Tamanous

I believe using Modui adds a mana bar in forms ... along with the ton of other things it adds to your UI without changing the look too much.

Ya his comment only applies to raiding. Horde ferals have the edge in pvp and little to no difference outside of raids with edge to Warstomp. A shaman nearby in pvp helps in different yet equally beneficial ways so you can't make direct comparisons. Sure you don't get the best offensive buffs from them (good pvp shamans don't drop buff totems) but you either get all the totem benefits they do drop plus either great healing or an elemental shaman blowing shit up way, WAY faster than any paladin could hope to do. I don't see many enhancement shamans in group pvp but they still use totems and you can at least benefit from all the snares they throw out.

I do not believe it's possible. I gave up long ago and got used to hitting 2 buttons in sequence. Perhaps someone found a way but my search didn't pan out.

It's mostly a gear issue. I usually find my dps starts to pick up in mid 50's through 60 as you start to get pre-bis. If only concerned about dps and not so much HPs then stack as much offensive stats as possible. +Hit is a priority, 3-4 if only grinding mobs your own level is a massive increase. 4 I believe would suffice as I find I still miss the odd time at +3. Everyone will say to stack Str but using your bleeds when mob grinding is typically a dps loss. Pounce and bleed combos do offer a steady dps but once you get your crit up it won't come close to your big hit dps on average. You still open with Tiger's Fury+Ravage after 1-2 energy pulse returns prior and use claw (or Shred if you are good at using it solo ... bad server latency makes it easier to do, otherwise may not be worth trying) only to maximize TF (Rake doesn't benefit from TF and the point of using TF after some energy return is to basically get a free Claw's worth of damage). FB for finisher. You use Wolfshead helm to powershift if needed but often just between mob kills because FB drops your energy to 0. Rejuv can be slipped in then. If powershifting on solo fights (and face to face Shred isn't viable) I only use it the moment I tap energy to 0 on claw spam in order to FB and worst case, again to regain energy to claw again. Not something you want to do often as it forces you to sit and drink too often between innervate use. Not using dots actually is the highest mob grind dps and this also means agility is your primary stat and not Str. This is mathematically proven in another thread but you don't have to worry much as the gear choices you have at these levels always mixes Str and Agility. Just means you get agility enchants instead of Str. Energy management is actually important but only requires getting a feel of maximizing ability use within the time it takes to kill a mob. Before the server split I was using my feral to grind gold in Felwood by skinning bears. Around level 56-58 killing Angerclaw Maulers (they are only around level 50 so dps is inflated) I did around 400+ dps on average with spikes up to 1000 with some crits. I did not have any issues fighting mobs my own level either. Priority weapon is the quest mace from DM west at 60 and pre-Bis list gear. If you don't want to blow the coin for Devilsaur gear get gear with great stat bloat but find other options for +hit. Devilsaur is only needed to get to raid level +hit but not required for solo grind or dungeons. All this of course is based on the typical pure feral build. As far as I know this server still let's feral's white damage benefit from using Weighstones and +damage weapon enchants so use them.

For leveling it's easy: Stack a crap ton of nature damage gear and blow up stuff before it gets to you. Typically this means you engage first. End game: what other's said.

I feel it is too fast as well ... but adjustments can be made. Raiding progression patches on current timeline is too fast for the bulk of the player base. Metrics show a crap ton of new players and serving the hardcore crowd will backfire. That said, I can see it only adjusted slightly slower (faster than standard) with KEY changes to content addition. Certain things like zone quest additions, pvp gear sets, Tier 0.5 questlines and a few other things WELL below T2 and AQ gear can easily enter the game earlier. A very good example of this is the level 50 class quests. There is absolutely no reason why they need to be spread out over several patches. ALL classes should get them at once. It makes no sense for some to wait 2-3 patches later to get theirs ( I mean, Jebus Krist, Druids can have AQ sets by the time they get a level 50 blue!!). T0.5 sets earlier would help those specs lacking gear options even in raids and offer more competitive gear for the majority of the actual player base that metrics clearly prove do not raid regularity. Starting at 1.2 already helped greatly offering Wrath gear for casters. There would be no way I'd level my shaman as elemental without it. I could see T0.5 sets easily entering the game pre-AQ during that content drought. This is an opportunity to improve upon the vanilla experience instead of continuously copying Blizzards mistakes of the past. Also, as other's have mentioned, Classic is likely not here for at least 2 years. This new server is benefiting the most of any private server from the hype of the Classic announcement. It's content should likely be tailored to fill this gap with TBC timed when Classic approaches (while Blizzard is still far away from TBC expansion).

