Confirmed 1.9 Patch Notes

[Kevin]

I think Blizzard's afraid to make real feral epic gear.  Then they might actually have to consider the fact that Ravage/Shred are very good counterparts to Ambush/Backstab.
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Don't forget that maul spamming is stronger than HS/Shield slam spamming for DPS. I do more DPS in feral from than Gnolack does in protection with the sword and 1 hander and that is with only 20 feral talents. When I had 34 it was even more DPS. Of course I do take less damage as Gnolack even with bear form giving me more armor than plate does but with no parry and no block I take more damage (Gnolack is 10-14% parry depending on gear and 10-14% dodge, in bear gear Taranna was about 15% so 5-14% more damage avoidance on the warrior). But that is alright. A higher DPS lower threat more damage taking tank is fine and while we haven't done it I don't see why a feral druid can't tank trash in MC just fine, we've had them tank Garr adds, majordomo and Corehound packs before. Keep in mind that the druids taunt holds the mob for I think 6 seconds (not 2 like a warriors which is another reason why a feral druid is better on domo than a warrior).

And yes Ravage/Shred are good but if you recall I had Taranna in cat form for the trash mobs in MC after 1.8 came out with 34 points in feral and I was still a good 30 DPS behind even the worst geared rogue there. I can live with that. Of course Taranna still doesn't have a good cat damage set, but even in the best gear we'll still fall behind rogues and won't have much mana at all for versatility. We are also more vulnerable to melee damage (only dodge) and since weapons don't give us as much DPS we lose even more damage than a rogue in resist gear. I don't think the feral druid is really all the out of whack talent wise and I don't think epic gear is going to put a feral druid past a rogue for damage if that rogue is in similar level gearing. And the extra utility of that druid to get to those DPS levels puts them at a bout 2500 mana pool which isn't much healing or casting if they need to shift so the higher utility isn't that big a deal wither.

Blizzard did druids pretty well in the last patch they just need to itemize for the 3 different types.