A druid from the past ...

[wingcommander]

Hello all,

I considering starting up wow again for the 4th time . It took me 30 mins to find this forum and figure my login. This was always the best forums.

Back to the point, I was wondering how do Druids fare now days in feral world for PvP, tank, dps. Are bear tanks in demand atm? Is it possible for cats to do well as dps or pvp? I had a decent raid naxx healer set too, but i'm more interested in Feral aspects. ^^

My char is too old on the armory to show, but I had all raid naxx level stuff and would like to know how out of date is my gear from then to now. I'm not expecting to be top notch or anything, but it would be nice to have to get some new gear and see some decent upgrades from my past gear.

Greatly appreciate anyone willing to give me a quick overview since uldaur.

Thanks in advance
WC

[Kereba]

Kitty DPS is pretty good nowadays.
Bear Tanks, ICC are in love with 'em (Extra 15% HP buff with a Bear Druid = Heaven)
Bear tanks in WG, with Tenacity, well. You can imagine the health ;]
Hope I was of assistance, welcome back!

[Zabrajin]

Depends really what you mean by 'all raid naxx level stuff' do you mean lvl 60 naxx or lvl 80 naxx?

[Kekkonen]

Blizz has really made every spec viable in every aspect of the game so its a free pick

Just socket, enchant etc correctly

[badge]

In WOTLK Being a druid of any spec has never been so good in all of wow hostory, except for maybe resto druid season 2 >.<

[MushroomBomb]

Feral now works brilliantly in pretty much every aspect of the game (while I can't personally speak for PvP, I hear they work fairly decently there as well). While your gear is far outdated, you only really need to farm Heroics in order to get up-to-date and ready to raid ToC and ICC.

[Zuldain]

Depends really what you mean by 'all raid naxx level stuff' do you mean lvl 60 naxx or lvl 80 naxx?

Assuming Naxx 80, since he also mentioned ulduar.

Your gear is plenty good enough to get you into the new LFG Dungeon tool. That means you'll quickly(as a tank especially) be able to get groups to run heroics, all of which will award eblems of triumph, which you can use to purchase Tier9 armor (tier 10 is current ICC Armor). You will gear up in no time.

Bear tanks are great in ICC, feral kitties are very competitive in PVE if played correctly.

[Kaymar]

Feral now works brilliantly in pretty much every aspect of the game (while I can't personally speak for PvP, I hear they work fairly decently there as well). While your gear is far outdated, you only really need to farm Heroics in order to get up-to-date and ready to raid ToC and ICC.

This.

And my druid is feral too, mostly PvP and I enjoy it alot! Plus with the change to Predatory Strikes ( Makes your finishing moves a 20% chance per point to make your next Nature spell be instant) really helps for instant Cyclones or healing

[Ormula]

PVP for feral kitties is kind of subpar. It's not impossible, but your damage relative to your lack of MS and stuns, as well as relative squishiness, is more a liability than an asset.

[DiscoTabasco]

Gearing is easy nowadays...i dinged 80 on my feral druid and was tankin ToC same week.

Just run Heroics with the LFG system til you have your 4pc T-9...doesnt really take anytime at all.

Welcome back!

[Horrid Crow]

Every spec is viable, you can be anything you want and be good at it.

[tibben]

Feral kitties are doing some pretty amazing things in PvE, especially on tank and spank fights these days. They also do fairly well on movement fights since they run at 30% increased speed and have sprint and kitty charge to get back in the action on fights like Sindragosa and Professor Putricide. The rotation is still unforgiving so the difference between your average cat and one that really knows how to play is a very large gap. Our top kitties are doing around 13-14k DPS on tank and spank fights right now and some of the best geared (and of course receiving Hysteria and ToTT) are doing even more.

Bears are a very wanted addition to an ICC raid as well. As was mentioned above, with the 15% buff and 264/277 item level gear bears are hitting some very impressive numbers for health. It's not uncommon to see bears that are running Heroic 25 ICC with 80-85k health, and that's BEFORE popping Survival Instincts. Even with the 20% dodge reduction in ICC bears are still doing very well, especially with the cool down provided by the Tier 10 4 Piece bonus (Enrage no longer reduces your armor, but instead increases your damage reduction by 12% for 10 seconds).

[Pompeii]

PVP for feral kitties is kind of subpar. It's not impossible, but your damage relative to your lack of MS and stuns, as well as relative squishiness, is more a liability than an asset.

This. Instant cast spells are OP, but that alone is not enough to make feral itself OP. We can be played strongly, but I'd still say that feral is at a slight disadvantage. Rogues will almost always be better than us to fill roles in arena, and as stated we lack any form of MS. However, we also have the ability to heal among other things, so I'd say its a fair tradeoff--it just makes us less desirable as arena partners in that aspect. If you're into dueling and battlegrounds feral is an excellent choice. If you're into arena, you might want to look at another class or go resto. It's not impossible, but if you're new to that kind of thing you'd likely do better as something else. GREAT survivability for BGS, though.

PVE is fine; I've only ever PVE'd as feral, so I cannot compare it to other specs however. We can put out competitive damage, definitely.

tl;dr we're by no means horrible, but there is more to be desired from a pvp perspective

[wingcommander]

Thank you all for the positive feed back, I do love this community and am glad there is loads to do again!

I'm installing tonight it will probably take the rest of the evning to install patches, load, find and set up add ons etc.

I'm definately looking forward to talking to more you over the coming months, once I get back up to speed (and know what I'm talking about) haha.

Cheers All
WC

[Amgyn]

respec and gear bear-tank...

run dungeons. get t9 gear. should not take that long at all - do full instances on random queues and you will have all the set of triumph gear in about 20-30 instance runs.... and once you're into the ICC5man heroics, your off pieces (like another ring, trinket, necklace etc.) will be upgraded.

you should be able to tank ICC10 with 50k hp in no time.

[wingcommander]

I was pretty close to 50k in tank gear before and more in full frosty hp gear. I remember i had slight less hps than a fully buffed doom guard, back in the day. Trolling forums now!

[wingcommander]

So the reality of the situation after my frist weekend from a years break is that, there are shed loads of stuff to do to get back to near where I was a year ago! Just more of a blog and thoughs.

Tanking still seems ok, in terms of threat genereation, even in old gear a gs of ~4300. I'm told I need ~5k before I can begin raiding ICC. However, in the 8 random dungeons last night, only two people came close to taking aggro off me. So at least in that respect, for random dungeoning, its good. Only randomed one new instance though. So its hard to tell at this stage. When I get start getting the latest teir of gear (valarious atm), then tanking will just get easier. The biggest concern for me seems to be hit points for some strange reason .....

DPS cat, i think i maxed out at 3.5 dps on bosses (yeah i know its low atm). Which it wasn't too bad back in the day and not that great now days. But still at least I'm not last either in a pick up groups. I doubt I ever get to go as DPS whilst the tank option is checked on the random dungeon menu. Cat rotation still seems to be one of the more difficult rotations to master.

PvP, 700 resilience from before, squishy as a bug. saw hunters with 32k hps in arena, compared to my paltry 24k. well I have some way to go here too. won 2 lost 8 ^^.

All in all, liking the feral play, plenty of room for imporovement, already doing well in tanking area. Dps and pvp needs a lot of work. Also by the time I spec up and stuff, we get to do it all again when the expansion comes out!