Liar, I'm not disagreeing with your assessment, that's particularly why I left off "grading" from my comparison. Druids can powershift to break snares, warriors can charge. The pluses and minuses flesh out from there extensively, and I would say that powershifting is overall better, it does have its own downsides(like possibility of being in caster form from GCD clipping).

Anyway, my point was to show ferals are lacking in least one very important category, maybe two. Without shield wall, I don't see them being main tanks for raids. I still consider some sort of active spell mitigation important too(doesn't have to be an interrupt). I know paladins don't have it either, but I think they've been asking for one as well.

Overall, not ability specific, they don't seem to stack up to the other classes.

This is a significant "if". There are definitely places where it's possible to throw these abilities around, but this has largely been a product of our role as Secondary tanks, something they've wanted to get away from. The analogy would be giving warriors an ability they can use if they take off all their armor and give up all their mitigation for 3 seconds. Not a whole lot of MTing situations where that happens.

Mongoose with static ranged item stats compared to static agility enchant with proc based item stats was pretty much a wash, even if they had the numbers wrong. Using pots was like stance dancing, there's a cost to do it. They talked about giving us Barkskin in forms early in TBC, but it didn't make it off the PTR.

I cut the front portion of your response, because I think it leads to the same place. I'm not saying that Druids don't have any toys, that we don't have interesting abilities. I think a distinction needs to be drawn between Main tanking and Secondary tanking. Druids were and are, throughout TBC, the best secondary tanks. We were point on trash, providing high threat for the initial dps and the ability to swap to dps afterwards. Our cooldowns and abilities are largely geared toward this type of tanking, but not towards Main tanking. All of the tools you mention are tools we can use on trash, or in small groups like Heroics. This is why Ghostcrawler's recent posts are confusing to me:

and

On the one hand he's saying we were designed to only be secondary tanks, on the other he's saying that despite that design, despite having no abilities specifically geared toward MTing, we managed to become the premier tanks except in situations where some gimmick prevented it. While I think his second point is actually specious, the change to design seems to be largely an alteration in mechanics to keep our tanking stats where they are without adding any abilities. I haven't really seen any design changes that place an emphasis on us as MTs, or substantially alter our ability to be MTs. By way of comparison, Paladins get a range of abilities to produce better threat, abilities that allow them to take advantage of a huge range of itemization, while retaining their gimmick abilities. The Warrior changes, as you point out, seem largely in the direction of making small groups more interesting, along the lines of the tool set a Druid or Paladin has for those situations, e.g. mobility, range, and AoE threat.

I like tanking heroics on my Warrior where I could Conc blow a melee mob, Intercept a caster, and then cast...ummm. So the parallel breaks down at the same point you highlighted above - we are burdened with caster abilities. Where it becomes more of a problem is the homogenization of gear has the side effect of further separating the caster and melee sides of our hybridity (is that a word?). Stealth is a big one, I loved doing stealth Setthek Halls for Assassination shoulders at the beginning of TBC (no, itemization problems are not new). I always got eaten by fishes in SP, though.

I love my Druid, and I don't intend to stop playing it. I was Resto for the Mindslayers, and the burden for the Mind Flays should have been squarely on the healers. Like the Houndmasters: no one should waste a GCD 'cause it should be dispelled. I am worried about the contradictory ideas the devs seem to have about our roles in TBC. I am concerned about our itemization in the face of homogenized gear, especially given our dual-role as Ferals situated within the larger triumvirate of Balance/Feral Resto.

I think the most fun I've had so far this expansion was tanking side by side with my warrior buddy who I'd healed through vanilla. Sunwell especially, where we're able to literally tank side by side on Brutallus and Twins, each having our own advantages and disadvantages, but there being no question for our guild which two tanks would be the ones to do it. I am heartened that Blizzard wants all tanks to be equally viable, because that's really what made TBC shine for me. I am concerned that their efforts to do this are directed at making other tanks like Druids were in TBC.

Sure, they did and they pretty much lied. Then again, if you are just going to be really cynic about it, nothing they or I can say would change your mind, would it?

I don't know about that. Just think about SWP. I have only seen the bosses up to M'uru but you can Innervate and Rebirth on every single fight where you tank.
Kalec: 3 tank fight
Brut: 2 tank fight
Felmyst: Has a flight phase where you are free to do whatever
Twins: 2 tank fight
M'uru: You can res someone inbetween waves

Even if you think about BT, there really are more fights where you can use that than not:
Naj: Not possible
Supremus: In P2
Akama: During waves
Bloodboil: 2 tank fight
RoS: Only possible as OT
Teron: Not possible
Mother: Only possible as OT
Council: Possible if you don't tank the Paladin
Illidan: Possible inbetween phases

And for the Mind Flay example: Yes, ideally the healers fix that. Just like how a Warrior ideally never has to use Shield Wall or Last Stand except for timed enrages. But we both know that is far from the actual raiding experience.

I try not to be cynical, but I also think it's something that's going to be very easy for them to slip up on. They'll think 'Oh, hey, we should spotlight class ability X' - but without giving several classes that ability, they'll accidentally lock raids into having that class.

