Talid

The thing is, some of the talents have a greater increase for dps vs a greater increase for tanking. Due to the fact that you HAVE to go 11 points in to resto (I wish I could swing 16 to get Master Shapeshifter), that leaves you with 60 talent points at max level to get every useful talent in the feral tree for dpsing and tanking. With the changes to Ferocious Bite and the Feral Aggression / Rend and Tear buffs to it, you'd need 66 talent points and this is skipping Brutal Impact, Nurturing Instinct and Primal Tenacity entirely.

The idea of having to choose between Bear and Cat in your spec is annoying because neither will be as good as the class you're imitating. You don't scale as well as a rogue in cat form and you don't tank as well as a warrior in bear form.

Why even bother to spec feral if no matter what you do, you can't do it as well as a base class. The old argument of other utility has no merit any longer because it's not accurate at all. You're not going to jump out and battle rez someone when you're tanking, so why list that as a benefit of the class?

 

Ravager

Old argument?
What about shifting out of cat form to battle-rez a healer while the prot warrior tanks a raid boss? Talk about wipe prevention!
What about shifting out of cat form to innervate someone?
Hell, what about the flat +5% to crit chance that you give your group when in cat form or bear form?

In response to the "ferals can't tank as well as prot warriors and they can't DPS as well as rogues so why bother?" argument, how do you think rogues, mages, warlocks, and hunters would feel if a class can DPS as hard as them one day and be a healing champion the next? Getting a set of gear is sure hell of a lot easier than leveling to 70+ again.

 

TimWischmeier

You cannot dps and heal like the corresponding main class with the same spec and/or gearset.

Beside that: If I do not the same dps (bit less due to lotp) as a rogue, why would I deserve a dps slot in a fight where it matters? Think of Brutallus: you don't kill him beofre enrage, you raidleader ask you to make oom for a rogue. What will you reply? "Hey, but I can come in and heal if you want"? When it comes down to min/maxing, you either are competetive or not. If you're not, it's not going to help you that you would be able to respecc and do something else sub-par.

Oh, and if ferals are not allowed to be competetive with at least their tank or dps pendant, why are trees?

 

Talid

That's a really stupid comparison, sorry. Sure a druid CAN change roles and gear and become a healer. But that isn't what I am arguing. If that rogue really wants to play a healer then he can level one. Maybe that druid really DOESN'T want to play a healer and enjoys being feral only.

The feral tree is a separate beast (forgive the pun). You have two rolls in that tree, tanking and melee dps. You shouldn't HAVE to choose between the two within the one tree.

Currently, the fact that you get both in one tree is balanced by the fact that you're 80% to both roles. Having you choose one or the other without making you 100% in the one you choose is lame. In the expansion, if I choose to be a cat-based melee dps, then that dps should be able to be as good as a rogue's dps. If I choose to be a bear-based tank, then I should be able to tank as well as a warrior.

 

Unity

A Cat-specialised Druid shouldn't be 100% of a rogue. Rogues don't bring a crit buff, res or refill anyone's mana bar. A Bear-specialised Druid does need to be 100% of a Warrior since caster form utility isn't accessible while tanking.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

It seems somewhat futile to try to limit you to 100% performance in either cat or bear, when you have free respecs. It'll just end with you respeccing for the optimal role each fight. I can see why they'd want to limit what you can be in a single fight but they're deluding themselves if they think you're really making a choice.

 

• Astrylian

Don't forget that there's still that whole 'two talent builds that you can swap between' thing that may be coming, which will let us swap between Cat and Bear specs perhaps. Dunno when you'll be able to swap though, perhaps any time out of combat, perhaps only back at a trainer... Who knows, but that's definitely relevant.

I would agree though with them splitting talents up between cat and bear more, if they want us to specialize in one.

Rawr - A theorycrafting tool for Bears, Cats, Moonkin, Trees, Healadins, DPSWarrs, Retadins, Mages, ProtWarrs, Tankadins, HealingPriests, ShadowPriests, Warlocks, Rogues, EnhShams, Hunters, Elementals, RestoShams, Tank DKs, and DPS DKs!
Download Rawr v2.2.27 <--NEW Nov9th!

Are you an active Rogue / Hunter / Warlock theorycrafter and an experienced C# dev, with some spare time and a desire to help build something great for the WoW community? Send me a PM!

 

TheNameLessOne

Cat should be on par w/ fury warriors if they are going to redo the whole tree as cat and bear.

I seriously doubt they are going to redesign the entire tree however. More likely that blue doesn't really understand what they are talking about. Remember this same one that thinks kitty does equal rogue DPS currently and that the Lich King talent trees are already split into cat and bear.

