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#1 Jan 22 2008 at 6:04 AM Rating: Decent
BACKSTORY:
We've been clearing Karazhan a bit lately, and there's really only a handful of trash pulls and maybe two bosses (3, maybe) where an offtank is needed, so most of my time I'm in cat form for DPS.

Similarly, we have three healers, but really only need two for most circumstances.

Last time in, I switched to healing and still did my offtanking as needed. But I had trouble with threat/agro (missing FF & mangle, among others) while healing pretty well.

QUESTION:
Assuming that an offtank/sometimes healer/sometimes cat DPS is viable, what spec would work best? Or rather, what can I get away with not taking in the feral tree so I can maximize my healing (or vice-versa).

I was thinking a 0/21/40 build, to get the Faerie Fire ... but then I lose on the ToL... so I guess, like, is FF more important to an offtank than ToL is to an off-healer? Or the other way around? Or survival of the fittest? (but that's not REALLY needed, except maybe in netherspite)
#2 Jan 22 2008 at 6:34 AM Rating: Decent
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97 posts
You won't miss faerie fire as much as mangle. and without sotf you'll need a like
twice as much anti-crit.

A feral druid for OT/dps is a really strong combo in my opinion.
If you want to mix in healing with dps instead, my guess is that some
balance/resto build would serve you better. Either full spell damage gear and a
hybrid build, or full healing gear and a balance heavy build. Of course you could
also bring two sets of gear like you would as a feral.

Might even be more fun while sologrinding.
#3 Jan 22 2008 at 7:08 AM Rating: Good
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1,180 posts
I switched to 0/30/31 a while ago and whilst I found the healing worked well I couldn't tank at all well.

With the group I ran with the only time I was needed to heal was on maiden if we had too many melee dps, other than that I just went kitty when only one tank was needed.

I'd suggest you go for off-tank/melee dps or healing/spell dps as they are specs that complement each other the most (my tanking spec has 16 points in resto, 3/3 intensity and 5/5 naturalist being the only ones to help healing).

You might want to see if one of your other healers is interested in speccing part damage, then they can switch to damage when you only need two healers, and back to healing when you need 3.
#4 Jan 22 2008 at 7:18 AM Rating: Decent
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256 posts
As both off tank and healing specced you would gimp yourself too much and you would end up sucking at both. As the others said either a balance/resto build for dps/healing, or a feral build for dps/off tanking.
#5 Jan 22 2008 at 7:27 AM Rating: Decent
Thanks.

The ideal/hopeful option, really, is offtank & healing. Ideally (of course) a full-feral (for tank/dps) or balance/resto hybrid (for dps/healing) spec would be best... but I'm interested in figuring out a way to maximize the tanking/healing option.

Basically trying to get the most out of my druid, a jack-of-all-trades sort of thing so that we can bring in another DPS and go even faster through the instance.

If it can't be done, then it can't be done. But I was wondering if anyone had given it a try and figured out what can be sacrificed without losing too much of one thing or another.
#6 Jan 23 2008 at 4:10 AM Rating: Decent
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256 posts
I haven't tried it and wouldn't recommend it, but here is how i would put my talents for a feral/resto build.

It gives you decent agro generation, avoidance and mitigation while tanking as well as a good buff for healing touch. I don't see any good way to go higher in any of the trees without gimping the other too much. If you find you are very low on str in your healing gear, i would probaly move the 2 points in nurturing instinct to feral charge and ferie fire feral. You will be missing a lot on dps with this build, since mangle is very important for feral dps.

I wouldn't use the build for main tanking, since your threat generation will be kinda low without mangle, but as off tank where you have time to build agro while the main tank target is beeing killed would be quite ok.

Last but not least: remember to gear for the role you are currently in. Nutering instinct does not give you an excuse to start wearing +str items while healing! You are gimped as it is, so gear for the specific role you are in and switch items in between fights as needed.
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