A realistic look at druid tanking
by Elizabeth Harper 
Feb 26th 2007 at 8:30PM
Druids have received some significant changes in the coming 2.0.10 patch, but while there's lots of complaint and speculation, there's little agreement on what the changes will actually do for druids. But the loudest complaint is that druids will no longer be able to tank and will be once more reduced to a pure healing role. Note that there are no changes to cat or moonkin effectiveness or damage output, which does leave DPS as an option (in both PvE and PvP) -- but with so many classes able to DPS and so few classes able to heal, druids are reasonably concerned about being marginalized. The facts on bears from the patch notes are as follows:
- Bear/dire bear form's health bonus has changed from +25% health to +25% stamina. While this sounds like a non-change, this means that +health enchants and health-increasing potions or flasks are no longer considered in the bonus calculation, resulting in a loss of health for some druids.
- Dire bear form's armor bonus has been reduced from +450% to +400%.
- The talent Savage Fury no longer affects mangle (bear), maul, or swipe. Savage Fury previously increased damage done by those abilities by 20% for two talent points. The ability lacerate is the only bear ability that is not effected by this change, but only because it wasn't effected by the talent previously. (This talent will still have benefits to cat form, but no longer benefits any abilities in bear form.)
- The talent Predatory Instincts has been changed from a critical damage increase of 3/6/9/12/15% to a critical damage increase of 2/4/6/8/10%.
- The rage normalization equation has been adjusted to grant more rage.
On the official forums, poster Zelvar has compiled some numbers on the exact changes. He averaged damage from a series of 30 samples, and came up with the following information.
On live, he has the following stats, self-buffed:
HP:.............................11791
Armor:.......................17894 (62.89% redux)
Damage Range......388-449
AP:..............................1363
Crit:.............................23.54%
And was getting the following damage results:
Average Maul damage against the 66 Clefthoof Bulls in Nagrand: 502
Average Maul critical against the 66 Clefthoof Bulls in Nagrand: 1100
Average Mangle damage against the Clefthoof Bulls: 556
Average Mangle critical against the Clefthoof Bulls: 1408
On the PTR, he has the following stats, self-buffed:
HP:.............................10893
Armor:.......................16345 (60.76% redux)
Damage Range......388-449
AP:..............................1363
Crit:.............................23.54%
And was getting the following damage results:
Average Maul damage against the 66 Clefthoof Bulls in Nagrand: .432
Average Maul critical against the 66 Clefthoof Bulls in Nagrand: 932
Average Mangle damage against the Clefthoof Bulls: 376
Average Mangle critical against the Clefthoof Bulls: 858
And if you compare these numbers, you get the following data:
Health decreased by 898 (7.62% reduction)
Armor decreased by 1549 (8.65% reduction)
Maul damage down an average of 70 points (13.94% reduction)
Maul crit damage down an average of 168 points (15.27% reduction)
Mangle damage down an average of 180 (32.37% reduction)
Mangle crit damage down an average of 550 (39.06% reduction)
This level of reduction is obviously major for bears attempting to PvP. However, with cat and moonkin damage untouched (and with moonkin armor buffed), druids should still have options for PvPing. However, for tanking, these changes are more significant. Of course there's the obvious reduction to health and armor, but even these aren't the most important part. Unlike warriors, who have sunder armor and other abilities specifically to generate high threat and hold aggro, druids primarily maintain aggro by damage (they only have one ability that specifically generates extra threat, and that's lacerate, gained at level 66). With damage done equaling threat, and damage being reduced this could mean a big problem to druids attempting to tank -- putting them right back in the ranks of second-class tanks, after a short time at the top.
Of course the test realms can change all the time, and there may yet be undocumented changes we don't know about. In my mind, if the problem Blizzard was trying to solve was the bear's damage abilities and mitigation abilities in PvP, then an across the board damage reduction would be the way to do it. However, to maintain viable tanking and aggro-holding abilities, some sort of increased threat would need to be added to compensate, and to the best of our knowledge, that didn't make it into this patch.
