Make Feral Raid Spec be OFFTANK instead of 2 specs : DPS or TANK.

[Reddenaltmer]

Call me stupid, but with this spec I think you can get the best of both aspects on a pure pve aspect.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

Again, i stress that this is NOT a little bit of everything feral spec, definitely not for the druids who spends half their time pvping and half their time doing heroics or other low end raids. From what I can tell you can be a perfectly good main tank OR off tank, as well as catching all the cat dps talents.

[StokaCRO]

By my opinion its wrong to make druid the "offtank" class.

If i have "tank" spec why wouldn't i be able to tank as well as the rest??? As a wise man on the forum said to be the best OT is like being the best 4th dps in the raid -.-

There is no real reason to make druids OT...if you wanna be cat...take the "dps" talents...no need to whine about respec...50g isn't that much!
Dumb thing is to hear ... you should leave the party on this boss coz your dps is low and there is no need for OT now...but you can come after -.-

If you have 2 players with similar gear and similar skill...why in the gods name would more useful than the other at the same job if they both aim for the same thing -.-

[Shuror]

With current Blizz trend to buff all plate tanks (AND INCREASE THEIR HYBRID potential) it is slap in the face that feral druid will have to chose subspec of spec and specifically chose ONLY ONE distinctive ROLE.

That is bull. Why the hell buff overall class scaling for plate tanks, while give feral druids only ONE role inside of spec?

THAT IS WRONG DIRECTION TO PIGEONHOLE FERAL DRUIDS!

WRAAAAH.

Or no. The point of the slight diversion between tanking and DPS talents is to allow bears to be main tanks equivalent to the other tanks, without making the others completely redundant through doing more DPS than them.

With the upcoming diversion(no, it's not tuned yet by far), it will probably be possible for Feral Druids to keep their "jack of all trades" spec through sacrificing some tank and some DPS talents, and basically keep their current role like it is now in TBC. However, most people will probably tend to want to specialize, as obviously that will make them stronger in the role they prefer to play, DPS or tanking.

This will not mean the Bear specced Druid is a downright bad DPSer, as he will still get plenty of Cat bonuses from talents which he mainly take for tanking. However, he will obviously be a little worse than a Cat specced druid, and that is perfectly fine by me.

[StokaCRO]

As druid tank there is some things that are dumb in this thread

-Title of the thread
-Meaning of the thread

and that should be it...

First for all you non feral druids.....if you hate that we can go cat and bear without respec REROLL DRUID !!!!!!!
Hell if you like to OT so much ask blizz to give you more +HEAL GEAR ....it would be IMBA even more...you can tank, dps and heal at the same time....hell...why dont you even generate gold while you do that...coz everyone is admiring your imbaness!!!

IF i tank...why in the world would it be good for me to hear...you can tank trash but ill tank boss...you just dont cut it...oh look a T gear dropped...i thing priest should get it ...he is infact Main Healer...your just an OT...not that much meaning for a progress -.-

i seen prot palas...ooh...you cant do a thing if your not tanking...ofc -.-...if you cant grind in tank specc REROLL to druid...we are imba
Druid tanking is a symphony orchestra for what you call tanking -.-

Warriors are useless beside TANK...we should be best bla bla bla...tell that to the gnome who owned my a** in 2secs in AB...if you think we are better REROLL

and once you rerolled and seen that you cant go to arena feral but as resto...and that you have to have 2x more gear to "tank" and that you smash your head when you c the DPS you make compared to real DPS of other classes...you realize that only OP thing druid has is that damn bird instant cast...and thats it!

[metzin]

Offtank ?

Really, it's a stupid idea. A very stupid idea.

Why the hell would you bring an offtank when you could just bring a real tanking class. It'll take you 5 more seconds to down the trash and you don't carry any of the risk. Come to the boss and you'll have a tank capable of maintaining aggro and defending themselves instead of an offtank struggling in both areas.