 

Okoto

Could any beta testes clarify how the new predictive movement system works with regards to feral combat.

I read beta notes (I believe) on the subject yet I had understood that it was a combination of both hitbox size and latency that would factor into the inability to properly hit targets without being on top of them.

Is it now that when in cat & bear forms the hitboxes of your opponent are passively increased in size for only you ?

 

• Astrylian

No, nothing about hitboxes or ranges, specifically. Rather, it just means that the spot you see them more accurately depicts their position on the server. So when you are chasing someone and they're in range client-side, they're (more likely to be) in range server-side too.

Rawr - A theorycrafting tool for Bears, Cats, Moonkin, Trees, Healadins, DPSWarrs, Retadins, Mages, ProtWarrs, Tankadins, HealingPriests, ShadowPriests, Warlocks, Rogues, EnhShams, Hunters, Elementals, RestoShams, Tank DKs, and DPS DKs!
Download Rawr v2.2.27 <--NEW Nov9th!

Are you an active Rogue / Hunter / Warlock theorycrafter and an experienced C# dev, with some spare time and a desire to help build something great for the WoW community? Send me a PM!

 

Ravager

This is not a limitation of your talent trees, it's a limitation (by design) of your class as a whole.

 

Talid

It isn't an acceptable limitation with the looming changes to the feral tree requiring you to pick one role to excel at (dps/tanking)

 

Ravager

You left out the part where even though you excel at one role, you're still pretty damn awesome at the other one.

 

Talid

Yea sure. Except that -with the changes- if you choose to spec for tanking your (already bad) dps takes a hit. If you spec for dps, who knows how your tanking will be...we haven't seen the gear... but it will probably be a noticable decrease in effectiveness. So again the issue becomes why take a feral when you can take a moonkin or tree? Especially where DKs are apparently getting the 'Tank that can DPS when not tanking' mantle that we've had

 

Garanthir

A secondary spec, or talent bank, or whatever would help, but.... I also seem to think many folks are wanting a little too much. Sure we want to spec appropriately for encounters, but there is so much to be considered. Do you plan on tanking 5 mans, 10 mans, 25 mans,OT,MT, etc? A spec for 5 man where you are pretty much guaranteed to be the only tank might require a few extra points in one area vs. a 25 man tank spec that has many classes providing buffs/debuffs. In the case of a 25 man tank I can't see where things like IW and Feral Aggression would be required. Those few points right there pretty much give you everything you need to DPS **and** tank in a 25 man.

So to me I think the big tree is nice it really does give flexibility and allows us to "specialize" a bit.

ON EDIT: People are talking like DPS vs. Tank is some huge change, when in reality it's simply swapping a few points around. I think this is getting a bit blown out of proportion.

 

Unity

If the same build lets us tank like a Prot Warrior and DPS like a Fury one we'll deserve nerfs. I'm quite happy to need to choose to emphasise one or the other. I'd like a bear build to have enough raid synergy to still be worth bringing on a dps fight and have no reason to doubt that will be the case, any of the current bear builds still include a lot of points that benefit cat.

 

Sigtyr

True, it's better too be able to tank as well as a protection warrior and dps as well as a fury warrior by respeccing than it would be to have one spec that would put us on for example 80% of both with one spec.

I'm guessing that a true bear-spec and a true cat-spec are only gonna matter for high-end raids. We will have to see what the feral itemization will bring for us, but I assume we will be able to tank or dps 5-men instances in any feral spec.

 

ionasej

Splitting up talents would require us to at least have spell reflect and fear immunity as often as desired. If they really want us to "chose" they surely have to push bear and cat talents a bit.

Basically I agree, You need to be 100% tank if you want to be MT, and THAT IS AN ISSUE, currently in TBC and still in WOTLK. Giving us a 80%+20%-By-Viability Cat Form would fix that up - if things else would stay the same. But they are not staying the same. As official quotes state, they want us to specialize in one and thus be "worse" in another. Specialising into Tank does not result into a "full-fledged" Tank (like a warrior) and gives crap DPS in addition.

Furthermore it argues me that if you can really switch specs per encounter all other classes that have more distinct trees will have a huge huge benefit there. Going Fury or Prot is like going 100% or 100%, going cat or bear (if specced bear (was cat, sorry for typo)) will be like going 70% or 90% and if specced cat like going 80% or 80%.

Thats not what raid leaders will want.

 

tenshirou

I had a thought, they say that we are supposed to specialize, but ,at least right now, cat and feral have different gear requirements. If they do tier raiding set as in the past, are we going to get a tanking tier set and a dps tier set? I am kind of curious now how that is going to play out.

 

Grubsnik

What is this thread coming too?

