Thread title probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I read a post on this board recently that just came back to mind. The question is, all things being equal, if you are building a "tanking" or "cat/DPS" set which stat do you generally go for? Certainly a balance is needed on top of things like taking yoru defense into account. The way I recalled the post being written seemed counter intuitive at the time but now I can't even recall which it was mentioning to favor for which lol. Off the top of my head I would venture to say agil for bear and str for cat but not sure if I am thinking correctly in terms of how those stats feeds into the forms.

Any help/thoughts?

As a general rule, you are correct.

For my ferals, I try to get more Str in my cat set and more Agility for my tanking set, but not exclusively for either.

edit: moved to a separate post

depends on your level at 70 1agil > 1strength for all dps purposes and better for tanking.

Your AP naturally raises with weapons and gear, most raid buffs are AP oriented (Trueshot, Battle shout etc..). Raiding druids should concerntrate on their ability to place and set down damage - toHit, Agility, energy(T4 2pc for example and swiftshifting), Omen of Clarity, run speed and Critical strikes.

As you are leveling if you have a choice go agil, as it serves you more function as well - armor, dodge, crit and AP.

Agility. Agility for cats, agility for bears, agility for seals.

Str isn't bad, but it shouldn't even be a question - at the levels that you care about, str is simply worse than agility.

I was assuming the OP had a levelling druid. As others have pointed out, it's another ball game at 70.

I've noticed a marked difference in Cat kill speed with Str favoring gear (faster) vs Agility favoring gear (slower) from 20-50ish.

I care about those levels, if that's where my druid is (and they are) ;)

My 0.02 FWIW.

I think that's reasonable, if only because so many abilities don't come into play until you can start getting more reliable crits and most of your damage is going to come from white damage. Plus, early on you won't get items with +AP like you will later.

In general: if you have low AP, low crit, go with more AP.
If you have low AP, high crit, go with more AP
If you have higher AP, go with more crit - and 'higher' is not all that high and is basically around lvl 65ish gear.

I'd say +str > +agi until you have ~1000AP (should happen around lvl 60-61). After than +agi > +str.

It is a question of +feral AP weapons, which are non-existence below 50-55 I think. So of course when you options are low then you need to consider balancing.

There are some great druid maces and gear as you are leveling, I would love to have a little druid tag along to help gear up. Also if I did it again I would go leather working, that opens up your options.


So back to the OP, you need to balance both AP and Crit for dps, and agil/armour/stam. I had some really good pre-BC gear and I was basically a mob-killing lawn mowing Bear, high crit and good armour - go to an area and constantly have 2-4 mobs on me, self heals, bear form and I could go for so long without not killing, and it taught me how to keep argo.

Word up sounds fun!! leveling again :|

Hello, new to both WoW and Druids; just got level 10 and bear form. Most of my play time is solo while I learn to play and catch up to my friends.

Is the consensus then that as a levelling Druid I should focus on +Strength until I can get into the Outlands, when gear choices widen?

Thanks, and great site.



Edit: Originally wrote the opposite of what I meant to say...

@Oiysters: get the gear with the most overall-stats.
dont focus on specific stats... u wont have much choice in gear anyway

For me, Pre BC <60, Strength, Agility and Stamina are what you want. Strength will give you the best bang for the buck at that level, but if you get pieces with enough agility the +crit will make up the difference. Its one of those counter intuitive things about druids. Beyond a point STR becomes way less useful and you begin stacking agility for the crit.

Sorry for not getting back to this thread earlier. I also should have included the context of my question which is, in fact, a leveling druid. Will have to keep the 1k ap ~milestone in mind.

Thanks all!

Here's an interesting strength vs. agility article for kitties:

http://web.mac.com/sven_schmidt/AnuBear/Welcome.html

The conclusion:

Point for point there is no noticeable difference between strength and agility with respect to dps for a Cat druid with all dps increasing talents.


That's what I've always lived by. *Shrug*

Interestingly enough though this makes rogue gear that much more poweful in the end game. It stacks +hit (which we need some of anyway), crit which comes naturally in agi, and agility. So you are getting not only high amounts of agility, but you are getting huge amounts of crit. Standard druid gear tends to lack in crit, but favors very high strength and agility. That's cool and all, but the rogue gear will really crank your crit on top of boosting agility.

Interesting graph and article in the above linked post.

But again, it was oriented to endgame. AP of 2000+ in the graph.