Melee hunter concept does indeed work. It's actually rather fun and does decent dps albeit more gear dependent than BM. It also scales well as you level because you attack chances increase through talent and gear gains that increase dodge, parry and + hit due to how hunter melee works. It is the most dynamic game play of any hunter build as well as you must adapt strategies at all ranges and target types whereas other builds are strictly pet tank and shoot (or kite which isn't grind friendly anyway). Why is it not used or talked about much? Because of how the very melee mechanic works. You must have aggro which makes raiding and group play pretty much the worst situation for a melee hunter to be in (although it works fine in 5 mans with knowledgeable players and some sneaky ways to keep traps up for added dps). It's strictly a leveling and niche pvp build. Once key talents are in place, it does impressive sustained dps when layering dots, melee and pet damage. It can seriously gibble burst a melee class in pvp if they aren't prepared for it. I've destroyed a rogue and a warrior in melee already but avoid pvp in order to level due to my restricted play time. It's defensive ability is it's dps burst mechanic. Why use it? To do something different than the usual BM boredom. I find the hunter class overall has strong talent trees and I like then all. Survival is often ignored as a leveling choice evolves into more true melee in mid levels. I find it's strength is playing it as a hybrid and not forgetting you are still a ranged class at heart. Honestly playing around with 25+% dodge by mid 30's is pretty sweet. I do more melee and total damage and take less damage in close combat than my enhancement shaman 3 levels higher (both in mid to later 30s atm). The dps is less mana intensive than the shaman too. It's just a damn fun and effective build (I have slight tweaks to it over the one listed by OP here but same concept) for leveling and I'll likely use a variant for world pvp later. I specifically went Orc for this because of the pet damage bonus and Blood Fury which adds serious burst to deterrence and melee stack macro. I usually go for nelf Shadowmeld hunters but the Orc benefits in actual combat are just too damn good with a melee hunter build. My gimmick is using a Windserpent instead of an Owl. I don't like the aoe ability stealing aggro, I survive just fine and will focus slightly more in BM on pet damage to maximize the Orc pet bonus with a ranged pet ability (I like to send in my pet which attacks with lightning at 20m ... which is a loud BANG) then recall it before 10m which I have already made a priest and warrior waste their aoe fear to no effect. Honestly sometimes gimmick builds work and worth trying. Due to putting talents into BM I'll get Counterattack at level 41 which basically completes the melee portion of the concept. I'll also have the +3 hit talent which by itself will be a large dps gain. At 41 I'll report some numbers using likely some updated greens and hopefully a blue weapon by then with the odd enchant. I only use axes to benefit from the racial bonus. Currently at 34 I grind nearly non-stop on same level mobs at around 90-120 dps depending on how much mana I choose to dump and take very little damage. I keep up on decent greens and the odd blue worth getting as this build is more gear dependent than BM as stated.

Way to derail the thread with your mental deficiencies.

I'd also love to see the T 0.5 set quests introduced a full patch level sooner. Crestfall plans this and for very good reasons. It comes WAY too late on the current progression when set against the raid gear available. T 0.5 is for those who don't progress in raiding as far and, even more importantly offers set bonuses for class specs not supported elsewhere which vanilla wow failed badly at offering.

I'd rank a feral druid over a warlock for ease to level especially on a pvp server. Only reason I play a druid however is for pvp. If raid is a primary focus then the usual raid classes are the best bet.

Most walls and buildings no but trees do nothing. It's the one thing I loved about one of the older servers; modded so trees blocked los. Not Blizz-like? Who cares! It just makes damn sense!

Lots of new players and new leveling guilds forming. Jump in.

