MoP Beta, Where to start questing…
Once you get the Beta installed, if you are like me and want to dive right into questing you will first need to go to Pandaria. To do that you will need to find the Panda in your faction Capital City. The Panda should not be too tough to find in either city as he was placed in the most active area with a moonglow spotlight on him.
When asked, have him port you to Pandaria, there were a couple of different port options, but bottom line you need to end up in the Jade Forest and if you are horde make your way to the Northwestern top of the map, Alliance Southwest bottom of the map to find the starting quest areas. Horde is right above Hellscream’s Hope (Have the Panda port you there if it is an option still), Alliance is at the Wayward Landing (Also probably a port option).
I started out picking talents and a spec that sounded good for leveling. Talent choices really do have a feel for them based on play style so there really probably isn’t a better or worse option just one that fits how you like to level. If you like to grind on multiple mobs while questing you might pick different talents than if you prefer bypassing a lot of combat to get quests completed more quickly.
I knocked out a couple quests and even received my first reward, a two handed staff for either Boom or Kitty, neither of which was better than what I already had in inventory which is typical of every expansion since I raid… so nothing new on that front… except of course that the quest reward is custom so every class will get a useable item from that exact same quest without seeing like 8 possible rewards, just 2 based on which spec you want it for. A very welcome change and I am very happy Blizzard is finally looking at intelligent ways to reward loot.
I will post more after spending some time in the beta this weekend.
Beta Posts Incomming
So I am downloading the MoP Beta now. It’s Big…. and slow.
Once it’s finished and I can get into play I will start posting and covering feral details. With this Beta extending to so many users I am sure there will be a lot of good information out there but I will make sure to put in my 2 cents… as usual.
4.0.1 Released
First let me say that I am sorry for my Debbie Downer post. When I saw a ping back this morning from Feral Instincts with a reference to my patch post described as “a sad piece” I felt a little bad, almost irresponsible to trash us kitties before experimenting in the new patch myself.
I do have plans on running my own parses and taking a look at a new DPS strategy (now that our damage is back to the BC bleed optimization and lowing the relevance of melee auto attacks and fillers). I need to re-gem first which could take a while since my alchemist didn’t have the ability to transmute, or craft anything else for that matter… not sure what happened there Blizzard but a profession with no crafting possible makes for a bad profession… lol.
I did get a chuckle at THIS over at the Fluid Druid “The same patch that made Cower useful also ensured that we won’t have the DPS to need it.”
So last night I logged in, sans a bunch of addons (Oh QA how I miss thee) and went ahead and learned a bunch of glyphs on my 4 80 toons. I did my talent tree for feral which basically amounts to being able to get every DPS talent you want except for the one you will want over in the resto tree which we will have to wait for as it will take moar points.
I also did my talent tree for my Hunter (BM for now) and took a little trip to Stillpine Hold in Azuremyst Isle in order to resurrect Slurpee.
I had to get rid of Slurpee a while back but now with all the stable pet slots I wanted to get back and pick him back up as soon as possible. Next will be to retrieve Bumble from that cave in Ungoro… if you have not noticed I have a thing for white pets, for example…
Bumble
Equinsu Ocha
Für Elise
Anywho, hopefully tonight I can work on getting gemmed correctly (maybe reforge Crit into Mastery) and start playing with a new optimal rotation of bleed uptime, FB, ravage starter after a leap, yadda, yadda… and will let everyone know how we look.
Or I will go get more pets… only time will tell.
Kitties be ready
Patch 4.0.1 is on the way. As most know this is the start of the Cataclysm event and many things will change. The following is going to dramatically change your ability to DPS…
- Loss of FAP (Feral Attack Power).
- ArP is no more, your ArP gems become Crit gems (and that sucks)
- Talents change (You will lose expertise and crit)
There are a thing or 2 changing as well, but these are the big 3… well, and the change to Savage Roar… you can read about it.
A few good sources of specific changes that detail why our DPS is going to stink come the patch…
- http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r24873969-The-Death-of-the-Cat
- http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t101212-feral_cataclysm_discussion/
- http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27026476757&sid=2000
The Summary:
In order just to keep your DPS above hunter and lock pets you will need to re-gem Agility, Reforge for either Mastery or Haste, and switch gear or gem to pick up a little expertise.
OK, so maybe that explanation is a little melodramatic, however that is honestly what it looks like is going to happen. A 14K DPSing kitty in Icecrown will be putting out about half the DPS they were… probably about 8k-ish. People are saying Bear DPS is higher than kitty post patch.
My short term advice…
- Be prepared to respec to Boom. Hopefully you have been picking up caster items that would have been otherwise DEed.
- Be prepared to take a vacation until Cata hits where your low DPS won’t really matter during leveling. If you stay kitty don’t bother dropping a bunch of gold on new agility gems, just take a break and replace your gear a week or 2 into Cataclysm.
- Finish out Wrath having fun playing your Hunter or other Alt.
My long term advice…
- Level Boom in Cata, because you will be less broken. Continue to check back to my site and I will let you know when Feral Kitty is again viable.
- Keep caster gear rewards where there are no melee / melee leather rewards. Where there are good melee DPS rewards be cautious if there is a good caster reward instead.
- Consider doing more quests for gear even after hitting 85 so you have options.
- Do not suddenly spend Justice points until things get sorted out. If your friends are ready for Heroics and Raiding at some point you might have to commit to casting in Cataclysm at least for the first tier if they don’t fix our DPS way before then.
Kitty DPS has been really fun in Wrath, I hope it can continue in Cataclysm but I am not holding my breath. A return to Bear/Cat Utility spec, Tanking, or becoming a caster looks to be in our future.
3.3.3 and the Mangle Change
Patch 3.3.3 should be out tomorrow and some of us feral kitties managed to get a buff from the following change…
Mangle: The debuff from this talent now lasts 60 seconds, up from 12 seconds.
For those of us having to keep up Mangle this will equate to a small buff now that instead of wasting energy on a Mangle reapplication we can get in more shreds. Most ferals in 25 mans won’t see a change if they already have a bear or warrior keeping up the bleed debuff.
Also, there is talk on EJ and other forums about the new Glyph of Mangle: This glyph now provides 10% increased damage done by Mangle instead of increasing the duration of the debuff. The talk is about how viable a Mangle spam build might be. To save my readers from a lot of reading I can answer it here for you… it’s not.
Two changes were made to give us a little more edge in PvP. One is the new Mangle Glyph and the 2nd are the charges added to Nature’s Grasp (Now has 3 charges, up from 1.) Make sure to put Nature’s Grasp on your bars, at 3 charges this can be a game breaker in all kinds of PvP situations and maybe even in PvE in encounters with CC’able adds… It should also be handy when leveling in the next expansion.
There is also talk on Mangle spam being viable for certain encounters where staying behind a boss is difficult or impossible… There is really only one and that’s Kologarn in Ulduar and you will be better served from a pure DPS and damage standpoint standing in the middle swipe spamming… trust me, I have tried the various other methods of maintaining high DPS on this fight and Swipe spam works the best. It’s retarded and cooky to swipe spam on this fight just to boost your personal DPS but blame blizzard for creating a fight that does not allow our main damaging attack. Swipe spam while using mangle just to keep up SR and amuse your friends with your high DPS.
