feral druids in classic

[balsh]

Yeah druid tanking is pretty bad, all you have is armor and hp no defense stat so warrior is better in almost any situation.

There is no reason to take a feral druid in raid, I was lucky enough to raid from MC to Nax as feral on retail just because my pvp guild back then has joined a pve guild and my guild was kicking ass in raid so they were taking any member for raiding.

That being said and like I said, feral is realy awesome and probably has the most interesting gameplay and mechanics in vanilla pvp wise. Yet pretty weak but also pretty rare because of that which gives you an unique awesome feeling.

Edit:
And for OP asking comparison with BC, it's like day and night. In BC even if feral wasn't the best spec (resto druid is probably the most op class in BC), feral was alot more viable than it was in Vanilla.
There were main tanks feral in my guild, which would be impossible in vanilla.
The class in BC was also easier to play due to the shapeshifting changes (no longer have to switch humanoid before changing form).

[Larsen]

double post

[Larsen]

Bears are excellent offtanks on raids. They can do okay DPS whenever they're not expected to tank, unlike a prot warrior. Of course arms warriors can also be offtanks if they spec for it, though it does require some talent juggling whereas the feral talents are very dual-role friendly. Druids also bring a lot more utility, like combat rez and innervate, as well as immunity to polymorph effects.

You don't want to play a tank main with a druid, but you can be a healer+offtank. There's a fully viable raid spec that is both a tank and a healer, thanks to Heart of the Wild in the feral tree which gives +20% intellect. This is a viable alternative to deep resto. The spec looks like this:

http://www.wowprovider.com/?talent=1121 ... c555e501d0

If you look at what you give up in the resto tree, it's really not much. Some aggro reduction, some crit on Regrowth which you shouldn't be casting anyway, Swiftmend which is a weak 31-point talent anyway, and then the only significant loss is the +10% healing. I think +20% intellect easily makes up for this.

This build is an incredible dungeon tank, better than a warrior due to its rock-solid AoE threat and very high armor/health. You could also main tank some easier raids, and raid content that you outgear, but it's not really meant for MTing in general. It's a very good OT, however. This spec is not a half-assed healer, it's a 100% capable healer that can also tank with a gearswap macro and do it pretty much as well as any feral tank.

This is the closest thing to dual spec that you'll find in vanilla. The uninformed will look at the 0/30/21 distribution and decide "that can't heal" simply because the majority of the points are in feral, so the spec never gained widespread popularity. However, it was a recognized spec back in the day, and completely viable.

[Ivina]

keyword here? "Block"....

Keywords? "Armor", "HP pool", "multi-role".

Yes a prot warrior will have an overall better damage mitigation than a druid, using "no-brain theorycrafting".

I say "no brain" because it is all about making false assumption like neglecting magic attacks, neglecting the risk to die, flat statistics over procs.

To achieve the best mean damage mitigation, a warrior rely on procs. To block and to parry are "procs". It can happen you take 3 blow in a raw with no block or parry. Such a case is often catastrophic for the warrior.(Don't tell me a well geared prot warrior is always either blocking or parrying or dodging, it is again theory while in practice, the tank is stun, bumped, and makes mistakes.)
In the meantime, the druid has less "procs" (no block or parry), but a better mitigation on direct hits (higher armor). Moreover, the druid has more HPs, which means it is less likely to die within a very short amount of time.

A good example is Lashlayer in BWL. On retail, my guild very quickly understood the strength of a druid tank on such a boss. His mortal strike can one shoot a warrior in case of crit. If ever the warrior is not full life when it occurs, the death is very likely. On a good geared druid (and in BWL a good feral tank gear still includes lot of blue items), the MS hit for something like 6k while the bear has over 12k HP.
This makes a druid a very good practical solution. Even if we state (which is not sure) that the druid takes more total damage over the fight, it is less likely to die, it allows more "mistakes" from the raid, and this is what we want to win a fight!

Enough spoken of the druid as tank: another important asset is that as soon as he is not used as tank, a druid with the same spec can make a decent DPS, while the prot warrior is a useless spot. Good feral druids know how to make DPS, and at equivalent gear the DPS is the same than a rogue. I must agree however that "equivalent gear" is a condition that is rarely matched, but what is important is that the spot in the raid is used for something.

[tunguska]

"Feral" as a spec is completely viable in vanilla, though being ONLY a 'tank' or 'dps' is not. You wont be the best tank, or the best DPS, but in 40 man raids there is absolutely room for at least 1x feral druid. However, feral tanks are very hard to gear, and you have to know what you are doing (both as a tank, and a DPS) to gear (and play) them right. To tank you need mark of tyranny+smoking heart of the mountain+ warden staff + cloak of warding at the least. A druid tank can easily surpass 13k armor and 8k HP unbuffed in vanilla gear.

