Druid OT Getting Destroyed

[Porra]

Here's the story. The past couple of weeks we've doing some ToT casually and my Druid offtank is getting annihilated every pull. Not necessarily more overall damage than me but more unhealable spikey damage. Im a monk and I heal it back like crazy or completely avoid it while he's getting 2-3 shot on Tortos in seconds. We ended up putting him on the bats because the damage he was taking was insane, and it was the same story with the bats so I ended up just tanking both and he brought them to me when they spawned so melee wouldnt get ganked by a boss attack. I checked up on some Druid stuff and saw his Savage Defense uptime was hideous along with Frenzied Regen and told him, yet he's still getting trucked on every boss, mostly Tortos and Council when he takes Frost King.

http://worldoflogs.com/guilds/176629/
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...r/Mahii/simple

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[Splatter]

He is reforging for crit almost exclusively and often at the expense of mastery. He is also forging for hit and expertise. You only need enough hit and expertise to stabilise your rotation or if you are having rage generation or threat issues. Direct him to the feral druid guide on the forums here. He needs more mastery to improve base survival and it seems he is gearing/statting to maximise threat generation/dps.

My druid is 20 ilevels below him but has about 2000 more mastery rating that he does. Thats about 4% less physical damage taken. Mastery = armor = reduced physical damage taken. He also has waaaaaay to much expertise and hit. Regem and reforge to get more mastery will help a lot.

Taken from the guide http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Survival-Guide

there are essentially two ways to reforge:

Survival: Dodge >= Mastery > Crit > Hit=Exp > Haste
DPS: Hit=Exp > Crit > Haste > Mastery > Dodge

[Troklon]

Gear including gems and enchants looks fine for endgame raiding. Talents as well.

@ Splatter: It is actually more advisable to go for dmg stats than def stats because it gives you a higher rage generation to allow you a higher uptime on savage defense and frenzied regeneration wich in turn gives you better survivability and overall dmg mitigation in comparison to going for dodge and mastery.

I think he has to work on a better uptime of his savage defense and barkskin. Without anything active the bats in the Tortos encounter tear you appart. It is possible to keep savage defense up for over 30 seconds.
- The goal for him is to have savage defense charges on zero all the time (meaning he uses it on cooldown and can therefore have it up for over 30 seconds straight)
- To accomplish this there are a few factors:
1) Use !!each and every!! mangle cooldown available while tanking even if it means to do a few aoe attacks less.
2) Use enrage when mangle and auto attack rage is not enough.
3) Pop Berserk or Incarnation when you don't have enough rage. If you end up having to much rage use it on Frenzied Regeneration.
4) Between the bat packs fill up your rage to 100.
5) If it still doesn't work skill from Incarnation to Soul of the Forest to get an increased rage income by mangle

In addition he should
- use Barkskin on cooldown as it is only on a 1 minute CD but he only used it once in a 5 minute encounter
- put symbiosis on a monk (preferred) or DK to get another small but free defensive skill he can use on 1 minute cooldown.

I hope this helps!

[Splatter]

@ Splatter: It is actually more advisable to go for dmg stats than def stats because it gives you a higher rage generation to allow you a higher uptime on savage defense and frenzied regeneration wich in turn gives you better survivability and overall dmg mitigation in comparison to going for dodge and mastery.

You don't need 14% expertise and 7.5% hit to have 100% possible uptime on Savage defense ..... unless you are doing something wrong.

Looking at our Main druid tank which is the same ilevel as the OT's druid, he has 7.5 hit and 7.5 expertise, but nearly 3000 mastery rating more. He is not squishy at all.

[proteen]

Bottom line - Your tank is simply tanking wrong. Use Savage Defense and Barkskin.

[aggixx]

You don't need 14% expertise and 7.5% hit to have 100% possible uptime on Savage defense ..... unless you are doing something wrong.

Looking at our Main druid tank which is the same ilevel as the OT's druid, he has 7.5 hit and 7.5 expertise, but nearly 3000 mastery rating more. He is not squishy at all.

Keeping SD up is NOT the sole goal of rage consumption.

Prioritizing mastery has absolutely nothing to do with your druid's survivability, he is simply playing better.

[Scubascythe]

You don't need 14% expertise and 7.5% hit to have 100% possible uptime on Savage defense ..... unless you are doing something wrong.

Looking at our Main druid tank which is the same ilevel as the OT's druid, he has 7.5 hit and 7.5 expertise, but nearly 3000 mastery rating more. He is not squishy at all.

Don't listen to Splatter. He doesn't know guardian druid mechanics as well as he presents himself. Maximum uptime on savage defense is 67%.

