Remove all bonus armor from the game. Increase bear form multiplier so that rogue gear provides equivalent armor as feral T6. Lower the multiplier in arenas. Easy problem (too much snowflake-gear), easy solution.

Or the armor could be moved to weapons and relics, allowing for more multi-class friendly armor without removing that mechanic. Admittedly, armor-weapon options would add an additional drop to some boss loot tables, loot which nobody but a druid would want--unless they made 'universal' feral staves rather than continuing to separate them by use (either tanking or dps)--but one weapon per instance is probably preferable to multiple items. I wouldn't count a Druid's ability to stack armor out entirely at this point; even if the only +Armor items that remain are rings, trinkets, and weapons, that's still 5 slots which could receive a lot of armor without 'ruining' a piece of gear for a DPS class (heck, if the pieces are itemized well, they might be useful for EVERY tank class, even with some budget spent in +Armor).

Also worth pointing out that if they're sticking with class specific sets based off token drops (which seems to have worked relatively well so far) that there's no reason not to keep a number of high armour pieces achievable only by that route. Additionally this allows higher stamina levels than will often be wanted on dps to gear to be used as well which is the other major issue.

Pretty sure I recall that DKs are supposed to be tanking with DW or 2H. If it's 2H then ferals and DKs could share 2H maces with armor. Warriors and pallies would also be happy enough with 1Hers with armor on them, but then you have to find a offhand for the feral - and that just gives me nightmares of Stitches' Femur.

Jewelry isn't that hard to get around--throw it on a rep/badge/rep+badge vendor, or switch rings over to a tokenized system. The more difficult problem is the disproportionate desire of stamina against DPS stats on piece that a rogue and a bear would both want. On Tier armor (and other token pieces) this is obviously not a problem, but it means that you can't thin out offset gear without making it bad for one or the other, or both. There are a few ways around this. One is simply that encounters expect gear to give tanks the same base stamina as a DPS class, plus talents gems enchants consumables. Another is that offspec gear is meant to fill itemization holes or make up for drops that never drop, which means they don't have to be optimal, just "good enough" compared to a better-optimized dungeon blue, which a middle-of-the-road epic might be able to do.

+AC is probably on its way out as a common stat because it's the best stat for one spec and negligible for all the other classes, which runs counter to the whole paradigm of streamlining itemization. The best arguement for leaving it in is probably cloth PvP gear making it more widely desirable than just one spec, but that still leaves AC leather as relatively niche.

EDIT: DKs couldn't easily share weapons with druids unless they benefit from feral AP. Their agro looks largely damage-based, so they couldn't take the loss in base weapon DPS.

As I was browsing through deathknight.info's screenshots, I saw that a group of NPCs were discussing Naxxramas boss battle tactics, with holographic projections of each of the Naxx bosses. That's probably the source of the "ghostly" models.

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As far as Leather drops are concerned, I do agree with Cube that the impetus seems to be towards slimming it down to just 2 kinds: Physical leather for both DPS and tanking Ferals, plus Rogues, then Spellpower leather for both Moonkin and Resto Druids.

Upping the talented crit reduction to 6% means that Feral tanks won't need any defense on their gear, and will instead leverage on their high AGI to dodge conversion for avoidance.

Bonus armor is an intriguing question:
I don't like the idea of putting it on Feral weapons, because that's still going to necessitate separate weapons for both Cats and Bears, then you end up with the current situation of the best Bear weapon coming from SSC trash, while both the BT drop and the 150 badge staff are all for Cats.

I think it's much more likely that we'll see a variation on what's happening now. That is, bonus armor will be coming from Heavy Clefthoof-esque crafted sets (no collision with Rogues), 5-man drops (limited, but acceptable collision with Rogues*), tanking jewelry (very little to no collision with Warriors/Paladins/DKs**) and finally tier gear (no collision with Rogues).

*I've always been of the opinion that you can generally afford to make 5-man drops a lot more "cluttered" than raid drops, because 5-mans are infinitely more farmable.

**I think it was math'ed out in the Mechanics forum that a single point of armor was roughly equal to 1 HP for a Paladin/Warrior if you're only taking physical damage, so armor on jewelry is hardly a wasted stat for us, and is at times even welcome on some of our best pieces.

