Runnybabbit

Per the suggestion of Chupid, starting this thread to consolidate all the various Feral hijacks (assuming they aren't tapped out by now) to prevent clutter of other discussions. And give XI a target-rich environment for AoE flaming. I kid.

Anyway, to get the ball rolling...my guild has been farming BWL for a few weeks now, and some of the druids (myself not included) are getting antsy about speccing out of heavy Resto builds. There's some tension about this since we are just getting started in AQ (eff you, low pop server) and two of our best-geared priests just quit. I am trying to assemble some ammunition to argue on behalf of our druids who are keen on Feral builds, but I have limited experience with Feral specs in general and zero experience playing them in a raid setting. Obviously, this makes me a suboptimal advocate.

I know properly geared Feral druids can acquit themselves admirably when called upon for tanking or DPS. However, the knock on druids has always been that the niche classes (warriors and rogues in this case) are better suited for those roles, so why dick around with Feral druids if you're really focused on PvE progression. This argument sits better with some than others, but I'm willing to concede that point. What I'm more interested in is how Feral druids contribute to a raid in ways that warriors and rogues can't. Do they? And, more importantly, can they do so consistently? Anecdotal "I saved the raid once" stories aren't opinion changers. I want to hear about the unique things you bring to the table each and every time you raid.

 

Elerion

Coming from a guild that has traditionally had a surplus of warriors and rogues and a low amount of druids, feral hasn't worked out well for us. One of our absolute best players went feral around the time we cleared BWL, got the best feral loot available, and did dps on tons of raids. He was consistently quite a bit below our best rogues, and tasted aggrodeath more frequently due to lack of vanish. He did do a decent job of tanking, but we have always had plenty of warriors. Due to his skill and high gear level he was still a pretty useful addition to the raid, but nowhere near as useful as a similarly geared/skilled rogue/warrior/restodruid.

 

diospadre

On one hand I really can't hold it against druids who put points in feral because of speed concerns while soloing. Personally I would never go out and farm anything for more than a few minutes, but I do know there are people out there who do enjoy it and the pain felt by resto druids when attempting to farm.

But in raid situations I just don't see the point. Out of all the content in the game, the only time I can possibly see druids' shifting into a form to be of any use is during some of the post-emps pulls and possibly on Sartura. Everything else is just pointless (and honestly an annoyance when I'm trying to pull something off a bear who is about to die because he aggroed a Wyrmguard and just won't stop taunting it.) If your guild is anything like 99% of the other guilds in wow, you have plenty of warriors. Have you ever only had 3 warriors sign up for a raid and found that you wouldn't be able to tank all of Garr's adds unless some druids went bear? Probably not. When is a raid ever hurting for melee dps? Do you somehow have no rogues or warriors in your guild? Probably not. The only times these situations arise are during the catastrophic situations that result in a large chunk of these classes dying, and by then no amount of bears or cats wearing +healing stuff is going to help you regardless of whatever amount of feral points they've got.

Even if class balances were flipped, does it really make sense to have druids that are dedicated to doing damage or tanking? A druid with points in feral can do 300 dps, but it isn't as if a druid with all those points in rest instead can't do any. Does it really make sense to putting points in tanking or dpsing when 1) they really don't do all that much more damage and 2) it wasn't necesary in the first place?

And for the guilds that do have druids with significant amounts of points in feral, do you ever really see druids going feral on raids? Sure, maybe to dps some trash or to tank an add they aggroed, but that's about the extent of it. People say "Hey let Chupid tank MC" (I'm not even going to discuss how it's year old content) but then the warriors just do it instead because they're better at it by measures of both skill and gear.

It's because putting points in feral doesn't impact a druid's healing capacity too severely that most rational people of other classes aren't so adverse to the idea. If your guild is saying that you're not allowed to put points in feral they're only a bit less stupid than the ones that require the shaman to spec Mana Spring or whatever the hell that worthless totem is named, but to try to argue that feral druids make a meaningful contribution to raids is an empty justification for increased solo and pvp prowess.

 

• Bad Luck

What Dios says makes sense to me.

I like Feral because it gives me a lot more PvP viability and doesn't impact my healing so much to make me a complete bane.

 

subscience

Yea, the "compared the number of DDs to Healers and figure out which they're going to want you to do" scenario pretty much sums it up in most cases.

The only time I can see a raid actually wanting Feral Druids is either when there's too many healers and the Druid has LotP or when the raid group has the instance down cold and just wants to clear it quick.

Edit- I agree with Bad & Diospadre. The only reason I'm putting 20 points into Feral myself is namely for Feral Charge, the MoD-equivalent talent, and the +30% Cat Form speed boost. Those just make my life easier when I'm not healing.

