I just don’t get it to be 100% honest. Maybe any druids reading this site (other than Stef) can make some sense as to what the general desire for feral is. So far I can’t see what all the fuss is about.
The design is for bears to be viable, end-game main tanks. The design is for cats to be viable, end-game melee dps. In both cases you are going to need the right talents, good gear, skill and companions who can back you up — I don’t mean to imply raiding will be easy.
If you want to do a little tanking and dps, you probably won’t be as optimal at either, though you’ll probably always be better at switching between the two than other classes. In order to be as good at tanking as the other classes, you might have to give up a few talents that maximize your dps, and vice versa. This is a good thing — it lets you choose to actually be a main tank.
We are adding a new class to Lich King, as well as improving the raid viability of specs such as Arcane mage, Survival hunter and Balance druid. That means you have 30 available specs for 25 slots. There are two ways to design around this problem. One is that there are 25 mandatory specs and 5 that shouldn’t be raiding. Boo. A more fun, interesting and ultimately fair direction is that you actually have some choices in who to bring. Imagine running a raid with no warrior tanks at all.
Don’t worry about your bears. The armor and other changes were done to fix itemization issues, not to nerf druids. You’ve already gotten the ability to drink pots in bear form and benefit from weapon enchants and windfury. We have plenty of knobs to turn to make sure you can do your job even better than you could in LK. (src)
From my encounters with ferals druids, it seems that most of them love to melee kitty dps, but bear tank just so they can get into raids. I guess it’s almost the difference between a ret/prot pally and fury/prot warrior.
From what I understand, they want to be great melee dps so that they can hold onto the hope of being a preferred melee dps in raids, but also want viability of tanking so that they don’t have to sit around while competing for a spot with the other 3000 feral druids on the server.
Taking a feral druid as melee dps and not heals or tanking is not all that common in my experiences. Most would prefer that the druid brings their tanking or healing gear, regardless of what they invite them to do.
I, myself, think it’s much more useful to lvl up multiple characters to fill multiple slots, but some people don’t want to put in that kind of work. I’ve seen several “off-spec” ppl with no chance of getting in a raid, lvl a character of a different class just to have a chance to see end-game content *cough* healer *cough*.
Did I get off subject? Anyway, the point was, they want to melee dps, but will tank if that is their only option. Some druids truly do enjoy tanking and wouldn’t have it any other way, but how many times have you heard a druid say, “SEXY KITTY!”
Too many, had a cowdruid trying to sex me up the other night… and it was a boy
love that you have to have good gear part the mention.
now , lets do a search on items usuable by druids , with armor > 500 (i consider that tanking stats for armor , should replace t4 right ?
i get 3!! items in the database , 2 weapons with armor but NO stamina , 1 chest that is for boomkin.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/
i know it’s not filled yet but does show the love we are getting imo :/
*a not so happy feral.
I think most ferals would have been happy keeping the same role in burning crusade except with better cat form DPS scaling and some shiney new abilities to make both forms function better. Ferals are getting this, but are now being sort of ‘forced’ to spec more bear-like or cat-like. I personally see what blizzard is doing to the feral tree… they are making it more death knight-like (our obvious direct competition in WOTLK).
What do ferals want to do? I imagine more would like to feral DPS/raid support and off tank when absolutely needed (similar to a blood death/unholy death knight?).
What will happen? Ferals will likely take the middle ground between the cat-like/bear-like specs and do a bit of both or spec to be viable endgame main tanks imho.
Doesn’t bother me, would like to see berzerk on a lower CD since most tanks in the game seem to be getting wicked new abilities while PVE ferals get rehashed lower tier abilities of other classes. I think if berzerk were split into two different abilities for each form on a 3 min CD (this i key), then ferals would be happy. Digressing a bit I know, but I think it would shut ferals up. Me at least. =)
Funny part is that I have a druid lvl 72 now… I have been tanking from the beginning, own buffs 17.9k HP and 19k Armor, with a dodge rating of 40 percent.
here comes the funny part… my DPS in Bear is Higher than in Catform. Last night i tanked the Nexus and had a DPS of 912.2!!! While in cat i cant get higher than 788.4!!! in BF I have 2.8 AP and in CF 3.1k AP!!
So Druids arent nerfed
From my point of vieuw… im very happy ith the changes they made. I have an average threatbuild of 1800 now 
so i found it highly interesting.
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Darkspear&n=Pantzer
Check me out!
Interesting … as a druid tank who dps’s when needed, I have to say I had a visceral to the idea that most feral druids would prefer to dps. Maybe the druids in my guild are just a bunch of misfits, but our raid leader has noticed that we really prefer to tank over kitty dpsing. We dps when needed because that’s our job, but those of us who tank really want to be in the MT role, and there has been some frustration with blizzard in BC over the fact that we had to work a lot harder to tank at the same level as prot warriors, or even prot pallys.
We also have been relegated to the OT slot more often than not because of our flexibility, and to some degree, that’s what we signed up for (unless, like me, you picked a druid as your first character and only later discovered what your “true” role was once you more fully understood the game). It looks now like Blizzard is collapsing some of the class diversity it has had in the past. As far as I can tell, bears are now as effective at aoe tanking as pallys, and as effective at single-target tanking as warriors. We’re stilly hybrids, and to be sure there will be marginal advantages to the “pure” classes and builds, but consider:
1) Bears with the right build are crit proof without any +def gear
2) Bears with the right spec and glyphs hit multiple targets with 3 out of 4 of their primary bread-and-butter abilities
3) Damage output in bear is increased. More threat=more viable tank
4) Nerfs in armor and health have been matched by environmental nerfs. I think the end result is I’m tougher, relative to the mobs I tank, than I ever was.
