Feral Druid: The Sleeper Spec of Classic?

[Livnthedream]

THIS! Thank you for reiterating what I was trying to get through to people with my post.

Pservers may not have the most accurate numbers, but anyone remembering Feral from Vanilla at any point before 1.12 (and especially before 1.7) has an even more inaccurate idea of how they will perform in Classic.

They won't be more representative though. It will be no different now than it was then. Unless there is a good reason, no one is going to carry you. You can argue that perceptions are wrong blah blah blah, but at the end of the day all that matters is performance. And feral druids do not bring anything to the table that won't already be brought to a raid, or is a poor choice in a 5 man.

[deepr]

I've played Feral as my first character in late Vanilla and throughout TBC. Didn't raid in Vanilla, but had fun tanking 5-mans.
Anyway, nobody ever seems to make a point of how shitty the shapeshifting worked back then.
If you play druid now and go back to old skool druid, people are going to be disappointed....
Fluid shapeshifting from form to form was introduced in late TBC or WotLK or something?
Getting stunned in normal form between cat->bear shift in TBC arena, good times!! Not.

[collax]

They won't be more representative though. It will be no different now than it was then. Unless there is a good reason, no one is going to carry you. You can argue that perceptions are wrong blah blah blah, but at the end of the day all that matters is performance. And feral druids do not bring anything to the table that won't already be brought to a raid, or is a poor choice in a 5 man.

Feral bring nothing ? Best threat tank, best eh tank on resist fight and in some special case (patchwerk, bloodlord lashlayer for example), viable offtank, viable dps, bring another innervate an battle rez, can decurse/dispell and still heal if needed. All of that with one spec. Versatility is a huge strength for the raid.

Of course all of this only work with the last talents rework. So it was only viable at the end of vanilla for a tiny amount of time, but it will be viable from the start on classic.

[Livnthedream]

Feral bring nothing ?

See, this is precisely why people can't take your special pleading seriously. No, that isn't what I said.

Best threat tank

Threat is meaningless if you are dead.

best eh tank on resist fight and in some special case (patchwerk, bloodlord lashlayer for example)

Why would the raid invest in a tank that they will only reasonably use once per tier?

viable offtank

So is a dps warrior switching to defensive stance and equipping sword and board. And without taking the dps hit.

viable dps

I think you have a funny idea of 'viable'. Sure, you can kill bosses by carrying this person, why would you honestly want to?

bring another innervate an battle rez

Neither of which you should need if you bring a reasonable dps in their place.

can decurse/dispell

You don't bring mages? For the very few fights that you actually need a lot of dispels you don't have warlocks?

and still heal if needed

So 2 max rank healing touch before going oom? Or overwriting actual resto druid hots? Remember, that shit doesn't stack.

All of that with one spec. Versatility is a huge strength for the raid.

Versatility that is only 'needed' if your raid comp is terrible. And honestly, if your raid comp is terrible then so is the leadership and therefore you probably aren't killing anything in any sort of a decent manner for it to matter anyway.

Of course all of this only work with the last talents rework. So it was only viable at the end of vanilla for a tiny amount of time, but it will be viable from the start on classic.

October 10 2005 was the end of vanilla? Well shit, I guess TIL! The only thing druids really gained after that was innervate. And innervate won't suddenly make feral a reasonable bring for raids. At best they will be someone you carry because you like them. Just as every vanilla raid had back in the day.

[Release]

This entire thread is what a few delusional players wish was true and refusal to accept reality. In 1.12 Ferals were alright and could be competitive with the items other have linked but again if you want to dps you just play one of the pure specs and easily outclass a feral on nearly all fights in classic. Feral was however, excellent in pvp but I feel some of you are going to level a feral just to try and prove others wrong and you'll get mad when you see the dps meters and get called out.

[zoddzero]

P server? Using pummler weapon from gnomeregan with x3 charges that increase attack speed by 50% for 30sec? Come on man .. How many hours and how many pummlers farmed??

Feral damage is half what you see in the clip, about mid pack ... I ain't against Feral at all but let us be realistic.

It is still a faily viable spec even without pummlers.

[Cockus Maximus]

October 10 2005 was the end of vanilla? Well shit, I guess TIL! The only thing druids really gained after that was innervate. And innervate won't suddenly make feral a reasonable bring for raids. At best they will be someone you carry because you like them. Just as every vanilla raid had back in the day.

