Feral in Raids?

[Stalk]

I don't know why you guys beat around the bush with your advice. Just give the OP a link to the fucking feral gear guide. Armor and Stamina are your top tier stats.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Level_60_druid ... _equipment

[tunguska]

I don't know why you guys beat around the bush with your advice. Just give the OP a link to the fucking feral gear guide. Armor and Stamina are your top tier stats.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Level_60_druid ... _equipment

True that, this is good advice and the same gear guide i've always followed.

However, keep in mind that to be as valuable as possible to the raid, i recommend having 3 sets of gear with you at all times. Feral(tank), feral(dps), and healing sets.

Shit, I even had a decursing set with mp/5 and spirit.

[mindbullets]

As a feral druid that raids, I can tell you that it is certainly possible and if you put in the time to gear properly it's a fun role to fill. You are essentially an OT that does significantly more damage than the warrior OTs when you are not required to tank. You also have the utility of Innervate and Battle Res, and it's easier for you to take time to use these abilities than any other druids when you are DPS.

In MC, I typically get assigned to tank on core hound packs, Garr, Sulfuron Harbinger, and Majordomo. I'm occasionally a backup tank on Ragnaros, but for pretty much every other fight, I am a DPS.

This means I had to build a tank set, a cat DPS set, and the FR set. I had to level enchanting just to make the tank trinket that never gets replaced. I also rolled healing for a while before I started raiding as feral and acquired a reasonable healing set that usually stays in the bank. I bring about 12 different consumables to every raid since I have two roles. It takes a lot of time to prepare to raid as feral, but it can be done.

I don't know why you guys beat around the bush with your advice. Just give the OP a link to the fucking feral gear guide. Armor and Stamina are your top tier stats.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Level_60_druid ... _equipment

This is the tank gearing list I use as well. They value stam fairly highly compared to other lists I have seen, which I think is important. Druids absolutely need a huge HP pool to tank well, since it helps lessen the spiking when you do get crit or crushed. That's of course not to dismiss the importance of armor; bonus armor pieces place very well on this list. Most of the tank best-in-slot items are bonus armor pieces.

[nessåj]

I personnaly think some feral can be good for raid, since they add 3 % crit for all other (you can count the extra crit of other done with aura as a part of feral DPS).
One more innerv for healer, one more battlerez, tranquility to heal group when a lot of raid damage, can offtank too if needed.
For sure drood dps won't be first dps but he can done a normal amount of damage + the extra utilities for raid.

But feral drood need to be in alliance, seal of wisdom (of might, of king good too) + blessing of wisdom needed for optimal dps gameplay.
Feral have to demorph remorph a lot to win the extra 40 energy (powershift), so you need farm a lot of consumable to fix the mana problem.

The problem is the gear you want is often the gear rogue want, since you dps less than them you will be always the last choice for an item and the gap between you and rogue gonna be dig a bit more each item they win before you.

[Grove]

Ask yourself: Is my DPS sustainable for long periods of time and is it at least on par with Mage, Warlock, Rogue, or Fury Warrior? Are my utility abilities good enough to grant me a raid spot over another? Be Honest.

If you were being honest you should have arrived at the conclusion that your DPS cannot match any of these classes. So why does a Shadow Priest get a spot in the raid and I don't!? The utility provided by a shadow priest is their stacking debuff, which at 5 stacks grants an additional 15% shadow damage. The 3 crit provided by ferals DOES NOT justify giving them a raid spot. Ferals, can provide an additional Innervate for a more critical class and Feral does a good job at trash tanking which is why -one- raid spot is typically afforded for a feral druid.

There's always "that one guy (or girl)". You know "the guy (or girl)". You probably are "the guy (or girl)". So what is "the guy (or girl)"? He or She is the one who always has to do things differently. Frequent examples are Ret Paladins, Feral Druids, Enhance Shaman, etc. He's (or she) gonna prove you wrong. It doesn't matter what your experience is, his or her tenacity and wisdom will always trump your own.

**A better question, more about the politics within a guild than min/maxing: If we allow a Feral druid to raid with us, will that set a standard and where do we draw the line with utility classes?**

In my previous guild, we had a feral druid throughout all of AQ40 but forced him to go resto when we started pushing Naxx progression.

