How is feral DPS/tanking?

[Rooflesstoofless]

A good friend of mine got me into WoW during TBC but was a twice a week for a few hours kind of player so I never raided or did any kind of end game before leaving the game because of school/life/etc...I think I stopped playing around level 58.

I came back in late WotLK and rolled a DK under advisement of my friend but was thinking about leveling a feral druid again for tanking and dps. The same friend says they are a no go sending screenshots from raidbots but I think he's full of shit (I know people can generally do better than what they show on those sites in terms of their placement against other classes).

How is tanking and dps with druids currently?

[Thunderbro]

I find tanking and DPS on my feral druid amazing. As a tank, I could do more damage than some of the rather meh-players, and as offspec DPS, I find myself often out playing others in their main spec. Overall, I think feral druids are slightly overpowered in the sense that they can put out good damage while in tank spec, and put out great damage in kitty spec, even with tank gear.

Honestly, I love my feral. Been playing since BC. I've tried other tank classes, and nothing comes close to bears. One thing to note, though, is that feral dps is a bit tough to learn as you have MANY abilities to watch and judge, but I find it much more entertaining and satisfying that an Arcane Mage.

[Rooflesstoofless]

That is great to hear. I remember being able to switch over to bear form if the the tank ever went down (even though I was dps) and as long as the healer was on top of things we could get the boss down. Thanks again for the insight.

[revilfour]

I find tanking and DPS on my feral druid amazing. As a tank, I could do more damage than some of the rather meh-players, and as offspec DPS, I find myself often out playing others in their main spec. Overall, I think feral druids are slightly overpowered in the sense that they can put out good damage while in tank spec, and put out great damage in kitty spec, even with tank gear.

Honestly, I love my feral. Been playing since BC. I've tried other tank classes, and nothing comes close to bears. One thing to note, though, is that feral dps is a bit tough to learn as you have MANY abilities to watch and judge, but I find it much more entertaining and satisfying that an Arcane Mage.

Could not agree more.

[Avutu]

I find tanking and DPS on my feral druid amazing. As a tank, I could do more damage than some of the rather meh-players, and as offspec DPS, I find myself often out playing others in their main spec. Overall, I think feral druids are slightly overpowered in the sense that they can put out good damage while in tank spec, and put out great damage in kitty spec, even with tank gear.

Honestly, I love my feral. Been playing since BC. I've tried other tank classes, and nothing comes close to bears. One thing to note, though, is that feral dps is a bit tough to learn as you have MANY abilities to watch and judge, but I find it much more entertaining and satisfying that an Arcane Mage.

Amen to this

[xrayEU]

I really love cat dps right now, you really feel that you get rewarded if you don't mess up your rotation, but if you do mess it up you will end up at the bottom of the DPS list.

That is great to hear. I remember being able to switch over to bear form if the the tank ever went down (even though I was dps) and as long as the healer was on top of things we could get the boss down. Thanks again for the insight.

You are still able to do that for a short time, maybe not on some of the heroic bosses, using Bark skin and Survival Instincts and scream to healers to keep you up until the tank gets a CR

[Deleted]

I love playing druids more then any other class, theres so much flexibility as we are the only class with a healer/tank/melee AND ranged dps option.

Only problem I have is how often i respec and the 100000's of items of gear in my bags and banks for pve and pvp xD

[Fiana]

How is tanking and dps with druids currently?

I think there is no reliable source of information about it, but I have strong feeling that Bear tank is worst tank in current content.
Warriors and paladins always took less damage than druids and damage taken was less spiky.
Nowdays with armor buff and huge itemlevel of gear even DKs take less damage than druids.
Add some additional utility - like kiting blood for warrior tanks and solo-tanking yor'sahj for DKs and you will get overall picture.

Feral dps is simply the lowest out of all classes. Thats it. You can't compete with others, sorry. On some bosses you can take advantage of your class, like hagara, on some bosses you will get dps penalty just because you are feral druid - like ultraxion. Anyway, there is no chance that you will EVER be able to beat some overpowered classes or even rank close (5%-10%) to them.

Most people decided to stop playing ferals at all.
A lot of raid leaders do not take ferals to raids and a lot of guilds don't have ferals in their roster.
In the beginning of 4.3 ferals were widely used to offtank adds on heroic spine, but nowdays with 20% nerf on tendons you can go with either 3 tanks or just 2 tanks.

So yeah.. its hard times for ferals. Well, just like it was from the beginning of the expansion actually.

Anyways for casual raiding 10-20% less dps or 5% more damage taken just does not really matter. In some cases, like casual 10man guilds, feral druid can be actually useful because he can tank and dps in pretty much the same gear.

[pigglitt]

I've been playing my feral druid since BC, and i love it, still do. And imo, Bears are not "worst tank in current content" we bring alot of utility to the raid, combat rez, stampeeding roar, an occasional tranq, and from what i've seen, the highest tank dps avalible.

