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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think alot of people are (unfairly) judging a class's viability on the talent changes that are announced so far.

Theres more re-balancing to come, and more gear to show itself.

But the biggest factor of all, is how the encounters will be tuned. What if there was a boss implemented that continually ran away and put slowing affects on the raid, but druids could powershift/infected wounds their way through it? What if there was a boss that reflected all dmg (a bit like ROS p2) except only non crit dmg? Our own stellar crit rates, plus our LOTP on others would be a necessity.

I remember back in classic wow during the TBC beta when my warlock was my main we were a bit concerned about warlocks viability in a raid setting. Through most of the content they do similar dps to other casters, but encounters were actually designed to include them. Think puppies in HKM, infernos in Mag, tanking Leo, tanking Kael add, tanking Illidan.

I agree with this. This is the biggest factor. We'll probably still be the kings of role-swapping. If there are fights that require 3-4 tanks sometimes and only 1 others later (Lurker, Mag), we are very useful. If there are fights that need a threat-sponge (Gruul, Supremus), we are useful (assuming we still put out more threat than other tanks without being hit). If there are trash clears that need a few tanks before the single tank fight and there is not enough time to swap people out, ferals can tank and dps.

If fights are mostly 1-tank, tank and spank + dps, we're in trouble. I doubt that will happen because it's boring.

I personally like most of the new talents we got and think they're moving in the right direction for ferals (WF, shared gear, pots and procs, etc).

My only concern is long term scaling and gear availability. I understand it's too early to judge our level 80 gear and end-game scaling. We will probably be balanced / overpowered at 70 (like KZ). And, they could fix things post-release. My only contention is that, given that bears only like 3 stats (1 which might cap) and that no other class likes all 3 of those stats, it will be difficult to itemize bears and also to have them scale well into WotLK. A change in how we get our survivability could fix. And now is the ideal time to do that via survivability mechanics or talents. If I were in beta, I would post there. I did post on the druids and suggestions forums. I mainly came her to get feedback from other ferals of how this could be accomplished. Some suggestions were already made, some good, some bad.

The main issue with Cat DPS is that it has a scaling issue. This has already been remarked upon by blizzard (don't have a link handy, sorry), and is something they are addressing in WotLK.

It's also worth noting that it isn't until late BT/Sunwell, that cat dps starts lagging notably behind. Meaning even if Blizzard was in the habit of repeating previous mistakes (which they are not), it still wouldn't become an issue until WotLK had been live for nearly a year.

The concern raised about glyphs is however much more relevant. Let's hope they pair them up with the 2 sets of talents.

What we need to keep in mind is that our group utility is just 5% crit for the group. And that utility becomes worse the better gear gets, 125/120 = 4.16%, 155/150 = 3.33%, so cat dps will need to scale slightly better than other melee dps to hold its own.

The one part which sounds good (provided that they will stick to it through rogue howls) is that they intend itemisation to no longer provide excessive hit, just enough to get to the yellow cap, making the hit penalty from dual wielding somewhat meaningful.

I am waiting to see which glyphs will be provided to all melee dps to form a proper understanding of where cat dps scaling will stand in WotLk.