Filed under: Druid, Patches, Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ezkial Feb 26th 2007 8:46PM
thats because blizzard hates durids. durids have always been the red headed step child of the class list. the only class that gets owned by everyone because of no "real" CC. Cyclone on DR is a joke. If your balance, you die if anyone targets you. Feral was the only viable option if you dont want to healbot. but now that people actually started playing other roles of durids, everyone else cries and cries.
so, ferals get the nerf bat and now only warriors can tank. but good luck finding a prot tank seeing as how they all want to "I can do mad uber DPS in fury/arms". so, warriors cried that they couldnt tank, even tho they really dont want to tank. and now durids cant tank so there will be parties, priest in hand, ready to go but with no viable way to stay alive.
so..durids will be forced to spec healbot and spontaneously combust if any aggro even targets them.
man blizz seriously needs to stop nerfing the durids and give them mana control, and maybe a viable CC or spell interrupt. cuz there is nothing like getting CC'd+silence+2 shot of death.
Galipan Feb 26th 2007 8:49PM
WoW, I hadn't noticed how hard bears got hit. It's crazy, which really sucks now because I used to love druid tanks, i never took agro, which rocked hard. Then again, that rawrbomb was doing too much damage ='(
Martel Feb 26th 2007 8:51PM
My druid isn't 70, but I'm not sure if those reduction percentages tell the whole story. Clearly Maul and Mangle will be hitting for less. But I also notice that rage generation is supposed to have been increased. So perhaps with more rage, bears will be able to use more special moves and make up some of what they are losing. Specials will be hitting for less, but hitting more often.
shawnzie Feb 27th 2007 5:57PM
Wow, lol #1...someone obviously doesn't know how to play his class.
Balance druids can hold their own in PvP just as well as anyone else.
bliSSter Feb 26th 2007 9:10PM
@Martel
Problem is that specials WON'T be hitting more often. I can barely dump extra aggro that I have currently, and swipe will only hit 3 targets and is directional...not counting the Idol of Brutality nerf. Mangle, in bear form, is on a 6 second cooldown so no extra rage dump there. Maul is limited to "next attack", so it's not there either. Perhaps spamming Demoralizing Shout? Now that I have 2 extra talent points I can at least improve that a bit more...
Damage in bear form (primarily Mangle), needed to be toned down, certainly. But it's as if the developers threw a bunch of dice in a can, rolled Yahtzee, and nerfed EVERYTHING instead of tweaking a couple here and there. Health, armor, and three separate talents...utterly trivializing 2 points entirely through Savage Fury. Maul is hitting at level 70 similar to its damage at level 60. Does that seem odd to anyone?
Don't get me started on the priest changes. There is seriously zero excuse for the half-assed contest they've been through for the last 2 years.
At the end of the day, EVERYONE suffers here, if most realms are similar to mine. Three out of every four warriors I've run with want to spec fury or arms for viable solo/farming and PvP play. Protection warriors are now very few and far between, and those that can actually play that spec are even more rare. So at the end of the day, all that the PvP QQing really got with this patch was more difficult PvE play for anyone seeking that experience...Bon Appetite!
duron Feb 26th 2007 10:21PM
you guys are forgetting the obvious point that druids no matter what are not meant to be mt as said by drysc or tseric themselves months ago
Lostmimic Feb 26th 2007 11:01PM
You feral guys are getting smacked around as bad as priests have been, we have a support group, we mostly flame the blue who lies to us and thinks we actually believe anything they say.
iamdexx Feb 26th 2007 11:10PM
@Duron - Why, now with alot more focus on smaller dungeons (5,10 man). Would you not want to have the choice of more than 1 class that can MT - It seems pointless giving druids bear form and they nerfing it over and over again to make it almost pointless. I have a 65 druid on dunemaul and find that, even before the patch bear form seems pretty well worked out. Druids arent/wernt OP they were on par with other classes - and now we get kicked in the head again. woot!
anowack Feb 26th 2007 11:40PM
"This level of reduction is obviously major for bears attempting to PvP. However, with cat and moonkin damage untouched (and with moonkin armor buffed), druids should still have options for PvPing."
I haven't PvPed seriously since the expansion (too busy leveling and questing), but the concern among druids is that using cat form for anything but an opener in PvP isn't much of an option, as being in it tends to result in swift death against a non-CCed opponent.