Yup. This and the advanced console graphics settings do indeed make a very obvious improvement to visuals on the game. A great place to test these settings is in Darkshire at night and also standing in the Inn around the fire. Very warm and cozy feeling and the outside night sky and town is amazing.

Indeed. I merely hear way too many spouting outdated information about vanilla druids especially in pvp. Live vanilla did not play out anything like emulator vanilla sitting at patch 1.12. Tons of class info from live vanilla never impacted emulators due to this mechanics baseline and thus wrong. Typical things are: 1. They are only good at flag running: NOPE. They are good at flag running because of the nature of the class. When you flag run, YOU DON'T FIGHT. A combat feral/hybrid still is very effective in more open areas like AB, AV and open world. 2. Feral damage starts to drop off at 50: NOPE. It actually starts to pick up at 50 because the class is heavily dependent on talents and the good gear starts showing up then. Feral doesn't even exist really until lvl 20 and has tons of passive damage in talents much like shadow priests that you can only get at higher levels. If your damage drops off at 50, you lack the knowledge to properly construct a feral set and understand powershifting. 3. Rogue > Cat, Warrior > Bear: NOPE ... because druid isn't either/or, it's Cat + Bear + Caster as one unit. If you are in bear form in pvp it's because your target already has multiple dots ticking that came from non-bear forms. Dps is all forms in pvp, not just one. 4. Feral is clunky: NOPE ... cause macros. Raiding issues are real on many fronts but also full exclusion is typically only from hardcore raid guilds who won't deviate from most optimal strategies even though other functional strategies exist.

In my experience the most effective hybrid builds are: Resto/bear: worth going bear talents as you skip cat. Not good leveling build however but I suppose those wanting to emulate priest leveling fun can try it. Balalace/bear: Ok never played it in vanilla but ... interesting I guess? Needs caster gear and is late game build so not for leveling unless you use Wrath gear, love drinking for mana (nelf shadowmeld drinking is safer but icky downtime) and can accept a glass cannon play. HotW build: This basically plays as pure feral to begin with and the gear you need to make viable once resto points are in is rather late game. I'm tempted to try it this go around on my new druid but only if I can get the right gear and see how hybrid cat/magic damage dps works in level 60 dungeons as I don't like healing. Healing leathers often fall into your bags as druid of any build so perhaps I'll try this time. The issue with throwing points into bear is if you take cat talents you won't use bear for leveling dps at all. You don't need bear talents for level dungeons so by the time you want them, you've already leveled.

What I find funny about this bug is that ALL through early Wow I wished damage add enchants did work like this because it merely help even the playing field when druids lagged behind dps anyway. I use damage add 'chants for leveling but once +25 agility is available just use it as it's better all around for feral. Weightstones add to damage as well so stack them both. You can abuse the rules to their limits and you won't reach the dps of the big raid hitters so barely any harm nor foul.

Druid time to kill is just fine and combat tactics vary wildly per class. I kill sitting mages in 1 shot often. :) As for the discussion about fighting in cat form it varies per spec obviously. Dedicated cat builds (dungeon/raid spec is just fine for pvp although you change your gear up a little) only stay in cat most of the time against clothies. It is a priority form against mages and any other form change is merely to break snare/roots. Even then it's about mana management so bear is for a stun, if even required, and using eng and other items is preferred. Also, never forget how hard a Feral's 2h mace auto attack can hit against cloth (dat's a lot'a Str behind it). Sneak in a swing when close waiting to eat a snare so you can get back into cat. Pure cat form just means you specialize more against some classes and suffer a little against others. I prefer hybrid builds for pvp but am happy to stick with a more glass cannon cat build while hunting for pre-bis and bis items. Guess I'll have to get used to it again since I am leveling a new druid on Elysium now. Seeing how many shreds you can get in pvp is a nice litmus test to see who actually has skill out there ... and world pvp is a nice mix of noob through ace. The length of time some players let you powershift continuous shreds behind them in battlegrounds is hilarious. I'm just trying to express my personal experience with the class. There is no real way to convince anyone who isn't interested in druid because how they do not fit into the typical "raid for gear sets" meta. I don't really get the low dps talk either. Sure at raid scaling it's not the best nor is meant to be but by the time I hit DM to finish off pre-bis I am doing 400+ dps which is more than typical pug dps.