5) Our gear requirements are a lot simpler now, allowing us to focus on stam and agi in addition to the obvious armor rating. Coupled with the mitigation and stam talents, we can increase our stats much much faster than we could for BC raiding.
Couple this with the fact that other classes/builds will be more effective dpsing, and that means we don’t always have to be the class that tanks only when there’s room for all the tanks in the raid. Overall, bear tanks have really benefited from all of the changes, which is the point I think the Blue quoted in the OP was making (and I believe that was the original question asked in this post…) Whether the game has benefited is an open question … obviously, it’s important to maintain some differences between the various classes and specs. How well Blizz balances this with the need for viability among all classes remains to be seen.
Its alot easier to tank now after WotLK then before, higher dmg mitigation, and we actually have dmg mirigation against spells and such. No problem holding aggro anymore, changes to swipe is great, the new talent, berserk is great not to mention the glyph that makes maul hit 2 mobs instead of one.
Whats alittle bit sad is that the tank classes got closer to eachother, it not as much, this tanking class is alot better here anymore, so you are not so specialized as before, when druids came up in max dmg mitigation from armor without a problem and had loads of life, but problem with spells and aggro and such. It was nice with hte diffrence, but we became stronger so Im happy
I’m getting carpal tunnel syndrome from hitting swipe every global cooldown x_x
My first character was a druid in the bc era, i stopped at lvl 60 and started a rogue. Once i heard my guild needed a tank i tought my druid lw, looked up some gearing cities and was 70 and geared for heroics in 2 weeks. In bc gearing for druids is so much easier then any other tanks. The fact that druids can be really flexible with gear makes tanking more fun and contributes to the classes playing style. I kno most wont like to hear this but i believe blizzard should have stuck wit the same gear concept. I didnt like def being taked away from druids, even though you needed the right talents to be crit immune. I think all tanks should have defense as a stat at all times. When being a druid tank most of their dps gear comes from drops that other leather users didnt need anymore or fight over but now that druids can tank in rogue gear, its a basic free-for-all.
So yea i do believe blizzard has become lazy with the new expansion to the point where many dont play the game cause it no longer lives up to their gameplay. Im glad to see druids coming along but i rather have the tank classes different to the own content.
I’m pretty disappointed with the gear choices for druids in WOTLK. We get one trinket and a belt from the badge vendor for tanking – on top of that, the badge belt is trumped by the belt from UK. My Drood tank has all the heroic drop/badge/rep items that are best for tanking pre-naxx, the problem is… I don’t see much naxx gear that is even that much better. I’ve seen a staff that has great stam, but lacks the armor – T7 gear can be tanked in, but for a stam based tank, you’re better off tanking in Polar gear :-/ I’m not a LW (unfortunately) but am still sitting at 36k, 35% dodge in bear.
I actually had people give me shit because I tanked OS 25 in polar gear – afterwards I asked “how’d I do? *snicker*” – they were pleasantly suprised.
Unlike the first comment above – saying how we’re all rogues that just tank because we can is not true in my case, I built and leveled my druid as a tank (had a healer buddy along for the ride). I want him to be a viable raiding tank and he is… but there’s not much more I can do or aquire – so I play my 80 resto shaman.
Well I play a druid too, and I reached 80 as a Boomkin and was recruited to a raiding guild as a Boomkin and got some pretty good Boomkin gear, but then I decided to drop my healing offspec to go offspec Tank for guild progression, and guess what, I started out in Polar gear.
I slowly worked my way around the lack of rings/necks/trinkets for tanking bears and now have quite good tanking gear, including 2 t7.5 and im wondering if it’s worth going for the 4 bonus. Just this week I maintanked 25naxx and it was just fine, no major problems what so ever. My current stats without any buffs at all in bear are: 32,292 HP 26,908 Armor 36.83% dodge. That fully buffed brings me to around 43k hp (with commanding shout) 30k armor and 44% doge. To be honest, I think I am fully capable of delivering solid tanking performances in Ulduar. Obviously, more work needs to be done (as I still wear Polar Boots) but the possibility of druid tanks if quite far from gone. The only problem is that you dont really have a good dmg reduction mechanism (something like shield wall or something). Only thing we can do is pump ourselves full of HP (I reach 60k during Survival Instinct full buffed with the glyph) but that still requires the same amount of healing.
Anyway, Im looking forward to the new Skins patch and I hope druid tanks are soon gonna get a break and some true druid tank gear is gonna come around. Till then, just make peace with your rogues xD
I just made a wotlk geared boomkin and felt like having a geared tank os what is a good talent tree?
you mean a good build?
Wierd comments you get here. @ Steph: As my guild’s main tank (and a bear) I can tell you the polar set is fine to use for a few Ulduar fights (preferred for Hodir at least) and don’t underestimate the reliability of barkskin. It’s not a big saver like the other guys have but it’s up every minute and that gives us some breathing room on fights like hodir where frozen blows just keep popping up. Also, do you spec into Frenzied Regeneration? If you do it becomes another very useful tanking cooldown as 20% bonus healing on top of the 10k-12k you’ll heal yourself for during it is on par with any other 3-minute CD any other tank has in Ulduar.