I would advocate moving feral staves to the badge vendor or reputations; [Earthwarden] was a huge buff to feral tanking at the start of BC. Perhaps even move to the Sunwell system; a 2handed axe/sword/mace itemized for ret pallies/warriors/DKs drops off a boss, a druid wins it, and turns it + a small fee/reagent in return for a feral staff, either DPS or tanking.

It seems odd to monkey around with a system that's working so well in BC (although admittedly itemization blows, which is more a fault with the itemization team rather than the system's fault).

Another point that came to my mind is a little thing in the character screen. While talents increasing the chances to hit critically are included when showing the crit rating, talents that increase the chance to hit aren't. An example would be precision. Also only the mainhand crit rating is shown, this is why the good old question (weapon specialisation) is asked by many new rogues over and over again.

Yeah, removal of feral AP would fix that and also be nice in general. It's a pretty silly mechanic now. Is there really that much worry about caster-form white-DPS? Though I guess if they're mainly using maces some DPSers might be interested. Which I'm not sure is a bad thing.

To get around stamina problems on rogue vs tbear gear, somewhat, you could raise the stamina bonus in bear form. You might have to tweak feral threat mechanics at the same time - since druids would then be wearing high DPS armor to tank in. And then they can't really have a high-threat set - since almost all armor would be "high-threat"

So I guess in general, if rogue and feral gear were to completely merge, it would weaken feral's choices in tank gear. Not something I'd want.

Considering how caster weapons such as the Gladiator's War Staff and Gladiator's Maul had their attack speed drastically decreased to lower their white hit top-ends, yes, caster-form white-DPS seems to be a concern, or at least from a PvP perspective.

Removing feral AP is a great idea if they could do it elegantly, because it's something that only one spec might want. Either you're feral and want it, or you aren't and you wouldn't notice if it got removed from the game. (Of course, a better approach might be to just make it "free" from an itemization POV, which I thought they were already doing?)

Removing bonus AC is quite a different issue. True, it's only godly for one particular spec, but it's a perfectly good stat for other tanks. It may not be the best use of the itemization points, but it's still a good stat. There are plenty of warriors wearing gear with bonus AC right now (the badge tanking cloak being a prime example) who would be upset if the bonus AC was removed.

One part of the game IS letting people juggle different stat types which all do different useful things to try and maximize their performance with the gear they have available to them. (Parry vs Dodge vs Stam vs Block Val vs Block Rating vs AC, for example.) Removing bonus AC slightly decreases the number of stats to juggle for a tank; I don't see that as being unambigously good.

Removing feral AP is a great idea if they could do it elegantly, because it's something that only one spec might want. Either you're feral and want it, or you aren't and you wouldn't notice if it got removed from the game. (Of course, a better approach might be to just make it "free" from an itemization POV, which I thought they were already doing?)

Predatory Strikes is getting changed such that it increases any AP on your weapon by 7/14/20%. If this was bumped up high enough, I imagine it would allow Feral Druids to share normal weapon itemization.

1. Blizzard has stated that they do not want to require a non-DK character to "unlock" a DK because everyone would then rush through WOTLK, trying to complete that quest as fast as possible without taking time to appreciate any of the content.

2. It's very, very preemptive to say that the DK will not feel "epic" enough and you'll need a special quest line without first knowing what his current starting questlines are.

Feral tanking and other tanking aswell is getting a serious overhaul. The Shield Block change for warriors indicates a removal of crushing blows, a huge buff for druids. On the other hand their agility conversion rates gets changed which is a nurf. Another thing is the change to SotF which is a plain buff, but might indicate a pure merge with rogue armor, leaving less bear specific armor and stats in the game which is a nurf.
On top of that all tanking classes get their damage output changed, bears using rogue gear might be fine as it is.

For my taste there are a bit too many vague infos or unknown variables right now to see where its heading. I agree though on feral staves being problematic, especially if you look at the history of bear and cat specific and sometimes poorly itemized staves in BC. A merge with other 2H weapon wielders would be less problematic than to keep the current system up.

On second thought, perhaps my previous statement about Predatory Strikes was a little off:

[Gladiator's Maul] has 68.7 DPS and 894 Feral AP
[Gladiator's Bonegrinder] has 118.6 DPS

All other stats (STR, STA, hit rating, crit rating, resil rating) are equal.

