Feral in Raids?

[Grove]

It doesn't have to be on-par. Notice how rogues are often topping dps on certain encounters, does that mean mages aren't worth it and you should just fill up your raid with rogues on those encounters? Obviously not, everyone brings something to the game besides their mere dps.

Let me stop you right there NIF. You know "that guy" I mentioned in my previous post. You're him. And like all "that guy"(s) I'm sure your opinion is more right, than mine. I could list plenty of valid counter points but I'm not going to. Your post is riddled with problems but I already know not to argue with "that guy".

A Feral OT is the best OT you can get, and the best Raid comp going through the vanilla content would be Prot MT/Feral OT/2 Feral Hybrids who can become OT for certain larger pulls. ).

Ferals are good for OT but they lack a lot of damage mitigation for "oh shit" moments. So while Ferals are good for OT positions, they serve much better for trash. I think you'll rarely see a feral druid main tanking anything for a reason, which you'd think would translate into offtanking as well but I guess since there are less "oh shit" moments in off tanking it makes sense to use a feral over something else?

What about encounters where I can heal myself, my group, throw an innervate on a priest, and proceed to keep DPSing?

This is where utility comes in over DPS. Innervate is an invaluable ability that can benefit, if not save a raid group. So that does have some clout. There's also something to be said of a Druid that can play most roles (I know most of you ferals talk a big game about doing multiple roles but most of you suck at it) without having to be told to switch and OT or switch and DPS. It requires a lot of skill and situational awareness that most players don't have on their best days.

I am fully willing to admit that one Feral in a raid is a good idea though not having one is not a bad idea. Most of the points listed, healing to innervate and buffing are handled by resto druids who often serve a better purpose than a feral druid that could just as easily be replaced by a prot warrior.

People are skeptical about Feral Druids for a reason. It's a fully justified reason.

[tunguska]

Ferals are good for OT but they lack a lot of damage mitigation for "oh shit" moments. So while Ferals are good for OT positions, they serve much better for trash. I think you'll rarely see a feral druid main tanking anything for a reason, which you'd think would translate into offtanking as well but I guess since there are less "oh shit" moments in off tanking it makes sense to use a feral over something else?

I can agree regarding the "oh shit" moments, which is precisely why I wouldn't want to be in a raid with a feral main tank if there was a geared warrior MT available. Would not argue that.

I do disagree regarding the trash comment. As a feral I've effectively tanked plenty of boss situations where i was NOT sub par to a warrior tank in any way. Bug trio for instance, where as a feral I'd have the first kill target and move on to DPS better than a prot warrior would of, while still adding an innervate/rez/depoision to the mix. Or offtanking twin emps (vek lor, melee guy) when he teleports and you need an offtank with high HP and armor to absorb his initial hit. Or patchwerk hateful strike tanking, where your warriors are better off as a DPS spec and you can be there as a massive sponge with tons of utility. Or the Nef encounter, where i can tank one of the sides, and once the adds are done I can contribute significant DPS to the boss fight. Honestly in every raid tier there are many encounters in which a feral druid is very useful and more than worth a raid spot.

We're good for trash too, especially bug packs and anything that needs more offtanks in a pinch (or AQ trash that mind controls), etc.

This is where utility comes in over DPS. Innervate is an invaluable ability that can benefit, if not save a raid group. So that does have some clout. There's also something to be said of a Druid that can play most roles (I know most of you ferals talk a big game about doing multiple roles but most of you suck at it) without having to be told to switch and OT or switch and DPS. It requires a lot of skill and situational awareness that most players don't have on their best days.

And again, I agree with you here. I think this is why there is such a bad stigma about feral druids, it's NOT an easy class to play, and you must know the encounters very well to gear properly before each fight, and know what you are capable of doing in order to play one correctly.

I'm not saying I'm the shit, but I do know all of the encounters in vanilla, and i know how to play my class and spec to the best of its ability in each encounter. A feral druid's utility can't really be measured on a meter, so to some people that means they are useless, which is just ignorant.

The level of skill and situational awareness required is what makes the class fun and challenging to me. This is 10 year old content after all, it's not all that fun to spam one button for 2-4 hour periods for me anymore.

I am fully willing to admit that one Feral in a raid is a good idea though not having one is not a bad idea. Most of the points listed, healing to innervate and buffing are handled by resto druids who often serve a better purpose than a feral druid that could just as easily be replaced by a prot warrior.

People are skeptical about Feral Druids for a reason. It's a fully justified reason.

Sure, maybe you could replace the feral druid with a prot warrior, but then you have a GREAT tank, overkill for pretty much any offtanking situation, that does worse DPS and offers none of the utility we just discussed. And you cant replace him with another resto druid, because now who is going to offtank?

[TheNIF]

It doesn't have to be on-par. Notice how rogues are often topping dps on certain encounters, does that mean mages aren't worth it and you should just fill up your raid with rogues on those encounters? Obviously not, everyone brings something to the game besides their mere dps.

Let me stop you right there NIF. You know "that guy" I mentioned in my previous post. You're him. And like all "that guy"(s) I'm sure your opinion is more right, than mine. I could list plenty of valid counter points but I'm not going to. Your post is riddled with problems but I already know not to argue with "that guy".

