@Tublade:

A) DPS scales and reasonably well, just other classes (especially rogues/warriors) will "outscale" you. Going full on DPS is just shortsighted in relation to how the class works, but if you want to be full DPS on boss fights, it depends on your guild more than anything.

B) Tanking wise you should always be a viable tank, it's just not quite as viable as having a prot warrior (cooldowns, some abilities "require" warrior tanks) and when they aren't tanking they're pretty useless.

C) Every class has whiners (and a large majority of them seem to show up on the official forums). You can almost certainly find someone of every spec from every class who says that theres a better class to play or better spec to play. I personally love playing a druid, and have done in both healing (pre-tbc/tbc beta) and feral (tbc) specs. Both feral and resto are perfectly viable to the end of TBC raiding as it currently stands, and having them is a significant benefit if played well (feral = tank+dps, resto = ridiculous healing value on multi-tank fights along with "buffer" on MT in single tank fights, extra CR for both). I have no experience with balance-specced druids, so I won't comment on them.

D) If you aren't using more than one form in a fight, you're limiting yourself. There are the very, very rare occurances where the fight requires one tank and no-one screws up so you don't need to switch (innervate/CR/tranquility) but almost every fight I find myself switching multiple times for more than just powershifting. If you use all your abilities well, it's of major benefit to the raid over and above the utility of being able to tank trash well and still pull some major DPS out of the bag. You should also never rule out using healing gear, as some fights become significantly easier with one "backup" healer (I do it on archimonde normally).

@Dyvozvir: Yes, but I'm not entirely sure how much. It's generally accepted that the Dragonspine is significantly better than all other trinkets for all melee classes. Obviously with the haste nerf, this is likely to be slightly different, but I still expect it to be worth more than any other trinket, including for druids. There's no hit on the [Dragonspine Trophy] btw (I assume you mean haste, not hit). If you're thinking about taking it over many other melee classes (in which case you're likely to get whined at horribly) then read my last post.

Offtanking Kael's weapons (Axe, Shield, maybe something else if you have the gear for it),
MT'ing Archimonde (Then again that's only for alliance friends. At least until the spread around Fear Ward).
MT'ing Mother Shahraz (Crucial imo, as she cannot crush druid is just so much better at tanking her.) other than that 5% crit for your melee group is awsome. Even more if you have mutilate rogues.

Actually you should tell your rogues to keep their grubby mittens off of it. Warp-Spring Coil from Void Reaver is somewhat better and if they have DST already they should really go for WSC or Ashtongue trinket (once you get their) as their second trinket slot. (As mentioned before DST, even with the haste nerf is by far the best trinket for all melee classes).

I was only refering to the specific scenario mentioned in post #605. It's a question of whether Helm and Shoulders of T4 (and the associated setbonus) outwight T6 Helm and Shoulders (and the 4pc T6 setbonus). In both scenarios you still have the 2pc T6 bonus so i didn't take it into account.

A note also, that while 2pc T4 IS (from all the spreadsheets I've seen) better than 4pc T6 but only by a very slim margin. The added Sta, Armor and stats on the T6 would probably make it better to use overall than 2pc T4 and 2pc T6 (especially since the 2pc T4 bonus can get "lost" due to powershifting or lots of procs in a row etc).

Pretty sure the Gloves and the Helm are the "smallest" upgrade from T4 to T6, not to mention the T4 non-meta socket is yellow and should be easier to socket with a good DPS gem while still retaining the socket bonus.

edit: by my calculations, the same holds for T4 to T5, the helm and gloves are the "smallest" upgrade.

In terms of item budget, the helm, legs and chest have the most points, then shoulders, then gloves. Hence it is usually considered optimal to keep the shoulders and gloves for a 2 pc bonus as these will have the least stat difference between the 2 sets.

I'd take the Helm and Shoulders. T4 Gloves are really VERY bad for DPS, even after the buff.

Not arguing with your conclusions, but how do you get an AEP of 1.24 for Str and 1.32 for Agi?

Str 2.72
Agi 2.9
Hit 1.9

Though I do think the main point behind the whole "hat" thing is that T6 hat is the last item you'll get and T5 hat is bad.

As for shoulders, I think the main problem is that you're comparing T4 to T5 and not T4 to every item available in that slot, take a brief look using the upgrade button from the modified spreadsheet shows 1 upgrade for t4 shoulders if you're using the t4 gloves to keep set bonus, and that's t6, compared to gloves which have a multitude of upgrades including Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation.

edit: Ugh, T5 shoulders were listed as 24 agi in the spreadsheet not 35, and just about every socket bonus was screwed up.

I use a slightly modified version of Lolaan's cat dps spreadsheet for my AEP numbers

2.90/2.72 = 1.066
1.32/1.24 = 1.064

Your agi/str ratio is pretty much the same as mine, as I would expect for most druids that try to keep a decent balance of AGI and STR. The actual numbers are relative.

I totally agree that there is no reason to hold on to the 2pc T5 bonus, if you can get better, by all means do so, and if you want the 2pc T5, you only need 2 pieces, not 3, so don't hesitate to replace one.

With full access to T4 and T5 I would personally probably do:
[Stag-Helm of Malorne]
[Nordrassil Feral-Mantle]
[Shadowprowler's Chestguard]
[Gauntlets of Malorne]
[Nordrassil Feral-Kilt]

Looking at the numbers with full T4-T5 access its better to use (using Boevis' numbers):
[Stag-Helm of Malorne]
[Mantle of Malorne]
[Shadowprowler's Chestguard]
[Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation]
[Nordrassil Feral-Kilt]

Looks like it. Assuming you want to get the socket bonus (which isn't completely perverse), you'd probably go for a [Shifting Nightseye] in which case that's going to give you an extra 4 agi and 2 str, which will push it above the helm in terms of upgrades from tier 4.