1.0 Introdution

2.0 Threat

2.1 Threat in 5-mans
2.2 Threat in Karazhan
2.2.1 Trash
2.2.2 Bosses
2.3 Lacerate

3.0 Survivalbility and Mitigation
3.1 Druid Stats
3.3 Druid and Warrior

4. Advantages of the Druid Tank

5. Conclusion



1.0 Introduction

Many players laugh at Druid Tanks. They cannot hold aggro against heals, die instantly to crits, do not wear plate or a shield, can be feared by any boss, cost a lot of mana so the healers run out of mana in 15 seconds and so on. These are the statemants of players who never see a druid tanking and i want to enlighten them. In the next few lines i will explain what is true and what is false, why druids can tank and why cant.

My druid tanking career began when i forged a new 25-man pre TBC guild where offspeccs are highly allowed. We had Shadow Priest, Elemental Shamans and of course a Druid Tank. I have main tanked everything form the first Guild-UBRS and Venoxis wipes to our first Ragnaros 28 man kill before Sons spawn. I gathered a lot of information, experience and even more of those in TBC. I want to share these information with you.

A few weeks back, the druids got a major buff, but also received a sudden major threat nerf. Many, many druids were asking if the druid can still hold aggro, and if not if it is the end of druid tanking. So my first chapter is about the threat in 5-mans from 61-70, the threat in raids and the new spell Lacerate.

2.0 Threat

2.1 Threat in 5-mans

Hellfire Ramparts. The first instance. It was cruel, very curel. The Threat nerf had a major impact on trash mob tanking. I had to buff up with Potions and take on a few pieces of DPS equipment. The new instances have many pulls with 4-8 mobs. If a caster or healer draws aggro they dead within a few hits. This is not very enjoyable, but i know for warriors it was even more dificult and it was ok - I simply had to learn how to tank 6+ mobs better.

This first expression lasted to lvl 65. Better equipment with higher attackpower and good tanking stats and the first tank weapon upgrade made thinks a lot easier. The new feral attack power tank weapons it what makes druid threat powerful again (more about this later).

At lvl 67 i specced the tank specc and was leveling through instances. The attackpower form new gear the new tank weapon made tanking in lvl 70 quite ok. We cleared The Mechanar and the The Botanica when i was 68 and tanking of course. I never had problems with the aggro - I learnt to tank large packs of mobs better.
The key is to use Growl just differently than before. I becomes a tool to hold aggro and not to grab aggro off somebody.

I do it like this:
1. assign focus fire targets (icons) with short keys
2. Pull with Wrath and 1-2 Moonfires, Dire Bear Form, FFF and pop Enrage
3. Maul the focus fire target, swipe once, mangle the left mob - at this point the mob right of you and maybe another mob will run to the healer
4. Taunt the right one
5. Swipe the other mob building threat on 3 additional targets
6. Maul the focus fire target
7. Mangle the taunted target to gain aggro - if you dont the mob will run to the healer, and while Feral Charging you may lose aggro of other mobs
8. Demo Roar to minize dps against you
9. fix single low target threat with Swipe + autoattack, Mangle or Maul
10. assign new focus fire target, on which you think is the most threat


3. to 7. is about 6-7 seconds of time. At 9. Mages can even bomb the mobs carefully and you wont lose aggro on more than 1 target and that is fixed with Taunt or Mangle-Maul.

With this steps I never had problems against large mob packs, even The Shattered Halls without crowd control is very doable.



2.2 Threat in Karazhan

Progress: We cleared up to The Curator two days ago, and downed every boss after reset yesterday on our first attemp. I have tanked both, Romeo and Julia (no other tank was available) and gathered a lot of information about the fully buffed status of a druid tank.

2.2.1 Trash

The hard hitting trash in Karazhan nets you a huge amount of rage so you never have any problems with rage, the mobs are 90 % Lacerate immun, though (more on Lacerate later).

