Know Your Buffs or How Many Druids Does a Raid Need? Part 2

Last week, I took a look at the raiding buffs provided by the Boomkin spec.

Today, we'll go through the Feral and Resto buffs. Let's jump right into it.

Restoration

Tree of Life - +6% healing received - buff

This is the only buff that a Resto Druid brings, and it can be argued whether it's really necessary, but it certainly helps.

Alternatives:
- Improved Devotion Aura (Prot Paladin or Holy Paladin specced deep into Prot)

If you are doing hard modes, chances are that you've got a Holy Paladin in the raid, specced deep into Prot. If you don't, and you don't have a Prot Paladin either (which is much more likely), then your Resto Druid will be the only option for getting the healing buff.

Feral

Leader of the Pack - +5% crit chance for melee and hunters - buff

It's a pretty big dps increase for all physical dps, not only in terms of direct damage but also through secondary effects triggered by critting. Provided by both cats and bears.

Alternatives:
- Rampage (Fury Warrior)

The range of Rampage and Leader of the Pack is the same, the only difference is that Rampage needs a crit to proc, giving an uptime of less than 100% and making Leader of the Pack superior.

Improved Leader of the Pack - heal 2% of max health on crits - buff

A unique buff, this can be a huge benefit to a raid on certain fights, where incoming raid damage is high (e.g. Iron Council, General Vezax). Provided by both cats and bears.

Alternatives:
- none

Mangle - +30% bleed damage - debuff

The various melee classes benefit from increased bleed damage to different degrees, but it's still a very nice raid dps buff. Indirectly it may even be a slight caster dps buff, if casters are threat capped and the main tank is a warrior (it buffs Rend damage). Bears use Mangle in their regular tanking rotation, while cats prefer to have a bear tank apply Mangle (but they will use it, if noone else provides the debuff).

Alternatives:
- Trauma (Arms Warrior)

Trauma again suffers from the fact that it requires a crit to proc, resulting in less than 100% uptime. Mangle on the other hand can be controlled (except for miss/parry/dodge), which is why it comes up superior on single targets. On multiple targets, Trauma is superior.

Summary

Resto Druids are by no means a requirement to a raid, as far as buffs are concerned. They do provide unique healing abilities, of course, and any raid / guild leader will know the value of having a Resto Druid in a raid, but they don't really provide any inexpendable buffs.

Feral Druids, on the other hand, provide much more (and very valuable) buffs, and in order to make up for not having one in the raid, you would have to bring:

- an Arms Warrior
- a Fury Warrior

The chances of your raid having both regularly are pretty slim. Ergo: make sure you always have a Feral Druid in the raid (and a Balance Druid, as we saw last week).