So you want to stand in front of the bosses in the raid? Would be very healthy for you and the tank...

What? I don't get your reasoning.

If mr. warrior takes 2k incoming dps and mr. druid takes 2.4k. Healer1 heals mr.warrior for a 2k heal which would heal the druid for 2*1.2=2.4k from the same amount of mana.

If;

1. Druid has 20% more health than the Warrior
2. Druid avoids 20% less damage than the Warrior
3. Druid gets a 20% healing bonus over the Warrior

From a healer point of view, it would be easier to heal the druid due to more consistent damage and a larger health pool. They would handle unavoidable melee specials much better than a warrior. If wotlk healing does become more reactive and less spam healing, perhaps the healing bonus could be leasened to 10% for bears to make it a little more balanced.

They should just add sides or behind and allow 270°

@ Vodrin that is why in my post pointing at "please suggest it onto beta game/forums" you can find 10-20% Bear and 20-30% Cat @ NI. 15% Bear and 30% Cat would be nice for example - and btw after the nerf to agility->crit it should add bonus healing by 100% of agility or by 50% of strength and 50% of agility - or better just by 30% of AP.

Do I get a choice when the boss fight requires me to stand in front? I don't have a different feral tree to spec into to get a different main attack and being reduced to spamming mangle isn't interesting or going to let me be a good choice for any such fight compared to other dps classes is it now?

Think about what I'm asking instead of just writing it off because I very much doubt Blizzard are done with boss fights where you don't have the luxury of choosing to always be behind the boss.

Neither in MH nor in BT I can find any encounter where you "have to".

Problems - though - occur on Winterchill, where you can have D&C on one side but cannot move to the front and on Na'jetus where you have to be at the back and thus add one more restriction to positioning setup - besides that there are a few fights where you have to stand in front from time to time, but none where you have to stand on the back side (in my memory) - tanking Murmur in Cat Form is an issue - yes :P

All in all its more a PvP issue. There I still prefer the 270° solution (right now its effectivly 170° anyway) instead of a all sides solution. It gives us (and Mutilate) flavour - yes it can be a drawback, but why not buff other things (like Mana Drain for Cats and NI buffed more for Cats and implemented for Bears) and keep this "special" thing. With improved SAP and alike Pounce really has to be all sides, but thats it. Shred is basically fine.

I'll try to dig up the source later, but I saw a blue post saying that attacks that can only be done from behind (eg shred, backstab) will no longer be dodgeable.

Im not certain if that was NPC's or just players, however.

They can't be parried - PvE + PvP
They can't be dodged - PvP only

That's on account of having to be behind someone/something, which should automatically take care of the no-dodge / no-parry mechanic.

Don't take this the wrong way, especially from someone who decided to reroll to a Deathknight (however, I decided to do so long ago before any of these worries came to the forefront), but I think a lot of these worries are somewhat overblown. Not quite much ado about nothing overblown but the sky definitely isn't falling and your role as a viable tank--off, main, or whatever you prefer / your guild needs--will not go away. It may be diminished in some way but it will NOT suddenly disappear unless you yourself are not worth keeping as a tank if you are no better than some other guy.

Heck, if you're simply better at your job than the average tank out there, you'll be used even when better classes exist. I've been raid off-tanking since Garr (adds) in Molten Core and doing serious tanking ever since we reached Broodlord in BWL; I got my first tanking opportunity when we needed another body to hold onto a Garr add and simply moved up from there to being a regular offtank on Sulfuron(sp?) and Domo (again, more of a 'we need another warm body here' thing). When we hit Broodlord, we were moving forward smoothly in BWL and I was in a comfortable 'swing' slot in the raid; I'd heal or tank a corner on Razorgore, DPS on stuff like Vael (or heal if we were short), be part of the spam-tanking in Supression Room, heal during the three drakes, and usually Chromag, and tank on Broodlord and Nef (we used a 3+3+MT tank setup for the doors, I was usually put on whichever door was 'weaker' because swipe was still way, way OP).

Why was I on the tanking rotation for Broodlord and Nef? Because Broodlord couldn't quite worst-case one-round me (Melee + MS + Blastwave wouldn't quite do it but Melee + MS + Blastwave + Parry-Hasted-Melee would >.>) and because I was a better option for a Nef door than all but our MT or our first two OTs (our MT was always great and our top two OTs were usually top-notch, but after that point... :-/). I was 'easier' to heal on Broodlord because my slightly higher armor DR% and slightly larger HP pool gave me less spiky spikes and gave more margin for error. I was vastly harder to heal on the Nef doors because I took 100% magic damage from the trash that I held--which sucked. A lot.--and I simply didn't have parry to negate at least a few hits; I was simply a 100% worse choice than a warrior was... but nobody but our best three or four, out of six or seven tanks that we needed, could get the work done. So, I was thrown at a door and got the job done.

The point is that, even if your class is lackluster in some relatively noticeable way, yet maintains some advantages that are at least semi-unique, or if the player is just worth having along, you will have no problems getting raid invites in non-bleeding-edge-hardcore guilds. Bleeding-edge-hardcore guilds will always--ok, often--minmax to the point of bringing 50 people to a 25 man raid if they must in order to have the 'best' makeup for each encounter. Guilds that are the next step down will most likely bring what provides them with the most effective raid with the least headaches. Now, while we could not swing between solid tank, decent dps, & good *filler* healer in BC as we could in WoW 1.X, maybe that WILL be possible in WotLK with the 'second spec' thing that we keep hearing about every now and then. If so, this will revive the hybrid capabilities of Hybrid classes, including the Druid, as long as you do your due diligence and collect offspec gear of at least one kind.

In fact, I'd love to see Naxx-10 or Naxx-25 almost require some changing role requirements as you go through the wings. Maybe the Spider(?) wing would require more DPS but less tanking, the Deathknight wing would culminate in 4H, so maybe it might require stronger tanking than the others, the Abomination wing--ending in Loatheb, correct?--could be more demanding on your healers, etc. The most hardcore could bring a raid with enough alternates to do each wing, and each encounter, 'perfectly' but the guys a step or two down could have their members push the 'swap spec button' every 30-60 minutes--again, if it exists--and perform the different roles required of them, even if slightly suboptimal for whatever reason.

Thoughts?

Kil'Jaeden springs to mind, most of any fights using a bouncing beam mechanic (Maiden) and of course Thaddius 50% of the time. It's a long list I agree but why concern ourselves with fight mechanics now? It should be safe to assume we're going to see some of the best boss fight mechanics reused in some fashion for new fights.

Ignoring the unpleasantness of it in PVP for a moment what justifications are there for it to only work as it does? The only reason that I can fathom is they don't want ferals to be more effective in solo grinding or it's just the feral backstab and that's that?

I understand and appreciate all the discussion, but sincerely in my humble opinion, Druids should be worked as the last class. First they need to know what they want for warriors, rogues, mages and priests, after that, they can work our varios specs/emulations based on that adding the flavor aspect of the class. After all, since we were real noobs, all we know is that we are compared to the original classes from which we clone the skills. But, of course, our tweaking can´t be rushed afterwards, it needs to receive as much care as the first tweak (similar to mages dps/utility upgrade in the most recent patches).

They're referring to PvP, where due to lag Shred is dodged and parried very often. Try to land a shred on a rogue with Evasion on and you'll see this. It's a welcome change that's honestly been a long time coming.