First off: This is pretty much an usual thread on forums that mostly deal with theorycrafting, I think. The discussion is going to revolve around some theory crafting but also about what you think is "fun".

Anyways, I stumbled across a few interesting posts by Ghostcrawler about tanking balance that seem to be quite relevant to all tanking classes and Druids especially. Apparently Blizzard's problem is that they cannot figure out why not more people play Bear tanks even though (in his opinion) they are fun to level and play, but also not gimped at all - borderline OP in 3.2 even. It is also something I have noticed in my guild and server. I know of very few Feral druids that like tanking. Most Feral druids are enjoying Cat far more than tanking (if they are even Feral specced).

Now his question (and mine) is: Why is this? Why aren't there more Bear tanks since all tanking classes are viable (especially 3.2 looks really good for Paladins and Druids)?
To those who play Cat: What is it that you hate with Bear tanking?
And to those that play as Bear: What do you like about it and what would you like to see improved? (Do you just play a Bear because you didn't want to level another tanking class or because you genuinely like it?)

I have a few ideas but obviously I haven't played a Druid since TBC (I rerolled in late T5 for reasons I will explain later in the thread since atleast part of my reasons should still be relevant):

- Is it the same old forms? No visible gear progression?
- Lack of "real" tanking gear?
- Having to PvP for PvE gear? (might tie in into the 2nd question)
- Cat being so strong that it overshadows Bear?
- A boring tanking rotation?
- Other players thinking Bears are crappy tanks and not giving you a shot?


In any case, I hope you can help me with these questions and keep in mind that answers are most likely not going to be all theory-crafty - which is fine - since the Bear problem seems to have different kind of roots (which was ultimately the reason I didn't post it in the tanking thread here).

When faced with the choice of me going DPS or one/both of our Prot Warriors going DPS, the former is currently the better option. Current content does not require a massive amount of tanks, we can excel elsewhere.

Rage starvation, when you are getting close to 50% dodge tanking gets rather boring. Waiting ~20s to do more then maul/FF is just sad. When you compare yourself to a dk, his tps scales with avoidance while ours decrease. It is just more fun to have buttons to push.

In my opinion the MT must be a Dk, Druid is too bored in Bear Form because have a small abilites-rotation and take many damage.

Cat form have a intresting rotation with many abilities and do much dps for a good rotation, in 3.2 too

Yeah, there is that but Warriors have the same issues (or well, actually have it worse due to a lack of rage on avoidance and/or 5 rage on crit). I won't dismiss that reason off the bat but since you can find it in another tanking class which is alot more popular, that alone can't be it.

I think it's because they buffed cat DPS so massively in 3.1. I always used to do some tanking and some DPS for my guild, doing a pretty good job of each but certainly not top of the DPS meters. Then with 3.1, I'm still just as good a tank but I'm at the top of the meters on every fight (this is in 10 man which does skew it, we don't have any rogues to outshine me).

I don't think it's a mystery why people will prefer DPSing to tanking when Blizzard makes DPSing much stronger relative to tanking.

As promised now that I got more time:

I started feral tanking in BWL while we learning Broodlord and shortly after getting good enough gear (which back in the day meant good blues) I tanked progression fights from Broodlord onwards and whatever people may say, Druids were pretty good even then. I think my biggest achievement as a Bear tank was tanking our first Twin Emps kill and being told that Bears are way easier to heal than Warriors because of the higher armor and health and the fact that the Emps WILL crush any tank, Warrior or not - and all that while being able to CR and IV other players during tank swaps. Unfortunately we only killed Raz, Grand Widow and Anub in Naxx so I can't say much about how viable Bears were back then (but that is not the point either). I kept tanking in TBC on my Druid as well, everything in T5 except Kael. But in contrast to Vanilla, I MTed less because Cat DPS was ridiculous in T4/T5. You really had a hard time justifying MTing when you could tank 1-2 adds on Maggy or Vashj in a DPS set then proceed to be top 3 DPS. In any case, that was pretty much one of the biggest reasons I rolled a Warrior. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to tank or DPS on the Warrior but I ended up as Prot anyway. Anyways, sorry for the history lessons but I think it's important to see where I come from.

