I’m not a vanilla veteran, but I do have over decade’s experience in the game. The community gets things wrong from time to time.
I haven’t googled that statement. I have listened to his videos and now streams as of yesterday. Skarm clearly works at it. He backs his ideas up with proper math, and it’s convincing. We’ll see how it checks in classic over the upcoming months.
Screenshots + article of the 30% less damage in classic:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/possible-bug-feral-base-damage/205737
Skarm’s calculations are based off of incorrect private server numbers that he played under. That isnt the same as what classic will be.
I’m playing OCE so not specifically relevant but I plan on rolling resto (which I played throughout vanilla) but would go Heart of the Wild/NS if the guild wanted me to offtank.
For priest I’d go holy (played shadow in TBC).
Realistically, it takes a certain mindset to play a less than optimal spec, knowing you are going to underperform. You either have to totally love the spec or but willing to experiment to see what you can bring.
Also, feral and shadow both have to work much harder to be competitive and still won’t be on par with the primary dps specs. Not everyone wants to make that kind of effort.
If you truly want to be optimal and/or top the meters you will likely opt for an a more ideal class or spec.
True, and we’ve done our research - our comp does very well with 1 Feral OT and 1 Shadow Priest. If it’s anything I’ve learned playing 1.12 over the years, it’s that optimal may be relative - there will always be a guild that stands by the 32 Warriors and 8 Shamans optimal comp, and many more that say, “yeah, we don’t need to do that.”
Thanks for including the original source material. The screen shot is at level 40, not 60. The original beta report goes on to say:
We currently believe the difference is in the ‘base paw’ damage from cat and bear forms, this would explain why the dps drop is higher at lower levels but tapers off as levels and gear are added.
It’s a rush to say “30% off, so bad”.
Well, for instance as feral dps you need to farm tons of manual crowd pummelers for every raid. Not everyone will wamt to do that.
Also there is the perception, which is reinforced by the echo chamber, that meme specs are completely unviable and that will sway a lot of players
Yep, and the general perspective of hardcore druids is that MCP farming > Binding farming. That thing is your BiS and you have it day 1. Those runs are fast and also make a good amount of money too, so not bad all in all for the skilled druid 
This isn’t really unexpected, without the bait and switch we had in vanilla most people are fully aware that feral OT’s and shadow priests are mostly just gimmicks. And the people who want to go ranged caster DPS are going mage or warlock and the tanks are going warrior.
True for meters, and probably for most single encounters. But a raid contains multiple encounters where different things are optimal - sometimes an extra tank, sometimes more heals, sometimes dps. Having one or two players that can effectively change role from encounter to encounter, rather than carrying an extra warrior or priest that are superflous to requirements on half the bosses, might not be so very far from optimal across the raid as a whole. Especially early on when we’re all gearing up, and said players also won’t be competing for loot with the main warriors/priests.
In a game that can be so much about numbers though, it’s not something that’s easily quantified. If someone doesn’t see the value, just have to smile and move on.
Yeah it has been sad how vehemently people have been trying to discourage others from playing anything but heals and to just not play druids.
yeah people will end up quitting before 60, some will switch mains or reroll servers. its too soon
Maybe. I don’t know about my play times, my jobs are odd, I may not be able to line up with raid times so there is that. Figured I’d give it a bit and see if I wanted to join a guild or go solo.
There are some content creators out there promoting druid… Taladril, Ebbnflow, Slarmtank, etc.
Ebbn just did a video on the realities of playing the class which is pretty objective.