And for DK's ability to solotank yorsajh? my guild has got HC Yorsajh on farm, and ive been able to solo tank him just fine, as has our Protpally, we are however a 10man guild, so i cant say anything about 25man, but Yorsajh 10HC is perfectly solotankable by any tankclass. I can safely say, that i have yet to see a fight, were our Protpally or our Protwarr has taken less damage then me.
I do agree that we can be abit spiky, compared to paladins and warriors, but we are in no way inferior to them.

Feral dps rotation can be quite tricky and unforgiving, but if executed right way, can be very rewarding. However, i do feel that kitty dps is abit lower then pretty much all other classes atm, could be cuz of my own skill lvl isnt enough to compete, or just that kittehs are in a bad place atm.

All in all, i love druids and i will never stop loving them!

[Fiana]

Sadly its hard to understand the benefits of the classes when you don't deal with cutting edge content without overgear and prior to all nerfs.
Also its hard to understand the importance of tank mechanics when you raid in 10man and bosses just don't hit hard enough.

I think people who raid 10man will never understand what kind of nightmare was Yor'sahj25 pre nerf. It was simply the hardest boss before spine. Enrage timer was insanely tough. It was so tough, that best guilds in the world with best dps in the world were not able to push him before enrage.
It was nerfed late on week1 of heroic modes. Just 27 25man guilds were able to down it before nerf. And over 900 10man guilds(obviously no nerf was even needed, no wonder that you have this crap on farm).
We decided to go with 1 tank and managed to kill him pre nerf. It was impossible without DK tank due to debuff mechanic, that can be completely ignored in 10man.

Zon'ozz hitted like a truck. Damn it, he killed our poor feral tank in 2 hits even with saving cooldowns. We used warrior and he was dead in few pulls. Warrior was taking considerably less damage.

Ultraxion was pretty tough dps race in 391 gear in 25man. 10man raids did not even understand how could someone survive to 6min hard enrage, but 25man guilds had to. Again, dps requirement for 25man ultraxion was extrimely high in 25man and ridiculously low in 10man. Funny enough, DKs actually do more damage than feral bears on single target boss. We used Warrior and DK as tanks, and cat to heal in last seconds. Bear tank was not an option.

Warmaster Blackhorn was pretty fun guy. We wiped a lot until we understand simple thing - we can use DK tank to take Twilight Barrage solo. It greatly simplified the fight and

Spine of deathwing. Prot warrior. Thats it. I heard about people who kited blood with paladins and even DKs, but its just beyond sanity. Kiting 150 blood with warrior is easy, kiting 150 blood with any other class is suicide. There was additional 30+ blood sitting on second tank and bear tank took just too much damage from it. MUCH more than warrior or paladin. Cats were widely used on this fight because they provided good dps on tendon and were able to tank adds without taking much damage, but again, no place for feral tank itself.

Whats the point of all the examples above? Well, pretty simple. There is no place for druid tank in 25man guild. Its useless. You can always replace him with other tank without losing anything. But current content required prot warrior and DK was really helpful.

AND besides of that, bear tank always took more damage than other tanks in dragon soul. It can vary between bosses, but in average on all bosses he took considerably more damage.

As of feral cat - yes, it was good to have feral cat on some bosses. But there was no reason to take it to all others. Every time I killed new boss I said - hey guys, look, I'm the first feral who killed this boss. And it was true. For every 50 rogues there was 1 feral. Top progression guilds just did not take cats to raids. Period.
Damn it, look at worldoflogs, there is still just a little bit more than a hundred cats who killed spine and madness.

Ofc all above does not matter at all if you raid in casual 10man guild. I'm pretty sure that you can be top dps as feral cat, tank everything in dps gear, kite, res, heal and do whatever else needed - you are limited just by your own skill.

[Tholle]

I think there is no reliable source of information about it, but I have strong feeling that Bear tank is worst tank in current content.
Warriors and paladins always took less damage than druids and damage taken was less spiky.
Nowdays with armor buff and huge itemlevel of gear even DKs take less damage than druids.
Add some additional utility - like kiting blood for warrior tanks and solo-tanking yor'sahj for DKs and you will get overall picture.

Feral dps is simply the lowest out of all classes. Thats it. You can't compete with others, sorry. On some bosses you can take advantage of your class, like hagara, on some bosses you will get dps penalty just because you are feral druid - like ultraxion. Anyway, there is no chance that you will EVER be able to beat some overpowered classes or even rank close (5%-10%) to them.

Most people decided to stop playing ferals at all.
A lot of raid leaders do not take ferals to raids and a lot of guilds don't have ferals in their roster.
In the beginning of 4.3 ferals were widely used to offtank adds on heroic spine, but nowdays with 20% nerf on tendons you can go with either 3 tanks or just 2 tanks.