Earthwarden. That is the keyword for Threat. With Earthwarden you will have around 2000 Battle Shouted attack power in full tank gear. A FFF Enrage Mangle-Maul pull makes it impossible to lose aggro on your focus fire target, Warlocks and Hunter can go all out. A Warlock critting for 4,5k+ will not draw aggro.

At this point you see that the threat nerf is highly justified. The threat generation seems even better than back at lvl 60s before threat nerf. Even multiple mob tanking works quite well, so I often tank 2-3 mobs because the Priests hated to be oneshotted after the new casted shackle faded after 2 seconds.


2.2.2 Threat against Bosses

This is an nonissue. The threat generation is incredible. You have plenty of rage which can be dumped besides queuing up Mangle and Maul by spamming Lacerate and/or Swipe. However, I wished to have Intervene because at some events bosses spawn and run immediatly to the healers. Feral Charge often takes to long, Intervene is very handy in this situation.


2.3 Lacerate

I hoped that Lacerate is the new tank spell to hold aggro even better. When i reached level 66 i was very unhappy with Lacerate. It cost too much rage and does generate too litte threat. The problem is that many players and me inculed thougth that Lacerate is like Sunder Armor, but it is not !

Lacerate is a spell to generate additional threat over a long time with little rage requirements.

The Druids threat is enough even without Lacerate you dont need it, but you have to see it as additional threat. Stack it up to 5 and refresh it every here and than for only 13 rage talented. This seems to be very simple but it is not. In a 5-man instance bosses stun, fear, charge, coil and more, and if you miss a Lacerate followed by a crowd control spell of the boss, Lacerate will fade. At this point Lacerate is bad, if it fades it is worse than simple Mangle and Maul the boss. So i dont use it against the most 5-man bosses, but it is just a wonderful addition in Karazhan where you have plenty of rage against bosses.

You might say - wait Karazhan ? Immuinity ? Yes, you cannot use it on every boss, but it is an addtion not a requirement to hold aggro.

All in all i am quite satisfied with the new Lacerate.



3.0 Survivalbility and Mitigation

3.1 Druid Stats

The Druid has a large pool of health and armor, but i becomes more and more important to stack up agility for avoidance through dodge to be more mana efficient. Some might remember a thread were Warrior, Druids and Paladins are compared. The numbers in this thread seems to be not accurate for health. My stats at Romulus and Julianne are:

with Flask of the Titans and without Commanding Shout and Blessing of Kings:
19260 Health
26040 Armor
30.66 % Dodge
408 Defense

The health pool is simply amazing, however i need more dodge to reduce the incomming dps. I am near to crit immun like a Warrior is. The overall mitigation and survivalbility is much higher than a Warrior, but i need more healers' mana than a warrior does.


3.2 Druid and Warrior

A very common discussion. That is better Warrior or Druid ? The answer is simply Warrior, but why are Warriors better and why are Druids bad ? On this Topic there is very few information because every discussion is like this:

Druid: "Druids are teh best tanks EVER! 25k AC and 20 hp, nuff said !"
Warrior: "ROFL NOOB ! Learn to heal, feral idiot. You cant even Block or Parry and you want to tank WTF?!"

However, i analysed the hole situation. I tanked with both, a Druid and Warrior. I check the math. The answer to the problem is simple: Shield Block.

With Shield Block up all the times, the Warrior is not tanking any Crushing Blows, due to this the warrior is less spikey than a Druid and needs less mana. The damage blocked is near to be equal to the damage difference of the Druids armor. In numbers the Warrior receives about 10-15 % less damage than a druid tank pre TBC. However this number might decrease a bit because of the new Dodge Formula. Nevertheless, even if the druid is only tanking 5 % more damage, it is 5 % less mana for every healer !

In addtion a Warrior can drink pots all the time. While I can drink a pot before the fight and fit them in a few breaks like Moroes' Vanish, Romolus' and Juliannes spawn, a Warrior can chain drink Stoneshield Pots to maximize mitigation or drink Healing Potions while at a critical amount of health. In addition the warrior can eat something on the Demonic Rune cooldown, like Healthstones, Whipper Root Tuber, Nightmare Seed (a huge plus for enrage for example).

