Hi all!
I posted a thread in the TBC Classic section about maining druid upcoming in BC, and just wanted to link it here in case you old-school forever druid mains can remember how things worked for us back in BC?
Any help is very much appreciated. 
I believe if you click into this you can see the small list of questions I have. Not trying to spam posts, I just want to create visibility for my questions.
There’s a lot I don’t remember from back then, but I feel like tree was more or less mandatory.
Shifting was better than in classic for sure, but still has its limitations.
There are weapons with a boat load of attack power meant for feral druids.
The only really frustrating thing about feral for me was that you couldn’t bleed certain mobs like mechanical creatures, so your dps would suffer like crazy in those circumstances.
Basically, resto druids in tree form move 20% slower, they are amazing in PvP and have a few viable specs they can play with half resto half balance or deep resto, in PvP they are excellent and every raid will take 1-2 since multiple hots can be used on the same target and the amount of buff slots were increased
Balance is meh in PvP and also meh in PvE, they bring a 5% Crit buff to the raid or party can’t remember, but they rely on Crits to do any decent damage especially compared to a warlock or mage, the final talent choice treants can sometimes ninja pull as you have no control over them so people hardly took them, that being said you would still get raid invites for insect swarm and improved fairie fire for the amount of hit reduction it brings
Feral is a weird one, I’ve seen ferals do top DPS and ferals who are at the bottom with similar gear, all the way until season 4 or sunwell plateau you are using a level 44 blue helmet that gives you energy upon entering cat form, this is called power shifting. I’m not going to get into all the details about it but basically you’ll need mana pots and a lot of effort to play a feral well. Raids are happy to bring a good feral but if you underperform don’t except to be kept since you aren’t essential. Ferals bring a 5% melee Crit buff along with a heal attached to hit whenever a Crit is done and they can off tank in emergency situations.
In PvP it’s pretty much the same, you gotta power shift to make use out of the spec, some people enjoy some people don’t, I personally enjoyed it in PvE but not as much in PvP
Bear druids share a talent tree with ferals and it’s a debate if warriors or bears are the best tanks in a raid, but basically bears with good gear can get insanely high dodge chance I’m talking like 80% and they have the most amount of HP aswell as armor compared to the other tanks, they can hold agro just fine aswell but warriors are still slightly more desirable because they have better panic buttons such as shield wall and shield block, but again if you know what you’re doing and have the gear you won’t be replaced by a warrior like in vanilla
This is just knowledge from private servers and research so don’t quote me if everything isn’t 100% accurate
BC is when I switched from healing to feral and really started liking my druid even more. I remember in Kara battling my old guild leader’s Shadow Priest for top dps. Then after a bit I switch to tanking for Gruul’s Lair and loved that. To me it seemed like BC made it so druids were allowed to do something other then heal in groups.
Taking tree form was mandatory. Lifebloom could be on multiple targets, and stacked 3 times. Basically, you could do nutty healing just rolling LB stacks all around, with the limit being how much haste you had.
You went oom pretty fast shifting in and out. The talents for 30% redux of shifting were easier to get than they were in Vanilla.
Tree of Life is pretty mandatory for PvE, and I remember the argument being why slow yourself with a permaslow from ToL vs the Extra Healing. Arena it was a no no, but Randos, do what you like.
Some people still ran them (did lousy DPS) and swore by them. They usually got laughed at, hit with a stick, told to sit in the corner, and stop being dumb. The lack of scaling with feral in Vanilla was a thing(Kitty Paws were a fixed 99 DPS IIRC Two hander?), and from what I remember, it was one of the things they tried to fix in BC. The squid staff out of Kara was one I was most excited to get. The wolf’s head helm is still contested. Some say the extra stats and the meta isn’t worth the extra energy, some say it is. Depends how much effort you want to put into it. I didn’t run it, didn’t was the hassle nor the mana pot costs. The guild leader did, did a extra DPS, and enjoyed it. With a non world first guild, it probably isn’t an issue. Like others have said, your utility+decent DPS is a good combo. But it is a different set of people playing. We didn’t have many min maxers. Seems to be the opposite now.
I honestly don’t remember if Resto had a non battle rez. I don’t think so, but not sure. Sure as hell didn’t have one as a feral. Was one of the things that got complained about in five mans with a feral/resto healer if IIRC. But we had a pally tank, so not as bad.
I consider BC the “happy times” for druids. It was a powerful class, and the most fun I have ever had playing a feral.
Edit:I am not so sure about the MCP, I can’t remember if was a private server discussion I read a while back, or from a dude I knew that used to love to try and find ways to break the game (Engineering in PvP and other things like that, low level items that hadn’t been nerfed) But I am pretty sure he tried the MCP in BC. But not sure.
In BC I got a druid in full PvP gear. It was fun to do open world PVP (jusT HAVE PVP turn on). But switch to a lock and it was easier.
Bear is ok but back then gear was as good as now I mean the stats didn’t really favor druids much.
Dunno, I am pretty casual compared to back then. Didn’t play feral in WoTLK (John F’ing Madden didn’t appeal to me, and I jumped on the DK Hype train, but ended up with a Balance Druid) I don’t even really raid anymore, nor do the level of PvP I used to do back then (Rogue or go home. It was Op’d as hell)
I liked bear catting, and to me, that was the height of it. Experiences are subjective, however.
Edit:Plus I have gotten old, and you know what they say about nostalgia. Get the hell off my lawn, you damned whippersnapper, with your new fangled four specs and good gear!
Loads the SquidStaff with rocksalt
I feel like the druid class wasn’t fully polish till Warth. There were changes in BC that made it better but it wasn’t till Warth where we shine.
Yeah, I agree with that. We had a feral in our guild in WoTLK and he tore it up. I was to lazy relearn to play a feral(I hated Savage Roar), plus Unholy DK caught my eye.
The meta when I played wasn’t treeform. Druids went 11 points in feral for feral charge because it gave your bear form a spell interrupt. 11 points in balance for insect swarm, then the rest in restoration. they didn’t have enough points in resto to go tree form. Also druids could shift out of polymorph, not just be immune to poly during our other forms. So essentially treeform wasn’t good enough to give up those other abilities.
I mained Druid in BC. Played all 3 specs in raiding, pvp and heroics.
Not going to dig out your Q’s from the other thread, but feel free to ask me whatever here.
Edit - nevermind, got bored and posted answers in that thread.