Feral Druid 5.0/Mists of Pandaria Gear List published!

After long hours of wowheading, I’ve finished up the 5.0/Mists of Pandaria gearing list for ferals! I’ve included an excerpt below: hit this link for the full list.

Here’s your feral gearing list for Mists! Some quick notes:

Slots to fill!

• PvP gear doesn’t suck! I haven’t listed PvP gear here, but the low-level stuff is very comparable to equivalent item-level PvE gear, since you no longer lose a secondary stat on most items. Crafted Contender’s gear is great for starting 5-man heroics; Dreadful gear is perfectly acceptable as a 5-man heroic drop replacement. (Malevolent gear isn’t as comparably good, since you start losing socket bonuses/set bonuses.)
• Your basic leveling/gearing strat will be to quest through Kun-Lai at 87 (to unlock Vale/Golden Lotus and gain Shado-Pan rep), then Townlong Steppes at 88 (more Shado-Pan), then Dread Wastes at 89 (Klaxxi). Once you ding 90,  run dailies in the Vale of Eternal Blessings for Golden Lotus rep: once you get GL to revered, daily hubs will open for the other factions. You shouldn’t need dailies to get to honored (except August Celestials) but anything past that will take some daily quest grinding.
• Justice Points are used for buying honored rep gear, Valor Points are used for buying revered rep gear. Don’t stress too much about Valor Points, as you’ll have to do a lot of daily grinding before you can use them anyway. (If you heard about VP’s being used to upgrade gear, that mechanic’s been pushed to 5.1.)
• If you are in well-gemmed/enchanted raid gear, I wouldn’t start trying to replace gear until level 88, and don’t break your set bonus until 90. The free OOC proc when you use TF is great for leveling.
• In general, mastery >> crit  > hit/exp = haste. If you choose to hit/exp cap (7.5% for each), you’ll take a small theoretical DPS loss, but you’ll likely make up for it with a cleaner rotation. I expect bleed damage to get reduced a bit though, so mastery will likely fall back some.
• Expect crafted gear to be very expensive because of the Spirit of Harmony requirement, which isn’t tradable.
• Neither set bonus is very good. The 2pc set bonus is worth about 0.5% DPS. The 4pc set bonus is worth about 0.75% DPS. That said, I wouldn’t break them unless you’re upgrading at least two pieces a full tier, or at least three pieces a half-tier.
• Off-sets: The head, shoulder, and chest slot off-sets are a half-tier lower than the tier gear, so don’t prioritize those. LFR/Normal-mode raiders will likely prefer to go offset gloves, since the Murderer’s Gloves (crafted) are much better itemized than tier gloves. Progression raiders will likely prefer to go offset legs, since the “elite” off-set legs are better itemized and a half-tier higher than the tier legs.
• I’ve cut this list off roughly around 440/450; a full set of 437 gear can be obtained in Dread Wastes to fill missing spots.

2H Weapon

As always, weapon DPS remains a feral’s best friend, so go for the best you can find. The archaeology spear is actually the best pre-raid weapon you can get, if you want to take the time to go dig it up.

This is an excerpt – click here for the full guide.