You bring up a lot of valid points. In a fully optimized raid, with everyone playing perfectly, perhaps the utility a Feral Druid brings is of no use. But the first thing I'd have to ask is how many raids can you think of where everyone plays perfectly? Back then people barely knew how to play. Today, especially with LFR culture, I'd still argue for people needing a Brez every now and then. As much as maximum raid optimization with full consumables may be desired, the fact of the matter is that people make mistakes.. and bringing a Feral Druid or 2 will be good insurance against those mistakes in Classic.

The next (and most important) thing is the date you mentioned. That is when Druids got their talent rework. Is it all the way at the end of Vanilla? No, but 1) not all of their essential changes were implemented in that patch, and 2) this is already at least halfway through Vanilla. Even if we take this date as the "date of viability" for Druids, this means that they weren't viable through everything from MC all the way up to ZG when those raids first came out. Even if Druids all of a sudden started being viable halfway through Vanilla, any serious raider would either be healing by then or playing another class.. and the stigma would've already fully developed. Now take into consideration that Ferals didn't actually become FULLY viable until August 22 2006, and now the full picture comes into view. The fact of the matter is that Ferals were only remotely viable for about half a year before TBC came out, so any memories people have of them in Vanilla are most likely from before that period. Additionally, if you watch any raid progression videos of any raids from WoW you will not see any Ferals because during the earlier raids they weren't viable, and during the later raids they were behind on gear due to not being viable earlier in Vanilla's lifespan (on top of acquiring a negative stigma from it). This also explains why you see Ferals in private server raids but not in Vanilla ones: most private servers (or at least the ones with viable Ferals) are running on the 1.12 client.. unlike most of Vanilla, but exactly like Classic will be.

[collax]

Threat is meaningless if you are dead.

And you shouldn't die on the boss you tank since most don't even hit hard anyway. Sure you will not tank chromaggus or huhuran for example but there is only a few bosses feral should really not tank.

Why would the raid invest in a tank that they will only reasonably use once per tier?

Once per tier ? The example i gave were a few cases where druid are better main tank than warrior, but they will still offtank any other fight.
And lets not forget a feral tank mostly use gear that is useless for other class anyway (yeah rogues don't need leather with high armor and stam, they need stats to dps) and having a feral instead of another prot war mean all your other war get gear faster.
Even a dps feral won't take that much gear from rogue/war anyway. Can't use rogue tier set, want different stats than rogues, don't want the same weapon, crafted helm is bis so thats even one less slot to gear.

I think you have a funny idea of 'viable'. Sure, you can kill bosses by carrying this person, why would you honestly want to?

When i say viable, i meant they are about on par with hunter dpswise (can even be top dps if you try hard with the manual crowd pummeller) That's pretty good for a spec that can also tank and do other thing when needed just by swapping gear.

bring another innervate an battle rez
Neither of which you should need if you bring a reasonable dps in their place.

Unexpected things happen all the time. Saving a wipe with a battle rez or an innervate is more valuable than shaving off maybe 10 sec on a boss with another dps (assuming the dps you find is actually better, don't forget you will have to fill 40 slots and if you are not a hardcore guild you won't have the luxury to choose only the top dps, you will get rogues/mage/warriors/warlock that will only do 10% of what the top dps do. Off course bad feral will also exists and you probably don't want to bring those too).

So 2 max rank healing touch before going oom? Or overwriting actual resto druid hots? Remember, that shit doesn't stack.

How can you go oom if you swap to healing gear (druid tier set is really easy to get in raid since a raid since there aren't alot of druid) and have 20% intellect on top with heart of the wild compared to resto druid ? Hot not stacking isnt a problem if you only use healing touch.

Versatility that is only 'needed' if your raid comp is terrible. And honestly, if your raid comp is terrible then so is the leadership and therefore you probably aren't killing anything in any sort of a decent manner for it to matter anyway.

Yeah because you will always have the same 40 people available at all time to have the perfect composition every raid day....
Even with a perfect composition, versatility is still a good thing because each boss fight you have different needs. Need more tank ? Go in bear Need more heal on the next one ? Swap to resto gear and heal Need some decurse/dispell ? Keep the resto gear and help decurse dispel Don't need any of that ? Go in dps and make the kill faster.

October 10 2005 was the end of vanilla? Well shit, I guess TIL! The only thing druids really gained after that was innervate. And innervate won't suddenly make feral a reasonable bring for raids. At best they will be someone you carry because you like them. Just as every vanilla raid had back in the day.