[TheNIF]

Ask yourself: Is my DPS sustainable for long periods of time and is it at least on par with Mage, Warlock, Rogue, or Fury Warrior?

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. But anyway, if dps is the only thing on your mind you should factor in that dps added from that buff (3% crit) to the entire group you could add to your own. With that in mind, yes, the dps of a feral druid who knows what he's doing is in fact on-par and worth it.

Also, that druid will bring all the normal utility of a druid, like battleress and innervates and can in fact keep himself a live easier than other classes.

And feral dps is just as long-term sustainable as any other melee class: infinitely long because they don't use mana.

Naxx is irrelevant because naxx has not been released yet. Until naxx, a feral druid is worth it. Naxx was shit tbh because not only did they make the instance hard as hell, they also made only gear for the "main spec". For example, there is only 2 pieces of leather a feral druid would want in naxx. So a feral druid will be stuck in AQ/BWL gear while everyone else is gearing up in their sets. What is holding feral druids back in naxx is not mechanics, it is shitty itemization. Luckily, the entire rest of vanilla is not like Naxx, so if you're not doing naxx anyway, fuck naxx ferals are fine.

Everything here assumes you raid with a person who knows what he's doing. I have seen my fair share of shitty feral druids just as I have seen people who excel at what they do. So if you can find that one dude who wants to be good at what he does, having a feral druid is not a loss in any way.

[TheNIF]

The problem is the gear you want is often the gear rogue want, since you dps less than them you will be always the last choice for an item

If that is how loot is distributed in your guild, based on "which class is topping dps" or not, I'd leave it.

Do hunters pass gear (rings, necks, trinkets?) to rogues in your guild? Hunters almost always do less dps than rogues, so going by how one class does less dps than another, they should also pass on gear right? At least, that would be a consistent application of that rule. If would be really stupid for a guild to bring feral druids, but then prevent them from getting gear. They it's not because of mechanics issues that ferals are held back, it's because of stupid loot rules.

In my guild, everyone has an equal right to the loot if they can use it in a raid context and it is for their main spec. That means nobody gets left behind.

[tunguska]

Ask yourself: Is my DPS sustainable for long periods of time and is it at least on par with Mage, Warlock, Rogue, or Fury Warrior? Are my utility abilities good enough to grant me a raid spot over another? Be Honest.

What narrow minded thinking. Now, if a feral druids ONE AND ONLY job in a raid was to DPS, then yes, your argument would be valid.

However, in any given raid a Feral druid should be offtanking as well as DPSing. A feral druid makes a really good offtank, set their target as the first kill target, then you can have them move on to DPSing the rest of the adds (or the boss) of that encounter. In some encounters, i may throw on a +int set and decurse the entire fight, or use a hybrid of gear and DPS and shift out to help decurse as needed.

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

What about the many fights in AQ where there are poison to be cleansed, random mobs running around one shotting priests that need to be picked up ASAP, etc?

Just a few examples, but just because you can't measure the usefulness of the class on a meter, does NOT mean it's useless. As a feral druid I've saved a full 40 man raid from wiping on many occasions, and my old guild would attest to that.

So, let's tally this up. An offtank that can battle rez/innervate/decurse/depoision, can do comparible DPS to a hunter, and buff/heal his comrads. Definitely worth a raid slot, especially in 40 man content.

[Rugh]

Ask yourself: Is my DPS sustainable for long periods of time and is it at least on par with Mage, Warlock, Rogue, or Fury Warrior? Are my utility abilities good enough to grant me a raid spot over another? Be Honest.

If you were being honest you should have arrived at the conclusion that your DPS cannot match any of these classes. So why does a Shadow Priest get a spot in the raid and I don't!? The utility provided by a shadow priest is their stacking debuff, which at 5 stacks grants an additional 15% shadow damage. The 3 crit provided by ferals DOES NOT justify giving them a raid spot. Ferals, can provide an additional Innervate for a more critical class and Feral does a good job at trash tanking which is why -one- raid spot is typically afforded for a feral druid.

