I didn't intend to touch a nerve with my comment. I've tanked the fight a couple, few times. The last time I tanked it we didn't have a tree healing me and the spikes were, literally, killer.

Part of my point is the classic one that overall druids will take a bit more damage than a warrior but it should be somewhat smoother.

Partially I'm just reliving my last try at Morogrim. We had a group that took down VR but couldn't finish Morogrim. It has me scratching my head wondering what I can do better.

For reliquary, a warrior tank is preferred since in phase 2, spell reflect is almost required to reflect the deaden (unless you have very very strong dps that you can kill him without deaden before the soft enrage), and for phase 3, warriors mitigate the rage burn better due to defensive stance.

For Mother Shahraz, we actually do use a feral druid to tank since mother is not capable of dealing a crushing blow.

For Illidari council, i dont think either one has too much of a advantage, unless there are mechanicsim missing.

For Illidan right now, there seem to be a high hp-reducing ability that can be blocked, which favors Warrior tanks over Druid tanks for now, but whether it is intentional that that ability (excuse me for not saying the name, i cannot currently recall it) can be blocked is unknown.

Right now, i'd say Druid tanking is actually rather close to Warrior tanking in terms of relationship, versrus their relationship prebc. Now druids are capable to be immune to crit thanks to SoTF and gems. Warrior armor is also increasing at a rather nice speed, and with the introduction of sockets, 5% stamina talent boost, better scaling with shield slam threat, brought both class rather comparable at tanking, instead of being two entirely different style tanks

That is the great part, for whatever messed up reason, they decided that there is NOTHING the druid player can do to effectively improve his tanking during a fight. We can only gear our character out and pray that everyone else does their job well.

The only thing we are capable of doing is equipping an activated dodge trinket or two, but those are extremely limited effectiveness.

So I was asked by my guilds warrior class officer to make a post about the pro's and con's of a feral tank, over a warrior. This is what I have come up with, please rip it apart and let me



In AB we use feral druids a lot as a viable alternative to a warrior. There are several good reasons why we do this and several reasons why we are used as off tanks not as a main tank class.
Pros about feral druids in the correct gear, and right mind set:
1. Higher armor = less damage taken when struck by a melee class of a non-boss level
2. Usually higher stamina= more time to allow healers to recover while multiple people are being pounded and my need a more time to get of that much needed heal.
3. When not tanking feral druids can switch gear and become a DPS class and assist melee. We can pull down more DPS than a prot warrior, and thus great if we have to tank for a partial fight, because of the nature of the class we can start pumping out dps the second we are no longer tanking.
4. Feral druids have the ability to generate massive amount of threat while not being the main target of a mob. Because of omen of clarity and the 2 piece set bonus of teir 4, we can generate rage must more efficiently than a prot war, and if we do pull aggro (Main tank dies/ aggro dump) we do not have to equip a shield and can instantly start taking hits as a tank.
5. Leader of the pack. 5% crit to melee classes is a huge increase to DPS, and as a plus every 6 seconds when a melee crits they heal themselves for 4% of their total life 9000hp = a 360hp heal every 6 seconds.
6. “Snap” aggro. Mangle (41 point feral talent) For Bear Form, the attack causes 115% normal damage plus causes the target to take 30% additional damage from Shred and bleed effects for 12 sec. Mangle is an instant attack, because of its large damage amount we have the ability to almost instantly grab a mob to tank.
7. Multiple add tanking. Swipe hits 3 targets in an area in front of the druid. (3 random targets if more than 3, not CC friendly) this plus tabing between targets is a great way to grab a lot of mobs quickly.

Cons, and misconceptions about a druid tank.
1. Crushing blows, A crushing blow is an attack made by an NPC that is 150% of the Damage caused by a normal successful attack. The mob must have greater than 15 points of weapon skill above the person they are hitting. Palidins and warriors have abilities to avoid a crushing blow, The warrior ability Shield Block increases block rate by 75%, removing crushing blows from the miss/ dodge/ parry/ block/ crit/ crushing-blow table that occurs when an opponent attacks, and making the warrior more or less "immune" to both crushing blows and critical hits in a PVE environment. n the same way, the paladin talent Redoubt along with the Holy Shield ability increases the block rate by 60% (30% each), allowing for period of immunity against crushing blows, assuming dodge + parry + miss rate + base block skill is at least 42.4% (against mobs their own level), which it will be for anyone wearing normal tank gear. However, Redoubt only procs randomly and cannot be relied upon. (wowwiki source)

DRUIDS CANNOT STOP A CRUSHING BLOW OF ANY KIND!

