I recently posted my druid tanking movies here on the EJ boards. These showed druid 5 man tanking from TBC beta in non-heroic instances. Small content, indeed. I assumed that once we startet hitting 70, warriors would once again be the main choice for tanking in most cases.
However, recent trends seem to suggest otherwise. It startet with a druid from my server Ravecrest (EU), Hanabi, showing superior tanking stats and damage mitigation to their guild Maintank against High King Maulgar.
Well most people would assume that this is a one time example. However, recent screenshots have led me to believe otherwise. My friend Rulah, from Nihilium (don't think the guild needs an introduction) is even specced Feral and tanking at the moment for Nihilium, not as maintank as far as i understand though.
So, any other high end guilds who startet TBC raiding have something similar to report? What about paladins, since they also have a dedicated talent tree now (and i Dare call them the highest threat generating tank in the game post-druid threat nerf, Seal of Vengeance for alliance paladins is serious threat generation, rank 1 Consecration, Holy Shield and you are going strong). Anyone else have something to show us of Feral Druids and Prot Paladins in TBC raids?
Well most people would assume that this is a one time example. However, recent screenshots have led me to believe otherwise.
Because a druid naturally has BoK, Flask of the Titans, Lay on Hands? To name but a few, okay, that's a high stat druid, but give all that to a warrior in similar gear, and it won't be that entirely different.
[18:33] <FalkFalkFalk> did you know that if you zone into Hyjal with both Warglaives of Azzinoth
[18:33] <FalkFalkFalk> Furion Stormrage appears and says "Where did you get that? Did HE send you?"
[18:33] <FalkFalkFalk> optional Mt Hyjal boss
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[17:59] <JamesVZ> i jerk off to my TPS during evocate
Well most people would assume that this is a one time example. However, recent screenshots have led me to believe otherwise.
Because a druid naturally has BoK, Flask of the Titans, Lay on Hands? To name but a few, okay, that's a high stat druid, but give all that to a warrior in similar gear, and it won't be that entirely different.
Wrong, i took account for that. A prot warrior with thoughness has around 13.5k-14.5k armor from items. Add say 2k from Pots and Auras etc. and you are at 16k (can get higher if you wanan blow more pots than the druid did). Add LoH, which only applies to armor from items, aka. 14k * 1.3 + 2 = 20.2k. This gives 66.53% mitigation after Defensive Stance. A druid with 31.6k armor has 72.54% damage mitigation against a level 73 mob. This effectively means that even after LoH, the druid takes 17.96% less damage than the warrior per hit (aka. a 4k hit on the warrior is a 3.28k hit on the druid.
This is very far from "entirely different". Also, yes BoK is natural part of raid buffs. If they had a shaman, throwing the druid a Grace of Air totem would also benefit him more than the warrior because of the new agilyit-to-dodge conversion for druids, meaning it would grant the druid around 6.6% dodge and only grant a warrior 2-3% dodge.
This has nothing to do with the thread btw. I asked if there had been any more reports of this, i didn't start a discussion where druids pwns warriors or the other way around. I asked for specific examples where druids or paladins are earning a tank spot, why they are doing it (lack of warriors, better tanking stats or whatever) and personal experiences.
While we aren't using a feral Maintank, we do have a feral druid who is maxed out pre-raid tank gear wise, and whom I tank Karazhan with, as well as constantly 5manning, so I have a little insight.
So far we find prot warrior + druid to be a excellent combo in terms of flexibility. Their threat generation is exceptional, and they have the unique advantage of being able to put out pretty good threat gen while not being fed rage from being hit, which actually makes them the ideal offtank in many situations. Very easy to lock down dual-Skeletal Ushers with that combo, unless you get an unlucky string of dodges/parries.
Crushing blows eat them alive though on some boss encounters, and negate much of the AC advantage. We experimented on Romulo with each tank, and its noticeable how much less damage a prot tank takes, with most crushing blows being blocked and never being crit. Talented demo shout is also stronger than the druid version, and is the greatest boss debuff in the game.
In any encounter where you have to take down initial or periodic adds, and then switch back to single target (half of all encounters in the game?) Feral druids simply excell because of their ability to perform varied roles without dropping combat. Tank/DPS and still battle res and innervate if they get time.
Horde, so unfortunately little experience in paladin tanking, although that will change in the next couple weeks.
Talented demo shout is also stronger than the druid version, and is the greatest boss debuff in the game.
Which is not relevant because Curse of Weakness is better than talented Demo Shout.
Demo shout gives -300 AP, talented gives -420 AP and lasts 30 seconds (also gives some threat). Locks CoW gives -350 AP and lasts 2 minutes (can talent it to be -420 AP though, but I don't think a Lock would ever spec that).