It'll be a while before I see that. :ohwell: But good to know for when I do. :thumbsup:

Hi all newish to Druids and new to the board but reading throu the info on this post i am still kinda lost on where i should be go. More Str or more Age for lvling i am at lvl 48 atm with 55str 177agi 160ap 13.5crit otherwise here is a link to my toon
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Drenden&n=Keonebear
Any help in know where to go would be great thanks in advance

Keonebear

48 druid
70 hunter

For leveling, it really isn't that important to optimize. Especially that early. Get the thing that has more stats in general. You'll probably want to favor str over agi in general.

As mentioned by Kalbear, until you are much higher level (say 62+), it probably doesn't mater. Though I went with +str > +agi (basicaly maximize AP over crit) until I reached ~1000AP. Then I switched to +agi >> +str (max crit over raw AP).

You won't find much, if any, pre-BC gear with +AP on it.

Right now in my Kitty set (of the Tiger AH items, quest items and maybe 1-2 65+ instance pieces) I have ~2050 AP and ~28% crit. Which has been great for questing, grinding and daily quests. If I were a RAID kitty, I'd need quite a bit more of both (along with some more +hit and +exp).

yeah i've been using my kitty so much more recently since coming back to wow than i ever seemed to before BC.

i dont raid so its only gear you can get from 5 mans (and currently only normals not heroics) and questing upto level 70. maybe the odd bought epic - ie got cobrascale gloves and hood.

i'm around 2300AP with MotW, 28%crit and i think about the same dodge.

grinding through the netherwing rep has been a lot of fun and i'm sure a raid kitty with decent epics would be so much better as tlb says...my +hit is very low but it does not seem to matter just grinding for rep.

i did see someone offering to sell a pattern last nite for Swiftstrike (?) Shoulders.....very nice and i was tempted to ask the price BUT it needed Heart of Darkness which i think (and please correct me raiding people) they only come from MH / BT ? and are likely to cost a fortune if i even ever see them on the AH !

I'm curious. People keep mentioning till your AP is 1000. Do you mean 1000 in kitty form or caster form? Because 1000 AP is stupidly easy to get in Kitty form.

I'm curious. People keep mentioning till your AP is 1000. Do you mean 1000 in kitty form or caster form? Because 1000 AP is stupidly easy to get in Kitty form.Yes, in cat form. I didn't reach that point until lvl 61-62.

I didn't hit the Outlands until I was lvl 60, but I had purchased quite a few AH greens before entering. So at lvl 60, I know I was around 700AP in cat form. By the time I finished all of the HFP quest (I did them all) and 1 ramparts run, I had ~1000 AP in cat form and was probably lvl 62-63. Until I reached that point, I never really felt over-powered in cat form. Just strong. Now at lvl 70 with 2000AP, I feel like I can DPS anything down without issue. Can't imagine what it is like with 3800AP and 35%+ crit.

Come on... you know at lvl 80 with 6k AP and 45% crit it will be hella fun. :p I keep hoping that we'll get an advanced form of kitty for WotLK. Maybe a nice snow cat form (like the advanced Dire Bear Form). That would be cool, but I shouldn't hold my breath. We got some serious loving with flight form and epic flight form in TBC.

Of course if I'm lucky my bear will have 50k armor and 40k health.... but I somehow doubt it.

I have to wonder if they will split Bear and Cat into different specs in WotLK (I read they use to be different specs). Right now, you can have one spec and be great at both (in PvE). Seems a bit odd. Maybe we'll have to make a few real choices in the Cat v Bear spec in WotLK. Also, wouldn't be surprised if they don't give Resto some sort of DPS boots to make solo questing easier for them. Big Red Angry tree form. :lol:

Flight form does rock it just seems so much easier to fly around than on my other mounted characters but the instant cast is the real gift.

Ok thanks all guss I will just not realy worry to much about gear till i get out into HFP and start geting my head smashed in by the Fell Rever agean.

Keonebear
49 druid
Keone
70 hunter

The Fel Reaver gave me problems with my first lvl 70 character, but with my Druid he wasn't much of an issue. Maybe I was just more alert this time around.

Heh. Gotta love being snuck up on by a 5 story creaky Steamroller of Doom. Happened to my hunter a couple of times.

Once I was 68ish I went out of my way to kite them to the group of mages just east of the Horde outpost in HFP. Good times, good times.
BTW, if you're Horde, it's the easy way to kill a Fel Reaver for the quests to get keyed for regular Shattered Halls.

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