Ummm how about if you need 3 or 4 tanks for trash but only 2 for the bosses. Why totally gimp your DPS by having Prot MT's on the boss when you could have feral druids in cat on the boss and feral druids in bear on trash?

How about if you need a tank who will be doing far more DPSing then tanking, why take the hit to DPS with a prot tank when you can have a feral druid?

While I think forcing feral druids to be offtank and nothing more is a rather stupid idea, it doesn't change the fact that off tanks who can do DPS is a good thing to have.


As for the previous poster, if you are so unhappy with your class, maybe its time to take your own advise and reroll.

[Shuror]

Ummm how about if you need 3 or 4 tanks for trash but only 2 for the bosses. Why totally gimp your DPS by having Prot MT's on the boss when you could have feral druids in cat on the boss and feral druids in bear on trash?

How about if you need a tank who will be doing far more DPSing then tanking, why take the hit to DPS with a prot tank when you can have a feral druid?

While I think forcing feral druids to be offtank and nothing more is a rather stupid idea, it doesn't change the fact that off tanks who can do DPS is a good thing to have.


As for the previous poster, if you are so unhappy with your class, maybe its time to take your own advise and reroll.

As a blue said, ferals aren't good enough if the only incentive to bring them is trash killing. I agree with him.

[gronyon]

Ummm how about if you need 3 or 4 tanks for trash but only 2 for the bosses. Why totally gimp your DPS by having Prot MT's on the boss when you could have feral druids in cat on the boss and feral druids in bear on trash?

+1.
My idea of the OT is that you can :
- be better at tanking where you need a "weak" extra tank
- be better at threat generation for very short tanking situations
- able to support the main tank with tools that complement him or save him rage & gcd

Take beginning of BC, with fights like Magth, you are more than happy to have a decent tank with nice aggro gen for the first adds to down. If you put full tanks everywhere, assuming their threat generation is slightly under one of an OT, your dps are slowed down by threat limits, and once the add is down, the full tank isn't bring much dps for the rest of the adds.
That's the kind of situation where polymorphing gear and role is king.

BUT I agree that :
- pigeonholing druids to that simple role pauses a lot of issues, typically : stay away from most raids, because there is no such situation where extra tanks are required but its a dps issue fight.
- after all, difference between a bear dps-based threat generation, and a full tank ability-based generation is minor, especially since WOTLK seems to increase a lot the part dps takes into threat.
- the CAT spec, if exactly that : be a decent tank enough for tanking trash and occasionnal tanking adds (lurker, 3 or 4th Void tank, alar's little phoenices, etc.)
- 8% of the 25-man population, 20% of the 10-man/5man population needs to be able to Main Tank bosses, so relying on 4 classes to elligible to do so, is a wise move from Blizzard

Finally (I am the OP), I'm ok with what blizzard proposes.

I'm yet still missing that "tank support role" when i'm cat or bear trash tanking. snif. Point is, I wish to have features available in BOTH forms. Infested Wounds as a replacement for Thunder Clap won't do it, since TC will be a high aggro move. Demo roar is weaker than shout, and not available to cat. Only remain FFF but that brings so little to threat.

What about feral aura grants expertise ?

[StokaCRO]

All in all:

If you wanna be MT pick full tanking talents and get full tank gear

If you wanna be OT pick a bit of bear and a bit of cat talents ( though they all seem the same to me except 1-2 skills ) and collect 2 sets of gear

If you wanna be DPS...well...figure it out -.-

The way you c it is ... don't give me a choice of talents...make all ferals the same as they are now -.-

Last time i checked the CHOICE is way better than NO CHOICE

Everyone can be an OT if you give them the gear -.-...no need to make a spec for BEST SECOND OF SOMETHING IN THE WORLD

This is better for all druids...just remember the MC and NAX...and the big question... TO HEAL OR NOT TO PLAY

[Spoonerism]

I am raiding on a feral druid, I am lucky to be doing cat dps mainly, but ofc I have a tanking set on me at all times and if we need an extra tank I switch gear before the pull and we're fine.

personally I like the changes to improve cat dps - I just hope it means we scale a little better with gear, and maybe come a little closer to rogues without outgearing them if we are specced and geared for pure melee dps(you can gear for it atm but you cant really spec for kitty right now).