Now obviously since Druids are fine MTs now and they have to pick between a tank and a DPS spec so being relegated to doing DPS is not an issue anymore, why don't I return (and keep in mind that I am comparing today's Warrior with a TBC Bear so if there are too many discrepancies, let me know)?

1) Warrior tanking is alot more fun. I know this is subjective but that is the way it is. I have alot more buttons to push and Warbringer is just plain awesome. Not only do I get to emulate one of the core fun mechanics of Druids, the root/slow breaking, but I also get to whoooooosh around on trash and bosses. What did Druids get in return? Instant form swaps so you can Dash immediately with 1 button press from Bear to Cat which is OK, I guess. But you probably won't believe how many near tank deaths and/or wipes you can prevent by Intervening away from the boss while you get healed up. But like I said, fun is a subjective thing after all.
2) I get to see my new, shiny gear. You may laugh at it, but after a couple of years of staring at the same level 10 Bear butt and having ALL damn shapeshift gimmicks like Noggenfoggers and Sindorei Orbs break on shift, it really is amazing. Even if they'd fix that issue, the new forms are too little, too late.
3) No real tanking gear. I am not a big fan of wearing DPS gear, then having my passive talents boost my stats to that of a proper tank. I know this is just perception for obvious reasons but I don't think this is something we can neglect either. I like getting upgrades and I like seeing the upgrades on the items and not after I have to shift and talent for them to actually be upgrades. And damn, I'd be bummed if I had to wear Royal Seal of King Llane because it's BiS for stamina gearing while not being able to benefit from the Use. Same with jewelry that has parry.
4) I fell in love with blocking (TBC version on trash/bosses, and Wrath version on trash). Again, another perception thing but I like having parry and block even though I know 100% that even when Druids don't, they can be balanced around it. But can a Druid build a Block set for fun and solo raids? No. In return they get ILOTP and heals to achieve them same but I just prefer the former.
5) Tank homogenization: Specifically, AoE threat. I remember back in TBC how nice it was a Druid to Hurricane a trash pack before switching to Bear for initial aggro. That was fun. In Wrath? Noone gives a damn because every tank's AoE abilities don't have target limits anymore. Even when I saw Druids getting roots in doors I was happy because hey, how cool would it be to root one really annoying elite mob, then tank the others away from it? Yeah, we all know how that turned out...
6) Bears lack a special something that makes them unique. Warriors get Spell Reflection and Berserker Rage, and even though you can't use them on most bosses, on the ones you can, they are amazing (not even counting trash!). Paladins get the ability to self cleanse on Steelbreaker and Sacred Shield themselves or use their Hands. DKs get AMS/AMZ and Deathgrip to place mobs on specific spots which is relevant for some encounters and Druids get IV and CR. Yes, CR and IV are godly and even though you get to use them on most bosses even if you are MTing, it still feels a bit clunky; these two abilities are not tanking abilities, they are abilities any Druid can use in caster form. And root/slow breaking, while nice, is not unique to Druids anymore.
7) Even though I hate to admit it, being the underdog (if the gap was close enough) was fun. Now Druids are better than Warriors and DKs in 3.2 or at the very least equal so even that niche is gone.


Now you may look a this list and think "hey, what the fuck is that guy talking about, these are all minor things!" and you'd be right. On their own, they are all minor. But they do add up. In any case, I'd like to hear from others if you got similar experiences or if I am just completely off base.

(Note I left reasons such as losing all achievements, mounts etcs when rerolling back to Druid out because it is the same for any class you'd change to and things that are tied to rage problems since both Druids and Warriors share those (and in most cases, the Warrior has it worse).)

