Levelling specs

Most WoW theory is about maximizing raid damage. But for the next few weeks we're all playing a different game: levelling up, mostly fighting mobs solo. What's the way to spec for solo play? The big thing is that Shred and Rip are basically useless when fighting alone. We also care about survival, particularly healing and damage mitigation.

Here's some talents that have unusual utility while levelling:

Feral Instinct: Stealth makes a lot of quests go faster and swipe spam is good bear AoE.
Feral Swiftness: moving faster is the #1 way to help you finish quests quicker.
Brutal Impact: Stuns are a big help when solo.
Nurturing Instinct: boosts your LotP self-heal, also makes your emergency Rejuvenation work better.
Improved LotP: passive self healing is huge. Also gives you mana!
Infected Wounds: 10% attack speed reduction on whatever you're fighting.
Improved Mangle: Mangle spam is your #1 cat DPS when solo.
Rend and Tear: Ferocious Bite will be your primary finishing move when fighting solo. OTOH, the Shred bonus is wasted.
Berserk: three minute cooldown means you can use it every two or three pulls

Talents that are not so useful in solo play:

Shredding Attacks: don't get to shred much when alone.
Protector of the Pack: the attack power bonus works solo, but the damage reduction doesn't.

Unfortunately there are way more talents I'd like to take for solo play than ones I'm willing to give up. Here's three possible compromise specs:

• 0/50/11 Burning Crusade raiding spec (Cat DPS focus, level 70)
• 0/50/11 WotLK levelling spec. (Solo focus, level 70)
• 0/60/11 WotLK levelling spec. (Solo focus, level 80)

Going level 70 to 80 I'd take Berserk first, then Brutal Impact, then Rend and Tear, and finally Shredding Attacks. Of course this is all speculation, we'll see how the game plays.

PS: dear Blizzard. It was nice of you to give Moonkin two free talent points in the 3.0.3 patch. How about us poor ferals? Our tree is too tight.

Comments

[bob]

Protector of the Pack is being changed to work solo, but I am guessing for those of us waiting to level it is not going to be fixed until we are leveled pretty far. See the latest round of posts from GC.

[MTR]

I've been thinking about leveling builds too. Two comments on your plan: some people like to use rip when soloing; they damage the mob enough it will die from the rip and then just run to the next target, accepting it will hit them for a few more seconds before it dies. Second, I want to be able to tank a regular instance while leveling, so I'd like some of the bear talents. Any idea what is really needed to pull that off?

[Flyv]

MTR: I don't know about how my proposed solo spec will work for tanking instances. I've left out Thick Hide (armor) and Protector of the Pack (damage reduction). Frankly I've got enough T6 gear and enough strong healers in my guild that I think I can get by taking a little more damage while tanking level 70-79 instances. I'm guessing things won't get dangerous again until heroics at level 80. But we'll just see!

As for Rip, I'm not much of a fan of moving on to the next mob while it bleeds to death. Too much work finding the corpse to loot afterwards :-) Also there's something very satisfying about 6000 point Ferocious Bites.

[MTR]

I'm only in Kara/ZA/badge gear and my guild has pretty much disappeared in the wait for Wrath, so I can't get away with quite as much as you. But I've heard the leveling instances are pretty easy and nothing says I'll be able to get a group... I should probably go for a pure leveling build and respec if I find I went too far.

[Hobbes]

Hi there, I've been wondering the same thing -- how to spec for fastest leveling. I'll be solo 90% of the time, but doing some instances with friends and guildies occasionally. It's too much trouble to respec each time (even with a Moonglade teleport), so I'm looking for an all-in-1 spec. I'm in mostly S3 and badge gear.

Here are my thoughts on some talents:

Brutal Impact: not needed if you outgear the mobs, except in the rare case of soloing elites. It's most useful against casters, who will die quickly anyway. Plus, you have a maim to interrupt in cat form.

Infected Wounds: again, not needed if you outgear and kill mobs quickly. Generally your ILoTP will heal you faster than mobs damage you, especially in the 70-75 range.

Rend and Tear: 6k FB's are fun to see, but often overkill for early Wrath mobs.

Berserk: great talent for when you accidentally pull more than you can handle -- a quick Berserk can bring them all down. 3 min CD is a bit long. If you're in Tier6, you should be pulling more than 2-3 times in 3 minutes, maybe more like 12 times? (15s per pull)

King of the Jungle is a great talent -- refreshing 60 energy every 30s (every other pull) means even faster grinding.

Protector of the Pack is good for the 10% of the time I'll do instances. It's our only spell damage mitigation. But you're right, T6 healers can surely heal you through any 5-man in current gear.

Those are all comments for my 0/52/9 build at 70. My next 2 points will go into completing 5/5 Naturalist and then Omen of Clarity. After L72, I'll get to fill in more of the feral tree I skipped, like Infected Wounds, etc...

[Yalon]

I personally love Brutal Impact, because it allows me to pounce, mangle, shred, then the stun finishing move, then shred twice. If my lag doesn't get me, the mob is lucky to hit me once.

Obviously, Shred is quite useful soloing now that druids can stun twice in a given fight.

For what it's worth, I'm only in questing/AH greens and blues.

[Flyv]

I've ended up taking Berserk, then Shredding Attacks, and now Rend and Tear. Brutal Impact will be last if at all. It was just too frustrating playing without Shredding Attacks. And I'm using Ferocious Bite a lot, so Rend and Tear seems a good investment.