Druid: Balance (11) / Feral Combat (40) (http://talentcalculator.merciless-gilde.com/?lang=en&show=t&t=64115)

Just experimenting with some possible builds, I am aware that people don't usually think of druids as MTs, but I think this would be the cat's meow if you were going for that role.

What are other people's thoughts?

I guess not

No improved enrage or furor are two glaring problems I would see with being a MT build. With the exceptionally high number of warriors out there its rare to find a guild that would remotely accept a druid as their MT, aside from a few encounters where a druid would be a better MT. That aside I would get imp enrage at the least and furor if you plan on shifting quick to feral charge.

I gotta agree, Furor is key (Imp Enrage I'm so/so on).

This is how I pull... Starfire, either moonfire/rejuv on myself/thorn on myself... then drop to bear and immediatly maul.... I'd hate not having that maul. Also for Feral Charging in situations where you can shift and break web's and keep tanking where a warrior couldn't... Spider Boss in ZG or Spiders in Scholo/Strat UD come to mind.

I would prob drop balance, get Furor and either Imp. MoTW or Nature's Focus. I have very little problem tanking as a resto' build. You don't need 10% more damage to tank, nor the occasional free attack... up to you.

Failing that, you could also drop Feral Aggression or Thick Hide to get the 5 pts for Furor.

No improved enrage or furor are two glaring problems I would see with being a MT build. With the exceptionally high number of warriors out there its rare to find a guild that would remotely accept a druid as their MT, aside from a few encounters where a druid would be a better MT. That aside I would get imp enrage at the least and furor if you plan on shifting quick to feral charge.
Possibly dropping some of the unnecessary cat form talents to get some Furor as mentioned above.

Some gear actually gives you rage/energy when you shift, but then you'd have to be dependent on that gear to get the immediate feral charge.

There weren't any useless cat stuff in that build, there WERE some TPs that benefitted BOTH cat and bear, but not a single one was solely cat, btw.

I have very little problem tanking as a resto' build.

I would have to agree here as well being a mainly resto build myself. I honestly have never seen a feral build that didn't at the very least include Furor from the resto tree. Imp Enrage would be nice too unless you are going to be constantly in combat gaining rage.

I would have to agree here as well being a mainly resto build myself. I honestly have never seen a feral build that didn't at the very least include Furor from the resto tree.

Just because you have never seen a build that didn't include furor, doesn't mean it's an insane idea to exclude it in a feral build. Getting that immediate rage/energy is nice, but at the cost of 5 TPs just to get 100% chance and then Imp Enrage is a bit much. It only takes about 1.5 sec to build enough rage for Feral Charge (from enrage), which is arguably quite adequate.

(Imp Enrage would be nice too) unless you are going to be constantly in combat gaining rage.
Exactly...which is the whole idea behind a MT feral build.

We might not be able to match a twinked warrior for AC, but we can heal/buff ourselves (and our party with LoTP, GoTW, thorns) much more effectively than a warrior, which more than offsets the AC disparity, IMO.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/druids2/talents.html?0140050010000000505250130302215105000 0000000000

is a more effective MT build imo. Enrage is 2 rage per second, so effectively you pop enrage and its 2.5 seconds, or 3 seconds since I doubt you get half second ticks of rage, until you have enough to perform feral charge. Keep in mind enrage puts you at 75% base reduction of AC as well. Or you could have furor and pop into bear to instantly feral charge and taunt. You can usually easily outmatch a warrior in terms of AC and threat generation, but mitigation of crits via +defense is usually where druids fall short.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-druid&t=781672&p=1&tmp=1#post781672

-there is a decent thread on Druid tanking if you are interested. Choose whatever you want honestly, it makes no difference to me. You came here asking for comments/critique though =)

Last nite as I was tanking, I realized the other thing I forgot about. You also want Furor for dropping to bear and getting off a Demo Roar to deal with pulling 3 things at once...

If all you want is to stay bear all the time... then roll a warrior, you'll be much happier in the long run.

If all you want is to stay bear all the time... then roll a warrior, you'll be much happier in the long run.
QFT. A druid should basically be doing the stance dance x 10.

So you're saying that if I'm not shifting a lot when I'm MT then I'm not playing correctly? Um....No. If pulling with starfire and then shifting to gain 10 rage works for you, great. I'd rather keep the rage I had from the last pull and pull with faerie fire. People are used to waiting for a warrior to get some sunders on before they start dpsing. They can wait for me to get a growl and a maul or two.

Regular enrage works just fine before a pull. Once I'm in combat, I have no problems generating rage. Furor is most useful in PvP. You can shift to bear and immediately charge. That is the only real point of Furor and shift, enrage, charge is usually good enough.

I'm 11/40. I left out Feral Instinct and 1 point in Brutal Impact. The +15% threat is nice, but not necessary as long as I use Growl whenever it is up. Basically I'm all the cat AND bear I can be. My guild is more often short on tanks or DPS for a raid than healers. I always get a spot because I can do all three by switching gear. I'm not all the healer i could be, but I have a huge mana pool and as long as people understand that they aren't going to get an instant heal and that if something crits them for 3k they may want to pot to give me time to get a heal off, we don't have any problems.

So to respond to the original poster, I'm 11/40, I love it, my guild loves it, everyone is happy.

I'm currently 14/32/5 and considering respec'ing to a 0/30/21 to get better healing while still keeping my feral aspects that I so enjoy ( though I will miss OoC and Natural Shapeshifter ).