No idea how the moonkin armor buff will change Balance PvP, but my instinct is not much.
"(they only have one ability that specifically generates extra threat, and that's lacerate, gained at level 66)."
Maul also generates additional threat, comparable to Heroic Strike according to Blizzard, for the what it's worth.
"if the problem Blizzard was trying to solve was the bear's damage abilities and mitigation abilities in PvP, then an across the board damage reduction would be the way to do it. However, to maintain viable tanking and aggro-holding abilities, some sort of increased threat would need to be added to compensate, and to the best of our knowledge, that didn't make it into this patch."
Oddly enough, despite a lot of players seeming to see this as mainly a PvP-centered nerf, Blizzard's posts seem to suggest that it was indeed intended as a tanking nerf. Which makes it seem unlikely to me that any sort of aggro-boost will go in before hitting live.
Kazia Feb 26th 2007 11:58PM
From a PvE standpoint I have no problems with the changes. I lost a little bit of DR from the armour, but then I always felt they buffed the armour multipler too much (remember it did use to be 350%). All it means to me is that I now need to be a bit more picky with my choices of gear for tanking (I have noticed many pieces, despite being same ilevel and quality have signifcantly more or less armour than others - search for them). The health loss for me is marginal mostly because I have been lax with my enchants.
My threat production has dropped though any druid who tanks a fair bit could see this coming a mile away. Due to the high DPS of bear form it was a joke holding agro. I didn't even need to use my threat abilities. Now I actually will have to plan out my moves in advance though I doubt it will be a problem. Maul and Lacerate both give strong threat when coupled with our other minor threat abilities, add in a strong party buff, innervate and self heals and the fact that I still do more damage than a protection warrior, I doubt I will have trouble finding 5 mans to tank in.
In a raid scenario though, druids are never meant to be a Main Tank, and as an offtank we, like Palidans do an exceptional job and I doubt this will change much.
However - all this does depend on your guild. In a game starved of healers, if you want to progress and you can heal, well that is what you might have to do.
My biggest issue with the changes is how they affect PvP. Cat form, due to the lack of any significant DR, is as squishy as caster form, and unless your trying to get some interuption on a clothie going, your going to spend most of your time in bear.
2 years ago, PvP for a druid was turtle in bear, run away, heal, turtle in bear. Rince and repeat until either your opponent died to your paltry DPS or the much greater threat of boredom.
When they upped the DPS of bear we finally were able to compete in PvP as we were meant to. Looks like its back to turtling again...ZZzzzzz
Still - I would be partially molified if they made it that I could switch straight from cat to bear without having to go caster first.....
Cowsoup Mar 1st 2007 7:28PM
Awwh well... was fun while it lasted. Time to ditch the furry tank and start playing Lord Of The Rings Online until Blizz give me a reason to be a Druid again.
MattRossi Feb 27th 2007 12:23AM
1 - "so, ferals get the nerf bat and now only warriors can tank. but good luck finding a prot tank seeing as how they all want to "I can do mad uber DPS in fury/arms". so, warriors cried that they couldnt tank, even tho they really dont want to tank. and now durids cant tank so there will be parties, priest in hand, ready to go but with no viable way to stay alive."
Hi, same old druid bullshit, how've you been? I haven't seen you for what, five seconds now?
Feral druids were overpowered and you know it. The reason tanks didn't want to spec full prot was because it gimped us in so many ways AND because of the way Blizz itemizes warriors, a full prot warrior with best gear actually LOSES effectiveness as a tank compared to a druid.
Is he easier to heal? Yep. He sure is. By a lot. On a raid boss, the prot warrior was the way to go.
ON EVERY SINGLE OTHER KIND OF TANKING IN THE GAME, FERALS WERE FAR OUTPERFORMING PROT TANKS.
I went with all caps there because I want to try and finally drill that point home. In a five man, no warrior, be he prot, arms, fury, or a mix (31 arms 30 prot, say) could touch Druid aggro. Sure, the prot warrior is easier to heal over the long haul. But because of mitigation based on dodge/parry/block, he's opening every fight with barely any rage to build aggro with. Now, druids have already stated that this wasn't a problem for them: their huge armor and health let them soak damage and gain rage from it that they could immediately use to build threat with their insanely high damage. (Much greater than anything a prot warrior could put out outside of ridding his gear so that the ONLY stat on it worth anything is shield block so that his Shield Slams go off for more) - what does this mean for tanking?
