• Playered

Yeah sadly only the chest has MP5 if im not mistaken, I spose its Blizzards idea to help itemize Tree Druids with plenty of spirit.... because Tree Form has awsome spirit regen from the 2seconds outside of the 5second rule it occasionally gets.

 

• Tristanian

Another good question would be how was Quagmiran. I've done pens with a shadowpriest but he was healing on the last boss (we wiped @ 1% when he was in shadowform so might be possible as well but needlessly stressing). Somehow I don't see how hots alone can compensate for spikes, unless the ToL has gear worth of 1400-1500 healing (not very hard but not the easiest to acquire as well) and using regrowths a lot, which at some point will get him oom (ofc there is always the alchemist stone + super mana combo). If you are not sitting in tree form all the time, it's an entirely different matter though.

As for aggro generation, it really doesn't matter a lot, if you pull aggro and the tank doesn't react fast enough/gets taunt resisted/untauntable mob, you will die from a melee mob (especially on more unforgiving melee mobs). Whether you will get 2 or 3 shoted makes little difference but imo there is enough healing leather out there for a decent resto or hybrid kit. I haven't seen a good reason to use cloth yet other than spirit (which doesn't affect me much since I rely on dreamstate for regen within the 5 rule for the most part).

 

◊ Lord BEEF

For defenders we had both the shadow priest and the druid bombing max rank heals on me and that was one of the times when he had to drop tree form. Those packs are an obvious example where throughput is superior to longevity.

I can't remember if he had to drop tree for quagmirran. It wasn't too bad though regardless and the hots were definitely useful.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

• Cryect

Shrug, done Slave Pens with just a single resto druid spamming her largest healing touch on me. Was lets say a little risky though so for the rest the 2 defender pulls had the DPS kite the second one while I offtanked the first one (was a mage, hunter, and warlock).

Basically there is always a way around things like those mobs that a single healer not even healing spec can heal them.

Quagmirran she did have to drop tree to throw some abolish poisons up but there wasn't any really spike damage on the fight so if it wasn't for abolish poison she could have remained in tree form.

I would say the boss fight she had the biggest issue with would be the second boss where filling up a tanks HP by yourself is extremely hard.

 

◊ Fellwraith

Our 41 resto druid solo healed me as maintank on the curator for our first 2-3 kills. As long as you can hit a trinket, last stand, or a potion when you take a spike, they can keep you up for a long time. You just need to give them a second to catch up if they fall behind. Very gimmicky in 10 mans, but it may be nice for sustained healing in a 25 man if you have someone to provide spike damage support (paladins would be a good fit).

I'd second the weaknesses of balance. No threat reduction and high crit rates are a very bad combination. We have a healing touch/balance druid who occassionally goes moonkin form in 5 mans. He's probably the one person who can easily pull aggro off me (aside from gimmicky aoe damage encounters like heroic quagmirren with a shadow priest dps'ing).

 

Gwyd

Solo healing heroics with a Resto spec is not an issue, it's not easy but it's do able with the right gear and a good group. I've even been solo healed through a Slave Pens heroic by Resto Shaman.

The age old art of pre-casting counters most spike damage, as long as you have the dps, cc and tank working together even two off spec healers can heal up to most of the end bosses.

Dpsing on the other hand is less excepted by the masses, to dps in any instance as a druid you usually have to out gear the content to a degree. This isn't due to low dps by any means but to the communities attitude to the class in general.

I’ve proven over the last month to be consistently the second best tank in the guild and the second highest melee dps in the guild, yet I’ve only once been asked to dps in a heroic.

 

Shiftir

Patch is going live today, guess we'll find out first hand in karazhan tonight if druid tanks still work. I'd imagine it's going to work but be somewhat painful relearning the threat limits, and of course no lacerate.

 

• Apate

I would probably try and get a feral to tank a Heroic; not because I doubt their DPS, but because I think they'd do better than I would.

See you, auntie.
"You don't need a machine to make a rainbow. For rainbows are made of happy thoughts, and dreams, and chocolate unicorns, and gumdrops, and licorice sunsets, and fuzzy gumdrop bears, and sugar-coated chocolate gumdrop land."

Originally Posted by DeeNogger I am coming for you Apate.

 

Dakous

I thought lacerate was changed specifically to still apply threat even if the mob is bleed immune.

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

• Zyla

Nope. Still waiting on potions and procs as well..

you might be thinking of the mangle change to let it go on to bleed immune mobs for shredding

 

• Cluey

I think you are confusing the change they made to the Mangle debuff, they changed it so it would be up on mobs which were immune to bleed so its effect on Shred still worked.
I haven't seen anything about Lacerate still generating threat on mobs immune to bleed effects

 

• Playered

Im sure I read during beta that Lacerate got changed so it would apply the initial threat even though the mob is immune to bleed, mostly I remember because of the "why cant we get a dev like that druids got ffs" whines I saw afterwards

 

• Cluey

I recall the same whines but have them associated with the Mangle debuff change.

