new AOE must be feral bear talent.
I spent some time yesterday in heroic Oculus.
Before WotLK small dragons like whelps were rather easy and painless.
Here if you have a healer without instant heals one whelp can destroy everything, and because I have only growl and challenging roar I was unable to taunt lose whelps.
It was just Demo Roar, swipe loop for a minute.

A aoe, A aoe, My kingdom for AOE!

Or is it just the conversation was in reference to rogues, so when they talk about feral they mean our rogue form being cat?

Wise Foxs last blog post..Vices

So, yes, Rogues are obsessed with damage. Its the only *tangible* thing they bring to a group/raid. No one brings a Rogue for anything else, unless there is a specific scenario that needs a door unlocked or something (a la Shattered Halls). In a single target DPS race, particularly 1 that is not designed to be favorable to casters, Rogues usually DO rule the roost, all things being equal, but the margin isn’t so wide as to be obscene. On the other hand, in an AoE scenario, Rogues fall far behind. If other clases do 90% of the damage a Rogue does in single target scenarios, and do twice the damage Rogues do in AoE scenarios, why bring a Rogue? If other classes have more reliable CC, that can be reapplied in combat, can bring buffs, and will take less damage in the course of doing their job by virtue of just being further away from the enemy, why bring a Rogue?

Now, of course, I’ll say that I LOVE having a *good* Rogue in my group. They are bar none awesome when it comes to handling “oh crap” situations. I can’t count the number of times a tank goes down at the with a boss at <10% hp, and a Rogue popped Evasion and tanked it out, or the number of times a tank’s screw up didn’t mean a dead healer, because a Rogue was there to pick up the slack. Even then, you have to wonder if Rogues will be supplanted in this role by Death Knights, whose damage output is on par (or better), *and* they have some powerful AoE abilities, *and* they can tank, *and* they bring powerful buffs/debuffs that boost raid/group wide DPS, and even a unique talented effect that reduces incoming damage.

I don’t play a Rogue, but Rogues definitely need a buff to their AoE. If DPS kitties are meant to be taken seriously as anything other than poorly specced offtanks, and that is supposedly the case, and probably need an AoE ability that is relevant to their gear and talents. Hurricane is “better than nothing” but in Feral/Rogue gear and without talents, not by a lot.

but there is many, many places, where feral druids must compete with rogues for the one and only (or maybe two) raid slot.
and if rogues will beat ferals in DPS more and more, ferals will start to lose this fight.

Once again.
I’m not telling that feral AoE is against or not ‘feral nature’, I’m talking about balance.

Lets give priests more HoTs, more Instant Healing, increase mana regen by 100% and hmmm.. well..thats enough.
Some druids will said ‘well.. I just like to be a druid so Ill keep playin’
but after two weeks of ‘-sorry mon, but we already have three priests on healing, maybe next month’ they will start to whine.

@Shasmo: I love the “Bath Time” idea … and if they ever decided to also give Cats a Vanish, they could call it “Knock at the Door!”

Playing a paladin I’ve been very impressed by the two spell-power conversion talents. One gives protection paladins spell power based on their stamina(http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=53592), and the other gives retribution paladins spell power based on their attack power(http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=53503). These talents make both classes able to use their spell-power-based skills, which ends up mostly being heals, without having to wear SP gear. This way they can still toss out a few heals when needed instead of effectively taking them off their bars.

I think ferals could use something similar. If Nurturing Instinct were changed to increase your spell power based on attack power then hurricane would become a reasonable form of AE for ferals. You wouldn’t have the best AE by far, but if you wanted that you could have specced balance.

I have to admit I’m of the camp that believes AoE damage capability isn’t really something Cat form needs. That said, if it is desired that Ferals do AoE dps (rather than tanking, and no matter how sporadic the ability) the ability really should be Cat specific.