And going for hit cap + exp hard cap > crit > mastery > haste == dodge is absolutely a decent gearing/reforging strat for guardian druids. The idea is to smooth the rage gen hence theoretically smoothing out the damage intake with correct use of savage defense + frenzied regen.

Anyways I looked at your guardian druid logs in much further detail than usual because first glance at uptime of savage defense, frenzied regen, use of cds, mangle vs lacerate/thrash, etc appears he's using them correctly.


Looking specifically at 3-26 logs on Tortos, attempt #1 isn't his fault, he was tanking both bats + tortos and died. Didn't dodge any of the bats though, so his probably gave the bats his back. To be fair, should be able to tank tortos and grab stray bats without giving his back to either.

Attempt #2. The only thing healing him for a span of about 10 seconds between the 2 snapping bites before he died was Rejuv, wild growth, and a tick of atonement. (23:30:14.647 to 23:30:25:834) He even managed to pop a healthstone and health potion after the 1st bite. In those 11 seconds before his death, he basically didn't receive healing from the 2 disc priests (no 100k absorb from a PW:S, or a heal like prayer of mending, penance, greater heal, life swap, etc.) and only a rejuv + wg from the druid heals.
However, as the tank on tortos why is he pressing growl every 10-15 seconds, the monk tank is not taunting.

Attempt #3. So quake stomp occurs at 23:33:38:630. It's absorbed via spirit shell. From then on until his death at 23:33:46:685, so for 13 seconds), the only heals he receives is 1 atonement heal (1 tick of holy fire doesn't count), a 16k absorb (presumably a divine aegis proc or guard from monk block ox statue, as PW:S would be around 100k absorb), lifebloom, regrowth, and swiftmend. Though it seems like the regrowth and swiftmend fell off about 5 seconds before his death, so the only thing healing him at that point was lifebloom. However, same weirdness of him pressing growl every 10-15 seconds when the monk tank is not taunting?

You killed it in attempt #4 with the monk tanking tortos and him tanking bats. He died due to rockfall. Bad play.

So attempt #1 wasn't his fault since monk tank died first from bats, and attempt #2 & 3 is more healer's fault then his fault, his uptimes and usage of abilities seemed fine in those attempts.

Looking at council fight he was tanking the priest, and taunting for tank swaps on frost king frigid assault, Usage uptime seems to be fine... Until you look carefully and realize most of his damage taken was from the priest's Wrath at 53.6%, and melee + frigid assault at 16.0% + 9.8% while his savage defense uptime was at 50.1%.

So, based on this...

1) He needs to unglyph Frenzied regen. Frenzied regen scales with vengeance; the heal is great for spike damage to give your healers time to wind up that greater heal cast while health is low. The glyphed version is great for helping with overall hps, but sucks for spike damage, hence unglyph it and use it more.

2) He needs to learn to use and time his abilities based on the encounter. Eg. For council when he's tanking the priest and she's dealing high spell damage to him, he needs to be self healing using Frenzied regen, not keepin up the dodge from savage defense. He does keep up savage defense relatively well when tanking the bats on the the kill of Tortos. I didn't delve into the logs more carefully but he needs to do things like pop a CD (barkskin, ursoc, survival instinct, bone shield from symbiosis, etc.) before each quake stomp while tanking bats so his health doesn't dip below 350k, or not accidentally turn his back when tanking a bunch of adds. I don't know why he's taunting every 10-15 seconds on tortos attempts when MTing him but that needs to stop, it either means he doesn't know it doesn't generate threat or he's got it macroed to an ability, which is bad too.

3) Healing seems to be an issue. 2 out of your 3 healers are really weak. Your resto druid is ridiculously low on Horridon (like wtf is he doing just standing there low). And one of your disc priests and your resto druid got outhealed by the brewmaster tank's guard + black ox statue guard.... This is after the 5.2 50% healing nerf to it!


Before the rest of you guys throw this poor guy under the bus look at the other aspects of the raid, mainly heals in this case which are doing horribly bad.
Your druid tank seems to be ok, he mainly needs to know how to rotate his abilities based on the encounter, not play the same rotation for every fight, eg. Savage defense vs when to self-heal using frenzied regen.

[Daniie]

Gem/enchants are fine it's most likely a L2P issue.

You also say he's your OT in which case going down the RPS gearing route is better as he'll be tanking a lot less and be providing a hell of a lot more DPS than the main tank.

@splatter - Don't tell him to get more dodge/mastery or whatever that just isn't the issue here.

[Deleted]

L2P issue. He's read the Guardian guides on how to gear, gem, reforge etc. but he fails when it comes to actual practice and not just theory sorry.

[Embermoon]

Daniie, where do you get the idea that the OT will be tanking "a lot less?" There really isn't much of a distinction, anymore, between MTs and OTs; that's simply player nomenclature, these days. And, if you think the OT will be doing more dps, due to being RPS-geared, then you have to remember that that's only if said OT has full vengeance. Otherswise, an RPS-built guardian will still sit on the bottom of the damage meters.

