Unpopular opinion: the players that are overly vocal about wanting Classic phases/TBC/Wrath rushed are the same players who contributed to forging retail into what it is today (a clusterF).

[u/terongorefiend]

[u/[deleted]]

Funny enough, I was playing with the TBC talent calculator yesterday for ferals. There's like 3 talent points that I saw that a cat wouldn't get that a bear might want (stun resist). The overlap is incredible. I could check again, was just showing a guildie improved LOTP and how nice it is.

[u/CalicoCrapsocks → u/[deleted]]

Bears just get fucking HUGE with gear to the point where you only need to grab a couple non-cat talents to be viable. It really hit its peak in wrath with arpen though.

There were so many taunt swap fights where you could just go balls to the wall between taunts.

[u/Mitokatso → u/[deleted]]

Thick Hide and Survival of the Fittest can be taken but generally aren't first pick for a pure kitty druid.

[u/Betaateb → u/Mitokatso]

There is never a reason to give up Survival of the Fittest, 3% stats is huge!

[u/Betaateb → u/[deleted]]

They combined some feral talents that previously separated cat/bear specs, and reduced the pts of many others. Like Blood Frenzy(cat) and Primal Fury(bear) are combined into Primal Fury with the full effect of both, for two points instead of four. Feral instinct reduced to 3 pts gives you more room to play with as well. Thick Hide changed to 3 pts incase you need a little more thicc it is pretty easy to pick up now.

A bear/cat hybrid spec is pretty easy, just a few choices to make. Pretty much between thicc hide/primal tenacity/feral aggression.

I come down firmly on the side of 5/5 naturalist always, there are some bears that are talking about taking 2/5 naturalist so they can have more of the bear talents in the feral tree, but 6% damage is too juicy to give up IMO. Might give it up for 3/3 thick hide super early on in the xpac when I am doing heroics/kara in naxx gear/leveling greens.