So yeah.. its hard times for ferals. Well, just like it was from the beginning of the expansion actually.

Anyways for casual raiding 10-20% less dps or 5% more damage taken just does not really matter. In some cases, like casual 10man guilds, feral druid can be actually useful because he can tank and dps in pretty much the same gear.

I totally disagree with pretty much everything in this post. Bear tanks are not the worst tank in the current content, nor is any tank - some are just less faceroll than others (read death knight). If you know your class well and the encounter, you should be able to tank as well on a druid as any other tank. As an example I've solo-tanked Yor'sahj heroic on my paladin many times.

DPS-wise feral dps might not be topping meters (especially not on Ultraxion), but they ARE competative if you know what you're doing, since it's by far one of the most complex classes to play in my opinion. But it happens quite often that I find myself topping meters when going LFR on my kitteh, but you DO get a lot of crap players and slackers there. Doing great dps as a feral takes skill and knowledge, but personally I find it the most entertaining dps class to play.

[Avutu]

"Overall, druids are the best tanks for all 8 encounters and they also have the best 4 piece tier bonus."

That was stated by Seita in Paragon Q&A (link: http://www.paragon.fi/articles/paragon-qa-we-answered), so I personally trust that.

[crabmousse]

you guys need to learn to judge the tone of a post. Ferals place in bleeding edge progression guilds is largely irrelevant here. the Dragon Soul race is over, we're on 10% debuff, certain nerfs, increased gear levels and no competition any more, benching and min-maxing is now an excuse for poor performance elsewhere in your raid: a bandaid. there are now plenty of Ferals with 8/8hm, so that point is totally moot.

secondly, the OP clearly will not be doing this hardcore. OP, Feral is a very effective tank and a reasonable DPS. we're not the strongest melee and we don't have the easiest rotation but unless you're looking to rank top 100 on DPS it's largely irrelevant. I haven't seen a single heroic drop yet and I can rank 43k dps on a patchwerky fight like Baleroc, if that's good enough for you then rock on.

[Fiana]

I totally disagree with pretty much everything in this post. Bear tanks are not the worst tank in the current content, nor is any tank - some are just less faceroll than others (read death knight). If you know your class well and the encounter, you should be able to tank as well on a druid as any other tank. As an example I've solo-tanked Yor'sahj heroic on my paladin many times.

I provided enough examples when druid tank was not usable or was worse due to fight mechanics.
Also this "takes more damage" is a big deal. It can be 1% more damage but it still makes the tank worse. There is ALWAYS best and worst tank. For every fight, as well as average overall.

DPS-wise feral dps might not be topping meters (especially not on Ultraxion), but they ARE competative if you know what you're doing, since it's by far one of the most complex classes to play in my opinion. But it happens quite often that I find myself topping meters when going LFR on my kitteh, but you DO get a lot of crap players and slackers there. Doing great dps as a feral takes skill and knowledge, but personally I find it the most entertaining dps class to play.

Do you know what "competitive" means?
It means "Can win". You can't.
If you do 45k in BiS gear, with perfect rotation, amazing procs and in perfect pull it means that you can't beat 55k that other class does. Ever.
There is no fight in current content where you can win without doing at least 10-15k more dps than you currently do. Doing 10-15k more dps is absolutely impossible.

If you take overall picture of average feral dps, you will understand that feral damage is at least 15-20% lower than highest class damage, and is actually lowest out of all classes.

---------- Post added 2012-02-15 at 05:07 PM ----------

"Overall, druids are the best tanks for all 8 encounters and they also have the best 4 piece tier bonus."

That was stated by Seita in Paragon Q&A (link: http://www.paragon.fi/articles/paragon-qa-we-answered), so I personally trust that.

Its much more complicated than you think.
As I said above, druid takes more damage and sometimes take huge damage spikes. They had to deal with it, and they decided that he should go full stamina to increase his health pool by 50-70k, make him more reliable and let healers more time to react.
While it obviously worked out, in the same time you should understand that he took considerably more damage. I don't remember exactly, but I think Tangedyn was talking about 15% more damage taken.
I'm not saying that it was not right. In my opinion it was the only right way to go through heroic DS in ~395gear.
But just think how stressful it was for their healers. Bears take more damage by default, and they take even more damage when they go full stamina.
I just can't imaging how can stamina bear tank spine of deathwing. Its beyond common sense.
Obviously they have impressively good healers and they always said that they do, but it does not mean that bear tank is best tank for heroic DS in any means.
In their case he took at least 20% more damage than warrior and paladin tank in the same gear.

[Themessiah]

I often find that people state this or that tank is worse based on a percentage of damage they take, and such a statement I think is non-sense. What matters, so I think, is how easy to heal a certain tank is. If overall the bear took 5% more damage, but was very very easy to heal, then one might forward that the tank was better because the survivability of the tank was greater than the tank which took 5% less damage but that was harder to heal.