Porra, I hope your guardian buddy will take a look at Scuba's suggestions. He's dead on the money.

[Daniie]

Because he's playing Guardian? It's generally the MT does most of the tanking where possible (depending on class) and then just swap for debuffs etc. on the majority of fights and yes I'm assuming he's keeping full Veng up which isn't all that hard. In which case a heavy RPS build will give the raid valuable DPS when getting encounters down - especially in 10m.

[kendro1200]

Don't listen to Splatter. He doesn't know guardian druid mechanics as well as he presents himself. Maximum uptime on savage defense is 67%.

And going for hit cap + exp hard cap > crit > mastery > haste == dodge is absolutely a decent gearing/reforging strat for guardian druids. The idea is to smooth the rage gen hence theoretically smoothing out the damage intake with correct use of savage defense + frenzied regen.

Anyways I looked at your guardian druid logs in much further detail than usual because first glance at uptime of savage defense, frenzied regen, use of cds, mangle vs lacerate/thrash, etc appears he's using them correctly.


Looking specifically at 3-26 logs on Tortos, attempt #1 isn't his fault, he was tanking both bats + tortos and died. Didn't dodge any of the bats though, so his probably gave the bats his back. To be fair, should be able to tank tortos and grab stray bats without giving his back to either.

Attempt #2. The only thing healing him for a span of about 10 seconds between the 2 snapping bites before he died was Rejuv, wild growth, and a tick of atonement. (23:30:14.647 to 23:30:25:834) He even managed to pop a healthstone and health potion after the 1st bite. In those 11 seconds before his death, he basically didn't receive healing from the 2 disc priests (no 100k absorb from a PW:S, or a heal like prayer of mending, penance, greater heal, life swap, etc.) and only a rejuv + wg from the druid heals.
However, as the tank on tortos why is he pressing growl every 10-15 seconds, the monk tank is not taunting.

Attempt #3. So quake stomp occurs at 23:33:38:630. It's absorbed via spirit shell. From then on until his death at 23:33:46:685, so for 13 seconds), the only heals he receives is 1 atonement heal (1 tick of holy fire doesn't count), a 16k absorb (presumably a divine aegis proc or guard from monk block ox statue, as PW:S would be around 100k absorb), lifebloom, regrowth, and swiftmend. Though it seems like the regrowth and swiftmend fell off about 5 seconds before his death, so the only thing healing him at that point was lifebloom. However, same weirdness of him pressing growl every 10-15 seconds when the monk tank is not taunting?

You killed it in attempt #4 with the monk tanking tortos and him tanking bats. He died due to rockfall. Bad play.

So attempt #1 wasn't his fault since monk tank died first from bats, and attempt #2 & 3 is more healer's fault then his fault, his uptimes and usage of abilities seemed fine in those attempts.

Looking at council fight he was tanking the priest, and taunting for tank swaps on frost king frigid assault, Usage uptime seems to be fine... Until you look carefully and realize most of his damage taken was from the priest's Wrath at 53.6%, and melee + frigid assault at 16.0% + 9.8% while his savage defense uptime was at 50.1%.

So, based on this...

1) He needs to unglyph Frenzied regen. Frenzied regen scales with vengeance; the heal is great for spike damage to give your healers time to wind up that greater heal cast while health is low. The glyphed version is great for helping with overall hps, but sucks for spike damage, hence unglyph it and use it more.

2) He needs to learn to use and time his abilities based on the encounter. Eg. For council when he's tanking the priest and she's dealing high spell damage to him, he needs to be self healing using Frenzied regen, not keepin up the dodge from savage defense. He does keep up savage defense relatively well when tanking the bats on the the kill of Tortos. I didn't delve into the logs more carefully but he needs to do things like pop a CD (barkskin, ursoc, survival instinct, bone shield from symbiosis, etc.) before each quake stomp while tanking bats so his health doesn't dip below 350k, or not accidentally turn his back when tanking a bunch of adds. I don't know why he's taunting every 10-15 seconds on tortos attempts when MTing him but that needs to stop, it either means he doesn't know it doesn't generate threat or he's got it macroed to an ability, which is bad too.

3) Healing seems to be an issue. 2 out of your 3 healers are really weak. Your resto druid is ridiculously low on Horridon (like wtf is he doing just standing there low). And one of your disc priests and your resto druid got outhealed by the brewmaster tank's guard + black ox statue guard.... This is after the 5.2 50% healing nerf to it!