This is by far the driving reason i've switched to a DPS/OT, though not for purely negative reasons. Due to gear being so flexible (and crit-immunity even as a DPS spec, which is unique to Druids), there are encounters in Ulduar where I have a tanking role, but don't change anything at all (Freya) or just wear my tank set with a PotP cat build (Vezax). The amazing versatility of cat specs (even more so if you reliably have Trauma, freeing up points) makes using another class for the OT/DPS role really unattractive - I can give up 6% dodge and 10% armor to be able to pull 5k+ on Vezax before the Animus spawns, relative to the DK/Warrior that will do 1-2k or the Prot Paladin who can't do anything due to fight mechanics.

The biggest weakness of Druid MTs I can see right now is the power of Druid OTs. I'd like to see something like Defensive Stance, Righteous Fury and Frost Presence all offer baseline crit-immunity from NPCs, so that other tanks can realistically OT as well as a Druid will be able to, because right now the playing field is shifted so far in a Druid's advantage that using other classes as OT is noticably worse.

I can only speak for our resident ferals. They stopped playing bear mostly because they felt like not providing something substantial for the raids anymore. After the 'rebalancing' they claim to have lost all earlier advantages, i.e. higher average migitation and effective HP-pool (the former bear tanking niche). Because bear always had less to offer than the other classes (no interrupt ability, less activable abilities, which also tend to be less attractive than comparable abilities from other classes), and the most appreciated raid ability, the feral aura, is also provided by the cat. Besides that, the bear tank mechanic itself is (due to sharing a whole ability tree with its feral counterpart, the cat) somewhat more repetetive and less flexible than other classes will experience. Add a somewhat unsatifying equip design to all that, and thats why we are not able to field a taking feral (besides short offtanking) anymore in our raid.

I love to tank and dps, and I can do both very well. I'm not sure I see a problem with bear tanking at all. The gear is typically the same as DPS with the exception of expertise. I have tanked all of UD25 with no problems what so ever. I think I round the stats at 44k health and 50% dodge before trinkets and idol of corruptor. So most of the time I have 55%+ dodge and its spikes up to 62% when everything is goin off. I do a far better job than our Warrior tanks and put out better threat than our paladin tanks.

So, if anyone is saying the gear isn't out there or bears don't do as good as other classes for tanking. They are simply wrong and don't know how to play it.

I think you misunderstood the question. The question is not if Bears are viable or if there is gear for Bear tanking because they are and there is. The question is: Why are there so few Bears even though it's perfectly viable, hell, borderline OP in 3.2?

I'd like to second Liar's points and add two points of my own:

- In WotLK, the influx of DK's, and the dev declaration that the pseudo-tank specs were now to be 'equal' in power with warrior tanking, led to what feels like a much, much larger pool of tanks. The requests from my guild and friends to tank dropped off immensely, as DK tanks flooded the scene, forgotten prot pal alts were dusted off, and prot wars squealed with the sheer fun of their new tanking abilities. Expansions are a great chance for people to break molds and switch roles, and a lot of people jumped on tank.

- The overhaul of feral-cat not only made its DPS jaw-dropping compared to where we used to be, it also made it much more fun to play. So when given a choice to go juggle all those cat buffs and debuffs and get some revenge on the DPS meters, or to mash the same boring bear rotation as I was for the past few years, it was no contest. I think a lot of raiding ferals saw OT/Resto in vanilla (0/30/21 for me), bear in TBC, and cat in WotLK, and its been nice to play a whole new role every few years without even having to level an alt.

Bear needs an abilities overhaul to be fun again. After playing on my DK and seeing their arsenal of fun abilities, there's just no way I'd go back to full-time tanking as bear. The original novelty of being the rare bear tank, and the scavenger hunt-like gear chase got old and isn't there anymore, anyway.