I could be wrong, but I recall using CoW on a mob and the Warrior's Demo shout overwrote my CoW, he could have been speced into imp Demo though.
I have seen Druid and Pally tanks do fine in 5 man content, no experience past that.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
I had an extremely long post, but most of it is strewn over these boards far too many times already, so I will summarize. From my own perspective (Druid to 60, Warrior to 60 with full Dreadnaught, BElf Paladin now to 70 that has tanked Gruuls Lair / Karazhan) -
Warrior - Still the best single target threat / survivability in the game, with excellent itemization and decent support skills.
Druid - Amazing (now) survivability, sub-par (compared to the other 3) snap agro generation, but probably the best out of tanking form utility with the ability to Innervate/DPS/Combat Res. NO Tier 4/5 Tanking Itemization, which says a lot about the future of druid MTs sadly.
Paladin - Singular best snap agro and AOE agro in the game (Avenging Wrath / Spell Damage Trinkets / No Rage Reliance) but subpar long term threat due to the nature of Spiritual Attunement and raid wide mana. Currently horrible itemized in T4, but T5 shows improvement. With proper consumables will make the best OTs, again because of mana vs. rage. Out of tanking scenario can Cleansebot and SoW regenerate, but not quite as useful as a druid (no prot paladin will ever DPS over a warlock pet).
Well most people would assume that this is a one time example. However, recent screenshots have led me to believe otherwise.
Because a druid naturally has BoK, Flask of the Titans, Lay on Hands? To name but a few, okay, that's a high stat druid, but give all that to a warrior in similar gear, and it won't be that entirely different.
Wrong, i took account for that. A prot warrior with thoughness has around 13.5k-14.5k armor from items. Add say 2k from Pots and Auras etc. and you are at 16k (can get higher if you wanan blow more pots than the druid did). Add LoH, which only applies to armor from items, aka. 14k * 1.3 + 2 = 20.2k. This gives 66.53% mitigation after Defensive Stance. A druid with 31.6k armor has 72.54% damage mitigation against a level 73 mob. This effectively means that even after LoH, the druid takes 17.96% less damage than the warrior per hit (aka. a 4k hit on the warrior is a 3.28k hit on the druid.
This is very far from "entirely different". Also, yes BoK is natural part of raid buffs. If they had a shaman, throwing the druid a Grace of Air totem would also benefit him more than the warrior because of the new agilyit-to-dodge conversion for druids, meaning it would grant the druid around 6.6% dodge and only grant a warrior 2-3% dodge.
This has nothing to do with the thread btw. I asked if there had been any more reports of this, i didn't start a discussion where druids pwns warriors or the other way around. I asked for specific examples where druids or paladins are earning a tank spot, why they are doing it (lack of warriors, better tanking stats or whatever) and personal experiences.
Ok you convinced us(me?) that druids gain better tank stats. However, spreading extreme screenshots of the same one druid with almost every buff possible again and again on every popular board is not a good way to point out things.
Let's not turn this into a flamewar, ok? There has been enough crap talked from both "sides" about the viability of tanks other than warriors, but nothing ever comes of it.
I'll echo what Shik said in the general sense, although my individual experiences have been different. Right now we run each of our Karazhan groups (we just started running K-Town last week, with two groups this week) with a prot warrior and mangle/tanking druid as the tanks. I as a raid leader find the synergy to be little short of impressive. I'm currently sitting at uncrittable defense, with around 23k armor, nearly 14k hp, and 24% dodge unbuffed. The choice of who is supposed to tank what is usually clear -- I end up tanking things that do large amounts of physical damage (including Romulo) and the warrior handles anything that has to do with magic. On large pulls I can tank many of the smaller elites at once while the prot warrior handles the most dangerous one, or the one with unique (and spell-reflectable!) abilities. The utility a druid can provide even while tanking -- I have shifted out as Moroes vanishes to Innervate or combat rez someone several times -- is impressive. Etc.
I feel like right now the game has achieved what Beef said in an old pre-TBC thread -- he hoped that there would be multiple viable classes for the tanking role. Right now I think we are mostly there. Each class has its own unique niches, while still being capable of, although not ideal for, tanking any boss. What I worry about is the near complete lack of itemization for a tanking druid (Tier 4 sucks and the PvP sets are decent in only some slots) in the near future. Now clearly we don't know a lot about the itemization from the Tier 5 instances, but if Karazhan and Gruul's Lair are any indication, the days of a viable druid tank are numbered.
'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.
