Allev

Rawr implies SotF and dodge from talents. You can make different gear choices to improve the other stats-- it was more a proof of concept. You can buy more dodge with druid Dungeon 3 sets, more insect swarm, shadowy embrace, and so on... If you wanted to, you could craft a Stormherald as it has more AGI.

In the "if I were designing the game" department, I'd put some sort of diminishing returns on dodge, change the armor cap so that you're capped at 75% or your armor mitigation vs an even level mob, whichever is higher for lower level cheese protection, nerf the dodge rating druids get from AGI, and instead give a reasonable amount of armor (i.e., armor which scales as levels do) per point.

 

Boevis

I just hope I get to do it once before it gets nerfed. An unhitable tank really would trivialize every boss.

 

Scurn

I would personally solo every heroic instance as often as I could. Hell you could offer to run people through level 70 instances for cash.

On a serious note I hope blizzard does offer some alternate form of progression for bear tanking. Raising the armor cap would alleviate some issues but an additional stat would be better. Reducing our dodge chance and giving us block, without a shield block type ability, would actually help quite a bit as well as improve existing stats for us. Would make strength give some form of tanking benefit beyond threat and add tank item synergy with warriors/pallies. Parry would just be another form of dodge and isn't needed.

 

seminarca

Bear tanking progression is an interesting one.

I think SBlock crush immunity and Defensive Stance (and the associated imp talent, i.e. magic damage) is now mainly how we're lagging behind. Another major factor is encounter design and both are slightly related. Add in a dash of itemization disparity (specifically the lack of crafted resist gear for Frost and Nature) and you get the current situation.

I don't have any BT/Hyjal experience, but from what I understand of all the SSC/TK level encounters you can safely have a Druid "MT" everything aside from the Kael'thas fight (the encounter necessitates the user of the legendary shield I believe?).

Maulgar / Gruul - trivial for an appropriately geared Druid.

Magtheridon - as above.

Hydross - you can build a crit immune 295 resist set using crafted jewellery and AH greens. What hurts here is the 16% extra damage you take, and the fact that to meet crit immunity and the resist requirement, you take a hit in threat generation due to the amount of slots you have to swap. Whereas, a Warrior swaps in much fewer slots due to the excellent crafted resist gear. But it's still not impossible for us.

Lurker - melee mob, fairly trivial.

Leotheras - melee mob, perhaps somewhat Druid friendly (?) because of our snap aggro after WW, we can contribute dps in Cat Form on Demon phase, arguably kill our inner Demon easier (if the Warrior messes up Spell Reflect).

Karathress - 16% extra damage from the random magical effects, but otherwise nothing special. Tidalvess favors a Druid.

Morogrim - arguably one that favors a Druid early in progression levels (Earthquake eats SBlock charges I believe?) but the gap closes as Warriors start to get closer and closer to passive crush immunity.

Vashj - my guild has only spent half a night attempting her, but so far (phase 2, two pylons down) I can't see any major disadvantage to having a Druid. And if your Paladins mess up the BoF rotation, or if you don't have enough of them to maintain 100% uptime, we can break the root easily while she's running out of range to shoot and not risk taking casterform hits (even less so in 2.3 with the /cancelform instashifts).

Al'ar - melt armor technically affects us worse that it does Warriors, but we can favor a higher dodge set for this fight.

Void Reaver - Druids shine here anyway due to our superb OT threat. Mitigation wise it's trivial for both.

Solarian - we can sort of stay ahead of dps going all out (at the start, gets harder over time) using well timed taunt > rage dumps but that's neither here nor there (only for her sporadic melee hits, I understand Arcane Missiles are random). Both of us are similarly effective in helping corral adds for aoe. Warriors might have a slight advantage with being able to Shield Bash Priest heals?

Kael'thas - tough luck Druids =(

Anyway, point being, if you're running a Druid MT for whatever reason, you won't be significantly hampered until you get to Kael, and then maybe in BT/Hyjal when Warrior's passive mitigation (armor + SBlock use) pushes them further ahead. By how far? I'm not quite sure, I guess I'll know when I get there. BT/Hyjal also have a few encounters which make it impossible for Druids to tank them? Correct me if I'm wrong on these.

