Feral Druid Addon Review – dotfocus

Since early Wrath of the Lich King, I have used the Bad Kitty addon to track my bleeds and Savage Roar. It could be customised to show icons and a few other things, but I used it for the timer bars. Unfortunately it has not / is not being updated for Legion, which means I have to find a new addon. Enter DotFocus.

DotFocus is a buffs / debuffs tracker that can also monitor energy, combo points, and much more. This is the followup addon of the very successful DroodFocus by Meranannon, now adapted for Legion compatibility. While it has huge functionality, I want it just for timer bars to replace Bad Kitty. In this post I will go through the process I used to set up.

Step 1 – Download DotFocus from Curse.

Step 2 – Turn it on and load into WoW.

When you load into WoW, and are in Cat Form you will see the default layout. I prefer timer bars over icons. So I will be going through and turning off a lot of features.

Default dot focus settings

Step 3 – Configuration

To open the configuration menu click on the mini map icon or type /dotfocus options into the chat. I turned this into a macro and put it on my bars to save time. To enter configuration mode click the Enter button where it says Configuration mode.

DotFocus menu

DotFocus configuration menu.

There is a lot of status bars, timers, and icons in this addon which can be customised. You can move them around the screen by clicking and dragging the blue circle with the white arrow icon. Mousing over the icon will display the name of the item. You can turn off the items by clicking the “Config” button in the Dotfocus menu that corresponds to the item you want to turn off, then unchecking the “enabled” check box.

The enable check box is in the top left corner of the config window for the selected item.

Current Setup

I’ve got for simplistic setup, this is for several reasons. My computer is fairly old, so the less stress I can put on it the better, which means condensing the onscreen items to as few as possible. The less onscreen items also give me maximum visibility of my surroundings. The last thing I want is to be caught in a voidzone I couldn’t see because an icon or a timing bar was covering it.

As I mentioned in my post about my UI, I want to keep all the important information as close to the centre of the screen as possible to reduce the amount of time my eyes are not focused where the action is. I’ve also been playing Feral long enough to know when my Omen of Clarity procs occur, when I have a Bloodtalons proc up etc, so I removed those cues.

Current Dotfocus setup.

One of the best features is that Dotfocus tracks the strength of your bleeds. On the icons for your bleeds are three dots along the bottom indicating which buffs have been applied to those bleeds. The first dot, coloured red by default, is for Savage Roar. The second dot is for Tiger’s Fury, and the third blue dot is for Bloodtalons. There is also a coloured dot in the top right corner. When this dot is red, it means that the the bleed is at full strength and should not be overridden. When the dot is green it means that reapplying a new bleed would be stronger than the current e.g. there is a Bloodtalons proc up.

You can see here the Rake and Rip icons. Rip has all three coloured dots highlighted meaning it currently is buffed with Savage Roar, Tiger’s Fury, and Bloodtalons. It can’t be buffed any further so the top right dot is red. Rake has only been buffed with Savage Roar and Tiger’s Fury. The top right dot is green which indicates that a spell is active (e.g. Bloodtalons) which can buff reapplied Rake.

Pros / Cons

Once I worked my way around the settings, I found that I could turn off most of the unnecessary icons, timer bars etc. The bleed strength tracking is extremely useful. Before with the old addon Badkitty, I would have to memorise on the fly the strength of my bleeds. I don’t have any data, but I am confident that this addon significantly improved my dps.

One the down side, I dislike that the addon reverts back to it’s default settings if you change a talent or change specs. The addon does appear to use a bit of memory, but I’m not sure how that impacts on performance. It would depend on individual players systems.

I can strongly recommend that you give it a go, especially if you are not currently using any addons to track your bleeds.

What addons do you use to track your bleeds? Let me know. You can leave a comment on the post, send me an email at fileunderferal@gmail.com, tweet me @Elamari_ or leave a comment on the File Under Feral Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FileUnderFeral.

~Elamari

Legion Feral Druid Hidden Artifact Appearance

Each artifact weapon has a hidden appearance associated with it. This post will cover how to obtain the Feral Druid hidden appearance.

Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the comment contributors at WoW Head for this in depth detail which greatly helped me. I am also not the original author of the macros and scripts in this post. Credit to the authors in the comments at WoW Head.

What is the Feral Druid hidden artifact appearance?
Feral Druids get what is called Feather of the Moonspirit. It is a bird like appearance complete with feathers and a beak for your Cat Form. Pretty much identical to the cat mobs in Azsuna.

The Feral Druid hidden artifact appearance – Feather of the Moonspirit. (Image source: WoW Head)

Legion Patch 7.1 Survival Guide

This week Patch 7.1 was released on October 26. With it comes some new content including:

• New Karazhan mythic dungeon
  • Entry to the dungeon require attunement. There is a guide at WoW Head. It involves running several mythic dungeons and a few short quests.
• New Trial of Valor raid
  • A new 3 boss raid that opens two weeks after Patch 7.1. Again there is a guide at WoW Head that explains the quest chains and shows the loot.
• New Suramar questline
  • Continue the Nightfallen quest chain with these new quests. They should also help with your Nightfallen reputation grind. See WoW Head’s guide.
• More world quests
• Blood of Sargeras trader
• New Raiding with Leashes
  • Pets are available from Wrath of the Lich King raids: Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader, and Icecrown Citadel.
• Class changes

A few updates for Feral Druids:

• (Balance, Guardian, Feral) Druids how have Regrowth in place of Healing Touch.
  With this update, our Healing Touch Macro will need to be updated with Regrowth. Here is the new macro

  #showtooltip
   /console autounshift 0
   /use Regrowth
   /console autounshift 1

• Activating Incarnation no longer triggers a global cooldown for any spec.
  This is a quality of life change I’ve wanted for two expansions. It’s frustrating that it comes at a time when Incarnation is not the talent of choice. A welcomed change none the less.

It appears that the farm in Mists of Pandaria (Sunsong Ranch) has been fixed also. I have been working my farm to collect the mats to craft some Sky Golem mounts to sell. They have been going for 100-110k. Mostly due to the price of herbs being high, and the ability to pick herbs in this mount without being dismounted. At the farm, the master plough was bugged only ploughing 1 square instead of 4, and there were other bugs with some of the other mechanics, pulling weeds etc. With the Blood of Sargeras trader coming with this patch, the price of herbs will likely drop through the floor, which means the price of the Sky Golem will likely drop. Hopefully not by much, maybe around to 60-70k. I’m two thirds of the way through the mats, so I will finish these batch off and see what the price is.

What are your thoughts on Patch 7.1? Too soon? Should have the problems it fixes been fixed before launch? Let me know what you think. Feel free to leave a comment on the post, send me an email at fileunderferal@gmail.com, follow me on twitter @Elamari_ or like and comment on the File Under Feral Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FileUnderFeral.

~Elamari

Cat Nap #13 – Soul Capacitor Macro

Soul Capacitor is a trinket that drops from Socrethar in Hellfire Citadel. This is a unique trinket because of the way it works. When it procs, you are actually doing no damage because it is being temporarily ‘stored’ for the duration of the proc. When it ends, your built up damage comes out of storage and is dealt in one massive hit with a multiplier. It can be great for high burst, singlet target and AOE damage.

Soul Capacitor trinket.

However there are certain situations where you might not want it to go off (the proc to finish) e.g. running away from the boss due to an ability. Obviously while you are away from the boss you are not doing any damage – thus not putting any damage into ‘storage’, and if the proc ends when no enemies are around you will deal no damage. The best way to get around this is to use a /cancelaura macro. Activating this macro cancels the proc (called Spirit Shift) from the trinket causing it to deal how ever much damage was stored at the time. This will help you get the most out of your trinket.

/cancelaura Spirit Shift

Since I’ve earned my legendary ring, I’ve been having some threat issues, particularly on the pull with this trinket. Pre pot + Berserk & Incarnation + legendary ring + heroism, and then a trinket proc on top often leaves me dead from a boss one shot. Being able to cancel the proc early helps reduce some of these threat issues.