 

• Zyla

all the testing finds conclusively that there is no threat if something is immune to bleeds. Go go limited use class unique skill!

 

Savos

One short comment I'd like to say is that blizzard made the choice to make tanking difficult for Warriors and Druids (seemingly, remains to be seen) with the monster nerf to threat generation of bear form. Still remains to be seen how bad the threat nerf is but there had to be some point where any tank specced druid realized that with no practice they were instantly 5 times better at tanking anything than a vast majority of warriors (and better than day one tank warriors in certain situations flat out).

Just wondering if any of the 70 tank druids ever tried any of the high end 5 man stuff as a warrior and a druid, especially Shadow Labyrinth or Shattered Halls?

Oh well just some thoughts regarding the WvD thread wars, carry on with crying into your beer (thread :P )

 

• Zyla

I have.

I do concede it was easier as a druid. Mostly this was because of rage issues. Blocking and dodging let me with such little rage to maintain aggro, often times I would throw on some less protective gear to tank the trash. This has been buffed in the patch, both with the rage gen, and the effects of thunderclap.

However, on boss mobs I felt a tremendous advantage as a warrior. It was tremendously more useful to have all of the different tanking abilities available. Shield wall and Last Stand are priceless, and the consistency of no crit no crushing makes the warrior much easier to heal.

It was the classic trade off - druid much more useful on trash(turning rage starved into rage rich), warrior much safer on bosses(oh shit buttons, consistency). The only thing out of whack was multi tanking for warriors (which was somewhat fixed), and that bears were a little too competitive with actual dps in terms of damage.

 

Brute

With 650ish spelldmg/23% crit I rarely run into aggro issues in 5 mans though certainly its a real risk (with little reprecussion in 5mans but obviously much more in heroics/raids). Like always aggro control just requires you to be smart and your tank to be smart. Start slow with dots and paced dps until there are 3-5 sunders and then you can get into your chain dps cycle. In a raid environment you get Blessing of Salvation to help you over the hump of longer encounters. I've yet to run into real aggro issues despite aggro control being our primary weakness. Perhaps in the later 25 mans if/when there are threat limited encounters.

As to mana issues, yes we're a consumable reliant class, much like shadow priests used to be. But I've found http://www.thotbott.com/?i=53989 + greater dreamless sleep pots (preferably) or super mana potions and demonic runes (speaking of which where are the level70/outlands version of those?) and I can pretty much sustain myself indefinately. Blessing of Wisdom and vampiric touch is gravey on top of that.

At any rate my dps is certainly not out of place in the early raid environments, keeping pace pretty comfortably. That may well change moving more fully into and through the 25mans but certainly at the 5 man/heroic/karazhan itemization levels my dps is there. Add the ability to swap into my +1300 healing gear and you have the versatility/utility that good hybrids should be embraced for.

 

◊ Anias

<<<

I might have tried both.

Druids were fine - warriors who didn't understand threat mechanics needed a buff, which they got, to make it more obvious that thunderclap is ridiculous.

Having held the entire SLab pack and the entire SHalls pack against full out no-assist zerg dps as a warrior and a druid, I can say with some certainty that it's different types of difficulty, not different amounts.

Druid PVP damage in bear is the only reason I can think of to justify the beating druids took, and I'll freely admit to not knowing how hard bear was hitting in pvp compared to an arms warrior (the right comparison) and if it was ok.

That said, I found warriors to be excellent tanks, provided they didn't suck, and druids to be equivalent (slightly inferior due to better utility - meaning cooldowns and block primarily, although spell reflect/piercing howl is amazing in heroics). If this nerf is the prequel to giving druids full consumables/procs a passive threat buff to mangle, and taking some time to look at the retardedly bad lacerate/feral faerie fire/frenzied regen (and cat form in pvp), then I can at least understand the logic, even if I don't agree.

To be honest - I would rather they had left druids be, applied a single buff to warriors (tc in dstance for the lazy - because apparently it was incredibly hard to dance thunderclap) and taken a long hard look at pallies (who seem to be missing a flask's worth of hp).* Having played fury in raids - I don't think the rage gen changes are going to be good for warriors long term, but might as well enjoy them in the interim. Having pvp'd lightly - victory rush changes are ridiculous. (Kill Totem - VR - Kill Totem - VR - Kill Totem - VR is stupid.)

Instead they nerfed druids, buffed warriors, and it feels very uncoordinated, and worst of all completely untested.