I have a Druid friend who is a hardcore Restoration Druid. He has something like 41 points in Restoration. :unsure:

 

Graham

Eh, your raid is a toolbox. Feral druids are a useful tool on some fights and some trash in 40-mans. In 20-mans, even more so.

Do you want 10 druids in your guild all feral? No. Is it damned useful to have a couple along for every raid? Quite often.

If you're a 50 person guild they are even more useful.

Feral druids are damned useful on Satura, and even some fights later in the zone. Not wearing the "OMFG CAT FORM" gear that they use when soloing, but useful none-the-less. They're better tanks than warriors for a couple of fights in ZG, and can tank every tankable fight in AQ20. The biggest failing of the spec is that catform doesnt have the inate aggro reduction that rogues do, and so they aren't really a useful DPS tool.

The 15/31/5 pvp spec isn't really very useful without that aggro reduction.
6/11/34 or 0/11/40 gets you the basic feral tools without sacrificing any healing abilities.
0/30/21 gets you about 85% of a druid's healing capabilities and a ton of feral utility.
24/0/27 gets you pretty good nuking DPS with insane healing effeciency.

THe basic problem is that people are used to thinking of druids as healers with a built in greater dreamless sleep potion once every 6 minutes. They aren't. They're a generalized utility healing class with speciation into either tanking utility, nuking utility (there is some with the new itemization, although it remains to be seen whether aggro will be a limiter like it is with cat) or maximized healing.

Take what you need. If you're in a 100 player guild with 8 druids and you're specifying specs, 4 resto, 3 feral, and 1 balance (24/0/27 not oomkin) is going to give you an astounding amount of flexibility when approaching fights.

 

XI-

These two sum up my feelings completely.

 

subscience

Bah, I couldn't edit this in my post on time:

Edit 2- It seems to me that in most PvE encounters (I can't think of anything off the top of my head where this wouldn't be true), you want to min/max as much as possible in order to get the best results. You want the best tanks tanking, the best DDs doing damage, the best healers healing, etc..

However, the Druid, fundamentally, falls short on each aspect but obviously has the adaptability change roles. But as someone above mentioned, if you're short on DDs, an extra Rogue or Hunter is generally not hard to come by. Nor are Warriors. However, healers can be and as a result you have a non-optimal (of course, this is debatable) Druid replacing a Priest's role - and the gap will probably widen after the 1.10 Priest updates. Of course, there are a few things a Druid brings to the table that no one else can but one the healers' favorite spells, Innervate, requires 31 points into Restoration thus further placing Druids into the "heal-bot" roles.

 

diospadre

Can bears be hexed?

 

XI-

No, and they can't be MC'd.

 

newladin

Nope, and the extra dps from warriors, not tanking, helps lots.
That bear just doesn't move unless he get ported.

all your base, are belong to us!

 

Graham

Hakkar MC varies depending on to whom you ask about it. Jin'do definately cannot hex them though.

 

• Bad Luck

And that is where our short cooldown Feral Charge comes in. :)

Edit: I'm pretty sure Hakkar would be able to MC you, I know I've been MCed by Prophet while in Bear form.

 

newladin

I think he is just talking about the hexxer fight.

all your base, are belong to us!

 

diospadre

Well no hex and they're not going to get MC'ed anyway unless Gilliam is in the raid.

edit: Yeah Bad cause insanity isn't just plain old MC.

 

Graham

Ah right, no bears can't be Jin'do MC'd AFAIK.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Well firstly, it'll take a good chunk of AQ loot to truly determine the effectiveness of a feral druid. You can't compare a druid using various blue gear to a rogue in bloodfang and expect the druid to compare.

Essentially, in a cat form DPS role, a druid provides X% of rogue dps, also has the ability to heal themselves and others in a limited fashion. In addition, they have the ability to res another player of their choosing. They can also remove curses and poisons. Finally if specced for it they provide a 3% crit aura to their group.

Compared this to a rogue, who does 100% of a rogue's damage, and also can stun things in some fights. That's ultimately all a rogue offers.

The question ultimately comes down to this:

Is the % of DPS a cat form druid provides high enough so that a feral druid's utility makes their net worth beyond the dps that you'd get by subbing in another rogue?

If their % of DPS is only 60 of a rogue you could bring, and you get to a boss where you have to burn them down as quickly as possible otherwise the raid gets wiped, then no, of course you're better off with a rogue.

But if their % is closer to 85%, and early in the fight you battle res a DPS class, letting them do their very high dps for the rest of a fight, then of course you're better off with a druid.