Druids rely on armor as a key mitigation factor, a crushing hit is a devastating blow to a druid tank. This means “Boss” level mobs and lvl 73’s are almost a death sentence to a druid.

2. Melee avoidance in compared to a warrior, druids have a Large amount of dodge, the reasoning is that we cannot parry or block, yes when you were questing “beasts” could parry and block your hits. However, druids cannot. So the overall avoidance for a war will always sit higher than a druid when you add the chance to miss from defense, dodge, and parry. Not to mention the amount they can just block.

3. Druids have no way to mitigate spell hits. We don’t have defensive stance and we do not have talent points to lower the amount spells can hit us for. We take the full force of the blast, leaving the pressure on the healers, which is never that good of an idea since they are already busting their ass on the fight.

4. Taunt, the druids Taunt(growl) is a much longer cool down than our warrior counterpart. Meaning those loose mobs are only getting a mangle or a swipe instead of the taunt which is still on 5 sec of its 10 second cool down. prot wars can spec their taunt to 8 sec, which may not seem like much, but really means the world

5. Combat rez while tanking. A key feature to a druid in a raid is the all powerful combat rez. Personally I have bashed a target and then combat rez’d my healer in a heroic or two. But this is impossible to do while main tanking, and just as hard in most raids due to the fast that most mobs are immune to stun in a raid situation.




Overall we are great off-tanks with better mitigation from a non boss level melee with our high armor, and our higher hp (usually). We are great for a class that can tank the trash then help dps on a boss. We are great for fights where adds spawn with “snap” agro abilities. In my opinion and experience as a feral druid, we are great for off-tanks and do not have to be switched out for a DPS class when it comes to the boss, we can hold multiple adds well w/ almost no real effort (compared to tab sunder).

Druids are 1/3 tank, we do not have 3 talent trees devoted to different melee abilities, we were designed as a hybrid healer, but because of the huge dependency on gear and points since WoW 2.0 we have set builds and most of which are hard to break away from (some exceptions apply)




Blizzards opinion “The Druid gives players several play style options. A Druid in normal form is a caster that can fight with spells or weapons. In Bear form the Druid becomes a Warrior with Rage. While in Cat form the Druid becomes a Rogue with Energy and stealth. The Druid can also transform into two other special animal forms. With its ability to heal itself and fellow characters, the Druid can also take on the role of a Priest. A Druid is not as versatile in its abilities as a Priest is, lacking the spells Power Word: Shield and Resurrection, but is otherwise a very capable healer.” WoW.com -> Info -> Classes -> Druid

First off, I would fix the typos.

Second, Higher armor = less damage taken when struck by a melee class (period) It doesn't matter what level the thing hitting you is, you will have more mitigation per hit.

As for crushing blows, yes Druids cannot avoid them. However, there are fights in which Warriors cannot avoid them either. However, crushing blows are not devastating to a Druid and boss level mobs are not a "death sentence."

While the bit about taunt having a longer cooldown is true, I don't think this matters in raid instances.

I believe the last two paragraphs are mostly opinion and should be removed if you are going for a fact based post.

Change 'dodge' there to block so you don't confuse the slow people who already get hedgey reading anything with more than 2 sentences.

Wow, thanks I did not know I left so many stupid things in there. Edited and reposted. Also working on a better way to word some of the info. Again thanks.

To be fair, Druids don't have an advantage (or disadvantage) when it comes to Snap Aggro, Multi-Mob tanking, compared to warriors.

Isn't TC better for tanking multiple mobs? I would've thought swipe is decent for upto 3 but TC is better on more.

Thunder Clap is by far the superior skill at multitarget aggro holding; it affects more targets, does more damage (talented), has static threat values associated with it, has bonus attack speed slowing and costs less rage (talented + Focused Rage).

Shield Slam is no slouch at snap either, though I wouldn't say it's better or worse than Mangle.

Not sure where you are getting the numbers for Thunder Clap. Rank 7 Thunder Clap does 123 damage, and it has a static threat component of 130. 3/3 Improved Thunder Clap makes it do 100% more damage. Thunder Clap threat per target is then ((123 * 2) + 130) * 1.495 = 562 per target. What is the 1.75 in your TC calculation? 0o

Also consider that Swipe is mitigated by armor, whereas Thunder Clap is not. Thunder Clap is subject to resist, but then Swipe is subject to miss/dodge/parry/block.