For some further reading about this trinket I’ll direct you to an article written by zoopercat from Ask Mr. Robot at Blizzard Watch. There is also a discussion threat for this trinket over at the Fluid Druid.

Hope you are feeling refreshed after our Cat Nap.

~Elamari

Feral Druid Tips for Hellfire Citadel Part 1

I thought I’d get on the ball nice and early and post the first part to Hellfire Citadel. There is a dedicated Raid Strategies forum over at the Fluid Druid where you can share your experiences and see what other Feral’s are doing. I recommend that you have a look.

Hellfire Assault
Not a great first encounter for Feral’s given it’s an AOE fight with lots of short lived adds. What I’ve found is best is to tab Rake and Thrash, but mainly focus on the mobs with the larger health pools such as the Hulking Berserkers. You don’t want to be wasting energy on Shred’s. Using Swipe may yield some extra combo points so I use it when I see Savage Roar coming close to an end, usually around 10-15 secs to ensure I get to 5 combo points. It would be really interesting to hear what other Feral’s do on this encounter given how poor it is for us.

The Fast & the Fur-ious – Guest blog by Cantor, Challenge Modes as Feral in Warlords

So young kitten, you’re interested in the most challenging 5-man content that Warlords of Draenor has to offer? Well, you’ve come to the right place; I’m Cantor, guild leader of Omen on Emerald Dream EU, Mythic raider and 10 year veteran of World of Warcraft, and I’m here to guide you toward your dreams of those shiny, shiny Gold timed medals. I managed to take Cantor, my Feral Druid, through 9/9 Mists of Pandaria Challenge Modes in late 2013, and 8/8 Warlords Challenge Modes in April 2015.

What should I know?

• Challenge Modes are intense, difficult, timed dungeons that reward a little gear, but mostly bragging rights.
• Gear is scaled down to item level 630 (heroic dungeon blues). Gem sockets, tertiary stats and set bonuses don’t work in here, and the best way to gear up is just to chain-run heroics until you find pieces with the stat combo that you want; for Feral, this is crit and mastery. Crafting 3 pieces of WoD gear and using the re-roll items until you get the correct item suffix (Of The Peerless) is also a good way to do things.
• The dungeons are basically the same as in Heroic, but either with mechanics added or the damage ramped up to insane levels.
• Feral is one of the weakest DPS specs thanks to our abysmal AoE damage; Shadow Priests and Balance Druids also suffer, and Guardian Druids are one of the weaker tanks thanks to their total lack of utility abilities like Anti-Magic Zone, Army of the Dead, Heroic Leap, Roll, Breath of Fire and more; if you want an easy time, go Resto, as they are the strongest healers by a country mile thanks to their run-and-gun healing ability. But hey, we didn’t pick Feral for an easy ride did we?

Highmaul Raiding Feral Druid POV

With the release of Blackrock Foundry less than a week away I thought it was time to get this post out. So let’s have a look at Highmaul from a Feral Druid’s point of view.

Kargath Bladefist
I really like this fight, it is a great introductory boss. For Feral Druid’s it’s basically a second Butcher (read Patchwerk) fight. Incarnation and Bloodtalons are your go to talents. Our poor AOE damage means that we wont be assigned to the Chain Hurl group allowing us to focus on our single target damage. I found that you can use Skull Bash to charge back into the boss after the knockback from Kargath channeling Chain Hurl. I did try using Feral Charge, but Skull Bash is just as good. More for the Heroic version of the fight, but watch out where the ranged are positioned when they are targeted for his Berserker Rush. If the target is behind you and the boss turns around you can get 2 shot very easily. The damage on normal allows you to take several seconds worth of damage. On Mythic I think it’s likely a one shot. The Glyph of Stampeding Roar may help some of your ranged with the Berserker Rush, but it depends on your raid comp, there may be enough other speed boosts so yours isn’t needed. Check with your raid leader. Feel free to roll some Rejuv’s on the Impaled tank too, every bit of utility contributes to the success of the team.