Forum Post of the Day: Druid tanks from a healing perspective
by Elizabeth Harper 
Nov 15th 2006 at 6:00PM
There's little discussion on this post so far, but the few posts in the thread thus far are rather interesting. As far as tanking goes, the warrior has always been king, with a much wider array of abilities to hold aggro and reduce their own damage taken. But when the Burning Crusade hits store shelves, druids and paladins will both find themselves with a wider array of tanking abilities -- druids with a hardier bear form and paladins with a much nicer protection tree. And while I still feel that protection warriors will be the cream of the crop, I wonder if druids and paladins won't offer their own advantages -- in certain situations. However, warriors and paladins maintain the advantage of block and parry, neither of which druids are capable of. But whether this means druids will be the Burning Crusade's third class tank or whether their immense stamina and armor ratings make up for it -- I think I'll really have to get some experience with it before I could decide.Forum Post of the Day attempts to highlight interesting and constructive posts (I know, I know -- I'm severely restricting the available options!) from the official forums. Seen a post recently that's made you think? Let us know about it!
Filed under: Druid, Odds and ends, Expansions
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ging Nov 15th 2006 6:20PM
I think a Druid Tank would be lovly to see in some sort of end game instence :-) SHOUT OUT TO ALL MY DRUID TANK FRIENDS!
Druid dude Nov 15th 2006 6:46PM
As far as beaing able to take a beating, equally equipped Prot Warriors and Feral Druids (specced and geared for tanking) come out pretty close most of the time. Druid Tanks will be a bit more of a mana sponge for their healers, but its pretty close.
The big difference I see is this:
Sunder Armor
Its the king of aggro generating abilities. Druids just can't generate the aggro a warrior can. That didn't stop us from doing a 25 Druid Ony run a little while back, so believe me when I say, I am a fan of Druid tanking. What we found on that run is that given enough time, Druid Tanks can generate a pretty good amount of hate, they just can't do it as quickly as a Warrior.
Kirlonthasha Nov 15th 2006 7:16PM
Err, try again.
Druids have far, FAR greater threat than most warriors. Only a Dreadnought warrior with shield slam comes close unless the warrior in question goes dual wield.
The reason druid threat is a little slow is due to the need for somebody else to stack sunders so the druid can reach his full threat level, and the need for the autoattack timer to come around for the 2 and 3rd swing.
Kirlonthasha Nov 15th 2006 7:13PM
Err, try again.
Druids have far, FAR greater threat than most warriors. Only a Dreadnought warrior with shield slam comes close unless the warrior in question goes dual wield.
The reason druid threat is a little slow is due to the need for somebody else to stack sunders so the druid can reach his full threat level, and the need for the autoattack timer to come around for the 2 and 3rd swing.
Samidare Nov 15th 2006 9:31PM
Ya know, I have seen druids tank better then some warriors. I just starting playing with the druid class. But have seen them tank in mc and zg, aq. So i have no issue with them tanking as long as there is ample healing.
Sadly the issue comes from the classes who are either a) threatened to an extent (warriors, especially the crappy ones), and b) healing classes who don't have that ability to be more then just a healer, or say "i have to heal more because he isn't".
Hopefully with the change in gear itemization with tbc, druids will find a better niche. /shrug, who knows.
Shat Nov 15th 2006 10:10PM
I know with my mid-lvl druid, if there's a priest in the party and the warrior's a retard, i'll pop into bear and do his job for him.
Mike Nov 16th 2006 5:09AM
@Shat: Druids like you are my priest's best friends (next to, of course, warriors who actually do their jobs).
Be nice to your squishy healers! Keep them alive!
Ken Nov 16th 2006 8:37AM
@Kirlonthasa
The druid will never tank as well as the warrior. The initial problem is that their attack speed is a constant. You cannot speed it up. Maul, the arguably highest threat generating move is not instant and can miss, be parried or dodged (warriors have overpower and instant attacks). This causes a lot of unpredictability. Burst threat is not what you want when you're tanking. You want steady constant threat generation. Why? So burst damage classes such as mages and rogues would not be able to snag aggro between your attacks. Swipe is instant, but does not generate nearly even close to as much threat as maul. Finally, Druids may be better at migitating damage but warriors can block.
This is not to say that Druids cannot tank though. It's been done and proven for most of the lower end raid instances. I’m just saying they’re inferior to Warriors.
You clearly don't know what you're talking about. The sentence "Druids have far, FAR greater threat than most warriors" doesn't even make any sense. No one innately has threat... you also do know that Revenge is the highest threat generating move for the warrior.. not shield slam.
As for the expansion, we'll have to see. Prot specced Paladins and Feral specced Druids may be able to tank better than a non-prot specced warrior but they definitely won't be able to tank better than a Prot specced Warrior. But I guess that’s stating the obvious. Specialization classes will specialize. Anyway, that's generally speaking. Given certain situations I'm sure the Druid or Paladin will be better suited to tank.
Lyta Nov 16th 2006 8:57AM
Pluses and minuses of druid tanks, from a raid leader's perspective.
