I've debated that myself so many times I've lost count. I need to just sack up and eat the 50g to try it and see if the armor debuff is all that bad. I suspect not, since the target of your Feral Charge is (1) immobilized for half the duration of the debuff and/or (2) a caster. I wonder sometimes about Imp MotW, though. It's a great buff, obviously. But here's what you get for your 5 talent points:

~100 more armor (+285 --> +385)
+4 to all stats (+12 --> +16)
+7 to all resistances (+20 --> +27)

And that's on a buff that gets purged with great frequency in PvP by alert warlocks (and shamans if you're Alliance). I still have Imp MotW; since I'm currently 12/0/39, Furor wouldn't be very valuable. If I ever go back to 1/16/34, though, I will probably ditch Imp MotW and just buy a couple stacks of Thornroot to bring along on raids for the druids who do have it.

Which changes this discussion from feral druids to all playable classes and begs the question regarding min-maxing.

Perhaps, though I think it's also a viable discussion within the realm of min-max'ing, which this is to an extent.

The separate question of "spec optimally for raiding vs. allow more freedom and get by with what you have" has been done a million times.

I'd argue that having a range of specs among your druids, and having druids with the gear to back up those choices, may be min-max preferable to having an army of Resto-clones. Sure, when you're fighting, say, Huhuran, you'd probably prefer everyone to be Resto with Innervate and max healing capacity. But unless you plan on porting out to respec before every boss, you have to approach content in the aggregate rather than the specific. And having more tactical options because you have certain people with certain talents is always a good thing.

Having a couple of people with Conc Blow is really damn useful in AQ. Do you want everyone to have it? Fuck no. But it doesn't mean it isn't "optimal" in a raid sense.

Yeah people bring player skill into the equation a lot more than they should.

There's a big difference between having 20 in restoration and being able to "heal just fine", and having 44 in restoration and being able to heal your fucking ass off.

Restoration is an amazing talent tree and the fact that you can actually spend 44 points there and say "hey all these points are well spent and make me a better healer" means a lot. I certainly don't see any other class spending 44 points in a single tree to optimize their raiding ability.

However having every one of your druid spec that way isn't optimal for raiding I don't think.

Why?

I'm not trying to be a dick, but in a perfect 5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5 raid, what would be the disadvantage of having 5 44-restoration Druids?

Having no one with Feral Charge and thus having a much, much, much harder time keeping certain encounters under control with only 5 tanks.

Edit: Of course, it'd be great to have 5 druids innervate 5 priests at 31% on Huhuran, or to have cycling innervates throughout the Twin Emps fight, but in most situations wipes aren't caused due to raidwide OOM.

Essentially what I'm thinking of doing once the priests get their update:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?MZvM0scbZxEsoxa0o


Feral Combat (20 points)

5/5 Ferocity
4/5 Feral Aggression
2/2 Brutal Impact
1/1 Feral Charge
3/3 Sharpened Claws
3/3 Predatory Strikes
2/2 Blood Frenzy

Restoration (31 points)

5/5 Improved Mark of the Wild
5/5 Improved Healing Touch
5/5 Nature's Focus
1/2 Improved Enrage
3/3 Reflection
1/1 Insect Swarm
5/5 Tranquil Spirit
1/1 Nature's Swiftness
4/5 Gift of Nature
1/1 Innervate

Feral Charge does not a Feral Druid make. There are plenty of Restoration Druids with Feral Charge. So, beyond that, what is the advantage? With 11 points in Feral you can get 3 key talents (-5 Rage to Maul, +15% Threat while in Bear Form, and Feral Charge), and if that can't help you offtank with adequate healing, then it's a personal problem, not a spec problem.

So, same question, different wording - With the same makeup, what is the advantage of having a few Feral Druids over 5 Druids with 40/11 or some variant that still stays close to it?

To go from 7/0/44 to 0/11/40, it's simply dropping 4 points in Subtlety, which quite obviously doesn't effect your healing ability.

Personally I agree with you. That's why my preferred build was heavy Resto with a bit of Feral.

If I could hand-pick everyone's talent specs and we had a 5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5 raid, I'd probably want one druid with 44 Resto, 3 druids with 0/11/40 or 0/1X/3X, and one druid with LotP.

Gurg should design encounters for Blizzard. This would be hilarious.

Okay now here's a challenge. Make a situation where having a moonkin in a raid would be optimal.

Taunt-immune boss that has a very heavy arcane vulnerability and high AC?

What if you have to fight on the moon and unless you have moonkin aura you run out of air

That's very much like my build with a few points in Restoration shifted around for a more PvP focus (5/5 Imp. Regrowth, etc.).

However, the more I looked at my talents, I realized that Nature's Grasp is extremely good for PvP. Then the -30% from Natural Shapeshifter looked awesome...

Blah. I might just go 8/12/31. :unsure:

Please no.

Right now, I have imp. regrowth, nature's grasp, and natural shapeshifter. Those first two are probably the ones I'm going to miss the most if/when I respec. Nature's grasp is handy not only in pvp but in AQ20 as well. But when it comes down to a choice between imp. regrowth and gift of nature, the comprehensiveness of gift is going to be more useful in the long run.

A minimum of 15 of your raiders will die assuming you have the "optimal" 5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5 raid.

One thought I've had on all this. Many of you have advocated pretty heavy resto builds, with only a few feral points, with the defining ability, by and large being feral charge. Which seems like you're looking for the charge -> bash combo, etc. You're looking the immobilize. So my question to you is this, Gurg you for example said you like them on Sartura. What's the difference between a druid in resto gear charge -> bash, and one that's wearing feral gear, other than the resto one heals better.

And offtanking, aided by the stuns and intercept when squirrely mobs get away.

A druid can't really tank a raid mob in caster leather any more than a warrior can tank a raid mob in full DPS gear.

Obviously if the druid were doing nothing but shift-->feral charge-->revert, gear would be irrelevant, but there's a bit more to it than that.

A boss that has very high physical damage mitigation and has to be killed within a set time. Doesn't have unusual burst damage potential or AoE.

Tangent: considering there is an entire instance of fire immune mobs, Blizzard doesn't seem to have made much use of high physical mitigation on raid bosses.

5 mages would do more damage than 4 mages and a moonkin, even with the aura factored in.

Yeah, and the priests will still get all the credit. So screw 'em. ;)