Dynamic DruidsFollow

So I've been curious about this. I don't really use my feral side all that often seeing as I'm full balance/intesity build. But I do have 5/5 Furor and 3/3 Natural Shapeshift to help with my pvp opener. Prowl/Pounce/Rip/Bear/Bash/Cyclone/Starfire/Root... Yeah its a long opener. But anyway, this is more towards PVE.

I don't really use bear and cat form that often seeing as I'm always rooting/nuking mobs down if they're outdoors while I'm grinding/farming. But the thing it boils down to is would it be plausible for a full balance to utilize a tanking set for certain things like some raids/instances. I already lug around a myriade of healing gear 3 pieces from kara, some quest/rep blues and greens I've supplemented from AH. I know that there is a stigma about druids always running out of bag space but would it really be worth my while to build a tanking set? I've already had to stop DPS in kara if a healer goes down or has to leave for some reason between bosses. I can heal the trash w/o much of a problem.

I guess the main question I can really boil it all down to is this. Can a druid thats spec'd only in one tree really be a truly dynamic player and fill the 4 rolls to the best of their ability or, as I figure the answer will be, will I really only excel more in casting dps and falter enough in the latter rolls I attempt to fill.

This post is all over the place but if you can make sense of it, please let me know what you think.

A Feral druid will never heal as well as a Resto or Restokin druid, that's the whole reason for specialization. So if you mean "best" as in "the best any druid could possibly do", no. The closest you can get to a multi-function druid is probably your cookie-cutter Feral spec + Intensity (0/44/14 + 3). With sufficient gear, you can be healer #2/3 in Kara and solo-heal heroics. You're already spec'd for melee DPS and tanking. Your ranged DPS will be terrible without a lot of the Balance talents, but you're hitting 3 outta 4.

If you use the Balance PvP gear, there's enough armor and stamina that you can try going bear, swapping weapons, and grabbing a tauntable trash mob. Remember, even though you have as much armor in moonkin form as a bear, you're missing a good threat multiplier and the extra stamina, plus 3% fewer crits from Survival of the Fittest. Bosses are pretty much out (except gimick fights like Netherspite).

If you are running kara with just 1 tank you should try and keep some tanking gear around for moroes, netherspite and those mobs who icetomb the tank. Anything beyond that i wouldn't recommend, but having a dps'er who can fit in as off tank i very usefull and you will surely survive longer with moroes on you than any of your healers. When solo tanking moroes I usually count on loosing 2-3 people on his blind/gouge

I'm finding myself off healing a lot more now as well, and main healing some Heroic 5 mans. I healed all the way up to Varz/Naz in H Ramps before I actually needed help keeping the tank alive (our other balance druid has terrible terrible dps, 178) so I suppose it was because we couldn't down Varz before Naz dropped.

But I'm in the process of building my different sets and I'm starting to see the trend that the druids in our guild are all pretty much dynamic druids and fill two rolls with ease. Be it dps/heal, tank/heal, or caster dps/heal. It just seems that no matter what you do there is almost no way to go any form of feral/balance w/o the respec.

Maybe someday I'll attempt to tank as a moonkin I have around 100 some resilience right now when I'm in pvp gear but I'm sure my guild just wants me to go resto like everyone else.

Whatever the case, I'll still try to fill all the possible roles.

I'd just like to add that a properly geared boomkin can generate more threat than a moderately geared and untalented bear, but put a feral druid in equivalent gear and we basically have the best single-target threat generation.