feral druids in classic

[Weazool]

Can any experienced feral druids from back in the day tell me how it was like? strengths weaknesses, advantages, disadvantages, and so on and so forth? Also, diffrences vs TBC ferals? Thank you.

[Karmacode]

PvE:
Leveling as feral is a no-brainer for most, and probably the absolutely easiest and fastest way to level your Druid.
You can comfortably tank any lv60 dungeon as feral, although your gear selection is fairly small; strength is rare on leather and you have to accent your gear with some fairly unique +armor pieces to be most effective. The actual gameplay for a tanking feral is horribly dull, queue Maul and Swipe when you have the extra rage and aren't adjacent to a CC target. You can forget tanking in most raid encounters, Warriors are the end-all be-all tanks for 9/10 fights.
If you're lucky you can find a guild that lets you DPS as feral, you'll have a constant spot in their melee DPS group and your rotation is more involved than most other classes. However you will probably be expected to heal.

PvP:
Ferals in vanilla are strong when they're played as true hybrids. Their PvP sets reflect this with a plethora of stats that most "pure ferals" loathed; they wanted Rogue gear. As a feral you'd shift a lot, and in vanilla you had to switch back to caster before going into another form or using an item (even PvP trinket was restricted to caster form iirc).
Ferals were, as in most expansions, the indisputable kings of flag carrying and with their PvP set they even got 15% faster travel form.

Sample standard PvP feral 60 spec: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#0zLV0oZVTMsfrdtV
Hype video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrljwQrM3uE

[Drain]

Druids level very well and Feral is the most versatile talent tree in the game. Since you get tanking+damage in 1 tree with 1 set of gear, it's a very cheap class if you go up this tree. It's not gear dependent either. Druid can level perfectly fine in complete garbage, unlike some classes. The awesomeness of Feral is offset however by Balance, which is no doubt the worst talent tree in the game and you'll probably never want to use it when you could just roll a Mage. Feral is usually the tree people play this class for since even Elemental Shaman puts Balance to absolute shame, and 3 other classes can heal.

The Druid version of Restoration works well enough. Druid is a primary healer, meaning they get many powerful spells. Secondary healers(Shaman/Paladin) get fewer healing spells, and they are weaker. Priest ends up being the # 1 healer because it's a primary and has specialized stats on its equipment, where as the other 3 have hybrid stats that divide out. But Druid gets the Innervate and doesn't die as easily. Priests could not get Pain Suppression before BC, so they were pretty easily kills. Druids however can shift into Bear Form, suddenly growing plate armor, or keep removing snares with shifts and running away. Shaman/Paladins have the best survivability, which is the main benefit of being a secondary healer, but their spells are weaker.

[Kurt]

I would rank Shaman higher in terms of healing potential due to Chain Healing and Mana-Tide.

As someone who played Druid back in the day, I would go so far as to say that Ferals were, as has been pointed out, a very decent WSG spec and can tank basically any Dungeon. Raiding just isn't a Feral thing. It's a damn fun spec to play I will say that.

If you're interested in tanking raids > Warrior
If you're interested in melee DPS > Rogue/Warrior
If you're interested in AV > Most Ranged DPS > Melee DPS > Ferals
If you're interested in AB > Traditional PvP specs > Ferals
If you're interested in WSG and tanking Dungeons > Feral is decent

The primary issue with Feral Druids is that they are horribly scaled and their gear is horribly designed. Blizzard did not do a good job designing gear in Classic.

Feral Druids do not benefit from Weapon's DPS and they do not deal enough DPS to compete with others.

Tl; dr - Be ready to spec and gear Resto for most of your raiding career, but enjoy the opportunity to play Feral every now and again.

[Germinou]

I can't agree with any of you.

I would rank Shaman higher in terms of healing potential due to Chain Healing and Mana-Tide.

Druid is a primary healer, meaning they get many powerful spells. Secondary healers(Shaman/Paladin) get fewer healing spells, and they are weaker

1) First of all, none healing class can be "ranked". Healing Priest, Druid, Shaman, and Paladin absolutely don't have the same way of being played.

2) Druid has very good single target heal (the most powerful of the game, and the most mana efficient ), and the best emergency button of the game with a short CD.

As someone who played Druid back in the day, I would go so far as to say that Ferals were, as has been pointed out, a very decent WSG spec and can tank basically any Dungeon. Raiding just isn't a Feral thing.

You can forget tanking in most raid encounters, Warriors are the end-all be-all tanks for 9/10 fights.

1) "can tank basically any Dungeon", true, but it's important to say that it's also easier to play than warrior in 5men in my opinion.