The last few pages are filled with stuff i'd expect to see in the official forums, but not here. People are crying for more buffs, talking about how the druid class won't be viable and how blizzard should fix stuff, and people need to raise more racket in order to save our class. That is what the official forums are for!

The current direction blizzard is aiming for is dual purpose within the feral specs, and i personally think it looks like they will achieve that. There are basic talents which are must haves for both forms, and then there are some who will benefit one form (far) more than the other. That is all good and fine.

The fact that we are allowed to specialize deeper into Cat and Bear just means we will be much closer to the much desired 100% viability. In fact, i wouldn't be surprised to see a fully specialized cat do 100% rogue dps, while a fully specced bear works just fine as a MT. The important distinction is, what you choose to miss out on. You can get all the mitigation-bear-talents for 51 points. After that it is just a matter of which aggro-increasing talents you pick up.

A final note on armor scaling. I think Blizzard is planning on letting us get to about 80% of the armor cap. This would mean that all the armor increasing talents from shamans, priests and paladins actually make sense again vs. in TBC where getting 25% more armor just means you are 25% further past the armor cap.

 

Malazaar

Honestly, i'm not so much concerned about the bear/cat issue - this concerns maybe 5 talent points and this is not going to significantly diminish your ability to do either role, take this spec for example:

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Druid -> Talent Calculator

This has all the really good talents for cat/bear in it and still 2 points to spare. One could even argue that Savage Fury and iLotP are't really so good and get up to 4 points from that.

Lets see what i left out:

Feral Aggression: Demo Shout is a good every warrior can do better than you because his Demo Shout is stonger (if only marginally so in WotlK). How good the Bite part of it is depends on how good bite really turns out to be.

Brutal Impact: Almost pure PvP / 5mans / solo talent, it does have only few very selected uses in raiding.

Nurturing Instincts: I think it will be a very good PvP talent as you will be seeing druids a lot more in cat. As for raiding - it is a nice bonus but absolutely no requirement for cat dps.

Primal Tenacity: Only very few uses in raiding, especially now that we have Berserk.

Infected Wounds: As pointed out a few times, that is a good that can be done by a death knight or warrior - or you could decide to put your spare points into it if this becomes your role.

Rend and Tear: This is the worst talent for cat dps if you consider dps per talent point. It is nice for bear threat though so this might be your other candidate for the spare points - as it doesn't hurt cat dps either.

Either way, you are not missing out on any vital talents for cat or bear, just some marginal boosts or utility talents.



What i'm really more concerned about is Glyphs. What i have seen of them so far is that they are a good deal more powerful than some of our talents. As the slots for Glyphs is limited we will have to choose to inscribe for cat or bear. I don't know how expensive those will be but carrying a stack of those in your bag for switching might not be possible.

Also, while respeccing will be easier, you will have to change your Glyphs too every time you respec. The way i see it, this will be an even greater problem than the daily respeccing many of us are doing now.

 

Duilliath

I have to agree. It's repeated over and over that, spec wise, there's barely a difference between full bear and cat output. Doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see some bloat removed, but I have my doubts that'll happen from Blizzard's statements. Gearwise, we can't say a single thing yet as there's no tier sets/raid gear (or even 80s instances for that matter...) available.

I looked up the weather forecast for today and it doesn't include anything about the sky falling.

I can see some concerns (strength being a major stat for the other tanks), but I thought this wasn't the place for random speculation and doomsaying.

I'd be curious to learn how exactly Feral DPS would compare to Fury warriors or Enhancement shamans (which I'd rather compare us to than rogues) so we actually have a working grounds to start on.

 

Kazanir

Agreed on all counts. As pointed out earlier, the differences between "completely optimal bear build" and "completely optimal cat build" are on the order of maybe 5-10 talent points, and involve a terrible talent (Rend and Tear) that absolutely needs changes, along with some situational talents like Infected Wounds.

It's worth noting that kitties already did *decent* DPS -- although certainly not rogue-like -- in TBC by using good rotations and powershifting. More than a match for, say, an arms warrior given the proper setup. Arms warrior DPS plus the buffs of Imp. LotP and an extra innervate, a battlerez, and the ability to swap gear and offtank various adds on trash or MT certain fights with ease (see: Kalecgos, Brutallus, Twins, M'uru) without a raid swap: These things are all quite useful.

Now, since TBC we are not only getting some decent new additions to our talents for both tanking and DPS but we are also getting MAJOR new core ability buffs -- Savage Roar, Windfury Totem, new Omen of Clarity design, and in-form weapon procs. All of these are major DPS boosts and our tanking was already *really really really good*.