Pluses:
Immune to many mind control effects, such as the Jin'do the Hexxer fight.
Damage mitigation almost as high as a warrior over a short term
Long cooldown self-heal might make up for the less-than-warrior damage mitigation
Minuses:
Very hard to gear up pre-AQ40 with good tank gear. The problem is compounded by the lack of very quick aggro generating abilities, making it easy for the druid's healer to get aggro. The solution is to drop more healers on the druid to split the threat, they can spot the raid half the time and heal the tank the rest of the time.
Requires a specific spec. I've had Arms/Fury warriors tanking Onyxia. No problems. Having a typical 0/20/31 resto/feral druid tank that would not work out. Believe me, I've tried.
No shield block or shield wall
No anti-fear beserker rage goodness. You can't always have a dwarf priest with you.
Other factors:
The threat building time is different. Over time, say, a 30 second span, a druid can build the same aggro as a warrior. But the curve is different. Druids tend to build threat very linearly, increasing at a constant rate. Warriors build threat quickly thanks to things like bloodrage and sunder, and then steadily produce more threat. Over time this will even out as a percentage of threat.
Summary:
It's a different set of challenges for a raid leader to have a druid tank. But not insurmountable or poorly understood challenges. Have your MA treat the druid as an offtank, and always kill their mob after the MT's mob. Make sure your feral-spec druids that want to tank have priority on equippable tanking gear, after your warrior MT's get their gear, set priority for the feral spec druids on rings/necklaces with +defense and other desirable tank stats. There just aren't enough easy-to-find items for guilds (at least pre-AQ40) that are +defense and equppable by druids, so you'll need to make allowances for that in your loot allocations.
Tigor Nov 21st 2006 4:34PM
One of my friends, a HWL Feral Druid, has tanked some bosses before in ZG I heard.
Deusirae Nov 16th 2006 2:20PM
Druid and Paladins are both capable of tanking end-game instances (for several bosses and all trash mobs). I would never say that we do as good as a warrior, who can generate rage much faster and use multiple threat generating and damage mitigating techniques. My pally relies on heavy hits and holy damage to hold aggro. My druid relies on a limited amount of aggro pullers and abilities. I generally only tank with my (Ret Spec) pally in MC when a warrior loses aggro, and I just grab the mob to bring him back for them to take over again. No druid or pally should view not being tanks as a negative thing, as we can save the raid from a wipe in a pinch as a backup, and have other roles to offer. What we should do is realize that warriors can do their jobs...well.
Aaron Nov 17th 2006 3:55PM
Quote:"The initial problem is that their attack speed is a constant. You cannot speed it up. Maul, the arguably highest threat generating move is not instant and can miss, be parried or dodged (warriors have overpower and instant attacks). "
Mangle is an instant attack and can be used right after a maul attack (with enough rage). If you watch (find) the movie DeepFeral3 you will see this type of attack in the Arena PvP section.
Also at lvl 66 (me thinks) Druids get the Lacerate ability. This is the equivalent of the warrior sunder armor (stackable 5X).
One of the bigger compaints of Druids is the lack of Parry and Pots. They believe the feral FF should be replaced with Parry (Like shammies I believe).
Ive played a Druid as Balance / Feral / and Resto. When I tanked since others didnt have the sunder armor debuff to watch Id tell them when FF is placed open up. I usually just use that after 3 mauls - then I have them pretty good.
Moonsong.VoW Dec 15th 2006 6:43PM
I have main tanked for my guild since 40 when I first got Dire Bear. I have tanked every boss in ZG = Batty, Spidey, Raptor, Tony the Tiger, Pantha, all the berserkers, and Hakkar - we had an allied group with us at Hakkar, and when I got mind controlled and they could not sheep me (b/c druids are immune) LOL - I got pulled - but *none* of the geared-up warriors and pallies who were there tanked him better than I did. These people were in Tier ones and are very successful, well-run group, while I am still in blues with just the Warden Staff. I have tanked Kurinnaxx about six times now (we've downed him three times), and I'm usually one of that last ones standing, and I have just never lost aggro on any of these bosses.
One benefit of a Dire Bear tank is that bosses with knockback can be reacquired almost instantly b/c of the ability to feral charge in combat about as often as they knockback. Feral Faerie Fire does not stack, but neither does it use much rage to speak of and is a good pull tool. What it *does* do is stack *with* sunders to add another 500 pts or so of reduction. People don't understand, Druids generate threat differently than warriors, so it is not a one-one comparison. Swipe is your aggro dump, and crits a lot, and the crit generates threat. A DB Druid can aggro and hold whole groups of mobs - I do it all the time. According to WoWWiki's Druid Tanking thread, a Druid has successfully tanked every boss in the game, including Nefarion.
The original was about healing - my healers love the fact I can take lots of hits :) - healing is smoother, so there's not the burst damage concerns as with others, which makes up for not having a shield. Warriors and Druids are very very well balanced, but Druids are not inferior tanks. Just different.