With the 2.3 Fear Ward changes, Archimonde is one that'll require either a 6 Priest rotation + PvP trinket failsafe, or a stance dancing Warrior.

And apparently Illidan has a Shear ability that needs well timed SBlock to survive?

Are there any other encounters in BT/Hyjal that make it impossible for a Druid to MT successfully?

~Anyway. Moving forward from this, what's the solution? We've been at or near the armor cap since mid-T4 level, our dodge can also reach fairly high values where we're at the stage we need to consider dropping avoidance to get a reasonable rage influx (arguably not as badly as Warriors, since we generate significantly more from dmg + Primal Fury). Packing on the Stamina just seems unnecessary.

Secondly, how do we close the gap that SBlock and Defensive Stance create?

To begin with, we need itemization parity. If we can have crafted FR gear, why not NR and FrR leather? They had both at level 60 for AQ40 and Naxx, though of course those were aimed at Rogues. If any encounters require tanks to wear resist gear, options need to exist at the plate and leather level, without fail.

SBlock. Great mechanic to add some skill to tanking, and very effective mitigation. We do need some kind of protection again crushings, or at least chain crushings. If not on gear, maybe via talents or something. I'd love to see something like "After being victim to a crushing blow, the Druid enters a state of heightened reflexes, making the next x strikes against him unable to crush."

Defensive Stance in light of magic damage. This one we can probably leave alone.

I remember reading something at the Blizzcon where they said they weren't quite happy with the randomness of crushing blows, and plan to alter the mechanic drastically (probably in WotlK?). So I'd be very interested to see what they have in mind.

Re: the Arena gloves bonus. I can buy that explanation, I guess my lack of Arena experience shows =p

 

Larisroth

Actually I'm a bit confused here. Some warriors were discussing 100% avoidance in one of the other threads on here, I think they decided it was only situationally useful. They at least theorycrafted a set, but that I think relied on parry which isn't always applicable.

If using parry, then itemising defense and dodge rating in equal combinations will only get you to 100% avoidance a little bit slower than druids and agility (mainly due to kings). Of course we have an advantage because socketing doesn't suffer from the 1.5 power thing that base stats do, but warriors often have more sockets to play with than we do.

I can see them dropping agi back so that it gives the same dodge as dodge rating. Then you could look at actually buffing the amount of agility on our gear if we end up with lower avoidance than warriors (quite likely).

Our mitigation situation is in a very bad way. We're capped at a very reachable 75% where as warriors and paladins have both overall damage reduction (talent for pally and defensive stance for warrior) and block that allows them to get much more effective mitigation. One option would be to change thick hide, so that instead of increasing your armour it instead provided some other form of damage reduction.

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

 

◊ Regen

Seminarca:

Only one you missed was:
Reliquary of Souls phase 2 has a spell reflect component

Everything else besides the ones you already listed are very possible.

>>> In regards to a 100% dodge set. Is there no cap for dodge? (85%? That number seems to be stuck in my head from 60 concerning rogues ~ maybe not)

 

Boevis

Warriors were counting Block as Avoidance in that thread, so far I have yet to hear of a warrior capable of 100% Dodge+Parry+Miss. It might be possible considering they start with 10 parry from talents, but I doubt Defense can be stacked that much.

The 85% for rogues is their new crit cap I believe (20% glance, 5% dodge I believe) But there is definitely no Dodge cap, I managed to get to 90% before and a 2h warrior was unable to hit me in a duel.

 

Yaha

Isn't this pre-2.2 patch? I didn't test it with timestamps but it seemed like the energy counter now resets every time you shift back into cat. I.e., I can no longer shred-powershift right after an energy tick and still get the next tick's worth of energy as soon as the first 2-sec tick interval is over. In which case the most that Furor can add to your net gain is 20 energy, since you would have gained 20 energy in that same time interval anyway had you not powershifted.

I hope I'm wrong.

 

Umph

We'll need to be careful when Bear potioning, as sometimes it goes wrong:

However, this happened once out of 20 tries, with 8 mobs hitting me, with one or two mobs the chances are very slim, and with one mob they are practically non-existent (provided you time it right).

