To get off the subject a little bit, are those trinkets really any good for us? Seeing as haste remains one of our weakest stats.

It's obviously an oversight.

Dunno really... It's been like this for what, a month now? Hasn't been changed in any patch, and I haven't seen any blue post about it. There's no doubt they're aware of it. There's been suggestions that they'll leave the extra armor on the pvp leather, to keep the synergy with the pvp cloth that also have extra armor. Crappy reason if you ask me.

Sadly I suspect the pvp armor will be left as is, resulting in s4 being stronger than t6 for tanking. It'll be an issue for the month we have till Wotlk, and during the 70-80 leveling and then go away.

I actually just noticed a bug with a few trinkets I had copy/pasted stats and not updated correctly (including these 2). It makes them slightly less valuable, but still good for us. While haste is a low value for us, total item points can make it worth using.

[Incisor Fragment] and [Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood] are actually slightly better. However, these are BoE and it's hard to say what the availability will be for them. Some BC and the new JC/alchemy trinkets are also better, but not included for similar reasons.

They are nearly equal in value with strength very slightly ahead by my estimates. However, they are so close that in practice I'd say agility ends up being more valuable for more consistent CP (and bear value). You could also switch the food for agility too.

I have a real bad feeling, a premonition, concerning the dual-spec new feature that will be introduced in wotlk. We have already a confirmation that players will be able to switch spec easily in the course of an instance/raid clean, and i think that this bring much implications for us than the feral community may think. I mean, we are in substance "melee hybrid", a fighter that can switch on demand between a tank-warrior-plate style, and a melee dps-leather-rogue one, thanks to talents that improve two forms that are available to all druids, with a lot of passive stats boosts. A very interesting comparison was made in the us beta forum to show how our tanking, even if it's viable, is less entertaining and "active" than the others tanks because they are specialized and have, especially warriors and dk, far more tools to use, far more buttons to push than us while tanking. We were ok with that, because we had a real "second world" open to us, you tank a lot ? ok you are a sort of "wannabe warrior", it's less specialized but it's good, because the fight after you can switch to dps, change completely your role, and be efficient in that until sunwell. The other case was true too.

Now with this dual spec feature, a warrior will be able to spec tank and have a whole tree dedicated to tanking, and respec dps on the fly, arms or fury, and have two trees dedicated to dps and utility. It's the same case for paladins, a whole tree dedicated to tanking, and maybe they will be able to respec on the fly, it they have the gear, retrib or healing, and have two dedicated tree to melee dps and healing. With us, 3/4 of our talents are build with the old hybrid conceptions of feral and boosts our two aspects, just a few of them specialize us on the contrary to their claimed intent since the beginning of the beta to give us the choice between a bear spec, completely different from a cat spec. The feral tree must share the space of one tree, to two role, so it's just a question of logic that the bear oriented feral or dps-oriented, maybe if they will remain viable (viable meaning = the content can be clean with a feral, and a wws report will show that ferals will be on par with the others in terms of performances), will be less specialized because of a lack of talents. Numbers are just here to illustrate what i mean, but with this system, i'm afraid that people will see for tanking, warriors, if they spec to tanking, as 100% tanks/50% dps, bear-oriented ferals as 90% tanks (lacks of tools) and 70% dps, and for dps, the same warrior, if he will have the gear, will be 100% dps (or 100% heal for a paladin) and 50% tanking and the kitty-oriented feral 90% dps/70% tank.

It's not whining, i'm not saying that we are screwed, but i think that it's a real valid concern if the spec-switching feature will be very easy and players will be able, as blizzard said, to change spec on the fly, because this idea is not adapted to feral, our tree is already a fusion between an hypothetic bear tree, and a cat tree. If it's really the case, i think that the best idea to solve all of our problems will be to create a fourth tree, and so make a bear tree and a feline tree, with less passive stats boosts, more feral-specific and cool-looking abilities that bring us on par with the efficience (i'm not talking about viability here) of the specialists.

If people here have some toughts about this concerns, don't hesitate to post them

They'll obviously have to be very careful with how they implement dual specs. I'm guessing a very limited number of times a day and probably a long 'cast' time or something. Otherwise you'd end up with stupid stuff like "oh our healers are dead -> NE ferals ghetto vanish (so ooc) -> respec -> swap items -> resto druid in just a matter of seconds.

Anyways, I think that whatever mechanism they implement will limit respeccing on the fly. It would be dumb if all classes can choose what role they want to play on every pull (or as illustrated even within the course of a fight).

I don't see how any of these concerns are changed by any dual spec feature, People have had the exact same concerns about being 90% of a protection specced tank ever since the expansion was announced and probably before the last one too.

We might be a "simpler" version of a protection warrior (less abilities to use in a rotation, less clickies) but fact is that the developers want a full bear spec to be an equal tank to other tank classes.

A full bear spec is already different from a full cat spec meaning to be the best of each we'd need to use the dual-spec just like Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights. The overlap we have in talents only means it will be easier for Ferals to make a hybrid spec or function as a hybrid (e.g. off-tank transitioning into dps) compared to Warriors.

I'm not sure I understand where the dual spec function changes anything.

It changes things because it almost completely eliminates the value to a raid of someone who can be a very real (95% or so) tank one fight and a very real (95% or so) damager the next. Well, rather it makes it so any warrior, paly, or DK with 2 sets of gear is also able to do that. Many people didn't roll a druid with the intention of being a main tank and very much liked the roll of being able to switch back and forth. They were fine not being able to tank a few 25 man fights as well as a warrior because frankly many people find tanking all the time boring. Depending on how this is implemented, while it opens up the idea of having a druid that tanks every single fight and a warrior that is prot for some and dps for some, that's not what a lot of people want.

You're assuming that when specced pure bear or cat we are only 90% that of our parent classes. Blizzard has been clear on their intent and all theorycrafting points to that not being true. In fact, we were so far better than other classes at tanking that we were recently nerfed. Yes this removes our TBC niche, but that doesn't mean dual-specs will be bad for us.

Even if it were true, 90% is still enough to push a good feral higher than a fair parent class. It's been argued before how difficult it is to balance top and bottom end numbers when considering player skill. Those small variances in numbers could even be due to anything from bad fight mechanics to bad crit luck.

A fourth tree isn't going to happen.


Ghetto vanish, huh? If you could get ooc, why not res the healer?

Odd, I could have sworn when I looked at those originally they said BoE. They'll shift numbers around a bit in a full build, but the previous numbers are generally close to full gear. I'm sure not every feral will have the same gear when starting to raid anyway.

You get thrown in combat long before you get a rez off. :P

I'm sure something as simple as making spec swap have a cast time like hearthstone would nullify all boss-related antics, but that's a ridiculously worthless shot in the dark because we just don't know enough details on what Blizzard plans to do with the dual spec system yet.