If a druid can get to 100% of a rogue's damage (not gonna happen), then there's no reason to bring a rogue at all except for the fact that they have the 20% passive threat reduction and vanish.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

Krag

Nope, bears can't be hexed :)

I doubt I'll ever spec feral personally, but I have no problems with others doing it. For most of the raids you'd, as others have pointed out, most likely have to be a healer for the simple fact that on most challenging fights tasks at hand are best done by the classes specialized for it. Which means warriors and rogues do the jobs a feral druid could do in feral forms. Druids on the other hand are very, very good healers and rival priests (at least until 1.10) on that front.

(speeling edit)

 

newladin

Hmm, this sounds familiar.

all your base, are belong to us!

 

◊ Lord BEEF

For bear tanking on the other hand, there's a really interesting thread comparing a warrior and druid using all "ideal" tanking gear that I found very interesting:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post744351

The basic summary is that druids are very comparable in tanking if both classes have their ideal sets of gear.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

XI-

Well, comparable I suppose is a matter of opinion. I'd rather have 0% chance of my tank getting crit than the 4.5k armor, and 1k hp.

 

Chupa

Dios, you look at it exactly opposite the way I do.

I like feral because I can contribute 300 dps or capable tanking to a raid with a very minimal impact on my healing ability. The utility is what I love so much. Healers/casters getting stomped? Bear-charge-taunt! Healing under control on trash? Cat form! Boss fight? Healbot! I also really enjoy LotP, and I know many DPS classes that enjoyed being in my group because of it. It's nice to bring more utility to a raid than just innervate.

I love, though, that feral druids are the ones who get made fun of for this, when shamans are practically equivalent. You have the Fjords who will tank anything they can, and the Relwin/Shabadus who love to do the dps, but, hey, they don't change forms in the prcess so who cares what they do, right? Why are druids expected to be nothing but healbots when the other hybrid class isn't held to the same standard? Why do we even have druids and shamans then, we should all be priests!

I love how we say lol beartank and then never actually try it, when most warriors prefer to do dps anyway and there is a large body of evidence that well-geared druids make good tanks. I love how I'm made to feel guilty every time I use cat form, even if we have plenty of healers. I love that I can do all this and still be an extremely capable healer, and yet still get made fun of regularly for doing so.

 

diospadre

Don't get me started on this.

As a warrior who enjoys tanking more than DPS it irritates me when a druid or shaman is actively fighting with me for aggro on a mob as it wastes both him and me. Bear form strikes me as something that is completely useless outside of the encounters that I listed, and saying "but we CAN tank 20mans" doesn't convince me when the real stretch of classes' merits is never in 20mans. The same goes for trash. If feral druids can shave 15 or 20 minutes off a raid's clear time that's cool, but how much time would they save a raid if they had no points in feral but went cat anyway? 10?

I think it's telling that when boss time comes around all the druids are healing away regardless of their talent specs because hey, if the raid wipes because there wasn't enough healing due to cats and bears running around there goes all that time that their extra dps had saved everyone.

I do think that just about every druid should have 11 points in prot, because seriously fuck not having intercept, but it would take a lot more than a crit aura and the ability to tank swarmguards to convince me that anything beyond those 11 wouldn't be better for the raid if they were put somewhere else.

And you shouldn't worry about being made fun of, hell we shit on our Prot warriors. however I do think that your healing abilities are what they are thanks to your above average skill as a healer and not your spec. I also don't mean to discount raids being more fun to you when you can go feral, which they obviously are.

(I wish I could bang out complaints as fast as I could these posts.)

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Against bosses, everyone switches to what they can do best for that fight. It just happens that when you go through two raid dungeons that gear you up for a particular role you tend to be better at that, so it's no surprise that druids switch to healing mode against bosses.

However druids really shouldn't go into healing mode against all bosses. For example, as a full resto spec I really miss having feral talents against jindo, ebonroc and moam as the dps I deal there removes the need for much healing to be done.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Well the whole idea is that you can live through crits much more than a warrior could.

Let's pretend there's a boss that does 10,000 damage before any armor. 15,000 on a crushing blow, and 20,000 on a crit.

A crit against the druid with the gear mentioned in that thread would be for 5572 damage, for 51% of his health. This would happen roughly 4% of the swings from the boss.

A crushing blow against a warrior with that gear would be for 4876, or 50% of his health. This would happen from roughly 15% of the attacks from the boss.

Warriors have higher overall mitigation for sure due to parry and block, but to assume "the bear will get crit and die" is just ignorance.

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