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Originally Posted by Lord BEEF,March 15th, 2006 @ 4:52PM
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Lol..look what I found trolling about..
Yeah it was funny as hell. Our MT got totally owned on a Crit Shadowbreath, and I happened to have my dps gear on for phase one. It took me approx 10 seconds to put an aggro lock on nef because I was still bashing away in kitty form.
It's important to note that I was filling a gap by being in Kitty. I could hardly beleive the raid leader's tell. "Go cat we need the dps". ( I stared at the tell for a while. I would never in a million years have even tried to argue this was a good idea. )
Anyways, We're planning to see in the next few weeks if a full nef tank can be done by a druid. A druid call is scary as hell, but having almost lived through one ( a missed decurse owned me), I'm pretty confident it can be done. I didnt have a flask or any of the real sta buffs on that could have helped me take that extra damage. Some of our math geeks have been crunching the numbers on the Warrior call vs. Kitty Call..with interesting results.
We've been getting our healers used to the random cat forms by having me tank onyxia and shifting to cat for 20 seconds every 3 mintues. Early results have been encouraging.
I used to argue up and down about bears being awesome tanks and all that jazz. We are, but theres really no sense fighting about it as much as some do. Most of it is just an angry reaction to the "LOL STFU INNERVATE ME HO" responses we typically get. Some of us tend to snap back at that.
As to the debate...fully resto specced, I outheal everyone, often by 2-5% depending on how hard I pot.
My super happy fun 30/21 spec... I'm 5th in healing. and our guild's #3 tank.
Its honestly the gear more then anything else. 30/21 loses so little on a personal healing level, I tend to advocate it to those that are adventurous.
But with it, I am just a beast of a tank. I have held Broodlord from 100% to 55% , and from 90% to 35%. I've had my fun on Nef, as you've read. I can solo tank Vem (its all about taunt timing, you can time it to interrupt a lot of his random charges). I basically solo tank Skeram, with the other tanks merely serving to hit taunt when he ports. AQ is feral tank heaven.
Not to harp on the points already made (many by non druids even o.0) but really, in many, many guilds, a talented feral druid is invaluable. Some nights we have 4 warriors, some nights we have 8. Some nights we have 2 priests! Some nights we have 8. I tank the fights its advantageous to tank, and I heal on the rest. As it should be.
Maybe my guild is weird (Top 5 healers -> Druid, druid, paladin, paladin, druid), also having a Druid as one of the most trusted tanks. But I have a feeling that a lot of guilds are like mine, that dont necessarily have a massive pool of godly 100% attendance raiders, and with mutiple tanks that are so good as to make it so that the guild hardly notices who's tanking.
The incessant min-maxing scares players and GM's away from having druids take on and learn this other potential role. I think that is the most alarming part. As a druid you sometimes can't help but feel forced into the proscribed role, and you almost feel guilty when you take that 21nd talent point into something not Restoration.
This is what makes me happy about AQ's loot. While a lot of people complain about the incessant feral loot, they probably fail to realize just how bad non-resto druids have had it (1.8 made feral viable..which isnt that long ago, relatively speaking) where your best pieces of gear were blues from 5 man instances. It's hard to argue about switching your role in a guild when you don't have any gear to back it up. Now that gear exists that makes this role viable, things are really going to open up.
Nowadays, someone like me can say with a straight face, let me tank this, I think I can do a good job on it, and people will agree with me and let me try it. I still think my guild's insane, but THEY want me to tank Nefarion, It wasnt my idea. I guess something about the idea is just fun. Which is what we're all about here, I hope.