Oooh, I see. That's a brilliant way to have a discussion and "secure a win": I have all these excellent points, but since there's something wrong with you I'm not going to vent them, you wouldn't be capable of arguing competently anyway (you know, because there's something wrong with you that makes you incapable of having a discussion).

Honestly, I'd really like to see a good and valid counterpoint instead of that nonsense because you can erect the same terrible reasoning as an excuse to not argue with anyone on any topic.

Most of the points listed, healing to innervate and buffing are handled by resto druids who often serve a better purpose than a feral druid that could just as easily be replaced by a prot warrior.

A resto druid isn't doing any dps or tanking, like at all. And if he raids as resto all the time, chances are he has shit tanking and dps gear because, unless somebody in your raid has lost his mind, your resto druids aren't being given rights to tank and dps gear and only start getting feral gear once the content has been cleared so many times the loot is starting to get sharded. And a prot warrior has truly terrible dps and barely any utility.

The point is that you get the utility of a druid, combined with useful dps and offtanking ability. The point is that a feral druid can do other things that makes him worth it despite him not topping dps meters and being maintank on hard content.

If you run with one more resto druid, you're running with one more healer which you strictly speaking might not need, instead of one more dps and offtank with druid utilities. This is of course all very hypothetical and every raid and every raid-day is different.

[Aslan]

Question isnt really if you can beat a rogue/fury etc on pure dps meters. In a horde raid, your +3% crit is shit anyway kind of.. Even without druid, you can only fit 3 melee into each grp due to shaman and hunter which both have superior bonuses (excluding the fact that with +12-15% crit we gain from world buffs currently, the crit cap is a real issue)!

But that doesnt mean you cant dps. As soon as BWL is here, there will be tons of leather armor with strength on it, I suggest you spec into +20% intellect for a huge mana pool and put the rest into resto as a hybrid spec. You will have the mana pool to decurse more proper than resto druids and you can dps on trash and vael, where not all healers are needed. That speeds up the cleartime by a lot. 1 more healer on trash wouldnt mean less downtime but more overheal anyway. You can also rotate 2 teams of healers, let half dps and other half heal, switch when they are oom.

As for the rest of the bosses you can heal. You need as many healers in the raid as you need for the most intense encounter. On all other encounters, the hybrids and best dps'ers can be more useful differently

[Aslan]

Question: how is a feral tanks tps in comparison to an impale prot warrior?
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#LVhL0hbZcZEizox0zVo

Single target of course.

[The Shortest Path]

Feral druid has always had higher TPS than prot warrior.

[Aslan]

Any numbers, reasons, claculations, sources, tests available here? Loose claims wont really do anything. I hear warriors claiming its warriors and ferals claiming its ferals .

Im very familiar with prot threat gain and threat mechanics, though havent really looked into druids. Might be worth bringing one to tank the add that gets killed first or a single boss on farm content when the healers can keep up with the burst taken. All only worth if threat beats an impale prot though.

[mindbullets]

Any numbers, reasons, claculations, sources, tests available here? Loose claims wont really do anything. I hear warriors claiming its warriors and ferals claiming its ferals .

Im very familiar with prot threat gain and threat mechanics, though havent really looked into druids. Might be worth bringing one to tank the add that gets killed first or a single boss on farm content when the healers can keep up with the burst taken. All only worth if threat beats an impale prot though.

I don't have numbers to support my claims here; this is based on my experience tanking in raids and instances on this server. That being said, druids are decidedly better at holding AoE threat and are probably very nearly as good at single target threat as Warriors. The reason we are better at holding AoE threat is simple: we have Swipe. It does good damage on multiple targets and does not prevent rage generation like Maul. For single target druids usually have no problem using Maul on every auto attack and using extra Swipes when rage builds up. I find I can hold threat relatively easy against full melee and caster DPS as long as I have rage, even with having 0/5 Feral Instinct as well.

Our biggest deficiency in threat is not having Mocking Blow. This ability can allow warriors to prevent raid damage and re-establish aggro reliably, and it's something for which druids have nothing comparable. Horde druids also do not benefit from Windfury, unlike warriors, making the threat differential more favorable for Horde warrior tanks.

[Grove]

Any numbers, reasons, claculations, sources, tests available here? Loose claims wont really do anything. I hear warriors claiming its warriors and ferals claiming its ferals .

It's never been Ferals. Do I have numbers to prove my claims? No. I do have years of experience raiding vanilla content, I'm sure many of us do. If people were honest they'd say their guild has 1 feral druid tops, and most guilds don't bring them. This means that not everyone is gonna be able to play Feral. I'd bet not even 50% of the unique posters here will be granted that opportunity.

Might be worth bringing one to tank the add that gets killed first or a single boss on farm content when the healers can keep up with the burst taken. All only worth if threat beats an impale prot though.

It's only worth it to bring Ferals for this reason. As an off tank.

[Aslan]

As stated: only offtanking adds that get killed first and bosses on farm content, only in case that the ferals tps is superior to the one of your impale tank.
Frankly i really dont want to hear 1 guys opinion based on a couple years of the same playstyle, thats nothing to work with. It was a shoutout about feral tps vs impale prot tps on single target, backed up with numbers,nothing more.

If feral > prot in that one situation, it would be worth bringing a feral tank in my raids, if not Id stick to eventually 1 hybrid heal-dps to decurse and offheal when needed + dps the rest for a daster clear. Feral tanks only if they are such outstanding players that they beat the warrior roster.