In WotLK I will be specccing cat and will still have a tanking set...just in case

[ohnoesBurrs]

Offtank ?

Really, it's a stupid idea. A very stupid idea.

Why the hell would you bring an offtank when you could just bring a real tanking class. It'll take you 5 more seconds to down the trash and you don't carry any of the risk. Come to the boss and you'll have a tank capable of maintaining aggro and defending themselves instead of an offtank struggling in both areas.

As a feral endgame raiding druid, several thoughts:

1) Ferals are more than capable at building threat; in fact, it's one of their primary strengths. Early on in content (T5 & most of T6), druids are unmatched for their threat generation. This, of course, evens out a bit but never to the detriment of the feral tank; his threatgen is never an issue.

2) Ferals do have good survivability. Their high armor makes them easier to heal for pure physical damage fights. Their stam multipliers make them able to gain absurd amounts of health if you know how to exploit it. Their main problem is the lack of oh-crap buttons aside from trinkets (Moroes'/Insignia is no shieldwall/last stand/anything close). Berzerk will be good but I will have to playtest it somewhat to see if it can stand up to Shieldwall/last stand in practice.

3) The role of the Offtank is not just to tank loose mobs in trash but rather to tank secondary targets in a bossfight. The druid is currently ideal for the role because a) he has strong snap aggrogen and b) he can return to catform, continue to buff his party with LotP while outputting mediocre but substantial dps (in my threatset which I use for OT, I can pull 1k-1.2k dps which is certainly not roguelvl but far better than nothing). The druid will never be wasted in such a setup.
Ask yourself, what else does the prot paladin bring to the fight once he's done with his tanking role? DPS? Har har. Healing? With his 5k manapool, he'll be oom within 30 seconds and won't have contributed anything meaningful to the healing.
Ask yourself, what else does the prot warrior bring to the fight once he's done with his tanking role? DPS? Again, har har. Yes, a prot warrior in full T6 dps gear and in an ideal group with windfury and heavy cooldowns available and no threat limitations will output decent dps (I've seen 1.5k on gorefiend). However, that's a lot of if's and if he's offtanking, then he's wearing tanking gear and will find himself in a tank-support group so his usefulness after tanking his mob will have been expired.

While druids have many good tools for OT'ing, they are not the premier choice for the role because they lack the ability to MT but because any other tanking class would be useless beyond their role as tank. I don't MT lolarchie, gorefiend, or felmyst even though it would make it quite easier because our two prot warriors would just sit there with their thumbs up their asses.

[caow]

bad idea close thread

[Disturbed]

i really like the idea of having 2 specs w/o paying a trainer like the blue mentioned, but it needs limitations. if you were able to drop ooc and respec/swap gear that would be some overpowered stuff. imagine arena. get ooc, drink, respec lol, swap gear, RAWR! that would be awesome.

1. you'd have to restrict its use from arenas completely as well as restricting it in combat. beyond that im not sure. it could be pretty unfair for world pvp ooc so maybe some kinda restriction that wouldnt effect raiding ooc.

2. if youre in pve raid it would be nice to respec for a boss then go back to the old spec afterward and continue raiding. thats great for hybrids and special boss fights. also good if someone leaves raid early or doesnt show up one day and you need to respec to fill his role..

3. it would be great for healers and tanks so they can go solo farm gold/mats/quests after raids.

4. it would be great for pve'ers who wanna go pvp after a raid and not spend 100g 3x a week to spec for it.

i for one am sick of having alts farm because my tank/healer cant do it himself.
i for one am sick of my pve spec not getting to pvp cause the cost to respec is rediculous.