I just started playing WoW a few weeks back and have managed to work my way up to a level 35 Druid soloing the world but I am somewhat stumped, I have tried to find this in various guides, but no luck ...

In Cat/Bear form, the Attack, Power and Damage ratings:

Do these have any relation to weapons held or are they based completely on stats + boosts?

ie: I could hold a fishing pole with +5 strength and it would be better then a 200 dps staff with no +'s

Other question:

I find myself fixating on the top of my screen watching the energy line fill and the dots on my target ... I end up with quite the neck ache ... are there any addon type utilities/etc that can give this more a central role?

Lastly, I wish to express my thanks to those here who have provided me so much information to make my character enjoyable with guides on what all those talents mean. :texla:

You're dead on with the weapon thing (although I don't think there are any +str fishing poles). The only factors that effect your normal attack str (white numbers) are your stats and any boosts on weapons to AP or to hit or to crit. Another example is you would get no benefit from the enchant that adds +5 dmg to your weapon, but you would from one that adds +5 str to it (or a piece of armor for that matter).

I don't use any mods myself, but I hear there are a wealth of custom UIs out there, I am sure you can find one that will be suitable.

I use a wonderful little UI mod called Perl Unit Frames. You can move and resize all the party ( and target ) frames. I love it.

Not the best example I could come up with, but it's something I already had:

http://www.ugfl.net/wow_interface.jpg


At the top you'll see my target and the target of my target.

Thanks guys ... looks like I have a lot of addons to look through ... glad to finally *get it* about the weapon stuff.

I use a combination of mods that I really like: CT_mod, Fubar (think titanbar, but less memory used), and Itemrack for shifting my gear around between forms. the full Ct_mod has a host of alterations you can make to the UI (among other things), and I use fubar to keep track of various things like pvp queues, stats, money, traveling speed, etc. etc.

Kulia I use the QTUI package (http://qtui.12.forumer.com/) there are alot of nice things about it especially that almost everything you need to see is centered, Give it a shot and see how ya feal about it... Hopefully 1.11 hasnt broken it too bad but we shall see once they get the realms back up online and stable... so prolly tomorrow