21 Resto gets you one valuable thing. NS.

That's the only reason you're even considering more than 5 points in resto. The thing you have to ask yourself is whether an instant heal on a 3 minute cooldown is worth 15-30% of your dps.

I didn't. In guild raids, we usually have more than enough healing so there aren't many times where NS is necessary. I get tapped to tank or dps as often as I heal, so for me DPS>NS. Soloing, I kill much faster, taking much less damage, so I don't have to heal nearly as often.

You may be better off with NS. Depends on your situation.

How often do you solo at lv 60? Other than gathering mats / gold for repairs for MC and Ony runs, I'd venture to say not that much. Unless you are doing quest lines for the gold rewards (post 1.10).

Just because you believe that there is no point in resto past furor doesn't necessarily make that the case. Natures Focus, tier 2 resto is of great utility. 70% chance not to have heals interrupted by damage is huge. Lock / boss DoT's hurt (and interrupt healing), and being able to heal one's self is a large part of what good druids do. If you cant heal yourself b/c of DoT's, or b/c there are 4 or 5 (non elite) mobs attacking you, gg.

And for 1 point, Insect Swarm is nice. -2% chance to hit on MC mobs actually makes them miss our tanks noticibly more. We have one druid keep rank 1 IS on the mobs just for the debuff. I had a 1/39/11 Build, and loved those 11 points in resto.

Aggro / threat on yourself is increased greatly by healing yourself. Being in bear form, charging a group, demo roar, couple swipes, then at about half health pop out and regrow rejuv then back keeps all aggro on you (situation permitting of course... you wouldnt do this against a MC mob, or when yo have lots of rage).

I am now 0/15/36, have 9.5k armor, 5.2k health buffed with MoTW and can tank just fine. I chose to take iMoTW over furor, as I am primarily healing, and have noticed how much I miss furor. The 3 sec to generate enough rage to feral charge is plenty for a runner to get away, or to lose a battle vs a mage in PvP. Though I don't do as much damage as I could (which I miss), thats what the rogues / hunters are for next to me :) I'm just the one take a beating while they do what they do best: kill.

**edit: Just my 2c. Not attacking anyone or trying to tell anyone that my opinion is more valid, or by any means that they are wrong.**

Claritondeus,

I much appreciate your input. I like the fact that you've been the full feral and now more resto to give a view from both sides.

As mentioned I'll miss the extra damage from Natural Weapons and the mana savings from Natural Shapeshifter....and the energy/mana/rage savings from OoC.

I've been thinking about this change for a while now, but last night kind of pushed it to the forefront. I was running UD Strat with a PuG and they wanted me as main healer. We hada Pally as well, and over all didn't do too badly ( some bad pulls triggered some wipes ), but I kept the tank alive. We had one bad pull where the tank went down quickly and the pally was being over run. I cast a big heal on her, and went bear, pulling everything off her so she could live ( and continue to heal ). We took down the mobs and rez'd the warrior.

I was going through mana so quickly though, that I knew I could do better with some more spirit and some resto talents.

I'll probably try the respec the weekend and report in on Monday.

Cool :) Let us know how it goes niner.

Great job pulling aggro with the huge heal then taking over as Tank. I'm sure the PuG was impressed. And the warrior was happy that he didn't have to hoof it from the GY.

Not trying to hijack, but what do you think of UD Strat / Scholo now that they are 5 man, not 10 man? Supposedly they took out some mobs, and made it easier, but still a good challenge huh?

With 5 man it's still quite the challenge. There are still so many groups around that you have to watch how far you pull or, oops here come 3/4/5 more. *wipe*

With my little tank heroics ( in healing gear >.< ) the warriors comments were "Wow, I thought we were gonna wipe. WTG guys!"

It was cool to show them that I could tank, but I would have been much better in my tanking gear as opposed to my +healing gear. It's hard to find a group sometimes when typing "LFG 60 Feral Druid" and I get whispers saying "Do you have innvenerate?" *sigh*

Welp, I bit the bullet, spent the 5g I think it was and respec'd 0/30/21

Yes, I miss omen of clairty when I'm running around in bear or cat. The free energy or rage was pretty nice.

But, having improved Healing Touch, Improve Rejuv, Nature's Swiftness and Insect Swarm ( totally dig the new animation, no longer just a green glow ) really is nice.

I was actually told I was one of the better druid healers that this group ( 3 from the same guild ) had run into. When I told them I wasn't full resto they just kind of stood there and said "really? well, you could have fooled me" LOL.

I really do enjoy being able to switch roles at the drop of a hat ( or at the drop of the "in battle" flag. :D ). Last night in BRD in one room I'd be healing and in another I'd be tanking to keep the mage from going squish. Then pop out, cast Nature's Swiftness and Healing Touch to fill the warrior so he continues with his mobs.

I had my damage meters up and was watching the "healing done". I was just under the pally ( said he was healing spec'd but I've never played a pally to know their trees ) in terms of amount of healing done. I've quickly moved away from casting regrowth if I can avoid it. Big waste of mana, and a rejuv in the beginning, then healing touch with a rejuv chaser seemed to work great 90% of the time.

Yes, I still miss Omen of Clarity, but with these new talents I am really digging healing.

Now I need me some more +healing gear. I'm going to start running DM more ( get the healing boots if I can ). I've got some Wildheart, Feralheart and the ironfeather shoulders & chest so that helps too.

Are there any decent 1 handed maces or daggers with +healing that don't require end game guilds?