You are just ignorant then. Druids couldn't tank early vanilla because they didn't have dire bear form (yeah they only had 180% armor buff, not 360%) didn't have 20% more stam from heart of the wild, dps and threat was all time low until the revamp.

[Nalorakk]

There are exactly 0 sleeper specs in Classic.

Feral's been solved as well, and it requires you to farm more than rogues to still do less dps than them except in short burst windows.

[Zyrinx]

Do people _really_ assume the damage tuning (DPS output) in Classic will be identical to Vanilla? That seems like a serious stretch to me.

I mean I'm not in Beta and I'm not even that interested, but it already seems like (from reading stuff) that numbers are off.

[Livnthedream]

You bring up a lot of valid points. In a fully optimized raid, with everyone playing perfectly, perhaps the utility a Feral Druid brings is of no use. But the first thing I'd have to ask is how many raids can you think of where everyone plays perfectly? Back then people barely knew how to play. Today, especially with LFR culture, I'd still argue for people needing a Brez every now and then. As much as maximum raid optimization with full consumables may be desired, the fact of the matter is that people make mistakes.. and bringing a Feral Druid or 2 will be good insurance against those mistakes in Classic.

If you bet on losing then you will lose. Again, for those couple of deaths, why don't you have resto druids? My issue with your OP, and really, your continuance to push it, is how you want to view things. As I said, if a guild just needs bodies, or you can find someone willing to carry you, then sure, a feral druid is perfectly 'viable'. They are better than not having something. They can contribute. That isn't what is at issue here, and seems to be what you are continually arguing against. It is that they aren't good at anything. There is nothing here that a raid leader is going to say "I need x of these". There is no reason to bring a feral druid over a solid rogue/warrior/mage/warlock. Especially under the idea of "well, we need to include one as insurance".

Even if we take this date as the "date of viability" for Druids, this means that they weren't viable through everything from MC all the way up to ZG when those raids first came out. Even if Druids all of a sudden started being viable halfway through Vanilla, any serious raider would either be healing by then or playing another class.

No, most of them figured out by this point that druids were healbots. Since that is what their tier gear and lack of reasonable off slot told them they were.

the stigma

A stigma that "but, but utility" doesn't absolve. Any raid leader that brings another brez/innervate at the cost of ~500 dps is a bad raid leader. Further, any player that feels entitled to be brought versus better options isn't someone that *I* would want to raid with. They are that douchey friend that always comes over to party, drinks all your beer and never stays to clean up.

during the later raids they were behind on gear due to not being viable earlier in Vanilla's lifespan

But I thought all of the gear that feral druids needs they can acquire before getting into a raid? Isn't that one of the 'pros' that are continuously bandied about them?

Even if that isn't the case, this is false. ZG/AQ20 were one of the first real stabs Blizzard took at a catch up mechanic. And it worked. For the most part the gear rewarded there was on par with t2, especially with t2 giving so much of its budget up to shitty resists.

This also explains why you see Ferals in private server raids but not in Vanilla ones: most private servers (or at least the ones with viable Ferals) are running on the 1.12 client.. unlike most of Vanilla, but exactly like Classic will be.

Or, private servers are running on an architecture that gives additional bonuses to feral druids, like armor values being incorrect, energy ticks being wrong, better server latency for form switching etc. Some things, like latency, will certainly impact Classic. Some though, have set some rather absurd expectations. Either way, again, my issue with you is how you refuse to look at this objectively and instead are jumping on everything you can to justify why you should be allowed to be selfish.

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And you shouldn't die on the boss you tank since most don't even hit hard anyway. Sure you will not tank chromaggus or huhuran for example but there is only a few bosses feral should really not tank.

Well, those goalposts are now on the moon.

Once per tier ? The example i gave were a few cases where druid are better main tank than warrior, but they will still offtank any other fight.
And lets not forget a feral tank mostly use gear that is useless for other class anyway (yeah rogues don't need leather with high armor and stam, they need stats to dps) and having a feral instead of another prot war mean all your other war get gear faster.
Even a dps feral won't take that much gear from rogue/war anyway. Can't use rogue tier set, want different stats than rogues, don't want the same weapon, crafted helm is bis so thats even one less slot to gear.

