Druid: Feral Combat Potential

Having to farm a weapon from an old dungeon to use as a consumable sounds like an absolutely miserable chore, and I don’t know why people would be willing to go that far just to make feral DPS work. Was balance caster DPS just that bad or something?

The problem with balance wasn’t damage but mana, a balance druid can put out alot of burst but go oom quite quick even with consumes and innervate.
There buff is also arguably not as good, they also cannot use dots, or are unlikely to be able to use dots.

Im not saying someone can’t play boomy and do good, in fact ive seen several boomies in naxx.
They just arn’t optimal, feral can be optimal it just needs consumables.
If you are dedicated anough and not in a horrendous guild (private server vets are more friendly than retailers) then you can play either role and people will respect you for it.

It should be noted that if you don’t mind healing and only want dps for PvP then you shouldn’t be using boomkin or leader of the pack spec, there are hybrid specs that perform exceptionally in raids as healer and exceptionally in PvP.

It works without that as long as you have the Wolfshead Helm and powershift. That gives you average dps. But farming and using the MCP will make your dps very competitive.

This is for feral cat dps. Moonkin balance dps is pretty much a joke.

This is 100% incorrect. Druids are SUPERIOR tanks for MC and BWL on any fight without a fear mechanic. They have higher TPS if they use MCP correctly which lets the DPS cut loose and while they take more overall damage, their higher health pool makes them easier to keep alive and technically wastes less healer mana due to less OH.

If you’re Alliance there is Fear Ward which removes your weakness to Fear mechanics…

Druids are superior to Warriors until you’re in AQ40 at which point you’re still a better OT than another Warrior.

A Druid tank worth his salt would take a 11-33-7 build. Everything you need to know about bear tanking can be found in " Taladril’s Treatise on Druid Tanking in Vanilla" google search. The only thing not covered in that guide is the fact that with the 8.0 marco client the shift is so fast druids will be able to use pot/cookies/consumes almost instantly. You wont even see the shift.

As for cat dps shedo the druid is the go to for learning to cat dps. He will show you the maths for cat dps shows that AGI>STR because of blood frenzy talent when powershifting. Wolfshead helm and MCP are a must along with Furor" talent. Cat dps is going to do better than it ever did on the pservers because of how fast the powershift macros are working with the 8.0 client. you dont even see the shift it happens so fast.
If powershift cat is something you want to try dont forget to get an addon to track mana in cat form and your energy tic so you can get those 80 energy shifts timing down. that way you can shred twice and not wait for the energy tic. It’s also worth noting that alliace ferals have the upper on horde. The pally blessings set us up for success as we dont get any benifit from windfury. Also worth noting that if a pally judges wisdom on a target you will be able to powershift forever on it.

Fury prot is going to get destroyed with 14% parry haste gib. Thats not even up for discussion.

ferocity lowers maul/swipe by 5 and the Idol of brutality lowers it by another 3 maul/swipe 7 rage maul! 12 rage swipe!