Another thing that has been touched on above: Cooldowns make or break a lot of fights in Ulduar. Barkskin is often to weak on its own to be of use, Frenzied Regen cannot be use preemptivly to mitigate an insanely large hit like Plasma Blast which leaves SI as our only effective cooldown. While i'm sure its entirely possible to use healer cooldowns to get around this in most situations, using a Warrior or DK would simplify matters a lot in these cases.

Many great points made in this thread. This quote most closely mirrors my situation. After a couple months away from the game starting just prior to 3.1, it was better and less disruptive for me to switch from MT to OT when I came back because it was just so fast and easy for me to switch. A gem here, and an enchant there and I'm making our rogues work to beat me on the meters. (They used to be facerolling lazy bastards.) It would have taken either our warrior or our pally much more time and effort to make the transition to dps.

Edit: I would however tank full time again should the need arise simply because I enjoy that role more.

Bears may take as little or less damage on average statistically, but when the big blows come our barkskin often isn't enough on its own and has to be combined with an external CD. That we cant reduce the predictable spikes on our own is in my opinion the reason bears are considered a bit weak as tanks.

From the playing point of view the lack of some kind of reactive ability is making bear tanking often quite boring.

I think people are a lot less likely to reroll these days unless it's to a DK, thanks to the level 55 start. Back in Vanilla and TBC many classes were held back by design. Warriors were the tanking class, paladins and druids were supposed to be off-tanks. Of course, they ended up failing to an extent as GC has pointed out and had to implement Sunwell Radiance specifically to rein in feral tanks, but this design wasn't restricted to tanks. Someone who leveled up, say, a priest hoping to someday top the DPS meters would have had no choice but to reroll, as priests were by design kept from doing competitive dps. Today the design is that every class can do competitive or even top dps if you know how to play and how to gear yourself. Likewise, all 4 tanks are supposed to be able to handle all fights with nearly the same level of performance.

This means that, in today's world, any time a class becomes OP it's by accident rather than design. It's much easier to justify rerolling if you're confident that Blizzard will ensure that the class you're rolling to will remain on top of the world. If, on the other hand, it's more likely than not that when a class becomes OP it will be nerfed 1 month later, people will be much less likely to invest the time to reroll. So I think it's no surprise that there would be more warrior and DK tanks than druids and paladins. Warrior tanks from Vanilla/TBC stick with the class because they're confident that Blizz will do what's necessary to bring them up to par, and there are more than enough DKs because they take less work and time to roll. I think you'd see quite a few more druid tanks if you could start a new one at lvl 55.

I suspect part of it is also that Bear druids generally use less of their class than Cat druids do - if something goes wrong it's easier for a Cat to shift out in response than for a Bear to do it. This works on both a fun level (Cats use more skills and see more forms) and on a raid optimisaton level - if you have a DK and a Feral, each equally good at both tanking and melee DPS on the specific encounter, it's better if the DK tanks because that keeps the rest of the Druid toolkit available.

Ive played a druid since Beta, and made mine day 1 on live and never really looked back. I leveled as feral (until 40ish when everyone needed a healer fulltime), and even after that played feral style whenever I soloed. Ive played other classes, but as a whole none of them seemed as fun as a druid. Having access to the breadth of abilities they do is the main draw. Their versatility really is the druid's key strength.


And to me that is also the problem with bears. If we can OT something and then DPS, especially since 3.1, we are essentially better than any other class that can do that, if for no other reason than we don't have gear all loaded up with defensive stats. Im not saying the other 3 classes can't just switch "stance" and swap a weapon and dps, but they virtually always wind up at the bottom of the meters. A druid, even in tanking gear, is still pretty much the same set of gear as a cat. Sure it might be gemmed/enchanted differently, and even favor different stats, but the base gear is still very similar. It wont be ideal gear, but it still seems that relative to other tank classes, we can still do the OT->DPS role better because of this. The same things can be said about spec. All ferals take the same basic skeleton build and throw on a couple of extra Cat/Bear/PvP talents. A prot warrior cannot dps very well even in dps gear, since his talents restrict him far more. The point of this all is, if the overall contribution to the raid is better to have a druid OT something then DPS as opposed to another class, then people will use the druid. And in the current environment where cat dps is high, if all tanks are considered equal, but feral can do more dps than the other 3, why would you have a feral MT and take a sub-optimal dps?