Less healing because you build hate faster, meaning that the group can open up DPS faster. Faster clears. Much less time spent marking and discussing CC options on trash. Much less time worrying about accidentally pulling healing aggro when the druid tank can spam Swipe and hold aggro much more effectively than any warrior, no matter WHAT his spec is. Groups obviously prefered druid tanks to warriors, any warriors, because no warrior can do this crap and stay alive. To match this kind of DPS tanking, warriors need to wear gear with less than a quarter of druid hp and armor on it. To match that kind of mitigation, warriors starve themselves of rage and cannot come close to the kind of fast hate druids can build.
Meanwhile, while groups are picking druids for every possible encounter outside of a 10 or 25 man raid (and even THERE druids were tanking bosses), the same druids could then go out and PvP in bear form and bring all that health and armor to stymie rogues, PvP focused warriors, and even casters who now have to burn through much more health to hurt the druid while the druid can use his tank form's DPS (which is damn close to his cat DPS) to rip through their cloth wearing hides with ease.
Are you getting the picture yet?
Quite honestly, a warrior with 20 points in protection should be enough for any five man. It just requires that his group not go supernuke crazy. However, they weren't likely to want to restrain their DPS for the first few seconds of a pull when they could just get a feral and not have to, now were they? The idea that warriors should have to spec full protection to tank is about as class pigeonholing as the idea that all druids should have to spec for innervate, which is why they made innervate a trainable and not a talent.
This was a change that needed to happen. Nerfs suck, but outside of giving prot warriors a major DPS boost (and did anyone outside of prot warriors want to see that?) there was nothing else to be done.
Collin Feb 27th 2007 12:30AM
If the real problem is keeping aggro, why doesn't Blizz just give Druids another aggro keeping ability? I mean, Druids won't take over Warriors with ONE more aggro pulling ability, no? And Druids can keep their damage at the same level. It kinda makes sense to me.
Kazia Feb 27th 2007 2:03AM
"the same druids could then go out and PvP in bear form and bring all that health and armor to stymie rogues, PvP focused warriors, and even casters who now have to burn through much more health to hurt the druid while the druid can use his tank form's DPS (which is damn close to his cat DPS) to rip through their cloth wearing hides with ease."
It is these types of ill-informed whines that really annoy me. If you think bear form DPS was too strong in PvP then all it tells me is that you don't know how to play your class (and I guess prolly lost to a good druid too). Druids needed the buffs they got badly and to have them removed when finally they are on a level playing field is just a slap in the face, and this is coming from a warrior.
Rogues should not be taking on plate wearers as targets of choice (they are cloth killers) but a good rogue should be able to kill a warrior or druid quite easily. Warriors should be able to beat them but its going to be a tough fight, and mages...lol - fighting a mage in bear form is suicidal. Killing a mage requires alot of shifting and even then its tough.
In the end, what the buffs did is allowed druids to compete rather be a support class. Fights are no longer killing the druid as he runs away but rather about survivng and skill. Like all hybrids we are versatile but at a cost. Learn to play to your charecters strengths and your opponents weaknesses. Its a pity people didn't, rather spending all their time crying.
I will take my druid back to PvE now, nerfs didn't change that for me.
Patrick Schriner Feb 27th 2007 3:21AM
I've played as a feral from day 1 of the expansion; I openly admit that the damage we did in bear form was way to high. I usualy tanked in Cat-like equip (actually, something inbetween), exchanging only one or two items for Trash and wearing full defensive equip only for bosses.
The result was - I did, at least in instances that allowed Swipe to have a good effect, at least 90% of the damage of EACH of the DDs in my group. Fury warriors weren't even close to my damage, mages were at the very top (example instances: Caverns of time, Botanica). Obviously none of them had any chance of getting aggro unless I chose to.