Before the rest of you guys throw this poor guy under the bus look at the other aspects of the raid, mainly heals in this case which are doing horribly bad.
Your druid tank seems to be ok, he mainly needs to know how to rotate his abilities based on the encounter, not play the same rotation for every fight, eg. Savage defense vs when to self-heal using frenzied regen.

If there is any post to take away from the thread it's this.
Talk with the healers. Don't throw your druid under the bus, it's animal cruelty and DEHTA will come after you.

[rated]

Ignore Splatter. No offense dude, but your posts in this thread have shown you do not know Guardians well enough to give advice on them.

I don't have time to look at logs right now, but I'll point out armory problems.

He's using glyph of frenzied regen which is not a good idea. He could be using frenzied regen to heal himself for significantly a lot more. Stampede roar glyph would be better instead to increase the range. (it's amazing for tortos and jikun)

He's under the hit cap and not quite at the 15% exp mark. imo he either needs to commit to 7.50%/7.50% or 7.50%/15.00%.

He's falling into the "gem for every socket bonus, even if it sucks" theory of gemming. 60 dodge on gloves is not worth gemming for.

His weapon, bracers and gloves enchants are wrong. He has more than enough heath to tank current content so lets stop getting more stam. He needs 500 agility on bracers, mastery on gloves and windsong on weapon. Colossus is crap and gets out performed by windsong for the same price.

Even these changes I've mentioned are rather minor and would not be the cause of a tank taking a truck load of damage. If anything these changes show he doesn't know how to play his toon therefore making him squishy, but the logs & everything Scubascythe said explains most of that (the healers being a bigger issue). lol

[Arielle]

Snapping Bite goes through Armor, so Druids are going to take a ton of damage from it whenever they get hit. However you should always just be able to heal it up.

As for bats, you have to use a cooldown on those when you're picking them up. Once you get Savage Defense rolling it's fine, unless your DPS are terribads and can't kill them fast enough.

His Savage Defense uptime during Frigid Assault could be better. Biggest problem is that he's not using Tooth and Claw like, at all. Ever. Should probably start doing that. Also: Why do you swap during Frigid Assault? If he's doing it correctly he should never actually get stunned.

As for the toon...

The only thing really "wrong" is his weapon enchant. Shouldn't be Colossus. Should be at least Windsong.

[Blencathra]

It's generally the MT does most of the tanking where possible (depending on class) and then just swap for debuffs etc. on the majority of fights

Maybe in your guild; don't assume the same is true everywhere. For instance in my 10m raid guild we have three main tanks and we all tank and DPS-offspec just as much as each other.

We've also noticed that I (the bear) seem to take much more damage tanking Tortos than the other tanks in my guild (DK/warrior) - I think this is because bears either take all or none of the Snapping Bite (cooldowns notwithstanding) damage whereas DKs have their own blood shield thing and warriors can partially block it. So I'm generally on the bats which are no problem so long as you keep Savage Defense up the whole time and use a cooldown on the earthquake.

[rated]

^^ Like Arielle said snapping bite goes through Guardians armor, hence the amount of damage we take from it. Our advantage to combat this though is to be able to heal our selves to full with frenzied regen right afterwards.

[wow2011]

Here's the story. The past couple of weeks we've doing some ToT casually and my Druid offtank is getting annihilated every pull. Not necessarily more overall damage than me but more unhealable spikey damage. Im a monk and I heal it back like crazy or completely avoid it while he's getting 2-3 shot on Tortos in seconds. We ended up putting him on the bats because the damage he was taking was insane, and it was the same story with the bats so I ended up just tanking both and he brought them to me when they spawned so melee wouldnt get ganked by a boss attack. I checked up on some Druid stuff and saw his Savage Defense uptime was hideous along with Frenzied Regen and told him, yet he's still getting trucked on every boss, mostly Tortos and Council when he takes Frost King.

http://worldoflogs.com/guilds/176629/
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...r/Mahii/simple

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

For a crit build, you have to know your def CDs and boss mechanics very well. Otherwise he can consider mastery/dodge build for passive dmg reduction.

I don't know if he is doing this but here are a few tips for normal mode:
Council Frost King: don't bother using savage defense when Frost King isn't using Frigid Assault. If he can keep up savage defense for entire frigid assault (this should be easy with hit/exp/crit build) then he should not get stunned at all. For the remaining time, just use frenzied regen to self heal to help the healers. Other CDs should also be rotated during frigid assault.

Tortos Bats: Savage Defense needs to be up before he starts to tank the bats and it needs to stay up while bats are alive. He should also have pooled 100 rage before the bats fly down. HP+instant heal should be used if hp is too low when bats come down. Keep typhoon and vortex handy to kite the bats to reduce damage taken further. Another thing to possibly consider is to pick up displacer beast to kite more if it's really needed (though he will need to learn how to use it properly or it's a suicide move).

I hope this helps.