All of this said as a tank that has tanked progression content on both a warrior (live) and a druid (beta) and was able to see the silly point of beta feral first hand and as a tank that has no real bias to speak of (as my current main is a level 38 hunter reroll - I'm taking some time to see content I find polished instead of more alpha/beta testing for blizz with no logic/communication)

*This is of course ignoring my largest complaint with blizzard which is - the solo game really cares a hell of a lot about how many mobs you kill per hour, yet blizzard doesn't seem to acknowledge that at all in their progression and design for tanks/healers. (That's another post though...)

 

Boevis

Overall I think this is a major symptom of leftover warrior perceptions of tanking from raiding that 1. They can't do damage as prot and 2. Mitigation is the king of tanking. Combined with how horribly easy the 5 mans are with even 1 CC class, the druid's advantage in rage generation everything got blown our of proportion because druids knew they could get away with wearing DPS gear.

I'm sure warriors would be amazed to see what they can do in 5 mans wearing of the beast style gear. ;p

But what's done is done. I can still tank 5 mans just fine, and Maulgar isn't until Sunday for me so I won't be able to give feedback on that particular gimmick fight. I do feel like a chump in PvP though.

 

• Cryect

Well I will be able to say hopefully today how magtheridon adds are. Really though mitigation values barely changed and its mainly the difference in damage/threat that will be changed which I won't be able to tell on that fight (well I assume I can still hold aggro fine there which seems likely true).

 

Bag

first post on these forums, although I have been reading them for a while...

as the only consistent raiding feral in my guild, I was at first not terribly bothered by these changes. sure, it sucks getting nerfed, but I'd often said that I'd seen a bear nerf coming. however, after reading and considering them further, I can't help but think that the changes are massively overboard. I won't write out any mathcraft on it, but consider a few points:

1.) Bearform Damage: Bear damage was high, even in a full tank set pushing 23-24k ac unbuffed (and without thick hide). now consider sunder armor in a melee-heavy 5-man or especially a raid. sunder increases raid damage way more than mangle, faerie fire, or lacerate. there's no denying that. Blizzard has also stated that they do not balance specifically for pvp, so this is to be taken as a pve nerf. in raids, druid bearform damage is inferior to other classes by a significant margin. next time I hear a mage or a lock or a rogue whine about being below a druid on dms, I am going to flat out tell them that they suck. you should NOT lose to a druid, and if you are, perhaps you should be reading your respective class's discussion thread instead of this one. also, as stated, damage is our only significant measure for generating threat, which brings me to my next point...
2.) Bearform Threat: This is the most overblown of all the complaints. druids generate a lot of threat, but they also lose it very quickly. I've been offtanking Gruul recently and managing my threat is somewhat of a nightmare. missing twice (with a 2.5 speed weapon and a 6-sec cooldown as my threat generators) means I drop below a rogue, but 2 big crits means I spike above the tank. it was very spikey, but had to be so in order to be able to maintain any level of threat. these changes now make it so we need to be hitting hard and fast the whole time to even hope to stay near a second aggro position, which means we are simply no longer reliable (couple that with armor nerf, although somewhat less significant, and you've nearly eliminated raid tanking viability).
3.) But Prot is supposed to be the best!: It is. Plain and simple, prot is superior for tanking in nearly every circumstance (read: when the tank is competant). the issues with rage generation and ae threat generation are clearly being rectified. the massive nerf to druids almost appears as a bizarre cookie for disgruntled warriors. warriors are recieveing due buffs this patch, but the nerf to druids is excessive on many levels.

now I'm not gonna be a moron and sign any QQ I'm quitting petitions, because I'm not. I was #1 on Kazzak, and I'm consistently top 5 dps on 25-mans, much to the slackass rogues' shegrin. however, this change to bear tanks is awful.

I kind of came here to QQ about resto issues (of which there are plenty, particularly the uselessness of treeform in 95% of raiding) but the beartank thing, even though it's been beaten to death, is what's really ticking me off, currently.

edit: as a final note, in regards to pvp, druids are not overpowered, plain and simple. MS wars critting me for 2500-4k is silly, but it's the way pvp is at the moment. all classes have massive burst potential, so I don't see it as an issue, although it's generally irrelevant to the issue of a pve nerf. IF a nerf is due, perhaps it is slight, and maybe it can be to the base damage of the ability, but to nerf the bonus damage through talents is just dumb.

 

Bag

a note on homogenous stats: am I the only one that likes them? I find that having a significant mana pool at the cost of some AP/sta has been invaluable in numerous situations (and obviously in pvp). couple shifting for furor with that raid-saving tranq and I see these stats are a huge bonus to the feral hybrid role.