Being a druid in a raiding guild

The two previous posts dealt with the raid buffs provided by Boomkins, Resto Druids and Feral Druids.

The conclusion again in a nutshell: You will always want to have at least one Boomkin and one Feral Druid in a raid. Resto Druids are more expendable, as far as buffs are concerned (however, due to their unique healing abilities, at least one Resto Druid should usually be present, especially on fights like Iron Council hard mode or Twin Valkyrs).

This has important consequences for Druids in raiding guilds.

I'm going to assume progress oriented guilds here, working on hard modes. During raid progression, dps counts. Your raid will need to beat hard and soft enrage timers, both of the complete encounter, as well as of all the little sub-goals (like killing the portals in time on Jaraxxus hard mode). Therefore, apart from the survival considerations (are tanks adequately geared, does the raid have enough healing power), there will be dps considerations which influence the raid setup.

And here's the kicker: Even though Blizzard wants guilds to "bring the player, not the class" (i.e., classes are supposed to be more or less equal, so that it comes down to the ability of the player to decide whether to invite him to a raid or not), Blizzard has also stated that "pure dps classes" are intended to have a higher theoretical dps than "hybrid dps classes". The current class balance may not have achieved that goal quite yet (Feral Druid dps is too high), but it's close, and we have to expect that eventually Blizzard will succeed, and "hybrid dps" will be slightly lower than "pure dps".

The number which was mentioned by Ghostcrawler (quite a while ago) was 5%. That's how much lower "hybrid dps" is intended to be. Not a lot of difference, you might say. Well, let's have a look.

Here is a raid setup with 3 tanks (Warrior, Druid, Paladin) and 6 healers (2 Paladins, Holy Priest, Disc Priest, Shaman, Druid). Then I added 6 dps classes, and look: all buffs and debuffs are covered. This means, for the remaining 10 dps spots, you can bring any class you like. If the theoretical dps of a pure dps class is 6000, then the theoretical dps of a hybrid dps class would be 5700. Multiply this by the 10 empty dps spots, and you have 3000 dps difference between taking hybrids or taking pure dps classes. For progression raids, that's a lot of dps.

What does this mean for druids in raiding guilds?

Well, it means this: The first Boomkin is always going to be welcome to raid. The buffs he provides more than make up for the lower theoretical dps. A second Boomkin, however, is likely to be benched during progression. He does not privide any additional buffs, so he will be judged by his theoretical dps (all other things being equal), which is lower.

So, as a Boomkin, you might find yourself in a guild with more than one Boomkin, in which case you can expect having to rotate, as only one Boomkin will be in any given raid. Or, you will find yourself being the only Boomkin, in which case you will be expected to be there all the time. The middle ground, like "raiding 4 out of 5 days", is unlikely.

The same basically goes for Feral Druids. Resto Druids, on the other hand, might have a slightly easier time in raiding guilds, as it's not so crucial if they miss one raid each week, for example.