So, shield wall is an example of those abilities. Three of four tanking classes have it - unless they have it in a poster on the wall, some designer is going to go 'Hey, wouldn't it be cool if the boss enraged in the last 5% and the tank had to pop shield wall, or divine protection, or icebound fortitude and the raid had to kill the boss in time?'

We're getting barkskin added to feral form, so that's clearly an upcoming change aimed at homogenization of tanks. What we don't know is what else, if anything, is going to be coming down the pipeline. That makes us nervous.

I am a little surprised with the 'Million Monkeys' approach to class problem solving that Blizz seems to be taking here and there in WotLk - I mean, there have been a number of forum suggestions (both official and here at EJ) that have appeared in game, and I'm not saying that they've been bad ideas.. but it doesn't exactly inspire any kind of faith in their development process or their overall game vision..

From the WotLK Druid beta forum thread: Pvp not tanking for once G-crawler


Post #7 Followed by Ghostcrawler Post #9 Provided those numbers approximate what actually gets implemented, it seems possible that in decent dps gear, you'd be running against the 6s cooldown. In the current int-less feral gear with 6500 mana would generate about 108 mp/5; 9K mana would up that to 150mp/5.

Still rather pitiable, but better than nothing. I think this could be significantly upped without becoming dangerously overpowered, given that without something like a lvl 80 version of the [Staff of Natural Fury] *and* all the cost reduction talents a feral can drop that 7k mana pool just by shifting alone in 4-5 shifts, in a minute or less. Shame I can't see how I can fit it in for anything but a pure 'cat' build or a PvP spec.

Back to the development process for feral PvE Tanking I can't help but boggle at the homogenization of talents - I enjoyed the unique and optimized gear that we had in TBC, and the 'best OT' niche we had in raiding. I didn't particularly envy the prot pally AoE tanking role, (unless our prot pally was away) or begrudge those with shields and encounters that required them, and was happy to do my best to dps and hybrid it up while the warriors MT'd.

If the goal is simplification with the changes for tanking in WotLK, I suppose they're achieving it, and at the same time the itemization changes seem to be aimed at making gear 'simpler' ..

My worry is that with all the class synergies slowly being made less complicated, the class requirements slackened, niche roles removed.. how long until we all find this game equally boring, regardless of class or role, as we get less options (gear, niche roles, etc) for which to optimize our own performance?

I think the answer is yes, although the way it worked out in TBC (as OT/DPS) we could actually use our 'caster hybrid' side. It's hard to measure the value of a perfectly timed tranquility on your dps group, or a seamless rebirth/2xT5 regrowth/innervate on your best (briefly dead) healer. I always wanted to see those cooldowns burnt because we are hybrids.

I don't really want to be a gimped tank, but I don't want to be a 24/7 MT either.. I don't want to be a 'cat durid' who never casts a heal or offtanks.. but it does seem WotLK will mean (as a feral druid) picking your favorite 3-5 buttons and mashing them, pretty much all the time.

I'm not sure that in WotLK the homogenization/specialization will really play out in a way like TBC where our caster hybrid nature wasn't a stigma. The lack of itemization to support it suggests an intent to depart from feral hybrid play, which in my mind is a rather sad departure.

Edit: Damn you Thessally, you keep adding good stuff to which I feel compelled to respond!

Anyone looked into professions for ferals?

Since they are buffing things like skinning, it would be interesting to get some thoughts on this.

I have been LW/JC since TBC release and it really looks tempting to keep it like that from what I have seen so far.

I'm keeping Alchemy for the 40% bonus to elixirs, and picking up Inscription for the 7th Glyph.

Edit:

My math was wrong, the correct formula is: DR = 1 - (1 - armor/(armor+16635)) * (1 - 0.12), so you need 41920 armor to reach 75% mitigation with Mother Bear.


Old post:
To reach 75% reduction with Mother Bear (12%) you need 37027 armor (it's multipicative):

DR = 1.12*armor/(armor+ 16635) (vs. lvl 83)

For istance in full t7.10 you have 34387 (with devotion aura) armor.

If 12% reduction, 75% total would need 30140 armor... 15% would need 28704. We will still be able to still get over 30k using an armor weapon, BoT, and badge/Karazhan rings. However, reaching that armor point does not necessarily need to be a focus anymore with crushing blows gone.

Multiplying reductions does not work like that. You need to reduce damage taken, not increase damage mitigated.

DR = 1 - (1 - armor/(armor+16635)) * (1 - 0.12)

I believe he was asking at level 70. At 80, 75% mitigation would require 41921 armor.

Indeed. I'll post the formula since incorrect ones were posted

0.25 = 0.88 * (1 - X / (X+400+85*(73-59))

Without any points in any of the bonafide 'MT Bear' talents you'll still be a fine and capable trash/offtank. Really the heavy duty bear talents are for those who *want* to be maintanking those final, main raid bosses. If you consider yourself a 'gimp' tank because its more strain on your healers when you try tanking raid bosses without those bear talents, well I;m not sure how to respond to that....