If you’re in a DKP guild and there is no Priority list and suddenly you bid on something and its XYZ prio not yours, leave its gonna get worse not better.
Most good DKP guilds have a set prio beforehand though or and individual loot council element (letting R14 warrior have same prio with Ferals/Rogues on dft stuff like that.)
Currently there are 20-25 min speedruns using all 3 druid specs successfully. You need the 1 druid in your comp regardless for FF and can’t afford more, but spec is second order beyond that. Balance and resto were the most popular options in MC, but feral has gained a lot of popularity in BWL because its DPS output is quite good in the current phase (especially on Vael). If a feral is brought, typically they will be playing a hybrid role - for example catting on drakes and popping out in bear just to taunt a buffet. I agree with some of the other posters that the statistical bias of top speed clears towards balance/resto is more likely an artifact of druids being scarce period in those types of guilds and feral being a very niche role at the top end, rather than any fundamental reason to use one spec over the other.
someone needs to explain to me why rogues and warriors that do 2k dps without a DFT, need to be priority for DFT.
Rogues get hit rating through talents, and a TON of gear, as well as class perks.
Warriors don’t have the talents, but have so many gear options your dripping in hit after a couple ZG runs.
Feral druids get what now?
No talents, no expertise, and no options at all for gear. Druids have 1 set of gear with almost zero variation, and only 2 trinkets of any use.
Druid tanks NEED DFT just to get out of the devilsaur set. but whatever, give it to the raid logging rogue who has everything else in the game.
makes sense, because min maxing a raids finished faster than scholomance is important for internet numbers on a spreadsheet.
Yep druid tanks must really suck! their snap threat is aweful!
Says ME the druid tank with 5% hit because boots of the shadow flame go to the 2k dps raid logging rogues.
BRILLIANT!
Question. How many have your guilds had drop? So far, we have been clearing BWL every week since release, and we have yet to see one drop.
Rogues and fury warriors do not need to do things…
Though I could easily and have swapped to sword and shield to pick up an add. ./shrug
The idea here is that we group with 39 other people, and some of whom will do those jobs better than you could.
That’s the entire point. And the discarding of these offset classes like a feral druid or ret pally, is part of of why we are smashing things today.
Can you shift forms and heal? Sure! Do I need you to? No. I think I would have that slot filled with someone who could do the role of dps the best they can.
Yes Feral is on the same level as ret? Damn I guess Mages/Locks must be bottom trash as well.
Can you Brez no, giving the raid a 500-600 DPS increase by rezzing the sperg warrior who pulls aggro whilst also doing ~700-800+ DPS yourself is good no?
Less Mitigation, Less Threat (when picking up bosses) a Cat can 100% act as a better OT than a full dps fury warrior.
“That’s the entire point. And the discarding of these offset classes like a feral druid or ret pally, is part of of why we are smashing things today.”
By this logic you should be discarding all Rogues as well as from what we can see in over all dps meters the BEST Fury warriors out dps all other rogues.
But if you look deeper you find that over all rogues as a whole out dps warriors because their is a higher skill cap to a Fury warrior than a rogue. A Feral Tank fits this same exact issue.
Can you just have fury warriors be OT? Yes, but they will be worse OT.
Could you just run 5 Warrior Tanks? (and later on 8 for 4 horsemen.) Yes, but it will take you much longer to gear up all of those tanks. (especially if your trying to get all of them Thunderfury.)
An average Feral Tank, will tank better than an average warrior tank. An Exceptional Warrior tank can out threat a Bear, but to do so they have to kill their mitigation, where a Bear gets to have threat AND be tanky.
Some bosses are just better for bears as well, I have tanked Rag every-time solo as a bear without issue, warriors have to have an OT dance around or be very quick with stance dance into charge. Our larger HP pools also help with magic based bosses. (can’t parry or block a magic attack.) Broodlord hits really hard and requires a ton of threat. If you try to Deathwish that boss when you first ran into BWL as a warrior you had a good chance to die. Etc, etc.
But really what matters is who are your MT’s? Most guilds should have 2-3, and prio gear to them is a necessity unless you like to struggle for no reason.
What good does a dps increase to your rogues if they are stuck waiting for the tank’s threat?
I think the whole point here is it should be given to the better players not classes. If you have a rogue and warrior that are the same level of player then sure prio the rogue but that’s usually not always true. If you have a great feral in the raid ya def give them one. But if you have an average level feral they probably shouldn’t get one till most the other melee have one too regardless of who’s class is “better” with it.
Only 1 has dropped for my guild.
What you fail to account for is that “better” mainly means “has better gear”, and witholding gear from those that need it to perform “better” is asinine.
WCL accounts for ilvl… you know that right?
Feral DPS is not even close to the same tier as mages. I mean…it’s great when you farm the pummeler, bud look out. Pummeler has what? 3 charges?
And if you are not bothering with the pummeler? Guess what ya have?
Mage DPS? Come on son. Mage is a pure DPS class. Locks will be up there as well in the later stages of classic. But ferals?
“oooo we re loved because we can off heal!” said no one ever.
At no point do top raids go “we need some off heals in this raid spot!” Look at all the speed runs right now and you tell me how many ferals they bring to the table.
Go look at any top dps chart on any boss and tell me which ones are swarmed by orange font.
Come on son. You are needed for MOTW and perhaps 3 percent crit to the real dps classes. You may as well be wearing greens for all I care as far as raid performance goes. No way does the raid go “thank got the feral druid got DFT!”
Thing is about “top raids” and “speed runs”, is that they are the minority.
Nobody has said Feral dps are offhealers?
At no point do top raids bring more than 2 mages to be able to sprint/blink to activate the RP for Nef and Vael quickly, the literal irony bro.
MFW all mage top DPS parses are RNG & Sucking the disc priests off for PI, lmao,
The only time a mage out dps a warrior or even a feral druid on a boss is a Fire mage on Chrom with Fire Vuln and Ignite lining up, or Vael in which you get PI’ed and BA’d. So the only time you come close to beating a Feral, Rogue, Warrior in dps is when you have to beg disc priests and pray you get good rng?
Your only use in speed run is clicking RP text and buffing the healers.
Flexing on your lvl 90 Retail alt instead of showing how much of a gamer mage topping the charts in your top speedrun guild in classic huh?
Awww how cute!
I upset the off class.
Wake up when BC hits. You’ll be great for 2’s.
Cheers off class!
Funny how this is coming from a mage that most of the “top guilds” only run like 4 of and only for their AoE. In addition you also only “git gud” in TBC when all the fights are terrible for melee.
The only reason other guilds run so many mages is because they can’t find any more melee dps so they have to take the locusts of the WoW world which are mages.
At this point your mainly a decurse, a water vendor, and an int buff for the healers in any hardcore guild.
No one is gonna say “Thank god we got the mage a Nelf Tear.”
I’m not a mage, I’m a fury war main. You know? I didn’t mess around. I wanted to do DPS…I picked a class that does it really…REALLY well.
You? Jack of all trades. Master of none!
You talk a big game for someone who got out dps’d by every mage in your group. And every warlock. And hunter. And even the shadow priest. You did manage to beat out the holy priest’s smite dps tho so, grats on that I guess. 
That’s not true, Mages come online with AQ/Naxx. While true, a small number are brought for AoE in current tier, it is also an investment to get them prepared for the next.
We did DFT to tanks first Fearl has a rough time finding hit in other spots we dont get set items with hit. I would find a guild who knows how to prio loot right.