cathedral's a mixture - generally catform for the outdoor bits, then switch to bear once I'm in the main building.

You've probably guessed I don't choose bear over cat or vice versa - they're both excellent at different jobs! I've probably got more points in bear talents than cat though, simply because I'm usually MT in the instances I run (anything up to and including UBRS - our guild's too small for the bigger ones). I think I mostly grabbed the bear ones, but also picked up a couple of the more useful cat ones (didn't bother with imp. shred, for instance, since I rarely use it).

Just for info, I generally start a fight in one of 3 ways:
elf form - moonfire all targets and switch to bear
bear form - feral charge if I have rage, faerie fire otherwise
cat form - tiger's fury and ravage; continue from there

When solo exping, i never use bear form unless i get adds, and even then it has to be 2 or more adds for me to switch to bear form. The reason being is because it takes too damn long to kill stuff in bear form. I don't know about you guys but my maul sucks, my maul generally does 35-50% less than my regular hits. I can't figure that out. So what i generally do is just go into cat form and slice and dice the mob apart, and if there is another mob there i kill the first, pop out if i need a heal cast rejuv or regrowth and cat up and keep going. I can go hours without normally needing to drink, barring the times when 4 mobs spawn around me or something, because my solo grinding gear is a mix of of eq that makes me have a large mana pool, and great damage and hp. Maybe its all about what kind of eq you grind in. ALso i grind on mobs either my level or 1-2 below or 1-2 above. I am currently lvl 57 and i blow thru mobs lvl 58-59 and 55-57 with the same set of eq about in the same amount of time. SO i guess my answer is that i liek cat form wayyy more than bear.

I use bear when soloing elite, more than 2 mobs or pvp only Warrior

I almost always fight in Cat form, but Bear form makes for nice variation.

Click my signature image to see talent build and equipment.

Btw, is it just me or does Primal Fury (Bear form crit = +5 rage) kick in sometimes when you don't crit?

Primal Fury often gives me 5 rage from normal Maul hits...

Don't tell Blizzard, mkay?

If the OP is still interested in some good builds I can recommend the tried and true "Omen of Clarity" build. It's great for soloing and it allows for some pretty decent dps if you chose to go in an instance, although as mentioned you would want imp shred for instance fights as well.

Its a 11/35/5 build that focuses on cat dps, but allows for solotanking (with primal fury) as well.

Decide whether you will put the first five balance talents into Imp wrath or Imp. nat. grasp (I would basiccally say that its a matter of what type of server you play on (Imp wrath for carebear and Imp. nat. grasp for pvp)

The 5 resto talent points is put in Imp. Mark of the Wild. Why? To make the greatest buff in the game even better. Its a no-brainer to me, and the base of all the builds I've ever tried.

gl customizing the 35 feral talents.

I would give you some suggestions though, some talents that are must haves.

*ferocity*
*brutal impact*
*feral charge*
*sharpened claws*
*blood frenzy*
*primal fury*
(I have imp. shred but that is because I am specced for instance dps (mc, BWL etc) since you are soloing you will not need this)
*fairie fire* (you will love the armour reduction when you make ferocius bites and claws)
*heart of the wild*
*leader of the pack*


Gear wise: Go for + agi and + to hit, agi is the stat that gives the most. We as druids dont get the benefits from str. that say warriors do, since we dont have any abilities to block incomming damage. Agility adds to dodge, armour, attackpower and crit rate, so it is your number one stat (closely followed by stamina of course).

Hope this helps :)

edit: spelling and clarification

Edited, Tue May 2 05:56:41 2006 by imradil

Cat: Great in 1 vs 1 and can survive 1 vs 2, but more than that and you're kitty litter most of the time. They just can't take the hits. So I like using cat because it kills very fast (I pissed off Winterspring one day farming furbolgs faster than anyone could move one day), but I don't do it anymore. Why? Hard to get groups. Rogues don't like you because you're out killing them. Warriors hate you because you keep pulling off aggro even after their three sunders. So if you're doing any group work, don't do cat.

Bear: Horribly slow for killing, but lasts a lot longer. Go heavy armor and strength and you're doing pretty good. Expect to **** off warriors who think they know how to tank, because it's far too easy to do and without even trying. You'll have to change a few minds, but will find that feral tanks can be much more appreciated than warriors for instances. Warriors are starting to fall behind in that regard. Finally someone notices.

Now if only Blizzard would.

Every situation is unique. And as a druid you have many ways deal with the situation.

My favorite is to build up dots. I pull with moonfire, shift to cat and build more dots. At this point, things usually start to run. So I Rej and let the dots do there job. Many times you will not even have to chase something down if you do this right. It will drop from dots alone. You can always add a big finish if you like. But if your in opposing faction's territory...save your energy if your on a pvp sever.

I know this pattern does not include ravage or pounce but its nice to use when you need to watch your back.

The basic idea of someone fighting mobs in bear form is, as mentioned by one earlier in the thread, pulling around three mobs and swiping them to death. Assuming you have primal fury 2/2 (100% +5 rage, per crit) it is actually very viable for taking on multiple mobs, relativley quickly.

Swipe costs 15 rage, each of its three hits has a chance to crit, because of this you have a chance to get back 0, 5, 10, or even 15 rage per swipe, in addition to your auto attacks' rage gain (which also has a chance to crit for +5 rage as well) and rage from the damage of 3 mobs. Swipe then has a good probability of costing you less than 15 rage (and occasionally free,) because of all the rage gain from the swipes, auto attack, and damage taken, bear form can produce large amounts of rage, allowing for very liberal use of swipe and other skills.

Cat form, while I love it to death, has some dissadvantages that bear form does not. Like rogues, cat form becomes "weaker and weaker" the longer the battle lasts, because of the instant attacks reliance on energy. The main idea of rogues, and a druid that prefers to fight in cat form, is to kill something quickly, they are both very potent fighters at the beggining of a fight, but the longer it takes, the less and less effective they become. Cat Form along with rogues, need to wait for energy to recover 20 every 2 seconds (with some exceptions due to some pieces of equipment,) where as the bear (and warriors) become more and more potent the longer a battle lasts, since rage is constantly building from attacks and damage taken, the Rage cost of abilities can be easily offset by the Rage gain.

Some situations Cat Form is much more efficient, but Bear Form certainly has many benefits and the potential to be just as much of a destructive force as a Cat.

I play a druid on Laughing Skull, currently lvl 24 soon 25. When i solo i am almost always in cat form, cause i find that it goes alot faster. Yes i have to change out and heal every now and then (every 2 mobs if they are 2 lvls higher then me) but by then i have regen'ed my mana while fighting so i have no downtime. The only time i go bear is if i get adds or have a healer with me and we are doing 4+ lvls above (or elite mobs ofc)Have 2 sets of items: one with stam and str/ag and a healing set with int and spirit (lot of that is cloth). hope this helps