Is it possible with a single spec and a single set of gear to be able to play both cat and bear as the situation calls for WITHOUT dual specing?
I want to be able to adapt to the situation. I have seen plenty of fights where the tank dies and the group doesn't wipe because someone is able to step in a cover to either finish the fight or hold the line until a battle rez.
I am less worried about min/max and more concerned with viability.
Thanks!
You're going to have to choose one role to prioritize over the other. I usually go with the "185%" rule. You have 185% effectiveness to divide between the two roles, and use the talents to determine that.
Of course that's just a random number. The actual number is somewhere between 185 - 190.
Remember you will still need 2 sets of gear, as both Cats and Bears reforge, gem, and enchant differently.
I leveled with a hybridish cookie cutter spec, because soloing you ran into a few situations in which you need to stance-dance. At that point you're changing gear too fast to really want to bother with enchanting, and there are no sockets, so a well-rounded spec can work then.
End-game as a kitty, if a tank goes down close to the end of a fight, sometimes if I shift into bear and slap on Barkskin/Survival Instincts we get lucky, but I make for an awfully inferior tank. If I moved some talent points into bear form and started putting some tanking gems and enchants in my gear, my DPS would take a serious hit and I'd still be an inferior tank compared to the players who are fully geared and specced for it.
Glyphs don't seem to be a big deal concerning hybrids depending on your playstyle. Tallents aren't a game breaker either if you spec into both appropriatly. In Raids you may need to get a specific set of gear for tanking, but as far as 5 man stuff goes (with WoTLK anyway) you could use DPS gear in bear form and still be a viable tank.
Even if you have less armor and HP than you could have with a tank set you'll still be avoiding and procing well with a high agility rating.
You'll need two sets of gear to really be effective at it, but yes, you can do it with one talent build. I wouldn't try to tank or DPS progression raid content with it, but for BG PVP, questing, leveling dungeons and heroics at 85 you'll be fine.
Unless you are raid-tanking, you don't need two sets of gear. Focus on mastery and you are good to go. IMO focus on the bear side. 10% more dps is worth less to a party than 10% better tanking, in my opinion, so assuming you do both of the jobs you get more bang for the buck with a bear-ish spec.
You can but you'll be gimping one of the two.
If you take talents that benefit tanking then you're not benefiting your cat dps.
And if you're taking talents to improve cat dps you're not benefting your tanking ability.
This isn't rocket surgery.
i'm dual specced cat & bear....and they are both quite different. if you did a hybrid spec, like they said before, it would be good for questing, but you have to use different sets of gear, and neither aspect would be as good as it would be with talents devoted completely to it.
From what I've read, gear itemization for bears and cats should be much more synergistic in Cataclysm than it was in Wrath. Stamina is less valuable, and agility provides plenty of threat and avoidance... So the only gem or enchant that might not work well for both roles is your meta. I could be wrong though; I haven't paid much attention to gear yet.
I think this is a reasonable feral/feral spec at 85:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZdbGfRu0drfzMcz
You're losing a little bit of dps, survivability, and utility in bear form with this spec... You might especially feel the absence of Infected Wounds if there is no one else to provide an attack speed debuff. But I would feel relatively comfortable tanking in this spec, and there should be nothing holding you back on DPS.
(This should be a perfectly viable DPS spec, only missing a bit of utility from Brutal Impact, and being a bit unfriendly on the healer.)
Keep in mind, though... Dual spec is only 100 gold these days. That's a few days of Argent Tournament dailies, even post-goldnerf. If dual-speccing makes you more survivable as a bear, you will easily make back that gold in a few weeks of lower repair costs.
Personally, I only see a "hybrid feral" spec useful in two cases:
This is what I see myself doing in cataclysm. For fights where a second or third tank is not needed, I'll probably roll with the above spec, ready to pop back into bear in an emergency situation. This should be much more viable in Cataclysm than it was in Wrath, especially in the later tiers. I'll probably also jump into this spec on DPS-heavy fights with a taunt rotation (like early Putricide fights).
[Edited: for bullet points.]
For what you were saying about a guy holding the line because the tank went down and he stepped in any DPS class with a potential tank spec can do that in a pure DPS spec, just make a defense CD macro and you'll be good for at least 10 seconds, which is more than enough for a Brez.
But to answer your main question, no it's not viable to say Ohh i'll be the main tank this boss fight then dps the next without switching specs
From what I've read, gear itemization for bears and cats should be much more synergistic in Cataclysm than it was in Wrath. Stamina is less valuable, and agility provides plenty of threat and avoidance...
