I can't believe there are guilds that have enough druids to even consider "letting them" go Feral. Our timeline usually follows this pattern...

Day 1: We recruit Druid.
Day 2: We raid MC and he gets 6/8 Cenarion and his tier 2 pants on his first trip.
Day 3: We raid BWL and he gets 4 more pieces of tier 2.
Day 4: He permanently quits the game because he got 7 pieces of loot on his first raid and only 4 on his second raid. Fuck only getting 4 upgrades in 1 day!

I think we had 2 druids present on our first Nefarion kill. We had 1 druid on our most recent Onyxia kill. 2 Druids on our last MC run. Any guilds want to trade a druid or 2 for some well-geared hunters?

This discussion seems to have two parallel tracks.

1) Should druids just be healbots?

2) Viability of a true "feral spec" in raids.

The answer to #1 is a no. I think Feral Charge is incredibly useful, and it figures prominently in many of the examples listed above. But really, to be a decent bear tank situationally, you just need 11 points in Feral. Yes, the extra stamina and threat generation are crucial, but I'm still skeptical about the benefits of using a druid in a primary tank role where they need to hold aggro over others or survive massive burst damage. I'm not disputing that a 30-feral druid can do this very well. I know a druid absolutely could be a great Broodlord tank, and I know guilds have used druids to tank Vael at times. But there's a difference between being viable and being optimal. It is optimal to use bears to help offtank certain trash or boss adds in many situations. I can't think of a fight in which it is optimal to have your druid tank instead of a warrior (maybe Jin'do I guess? I don't know).

I really don't think catform DPS is a factor in any important raid setting. Sure, it speeds up MC trash farming and such, but I can't really think of very many situations in AQ where it makes sense, for example.

In any event, I think Resto/Feral is probably the best raiding build currently, and I don't understand people who look at high-AC sta/str/agi leather as garbage. It's situational gear, the same way DPS plate isn't garbage to a tank. Sure, you're probably wearing Wrath most of the time, but sometimes even the guild MT needs to put out some real damage. Similarly, there are times where you really have enough healing and just need more tanks to help control stuff, stun stuff, interrupt spells, etc.. In those situations, why wouldn't you want your druids to have epic gear for the task instead of shitty instance blues? Genesis from AQ40 will be great for this just for its incredibly hybridity. It's a set you can legitimately use both in bear and caster form, which is nice.

We had a lot of trouble getting Jin'do down, but when we tried having a druid tank it became "easymode". I know it is an isolated example but it is one where the druid tank is optimal; and for guilds whose first raid progress was ZG I'm sure it matters a lot more than it did to those doing the instance in all epics the first time.

I'm with Chupid on this and think people are being too narrow-minded.

None of us will dispute that warriors are better tanks. None of us will dispute that rogues are better for sustainable DPS. Why people keep dwelling on those points is beyond me. We're a utility class and are proud of the fact. If healing is what's called for, that's what we'll do to the best of our abilities. If you need an extra tank, we'll do that too. Regarding catform, would you rather us sit there and toss the occasional (and ultimately unnecessary) heals to top people off or would you like things to die a tad sooner? Over the length of an entire raid, a few extra seconds here and there ends up saving you a good chunk of time. And with priests soon getting new and better talents, there's going to be even more cases where there's an overabundance of healing during trash pulls.

A druid isn't as good as a warrior/priest/rogue but is still worth 1.5x as much based simply on his/her ability to fill in the blanks. In other words, the "People will just take an extra <insert class here> instead of a druid" folks can bite my ass.

Just for the sake of theorycraft, here's how I'd probably spec if I were a druid:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...555503105315001

I don't think you need the threat-generation talents unless you are MTing a raid mob/boss, and while HotW is awesome, I don't think you need it unless you are tanking a full-fledged raid boss like Broodlord. This build contemplates the readily available use of bearform for control, while still retaining significant healing capacity.

I personally dont see a problem with a feral druid, as long as they know when they can be the cat or the bear. In our raids (We have 4 prot warriors, and 1 lol dps warrior (he tanks when needed to)) We dont need a bear to pick up the trash after Twin Emps, nor do we need extra dps to kill the Mind Slayers. So we dont have ferals, so I dont have any personal experiance with them in a raid (outside an MC raid once...)

What WOULD piss me off is to watch someone get Mindflayed by a Mindslayer and then watch the druid sit in cat / bear form doing something useless while someone gets their face raped off. (true you could blame the other healers, but cmon, if your past the twin emps, you should have SOME sort of raiding experiance)

Yes, Druids can be good tanks / dps (you can argue it, I wont take a stance on it though) but you have to know when to heal. And you shouldnt run around with a 2.5k mana pool also.

Well, what you describe isn't being a "feral druid," it's being a "fucking retard."

Our "lol feral druid" has 6/8 Stormrage (three of the Resto-heavy druids have 8/8 and he's passed a fair bit of it to them), doesn't walk around in catform, and is as reliable a healer as anyone else in the guild when push comes to shove, because he's a good player.

Don't let player skill cloud your ability to analyze questions of theoretical mechanics. Not every shadow priest is a faggot who sits in Shadowform mindflaying while your tank dies or half your BGs group is getting debuffed, nor is every feral druid an idiot who rarely ever leaves catform and has 2500 mana when he does. Those players would suck and wouldn't be worth bringing along on a raid if they were 51 Restoration. Assume a baseline of competence and intelligence, and argue from there.

To use the post-Emps trash, we find it useful to assign a bearform druid to each of the Slayers on multi-Slayer pulls, to keep them controlled and away from the raid. As soon as the Mindslayers are dead, we the druids can leave bearform and heal the rest of the way as we clean up. The damage to the raid they prevent by keeping the Slayers controlled exceeds the damage they could repair were they in caster form. Seems like a reasonable tradeoff to me.

I think the appropriateness of a feral druid relies heavily on your guild's raiding situation and your personal playstyle.

When the feral tree was revamped a few patches ago, I tried out feral on test and loved it. Very fun, very dynamic compared to the healbotting I was used to. Even in good blues, I was doing significantly more damage and farming was infinitely easier and faster.

However, around that time I rolled a hunter and powerlevelled her to 60. With a decently equipped dps class for farming, I didn't really see a need for my druid to be feral. I don't PvP much, so that sealed the deal. 12/0/39 probably forever.

In a guild where there is some competition for raid spots, you'll end up using half your points on feral gear (for your playstyle) and half your points on restoration gear (so you continue to be invited to raids). In this way, you're missing out on really gearing your character the way you want to.

That was a bit of a derail, but I really thing it's feasible to include one (maybe even two) feral druids on raids, especially when you have an instance on farm status. We frequently have a feral druid in a rogue group for the drakes in BWL. He actually keeps his dps in control (favoring AP over crit) so he doesn't pull hate and can provide LoTP longer.

This didn't come out as well as it was in my head, but I have a million things to say about feral druids so it's hard to organize them.

I've specced similarly to that before. If I were to do it again, I'd get one point in improved enrage letting you gain 5 rage on demand, and drop furor entirely and replace it with improved regrowth. That way you can still charge shit as soon as you go into bear by using enrage, and being able to pick up improved regrowth is really fucking nice.

As for a situation where a druid would be 'optimal' tanking. The boss would have to have some of the following abilities:

Attack speed reducing debuff
Disarm (dropped weapon style so strongholds wouldnt protect against)
Polymorph/hex
Roots

That's why currently Jindo and Spider boss are the only times where I've heard people say "hey lets have a druid tank this"

Just a thought...
Some boss could instagib anyone that parried/blocked attacks. That would make druids ideal tanks as well.

Fixed.