Why would you set your 'highest threat tank' as your off tank? Doesn't that nullify that perk? Especially when basically all bosses are immune to taunt? And what "high armor, high stam leather"? That didn't exist in a raid setting until AQ40 anyway. And how exactly does that help gear up warriors faster? Does leather dropping somehow magically increase the number of plate drops? Do dps warriors need tank gear? Do you think that any guild worth a damn isn't going to gear up it's tanks first regardless, and then funnel unneeded prot war loot to their 2 lowest dps (or most willing to tank) warriors for when you actually need more than 2 tanks? Why would you give prime sharable tank loot (Jewelry) to a tank that takes more damage?

When i say viable, i meant they are about on par with hunter dpswise (can even be top dps if you try hard with the manual crowd pummeller) That's pretty good for a spec that can also tank and do other thing when needed just by swapping gear.

That is both not what the word viable means (which is why good dps is referred to as competitive) and completely bullshit. The only "proof" of reasonable feral dps comes from private servers with incorrect formulas and general dumbshittery, like incredibly short fights due to no armor bosses, all world buffs, full consumables etc. Things that will not be happening on a live server. This claim is bullshit in any real scenario.

Unexpected things happen all the time. Saving a wipe with a battle rez or an innervate is more valuable than shaving off maybe 10 sec on a boss with another dps (assuming the dps you find is actually better, don't forget you will have to fill 40 slots and if you are not a hardcore guild you won't have the luxury to choose only the top dps, you will get rogues/mage/warriors/warlock that will only do 10% of what the top dps do. Off course bad feral will also exists and you probably don't want to bring those too).

"Bring a good feral in place of a bad dps, but no bad ferals and you will be fine!"

^ Top tier logic.

How can you go oom if you swap to healing gear (druid tier set is really easy to get in raid since a raid since there aren't alot of druid) and have 20% intellect on top with heart of the wild compared to resto druid ? Hot not stacking isnt a problem if you only use healing touch.

How are you swapping gear in combat? If it isn't in combat, then that utility goes completely out the window. If you are minmaxing that much, then why isn't the players/raid set correctly to start with?

Yeah because you will always have the same 40 people available at all time to have the perfect composition every raid day....
Even with a perfect composition, versatility is still a good thing because each boss fight you have different needs. Need more tank ? Go in bear Need more heal on the next one ? Swap to resto gear and heal Need some decurse/dispell ? Keep the resto gear and help decurse dispel Don't need any of that ? Go in dps and make the kill faster.

All of that should already be able to be handled before hand. If you need another tank, that is why you have dps warriors with sword and board. Why would you suddenly need more healing? Don't you have additional healers in the bench when someone can't make it to raid or suddenly has to dip out? You shouldn't suddenly need more healing for one boss, that is what consumables are for. Like did you not raid during this time or something? Cause all of this "Well, on paper this makes sense!!1!11" is incredibly irritating.

You are just ignorant then. Druids couldn't tank early vanilla because they didn't have dire bear form (yeah they only had 180% armor buff, not 360%) didn't have 20% more stam from heart of the wild, dps and threat was all time low until the revamp.

The date I specified was the revamp. Don't call ignorant when you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

[collax]

But I thought all of the gear that feral druids needs they can acquire before getting into a raid? Isn't that one of the 'pros' that are continuously bandied about them?

Even if that isn't the case, this is false. ZG/AQ20 were one of the first real stabs Blizzard took at a catch up mechanic. And it worked. For the most part the gear rewarded there was on par with t2, especially with t2 giving so much of its budget up to shitty resists.

Yes they can acquire gear before getting into raids like every class, doesn't change the fact that they can't compete with dungeon gear against players that had at the time raid gear from 1year of raiding. And alot of key thing were not figured out for feral dps to emerge, power shifting wasn't a known thing back then and using wolfhead helm even less (afaik it was mainly discovered in bc era).

As for raid gear, good feral gear is sparse and you won't be able to gear only from doing zg/aq 20.

Or, private servers are running on an architecture that gives additional bonuses to feral druids, like armor values being incorrect, energy ticks being wrong, better server latency for form switching etc. Some things, like latency, will certainly impact Classic. Some though, have set some rather absurd expectations. Either way, again, my issue with you is how you refuse to look at this objectively and instead are jumping on everything you can to justify why you should be allowed to be selfish.

True on private server, boss armor values are buffed so it's a disadvantage for the melee class (and feral druid), form switching might actually be even better in classic because so far changing form doesn't take a gcd on the beta unlike on private server (and unlike vanilla actually i believe).