Also, the druid versatility comes back to bite us with our 4 roles. I cannot really think of another class that has that has 4 different roles like that. Maybe something like a mage (Fire, Frost, FFB all across 2 trees), but even then they are just doing the same thing, in a different way. DK's are a bit similar (3 trees that are all tank/dps) but their class really is an outlier in many ways, and also it is still somewhat in flux, so they can make changes more easily. There isn't really a lot they can do to spice up bears without affecting other parts of the class. If they add in or improve more baseline abilities, then they risk consequences in the resto pvp department. If they add in more talents, they wind up with a very bloated tree, and also a bit more confusion for the uneducated (that druid is feral, but is he bear-feral or cat-feral?). If they roll more good abilities into the current talents, they risk having every talent being like SotF, one that is just flat out-overpowered. And if all the talents are overpowered, well thats also a problem.

The feral role itself is also somewhat responsible for the lack of druid MT's. The whole tree isn't solely focused on one thing, its virtually all cat/bear split. A Prot Warrior is a Prot Warrior; they spec, gear, and play to fill a specific role. A druid *can* do the same and be all bear/cat, but in doing so they are essentially ignoring the other half of their spec. As Unity mentioned above, a bear MTing something gives up on all of that other utility. Granted, most Ulduar fights offer some sort of window to throw out a spell quick even if tanking the big baddie, but if say on Hodir you shift out to rez someone during flash freeze and something goes wrong, you could quickly go from saving the raid to wiping it. A druid going bear to MT really does lock them out of a large part of their class. Hell, a bear only has what, 10 abilities total? If you're like me and like a druid for the versatility, staying in bear form the whole time and using the same 5 buttons the whole raid isn't as fun. And yes, part of this comes from the fact that a bear just isn't fun to play. We've had the same buttons to push since BC, the only new ones aren't part of the rotation, only occasional use (Barkskin, SI, Berserk). Everyone else gets lots of shiny new things, and bears are pretty much still stuck in the last expansion. This is still a problem though of our versatility and 4 roles. They can either design 33% more abilities for druids just to give us the same amount of "new stuff" in all our roles, but that really is spending a disproportionate amount of effort on us.

Ok, this got FAR more wordy than I intended to, but it really comes down to this. In a vacuum there really is nothing wrong with a bear, on the stats/mitigation end. Sure, playing one might not be very fun, and there is probably some perception that we are inferior tanks, but I don't think that is the reason for the low numbers on bears. It's because in the current environment, a DK is a slightly better tank, and a feral is a slightly better dps. Hard modes being what they are, you want to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your raid. Even if tanking is equal across the board, and feral druids were 5% better dps than any other tank class, you would still see a shortage of bears. In 3.1, the pendulum swung away and cat became the stronger part of the feral tree, so if you bring the same ferals to a raid, you just want them in their stronger role at the moment. Maybe 3.2 will swing it back, but who knows. I hope at least someone makes some sense out of all this.

I can echo this sentiment. Vezax comes to mind for severe rage starvation throughout the encounter coupled with kiting.

To an extent I did feel that the shift away from "tank leather" was a significant design flaw. The class seemed to lose its niche in favor of blanket itemization. While this may have opened up loot options the identity of druid gear became more and more vague in terms of offset pieces. Rings, necks and cloaks come to mind in Ulduar where several of the pieces are specifically focused to other tank stats we do not benefit from.

That said you need to consider the flip side of that coin in regards to off piece itemization versus main piece. If the off pieces are few and far between, the design for main pieces that would match the description of "tank leather" would fall under the same circumstance. It's a vicious cycle.