 

Vaccine

Basically the energy counter is now a fixed ticking counter rather than a new one created when you shift into cat form.

Furor will now give you a % of the energy based on how long is left in the current tick timer. So if you switch to cat with 1 second left on the timer, you get 20 energy at the first tick instead of 40. It made power shifting less effective but overall its still worth it if you can time it well.


Yer I wouldn't be too much of a fan of doing this when tanking Morogrim or Tidalvess. Most fights though you can minimise the risk by doing it after the boss just hit you and shouldn't have any trouble.

 

SS_Keera

Coming back to the weapon discussion for a bit.
As most of us I'm pretty disappointed by and its stat assignment. I can't see really whether it is an upgrade from [Terestian's Stranglestaff] I'm currently wearing or not. Assuming you are hit capped i suppose the ignore armor plus the added AP are worth more than the agility on the Stranglestaff.
Being a casual raider compared to most of the posters on this board and no big PvPer I consider [Vengeful Gladiator's Staff] out of my range but i will see once S3 hit the table.
The [Merciless Gladiator's Maul] would be the "last" alternative but i would think that i will be better using my "rare" arena points for some random S3 armor which doesn't require a personal rating. As these pieces are really great for my point of progression (2/4 TK..) for both tanking and dps.
So what are you guys using for dps or what would you use at that point of progression?

I'm not happy with it but i think i have to live with the fact that you have to be "good" at PvP to fill your PvE role as good as possible as a druid

 

Yaelle

I think this is a very nice list and I totally agree.
How about making this complete for all bosses?

Therefore I would like to add some bosses known to me.

Hyjal:

- Rage Winterchill can be tanked by a Druid.
- Anetheron can be tanked by a Druid.
- Kaz'rogal favors a Druid, because he has a warstomp and during that stun the only mitigation will happen through armor.
- Azgalor can be done by Druid, but I think he slightly favors a Warrior.
- Archimonde has already been discussed.

Black Temple:

- Naj'entus - no big deal to any tank.
- Supremus - no big deal to any tank.
- Shade of Akama - here you just tank adds, defenders slightly favour a druid.

I don't know about much about the other bosses there yet, we had a test fight with Teron Gorefiend and it seemed that a Druid could do him.

 

Murwen

I've tanked Teron, Gurtogg, RoS (Bears are amazing for phase 3), Shahraz and Veras Darkshadow on Council. Illidan is pretty much impossible and/or stupid to have a bear tank on because we cant avoid shears in a reliable manner.

 

dukes

To continue the list:

- Teron: Hit's very hard, possibly favours a warrior because of shield block, although I'm sure a druid can tank him.
- Gurtogg: Needs 2 tanks, almost favours druid tanks because of threat generation.
- RoS: P1 is shared anyway, P2 a warrior tank is pretty much required while learning (spell reflect or else you won't have the DPS to kill it in general), P3 can be done by anyone really, but there's a fair amount of magic damage = favours warrior slightly.
- Shahraz: Advantages either way (less magic damage or more armour). Can't crush.
- Council: Multi-tank fight. Favours warrior on priest/paladin because of reflect/(easier) interrupt.
- Illidan: Shear requires shield block. P2: Easier to get crit immunity in fire res as a druid, and generally higher health pool.

 

Murwen

Are you sure that a warrior would be slightly better for phase 3? Phase 3 being the dps race it is it would seem that a high aggro tank would be preferable, and with most of our threat being directly derived from our dps our threat would scale at the same rate as the dpsers.

 

seminarca

Thanks for the rundown on stuff I haven't seen or read up on yet =D

Would it be worth adding a concise, paraphrased list like this to the bear post?

 

dukes

I'll work on it.

Murwen: I'm not sure really. P3 is generally no problem for us agro wise with a warrior tank, and never has been. I suppose it depends on your tank - we have someone who knows what they're doing with agro as they're always pushed to the limit to do as much as possible. Also, having a prot warrior DPSing in p3 is generally worse than having a feral DPSing. For mitigation's sake, I'm pretty sure a warrior is better in general (partly because they can just shield wall the end of it if need be).