There's always "that one guy (or girl)". You know "the guy (or girl)". You probably are "the guy (or girl)". So what is "the guy (or girl)"? He or She is the one who always has to do things differently. Frequent examples are Ret Paladins, Feral Druids, Enhance Shaman, etc. He's (or she) gonna prove you wrong. It doesn't matter what your experience is, his or her tenacity and wisdom will always trump your own.

**A better question, more about the politics within a guild than min/maxing: If we allow a Feral druid to raid with us, will that set a standard and where do we draw the line with utility classes?**

In my previous guild, we had a feral druid throughout all of AQ40 but forced him to go resto when we started pushing Naxx progression.

The issue with this is some idolized ideal you build up that doesn't really exist anymore.

Back in vanilla people didn't take Feral or Balance Druids, Shadow Priests, Ret Paladins, or Enhancement/Elemental Shamans. And the issue at the time was never one of DPS or proper gearing, but one of not understanding. At the time, every encounter was a huge problem ( due to half the raid being on dialup, nobody knowing how to play their class/no DPS meters, and really shitty itemization ), so not pumping the raid full of healers was suicide.

It's not 2006 anymore though, and we now know far more about these classes then we once did. Yeah, sure certain offspecs are just terrible ( Cat DPS will never be as good as pure DPS by a significant margin, Enhancement is too bursty to be raid viable ), but other ones are actually just fine, or can work with certain caveats ( Elemental and Balance can work fairly well if they are supported by a Mana Regen Totem/Innervate to help with their mana issues. Shadow completely outpaces every other class when it comes to damage, especially on Alliance side since damage gets threatcapped by AQ, and they have far better threat degen then the other damage dealers. 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. ).

The content isn't absurdly challenging anymore. We all grew up, crunched the numbers, and have done it time and time again. We know the best in slot items now, how to get them, and why they matter. We know how our classes work, and can now identify when a Hunter/Rogue/Fury Warrior isn't actually doing the damage he should so we can kick them out of our raids. We've improved as players to the point the content no longer needs such strict measures to be cleared. When you can raid and clear MC/BWL with a 20 man geared in the gear from those raids without issue, it becomes a bit silly to start throwing a fit because someone in the raid isn't doing optimal DPS as long as they are having fun/contributing in some way.

The biggest problem for offspecs in vanilla isn't their spec or some sort of malign influence from Blizzard. It's the fact they can't gear up as easily. Unlike everyone else, they actually do need to think about BiS and what is their actual BiS is, and they need to usually grind quite a bit to get it. Most of their best items come from 5mans, or crafting professions, and they need to spend more time/money getting those items then the other classes need to, most of whom are just fine grabbing the sets and using those.

If you are in a guild that is still having trouble with MC, BWL, ZG, or even AQ in 2015 with 40 people, the problem isn't that a "offspec" got into your raid. It's that your raid is pretty bad, and people aren't doing what they are supposed to.

Naxx is a -slight- exception, in that it's the most challenging encounter in the game by far, and requires everyone to be at peak. This means you can't waste Innervates/Mana totems on Elemental/Balance anymore, and anybody not pulling their weight needs to switch to the proper spec. But even in Naxx I'd still take good/well geared Feral OTs over more Prot Warriors, or SPriests over yet another Rogue/Hunter. But that's because those classes offer so much more then their counterparts. Feral OTs are fantastic because they can do far more damage then a Prot Warrior can, giving them the chance to tank trash/subbosses, then still do respectable damage on the MT's target after their target is dead. They can also spam Sunder ( Faerie Fire ) for the Warrior, so the Warrior can focus on better threat gain abilities, and if needbe, can be an Innervate/Healbot for a second since they get the Int buff from HotW/have enough points to Hybrid some stuff from Resto. That's a much better gain then another Prot Warrior. SPriest has similar gains, since they'll be outdamaging the whole raid by Naxx if well played, and they can easily drop Shadowform and start healing if things go poorly, unlike Rogues/Warlocks/Hunters.

[Daedalos]

A long ass post...

This. A million times this.

I will be referring to your post, whenever I'll get a thumbs down in the near future.