I predict it will be a whole raid tier until Blizzard goes back to the old method of slamming tanks with atom bomb hits and this statement becomes untrue.
For five mans you won't need tanking gear once you are in starter raid gear though as defence is gone.
Hybrid feral specs are very viable. You can very easily get all of the tank talents that matter and only lose a few negligible DPS talents.
80: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0Zf0Gfouodrck0c
85: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0Zf0Gfou0drckMcu
The only "big" tanking talent lost for these specs is Infected Wounds, which is pretty much a non-issue if you have a DK of any spec in the group. Predatory Strikes, Stampede and Blood in the Water really don't make much of a difference; according to Mew, the difference between this hybrid spec and a pure cat spec in my gear would be a whopping 0.5% dps. The convenience of having a healing, tank and DPS spec without having to return to the trainer outweighs 0.5% extra DPS for me.
You will definitely need multiple sets of gear, though. 5 mans are perfectly managable in in DPS gear, but tanking in cat gear or dpsing in bear gear in raids will leave you sorely inadequate. Trying to hybridize your gear will just make you look silly. Just man up and buy bigger bags.
"From what I've read, gear itemization for bears and cats should be much more synergistic in Cataclysm than it was in Wrath. Stamina is less valuable, and agility provides plenty of threat and avoidance..."
I predict it will be a whole raid tier until Blizzard goes back to the old method of slamming tanks with atom bomb hits and this statement becomes untrue.
Nukes were used, in part, because avoidance scaled too well. I think raid boss scaling solves that issue. The other reason nukes were used was because mana was "broken". Presumably they have fixed mana... If that is not the case, I think they will keep trying to fix it rather than fall back on nukes again.
In hard modes, I'm sure there will still be some true "atom bomb hits". But I wouldn't recommend a hybrid set or spec for hard modes, anyhow.
Nukes were used, in part, because avoidance scaled too well. I think raid boss scaling solves that issue. The other reason nukes were used was because mana was "broken". Presumably they have fixed mana... If that is not the case, I think they will keep trying to fix it rather than fall back on nukes again.
I am just sceptical that they have the fortitude to push through the difficulty of implementing it. The idea sounds fine, but I think it is scaling where they will have a problem. Blizzard have never managed to have DPS scale properly let along keep tank/boss/healer scaling in synergy.
I think avoidance will be more useful in Cata raiding, but I doubt it will be long until people give up on the idea of avoidance tanking and return to stamina tanking.
I think avoidance will be more useful in Cata raiding, but I doubt it will be long until people give up on the idea of avoidance tanking and return to stamina tanking.
So long as there are bears, there will be someone insisting on stacking stamina. But avoidance may very well still be viable.
Edit: Personally, I always liked a mix of the stats. Shifting Dreadstones were my gems of choice until ICC. But for the purposes of this thread, I still think stacking agility will be acceptable.
Heals in cataclysm are about a third of the relative potency of heals in Wrath and cost about twice as much, so I'm really not seeing instagibs ever returning to Wrath levels. Even if heals scale to twice their effectiveness towards the end of the expansion, it still probably won't be anywhere near the Wrath environment. They went a lot further than they had to. Just healing heroics on the beta is probably one of the most stressful things I've ever had to do in this game, right up there with C'thun trash.
@Aanye:
Losing IW & Brutal Impact may not be the biggest deal in the world, but it still makes you about 90% of the tank you really could be if you weren't taking Cat talents.
As for Bear vs Cat gear:
Cats will not gem Stamina at all. Bears will. Therefore you need two sets of gear. Not to mention reforging and enchanting are different for Cats and Bears.
So sure you could do it, but you lose the attack speed debuff (which doesn't matter if you have a DK, but matters if you don't.) and a reliable interrupt. It's up to you to decide how important those are to you in a raid setting. For 5mans it won't matter so much, but for raids it probably will.
Moreover, I doubt your Rogues, Enh Shamans, Hunters, and dedicated Ferals will let you poach 2 sets of jewlery and gear for 1 hybrid spec.
Moreover, I doubt your Rogues, Enh Shamans, Hunters, and dedicated Ferals will let you poach 2 sets of jewlery and gear for 1 hybrid spec.
You underestimate this game's ability to repeatedly drop @*#* nobody else wants.
Touche. We've gotten nothing but whatever the Shaman token is for like the last 8 weeks. Except we seem to get one Druid token per week.
Haven't seen a Paladin token since, well, forever.
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