You're comparing apples to oranges with those links. First you claim all the links are for main tanks, but that is not the case. Of the 5 tanks listed, only Arkenphal and Ashra are taking Hateful strikes (notice the larger average damage per hit, 18k for the druid, and 21k for the warrior), the remainder are MT as their damage intake is lower. Main tank will in general take 8-10k average hit and the OT will take 16-26k damage. The reality of this fight is that the OT takes the most damage because of how hard Hateful strikes hits. The OT is where you want to place your strongest tank.

After my guild did this fight I dug around and compared how I held up with some of the other guilds on the server through high armor, I by far took the least amount of damage. 16k average damage compared to 22k average damage by the other tanks, 1 druid and 1 warrior.

This kinda made me feel good. From the reports, SF and DotD's Patchwerk kills, the average hit from Hateful strikes on their OTs was about 5-6k per hit higher compared to us.

DotD (Praka/Warrior): 22,248
Wow Web Stats

SF (Crunchies/Druid): 21,322
Wow Web Stats

UP (Blazefire/Druid): 16,204
Wow Web Stats


SF and DotD took on Average 4.3 million damage on their tanks, while between Taigi and I we only took 2.9 million.

While my dodge was a little lower than the other two OTs you listed, I took less damage than their tanks when you consider our fight was well over a minute longer AND we only had 1 OT to soak hateful strikes. it just goes to show that druids aren't substandard tanks.

~1.55million damage on OTs for Arkenphal/Gorek for a 3:06 minute fight
~1.45million damage on OTs for Ashra/Saba for a 2:51 minute fight
~1.68million damage on OT for Blazefire for a 4:16 minute fight

Basically, if the fight is still heavy physical damage, AC is king, which druids have the most of.

The best way to see how the change will effect you would be to download Rawr and feed it your armory data. Then go to options and select 'Wow 3.0.4' Armor Mode.

In my case with my current gear i'll drop from 35224 armor to 33380 armor. But I have Defender's Code, an armor neck, cloak and staff and dual level 80 armor rings, so i'm about the worst case scenario here. I'm hoping I can increase the average ilevel of my leather gear a little before the patch to soften the blow.

If you have stacked armor on accesories but haven't been fortunate enough to get defender's code yet, expect to see little change. If you havent' stacked armor on accessories (why??) and don't have armor trinkets, expect to get buffed.

Regarding our physical Migitation on Patchwerk, it's still very much superior to warriors. This is me MTing Patchwerk 2 weeks ago, and this is Malm MTing patch last week. The difference in average hits isn't that large, which is mainly due to block. As you can see Malm blocked 165k damage, if you'd add that his average hit taken is 9152 vs mine 7280. Now if you take into account his block and avoidance, Malm comes out slightly on top here with regards to least damage taken if the fights were equal length, because Patchwerk does alot of relatively small hits, which makes block quite strong.

Now this is Diawo OTing Patchwerk 2 weeks ago, and this is me OTing Patchwerk last week. The difference is quite obviously, 16k average hits taken by me vs 21k by Diawo. Add to that the fact druids have alot more health and are much much easier to use as a single OT compared to using a single warrior OT. Note that in that last example, I'm on 50% avoidance and both Diawo and Malm are on 53%, not a very large difference.

Where we fall behind is rapid small hits due to block, and we compensate by pulling ahead on bosses that hit really really hard. All in all I'd say we're in fairly good shape.

We tried having our warrior MT as the first Hateful tank last week and the druid Hateful tank as the MT. It was still doable, but it was a noticeable difference for the healers. Much as Abridix says, the druid may take slightly more hits, but the average value of those really large hits is much lower. For us it was 23k on the warrior compared to 15k on the druid. It's very noticeable as a healer when the tank drops to 65% hp and when the tank drops to 35% hp. Both are entirely healable, but I'd 100% rather have a bear as the first Hateful tank.

I am curious as to what armor numbers you guys have in order to get the hateful strikes down to 16k average. I was primary OT last night for our patchwerk25 kill, and the average was ~20k. I do not have defenders code or an AC neck, and only 154 armor on my cloak, so my armor sits at about 29k in bear - is defenders code that big of a difference? And post armor change, with the speculative numbers from rawr2.1.3 I actually lose a touch of armor as it is.

I only ask because I am wondering if there is another debuff on patchwerk that my raid is missing that is bringing your numbers down so far. I was perfectly healable - 45k health buffed meant I took the vast majority of hatefuls - but making it easier on our healers is still a good idea and I would like to validate that it was your mitigation that brought those numbers down so far, and not another factor.

In a word, yes. 29K is very low.

I don't have defenders code and I got to 32k Armor fully Raid buffed. This did not include a lot of T7 or something this mainly pre Naxx.

Head:[Thunderheart Cover]
Neck:[Shadowseeker's Pendant]
Shoulders:[Sprinting Shoulderpads]
Chest:[Tunic of Dislocation]
Waist:[Thunderheart Waistguard]
Legs:[Gored Hide Legguards]
Feet:[Thunderheart Treads]
Wrist:[Thunderheart Wristguards]
Hands:[Handwraps of Preserved History]
Finger1:[Ring of the Stalwart Protector]
Finger2:[Ring of Ancestral Protectors]
Trinket1:[Offering of Sacrifice]
Trinket2:[Defender's Code]
Back:[Cloak of the Shadowed Sun]
MainHand:[Enraged Feral Staff]
Ranged:[Idol of Terror]

Unbuffed Stats:
Health: 25136.7
Armor: 33886.66
Dodge: 32.27%
Miss: 4.85%
Mitigation: 71.02%
Total Mitigation: 81.78%
Damage Taken: 18.22%

Buffed Stats (Totems, BoS, Kings, Devotion Aura, Mark, Fort, Shouts):
Health: 34474.92
Armor: 37462.34
Dodge: 38.43%
Miss: 4.85%
Mitigation: 73.75%
Total Mitigation: 85.11%
Damage Taken: 14.89%

Stacking HP isn't necessarilly the best thing to do. If you sacrifice too much AC for HP, all you do is become a damage sponge and it kills your healers mana faster. In my setup, despite having ~10k less health than you, since I take about 5K less damage it works and I can still survive 2 HS without a heal *most* of the time, should healer timing slip up. Same as you with the extra health you have, but just a lot more mana intense. How many healers did you guys use for the fight btw?

Regarding debuffs, make sure Thunderclap or Infected Wounds is up and then Demo shout. If you have hunters, scorpid sting or a Moonkin with Insect swarm. Note however that sting or swarm don't reduce damage, just chance to get hit.

edit: I forgot, pop Barksin every time its up, while timing it out as best you can to make sure its available for the last 5% when he enrages.

How do you add up to 85% mitigation??

I made up a character sheet in Rawr that was about what he had for dodge and armor and it shows what he posted for damage taken and mitigation/total mitigation. I believe somehting is going on with the amount of Dodge/miss to show it as mitigation but I do not believe that it is the same sort of mitigation as armor/PotP/BoS. I could be wrong.

The 75% cap is for pure armor mitigation. Otherwise, Protector of the Pack (and Blessing of Sanctuary, but PotP is the big one) would do nothing against physical attacks past 63% mitigation from armor (assuming additive, or some other similar number otherwise), which is clearly not the case.

[edit] I know PotP is multiplicative, I was just trying to lazily demonstrate a point without doing the full math behind it. :P