2) Raiding is 40people. Before refusing a feral:

-First of all, do the guild have 40 people ?
-If the guild have 40 people, how many of them aren't optimized enough to be better than a good feral
- In every raids, you need OTs. Feral are the best at this game
-Swiss army knife

3) How geared is your Feral ? How geared are your healers ?

-In ZG/AQ20, Feral can be a MT easily.
-A very well geared Feral can easily tank 40-men bosses. (Most of MC/ BWL, Can also tank a few bosses in AQ40/ Naxxramas, but this is, I confess, greed. )
-Ferals are very well geared for MC with blue gear.

The awesomeness of Feral is offset however by Balance, which is no doubt the worst talent tree in the game and you'll probably never want to use it when you could just roll a Mage.
Feral is usually the tree people play this class for since even Elemental Shaman puts Balance to absolute shame, and 3 other classes can heal.

No. (Once again I'll talk about PVE, I don't give a single shit about PVP )

1) The worst talent tree are Retribution, then Enhancement (don't wine, but the improved totems can't justify such a low DPS. it's only good because of nightfall... and despite that, It's often better to give nightfall to the slacking-on-most-bosses-prot-warrior.


2) Balance DPS more than Feralcat

3) Optimized Balance is better than non-optimized "Classic" Casters.

(Once again, are your 40 ppl good enough to refuse a very good balance ? Most of the time, even in very good guilds, the answer is no )

[Karmacode]

it's also easier to play than warrior in 5men in my opinion.

That's kind of what's implied with:

The actual gameplay for a tanking feral is horribly dull, queue Maul and Swipe when you have the extra rage and aren't adjacent to a CC target.

It's easy, but also fairly boring. There's also the adjustment your group needs to do to accommodate the feral tank. They need to be better organized, a Warrior tank has a bunch of instant threat generating abilities he can use when a pull isn't 100% correct, whereas the feral is stuck Growl'ing one and hoping to god that a Swipe will be enough to pull aggro on the others.
The Vanilla feral is missing Mangle and Lacerate, which in TBC gave them a couple of options that start to rival that of a Warrior (still nowhere close).

As far as raid MT goes, I'll admit I never tanked a raid on my Druid. Any experience I have about raid ferals comes from playing a Rogue and as MDPS I almost always had, and always welcomed, a feral druid (cat) in my group.

I won't comment on Resto and Balance as they never interested me and are OT anyways.

[balsh]

Ferals are really fun in vanilla, most versatile class, you can fit any role in 5 men dungeon.
When it comes to raid your dps is underwhelming, I've been raiding as feral during the entire vanilla era and all I did was healing.
When it comes to pvp druid regardless of the spec is the worst class no matter what your skill level is, druids mostly outlast their opponents and with the gear scaling and the burst meta in vanilla you're not in a good shape as a feral druid.

You can still grab some kills with some descent burst, but when it comes to fair duels any competent player will rape you. It's still really fun to play though.
Pvp set is mandatory for the speed bonus but even with that you're barely viable beside warsong flag carrier.

[Germinou]

There's also the adjustment your group needs to do to accommodate the feral tank. They need to be better organized, a Warrior tank has a bunch of instant threat generating abilities he can use when a pull isn't 100% correct, whereas the feral is stuck Growl'ing one and hoping to god that a Swipe will be enough to pull aggro on the others.

Not that much ...
Hope that swipe is enough on the other... Well
Having swipe is already much more than what a warrior has on multiple target.

I've played both, Warrior in 5men such as Scholomance, where there is a lot of trashes packed by 3/4/5, it's a pain in the ass...
It's a little easier as a druid.
(And less depends of your group having a mage & a priest for CC )


Really depends on the way you're tabing your mauls.
The huge difference is the way to pull & generate aggro at the beginning ...


Some people prefers to HoT themself before...
I only do it where there is a lot of targets, most of the time I feel like Wrathing your first target & Moonfirering 1/2 secondary target(s) before shape shifting is far better... It's pretty funny...

(don't forget to have enough mana for the bear form ... -_- )




But Boring during the fight ... maul/swipe/swipe/maul/swipe/swipe/maul/swipe/YourHeadOnTheKeyboard .... -_-

[mrmr]

I'm against "Feral" in 40men raids...
Till AQ they cannot be tank...unless you wanna stress your healers team.

keyword here? "Block"....

You could probably bring a feral druid if you REALLY want to buff the hunters' group.
3 Hunters + Feral + Shaman (for horde)
4 Hunters + Feral (for alliance)
....and still, he shouldn't tank anything...just crappy dpsing...

Other than that....till AQ....your feral tank will be a wasted (warrior tanking) spot.

[Germinou]

Let's stress the healer, it's far better. They always sleep if we don't.