Ok. Lemme say, I've had 2 druids before, one at level 9, and one at 12; but I actually put time into this one, and bought armor for my level 15 druid; mostly greens. (He was 10 at the time, though.)

Needless to say, my armor rating in bear is 910, but I find myself losing about 20%-30% of my health on a mob of the same level, and it's kinda bothering me...Is it because I don't have much health, or am I just that bad of a player? o.o;;

Also, what are good stats to focus on? I hear that Agility is really good for crits, but strength is good if you wanna have more 'reliable' damage.

Thanks in advance, and please don't flame me...:D

o.o;; sorry guys, I should've probobly posted this in Questions...XD

My bad. ^^;

The moderators can move topics so they can adjust the location as needed.

There is no dumb ?'s do dont worry about it.

My advice would be to make a decision on what kind of druid do you want to build. This will guide you on armor and talents.

If you are undecided keep reading this forum and keep playing.

Check out the spells and talents for your talent selections and equipment for what time of armor to be looking for.

You will read that with a feral druid, agility gets important once you have > 900ap.

moved to correct forum

20-30% isn't that bad really. That's easy enough for a rejuve to cover in between fights. If you are worried though then just review your gear and see what you are lacking.

Low levels though you don't have many choices. But if you are spending a fair amount of time in bear (which wouldn't be a bad thing, bear is probably the strongest form for most of the leveling experience) then try to find gear that augments strength and stamina. Also stick hard and fast to leather so you can get the good armor bonuses of bear.

Druids do start off slow. Things get faster, but you still won't kill as fast as rogues or hunters. However you will have much less downtime. It gets better in a few more levels.

Agility is a good stat assuming you use the talents to put it into play (Blood Frenzy, Primal Fury). But for leveling I don't think you will hit a high enough crit % to make it take precedence over Strength. That being said, there are going to be times when you are more bound by availability than choice. I remember being stuck in Nightscape (AGI/STA) gear for a good 10 or so levels simply because I couldn't get my hands on anything else.

That being said, I see the whole 900 AP thing being said all the time to guys asking for leveling advice. Thing is, you are leveling and in no way are anywhere near that whole ordeal. Don't fret over that stuff. If you decide you like crit and want to level with cat form, so be it. Its your toon so do what you have fun with while leveling, as the trip from 1-60 is probably the better part of the game.

If you can tolerate druid to level 30 (when you will get travel form) then things become much better. The class gets much more enjoyable when you can start working more angles with all your skills and interacting with other players.

That being said, I see the whole 900 AP thing being said all the time to guys asking for leveling advice. Thing is, you are leveling and in no way are anywhere near that whole ordeal. Don't fret over that stuff. If you decide you like crit and want to level with cat form, so be it. Its your toon so do what you have fun with while leveling

The original question was asking for help with what stats to focus on while leveling. I could be wrong and I happily defer to the feral experts, but is not focusing on strength vs agility, until the 900ap, better for leveling in bear or cat?

I would look for items that give you armor, say rings, cloak enchants.... and the more stength the harder you hit in bear!

I agree, +str > +agi. Agi is great once you get a lot of it at higher levels, but at lower levels, the minimal amount of agi on gear won't improve your crit/dodge/ac enough to really notice.

In your mid 20's there is a really good mace that drops in gnomeran, with lots of +str. It's called the manual crowd pummeler. Easy to get.

Though the stat that I'd primarily be looking for at your level would be stamina. Stamina is always king. The more hitpoints you have, the less you have to shift out to heal, and the more things you can kill without having to shift out to heal.

Around level 35+, look for items and trinkets with high amounts of AC. Your armor will increase by 360% in DireBear, making you a beast to kill. (for example the offhand from a duskwood quest that gives 50ac = 230 armor in bear form.)

Also, its not really worth it to buy too much stuff out of the Auction House, as you will be getting equivalent gear shortly from quest rewards, and as you will be leveling pretty quickly, you will 'outgrow' that gear in no time at all.

I always watched the AH and was constantly buying upgrades for my druid's (1st character) armor, which left me low on money to train talents, and a ways away from gettin my mount at 40. Training all your talents as soon as possible should be a priority going forward definitley. On my priest (2nd character), I only used gear from quests / instances, and sold herbs on the AH, and always had plenty of money. Much easier that way. But yeah, have fun!