I dueled a rogue (something I have never done before, as i was full resto for 1 year), and could win over him in bear form or cat form without even shifting out for heal. Was he a noob? Maybe - but even in cat form those 10k life and Maim make for an awfull time.
Yes, druids deserved a nerf - it was a lot of fun to compete for the top damage spot with DDs, but it just wasn't fair.
The main problem I have with this patch is that Lacterate is about the only thing where you could get rid of the extra rage we might get but eg in Karazhan most mobs are immune to bleed effects. I don't know if that means that they are immune to the extra threat but in effect that makes a feral druid close to utter useless for tanking there. I'm left with the option of tanking only in small instances or respeccing for those raids.
I would have loved if they nerfed damage as they do but once again somehow free us some talent points. My present talent build doesn't even include the extra +15% bear threat available and as a lot of talents are of ridiculously lower effect gaining 1 or 2 talent points would be fair.
Btw the Armor and Health nerf are comparitively minor, it's still a lot better than pre-2.0 - and 25% stamina is still scaling whereas +1240 health was not.
Deafdumbandblind Feb 27th 2007 8:25AM
@10 I think you're missing the point. MOST people will not get attuned to the 25-man raids. They will howewver spend ALOT of time in Outland's 5 and 10-man instances.
Now I don't know how you do your 5 man instances but MOST good groups will sheep/sap one or 2 mobs, set the MT on another and then the off-tank/pet on the remaining mob. The party will then dps the off-tank's mob, then the MT's mob and then the sheeped and sapped mobs. Rinse & Repeat.
For the majority of non-boss encounters this is how an 5-man outland instance like ramparts or BF run.
Our warrior has NO difficulty holding aggro in these situations. 3 sunders and the mob is his for the duration. ALSO you can see that there is no opportunity or neccessity for a druid to swipe, in fact swipe would bring the sapped/sheeped mobs back into combat.
So your argument that a druid is superior to a warrior in instances is wrong. The druid offers an off-tank/off-healer role but also a "break-glass-in-case-of-emergency" during accidental pulls. Shift to bear form, challenging roar grabs all the mobs, hit swipe a couple of times and then soak up the damage whilst the rest of the party re-groups.
That's the way we use our druid and this won't change even after the patch but what the patch will do is stop us from running instances when our one prot spec'd warrior is not available. WHy? Because against a single mob there really is no substitute for sunder, revenge and shield bash for generating aggro. A bear only has it's roar (6 secs aggro only) and normal attacks - which are at 2.5 secs (remember he can't swipe without bringing the sapped/sheeped mobs back into combat).
So, in summary, warriors are fine if you know what you're doing e.g. L2P. Druids, after years of neglect by Blizzard, were finally given a badly needed boost and able to PvP and suddenly we're nerfed again.
What bothers me is Blizzard's part in all this. They've either made changes and released them WITHOUT doing the proper testing OR they're they're just scanning the forums, checking out which group is bleating the most and then busting a gut to change things to accommodate those who QQ.
Either way they're incompetent.
yotix Feb 27th 2007 4:22AM
I think the nerf is more than okay -- Druids had it coming really.
Oh, and yes I'm uncool enough to write about spelling errors: "but only because it wasn't effected by the talent previously."
Guess you should look up the difference between "to affect" and "to effect" in a dikshnery.
Zest Feb 27th 2007 5:12AM
i dont inderstand why they nerf the bear?
oky they can tank but not like a defwarrior
a bear takes a lot more dmg its only a good way for offtank but not mt
i think they must nerf the cat form hallo its dmg dealer nr1 and its a hybrid thats not ride i think an i play a 70 druid and i tank in Kara
tyger Feb 27th 2007 5:10AM
"but even in cat form those 10k life"
I've never seen a cat with 10k. I hope you meant bear...but then again you mention maim.
Tovort Feb 27th 2007 5:59AM
Ctprofiles doesn't really work that well right now - but it's close to this:
http://ctprofiles.net/4976051
http://www.circulus-vitiosus.org/tovort/selfbuffed.jpg
Substract the priest buff and you get roughly 9.5k HP. Put I think I added some enchants as well.
Unfortunetly my account is locked right now as my gamecard ended on saturday and I'm in "waiting" mode.