Now, if you're in Nihilum or SK and are really trying for world firsts, then maybe the raid leader will decide that a feral isn't completely optimal in a given situation and will trade you out for a rogue for that extra few hundred DPS on a DPS fight, or for a prot warrior or paladin for superior tanking on a certain tanking fight. But that is just the nature of the game at that level and has nothing to do with good overall class design. The *only* person posting regularly on these boards who has played at that level is dukes and he is probably one of the people that bitches the *least* (from my memory, anyway.)

If your raid leadership is trading you out on DPS fights because your tanking is 5% less effective than a 2nd prot warrior, or because you aren't doing as much DPS as a hunter or rogue, then they are kidding themselves about your utility, they are forced to run an even bigger roster of "pure classes," and are really focusing on things that don't matter. 98% of people reading this are not in bleeding-edge guilds where this is a concern.

In summary, most of you are getting overboard with the crying in this thread. It's really out of hand. Some of us have been around since Lord Funhoofs was posting the State of the Class threads on the official forums and since Zyla was making warriors mad in 2005. There is nothing right now to warrant this level of tears.

Wrath is not looking bad at all for ferals and you all just need to smoke a bowl and chill out.

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

ionasej

As I am part of that guys who repeat the current flaws in the design perspective of talent tree, stat conversion and itemization, I will (after this post, and in this regard) just shut up.

- I cannot see that Blizzard will give us 90% Rogue Damage + 10% Viability (=fair) by Talent Tree and Itemization if we go for "Cat"
- I cannot see that Blizzard wants us to be an "on par" Main Tank with Warriors (=fair) by Talents/Abilities/Itemization/ if we go for "Bear"

It is already possible (and high end raiders do that) to just respec from encounter to encounter since warlocks can port you anywhere (but in ZA). 50 gold is not much - esp it is less in TBC than in classic - and will be even less in WOTLK - furthermore Blizzard is about to take this to a next level - they want respecs to be even easier / cheaper / faster (we dont know yet exactly). I don't know about Glyphs yet, but besides glyhps you can dual spec now (as a warrior, or paladin for instance). An included dual spec is an inherit feature of the Feral Combat Tree - it justifies that we are only 90% Tank and 70% DPS in TBC->SWP. It is almost fine how it is in SWP. I do not see the situation to get better, but only worse in WOTLK, cause I do not see the 90% and 70% changing to 100% and 100% by talent tree/abiltiies/stat scaling/current known itemization.

And now I will shut up in this regards, and only raise my voice if there is any news to talents/abilities/items that has not yet been brought up.

Happy discussion, cu.

p.s. - no, exactly THAT has ALL to do with good overall class design, being viable in min/maxed situations, be it PvE or PvP, and the mainstream just takes a look at the high end progress and trys to copycat what they can. We all know the result.

 

Sahrokh

First let's stick to a "demand vs offer" model then.
The tank responsibility role demand is immense, the DPS demand is almost zero since in WoW everyone pure class and his mother are formidable DPS classes.

By having a tank and DPS spec, you already know that the average guild will demand you to be tank specced.
How many will apply to a raiding guild as "PvE DPS spec" feral druid and not be ridiculized to dust?
This is lack of foresight against the obvious that will happen.

Moreover, dailies giving immense money and warlocks being able and freely summon people everywhere exacerbated the basic "hybrid vs pure class" dilemma. Raids and even new raiders recruitment can go "all out pure classes" since there's a negligible penalty at having someone with pure class recall and respec and be the close to best, pure possible choice for every encounter.



What happened in 2 guilds I have been in TBC, once at mature T6 farm status?
The need for tanks dropped, the need for worthwhile DPS rose.
The ferals would be raiding till needed then would have to go out and be replaced by other melee DPS. Some days a warrior would just recall and respec from prot to DPS. No way an hybrid could compete with that.

In TBC our top rogue would easily go beyond 2500 DPS at Brutallus tries.
I'd love to know how both a full tank or DPS specced beta feral druid compares to rogues then.

Being asked to leave the raid for "real men" to take my spot and unable to be at first kills made me quit WoW in April and play another MMORPG that shows zero of the WoW class issues.
I'd love to know if it's worth hanging with WoW for WoLTK again or if I should just enjoy my stay elsewhere.
I exactly came over the EJ forums to read - with a credibility hopefully well beyond the "normal WoW forums" what the beta druids are experiencing now.


I never felt gimped as tank (and at Brutallus I'd get all inspired and ecstatic at how good and extremely easy I had it) but indeed I played in two guilds where they'd do swaps for DPS.
In this I disagree with you, worthwhile guilds app forums are bombarded with DPS recruitment requests, finding one more DPS warrior or rogue is not much of a "roster bother" and they tend to be quick to gear up if needed.