Leveling up, strength will do so much more for you than agility. In fact it's really hard to find the point where adding 1 agility does more for your DPS than adding 1 strength. The whole "XXX AP then focus on agility" is really a myth. If you are interested in seeing it debunked, I recommend reading this:

http://tangedyn.pbwiki.com/1200%20AP%20Rule

The big caveat to this is pvp. Burst dps is king in pvp, and maximizing dps is not always in your best interests for pvp.


EDIT: Also on that site is a good table which shows what attack power you need to reach the point where adding 1 AGI is more benefical than adding 1 STR. This is only for white attacks and does not take into account our yellow attacks, so taking those into account should lower the AP required, but it still is an eye opener. Notice that as you add each percentage to your crit, the AP needed to show more benefits from AGI than STR continues to go up.

http://tangedyn.pbwiki.com/Crit%20vs%20Attack%20Power%20Table

From my own post:
"But for leveling I don't think you will hit a high enough crit % to make it take precedence over Strength."

I do believe that for leveling STR is the more important of the 2 stats. For leveling I rate it 1. STR/STA 2. Armor 3. AGI as far as melee stats go.

That being said though, I don't believe anyone leveling should be worried about such and such AP or whatever. Because it is completely unrealistic for one. Secondly often times you may not even find suitable stats on a slot for a given level range.

With this though, I think that the concept has a certain merit. But for leveling it must be scaled down. Mobs while leveling won't have the high HP and armor that level 60+ mobs own. So there is no reason for a level 40 to be trying to skimp all other stats for AP at such a time. I personally think its much better to just feel out the fights. Anyone with a good 20-30 levels will know how a fight is going to go down. That said, I think that the faster a mob dies (ie. the less amount of white hits you place) the more important Agi becomes. If a mob dies in about the time it takes to place 3 combo points down, then AGI will help kill even faster by letting you place more points (Blood Frenzy) to get that finisher off even more swiftly.

On the other end, the longer the fight drags out, I've always felt more benefit from adding STR. Because there will be more hits meaning more white damage. As opposed to fast fights where most of your hits are specials.

Its wierd, many of those theories came about at time frames in druid past. Originally everyone just went with STA/armor since bear was all we had for feral as cat just wasn't worth the salt. Then some changes happened, namely AGI was altered to add AP in cat form. This placed AGI higher up on priority than it was before. Then along came 1.8; pred strikes was changed to be slightly less crappy and enter the HOTW. STR was now a big beast again. But at the same time you didn't need as much STR to hit those high levels and thus, many opted to take on some more AGI instead. At that time DM was the last 5man. Everything could be raided and thus mobs died VERY fast. So, in that situation I always felt that AGI let me do more. Since I was only landing a few hits anyways, maybe 2-3 specials before a mob was at it end. So since damage was bursting so hard, I favored AGI/crit over STR because practically 75% of my damage was from specials.

However for longer fights like in 20/40 mans STR was always the prime. Because you were delivery so many more hits. Then they changed the instances. 5 man caps on all of them now short of UBRS. So now essentially fights are twice as long. Thus STR takes on that role even sooner.

So yes now especially I think STR is the more important stat. However I still judge it by how fast I will kill. If I'm using my druid to farm, I still favor my "crit" gear. Because when ever 3rd hit is a critical things get mowed down very fast. ANd the faster I kill the less down-time, meaning farming is done sooner. However even my "crit" set is made up of items which factor in STR or +AP.

Everything could be raided and thus mobs died VERY fast. So, in that situation I always felt that AGI let me do more.

I was also thinking about this, forgetting the math for a minute, if agi was more useful in 5 man if you were providing the dps while tag teaming a mob with the mt?

If you crit with a limp wristed slap you will get combo points faster, and do more finishing moves but your dps will not be as good as if you were pummeling your opponent every second with a roundhouse.

The real benefit from agility is the dodge, since we can't block or parry its the only way to avoid damage (which ironically makes it better for tanks but still valuable for cat).

The bottomline is if you are only talking about dps, no matter the level, you should always take more str over more agi, until your AP is over 900. The fact that you can't hit 900AP at lower levels just means agi isn't going to help you until you are higher (at least not as much as str for dps).

If you crit with a limp wristed slap you will get combo points faster, and do more finishing moves but your dps will not be as good as if you were pummeling your opponent every second with a roundhouse.

The real benefit from agility is the dodge, since we can't block or parry its the only way to avoid damage (which ironically makes it better for tanks but still valuable for cat).

The bottomline is if you are only talking about dps, no matter the level, you should always take more str over more agi, until your AP is over 900. The fact that you can't hit 900AP at lower levels just means agi isn't going to help you until you are higher (at least not as much as str for dps).

