A Feral Druid's Illustrated Primer - cat stats

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Feral(Cat)

And what are the preferred stats for the kitty-cat? You didn't think it would be the same as for the cuddly bear, now would you? Well, there is one stat both the cat and bear want - Agility, but generally if you are dressing for cat you take your bear gear and shove it down your bags.

A druid in cat form is a lean mean killing machine, a sleek and furry bullet aimed straight at the enemy and your goal is to make sure they don't know what hit them before they are dead.

The key to hit the mobs hard is to stack up on Attack Power (AP). The more AP you have, the more pain you deal to the mobs.

Attack Power is a stat of its own and many items sports something like "Equip: Increases attack power by "some number here".


A druid in cat form also gets AP from Agility and Strength. One point of Agility gives one AP but one point of Strength gives two AP. Would seem that Strength is better then? Well, that is a tricky question, because it so happens that one point of Agility also increases the Crit chance, and thus the total dps of your cat.




So Strength or Agility? Well, for a lvl 70 cat druid there seems to be an equilibrium point at around 225 dps accordning to wowwiki.com if you have the talents Heart of the Wild and the Predatory Instincts.Check you character's melee tab and the Damage info to see how much your dps is.



Until you reach that number it is more beneficial to your AP to stack up on Strength, after that the increased Crit chance from the Agility will give more total dps.



Another nice talent for the cat to have is the Naturalist talent from the second tier in the Resto tree - not unattainable for a feral druid, especially since you most likely want the Omen of Clarity, which requires at least 10 Resto points.

However, what is the use of having a paw like a sledgehammer if you miss your target and drives that sledge deep down into the flag stones instead? Ouch, that would be painful for you, not the mob! Let's make sure you hit that mob next time, ok?

A single-wield (or maybe I should say single-paw) white damage attack or special attack (your Mangle, Claw and all those others energy-costing attacks you do) has a base chance to miss a lvl 73 mob of 9 % (yes, we are talking raid bosses again). You can decrease this by increasing your Hit rating and when you have 142 Hit rating you will have done all that is in your powers to do to eliminate the chance that you may miss the mob.



A new stat introduced in patch 2.3 is Expertise, and it affects the chance that your target will dodge or parry your attacks. As a true feral sneaky cat, however, you are not really planning on attacking something up front are you? Attacks from behind can't be dodged or parried, so this is not a stat you have to worry that much about ;P



So to conclude this short stats speech, a kitty-cat brimming with AP, Strength, Agility and Hit rating is a kitty-cat you don't wanna mess with.



Stay tuned, next episode of this Feral Druid's Illustrated Primer will deal with Feral(Healer).

Until then!