So far, our druids have become our first choice for an offtank in Karazhan, whereas a paladin is more like a last ditch effort to get an add or extra mob in a pull tanked. It seems like druids are better suited for the role, in that their tree gives them more of a boost than the paladin one does, it seems, and they can dps with the same tree when tanking isn't needed, whereas a paladin cannot. From my uninformed perspective, it seems like paladins need too many stats to be effective at holding aggro, so they can't pour all their gear's attention on mitigation.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell
Ah, it isn't better than talented. I was wrong there. Still you can't assume imp demo, especially in a prot build.
I find that remark quite surprising, seeing as I am 5/10/46 specced. I figured having an awesome debuff myself was important. Having to rely on other people to keep thunderclap up is already enough for me.
Ah, it isn't better than talented. I was wrong there. Still you can't assume imp demo, especially in a prot build.
I find that remark quite surprising, seeing as I am 5/10/46 specced. I figured having an awesome debuff myself was important. Having to rely on other people to keep thunderclap up is already enough for me.
<insert TC not available in Def Stance whine>
Err, I'd prefer the awesome debuff of Imp clap versus the 70 ap of talented demo over base CoW.
<insert fuck blizzard for never growing a pair and fixing thunderfury>
From my experiance (King down in Gruuls, working on netherspite in kara) a feral tank is perfectly viable. However if I have to choose between one and a prot warrior I'll take the warrior, simply due to his 'panic buttons'. Last stand, LGG, SW, Spell Reflect are all there to save us from a 'healing knockbacked, keep yourself alive' wipe, whereas with a druid (with their slightly better stats on paper) thats a death, with a warrior you can sometimes pull things off you wouldnt expect (hi2u 3 man standing aran kill).
Personally I feel both are viable and I'll definatly take a prot warr/feral druid combo over two warrs or two druids as it stands.
Warriors are preferable main tanks if you have them available for very obvious reasons. I looked at your ss, let's compare our warrior that tanked HKM vs yours.
375 vs 481 Defense
35% vs 18% Dodge
0% vs 16% Parry
0% vs 28% Block%
I'm guessing you have around 24k ac buffed (pre-inspiration) vs 16k ac
17k vs 16k HP
Shield Block
Ability to potion while tanking (burst healing, 2-2.5k ac / 2 minutes)
And like said above: "oh shit" moments, LS, LGG, Nightmare Seed, Shield Wall, Reflect, LGG, Bulwark of Kings
Druids just take the beating, yet take the noncrit beating a little better. Warriors have so many more non-crit checks, and ways to avoid crit, that it makes healing a bit easier (less burst damage, more sustained). There's no question about druids' and paladins' ability to tank, but honestly warriors are still the best MTs, especially for anything 3+ levels above.
Personally I've been MTing in Karazhan sofar, with warrior/other feral druid OTing, which one did the OTing depends on the situation. Im running around 27k armor and 17.5k hp buffed at the moment, without paladin buffs. Note that we're a small guild, not an actual raiding guild, so we dont have any protection warriors, if we did have prot warriors that put as much time in their tanking gear as me, I'd obviously consider letting the warrior MT depending which of us is better on each encounter. Besides that, I feel that sofar druid tanks are viable, future itemisation scares me though.
Druid - Amazing (now) survivability, sub-par (compared to the other 3) snap agro generation, but probably the best out of tanking form utility with the ability to Innervate/DPS/Combat Res. NO Tier 4/5 Tanking Itemization, which says a lot about the future of druid MTs sadly.
I disagree, i believe druids will do fine with itemisation. Druids have always been the masters of pulling tanking stats out of crap gear, and this is even more true now with the new agility formula where they can pull prot warrior avoidance and DPS warrior crit out of nowhere simply by stacking agility and speccing feral. Druids are experts of pulling tanking stats out of nowhere. Its just like pre-TBC where druids had to use Guise of the Devourer, Malfurions etc. and were tanking just fine, but the difference is that this time we actually have the Game Mechanics on our side (new hard-to-reach armor cap, more dodge from agility, new feral talents that helps damage mitigation like Survival of the Fittest).
The problem weren't always itemisation, it was more the lacking support of game mechanics to back up the itemisation we actually have. Now we have the support of game mechanics again, and in that regards, i don't care about sets, ill pick up some random epic/blue gear with agi/sta, a good tanking weapon, socket it, enchant it, and be a full fledged melee tank with loads of avoidance, HP, crit reduction and armor.
Druid - Amazing (now) survivability, sub-par (compared to the other 3) snap agro generation, but probably the best out of tanking form utility with the ability to Innervate/DPS/Combat Res. NO Tier 4/5 Tanking Itemization, which says a lot about the future of druid MTs sadly.