The more skilled a Warrior is the better the cooldowns are. Last Stand - Shield Wall - these cooldowns may turn a lost fight into a close kill. These cooldowns is what I am missing the most when i am tanking with my Druid. They are just too good. Hopefully Moroes drops his Pocketwatch the next time, which will be a good addition to druidtanking.


4 Advantages of the Druid tank

Druids can combat rezz and Innervate a healer - but can a druid tank do this while tanking ? You can do it more often than you think. I innervated and combat rezzed in every single encounter up to The Curator excluded in the Maiden of Free Loot encounter. Most of the time you fit these spells in litte breaks mentioned above, but you can also Innervate a Priest even while tanking, with a bit coordination. 12k hp in Cow form + Shield + waiting for the moment right after the boss' autoattack to Innervate can win the fight like a Last Stand or Shield Wall can do.
Druid tanking is very simple. While you have to have some experience in multiple mob tanking, bosses can be tanked by everyone who can press 5 bottons and know where to tank the boss.

A huge bonus is a Blue-equipped Druid Tank is superior to a Blue-equipped Warrior Tank. In WoW Classic a Blue Tank Druid is like a Tier 1 geared Warrior. The advantage is obvious. You can make fast success with a better tank and equip your Warrior with epic tank gear to deal with harder encounters.

5. Conclusion

The Druid tank has no major disadvantages when compared to a Warrior tank. Both can tank very well, and i guess Paladins can tank good, too. Blizzard made a good job by splitting the Tankmonopoly into 3 parts. Every tank has its advantages over other, the optimal tank setup in a 25-man raid is this:

Protection Warrior
Feraltank Druid
Protection Paladin
xx/xx/15 Warrior

I thought 490 was crit immune ? Your far from that, no ?

As I understand it, that was nerfed.

Oh, and 400 defense was the old crit immune. In my pally tank gear (holy spec'd), at around 454 defense I still eat the occasional crit.

Feral druids have a talent to reduce their opponents crit chance by 3%, so they only need 415 defence to be crit immune to a 73 with 5% crit IIRC.

Ehh some useful information in there...I guess.

At any rate, this seems like a perfect thread for "Class Mechanics and Theorycrafting".

Dont quite agree with you on the Lacerate, and if I recall correctly, a Blizz employee stated (pre-release) that the threat generated by Lacerate would be applied as per normal even on bleed-immune (aka undead) mobs.

As im only spec'd 0/30/31 and do not have access to mangle, i cannot do the 'uber threat' sequences so easily, but I am able to tank most instances, and find lacerate to work on almost everything I tank, will try test it some more later however.


Do you have a link to your profile btw? im only sporting 28% dodge, 16k HP, and 20k armour and cant find that much more to upgrade myself (sans armour/HP)

I always wonder a bit about this. I know I hold agro well in 5 mans and any pull you can get down to 3 mobs at a time or less is down right trival with a druid tank but skill is a big factor in tanking as well. I know I have done a few instances with the warriors and results vary widely. About half the tanks have what I like to call raid tank syndrome. For the last year their jobs has been to keep that one mob on themselves at all costs and they do that great. Problem is they don't make the trasition to 5 mans where they need to not only keep the one mob being dpsed on them but they need to keep all the others off the healers. The result is one mob that you can't pull off the tank at all and 3 or 4 mobs that are eating up your healer with only a sunder on one or two of them. The other half of the warriors hold agro just fine in 5 mans.

I know from my personally progression though instances that there is a world of difference in tanking when you get to a place like shattered halls and the maul the dps target and swpie the other 2 to keep them off the healers and CC the rest is no longer a viable tanking strategy.

Don't post like this, it's not funny.

Also this thread really isn't very informative and is essentially just another "who is the best tank" thread in disguise as a tanking report. Teh.