That is true to an extent. Except that everyone forgets that it is not just some issue of static numbers. There is an interplay between talents and stats with attacks. More crit means faster points. This means you get higher point finishers with less specails used, meaning less energy used. This combined with energy reducing talents makes an end result. Yes more STR means stronger hits (though the difference isn't so drastic as most people make out). However you have to factor in how much more easily it is to get a 3-4 point Rip as with 30% crit than 20%. There is a large difference between 3-4 points and 1-2 points. Then the return after the energy dump. Anyone can pull out a 3 point Rip but now that you are bound by energy regen, how many points can you lay up before the F. Bite to close?

That's why in shorter fights I have always found that increasing AGI makes for faster kills. In those situations most of the damage is with specials. It just seems logical that increasing the amount of specials (which increases points thus increases output of the finisher) would make for faster killing in such situation where specials are so important. That said its not stacking crit as opposed to STR. Even with 30% crit rate I still have nearly even STR to AGI.

Its just a matter of what you can do with the energy. In short fights, you aren't fighting for what does more damage, its a matter or how fast you can do a certain amount (mob HP). I just think that for such a shorter period that is normal world mob fights, you can get more damage out due to stronger finishers in a shorter period of time. Its the same burst DPS concept that is in PVP. You're not competing with a raid for how much damage you did out of the total, you are doing 100% of the damage. Its just what puts that amount in the shortest time.

But as before, in any raiding situation STR is more supreme because specials mean less do to the accumulation of much more hits on target where white damage takes heavier wieght. Fights last longer that the initial energy dump. Its a cycle with blow specials, white damage during regen before next specials. So its not a matter of doing a specified amount of damage in a short time. The time is extended so sustainment of dps becomes more important, which is STR's realm. This is aside from the agro issues with heavy crit rates and blowing more energy trying to cower. As well as taking time out to heal after getting smashed.

In the end it doesn't make much difference I guess. These topics come up, but only if you are in a raid trying to compete on a DPS meter does it matter much. For soloing/farming the difference will probably be small enough that just random distractions will drag out the process to the point of negation. I know I am always up changing CD's or watching a movie and just random afk's for whatever.

Nice discussion, all this reading makes me want to log in and really get after it!! :axe:

That is true to an extent. Except that everyone forgets that it is not just some issue of static numbers. There is an interplay between talents and stats with attacks. More crit means faster points. This means you get higher point finishers with less specails used, meaning less energy used. This combined with energy reducing talents makes an end result. Yes more STR means stronger hits (though the difference isn't so drastic as most people make out). However you have to factor in how much more easily it is to get a 3-4 point Rip as with 30% crit than 20%. There is a large difference between 3-4 points and 1-2 points. Then the return after the energy dump. Anyone can pull out a 3 point Rip but now that you are bound by energy regen, how many points can you lay up before the F. Bite to close?

That's why in shorter fights I have always found that increasing AGI makes for faster kills. In those situations most of the damage is with specials. It just seems logical that increasing the amount of specials (which increases points thus increases output of the finisher) would make for faster killing in such situation where specials are so important. That said its not stacking crit as opposed to STR. Even with 30% crit rate I still have nearly even STR to AGI.

Its just a matter of what you can do with the energy. In short fights, you aren't fighting for what does more damage, its a matter or how fast you can do a certain amount (mob HP). I just think that for such a shorter period that is normal world mob fights, you can get more damage out due to stronger finishers in a shorter period of time. Its the same burst DPS concept that is in PVP. You're not competing with a raid for how much damage you did out of the total, you are doing 100% of the damage. Its just what puts that amount in the shortest time.

But as before, in any raiding situation STR is more supreme because specials mean less do to the accumulation of much more hits on target where white damage takes heavier wieght. Fights last longer that the initial energy dump. Its a cycle with blow specials, white damage during regen before next specials. So its not a matter of doing a specified amount of damage in a short time. The time is extended so sustainment of dps becomes more important, which is STR's realm. This is aside from the agro issues with heavy crit rates and blowing more energy trying to cower. As well as taking time out to heal after getting smashed.

In the end it doesn't make much difference I guess. These topics come up, but only if you are in a raid trying to compete on a DPS meter does it matter much. For soloing/farming the difference will probably be small enough that just random distractions will drag out the process to the point of negation. I know I am always up changing CD's or watching a movie and just random afk's for whatever.

well said