Moving away from bear?

[Pelleas]

Hey All!

Few words of context for my question: Until 2 weeks ago I was a Bear tank with a heal secondary spec. Being the only Druid in my raid (10), I ended up gearing the healing spec pretty fast as every leather heal drop was for me.
Then an old friend started WOW again and just joined the raid as a DK tank, I offered to stop raiding as a bear to make room for him and take a healer spot then.
I also have a warrior tank (around 5500 GS) which I like to play a lot.

The more I think about it, I don't see myself tanking anytime soon with my bear. And when I feel tanking, can still use my warrior...

I see 3 options for me which I'd like to submit to the MMO Champs community:

1) Keep a bear spec. Even if I don't play it, shit can happen and guild might need me to tank from time to time
2) Save my Bear stuff in case of #1 happens and gather some nice Balance gear. If I need to respec into bear its only 35gold. Downside: I have to spend frost emblems on my main spec (heal) so won't be a great DPSer as balance for a little while and then not much use to my raid.
3) Re-gem all my 251/264 tank gear with arpen and change my feral spec to a kitty spec. Doing that, I benefit from all my past investment on feral gear and end up with a pretty nice kitty. Only downside is the cost of re-gemming (approx 4k gold) - can also re-gem back to tank if needed for the same cost..


Please help me decide

-Pel

[Orukmeta]

Id say kitty cat if you're any good with them. You already have a tank and heal spec, so why not a dps for those rare times they have everything filled but dps?

[Sunshine]

Really, it's up to you. I don't see any reason to do #1 if you're really not expecting to tank, when you can respec for relatively little these days and some sort of dps spec is always helpful. But the decision between #2-3 depends so much on your particular group and situation that I don't think we can help. Do you prefer balance dps or cat dps? How likely is it that your guild might need you to tank occasionally? Etc.

[Findus707]

You cant leave the bear!
He will rip you apart!

[sh0ckwave]

Since you have a warrior tank I personally would regem for cat.

[Deleted]

Bear community does not approve of this thread.

At least stay Feral!

[ripponesan]

Stay bear, and let the DK do something else. DK´s are anyway the mosthy squishy tanks in the moment, and still WAY op as DD´s, so suggestion is, drop 1 DD, let the DK make DD and stay yourself a bear.

[Prokenny]

as said before, reroll feral dps you will only need few items.

[Cheezee]

DK´s are anyway the mosthy squishy tanks in the moment

I would agree with you but they can be made as tough as a bear if you gear them up correctly. My bear has less than 1k more armor than my alt DK (35,xxx vs 34,xxx). The gap grows a bit when raid buffs are applied but not by a huge margin.

[Pelleas]

Thank you all for your input!

To be honest I tried kitty DPS before and I was not a big fan of it (or, not very good at it ) - prob mostly due to the complex rotation and bad gear I had at the time.
I'd be tempted to give it a try now that I have 264 feral gear and rotation is made easier with 3.3.3 changes to mangle - but as these changes (and context) that different to justify a 4k gold regemming ???

[Zycho123]

but as these changes (and context) that different to justify a 4k gold regemming ???

Do PvP for gems:

#1 Will get your abit of training in cat dps
#2 Save you a $h!t load of gold
#3 Feral charge owns in PvP

[Mbt]

#1: Modify the bear spec into a feral cat.
#2: Practice, practice, practice. Make sure you like feral dps.
#3: If you like it, re-gem slowly, bit by bit. You said you'd be healing and rarely dps'ing. Gem over time; continue to use your Feral spec to farm insta-queue heroics. (Easily 4 heroics an hour with decent feral tank that's including carrying bad dps.)
#4: This is coming from someone who farmed Furious Resto set in a matter of 2 days up from hateful. (2 days of focus, not 48 hours of straight play, hehe.)

So, save gold, make gold, and get the gems. Win Win Win.
(Gems Needed)20 / (Average Emblem Per Heroic) = (Total Instances Needed)
then, (Total Instances)/(Average # of Heroics Completed Per Hour) = Time Investment

If Time Investment < 4k Gold, You make the call!


Better get to work!

[MushroomBomb]

I'd say it depends on how many tanks your guild has. If you have five people with valid tank gear, yet no cat dps, it might be very worth switching. That said, if you only have three tanks and a guy with 540 defense and 35k unbuffed health, it would probably be better for the guild to have someone that can come in if any of the other tanks have to miss a raid.

But really, that's just what I'd do. You should by all means figure out what you want the most.

[Dhurn]

It'd be a shame to waste all the feral gear you gathered so I'd go with the feral cat option. Having a feral spec, even without bear talents, also makes it possible to still tank heroics when you need to (Dunno about you but I cant stand any role in heroics other than tank, you get to pull top dps AND control the pace of the run. Awesome)

[Pelleas]

Thanks for all the tips guys

#1: Modify the bear spec into a feral cat.
#2: Practice, practice, practice. Make sure you like feral dps.
#3: If you like it, re-gem slowly, bit by bit.

As I pull crap dps with practicing with bear gems. How do I know whether I'm just bad at kitty dps or just ungeared. Any idea how much a bear-geared cat in 251/264s should put up as DPS? Spamming swipe/maul in Bear, I hit 2.5k dps easily in all raids.