I disagree, i believe druids will do fine with itemisation. Druids have always been the masters of pulling tanking stats out of crap gear, and this is even more true now with the new agility formula where they can pull prot warrior avoidance and DPS warrior crit out of nowhere simply by stacking agility and speccing feral. Druids are experts of pulling tanking stats out of nowhere. Its just like pre-TBC where druids had to use Guise of the Devourer, Malfurions etc. and were tanking just fine, but the difference is that this time we actually have the Game Mechanics on our side (new hard-to-reach armor cap, more dodge from agility, new feral talents that helps damage mitigation like Survival of the Fittest).
The problem weren't always itemisation, it was more the lacking support of game mechanics to back up the itemisation we actually have. Now we have the support of game mechanics again, and in that regards, i don't care about sets, ill pick up some random epic/blue gear with agi/sta, a good tanking weapon, socket it, enchant it, and be a full fledged melee tank with loads of avoidance, HP, crit reduction and armor.
For now, I agree that druids are fine.
As we start getting to Tier 5 and Tier 6 and druids are still using Tier 2 and Tier 3 quality items in certain slots because of lack of available tanking upgrades, the armor gap will start to close while the defense and avoidance gap will widen. They are great now, but unless Blizzard changes how it itemizes, they just don't have a MT future imo.
Course I also thought that seed of corruption was a joke spell and that mangle was bugged to ignore armor on beta, so there's always a possibility I will be way off base.
Warriors are preferable main tanks if you have them available for very obvious reasons. I looked at your ss, let's compare our warrior that tanked HKM vs yours.
375 vs 481 Defense
35% vs 18% Dodge
0% vs 16% Parry
0% vs 28% Block%
I'm guessing you have around 24k ac buffed (pre-inspiration) vs 16k ac
17k vs 16k HP
Shield Block
Ability to potion while tanking (burst healing, 2-2.5k ac / 2 minutes)
And like said above: "oh shit" moments, LS, LGG, Nightmare Seed, Shield Wall, Reflect, LGG, Bulwark of Kings
Druids just take the beating, yet take the noncrit beating a little better. Warriors have so many more non-crit checks, and ways to avoid crit, that it makes healing a bit easier (less burst damage, more sustained). There's no question about druids' and paladins' ability to tank, but honestly warriors are still the best MTs, especially for anything 3+ levels above.
First of all, your perception of "burst damage" and easy healing is wrong. Even when taking some crits now and then, the biggest source of burst damage generally is boss specials+boss melee attacks in a row. Armor mitigates that burst damage alot better, giving the druid an advantage. Crits aren't that heavy a source of burst damage, we are talking 8k out of 17k HP against a well geared druid, crushing blows for 6k, its cake really. Druids handle that kind of damage spikes very easily.
Also -3% chance to get critted for a druid from a druid.
Leaving defense out of the equation for everything except miss and chance to get critted (you already listed block stats), this is the table for a 73 mob.
Druids have a 5.6 - 0.04 * (defense - 350) - 3 = 1.6% chance to get critted
Warrior has a 5.6 - 0.04 * (defense - 350) = 0.36% chance to get critted
Difference: 1.24%, warriors favor
Druid avoidance: Dodge + Miss = 35% + 5% + ([+defense] - 350 - 15) * 0.04 * 2 = 40.8%
Warrior avoidance: Dodge + Miss + Parry = 18% + 16% + ([+defense] - 350 - 15) * 0.04 * 3 = 47.92%
Diffence: 7.12% in the warriors favor. Note that the druid could have closed that gap by more than 3% if a GoA totem was present.
Armor: Druid has 23.2k unbuffed (not 24k, did some reverse engineering on LoH), 24.5k with buffs, warrior should, with the same buff, be below 15k, i refuse to believe that a warrior with same buffs (druid has 1.3-1.5k armor from buffs) have 16k armor in that gear unless you can show me a profile with that much armor, so 15k armor on a warrior.
Druid mitigation: 67.2% mitigation
Warrior mitigation: 60.08% after Defensive Stance
Difference: Driud takes 17.84% less damage than the warrior per hit
Now this is all before block, and clearly the warrior comes out as the best tank when looking at overall damage taken, but i strongly disagree with your view on burst damage handling, my winner in this case is the druid. Also, note that i, from looking at your warrior stats, i believe he is better geared than the druid compared to their raid standing (this was initial raiding for Borked from my understanding). With a few more stats, GoA totem druid should get a bit more mitigation and HP, i especially feel that his dodge can get a boost from gear alone.