I'd rather not be the player that draws comparisons to other class capabilities in terms of the old "they have x and y but we don't." Raid cooldowns are available for a reason, and on a personal note I enjoyed coordinating them to succeed as a main tank in Ulduar, regardless of other how another class can manage it through personal abilities. Still, TPS scales poorly with more flat avoidance for druids which seems counter intuitive to the tanking philosophy.

I would pin the problem on druids being one of the most successful hybrids.

They're stellar in all four specs but therein lies the problem; with the option of playing resto pve/pvp, cat pve/pvp, bear, and boomkin, with only being allowed two specs through dual speccing, the most obvious choices are going to be

bear pve/cat pve
cat pve/cat pvp
resto pve/resto pvp
resto pve/boomkin pve

or just taking one out of six options and sticking with it. Yes, there are oddballs who collect say, a healing set and a tanking set, but that provides a lot less flexibility than if they had a bear/cat set and a tree/balance set in addition to having much less gear shared between the specs. If there were more players playing druids as a whole or some of the other options available were not so great, bears would be more common.

Even the next most versatile hybrid, paladins, only have about 5 options for end game (prot pve, ret pve/pvp, holy pve/pvp) and their class is more popular, to boot.

Personally what struck me the most about Ferals coming out of TBC as a bear tank was lack of complexity. I've always been drawn to classes with complex mechanics and lots of versatile(if oftentimes useless) abilities to mess with. Warriors can stance-dance, have tons of situational fun buttons to push and were my first class I mained in vanilla for that reason. I loved being able to tank UBRS, then when The Beast was going to aoe fear, swap to Zerker and Zerker Rage to block the fear, then back to defensive and continue aggro, then when he used knockback, do Zerker->Intercept to get back on the ground without taking falling damage or skipping a beat, then back to defensive stance. I could use intimidating shout to buy my healer some breathing room, I could shield wall to shrug off a short series of attacks that normally woulda killed me outright. There were so many possibilities.

During TBC ferals became suddenly very versatile. A feral with a solid pvp set could fit both dps and tanking roles. They could dps, then if the healer got low on mana they could innervate, if someone died they could battle rezz, if a tank went down they switch to bear and tank. They could throw on healing gear and take advantage of their innate Int bonus to offheal with a huge mana pool, they could stealth around to help mark that trash pull around the corner without getting aggro, and they could cyclone to do a short-term CC on a trash mob. They could hurricane to aoe while reducing the tank's damage intake thanks to the attack speed slow.

WotLK took a lot of that versatility away. Ferals can't really reach optimum effectiveness without speccing only for cat or only for bear. Bear armor isn't that great anymore, so they need to stack stamina to be effective, unlike in TBC where their high agility->dodge conversion meant a feral with pvp gear gemmed with Shifting Nightseyes could effectively tank _or_ dps, because agility helped their dodge in bear, attack power in cat, and crit in both. Their defensive cooldowns are drastically limited compared to other classes, and they flat out lack buttons to push while tanking. Instead of it feeling like you're playing a class that can do 3 things as well individually as other classes, you feel like you're playing 1/3 of a class that's numerically comparable, but is still only 1/3 of a class(or, I suppose, 1/4th, considering druids can fill 4 roles).

Part of what made me roll a DK in WotLK is the fact that they have so much mechanical complexity(even if their rotations aren't necessarily all that complex*coughunholycough*), that there's a lot of "Oooh, but what if I try _THAT_ idea next time" and a lot of neat little tricks and ability combinations that are unorthodox but work when you run across them. Druids lost most of that transitioning to WotLK and it took a lot of fun out of the class for serious players I think.

I'm another that has tanked as a Bear since classic, and another that objects to tanking in DPS gear. Sure it's convenient, and sure SotF is amazingly good -- but it makes us a different kind of a tank: One that is optimal as OT/dps. Without getting into one of those MT vs. OT ego fights, I'll just say it feels like the role has been redefined out from under us.

It may also be that I just dislike fighting my wife (who plays a Rogue) for "tanking" gear.