From what I read (despite the context being PvP), they changed the attacks simply so that there wouldn't be a Parry or Dodge check, on account of always having to be behind the target. This would remove parried shreds in PvE encounters as well.

I'd rather not had more "bear"-talents in the Resto tree. Regarding Furor, it would be nice if they changed it like other talent-revamps into giving 4/7/10 rage and 13/27/40 energy on a shift, everytime.

If they do add something new to bear (like another avoidance or mitigation method) i'd rather like it being trainer or new ability based than to further pigeonhole us into taking certain talents.

There are already too many talents that are more or less required to tank anything. It already makes non-feral druids virtually unable to tank anything. The lack of SotF alone this will already make any decent tanking task impossible, i'd rather not make it worse.

I have to disagree on this somewhat. While we know tanks aren't at 80 and we aren't able to see what the real issues are, we've at least got some blue comments that have created alarm - the comment about how it was nice to see high armor on Druids in TBC with a suggestion that such a thing is in the past, the comments about how a Druid's main mitigation is via a high health pool.

Many might be overstepping on the level of panic and paranoia, but it's probably safer to show some concern up front with the chance of getting better face time than to sit back and wait with the assumption that the devs will get to it and everything will be fine. Meanwhile, every other class is throwing out complaints about X, Y, and Z and getting looked at while we're getting a quick glance-over because no one's really complaining.

For right now, I'm showing concern and asking that Blizzard set aside the time they claim they will go give us a good review, get our itemization down, and go through the talents. Right now, we've got a Rogue itemization and we aren't sure if that's all we're looking at, if we'll get talents to compensate for a lack of high armor, or if we'll end up with bear leather vs. cat/rogue leather again. So far, the suggestion is that we get Rogue leather and they'll fix things up via talents. I'm waiting to see that as one of the talents that would have helped in this arena was wiped out in Alpha.

Can we please, for the love of god, stop discussing the high HP Druid niche as though it's set in stone? Ghostcrawler explicitly stated it was simply an example, not a direction they were actively pursuing for us. Do you honestly believe Blizzard doesn't understand the difference between damage reduction/mitigation/avoidance vs simply having a high HP pool?

At least wait until they've announced what they have in mind. If it (as in, our niche) does turn out to be a high hp pool, that of course would be the right time to complain and/or bring up suggestions to bring us up to parity. As of now it seems people are just happy to argue for arguments' sake =/

edit:

Two more recent ghostcrawler quotes that are worth pasting here:

1) Making us crit immune from talents alone is seemingly intentional, and not due to potentially as yet unknown changes in combat mechanics or as a way to artificially curb mudflation by having tighter defense requirements.

2) They will get encounter design right. Gone shall be the Kael'thases and Illidans.

3) People are likely overreacting to the Cat vs Bear talent focus.

Theres a lot of people making a mountain out of a mole hill. I took Gnoop's post as it was the most recent but its something thats been a repeating trend through this thread.

It doesn't really matter whether we can no longer cap armour or not. Theres not much to complain about at the moment, thats the thing. We can't judge our tanking prowess till we hit 80 and see how both our gear that we are meant to tank in turns out, and how we stack up vs the other classes once they have their gear and 80 skills. The same applies to cat, until we see what damage the main dps classes are putting out at 80 it is going to be pretty tough for us to know where we stand. My personal hope is that since we have this new diversification into speccing for either full tank or full DPS is that we can now overtake classes with far more utiltiy than us like Enh shaman in the DPS meters but rest assured if we come out too low and/or there ceases to be reasons to take a feral (or a feral dps) balancing will be done to make them an equally viable option.

If we hit 80 and we can't tank a thing, then we'll get a buff. Blizzard have stated their intention to have us as viable main tanks already, they aren't just going to leave us unable to so, or drastically worse as an option for it.

With regards to "wanting Rogue gear and not having any bonus armor", I think it's important to note that gear homogenization only applies to a specific subset of gear: Random drops

You can easily justify putting bonus armor (or whatever other spec specific stats you want) on Tier 7 since the tokens do not collide with anyone else's gear.

You can easily justify putting bonus armor on Badge loot since the vendor selection does not collide with anyone else's gear.

And so on and so forth for crafted items, PvP items and reputation rewards.

Shields are a great example of this in action: Death Knights cannot block, so the tanking helms/chests/shoulders/gloves/pants/belts/boots/bracers do not have any Shield Block Rating or Shield Block value. They only have Defense Rating, Dodge Rating and Parry Rating, stats that all three tanking classes can use. Then you have the Blade-Binding Bulwark. DKs can't block, but they can't use shields either, so you're free to throw on as many "DK useless, Warrior/Paladin useful" stats on that as you want.

Isn't that the fault of bad itemization, though?

In any case, I agree that it's okay to leave Feral Tank armor on jewelry and Feral weapons - my comment was aimed more towards people who might feel that 5/6 slots worth of bonus armor would not be enough. That is, if it isn't enough, you can find it on 5/6 more without necessarily violating gear homogenization.

Personally i think the whole bonus armour thing is bad move. Ideally in wrath you should be able to tank and dps with one gearset. Yes, probably we'll all still have 2 but the thinner the gap between them gets the better.
Also high armour does mean capping, and so loss of scaling.

However the one stat which would facilitate single-set playing is probably agility, and that's been nerfed due to other scaling issues.

Having to have warrior necklaces and rings for a tank set is also bad, especially when it's easy to think up mechanics which would allow the use of rogue-friendly stats as tank stats, through talents or whatever.

The problem is the devs are talking about us having less armor than other tanks. Armor along with a slightly higher health pool is our only advantage over other tanks mitigation wise, so if you take that away we'll be left with almost nothing. Warrior for example have:

- More and better emergency buttons (50% shieldwall, last stand over berserker)
- Block for less melee damage
- 10% less physical damage and disarm
- 16% less magical damage and spellreflect
- More avoidance
- More armor too?

If we have less armor than warriors we aren't going to be viable as main tanks without compensating for the above somehow. Having a higher health pool isn't enough in any way, and the whole idea of being a damage sponge tank is flawed.

I dont want that. In fact if Blizzard reduces us to a big pile of HP im rerolling. Plain and simple. I dont want to be a mindless tank that relies heavily on his HP alone. Screw that.

I'm a post TBC guy and if that was what a druid tank was to reduced to before, i'm glad i wasnt there from the start.

Yes yes i know its still early and the latest news seems to indicate our next tree "revision" may have considerable updates.

I'm expressing my concerns in beta so i dont have to do it as much after WotLK is released. Saves time and aggravation