For DPS you'd need to use powershifting+ wolfshead helm to get the most out of your classes DPS. And of course on aoe pulls use hurricane, while other melee dps is near useless. On retail, i was able to offtank the bug trio, twin emporers, sartura, and others, be a hateful strike tank for patchwerk, and tank aq/naxx trash on my druid, while still being a DPS for other fights and usually coming in front of hunters on DD dps. Being a tank or a DPS you are providing a crit buff, have a battle rez and innervate for emergencies.

However, it's NOT an easy class to play, and a "bad" feral druid is going to be far worse for the raid than a "bad" rogue for example.

Also, in vanilla feral is strong in pvp when played as a true hybrid. Of course there will be tons of idiots running around in cat form all the time getting 2-shot which gives us a bad name, but that just makes it more rewarding to be a good feral druid.

Feral PVP video for inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djzrjTyJsPI

Yes, i plan on playing feral. Yes, i plan on finding a good raiding guild that is accepting of my class. Yes I will be pvping. See you out there, and always be careful to not underestimate a good fdruid

[Moxey]

If only feral dps didnt require that damn wolfhat and shift spamming, that kind of playstyle just is not fun for me.

[ThoronaX]

Feral Druids do not benefit from Weapon's DPS and they do not deal enough DPS to compete with others.

I've been using google to confirm this and all I can find are posts saying that weapon DPS is the ONLY thing that matters. Was this changed at some point? I'm asking this because I just noticed that weapon dps on Nostalrius indeed does not matter. I just "upgraded" my weapon from 22.9 to 37.2 dps only to find out that my feral dps did not go up.

Or does weapon dps effect certain skills only and not auto attack dps?

[noblue]

Feral Druids do not benefit from Weapon's DPS and they do not deal enough DPS to compete with others.

I've been using google to confirm this and all I can find are posts saying that weapon DPS is the ONLY thing that matters. Was this changed at some point? I'm asking this because I just noticed that weapon dps on Nostalrius indeed does not matter. I just "upgraded" my weapon from 22.9 to 37.2 dps only to find out that my feral dps did not go up.

Or does weapon dps effect certain skills only and not auto attack dps?

weapon DPS does not affect feral damage at all. You want to get weapons with good stats (str, agi, crit, etc)

there are a handful of difficult to obtain weapons that add feral attack power

the only thing feral tanks do better than warrior tanks is generate threat (and DPS). Warriors have better mitigation

[Larsen]

Nobody should make a feral druid with the intention of competing with warriors or rogues individually. The usefulness of the spec(s) is the versatility. A rogue might do 25% more DPS but can't also offtank and provide Innervate+Brez. A warrior tanks better but a prot warrior can't also fill in as a healer or DPS when their tanking isn't needed. As long as a feral druid doesn't try to go "I'm just DPS" or "I want to main tank," the spec is fine and completely viable.

[HelloSailor]

Feral tanks (and ferals in general) became awesome starting in 1.8 and stayed awesome until tBC. They could easily out-aggro Warriors of similarly-tiered gear as main tanks, which allowed DPS classes to go full throttle on damage at the cost of making the main healer work a little harder for a much shorter time (for a large reduction in net healing). It wasn't until WotLK that druids became mostly unsuitable as main tanks again (and DKs became the awesome tanks).

However, they were really only useful as healers prior to 1.8 and a lot of players continued to buy into that stigma out of ignorance (and a desire to keep as many healers around as possible).

The main "secret" to bear tanking is crit chance, their abilities generate insane amounts of aggro when they crit (added in 1.8 and removed in 2.0.3). Stack that, then Agi, then Sta. Be sure to take the talent that generates rage on crit; bear tanks generate so much rage that they can use Swipe as a rage dump even on single targets.

Remember that heals generate aggro. If you drop both your HoTs on yourself and Enrage before pulls (you did max out Furor and Improved Enrage, right?), you get an early start on both rage and aggro that Warriors just can't match.

Feral Charge will keep a bear tank in the game when a boss deals knockback or uses an aggro drop ability; Warriors have to change stances to use Intercept, increasing the chance that the boss will move out of its range before the ability can be used.

Don't bother with the Thick Hide talent. +10% of crap is just extra crap. The talent build you want looks something like this: http://www.wowprovider.com/Old.aspx?talent=11215875_11_8014c5301h505252030320015103n