Soloing BC heroics 101 - a feral druid guide

I recently went back on my druid through some old Burning Crusade heroics, in order to get Badges of Justice for an Idol of Terror. (which, funnily, remains the best tanking idol) It was actually a lot of fun!

I didn't have the heroic keys for the Consortium/Lower City dungeons, so I could only do the Cenarion and Honor Hold ones. Most of the mobs in these dungeons can be stealthed past, except for a few guards which shouldn't be hard to kill anyway. I did a total of 3 and 1/4 dungeon's worth of badges in a day, which means 20 badges over 2 days.


The basic strat to bear-soloing is basically keep up Demo Roar and Faerie Fire. The rest is pretty much the same as usual tanking - keep up full stacks of Lacerate, and Mangle whenever possible. Having your panic buttons (potions, Survival Instincts, Frenzied Regen, etc.) at hand is also a very good idea. Don't be afraid to pop Frenzied Regen; 50% is usually a good time to do it. Berserk is also very helpful if you're clearing trash, or on bosses with adds, for the Mangle-spam extra damage. Barkskin is also very helpful.

It might take a bit of learning the mobs in the dungeons to successfully stealth past them - I died quite a few times when starting to solo Ramps because there was so many mobs that could see through stealth, and so close together.

I'm intending to grind some Lower City rep soon (I never did any quests while levelling in Outland... haha) so hopefully I'll be able to try soloing some Auchindoun instances!

Tora's UI

Back when I first brought Tora into Northrend, she had a very drab, plain UI. Stuck at level 69, I didn't have much resolve to level her at alll.

Then one day, I saw a screenshot of a beautiful UI and it inspired me to make what you see here. I spent a lot of time on the eepanels, especially the Recount and Omen ones. To this day the OmenBorderTop still gives me problems and I have to change it every time I log in... but it's so worth it.

Oh, one of the mods I forgot to mention in the previous post...

OmniCC, for tracking cooldowns. I used to use CooldownCount, but found that OmniCC put the cooldown on debuffs in Pitbull as well, which is highly useful for timing Rake/Mangle/Rip reapplications.

Anyway, Tora finally (FINALLY!) got Staff of Trickery from Violet Hold tonight. The Naxx10 guild alt run we did was also pretty productive, I got me some shoulders, a kitty 2h mace, and a very nice chest. My avoidance is up about 2 or 3%, and health increased by 1k, which I am very pleased about.

Incidentally, I ran as kitty dps in the Violet Hold run that got me that staff. Pulled about 1.8-1.9k dps, came 2nd place just shy of the Death Knight, which I'm very happy about. All that reading about kitty dps rotations has really paid off, I think. Didn't do too well on Cyanigosa herself due to an actionbar malfunction though, but I'm really not too fussed.

Overall, Tora's feral dps and tanking sets are coming along awesomely. Hope next week's Naxx10 run is just as good. WTB set bonus! (legs, hands and helm would be nice) :3

Torakitty

More art coming!

Raiding as a druid

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. ^^; I've been busy and such.

Tonight I went to Naxx25 as a Resto druid, instead of on my hunter. To be honest, I was getting mind numbingly bored of Naxx. Each week it's the same old thing. So I thought I'd shake things up a bit.

In an ideal world, I would have gone as Feral and tanked my happy bear butt off. But no, we always have enough tanks. So I respecced Resto and went raid healing. I'm not a huge expert on it, but I figured, it can't be too hard right? Just watch some health bars. My experience healing Outland dungeons to level at least taught me as much.

Regardless, my noobish-ness and undergeared ass did fairly well. My best fight was Heigan, where I think I performed admirably. Being used to dps on the run already, it was a simple matter of spamming heals on the raid instead of instants on Heigan. So I'm pretty happy with how that turned out.

I got two pieces of loot tonight, Robes of Mutation and Shawl of the Old Maid. Well, not exactly Tora's first ever epics, as a few days ago I'd gotten her Bands of the Great Tree from Emblems of Valor, seeing as they're BoE. I also had Trollwoven shoulders crafted for her tanking set, which I will unfortunately now put in the bank, much to my disappointment. Well, at least they got to see some action tanking a few heroics and Sartharion. I guess the next time they'll come out is when dual specs are rolled out.

Overall though, my druid has been going fine. And Toshi, on the other hand, has been working on Elder. I got Elders of Eastern Kingdoms about an hour ago, gonna try and hit Orgrimmar early to finish up the Horde elders, and then we'll be running heroics the rest of the afternoon for the remaining dungeon elders as well as heroic dungeon achievements.

We're so close to the Red Proto Drake! I can smell it!

Tanking gear to-do list

My druid hit level 80 tonight!

I wasn't really sure at first what I'd want to do the endgame with on her, but I've finally decided that I'll make her a bear. I tanked, healed and dps'd quite a few instances while levelling, and of all of them, tanking was the most fun role. I'm already used to dpsing on Toshi, so I didn't warm up to boomkin very well. It is, however, a very fun spec for levelling and I must give it credit for that at least.

Reading the tanking gear post on Big Bear Butt, I've come up with a small to-do list to build Tora's tank set. Mostly for my own reference. :D

chest - Exotic Leather Tunic (UP quest), Crystal Infused Tunic (H Nexus)
feet - Slag Footguards (H HoL), Gorloc Muddy Footwraps (H Gun'drak)
legs - Gored Hide Legguards (H Gun'drak), Chain Gang Legguards
hands - Bile Cured Gloves (CoT Strat), Handwraps of Preserved History (CoT quest)
head - Shroud of Darkness (H VH)
neck - Amulet of Wills (HoS)
shoulder - Spaulders of the Careless Thief (H Nexus), Trollwoven (LW)
weapon - Enraged Feral Staff (H UK), Staff of Trickery (H VH)
belt - Sharp Barbed Leather Belt (H UK)
bracer - Bindings of the Tunneler (H UK)
back - Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions (rep)
trinket - Offering of Sacrifice (H Gun'drak), Essence of Gossamer (H AN)
rings - Keystone Great-Ring (H DTK), Band of Frosted Thorns (H Nexus), Ring of Earthen Might (JC), Iceforged Battle Ring (Storm Peaks quest chain)

Looks like we'll be running mostly heroic Gun'drak and Utgarde Keep for a while! Also not forgetting that Gal'darah drops a nice melee dps ring as well.

I'll probably try to gear up my resto set along the way as well, because I like healing almost as much as tanking. (this is why I rolled a druid!) But I did it through all of Outland, and halfway through Northrend, so I'm a little sick of it. Tanking is really what's getting my druid going at the moment.