You DON'T compare open world pvp druids to any other primary class. Comparisons in pve sure ... but ignorance drives comparisons in open world. Druids are very strong in open world pvp. It is their strength (along with perhaps flag running in WSG). A pvp druid plays nothing like any other class. It is a druid using all of it's abilities as one single form even when powershifting like mad. They aren't all powerful and have bad or challenging match ups. A feral typically eats a frost mage easily whereas a rogue has issues. A rogue is a warlock killer whereas a feral has issues. Druids are a hybrid class that plays a different meta than most others in vanilla Wow. Those who can't wrap their heads around it just spout the usual BS memes out of ignorance.

The patch progression is a little worrying especially on pve server because the bulk of the population are newer levelers with far fewer returning raid guilds properly fleshed out yet. I don't see why a new patch helps out the majority of the under leveled population.

It's the lack of updates on the issue that is disturbing. It affects both servers so obviously has a related issue outside of single server architecture. I wonder if it's a bug, hardware fault, exploit or attack out of curiosity anyway.

I like to know as well if wav files modified are allowed. Specifically No_ErrorSounds which is stop the sound from ability mashing (due to macros).

Absolutely nothing new here. Nearly everything Blizzard has ever made has been someone else's idea, remastered and filtered through the Blizzard propaganda machine tricking their audience (it takes little effort to trick a gamer as they live within one of the tightest bubbles in existence) into believing it's all original. Blizzard polishes but rarely innovates because it targets the largest possible audience. All of this is completely separate from whether the game is actually fun. What matters is who the game is made fun for ... the largest possible audience. If you are part of the audience that becomes a minority you WILL face abandonment. The current crop of gamers under Blizzard's scaly wing will discover this in the future. They simply have not learned their lesson yet.

Tested a few classes to try something new. Rolling elemental shaman. I want to be able to shift to support yet still have dps fun pre-raid. Decent benefit also being able to roll on most any caster shaman gear in raids due to being a hybrid and not having many sets when stuck healing. Got one nearly 40 now on K2 and mana management is proving fine once you can get 3 or so nature wrath pieces. Leveling 1-20 was easy as elemental. 20-30 seemed to slow down due to mana usage and lower dps slow burning combine with waning pre-35 water quality. Seemed to pick up again very nicely after 30 and into later 30s largely due to increasing talents and gear collection. Just did a SM Cath run a few times and worked like a charm. We kept getting combat state bugs and I did one run almost entirely without being able to drink. Managed it pretty good to be honest. Didn't oom entirely once. With a little more than 50 nature damage on gear at lvl 38 lightning bolt does 630+ crit and lucky windfuries between casts keeps dps high even if saving mana near end of fight on trash ( I don't solo with WF as melee is only used on clean up and wf won't proc enough). Can see fights as high as 200+ dps at times. Will slow well under 100 on slow burns and no wf procs however but at least shamans have melee back up much like priests have decent wand damage. Typically 100-150 dps though if left to full dps cycles even against the end bosses that are slightly higher level. They sure can pump out some serious damage when mana dumping ... damn. Cant wait for the mana per 5 and more spell power though. Will make life easier late game. It's about wanting a dps/support class. If you want a dps caster go mage or warlock.

Leveling 2 characters at different times or do you mean dual-clienting both at once? Elysium has rules against running more than 1 character per zone outside of cities.

I suggest toggling it off after it hits once especially if you are BM. The pet holds enough aggro for the entire fight minus late game MM spec. It is waste of focus. In fact I currently chain single mob fights with my pet leading off without even using Growl. I loot last kill and attack when my pet hits first with Bite and Claw only turned on. The front load damage holds aggro nearly always for normal mobs and no focus wasted on a single Growl. I'll toggle Growl on when pulling several targets and turn claw off. Don't get too reliant on chain using Growl out of laziness if BM. You lose a ton of dps. The Growl aggro has been rather high on more than one vanilla server.