And i don't understand how playing a feral druid is selfish ? I play one and i'm basically able to tank most boss, dps are happy when i do because they almost don't have to watch their threat. When i go dps, i'm still almost always in the upper half despite not farming the manual crowd pumeller, sometimes even manage to get a top 3 spot (and that's without counting the 3% group crit aura). The guild i'm currently in was specifically looking for a feral druid before i joined and i'm pretty sure they are happy they found me.

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Why would you set your 'highest threat tank' as your off tank? Doesn't that nullify that perk? Especially when basically all bosses are immune to taunt? And what "high armor, high stam leather"? That didn't exist in a raid setting until AQ40 anyway. And how exactly does that help gear up warriors faster? Does leather dropping somehow magically increase the number of plate drops? Do dps warriors need tank gear? Do you think that any guild worth a damn isn't going to gear up it's tanks first regardless, and then funnel unneeded prot war loot to their 2 lowest dps (or most willing to tank) warriors for when you actually need more than 2 tanks? Why would you give prime sharable tank loot (Jewelry) to a tank that takes more damage?

Because the add need to be killed first maybe ? (You don't need the highest threat tank on the boss if the tank have a 1min start). And you need a few offtank anyway.

High armor high stam did exist in bwl and mc. Here a few example :
https://classicdb.ch/?item=19405
https://classicdb.ch/?item=19396
https://classicdb.ch/?item=19139

How does that help gear warrior faster, well when you have 4 prot warrior and you need to equip them with 15+ plate gear weapon and shield (60+ drops), if instead you have 3 prot and 1 feral, you now just need 45 drops to gear your 3 prot while the feral get the gear only he need that would have been most likely disenchanted if he wasnt here.

The only common loot between feral and warrior is basically neck, cloak, and rings (not trinkets since feral bis trinket are found pre raid). And in those slots warriors often use threat items, while feral want armor and stam. (yeah the high armor high stam cloak the feral want isnt useful for a war)

And yes dps warrior will eventually need tank gear after because they will also need to tank a few encounter (skeram where you need 6 tank , 4 horseman where you need 8 for example).

As for damage taken, this isn't the only thing to look. On most fight threat is more important. That's why today the meta is to either use a feral druid or a fury tank dualwielding on 90% of the boss. (for the 10% that remain that actually hit like a truck then yeah on those you use a war with full prot gear except the few exception where a feral actually is better to tank the special ability).

[Livnthedream]

Yes they can acquire gear before getting into raids like every class, doesn't change the fact that they can't compete with dungeon gear against players that had at the time raid gear from 1year of raiding. And alot of key thing were not figured out for feral dps to emerge, power shifting wasn't a known thing back then and using wolfhead helm even less (afaik it was mainly discovered in bc era).

As for raid gear, good feral gear is sparse and you won't be able to gear only from doing zg/aq 20.

Well I would hope you could, seeing as what drops there is better than what drops in MC/BWL. Unless you are really saying that you should have AQ40 gear in order to do AQ40. Which sounds just a wee bit backwards.

True on private server, boss armor values are buffed so it's a disadvantage for the melee class (and feral druid)

And on some private servers they effectively have 0. Which is how some of the more absurd melee dps parses have been done.

form switching might actually be even better in classic because so far changing form doesn't take a gcd on the beta unlike on private server (and unlike vanilla actually i believe).

It didn't matter if it was in vanilla or not. Server lag, both from the servers being shit and from basically everyone having terrible internet meant that they may as well been on the gcd. I fully admit that this will skew Classic vs Vanilla, but that still doesn't gel with many private servers having borked energy regen and so on. I am not convinced that Feral will suddenly do reasonable damage. Reasonable enough anyway that whatever perceived/actual utility they bring is worth more than an equally skilled dps in their place.

And i don't understand how playing a feral druid is selfish ?

I explained it. I get it, you have tons of experience on a shittily built facsimile of vanilla that tells you that feral is fine, even good. I have experience of playing in vanilla with an EJ regular who tried desperately to make feral work in AQ40. I raided with her from BWL through t5 when she decided to quit due to guild drama. They were not viable in Vanilla. I know, the guild funneled her all sorts of gear. She even did some soak tanking for us on Patchwerk. She was one of a handful that we carried, for a variety of reasons. As I said before, if you can find a group willing to do that for you, then good, great even. Just stop perpetuating this retarded idea that Feral is "just as good" as bringing another class. Druids are good for healing, and really, that is about it. Anything else is a novelty.

[xuros]

We had a feral druid who kept up with the rogues and dps warriors on our raids. He was a beast.

[urasim]

Did I claim they were?

By posting that in a thread about classic, yes.

