Druid Feral viable on raid for DPS ?

[Ivina]

double post

[Ivina]

Feral as DPS, if you mean ONLY DPS, is not recommanded for serious raids.

The strength of the feral druid is it can have a spec that is optimized for both DPS and tanking. It can switch between decent DPS and very good tank only by switching gear. Even in 40-men raids, that's a good asset.

I agree that most of time, as pure DPS, the druid should be under a rogue. However, from my own experience, I strongly disagree with the posts saying it would deal only 50% damage of another DPS. That's just wrong.

Let's analyze a bit the druid strengths / weaknesses.
1) DPS from stats: GOOD. Feral druid take advantage from stats better than any other melee DPS (as explained in a previous post).
2) DPS from weapon: BAD. The weapon dps is not used by feral form. Only stats will matter. There is however a work-around: there are a couple of weapons that are especially designed for feral druids. Instead of having a high dps, the weapon has +AP for feral forms. The first weapons of this kind are on Nightmare Dragons or in AQ20 set. It is a big problem excepts if you are able to join a raid on Nightmare Dragons.
3) Gear: BAD. Unlike rogue that benefits from T0/T0.5/T1/T2 sets, feral druid can only rely on non-set gear. That makes things harder but not impossible. You can make a stuff as good as T0 when farming dungeons. The worse period is when farming Molten Core and Zul Gurub. There is very few feral stuff there, and while rogue will farm T1 set, you will make little progress. The problem is the same for the first bosses of BWL but there a very interesting items when farming middle and end of BWL.

Overall: the lack of gear is the main concern. Beside this, nothing makes the feral druid less good than a rogue. At equivalent gear, the DPS is even a little better if you play it well.

Special remark about Vaelastraz: the druid can make an incredible amount of DPS on this boss. It profits of the infinite energy more than the rogue and is the best melee DPS. The problem should be the aggro level, but this turns into a strength as this boss requires several offtanks.
The good strategy is: wear tank/fire resist gear. DPS like hell using an aggro meter. Manage aggro so that you are higher than the raid but lower than the tanks. When other tanks die, switch to bear form and play your role of offtank, using the aggro you have built with DPS.
For many guilds, this boss is THE hard step of BWL. Feral druid is probably one of the most efficient class on this boss. Unlike other offtanks, it actually do very good DPS all along the fight.

Vael is an important example but not the only one. If you are creative, you end up discovering that feral druid is an optimized choice in a lot of encounters. Optimized guilds SHOULD use feral druids in raids.
Those who say the opposite just haven't tried it seriously.

[lindz]

A feral druid will do significantly more damage than a prot warrior in situations when you don't need more than one or two. Itemization is not great early on but they make great OTs even before AQ. They are versatile and a good feral will also have a healing set for when an extra healer is needed. Not to mention LotP is a great buff for your dps.

If we were playing with talents from earlier patches, I would agree that ferals are crap but 1.12.1 talents are very good.

[Putni]

A feral druid will do significantly more damage than a prot warrior in situations when you don't need more than one or two. Itemization is not great early on but they make great OTs even before AQ. They are versatile and a good feral will also have a healing set for when an extra healer is needed. Not to mention LotP is a great buff for your dps.

If we were playing with talents from earlier patches, I would agree that ferals are crap but 1.12.1 talents are very good.

The point is not that feral druids are totally useless. You can be a feral druid and a useful addition of the guild if you know your way around your class. But you will be the only one. Every guild can make use of one feral druid for offtanking purposes and for the buff for the raid, but generally you don't need anything more.

If you need a healer, get a resto druid or another class, if you need tank, get a warrior, if you need a melee dps get a rogue or a warrior. 40 people raids make it absolutely unnecessary to have people in the raid just because they can quickly change roles if needed. Your setup should already include every needed role and probably more.

[lindz]

Except that there are multiple fights and trash packs that need 1-2 tanks and others than need 3+. When you only need 1-2, your other prot warriors are completely useless. Your feral druid is not. That is the benefit of versatility.

I do agree with you that multiple feral druids are not necessary though. They are a very particular class, but useful to have one of.

[Putni]

So instead of having occassions where your Warrior is completely useful and other places where they can jump in for emergency and can help in various ways (albeit not with DPSing, although a hybrid Arms-Prot build and offgear can kind of solve that, too), you now have a half-assed, hard-to-gear tank and a half-assed DPS in one person.

