3.0 Makes Me SadFollow

To a certain extent at least. I am quite fond of the new talents that I see in all of my druid's talent trees and I can't wait to see them all in practice. Unlimited Swipe targets, improved Mangle and other movement impairing and bleed effects, a talent for expertise and energy refunds. It all sounds awesome.

But they are essentially taking away my hybrid-ness. See it is quite possible that, at lv 80, I could put every single point of mine into feral and get all the talents I would need to improve both my dps in cat form and my tanking abilities in bear form. But this would be at the expense of some key Restoration tree talents that I have long been very fond of, namely Furor, Omen of Clarity and that 5/5 one that increases Healing Touch and damage done in all forms (I forget the name, sorry).

Ultimately, Blizzard is forcing me to make a choice. Spec as a tank and do mediocre cat dps, or spec as a dps and do mediocre bear tanking. I just can't really stomach that notion, and in a way it feels a little unfair to so drastically change what I have grown so used to. With the press of a single button (ItemRack FTW) I can go from an *** kicking cat pushing 900 dps in 10/25 mans to a bear tank in 28k armor, 20k health and 45% dodge that can tank most raid bosses.

But 3.0 is taking that away from me, and that's why I am sad. Sure it'll be nice for me to use Entangling Roots indoors, and all the better if their reliability is on par with the other standard forms of CC. As it currently stands I am seriously considering just speccing myself as a dps/cc with my 2nd spec as resto and never going back to tanking. That is, if 3.0 turns out as bad for us druids as I suspect.

Now, with the dual spec notion that I have been hearing so much about, there is the option of setting mine up in such a way as to just be able to switch between a tanking spec and a dps spec which in and of itself wouldn't be so bad. But that would probably leave me with having to shell out 50g every time I want to heal for my guild in a raid. Which, if Blizzard left my feral tree the way it was, wouldn't have been an issue because I could have just made that 2nd spec the resto spec.

What will all of you ferals do? Will you choose a role? Will you dump all your points into the Feral tree to do both still? Is losing those awesome Resto talents really worth the ability to both tank and dps without having to spend gold or alternate specs? Would we even be able to still tank or dps as effectively without those resto talents?

I'd love to hear what you all have to say.

Well yea I do see what you mean in that they are buffing both our roles to be on par with the others at the expense of the utility of being able to switch between them so freely and easily. I personally would sort of rather stay where I am for sake of that utility. Of course, that opinion of mine exists pre-3.0 and is certainly subject to change upon personal hands on experience of the changes next week.

I guess I'm just the sort of person who wants to have his cake and eat it too :)

I will try to find official information on it and link it. But yea, they have removed the Glyph of Swipe which was supposed to up it to 4 targets and just made it completely unlimited, any number of targets. They have done the same with Warrior's Thunderclap to essentially put us on par with a Paladin and their Consecrate.

edit:

Ok here's a link to a forum post. It's not quite an official "blue" post but I'm surely if I dug deep enough I'd find more definite confirmation. But it otherwise seems real enough to me.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=170CFBA432A591B9CE1742061C5BA5E2.app11_05?topicId=10972028046&sid=1

Edited, Oct 10th 2008 12:45am by Tavarde

Thanks for that link, thats awesome, I hope its 100% true, would help alot when aoeing a bunch of stuff.
I knew about the glyph of swipe, but this is alot better, druids don't haven enough aoe stuff.

Here is the post, from GC. It's mostly about warriors, but she mentions Swipe when talking about Thunderclap.

TBC, the best we could really do was be below average DPS or off-tank. In LK, we're getting the talents to be full DPS or MT. If you enjoy our current hybrid utility, you'll still be better at it in LK than you are in TBC. With just talents, you'll be crit-immune. We'll be tanking in rogue DPS gear with Stam/Agi gems and Stam/Agi enchants, so it won't be nearly as bad for DPS as our current tanking gear.

Relative to other DPS, you'll porbably still be ahead of where we are now with a tanking spec, and we'll still be ahead of Arms, Fury, Holy, and Ret for tanking with a kitty DPS spec. I'm not sure what's going on with DKs right now, I don't think they have a single dedicated tanking tree, more like 3 Feral Combat trees with a mix of tanking talents and DPS talents. If that's the case, they'll be like everyone else, having to choose between a tanking spec and a DPS spec.

Seriously? Sub Default for asking how the new Feral Combat tree is going to work for being able to DPS and tank with one spec?

One other thing I thought of, the points in Resto are actually good for DPS and tanking, so if you're goal is hybrid utility, you should still put 11 in Resto. Furor, Naturalist, and OoC. Master Shapeshifter is either 4% crit or 4% damage for 5 talent points, so I'd only pick it up in a dedicated tanking or dedicated DPS build.

This is probably what I'd use for a DPS/OT spec. It's missing 2 points from Rend and Tear, Improved Bash and Infected Wounds from Feral Combat, and Master Shapeshifter from Resto. I've seen some DPS specs also dip 2-3 points into Balance for Genesis (increases bleed damage).

Wow, I got sub-defaulted? I must have fans :-P

I certainly appreciate the rating vindication, thank you all. And yes Aurelius I can understand entirely that it is quite redundant and annoying for people to come on and complain about things they do not fully comprehend all the details of. This is why I am extra careful in how I construct my posts here on Allakhazam as I do not desire to come off as one of those stereotypical non-premium posters who invariably always gets rated six feet under because their attitude, sentence structure and general prose lie barely two steps above the intelligence of plants.

I would go so far as to say I honestly do not feel I was outright complaining but more so merely expressing an uninformed dissatisfaction with events of the near future, events that I know I cannot change and will undoubtedly have to live with if I intend to continue playing WoW and seeing level 80 endgame. It certainly would have been nice if they could have kept the Feral tree as intertwined as it currently is without requiring us to spec for efficiency in either tanking or dps. But it would seem that if they did this, and gave us the ability to be both that uber tank or uber dps at any time after 3.0, then we would not be far off from a crippling nerf. So really, the specialization is for the best.

And to keep quiet all the QQers I plan on owning in pvp. It's good to know some things won't change :-P

If sentence structure has to do with rate ups... I have no idea how I got sage.

I can't say I'm dissappointed with the fact that feral now has to spec accordingly to the job they want to do. But I understand the disspointment from the feral community. I honestly wondered why blizzard didnt split the tree a little more in BC. Resto/balance was always black and white. Feral just seemed to be that token grey spot.

Perhaps now I'll finally spec into the feral tree and try my claws out for real once.

Almost every other class. DK has 3 flavors of basically Feral Combat trees. Blood, Frost, and Unholy all have deep tanking and DPS talents. Unholy has Bone Shield and Magic Suppression. Frost has Unbreakable Armor and Frigid Dreadplate. Blood has Will of the Necropolis and Spell Deflection. Prot Pallies and Prot warriors still won't spec prot with different talents for DPS, but there were DPS buffs rolled into their tanking talents.

Edited, Oct 12th 2008 1:33pm by AstarintheDruid

its pretty much what micros said; now druids can have their cake and eat it too, one role at a time. you want to be top dps in BC? tough cookies, youre too hybrid for that (even tho you can be good dps and a great tank at the same time). now, in LK, if you wanna be top dps, you can spec top dps, but at an according cost of losing tankability. just like every other class out there (well, classes with multiple roles anyway).

want to maintain your flexibility? you can! you just wont be top tank or top dps. but youll be a good tank and good dps, able to go from OT to dps and back again on the fly as needed.