For a Feral Druid, the Bonegrinder offers (32 * 2 * 1.1) or 70.4 AP. In order to match the Maul's 894 AP, it would have to get a 635% bonus from Predatory Strikes' "increased AP from weapon" effect. That's a little excessive.

I think a white DPS conversion would be the best way to do this instead: "You receive x Feral AP for every DPS above y", where y is the baseline DPS of the weapon if it didn't spend any points on DPS - for example, we know the baseline for a level 70 one-hander is 41.1 DPS from all the caster weapons*.

If they're worried about out-of-form white hits, they could also add the clause "but the weapon's DPS is reduced by z".

Follow-up question: Is 68.7 DPS baseline for a two-hander? An ilevel 115 [Continuum Blade] has 41.4 DPS, and that 41.4 figure holds up all the way to [Sunflare], A [Gladiator's Maul] has 68.7 DPS, but the [Merciless Gladiator's Maul] has 70.7 DPS, [Staff of the Forest Lord] has 72.2, then finally [Brutal Gladiator's Staff] has 71.4 DPS, despite having a higher item level.

Looking at the [Gladiator's War Staff], [Merciless Gladiator's War Staff] and [Vengeful Gladiator's War Staff] progression, the weapon DPS increases too. What gives?

The base "weapon" DPS for a cat is 55.4 DPS. The [Gladiator's Bonegrinder] has 118.6 DPS, the [Gladiator's Maul] has 894 F-AP. 894 AP corresponds to 63.9 and added to the 55.4 base-DPS, you get 119.3 total "weapon" DPS. Very close to the DPS of the Bonegrinder. This equivalence continues: [Brutal Gladiator's Bonegrinder], [Brutal Gladiator's Staff]. 140.3 DPS on the Bonegrinder. 1197 F-AP on the staff becomes 85.5, added to the base-DPS gives 140.9 total "weapon" DPS.

In order to remove feral AP, all Blizzard has to do is convert any DPS higher than 55.4 (this value is lower before level 60, but remains constant from that point on) on the weapon to AP at the default 14:1 rate. They could go further than that and just say that the "weapon DPS" of a Cat is equal to the DPS of the weapon he has equipped, with the speed fixed at the standard 1.0 before haste. This however, reduces the scalability somewhat, as some talents (Hide of the Wild) and raid-buffs (Unleashed Rage) improve the feral-AP component that current weapons provide. Some talents and mechanics will have to be adjusted to compensate for this drop in scalability.

Yes, I know. I was just stating that it is what i would like to see for a hero class.

But on the second point, I do agree, I just didn't think of that first i guess.

Change feral attack power weapons give strenght instead. Then warriors, deathknights and ret paladins would share same maces.

You realize this is upwards of 600 strength on current weapons?

With all the talk of itemization, would it be completely unreasonable to have 1 set of each armor class? All the stats that are useful for any plate wearer (for example) could be on all plate gear. Would it hurt anything if a holy paladin had strength? or a DK had Spell power? Would it break the game if a rogue had spell power on his/her leather gear? I don't see why all gear can't have all stats then individual classes would have talents to modify their favorite stats, perhaps even convert unused stats to useful ones, intellect ===> Strength for example.

This is a good idea, been thinking alot about it as spell penetration is pretty useless for raiding casters. They could also make it so that the missed(resisted) spells don't actually hit the boss, but shoot off above the bosses head or something. Would add something to the raid experience at least.

Examples why this would be a problem:
The DPS warrior with 30% dodge, 30% parry, and 10% miss, more than double your maximum health and able to MS for half your health bar.

Holy Paladin with same defensive stats and 3000 plus heal and enough mana to cast for 5 minutes straight.

And they're carrying your WSG flag, camping your AV tower, or AB flag.

Only way I can see this happening is if weapon damage simply stops scaling with ilevel, and damage increases all come from raw stats for everyone. That 25-man Naxxramas purple sword does not have a higher built-in DPS than the blue from your last 5-man, but it has considerably more str/agi/ap/whatever. Do that, and feral AP can easily be removed. Would rogues and warriors tolerate that?