Like I said, one is fine, I would even argue your point is valid, especially with the 1.12 talent sets. But anything beyond one feral druid in the guild is a waste of raiding space.

That is not because bears in general suck, that's because Warrior T1 and T2 far outdoes everything bears can gather and they simply can't compete with the plates.

[Larsen]

Feral DPS is a little bit too low to compete with rogues, but still not terribly low. It's not far behind hunters, for example. Druids make excellent dedicated offtanks, though, as they do way more DPS than a prot warrior while tanking well enough to do any offtanking job. Since there's also a few fights where a feral tank is ideal, every raid guild should consider keeping one feral druid around, assuming that druid isn't an idiot who only wants to DPS.

[Moxey]

viable for 5 mans when you have epic gear.

Heal or reroll is our way sadly.

[Nithrasi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0BGh3GuGhs

Feral dps hype

tehats when feenix had no debuff limit or it was really big like 40

he was using both bleeds

I didn't really have to use rake though, just showing the rest of the server how the damage off different skills looked like. If you take a look you see I do a lot of bites aswell. They suck. I just do it to show some cool crits, "entertainment" and whatnot. I stated that where I first posted that in this thread:
http://www.wow-one.com/forum/topic/2097 ... -vs-patch/

[Flaat]

Feral as DPS, if you mean ONLY DPS, is not recommanded for serious raids.

The strength of the feral druid is it can have a spec that is optimized for both DPS and tanking. It can switch between decent DPS and very good tank only by switching gear. Even in 40-men raids, that's a good asset.

I agree that most of time, as pure DPS, the druid should be under a rogue. However, from my own experience, I strongly disagree with the posts saying it would deal only 50% damage of another DPS. That's just wrong.

Let's analyze a bit the druid strengths / weaknesses.
1) DPS from stats: GOOD. Feral druid take advantage from stats better than any other melee DPS (as explained in a previous post).
2) DPS from weapon: BAD. The weapon dps is not used by feral form. Only stats will matter. There is however a work-around: there are a couple of weapons that are especially designed for feral druids. Instead of having a high dps, the weapon has +AP for feral forms. The first weapons of this kind are on Nightmare Dragons or in AQ20 set. It is a big problem excepts if you are able to join a raid on Nightmare Dragons.
3) Gear: BAD. Unlike rogue that benefits from T0/T0.5/T1/T2 sets, feral druid can only rely on non-set gear. That makes things harder but not impossible. You can make a stuff as good as T0 when farming dungeons. The worse period is when farming Molten Core and Zul Gurub. There is very few feral stuff there, and while rogue will farm T1 set, you will make little progress. The problem is the same for the first bosses of BWL but there a very interesting items when farming middle and end of BWL.

Overall: the lack of gear is the main concern. Beside this, nothing makes the feral druid less good than a rogue. At equivalent gear, the DPS is even a little better if you play it well.

Special remark about Vaelastraz: the druid can make an incredible amount of DPS on this boss. It profits of the infinite energy more than the rogue and is the best melee DPS. The problem should be the aggro level, but this turns into a strength as this boss requires several offtanks.
The good strategy is: wear tank/fire resist gear. DPS like hell using an aggro meter. Manage aggro so that you are higher than the raid but lower than the tanks. When other tanks die, switch to bear form and play your role of offtank, using the aggro you have built with DPS.
For many guilds, this boss is THE hard step of BWL. Feral druid is probably one of the most efficient class on this boss. Unlike other offtanks, it actually do very good DPS all along the fight.

Vael is an important example but not the only one. If you are creative, you end up discovering that feral druid is an optimized choice in a lot of encounters. Optimized guilds SHOULD use feral druids in raids.
Those who say the opposite just haven't tried it seriously.

Thank you for taking the time to post this, it shows it is worthwhile to gear and maintain a good feral as offtank/dps.

Also this is not 2006, we are here to have fun and play the game we love. Sure you do slightly less dps than a rogue on some fights along progression. But do you see a rogue ress tanks, innervate priests, shift to bear for a add on a healer, offtank when a tank dies or main tank a boss the last 3% to make a kill?

A good feral that knows his role as a hybrid is worth allot, maybe not measurable in meters but this is 40 mans we are talking about.