For straight up damage, no. But what druid doesn't tank if he has feral talents.

Personally I haven't got the heart to trade Savage fury for Natural shapeshifter.

I only run about 30% dodge (no shammy in my group usually). I very rarely MT, usually being the OT where the druid abilities of high damage while tanking, and shifting to cat to help burn down the next adds/boss can be utilised. I have 5%ish hit and wear the lower city ring and earthwarden for the weaponskill.

Tanking any mob in Karazhan, I will find myself in the position of using fff to burn a gcd while I wait for rage. Even worse, I will find myself in the position of waiting, doing nothing, because fff is on cooldown AND I have no rage.

Tanking the first 2 channelers in Mag's Lair I will go to zero rage once the first add is dead and I am only tanking one.

Tanking any of Maulgar's entourage (mage excepted of course) I will go to zero rage.

Tanking 2 of the trash in SSC I will still have out of rage moments. Fortunately, by the time the first is dead I have a sufficient aggro lead on the second.

Normal dungeons it is not an issue, I can just tank everything at once. Heroics, where I usually run with only one healer (hence heavy on the CC), I find myself going rage starved as well.

No-one else has this problem with rage managment? Constantly evaluating when you can fit a maul into the mix, should I spam lacerate because it's 2 less rage per application than spamming swipe, etc?

On mobs where I know rage will be a problem (i.e. mag first add, offtanking gruul) then I ignore maul unless I have 80+ rage. By ignoring maul you not only save the 10 rage you spend, but you get the rage from the white hits (can be 50+ if I get a crit with a 2piece malorne proc). Then mangle is highest priority, and lacerate is pretty much spammable in between. I don't know how you're running out of rage quite so much, unless maul is the primary thing you're using (doesn't sound like it from the post).

The other factor is crit. I normally run at about 26-28% crit, up to around 40ish dependant on pots/GoA/partial DPS gear/etc. Every crit is +5 rage.

After reviewing the epic item changes, anyone else noticing the drastic changes to the "hybrid" feral/resto items? All the +healing and spirit removed in favor of a lot more armor and more feral stats. Still, I don't know what I think of these items. Some like Tree-Menders Belt will be an upgrade for tanking, but these items seemed to previously be resto farming gear or 30/31 spec gear. Now I'm not sure they fill that latter role.

From my experience, the only caster support stat that matters to me as a feral druid is Intellect alone. Small amounts of +healing really don't make much difference, all that matters is having more mana so I can output more heals while still keeping enough to shift multiple times. As resto, the strength and agility just don't matter at all, although extra armor is always welcome. Really when it comes down to it, I'd rather maximize my ability in one of those two roles, not try to split my stats between DPSing and Healing. I feel I'm better off spliting stats between one of those two and survivability.

These new items have really been shifted into the feral druid category, but maybe they will be a good fit for the Healer/Off-Tank role? Barring the changes to the PvP gear which I haven't seen yet, these seem to be nice PvP items for a feral druid, but their PvE use seems limited. Looking for other thoughts on these changes.

The heroic loot is what I was referring too. Looking at my first post, I think I mis-stated my point about these items (got distracted mid-post). The items mostly had the +healing and spirit removed and had armor and feral stats added. Gives some new PvP options, but also think they could improve the feral/resto role for PvE. Then you have Tree-Mender's Belt which will become the new choice for that slot for tanking over manimal's cinch, despite the stat points used on intellect.

I was just curious if people thought these changes might allow a more resto spec'd feral druid to better fill a healer/off-tank role, or if it's just going to end up being more undesired feral loot because it has intellect (except I'd want it for PvP so maybe not that undesired).

I don't know about you, but I like the mana more than the +healing, I'm not sure if I prefer int over spirit though. Being able to shift out and do hurricane on fights like Morrogrim is great.

It strikes me as a good change, in its current format what are they good for? There's no reason to wear it over a better dps piece for farming and the only area I can see it filling out is PVP where you might want to switch between feral DPS and healing. I'd have healed more when I was last doing PVP with a full feral spec if shape shifting wasn't so expensive on a small mana pool.

It does seem to leave a rather big hole when it comes to resto and balance loot from heroics now, unless you like cloth and I realise Druids are an unpopular class but getting that mp5 defense gem gives me the sneaking suspicion there's some loot slots that could be filled by deliciously overpowered Druid gear instead.

You should be able to find a nice compilation of the changes on mmo champion.

I'm not sure how I feel about Int over Spi. One one hand, the Int is definitely better for shorter fights (3 min or less) and for times when you are chain shifting (PvP). On the other hand, Int is a very weak stat, it's about as bad as spirit was before the FSR changes way back in the day, between the pathetic int-crit ratios, and the rather pathetic returns for healers in general (even dreamstate spec doesn't justify stacking int) Int needs to be looked at by the designers. High Int items are generally considered *shard loot* unless it also has high stam, and then the reason it's used is for said stam, not the Int.

I would argue that if you're concerned about your in-form, in-combat regen, then you're better off using the potion cooldown for SMPs, rather than a DPS potion. Either way, it still makes the Spirit completely worthless.

More Int = more longevity with our mana-consuming tactics, be it powershifting, spot-healing, or random Hurricane strategies. Less Int, with a bit more Spirit, doesn't somehow allow us to do those things more often in a longer fight, it simply allows us to do them in a less 'bursty' manner, forcing us to spread the actions over more shifts, which in-turn, uses more mana.

I'd want to see straight mp/5 on feral gear before I see more Spirit.

Myself personally, I couldn't give a damn if there's Int on my gear, bear or cat. I'm not a heavy PvPer, and the majority of my shifting happens when I DPS, almost exclusively from powershifting. As long as I have enough mana to shift out to rez someone, and then shift back down, I'm content with my mana pool.

More newb druid spec questions, my druid is only 36. I think i've decided on http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=zZxhGsfroeuioVxcz for 70. My only question is do I have to take 2/2 Brutal Impact to pull off the Pounce-Mangle-Shred combo? Brutal Impact seems like a soloing type of talent to me where it's nice to have the extra bash time to shift-warstomp-heal.

OK, awesome. I have Xperl which actually shows the energy tic pulse, the idea here is to pounce right before the tic pulses so that you pounce and immediately get the energy tic? I suppose this would make more sense if I'd played a rogue before...