[pinkz]

there was a period of ferals being OP in vanilla, many classes QQ'd including rogues. blizz came down with some nerfs which ferals could no longer:

- dual wield daggers, fist wpns, maces.
- crusader and lifesteal no longer worked for any spec druid
- nerfs on some bleeds, and i believe faerie fire

[collax]

How are you swapping gear in combat? If it isn't in combat, then that utility goes completely out the window. If you are minmaxing that much, then why isn't the players/raid set correctly to start with?

Well simple example, you only need 1 tank on Sapphiron but you need something like 14 healers to be comfortable. On all the other fights you need more tanks and less healers, are you still gonna bring 14 healers when some aren't gonna be useful for the whole raid except for on boss or won't you prefer to have a feral for example that can switch role and be useful on every fight ?

It's also funny because some guild literally use a few hybrid as dps mostly and have them switch to heal only when needed to get faster clear time. Better bring a true hybrid that can both dps and heal that a healer that don't have anything to do for 90% of the raid but is still needed for the last 10%

Well I would hope you could, seeing as what drops there is better than what drops in MC/BWL. Unless you are really saying that you should have AQ40 gear in order to do AQ40. Which sounds just a wee bit backwards.

This isnt the case, alot of piece from MC and BWL are better than anything you will find in AQ20 or ZG, some are even bis until naxx if not forever (and that's the case for every classes). In feral case, good feral gear is scarce so you are even less likely to find good replacement to MC/BWL gear elsewhere.

And on some private servers they effectively have 0. Which is how some of the more absurd melee dps parses have been done.

I'm obviously not talking about these shitty servers that no one play on anymore.

[gaymer77]

In summary, Feral Druids will be able to pull clutch saves in dungeons and raids by either restoring mana to the healer, resurrecting a key player in the middle of battle, or even tanking themselves. All this while doing decent (if not outstanding) DPS on top of it all. Coupled with the fact that Ferals are insane flag carriers in WSG, it seems like they are built up to be a Swiss Army Knife of a spec with a tool for every aspect of the game. Most importantly, they will have all these changes made over the course of Vanilla WoW from the very beginning in Classic.

The appeal of feral druids in vanilla was strictly for WSG because of their ability to run flags well. In AB, AV, and PvE content they sucked. You bring up feral being able to innervate healers & battle rez....so could a resto druid who had better use in a PvE capacity. You bring up being able to off-tank mid fight....so could an arms/fury warrior who only had to throw on a shield & go into def stance (and honestly so could a resto druid if they just popped bear form). The dps a feral druid brought to the table was shit compared to a "pure dps". The whole agility = 1 AP is crap too because strength gave 2 AP after that patch. That is why enh shaman, rogues, and feral druids used strength. Agility was a hunter stat because it gave RANGED AP, Tanks even used agi slightly because it innately gave chance to dodge to ANYONE who had it. Even in BC those now agility users used strength because of the 1 str = 2 AP conversion.

[Grmmppff]

If I remember correctly, once I had the aq20 set/world-dragon-weapon I was pretty viable, but then again, that is phase 5/4 so yeah, there's that, until then it was decent in pvp but hardly viable elsewhere

[kenoathcarn]

True. Ferals will deal way more dps than shown in this video, because powershifting is faster in classic and bosses will have more armor

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Kinda true. This item makes ferals just "viable" enough that they do good enough dps to justify a raid post. However this: http://classicdb.ch/?item=9449 is what makes ferals OP in raids (this is also the BiS weapon until Atiesh). If you use this, the whh helmet, you know how to time your energy regen and you powershift then you can easily become nr. 1 on the dmg meters on many fights until naxx.

These pummelers have to be farmed though, because they only have 3 charges, but the boss that drops them is a gnomeregan optional boss that can be accessed through the backdoor. It's not the worst raid prep though, because a full run (including going out of the dungeon) takes about 3min and the boss has a 40% droppchance. You will need 1 pummeler per boss if you want to be on the top

its bis even after atiesh im fairly sure. but "viable" just comes down to timing, early on they are actually on the top end of dps just because they are less gear reliant than other classes w/ wolfshead and mcps, it starts to change once warriors and rogues get proper gear, and later on (around zg) when the casters start catching up with spell hit after that id say they fall down to "viable" rather than good.

also this is speculation but i suspect mcps will be slightly weaker for the powershifting build on live retail just because it looks like powershifting will reset the swing timer which doesn't appear to happen on most private servers.