Which raises the question.
Why didnt they roll a warrior if the wanted to do nothing but tank ?

I don't quite understand why you ask that, seeing that you rolled your Paladin just for tanking, too?

Mhm,
I played alot of games prior to WoW, and the general palaidn template was a class that tanked as least as effectively as a warrior, but which had no option to deal damage. Instead of a DD option paladins came with a small number of buffs or a very inefficient heal. When I read the description of hte WoW paladin it seemed to match up so on day 1 I rolled my paladin and played it as a tank, very sucessfully, until I hit MC. At that point It bacame clear that I wasnt rally a tank class, although I was able to tank and help out ocassionally. I adapted and aceptd my role because I didnt have the time or inclination to reroll a warrior.

Essentially I rolled a paladin to be a tank, somewhat in ignorance, and somewhat decieved by the fact paladins could tank at the time pretty damn well with the exception of bossess that needed a taunt. The same simply isnt true of druids, druids were NEVER sold as tanks, they were sold as primary healers with some shape-shifting ability, druids have no background in previous games as tanks either, there is no presidence of a game where druids are the second best tanking class to my knowledge.

Basically, druids who rolled on day 1 of release had no reason to presume they would be as good at tanking as they are, certainly not to the extent they would play their class almost as if it only had bearform, which some posters (Mootan) appear to do. So why would they roll a druid to tank and nothing else ?

At the risk of Thread Necromancy, I hesitantly put forth the theory that a little known game called Warcraft III
might be semi responsable for this.

http://www.battle.net/war3/nightelf/...ftheclaw.shtml

As an attempted PVE shadow priest, I'll throw my 2 cents in:

There is definitely use for shadowpriests in raids; however, it's unreasonable to expect that as a shadowpriest you be DPS in every fight. If you want to do that, roll a pure DPS class. Shadowpriests have their advantages and disadvantages; yes, mana is an issue that is only partially alleviated with consumables, etc.. But, especially as horde, there are many encounters where you are more useful in another role, be it healing, dispelling, etc.. The question is really what can you do that best benefits your raid, and the answer is often not DPS. The advantage of bringing a shadowpriest to a raid is flexibility - your raid leader can decide how best to use the shadowpriest on a particular encounter. A shadowpriest DPSing during the Huhuran 30% enrage would probably be useful (depending on how healer-heavy the raid is), a shadowpriest DPSing on Chromaggus is probably a bad idea. There are fights where you can do both: for example, DPS during phase 1 of Nef and then drop shadowform to heal during phase 2. So in my opinion, the reason to bring a shadowpriest to the raid is not pure DPS or pure healing, but rather having the option of being able to use him as either one depending on what the encounter calls for.

While I believe anyone who rolled their druid to perform a single role is a bit silly, it's a fair assumption to think that Blizzard had the intention of making them viable tanks due to their class description. The same goes for Paladins really, but Paladins got hosed in that regard.

You're gonna put a paladin on the list for classes who get hosed for raiding but not shaman? /boggle

I'm sure that you could make a list with nine entries, but I was mostly working with the classes I know best.

Min/maxing for the win.

Druids are obviously not actually meant to spend talent points as it always makes some nosey bastard from another realm and guild angry that you've specced "incorrectly".

I have had more bad experiences with people who simply sucked at the role tailored to them, than people not excelling in the one they were determined to do.
At least our feral druids and shadow priests never let us down to do pvp like I have seen a couple of rogues and off-warriors do. And though the bear might not be as good as the def-warrior at tanking the boss, he saves us one off-warrior bitching about having to tank adds.
So I hope there is still room for them in Naxx. I couldn't stand loosing some really nice people just because someone decided min/maxing to be the only way to progress.

Then again, if 2 druids know what they are doing a duel can last hours. 2 shaman in my guild dueled for 3 hours straight non-stop.

Its funny when you find a moonfire spammer though. Such a good spell!

Most moonfire spammers do it wrong. If you must spam moonfire, start with rank 9, then drop to rank 8, that way the tick from rank 9 doesn't keep getting reset


On a lighter note: Old but good druid funny - http://www.thefaithfulguild.org/drui...os/photo3.html

Never, ever do that again.

Are there any shadow priests here who have done Thaddius? I would be interested to hear how well shadow priests perform on that fight.

I don't. Dealing with Feragho/Conquix cured me of any desire to ever spam moofnire ( apart from my rank 1 totem killer macro)

I concede your point. Still, I can't help but feel that if you're going to do something... lame... cheesy... whatever, atleast do it somewhat effectively.

Shadowpriest still heals on non-farm content. When healing isn't an issue, they can go dps.

Our best gear Restoration Druid also happened to have the best druid tanking gear (she has a much higher attandence). Bear tank for Giant Claw when no warriors are nearby.

We have 1 DPS druid who's in cat form almost always. He's good for backup healing and battle resurrection.

No moonkin.

Protection Paladin is mainly for the extra buff they provide. Unless a Paladin went for Reckoning build, mot Paladin don't have Blessing of Sanctuary, which is a nice buff for AoE intensive fight against many mobs.

We dont have any feral druid/mooking or useless stuff like that...

But we DO have a shadow priest,most of the time he outdps Locks and most classes,on boss kills on nax he is on top 5,he heals his grp for like 150hp/second. He has like ~+ 600 dmg,4/5 tier 2.5 set. He has access to all the +dmg loot he is intrested ,he even gets innervates during boss fights... He isnt a healer doing dmg,he is a Damage dealer and he is damn good at what he does...Ofcourse all other priests are heal bots,and thats what they wanna be really,and dont have access to +dmg items mages /locks actually need.

We have at least 1 or 2 feral druids and shadow priests, depending on what people are specced any one time. there are a number of encounters where off specs can be really useful.

Eg:
C'thun:
-shadow priest, silence on big/small eyes, shadow vuln during weaken phase to help warlock dps.
-feral druid, can heal in stage 1 then switch into tanking or dps gear in stage 2 since you can get out of combat.

Ouro:
-shadow priest, for debuff and dps on Ouro, since it's mainly a ranged dps fight. Vampiric embrace for a mage group also helps if you have casters taking sandblasts.
-feral druid tank, can feral charge straight back in after a sweep

Noth:
-shadow priest: for dps, much more of a dps fight than a healing fight, and you can drop dots on all the adds which makes for very nice dps, plus you can shackle when needed.
-feral druid: probably the one fight where a feral druid might be considered better than a warrior for tanking. Feral charge is great for picking up Noth after a blink.

Maexxna:
-shadow priest: in the MT group for vampiric embrace on the MT during web spray.

Faerlina:
-feral druid: tank an add at the start, then once it's been mind controlled you can cure poison, plus throw someone a combat res and an innervate if needed. Probably better than a warrior, who once his add has been MC'd dps's in tanking gear.

So it's not like it's never optimal to have a shadow priest or a feral druid. I can't think of any fight where you a moonkin would be optimal though. Spell crit for a group of ignite fire mages maybe..... or not.

Just as a reply to everyone who says Paladins don't tank anything after their review:
http://core.matris.org/?q=node/16

If you can't be bothered to click the link without knowing what it is, it's a video of "Ed" a (legendary =P) paladin of <Core> on Stormscale EU main-tanking Patchwerk, from initial pull to kill.

And if my profile isn't looking good, please tell me. My first post here, long time reader though.

Don't really dps in p1 (dot / wand ), unload in p2, finish top 10ish dps, #1 effective healing (After overheal is removed). I'm always in the MT group. I eliminate the need for any group healing to be done to that particular group and achieve ~900hps to the MT alone, which is effectively a lower end 2.5s rank5 gheal.