Whether or not this applies to bears at the moment will depend upon the content.


Competitive is also dependent upon the context - Competitive for what, or in what way? For spine hc with burst damage? On a Patchwork fight? On a fight with one burn multiple adds phase?

[Shepherd57]

I don't do dps as feral so I can't speak on that concept.

For tanking.

If you want to run 5 man dungeons or raid finder, then bears are perfectly fine. If you want to run normal mode raids then feral tank is fine. I haven't completed any or even attempted the Heroic modes but from Bear bloggers around the interwebs, The Heroic boss encounters can be accomplished with feral tanks.

As for the state of feral tanking. We don't have to wear tanking gear at all. We pick all agility gear (except maybe your trinkets, but that depends on encounters and what not). Our "rotation" for single target is more robust than in Wrath or BC and has an element of randomness to it. Our multi target "rotation" is more than spam swipe, but that is all you can say about it. Bears aren't going to have the higher health of the tanks and due to avoidance mechanics we take spikey damage. Overall we are in a better place in Cataclysm then we were in Wrath.

[Rioo]

Ferals together with DKs are the best tanks for DS no doubt. It's all about having a lot of armor, stamina and magical resistance. If we need the DPS I can switch out some pieces to my DPS gear and have no problems. Feral DPS is fine, neither OP or UP.

[Regen]

Like half of the people above, contrary to the other half, have stated: feral tanking is just fine. In my humblest opinion, it's the most fun tanking class for various reasons but one of them is....being a bear clearly. But honestly because of the versatility. Unless you are in a top tier progression guild (which you're not) then exactly who makes the best tank never wise won't...or shouldn't at least. Bear tanks are more than fine. Hell my guild's 2nd OT is a bear when the warrior/do are absent and tanks any of the first wings bosses on heroic (25 man) just fine. No complaints from us healers. And as a bear tank being one of my alts, I love it. I know lfr is no good comparative measure but when I dusted my feral off a couple weeks ago I got through lfr just fine tanking at 363 ilvl. It's highly enjoyable and a good bit of fun. Stick with it if you did like it because it's amazing as it has always been to those of us who love it.


As far as kitty dps, same argument. Unless you're in the race for world first, which is now over, that shouldn't matter to you at all. It's competitive and in the same gear around 365 ilvl I could still hang in the top 3 dps on a lfr fight. It certainly isn't what it was in wrath (was my main then and I loved it) but its still highly rewarding if you do it correctly. We're 4/8 heroic 25 man and there are fights where on of our cats is up there on the dps charts.

Basically, if you think you like your feral more as far as playing go then do it. You'll be more than fine in any situation. And it's extremely fun to this day.

Sorry for typos. On iPhone in class.

[Carstanan]

Its much more complicated than you think.
As I said above, druid takes more damage and sometimes take huge damage spikes. They had to deal with it, and they decided that he should go full stamina to increase his health pool by 50-70k, make him more reliable and let healers more time to react.
While it obviously worked out, in the same time you should understand that he took considerably more damage. I don't remember exactly, but I think Tangedyn was talking about 15% more damage taken.
I'm not saying that it was not right. In my opinion it was the only right way to go through heroic DS in ~395gear.
But just think how stressful it was for their healers. Bears take more damage by default, and they take even more damage when they go full stamina.
I just can't imaging how can stamina bear tank spine of deathwing. Its beyond common sense.
Obviously they have impressively good healers and they always said that they do, but it does not mean that bear tank is best tank for heroic DS in any means.
In their case he took at least 20% more damage than warrior and paladin tank in the same gear.

It's really not that complicated. Druids take "spikey" damage because they eat an attack or dodge it, that lends itself to "spikey" damage. Going full stam (below the hit/exp cap) is a pretty reasonable thing to do, just because our mastery is dependent on us landing a critical strike, which we can't do if we miss or are dodged/parried not to mention the fact that we might not crit. The additional health also allows for higher Vengeance numbers, bigger Savage Defense numbers and as you said more time for healers to react. In the Spine encounter, just looking at logs from recent kills, most of the damage (70+% in the logs I saw) was fire damage. Granted most of this was raid wide pulse damage, but Warrior and Paladin mastery doesn't mitigate that at all. Bringing a druid tank also gives you 2 extra Innervates throughout the fight, 2 additional Tranquilitys, extra raid wide healing through their 4 piece bonus, extra damage when they aren't tanking things, and the ability to throw some heals out when needed (as tiny as they may be).

[Deleted]

I don't see how bears can be bad in ds, they have the highest passive damage reduction for both physical and magic damage. Since ds is mostly magic damage, which can not be dodged, parried or blocked you would think a bear is awesome for it. The problem is most likely the low amount of defensive cooldown that bears have compared to other tanks.