Yo yo!
Im gonna level up a toon. Which class/specs are least represented as of right now?
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Member
Class balance currently
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Banned
Tanks and healers are always in demand. If you enjoy either of those, paladin is a good choice (but not the retribution spec, there's far too many smoothbrains competing for that spot).
Druid is your best choice if you always want to have a raid spot in a guild and in PUGs too. Balance, Restoration and Feral (Tank) are always wanted and too few players want to play them (sometimes it feels like the only druids I ever see are the stupid cats that they can't play correctly at all).
Any RANGED dps class or spec will get you far and quickly. MELEE dps specs are everywhere and in very low demand.
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Member
Feral (kitten or bear.) is the least played spec in my opinion but weirdly pugs are tend to dislike the spec idk why.
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Forum Veteran
I have played as a feral cat almost exclusively for 2+ years. To answer your question, feral cats don't bring any (vitally useful) utility to raids in comparison to other classes or to the other druid specs.
Here's what we generally bring as druids:
- Dudu buff;
- 5% armour reduction;
- 5% extra crit for melees and hunters;
- 30% extra damage to bleed effects;
- Innervate;
- Bress;
- Cyclone (on specific bosses like Kel'Thuzad in Naxx or Lady Deathwhisper in ICC)
However, here's the problem - most of the aforementioned abilities are already granted by boomies and resto druids, and they bring extra benefits for raids. Boomies are exceptionally wanted for their haste and crit auras, their +3% spell hit, and their Typhoon spell on DBS. Theoretically speaking, a raid can manage w/o a Boomie on DBS the same way a raid can manage without a Shadow Priest on Algalon, but having those specs just makes the boss encounters substantionally easier. Resto dudus have an aura that increases healing done, and they are very good healers in AoE fights.
So, if we imagine that we have those two casters in the raid, a feral druid (be it a tank or cat) would bring Mangle, Innervate, Leader of the Pack and Bress. However, fury warriors already have the 5% melee crit aura, and they are generally invited in every raid. The healing from Improved Leader of the Pack is absolute garbage, and this is why I'm not mentioning it as an argument. This leaves us with Mangle, Innervate, and Bress.
About Mangle: To my knowledge, only hunters, warriors, rogues, and feral druids have bleed abilities. Since it's generally bad to have more than one feral druid in the raid, a feral druid will only benefit the remaining three classes.
About Bress: Generally speaking, saving someone's *** in a boss encounter sounds very good. You "increase the damage" of the raid or the "healing" if you use it on a dps or a healer, and in some rare occassions you might even bress a tank, so that the group wouldn't need to do a "wipe and redo". In pug raids, this could be good, ngl, but when it comes to experienced players, they will generally avoid doing stupid mistakes that would result in their death. In comparison to a feral bear, feral cat is free to cast Bress on another player (which might be an instant cast with Predatory Swiftness) w/o worrying about taking any damage and dying. A feral bear can also do it, but on some boss encounters there might not be a such opportunity, or it might be limited.
About Innervate: It's not bad, but it's not something to be glorified. The things I've said about feral cats and bears still apply.Spoiler:Show
If you think about it, feral druids mostly bring Mangle to raids.
Even though I play as a cat, and I easily get all of the aggro from bears, I'd personally evaluate bears higher than cats for the simple reason of them being tanks, and we all know that this is the role that's always in demand. I think some people might have a bad opinion on feral bears just because bdk and prot pala are better, but if by chance they aren't available, then bears will be welcomed.
@OP
tanks + healers > dps with good utility > pure dps
Just my two cents.Edited: April 23, 2022 Reason: Added the preference hierarchy.
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Member
Tank or healer, literally any class that can have tank/heal OS. It seems like everyone just want to DPS on this server :/
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Member
I greatly disagree that bears are worse than bdk s or prot pallies, they can be bad at add tanking due no block causes them to take almost full damage from every single add but on boss tanking they can almost take anything that boss throws at them with ease due insane ehp they have combined with savage defense. The only problematic part in my opinion is that they are a bit bad at threat compared to dk s which shouldnt be an issue with proper md/tots.
Btw I didnt ask question, I just found it weird that people dislike cat since I also play cat for quite a time and know how its better than those must have specs, mostly before prebis/bis gear level, like warriors, udk s. Cat is literally a warrior without sunder/cs but with mangle and as long as its getting played above average skill level it does better performance than equal geared specs. People tend to get uh dk s over kittens even on normal raids, which is really a bad idea since uh dk s only unique buff/debuff is crypt fever, which increases dp damage of spriests and dot damage of other dk s.
And about bress, I really dislike counting bress as a bonus since I always found that relying on bress is bad, people shouldnt be dying in first place though pugwise its a bonus. But you are right, if we were talking about endgame raids rather than pugs, we wouldnt have this conservation due those raids would have a feral by default %99 of the time.
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Forum Veteran
Tbh, I'm not going to argue about bears being bad/good in comparison to other tanks since I don't tank at all - I'm just a plain dps whore - and I have never read anything in depth about them. I just know that prot pala has a second life and a bunch of defensive abilities and raid utility, and bdk has Hysteria. ^^ That's why I made that claim.
But, ye, I didn't deny that bears are valuable for taking the vital and underrepresented role of a tank, which puts them above any dps.
Well, you said "idk why", and I thought I had to explain the reason for it.
Ye, I don't deny that with good performance it can beat other classes, but my main issue is that dps is not everything in a raid, and imho "dps tier rankings" are very misleading because they just concentrate on pure damage and don't consider utility as a factor. If dps was the only thing that mattered, we would have seen people stacking cats. As I've said, in a group with other druids the only thing we would actually bring is Mangle, and imho that's not enough. Since boomies cover most of feral druid's utility with extra on top, the druid dps spot is kinda taken, and the cat player needs to compete for the "pure dps" spot if there's such available.
Tbh, I don't know the other classes all that much. I've played only a handful, and I always went back to cat, so mby I am not able to make a good analysis of it in comparison to other classes as I don't know the full picture. But having played as a cat for 2 years, I just don't agree with some that it's just an underappreciated spec. It has its flaws, and the lack of threat reduction and good raid utility bothers me a lot. In order to justify being in the raid and not helping the rest of the team members to deal with some mechanics easier, the cat player needs to give the RL a good reason why he needs to be kept and not someone else. Admittedly, this isn't an issue in guild raids (except mby on 10-man progressive ones), where the guild leader would know how experienced the feral cat is, so you're right that if the topic didn't regard pug RLs we wouldn't have this conversation in the first place. An experienced feral druid, who would know how to play their class well and would know how boss fights play out, would definitely have a solid spot in guild raids due to the aforementioned reasons and the presence of Mangle for a bit of class diversity [+ if he innervates healers constantly].
Yeah, I wanted to say it too, but I guess I didn't express my opinion well enough. I also think that bress is not worth mentioning in general, as any unnecessary death can and should be prevented by avoiding some mechanics in the first place.Edited: April 24, 2022
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Member
Hunter seems to be wanted on ally.
Next to this it's: healers + tanks (varies every day) > druid/priest/hunt/lock > every other dps
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