Cogitations on Cat Gear/Stats for Kara

One of the readers of this blog posited a question for me regarding my interpretation of the table I posted on Karazhan minimum requirements. He asked why I didn’t post a set of stats for feral kitty and since I’ve seen this question a few times I thought I’d write up a formal post in lieu of replying directly in the comments.




There are a number of good items you can get for feral cats and I think when I see this question posed, most people tend to answer it in terms of what gear to get, not what stats you should have. To that end I’ll post a couple of links I ran across from the forums, but later on I’m going to digress deeply into my thoughts on cat gear.

Here are a couple of links I’ve found that can perhaps help out Link 1 & Link 2 .

I’ve read 2.2k AP with 30% Crit is a good target starting place for cats. The basic gear choices for kitty are (one bear’s opinion here) – epic crafted chest from LW, hourglass trinket from BM, Abacus trinket from Arc, The clefthoof hide leggings, the elekk leggings or the x-52 pilot leggings from a quest in Netherstorm, the staff from Bot regular OR the Staff of Beasts from Nagrand, which is easier to get. Some folks like the hammer from PVP better than the staff Illhoof drops – but I hate PVP. I only did it to get my bear shoulders. The rogue gloves from Shattered Halls, Helm of the Claw was my DPS hat for a while (with the +12 agil meta), any decent DPS leather bracers – any of the nice DPS capes – there are several in the dungeon sets. I think I had cloak of the inciter but that wasn’t highly recommended for cats.

Mmm, If you don’t want to waste a lot of time getting gear – get the assassination set – rogue dungeon set 3a. That’s not a bad set to start with you could prob get one in a week or two. Other people will wax philosophically on the virtues of various gearing choices as a start, but I was always more focused on the tanking aspects. I gambled on picking up kitty gear as I went along, and I did.

My Digression
The KZ table I published was based on one I found on TenTonHammer, I freely admit I absconded with their table and I even noted why, because I was annoyed that I couldn’t deep link you directly to it, which in my opinion made their version all but useless – since it was hard to tell people how to find it, Go to this site, search for these words, click the third link, sacrifice a small mammal at the dark of the moon … BAH!

In all fairness I’ve even updated their chart, added color to make it easier to read and a few tweaks of my own and have since altered it based on suggestions from readers, friends and knowledgeable guild mates.

The KZ minimums table is lacking in two notable areas, Survival Hunters and Feral Kitties. I think there’s a reason for the lack of each. I know the survival hunter is a neat spec, you get exposed weakness which is a really nice boss debuff, and you get a solid trap option for CC, but in my experience, the overall consistent DPS output for BM hunters is more desirable than better traps. I know very little of MM, other than it is still a viable spec for KZ.

For feral cats, most of the time I’m in Kara, even when in cat form, I tend to stay in my tanking gear. The reason for this is that I can easily pick up a mob if the tank gets in trouble or if someone decides to pew pew the wrong target by accident. This sort of thing happens a lot to new groups – hell it happens a lot to me and both the KZ groups I run with are experienced raids.

I think the reason it's not on this chart is that you're not going to get into Kara as a kitty - you're going to go as a bear, who happens to have a cat set. A limited point of view to be sure, but perhaps the original was written by someone who wasn't into cats. However, we can correct this through a few modifications to our chart. (ohhhh, my first use of the Royal 'We')

A feral’s strength is “versatility” – it's hard to replace a rogue or lock that knows the job and does it well, but you are perhaps the most versatile class in the game. So yes, I think it's a vaild point to raise and I should make some changes.

But let’s get back to the issue of stats – as I‘ve said, I’ve read 2.2k AP with 30% Crit is the target to start. I don’t know about health pools but I’m guessing if you get the other two, the health pool your left with will be on the order of a geared pre-kara rogue. If anyone has solid info lemme know and I'll tweak it.

From what I’ve seen you’re looking to make your cat set similar to a rogues set – which only makes sense now doesn’t it? I mean, you’re a melee DPSer wearing leather … so sure, rogue sets are among your friends.

Mine wasn’t even close to that when I started, but my tank set was the best a raider could start with – and I had all the right gems and enchants. Both sets improved drastically since I was picking up both cat and bear gear as I went through the first month. I had to wait (and you may have to as well) on some of the kitty gear because our rogue got dibs on DPS leathers. Perhaps this explains the shortcomings on the chart - I was able to run kara in bear gear - almost all the time, perhaps the authors did as well, but that's still no excuse for not doing better.

We’ve all seen a lot of people with narrow minds in this game. So it will be no surprise if someone comes along and trashes my opinion, but I’d like to point out that this is simply that – my opinion. And in “My Opinion” there is no “set in stone” answer to the choice of gear/stats, only a set of guidelines and some general knowledge you can use to improve yourself.

Raiding is more about knowing your class and spec well than it is about what your gear will allow you to do. Any good raider will tell you that good raiders can make up for shortcomings in gear through skill and spec choices – at least until the gear they need drops.

I hope that helps.