We had issues with our MT being 1 shotted by the High King and moved over to a druid tank as that guy reached 22k HP (all normal buffs, no world buffs or something). It required quite a bit more healing but still it felt much more secure and we killed him after we changed the tank. Although our warriors are all slacking and still using lots of T3 and similar stuff while there are better items avaible imho.
Druids however are at least one of the best classes atm, especially feral druids. Their talents are just insane, they have better stuff in one melee tree then other classes in 2-3 trees and they can even take all of it easily. Also their talents all do multiple stuff (-cast time on Healing Touch, +10% melee dmg in one talent, which crackhead thought of that?), which makes them very versatile. Even if they want to spec the best possible cat form dps build, they are still a good tank. With druids being so good atm, the playtime of our druids seemed to increase quite a bit compared to other classes and mostly everyone farmed most of the gear avaible from instances/pvp/badges etc. At least for us that might be a difference as the druids are just better geared when compared.
When doing 5 men instances I prefer to group with a druid tank as well, much less aggro issues in bigger mob pulls and when several trash mobs hit them in heroic, the stupidly high armor means less funny stuff happens.
Anyway, i will ask we don't derail this threat with any more Druid vs. Warrior vs. Paladin talk and get to the topic: Perception and experiences with using druid tanks at specific boss encounters, and the reason behind. The post above me is a perfect example, most interesting, 22k HP without world buff sounds insane.
Now on a less bitter note. I somehow dont get what you want this thread to be. First you tell that you dont want this to be a druid vs warrior MT thread (I dont want these either), and that you only want to know how other guild let druids tank cutting edge content.
Then you go on to "prove" how druids are obviously better tanks and how they profit more from some buff (GoA totem) and how they are simpler to heal.
Seriously what do you expect.
The warriors rolling over?
As far as (my limited) BC experience goes, the DPS warrior at the moment is a dead fish in the water. Has no place in heroics whatsoever and very limited (if at all) use in raids.
Now you come here to post how a druid can handle content very fine ... supposedly better than a (deep prot specced) warrior.
Its just, that I (for one) even cant argue your facts.
It is that way.
You obvoiusly earned your spot.
But please dont act offended when warriors feel threatened by these kind of threads and feel to justify their existance, because right now many of the warriors I know are on the verge of rerolling.
I still can tank fine, I work hard in multimob pulls (against the odds) and I am determined to play my warrior, whatever comes (I do not twink). But seeing how some mechanics work out, I'm worried that we lose our last definite role. Even if it is not so ... playing a warrior NOW gets you this impression and this explains some of the warrior responses.
You can point that feral druids always felt this way (as obviously some rogue do feel now) and this is only fair.
But the point stands that a warrior onyl has two roles (DPSin and tanking) and one is in misery at the moment and the other is highly threatened.
I think this is somehow different to the situation druids were in, as they always could respec to a viable healer.
What should I respec into? TC and DEMO shout bitch?
Yes this is a whine and I apologize strongly for that.
Seriously what do you expect.
The warriors rolling over?
Im asking for other peoples experiences. Im not looking for theorycraft (we got a bit into this above, so i suggested we stopped, im a prime expert of Theorycrafting myself, so i don't need any more of that atm.), but i want to hear the actual experiences people had. Why did borked, or any other guild for that matter, use a druid tank on fight X, in this case Maulgar. Did the HP and armor really matter that much more? Was their warriors undergeared compared to the druid? Was it because they tried with a warrior and had him die? While i talked with some Borked members about this, Borked is one guild out of many, and im asking here to see if any other people have similar or slightly different experiences, have tried something similar.
FYI i have a 60 warrior myself (not leveling him to 70 though) so its not like im trying to put warriors down, i realise that class has some problems here and there, many more than druids have in their current state. Im not expecting warriors to roll over, i just want people to share their experiences, nothing else. Im not interested in promoting druids as superior tanks, i just want the pure statistics out, nothing else.
I understand you are one of many frustrated warriors, but please take it somewhere else.
... but i want to hear the actual experiences people had. Why did borked, or any other guild for that matter, use a druid tank on fight X, in this case Maulgar. Did the HP and armor really matter that much more? Was their warriors undergeared compared to the druid?
For your information.
We had a prot warrior tank him. Something like 16,5K HP flasked, not LoH Buffed.
He did have to use his cooldowns.
Spiked a lot.
But he was healable and his death was the cause for one wipe only.
We had a feral tank the shaman though (or whatever that ogre is .. the one with the polymorph).
Our ferals are (IMHO) not geared for this encounter yet ... but once they are it would very much surprise me if they werent the better tanks here. I dont know how much he crushes for.
02/06/07, 10:52 PM
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