Spec Synergy

I love the idea of Synergy between talent trees. As I have previously mentioned, Feral and Resto, along with Balance and Resto have always synergise well. There are even some Arena Builds that get benefits from all three tree's. The one combination that I have never really seen as viable is Balance and Feral. Ok, sure there was the Panzakin builds but that doesn't really count, does it?

Types of Tanks.

In WotLK, we will have 4 Tanking Classes. Blizzard has made it very clear that Warriors will be outright Mitigation Tanks, Pally's will be AOE Tanks and DK's will be Spell Damage Mitigation Tanks. Where does that leave Druids? Druids, at least in my opinion, will be the Off-Tank. I don't just mean "a" Off-Tank but the Best Off-Tank. That's how they are currently designed and I believe that's how they will stay. Sure, we will be able to MT, just not as well. This limitation is balanced out by our ability to DPS. So where should that leave us?

What Makes a Feral Tank?

I think there are a few keys here. We need to be capable of performing the same roles as the other three tanks, just not quite as well. Firstly, in order to fulfil the role as an OT, we need to have the best single target threat generation. It is the OT's target that will get DPS'd first. We need to be able to ensure we generate enough threat to allow the DPS's to do their jobs as well. I also believe we are the Damage Soaks. The High Armour and Health we have are our trademark. We can't Parry or Block so instead we soak it up. We can AOE Tank, but we are realistically limited to three targets. I think this is fine, we can hold three targets better than a warrior but not as well as a paladin. WotLK gives us some Spell Mitigation as well. Again I think this fits well in mitigating Spell Damage less than the DK, but we can still do it.

Bear Spec or Cat Spec?

There is usually only one or 2 points that you would change if you wanted to get that little bit more out of the spec. I would like to see a third option. Lets split the Tanking Specs and allow mini specialisation. With the Current WotLK Tree that has been linked previously, there are 13 easy points to put in the Resto Tree. Imp Mark, Furor, Natural Shape Shifter, Master Shapeshifter and OOC. What happens if we do the same in the balance tree?

Feral/Balance Hybrid!

Firstly lets take Starlight Wrath and make it give 5 expertise for 5 points. If we them place Brambles in the 2nd tier and add a 6% threat component, for 3 points, and put Control Nature on the 3rd tier and add 5% Damage Reduction from Spells for 3 points. We then swap Improved Moonfire with Nature's Reach. We are left with This.
Now we have two definitive Tanking builds that can allow us to differentiate our play style that little bit more.

What do you think?

Razorbax