 

Murwen

I suppose our warrior tanks are a bit undergeared since we've had below average number of tank drops. Though does your guild have any glaives yet? I'm curious to know how well a warrior could keep up with a rogue or a fury warrior (lol) with the main hand and going all out for dps.

 

Venomia

Damage wise p3 souls is definetely better for warriors but aggro wise, I'm not sure. Dont know if our tanks (and druid tanks) suck but in general on reliquary the dps is always just behind the MT and could easily get over. From this point of view (and especially in p3 where every second matters) it sounds better to have a druid tank to squeeze out maximum potential dps rather than 1.5k less dmg on MT every few seconds.

As for Teron, hes definetely doable as well and actually its even not that bad with the crushings (he got quite slow attack speed and massive hit potential, so armor works awesome there). Aggro wise it was about 300-500 tps difference, which can count aswell.

 

dukes

We've got one Glaive. The rogues never have agro issues as long as they use their vanish at the right time. The only people who pull are Warriors generally (although our Ret pala has a couple of times, and I've forgotten to get a new salv once or twice which has led to me dying as soon as someone else rips generally).

It depends on whether you need the damage or not. If you have a lot of people doing sub-par DPS then you need your "main" DPS'ers to pull out as much as possible (i.e. you need amazing threat generation). We're also lucky in that even our worst DPS'ers do good DPS.

I've also updated the main post with a bear boss tanking list, along with a summary in the summary bit.

 

Yaelle

Great work.

I'd like to point out that during stun a Warrior looses 3 abilities (Block, Parry, Evade) and is left with pure armor mitigation (+ less damage from Defensive Stance). Same thing for Druids, but they only loose Evade. In addition to that, we can easily have 20% stun resist (15% from Talent and 5% from Metagem). I think it comes down to, how much the Warrior or Druid can mitigate while stunned to evaluate who should tank that Boss (I believe T6-Warriors are able to Mitigate more than 75% of damage even while stunned)

Archimonde does not crush.

Morogrim Tidewalker favors a Druid especially if you have the choice between a T4-Warrior and a T4-Druid, later on the Warrior becomes more and more viable.

 

Valerian

If we're talking about efficiency the most you should be able to get is 20 energy back. When powershifting you're clearly going to want to shift at lowest energy possible which means you will have just attacked. Even with the insta-shifting on the PTR there's still the 1 sec GCD to deal with before you can shift back in. That means at least 1 second will be wasted when powershifting meaning a net gain of 20 Energy. With the one button shifting it should be quite easy to actually do this though, so its not that big a deal. 3 shifts per minute at this rate is already the same energy generation as the 2T4 bonus which is quite important dps wise and still a good boost to dps.

My fixed spirit regen is something like 114 MP5 while not casting so that returns 1368 mana per minute. Combined with raid buffs and pots/dark runes (if needed), not to mention your initial mana pool, it should be possible to shift much more than 3 times per minute, especially for short fights. With the instant changes its going to pretty much be a button you press to gain you 20 energy. Thats pretty good in my opinion.

 

◊ masanbol

I was under the impression that /cancelform was like cancelaura in that it did not trigger a GCD.

 

david0925

Threat really isn't an issue at this point for the warrior in the game. Also, 10-16% reduction from the Aura of Anger and Soul Scream comes a long way considering how much potential damage they can do (especially with a Max Rage Bar Soul Scream) and the amount of damage the raid is receiving

 

dukes

There's two options here:

0.0 Energy tick, 42 energy.
0.0 Shred -> 0 Energy. 1 second GCD.
1.0 Powershift (instant) -> 40 Energy + restart energy tick.
3.0 60 Energy

Or:

0.0 Energy tick, 42 energy.
0.0 Shred -> 0 Energy. 1 second GCD on abilities.
0.0 Powershift (instant) -> 40 Energy + restart energy tick.
2.0 60 Energy

In the first the maximum gain is 30 energy. In the second the maximum gain is 40 energy.
I believe it's the second one. As long as Form changes work like Stance changes for warriors (pretty sure they do), where the stance cooldown is independant of the GCD.