My rant about druid tanking...

...and mostly about people that don't know how to play while in a group with a druid tank.

I'm getting quite annoyed at some dps but mostly healers not being able to adapt to the kind of tank they have, so I'll just tell how druid tanking actually works. When aoe tanking we use Swipe, which hits all targets in melee range in a frontal cone of the druid, we don't have OP stuff like warriors and paladins. Swipe uses a gcd so we can't use our single target threat abilities and aoe at the same time. Swipe does less threat than warrior and paladin abilities and on top of that druids require more healing (we're meatshields!), so we have to do more threat to keep stuff off healers with an ability that does less threat. Our taunt has a 10second cooldown and taunts 1 target.

So PLEASE healers, give a druid tank some time to build aggro on ALL targets. Often a pack has two ranged mobs which means some moving around before he can have threat on all mobs. Druids have around 30k health, there is no need to start healing when he has taken 5k damage. If you do heal before the druid manages to position all the mobs in a frontal cone you WILL pull a mob to you, if you're lucky you can get a taunt but this usually only means that the mob turns around, shoots a shadowbolt, then switches back to the healer again. So if you do heal early the druid has to run after that mob (or charge), which means he won't be doing threat on the other mobs in the group until they run to the tank again (which they won't if they're ranged!). So you might end up pulling the other 3 onto you.

To healers: give the druid some time to put all the mobs in position, it's fine if he drops 15k health while doing this. Use your abilities that help generate threat like prayer of mending and earth shield (I think?). Do not shield a druid at the start of a pull if his rage bar is empty, no rage = 0 aoe threat. Learn to conserve mana: mana breaks mean standing still which means the tank has to start the next pull with 0 rage, requiring more time before you can safely start healing.
To DPS: stick to the marks, even if the tank isn't attacking it. On some groups I build up some threat on the maintarget, then switch to others to make sure they don't run to the healer, then back to the maintarget again. Expect low threat on the maintarget at the start because we have to use gcd's to spam our aoe. Feel free to use your brain and CC a mob that runs away, unfortunately most DPSers seem to lose the ability to think as soon as they enter an instance.

i dont attack skull untill i see 20k threat on him as a rule when i'm grouped with bear tank

Example:
When I just dinged 80 I would take around 3000 damage per second on certain packs (magic hurts , oculus ), or when someone ninjapulled.
Lets say it's a group of 3 mobs that do heavy (magic) dmg:
Healer aggro: (HEALED / 2) / #_OF_TARGETS = 3000 / 2 / 3 = 500 tps <-- before aggro reducing talents
Tank aggro: (29/14) * DAMAGE = 29 / 14 * 350 = 700 tps <-- 350 is a regular hit, you might get lucky and crit, you might get unlucky and miss
Threat from other sources like thorns and rage gained is very low.
Note that the healer will be doing threat right from the start, and druid tanks start doing threat once everything is in range.
Now imagine what happens if a mob runs to a healer because he started healing too soon.

That's why you'll notice the tank switching between targets a lot to get some mauls and regular white hits (those don't consume a gcd) on the targets.

Frankly Im startfeelsliglty sorry for bear tanks when you consider what abilities they actually have for rounding up mobs.
Most ranged 'pick up' abilities would require you to leave bear form, simply not acceptable nid combat (Gothik for example). Warriors can charge around and thunderclap, shockwave, heroic throw, all on small cooldowns, paladins have avengers, hammer of the righteous, holy wrath, exorsism, consecration, bears have well, nothing. Totally understandable that theyre struggling the most with the latest content

15K could be 2 big heals behind. Mana, right no mana is no heals. I know you want to keep your rage. but to die is not an option too . And those bears they tend to loose health so fast sometimes. Since 3.0.2 the nerfed my spirit. They nerfed my CoH, to heal you its not in enough to use my small heals. The only option is to waste my mana keep you at full health with my greater heal. Have loads of overhealing and let me drink between fights. I always feel to be hurried when having a druid tank.

I know i suck at mana regen atm . But i really dont want to waste mana pots for the rage of a tank. just let the dps wait a bit more.

But then i give Prayer of Mending for free

Earthshield now counts as the Shamans heal, threat wise too. I don't know about PoM.

Poor Gnock.

Give me a shout i will come stroke you bear with heals. I did a pug as DPS yesterday. Normal Nexus and had to get through 3 different 78+ healers before we could complete it. The quality of some healers astounds me. It makes you wonder how they managed to level.

Thanks for this post. It made up my mind which char to play. I will stick to my healer. I just feel safer .


For threat. JoL counts as pally heal now.

Reese wrote:

It made up my mind which char to play. I will stick to my healer. I just feel safer .

One of the reaons i rolled a druid to go resto, as i never felt safe in heroics with a random healer and there was only so little a hunter could do to help out a shit healer lol. Much rather be healing it myself

I'll admit im one for "pre-hotting" with a druid tank as they take so much dmg. <3333 Shadowmeld tho!

After doing quite a few herics with gnock ive just held out for 1 second later before hotting and it usually does the trick, the only thing/reason why i like to get hots up early is if you take ALOT of spike dmg it can be tricky or VERY mana consuming to spam healing with no hots up. The hots and swiftmend make it so much easier and less mana consuming.

druids aren't made for tanking...muahahaha, go spec doomchicken or greenhorn

I know I'm not in the guild and my application, but I though I'd throw in my own thoughts into the mix.

Regarding rage: I find that using enrage before a pull usually helps with gaining agro right from the start. I pull after about 5-6 seconds so people don't get too impatient with me. (Usually works fine for not getting hit which armour is lowered as it takes a few seconds for the mobs to hit me). Doing that allows the dps to attack earlier and the healer to heal earlier.

As for swipe, it can get kinda annoying when a dps stuns a mob when I need to shift my position because a mob moved out of the cone. I shift my position and the other mobs stays there stunned! I understand that the dps was just trying to help me take less damage, but it sucks if that stray mob then went after the healer.

I remember thinking that tanking looked pretty easy when I grouped with my mage before rolling a Tank druid. Certainly lots of things to think about, do I stay building more agro on the main pack of mobs, or go over to the caster to add more threat. Pick the wrong one, and somebody (or all of the group) might die. Nothing like a bit of pressure to keep me on my toes

Personally, I find the best way of not grouping with dumb healers/dps is to form a group with regular people you know and trust. Finding trusted players in what is arguably the realm's top PvE guild should be easy enough

Wunni wrote:Finding trusted players in what is arguably the realm's top PvE guild should be easy enough

Don't be decieved. We all just face roll. I guess we are good because we can face roll faster than others.

Lol, I stand corrected!

I once socketted and enchanted all my boomkin's PVP-gear with agility, dodge, armor and stamina and tried to tank Karazhan as panzerkin.





I miserably failed, but it was the best 1500g ever spent.

I miserably failed

You have no idea.